The Story of Owen (14 page)

I spent a couple of days trying to convince him that I didn't need to incorporate as a small business, though Lottie pointed out that it might be useful to keep in mind for tax purposes later. Eventually we decided that the Thorskards would pay for
the additional insurance, whatever gas I used driving Owen, and my tutoring fee. For the first time in my life, I had more money than I could spend in a single trip to the music store.

That's an outright lie, of course, but it sounds good. The truth was that I could start saving money for university now, whether I planned to attend or not, and I could also treat myself to the odd extra piece of sheet music from time to time. This was a new luxury for me. Now, not only did I have a car with which to take myself to the music store, located an hour away in the opposite direction of Saltrock, and someone to share the gas with, but I could also purchase things instead of looking at them longingly, and, should we be attacked by a dragon on the road, my new insurance would help me replace my car. I even got snow tires and put them on the car in the first week of November to be extra prepared. The weather was unseasonably warm, but between dragon fire and regular run-of-the-mill climate change, that sort of thing was becoming more and more difficult to predict.

I had finally managed to make the horn sound like something besides a duck that had just realized it was going to be Christmas dinner, and I was celebrating by playing “Venezuela” as loudly as I could in the practice room. Owen walked in, like he did every day, and then his face fell when he recognized the song. I was surprised he knew it, as it wasn't all that common a folk song. He stayed to listen, but he didn't say anything to me for the rest of the day. I thought I was okay with waiting him out, but apparently there was only so much I was willing to take,
and being in the car with him had put me at the end of my patience.

I checked the rearview mirror to make sure nothing was coming. Nothing was. Even though this was a main highway, it was still empty as often as not. Then I pulled over and put the car in park.

“What's wrong?” asked Owen. He was scanning the skies, looking for a dragon.

“That's what I was going to ask you,” I said. “You haven't said a word to me since lunch, until just now, and I wanted to know what the problem was.”

“It's nothing,” he said shortly.

“You asked Alex for help in algebra instead of me,” I pointed out. “It's definitely something.”

He looked out the window for a long time. I was just about to give up and shift into first gear, my hand already on the gearshift, when he turned back.

“Wait,” he said, and put his hand over mine. “There's something I probably should have told you.”

He balled his hands up and put them in his lap, looking back out the window, and I knew that whatever he was going to tell me was going to take some time. I didn't like to idle this close to Hannah's smithy, so I turned off the engine and settled in to wait him out, for real this time.

“You've never asked about my mother,” he said after a moment.

“I haven't ever really thought about her,” I said, which was the truth. I knew he had to have come from somewhere, but he had a family, and I'd never thought that there were any pieces missing from it. I had decided it wasn't my business.

“She's alive,” Owen said. “If that's what you were worried about.”

I'll admit, I had no earthly idea what I would have said if she'd been dead, but I didn't really have much to go on with her being alive either, so I just said, “Oh,” and let him continue.

“She and my dad met in the Watch, in 1994, right near the end of their tours,” he said. “Dad was assigned to the Middle East, but not Saudi Arabia like Hannah and Lottie. He was in Kuwait instead.”

I winced. It had happened before I was born, but Kuwait was the one glaring failure in the Oil Watch's record. It hadn't been the fault of the dragon slayers, but of course they were the ones who had borne the blame.

“It got really bad, for a while. Bad enough that Hannah and Lottie and a bunch of others, including my mother, were eventually reassigned close by to help,” Owen said. “And the dragon slayers were in the middle of the worst of it. It's why dad didn't go for a contract when he got home. He couldn't stop thinking about the fires. He still can't, not really.”

A pickup truck drove past us, slowing down to make sure we were all right. I waved the driver on with a smile I didn't feel, and turned back to Owen. He was still looking out the window.

“They got really close,” Owen said. “My mom and dad. Lottie says that's what happens in the Oil Watch. They put the dragon slayers together and hope they bond. Like Sparta, but without all the child sacrifice.”

He laughed, but it wasn't because he thought his joke was funny.

“Anyway, I was one of those things that happen when people ‘bond,'” Owen said. “Mom had to come off active duty,
and the rest of the squad voted to give dad the safest tasks, not that there was much in the way of safety to be had. I was born in 1995, just before their time was up. Dad wanted to come home, train new dragon slayers and work with Lottie and Hannah. Mom, she just wanted to go home.”

“And she wasn't Canadian,” I said. I thought back to that history class, the one where Mr. Huffman had pointed out that despite the camaraderie the Oil Watch is supposed to inspire, very few dragon slayers actually stick with it.

“Venezuelan,” he said.

And there it was.

“Do you ever see her?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” he said. “About once a year. She wanted to come when Aunt Lottie was injured, but they couldn't spare her. It's different there, dragon slaying, because it's a smaller country, so they all live close to their oil fields. She didn't have time to train me properly. She takes her dragon slaying very seriously.”

“And she didn't want to jeopardize her career by having a baby around?” I said, my tone as light as I could make it.

“It's more complicated than that,” Owen said. “But she certainly wasn't looking to settle down with a family.”

“But your dad was?” I asked.

“Hannah, actually.” Owen smiled. “Theoretically, dragon slayers are supposed to provide their own replacements, and Hannah wanted to make sure that Lottie's replacement was the best.”

“So no pressure then,” I said.

