It had landed just outside the ring of light from the gas station sign, the ring of light Sarah and her father stood well inside. The ground hadn’t shaken when the dragon settled—a gingerly step to the dirt from the air as it stopped its glide—but it did shake as the dragon came forward now, its head and long neck angling down low, the claws at the end of its wings hooking into the ground at each step, those great wings flaring on either side, making itself look bigger, more threatening.
When it finally came into the light, she saw it only had one eye. The other was scarred over, indeed seemed to have rope-like stitching holding it shut. The surviving eye led the rest of its body toward them until the dragon stopped and inhaled two big gusts of breath. Sarah knew it would do this. Their noses were sharper than a bloodhound’s. It was rumored they could smell more than just odor, that they could smell your fear or if you were lying, but this was probably the same old wives’ tale about them being able to hypnotize you.
Probably.
“You are the man?” it said. The words rumbled from so deep in its chest that Sarah almost felt rather than heard them.
“Who else would I be?” her father replied, and Sarah was surprised to hear a buried note of fear there. The dragon’s eye narrowed in suspicion. It clearly didn’t understand her father’s answer, something her father saw as well. “I am the man,” he said.
The dragon looked him up and down, then cast its eye over Sarah.
“You will not speak to her,” her father said. “I only brought her as a witness, since that’s what you require.”
This was news to Sarah. A witness? Her father had made it seem like coming along had been her own irritating idea.
The dragon kept its head low but arched its neck, looking for all the world like a snake about to strike. It brought its nose close to her father, so close it could have eaten him in a single snap.
Though that rarely happened anymore.
“Payment,” it rumbled. A word, not a question.
“After,” her father said.
“Now,” said the dragon, spreading its wings.
“Or what? You’ll burn me?”
Another low rumble from the dragon’s chest, and Sarah panicked for a moment, wondering if her father had gone too far. This dragon had lost an eye. Perhaps it didn’t feel bound by the—
Then she realized it was laughing.
“Why does the dragon no longer kill man?” the dragon asked, a smile curling the ends of its mouth.
It was her father’s turn to be confused. “What?”
But the dragon answered its own question. “Society,” it said, and even in the nonhuman (and for that matter, non-Russian) accent, even in its lack of a soul, Sarah could hear the amused bitterness with which it spoke the single word. “Half,” the dragon said, negotiating now.
“After,” her father said.
“Half now.”
“One quarter now. Three quarters after.”
The dragon considered, and for a brief moment its eye was on Sarah again. It can’t hypnotize you, she reminded herself. He can’t do that.
“Acceptable,” the dragon rumbled, and sat back on its haunches, awaiting the quarter payment. Gareth Dewhurst turned to his daughter and gave a small nod. They had expected this, and Sarah went to the truck, opened the passenger door, and reached into the glove compartment. She pulled out the small shiny fingerling of gold her father had formed by melting down his cheaply made wedding ring. It was all they had. They had nothing left to pay the dragon with at the end of his labor, but her father had refused all of Sarah’s attempts at solving that worry. “It’ll be taken care of,” was all he said. She assumed this meant melting down her mother’s silver-service heirloom set, hoping the dragon would take the lesser metal, knowing it probably would.
But what if it refused? What if it took badly to being cheated? Though on the other hand, what choice did it have in the end? Even deputies who weren’t Kelby wouldn’t care all that much about a dragon being underpaid. Still, it didn’t sit well in Sarah’s stomach. Not much did. It was where she kept all her anxiety. And there was a lot these days.
She brought the small sliver of gold over to her father. He nodded at her, at her bravery, she thought, as he took it from her. He held it up for the dragon to sniff, which it duly did, in an intake so strong it was as if it were trying to pull the gold from her father’s outstretched fingers.
“Meager,” the dragon said.
“It’s what was agreed,” her father said.
“What was agreed was meager.” But the dragon reached forward an open claw, and her father dropped the gold into it.
“Our deal has been witnessed,” her father said now. “Quarter payment has been made. The agreement is sealed.”
After a moment, the dragon nodded.
“You know where the farm is?”
The dragon nodded again.
“You’ll sleep in the fields you’re clearing,” her father said. “You’ll begin work in the morning.”
The dragon didn’t nod at this, merely smiled again, as if pondering how it had allowed itself to be so commanded.
“What?” her father said. “What is it?”
Another laughing rumble in the dragon’s chest, and it said, again, “Society.”
It took off into the air so suddenly Sarah and her father were nearly blown off their feet. Just like that, it was a shadow in the sky once more.
“It knows where the farm is?” she asked.
“It had to assess the work,” her father said, heading back to the truck.
“Where was I?” she said, following him. “You said you got it through Mr. Inagawa’s broker—”
“You don’t need to know everything.” He got behind the wheel and slammed his door shut.
She opened the passenger side door but didn’t get in. “You said I could drive.”
He let out that long breath through his nose again. “So I did.”
A moment later, they were on the road. Sarah shifted through the gears easily, even with the truck’s notoriously sticky clutch, even through the hills and turns that marked this part of the county. She avoided potholes, she signaled even though they hadn’t seen another car for miles, and she didn’t pump the accelerator the way she knew drove her father crazy. He had absolutely nothing to complain about. He complained anyway.
“Not so fast,” he said, as they trundled off the last stretch of paved street in Frome, Washington, the little hamlet their farm was in distant orbit of. “You never know when a deer could jump out at you.”
“There’s a dragon in the sky,” she said, looking up at the stars through the windshield. “The deer will be hiding.”
“If they know what’s good for them,” her father said, but at least he stopped talking about her driving. The road was black save for her headlights. No streetlights, no lights from nearby houses as there weren’t any, just heavy forest closing in like the night itself. They drove in silence for a few moments, Sarah thinking about having to rise in six short hours to tend to the chickens and hogs before heading to school.
Then she remembered. “What was that about a witness? What was I a witness to?”
“Dragons think men lie,” her father said, offering an explanation but no apology, “and require at least one other to witness every legal agreement.”