Prairie Fire (8 page)

The government had declared most of Huron County a no-fly zone, which was standard procedure after a large-scale dragon incursion, even in places that didn't have much air traffic in the first place. Cars were risky enough, and putting something in the air when dragons were around was considered foolhardy, except in extreme circumstances. This limited the number of news helicopters that could hover around the hospital, school, and other buildings that had sustained damage, but it didn't stop reporters from driving into town and filming anything they wanted.

The Thorskards had spent a few days camped out at my house, because it took that long for the media to figure out where I lived. Eventually they ended up in front of the news cameras, giving interviews without me there to help them tell the story. That's when Emily had stepped in, at the cost of her online anonymity, and became their unofficial media handler. She's the one who, using the power of public opinion, made the original respondents look like Conservative lackeys who were more afraid of losing a favourite summer getaway than they were of a death toll. Which, to be fair, they pretty much were.

“She's unnerving,” Lottie had told me. “You should be taller before you can control people like that.”

“I think it's funny,” Owen's mother, Catalina, said. “It's like watching a mouse grow teeth and take down a
siligoinis
.”

“I've told you that joke's only funny in Spanish,” Owen said, and his mother waved him off. “But seriously, Emily is really good at this.”

“Tell me what's happening,” I said. “We don't have cable in here, so I'm only getting the CBC broadcast if the weather is good.”

“Aodhan's looking into that, by the way,” Hannah said. “He pointed out that with regular dragon slayer patrols, he'll be able to protect the towers. We might even get cell phones.”

“Put her out of her misery, love,” Lottie said, her fingers linked with Hannah's.

“Fine,” Hannah said, all business. “Locally, we're doing very well. The people who lost property are angry, of course, but it's a relatively small number from what it might have been, and people seem to understand that had we let the eggs hatch, it would have been much worse.”

“That's good then.” I hadn't been looking forward to going back to school if everyone was angry with us for getting their houses burned down.

“Nationally, it's a bit less rosy,” Hannah continued. “The government is kind of put out with you.”

Lottie snorted.

“I was trying to ease her into it!” Hannah said.

Every now and then, usually after a big public dragon disaster, there was talk about whether or not we should just try to force them into extinction. The debate always split into two sides: those who felt we should just do our best to get rid of the menace and deal with the fallout, and those who argued that, in addition to the environmental damage, there was no way of knowing what sort of trouble a mass extinction would cause. This invariably degraded into conversations about the fate of the dinosaurs and general name calling, and by then something else would have happened in the news cycle, and everyone would forget about it until the next disaster. The government rarely stepped in, and when they did it was usually with some fabricated science that no one could really test anyway.

With us, they had apparently decided to take another tack. MPs and MPPs across the country were either denouncing us or hailing us as heroes of a new age. There was no split by party line, though as a rule the Conservatives were generally not our biggest fans. Queen's Park, currently held by the Liberals, was taking a softer approach, questioning our ages and whether we should have been permitted such a dangerous task without supervision. But the Prime Minister cracked down nationally and cracked down hard. Our MP had already been kicked out of the cabinet, where he had been Minister of Agriculture, and relegated to the backbench because he had spoken in our defense (which, for the record, I thought was very nice of him; I hadn't been old enough to vote for his opponent, but I had actively campaigned for her). And he was not the only one to lose his seat at the big table before Emily stepped in and turned at least the Internet to our favour.

“There are really only two things holding them back at this point,” Lottie had said. Her dislike of our Prime Minister was both quite personal and very public knowledge. “The first is that we are all very popular right now—not with them, obviously, but with a growing number of their constituents.”

“What's the second reason?” I asked, though I had a bad feeling about what it was.

“I have to join the Oil Watch,” Owen said. “So the government will have me for four years.”

He didn't look at me when he said it. He didn't have to.

My hands hurt. I couldn't do buttons or use a fork or tuck my hair behind my ear without snagging it on my bandages and dragging half of it forward again. And I might never play again. But I decided then that none of that mattered. I was going to join the Oil Watch, still, even though it was going to be infinitely more difficult now. If the Prime Minister wanted to control Owen, he was going to have to deal with having us both. By the time I released the Manitoulin song on YouTube, I was, at the very least, no longer Owen's “unknown companion.”

I replayed that conversation in my head fairly often as I went through my rehab and last year in Trondheim. By the time I got to Gagetown, it was part of who I was. When the helicopter deposited us back in the main base after Owen slayed the Singe'n'burn, I didn't need to remind myself any more. We only had one more week of drills, and then it would be assignment and deployment time. The cornet-sergeant was on my side, or at least on the side of bet-winning. I had learned to work with Owen's squad. The government of Canada didn't quite own us; the Oil Watch did. And we would serve wherever they needed us.

I was so innocent in those days. I thought that since we had done the right thing, since we had saved lives and prevented wide-scale damage, that we would be rewarded. Or, at the least, not outwardly punished. But our detractors were patient, and they had many more resources to draw on.

