Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls - Jane Lindskold [35]
I find that talking to the walls or to Betwixt and Between for too long worries Professor Isabella. Soon, ashamed at myself, I feign emotionally charged conversations in order to get her to take me outside.
Abalone always disguises me. She has ruled out dyeing my hair, preferring the variety of her wig collection. My eyes are hidden by contact lenses or sunglasses, my features by cosmetics. Professor Isabella also has a few disguises and chuckles about playing “dress up” at her age.
The computer door guard doesn’t care how we look as long as finger and retina prints match what is filed.
Meanwhile, Abalone is tracking down Ivy Green Institute. Often she is frustrated by dead end after dead end.
We persevere in this fashion for some time. Tracing the Brighton Rock candy campaign, we note that venders in the now ominous cream and jade are being posted at museums. Professor Isabella decides that we should avoid these even in disguise and takes me to concerts, plays, and zoos.
How well I follow concerts varies widely. Often I end up listening to the Hall rather than the music. Plays delight me, however, especially old friends like Shakespeare and Shaw, whose words, like the Bible’s, I think of as my own.
Zoos are a problem. I have not been much around animals. They were forbidden in the Home and the pets of the Free People tended to stay near their handlers. However, my timidity is not an excuse; Professor Isabella is determined to educate me about animals in more than theory.
We go and look at the caged creatures and I finally see wolves, bears, panthers, and owls in the fur. Professor Isabella must explain that there are no dragons like Betwixt and Between in zoos, but she shows me lizards and snakes. My dragons amuse themselves by making snide comments at the expense of their unicameral kinfolk.
These visits continue until I lose some of my fear. Then she takes me to the Petting Zoo, where there are animals to touch. Visit after visit, I refuse to do more than quickly pat a silken nose or hastily feed food pellets to an eager goat or llama.
Finally, however, I consent to make friends with the guinea pigs, starting by feeding one or another from the far side of a carrot or string bean and proudly progressing to the day I actually hold a stout black-and-white boar with whorls like flowers in his fur.
We come home to tell Abalone, full of triumph.
“Sarah actually held a guinea pig today,” Professor Isabella announces almost before we are in the door.
“If thine enemy hunger, feed him,” I offer, thinking how less sharp the teeth looked when chewing on a carrot.
“You held a guinea pig and fed it?” Abalone asks.
I nod happily.
“Great,” Abalone is clearly impressed. “Not bad at all. Oh, by the way, I located Ivy Green Institute today, even cracked some of the files.”
“Not bad.” Professor Isabella smiles and winks at me.
I smile, but I am not certain that I am ready to learn more. What I have discovered has hardly made me happy. Still, even as I am trying to shape the protest, Abalone is beginning to pull files up from her tappety-tap’s memory.
“Sarah. There’s a birth date here and a description.” She drums the table. “This next is what gets me—no parents are listed but there is a brother, Dylan, and a sister, Eleanora.”
Dylan. Pale of hair. Eyes almost without color. Dylan. Brother.
I shudder. Betwixt and Between call for me from my bag. I grasp toward them, but the room is spinning, the floor coming to meet my head. My hands are too slow to catch me.
When I awake, I am on a sofa in the living room. Betwixt and Between are propped near me. Four ruby eyes are bright with tears.
I reach and brush away the tears. Funny how in all the time Betwixt and Between have been with me, I never learned until now that dragons purr.
I am scratching the dragons under their chins when Abalone comes in, a beer in one