“Then explain why I shouldn’t,” said the dragon.
“So sit down and listen!” Mara bawled up at it.
To everyone’s great surprise, the dragon doubled its scrawny back legs under itself and sank down on its mangy haunches. “I’m listening,” it thundered in a new cloud of brown smoke. “It’s about time someone explained this mad world to me!”
“All right,” said Mara. “All right! Just stop blowing smoke at me!”
“It comes out when I breathe,” the dragon growled.
“Nonsense,” said Mara.
Callette waited to see that the dragon did indeed stop blowing out smoke and then took off in a mighty clap of wings. “Where are you off to?” Don shrieked.
“Healer!” Callette screamed over her shoulder, making her fastest wing strokes toward the hills.
“Oh. Gods. Yes,” Don said, and took off after her, going so hard to catch Callette up that he was flying like a sparrow, in swoops and furious flutters.
“Blade,” said Mara, “get your father to the house.”
Blade always found it easier to translocate someone if he was touching him. He did not dare touch Derk. Derk was writhing about in the cinders of the grass, blue-purple in the face and hideous red in most other places. Most of his clothes were still smoking. The way much of his skin had gone into yellow streaks and blisters made Blade hurt, too, in sympathy. Blade stood himself gingerly astride him and translocated both of them to the living room sofa. The dragon rolled an eye at them as they went but did not try to stop them. Next instant the griffin fur and dog hairs on the sofa sizzled. The translocation somehow tipped Derk on his side, which made him give a horrible hoarse yell. This so appalled Blade that he simply stood astride his father on the sofa and wondered what to do.
Lydda shot into the room. “Make him cold. Quick. First aid for burns. Freeze him!” she panted.
“Oh, yes.” Thankful to be told, Blade concentrated until he could feel his own feet ache with cold. Derk stopped writhing, but he was still boiled red and streaked oozing yellow, and he was not breathing properly. “Where’s Mum?” Blade said desperately.
“Talking to that beastly dragon,” Lydda said, sounding quite as desperate. “I suppose she has to keep it under control.”
As Blade was carefully climbing off the sofa, Shona and Elda arrived. The slightest jolt made Derk utter more of those terrible hoarse noises. Blade was shaking when Shona helped him finally climb to the floor. “He’s lost half his hair!” Elda wailed. “And Mum’s just standing there giving that dragon a history lesson on how the tours started!”
Lydda’s beak snapped. “Be quiet. We have to wait for the healer.”
They waited. Shortly Kit put his head through the window, grassy and ruffled with shame. He told them that Mara was still talking to the dragon. “It turns out to have been asleep for the last three hundred years,” he said. “I suppose that accounts for it. Things must have been very different when it was last awake.”
“I wish it had never woken up,” Elda said miserably.
Blade wished that, too. It seemed unbelievable that only half an hour ago he had been annoyed with Derk for making him drudge about getting lunch. Now he would have given anything to go back to being angry with his father in the old comfortable way. “We never had lunch,” he said.
Nobody wanted lunch. They waited.
About half an hour later Callette’s wings boomed as she hovered above the terrace, carrying the healer slung in a blanket like a marshwoman’s baby, while Don hastily landed to catch the healer as Callette tipped her out.
“Thank—thank Anscher!” said Lydda.
The healer, who was a thin, brown, harassed-looking woman, took one look at Derk and turned everyone out of the room except Lydda. “You look the calmest,” she said.
“I’m not. Really,” Lydda said, but she stayed.
Soon after, Mara left the dragon for a short while and went in to speak to the healer. She came out with a shawl wrapped over her startling dress, looking gray. “She’s still trying to clear his lungs,” Mara said to everyone sitting or couchant on the terrace. “She says to thank whoever cooled the burns off because she can concentrate on his breathing first. But she’ll have to stay the night. Shona and Elda, you run up and get her a bed ready and put clean sheets on Derk’s bed, and Blade can move Derk when she’s finished. Don and Kit, let me know at once when she’s through, please. I want her to come and see to the dragon after that.”
“You want her to see to the dragon!” Shona exclaimed.
Mara gave Shona one of her grimmest, chin-up looks. “That dragon,” she said, “is half dead. His wings need stitching, and I think he has some kind of deficiency disease. It may have affected his mind. He needs help, Shona.”
“Oh, fine!” said Kit. “Fine! And has that dragon of yours killed Dad? Or not?”
“The healer thinks he’ll be all right,” Mara said, at which everyone let out large sighs of relief. “But,” Mara added, “she’ll have to put him in a healing coma for the next five days at least, and he’ll be in bed for a while after that.”
“But,” said Shona, “Mum, the tours start the day after tomorrow!”