The Story of Owen (30 page)

We finished the garden without talking, and then we went inside for lunch with Mum. She had rented a movie the night before,
Singing in the Rain
, and announced that we would
watch it when we were done eating. Dad made popcorn in his old-style popcorn maker, which invariably burned everything so Mum always made sure to have some of the microwave stuff standing by, and I made root beer floats. By this point, even with Dad's earlier reassurances, I was discovering nerves I didn't even know I possessed. Sugar was probably the last thing I needed, but at least the root beer didn't have caffeine.

Just as the movie was ending, the phone rang, and for just one moment, I hoped it was the dragon attack we had been waiting for so I could finally put myself out of my misery. Dad answered it before I could, and I could tell from his expression that he was seriously debating whether or not to hand the receiver to me, before he finally did.

“Hello?” I said, a bit cautiously because Dad hadn't told me who it was.

“Hi, Siobhan.” It was Catalina. Her accent was a bit thicker over the phone, but I still had no problem understanding her. I'd realized by now that her English grammar was probably better than mine was. “How are you?”

“Oh, you know,” I said casually. “Keeping on.”

“As are we,” she replied. “Owen has finished in the garden if you would like to come over, but your father said it was some kind of family day?”

“We're watching my favorite movie and drinking root beer floats,” I admitted.

“Siobhan,” Catalina said, all business. “Are they acting like it's your last day on earth?”

“Kind of,” I said. I knew my parents couldn't hear her, but the urge to whisper my responses was overwhelming.

“In that case, you must come,” she said. “You do not need
any more nerves than you have.”

“Thank you,” I said effusively. I looked at Mum and saw the beginnings of a frown.

“Put your mother on,” Catalina said. “I will straighten her out.”

I handed the phone to Mum and listened to her half of the conversation with Owen's mother. Mum's face started off looking very determined, but as she listened to Catalina speak, her expression shifted, until finally she bid Catalina good night and hung up.

“Apparently Owen needs you,” Mum said. She almost looked like she believed it. “Hannah has some updated charts of the area you'll be boating through, and she wants to the two of you to go over them together.”

“Well,” I said in my very best
man, I really wish I didn't have to leave
voice. “At least we got the gardening done.”

“You are a terrible liar,” she said, and pulled me in for a hug. The worst part was that I really wasn't. I just had better secrets to keep. I felt Dad's arms wrap around the pair of us. “We're just so worried.”

“I know,” I said. “And believe me, I'm worried too. I just can't think about it anymore unless I'm doing something active about it.”

“Like looking at charts?” Dad asked.

“Yeah,” I said, not fooling anyone.

“Drive carefully,” Mum said, and of course I did, both there and back home again. I slept safe and sound in my own bed, where I could pretend that they didn't each get up three times in the middle of the night to come into my room and stare at me for a while.

On Sunday, the Anglican church held a special St. George's Day ceremony. I played the organ as usual and did my best to ignore all the stares I could feel boring into the back of my head. Traditionally, all the churches in Trondheim got together and put on a picnic (if it was warm enough), or something, for St. George's Day, but this year no one decided to force joviality on the day. The holiday was technically on Monday anyway, the same day as Owen's birthday, and the town seem stuck between bartering that coincidence for all it was worth and trying to ignore it in case they somehow jinxed us.

Catalina fell solidly into the celebration side. She baked a cake to celebrate Owen's seventeenth birthday, carefully recreating an iconic image of the saint slaying a dragon in candy and sugar on the top. It was delicious, which I know because she let me eat the cake scraps that were left over from transferring it from the pan to the plate after I had finally escaped my parents and made it to the Thorskard house on Saturday. But Owen never got to eat it.

Instead, in the early afternoon, there was a call from the weekend janitor at the school board office on the cliffs in Saltrock. A dragon had been sighted, weather conditions were perfect, and everything was in place.

Owen Thorskard turned seventeen in the dark on Country Road 10, just north of Hanover. Neither one of us noticed until nearly a quarter past midnight. Our minds were elsewhere.

“Happy birthday,” I said when I saw him staring at the clock. I didn't want to know what he was thinking.

“Thanks,” he said. “I wish I'd thought to pack some cake.”

“It'll be there when we get back,” I told him. Assuming the house was there too, of course. I suspected that Hannah would have at least put the cake in the fridge, if not the freezer, both of which were typically unharmed in all but the most severe dragon attacks. “And we've got enough food for an army.”

It was true. When the Thorskards planned, they planned inclusively. As soon as the dragon sighting in Saltrock was confirmed, Hannah had produced fully-stocked hampers for all of the groups, though the ones for Lottie and Aodhan were mostly packed with first aid equipment, since they would be in a place where food would be easy to find. Our hamper fit into
the trunk of my car. It nestled between the extra gasoline we'd laid aside for when we were on the uninhabited Manitoulin, and the flamethrowers that Hannah had spent the week developing off of plans that Emily found on the Internet.

“I'm not sure I'm okay with this,” Hannah had said when Emily had produced the blueprints.

“I don't know what your problem is,” Lottie had said, one of her increasingly rare smiles on her face. “You're not the one who is going to have the Ministry of Defense wondering why you Googled ‘how to make flamethrowers.'”

“I'm not worried either,” Emily had said brightly. “I used a school computer.”

Hannah had sighed and then proceeded to make several modifications to the plans that she absolutely forbade Emily from uploading to the web.

“I'm still not comfortable with the part of this plan that involves the trunk being full of flammable gas and a machine designed to create flames,” Owen said.