“None at all,” Owen said. He laughed, and this time it was real. “My mom is a national hero, just not from the same
country. I can't be mad that she wanted to be the best at her job. And Lottie was already famous, even then, so when Hannah offered an alternative, everyone decided it was the best and most responsible thing to do.”

“Hannah told me that the hardest times of her life were spent hiding in the dragon shelter after you were born,” I told him.

“I know,” he said. “She likes to trot that out whenever she wants something.”

“It really does take a village to raise a dragon slayer,” I said.

“If you say that too many more times, people are going to think it's my slogan and I'm going to end up with it embroidered on a pillow somewhere,” Owen said.

Another car drove past us, and I waved to the driver. This time, my smile was real.

“Start the car, please,” Owen said. He rubbed his hands together. “I'm starting to freeze.”

“If I'd left the engine running, we might have been attacked,” I said. It still wasn't cold, but if he wanted to change the subject, I was going to let him.

“At least I'd be warm,” Owen pointed out.

“You have very strange priorities,” I said. I started the car and shifted back into gear so I could pull out onto the road.

“Why did you pick that song, anyway?” Owen asked once I'd reached fifth and put the cruise control on.

“Because it has great range,” I said. “It's up and down and sideways. And there are fast and slow parts, pauses and notes you barely play. If you have someone to play the bass, it's even better, but as a warmup song it's pretty much perfect. I don't mind finding something else, though. There are lots of songs.”

“No, it's okay,” Owen said. “I should have told you all of this weeks ago. And it sounded awesome on the horn.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I've been practicing.”

“I noticed,” he said, and then winced as I smacked him lightly on the shoulder. “Hey, I meant that in the good way!” he protested.

“Sure you did,” I said.

“No, really,” he said. “I've listened to it all, haven't I? And never once did I wear earplugs.”

“My hero,” I said. “They'll sing songs of your bravery in the face of bad horn playing for decades to come.”

“They will if you write them,” he said. “But I think we'd both be better off if we stick to dragons.”

He was right.

Lottie didn't warn me that signing up to be Owen's bard would mean I got homework. It wasn't a lot, and it was mostly pretty fun, but it was still more work on top of my regular school stuff, the self-defense sword training, and my music. Mostly it was reading old stories, and some not-so-old stories, about dragons and dragon slayers. I would talk to Lottie or Hannah about what was true and what was fabricated, and then figure out if the fabrications were any good. It was way more interesting than
Heart of Darkness
, which, as promised, we had plunged into in English class. Not even the addition of stories about African dragons could make
that
book more appealing. Mr. Cooper said that Conrad had tried to keep the dragon lore in his book as true-to-life as possible, but I was under the impression that he just lacked imagination.

There are many things about dragons that are simply untrue, most of which will spice up nearly any story. They have no specific dietary prejudice when it comes to humans, for example. They don't really care if you're a girl or a boy, whether you're young or old, or if you've ever had sex. There was an anti-smoking
ad campaign a few years ago that suggested dragons were more likely to go after people who smoked cigarettes or cigars, but the testing methods used in the research were fairly sketchy and nothing really conclusive was determined. It was still a fairly successful ad, though.

When I was still in elementary school, an animal psychologist had published a book about how dragons had come to associate humans with carbon emissions, thus accounting for the higher number of dragon attacks since the turn of the millennium. No one took him particularly seriously. This was a bit because his methodologies were faulty, but mostly because the psychologist was eaten trying to prove his point shortly after his book was released to the public. Those few copies he autographed beforehand are worth a ludicrous amount of money to collectors, but mostly the book is used as an example of how not to think about dragons. It did come in handy every time an animal rights group tried to have a certain species declared endangered or something stupid like that, though.

Each culture had its own myths and misconceptions about dragons and dragon slayers. As I read more of the chronicles Lottie gave me, the more I realized that misinformation could be a dragon slayer's greatest help and biggest challenge at the same time. My job as Owen's bard wasn't just to make him sound cool on the six o'clock news, though that was a big part of it. I also had to protect him from damaging rumors and false leads, like the ones from the summer about Aodhan's supposed incompetency. Lottie had dealt with those simply by being in a coma and then announcing the move, but I couldn't always rely on that sort of distraction. The most important thing was
to make sure that the public stayed calm. There were several so-called preventative measures that didn't actually keep dragons away, but so long as no one was eaten while participating, they did no harm in keeping order and strengthening the trust between dragon slayers and the general public.

One such placebo was traditional Scottish bagpipes. (For whatever reason, Irish bagpipes were not considered effective dragon deterrents). As a response to the increasing number of dragon attacks on Saltrock, the mayor of the town had implemented a thoroughly ridiculous Saturday night ritual called “Piping Down the Sun,” wherein local pipers would assemble on the beach and play their bagpipes at full volume from the time the sun touched the horizon until it disappeared completely. The noise didn't do much to actually keep the dragons away, but it certainly worked with the tourists, which seemed counterproductive for a town that was kind of off the beaten path when it came to tourism in the first place.

The piping happened every Saturday all summer long. When fall rolled around, the good weather encouraged them to continue, and it wasn't until the third week of November, when it snowed, that the pipers decided to stop. Owen and I didn't know that, though. In Trondheim, the consensus was that piping down the sun was a bit of a joke, and since Owen hadn't even been in town when it started, we had pretty much forgotten it was happening at all. This explained how we inadvertently attended the last piping of the season.