“Well, we couldn't put the flamethrowers in the backseat, because if we hit a bump the swords might pierce the gas can,” I reminded him. “And if the gas is in the backseat, it's too hard to secure.”

“I know
why
we did it,” he said. “I just don't like it.”

Neither did I. But I wasn't going to say it out loud. We had enough to worry about.

Outside the car window, it was pitch dark. We saw the odd stop sign with a blinking red light on it, and on the rare occasion when we crossed what passed for a major intersection, there might be one streetlight to keep cars from T-boning each other, but aside from that, the countryside was dark. Even in
the places where I knew there were farms, I saw only blackness. Anyone who was home had turned off all the lights and retreated into their dragon shelters, just as they were supposed to.

“I hope the evacuation went okay,” I said, mostly because the silence was getting more and more terrifying for me.

“We've had lots of practice,” Owen reminded me.

“I meant in Kincardine and Southampton,” I said. We had just passed the turnoff for those towns. “I hope they've all battened down like they were supposed to.”

It was some distance from Saltrock to Manitoulin, even with the wind and the attraction the mine held for the dragons. If our plan worked, and we got a full-blown aerial assault, I'd hate to be the one person in Kincardine who was dumb enough to be idling in the Tim Horton's drive-thru when the dragons flew overhead.

“Everyone will be fine, Siobhan,” Owen said, and I knew to drop it.

“I don't suppose you could nap?” I told him. At least then I could talk quietly to myself.

“I really doubt it,” he said. We were going to arrive in the dark as it was, and we'd have to wait for sunup before crossing the strait in the waiting boat, but I didn't think I'd be doing any sleeping either. “You could sing,” he said.

“I am not going to sing,” I said.

“You sing all the time!” he said.

“I do not!” I argued.

“You really do,” he said. “You don't even know it, but you do. Half the time, I don't recognize the song, either, so I assume it's something you've made up, but you sing all the time.”

“I'm not going to sing,” I repeated.

“Fine,” he said. “Then tell me a story.”

“That I can do,” I said. “What do you want to hear?”

“Tell me how perfectly everything is going to go tomorrow,” he said. I could hear his hands tightening on his kneecaps, as he willed the car forward and the sun to rise and everything else he couldn't control. “Tell me how we win.”

“Okay,” I said. “But you have to close your eyes and pretend you're sleeping.”

“Deal,” he said and closed his eyes.

“Once upon a time,” I started. I went with a traditional opening because I was stalling for time. “Once upon a time, there was a dragon slayer named Owen. He was the son of two great dragon slayers, the nephew of a third, and also the nephew of the greatest living smith. And even though he had only just turned seventeen, he already had some very complicated dragon battles under his belt, and more than a few slayings to his name.”

Owen relaxed, just a bit, in the seat beside me. I took a breath and kept going.

“One day, Owen learned of a new hatching ground, north of where he lived and far from the control of the government. At first, no one believed him when he spoke about the danger, but soon everyone saw the truth and a great plan was made to keep everyone safe.

“The villagers and townspeople practiced diligently, until every one of them knew exactly what to do when the evacuation alarm sounded. Some went into their own shelters, and some went to their neighbors'. Dr. McQuaid went to the reinforced section of the hospital with her patients and waited in case any new injured people should be brought in by the brave paramedics.

“In Saltrock, Archie Carmichael led everyone into the mine, because Saltrock was going to be the most at risk, but in all the other towns, from Sauble Beach to Kettle Point, people made their preparations as well, so that everyone would be as safe and secure as possible.”

That part was true. We'd seen the beginnings of it in Trondheim before we left, and I'd watched the drills in Saltrock enough times to know that they would go smoothly. And Owen was right: the other towns would be equally well prepared. Now came the hard part.

“The brave dragon slayers were ready too,” I said, and somehow managed not to choke. “Aodhan and Catalina harried the dragon that had been sighted near the school board office, luring it in and then driving it off as they tried to buy time. Lottie Thorskard, the greatest dragon slayer since St. George himself, climbed to the top of the grain elevators, even though it pained her to do it on account of her leg, and settled in to wait. From her perch, she would be able to direct the other dragon slayers, and should a dragon make a run at her on her great height, she would still be able to pick it off as it dove for her.

“Hannah stood at the end of pier, waiting for the signal. When Aodhan gave it, it was Hannah's job to get to the ships moored offshore and evacuate the last of the skeleton crews to land so they could set off the explosions.”

“I know all that,” Owen said quietly, without opening his eyes. “What about us?”

“I'm getting to it,” I said, dropping my storyteller persona a bit peevishly. I'd been on a roll. “There's a style to this sort of thing, you know. That's why you hired a professional.”

“A thousand apologies, o bard,” Owen said grandiosely. “Pray, continue.”

I was still called “bard” infrequently enough that hearing him say it stirred something inside me. Even though he was making light, I knew he meant it. But this wasn't the time to stop and treasure moments. This was the time to plow on through them and hope for the best.

“But that was not the full extent of the plan,” I continued the tale. “For Owen and his loyal bard were hastening north in the bard's intrepid Toyota Corolla—”

“Are you seriously referring to yourself in third person?” Owen interrupted, this time sitting forward and opening his eyes.

“
Style
, barbarian!” I said. This had clearly been a brilliant idea. Both of us were actually having fun and forgetting, for whatever short periods of time, what it was we were driving toward. “And stop interrupting.”