Basic wore out its last week. The girls in our squad—Annie, Courtney, and the other firefighter, Laura Josephson—all shaved their heads to match mine. The boys saved us seats in the mess, even though we weren't required to eat as a group. The others looked at us with envy. We had done something they had not, and we had done it very well. They would face their first dragon in the field, untested and possibly on enemy soil. We had defended our home, again, and we had been perfect in our execution of manoeuvers.

“I hope we get at least the same country,” said Sadie, the morning of the last day. They would make the announcements at breakfast. She did the buttons on my dress uniform. I could manage them slowly by now, but she did it with much less swearing.

“You'll get the Middle East for sure,” the dragon slayer from Chilliwack said. Caroline, I think, but after Owen had slayed the Singe'n'burn a lot of people had introduced themselves to me, and I was having trouble remembering all those names. “And a big fat contract when you get home.”

I smiled. I knew that we didn't want that, but getting the offer, when it came, was going to be pretty sweet.

“Come on,” I said. “Let's go find out.”

I didn't want to say it in front of so many people, but I was looking forward to getting out of Canada for a while. I wanted to go somewhere where Owen would be appreciated, not maligned, however obtusely. And overseas they were more receptive to the idea of bards, too.

We filed into the mess and ate carefully, mindful of our hats and our white dress tunics. Then the cornet-sergeant took to the podium and began to make his announcements. His face was dark despite the fluorescents, and he had the look of a man who had fought for something and lost.

Deployments were called alphabetically by dragon slayer. We listened as our comrades were sent out to Alaska, Caracas, Kandahar, New Orleans, Newfoundland.

“Sadie Fletcher,” came the call, and Sadie sat up straight. “North Sea!”

Expressions of carefully muffled outrage and disbelief warred for dominance on Sadie's face. Those were dying gas fields, and ocean rigs besides, and Canadians were very rarely assigned to them. She didn't know anything about water battles; they didn't even train us for them here because they lacked the facilities. She didn't look frightened, though. Once the initial surprise wore off, she only looked angry, and determined. I was starting to worry. Despite not being in a conflict zone, Sadie's assignment was overly dangerous because of the underwater aspect. She was good and a fast learner, but her mentor had better be amazing too, or she'd be in real trouble.

At last, it was our turn. I'd lost track of who had been sent where, of the count of dragon slayers already deployed to the Middle East. They wouldn't overload the region, but surely, surely we would be sent where the fighting was thickest. Owen had the most experience. Owen had the most training. Owen had the legacy.

The cornet-sergeant's face tightened even more. I grabbed Sadie's hand and she winced at how hard I'd gripped her. There were notes skittering everywhere across my skin. It was worse than the first time I'd sat out of dragon slaying in the shelter with Hannah. I wasn't the only one to be unnerved. Around the mess, those who had been paying better attention than I began to whisper.

“The good places,” whispered Mikitka from across the table. “They're all taken.”

“They can't be,” hissed Dorsey.

“I think he's right,” said Wilkinson.

“Owen Thorskard,” said the cornet-sergeant, his voice still ringing clear and true in spite of his distress. “Fort Calgary, Alberta.”

Fourteen weeks of training was enough to keep the hall from bursting into pandemonium, but only just. Our support squad was in shock. Sadie bent my fingers back accidentally and then released me entirely when she realized she was probably pulling on my scars.

But I was only looking at Owen. And Owen didn't look surprised.

“Alberta,” he said, theoretically to everyone, but mostly to me. He was apologizing. I had been so sure that we'd be sent away, made into someone else's problem. I had put too much faith in the autonomy of the Oil Watch. I had hoped we would be leaving Canada, and that when we came back, we'd just return quietly to Trondheim and save chickens and sheep.

“Alberta,” I said, eyes on his. It wasn't what we wanted. It wasn't what we deserved. It was still under the watchful eye of a distrusting government. It was going to be ridiculously cold, when we weren't being lit on fire by the local fauna. But there were dragons there, and oil, and I could write songs about that.

THE STORY OF ALBERTA

Before a little queen moved a hatching ground and changed the way the British Empire dealt with dragons, there was a war. Actually, there were two wars, but in Canada, we are mostly concerned about the second one. The first war, an admittedly justified one wherein the goal was self-determination and the right to taxation with representation, saw thousands of British Loyalists retreat to Upper Canada and the shelter of the Crown. The French nationalists who supported American independence provided some dragon slayers, but many of the best trained came north with the Redcoats, rather than join Washington and the others in their rebellion against the King. The resulting American nation was woefully underpopulated by what the Founding Fathers deemed to be “responsible” dragon slayers, that is to say, dragon slayers who were neither Catholic, German, First Nation, nor Black.

For thirty years, the Americans did their best and paid for their war time and time again, as dragons flew unchecked from New Hampshire to Georgia. A Union was formed. The new country tried to train new dragon slayers as fast as they could. But it wasn't enough.

In 1812, James Madison took advantage of pro-war sentiment and turned the fledgling American army loose on Upper Canada. Bolstered by Jefferson's assertion that conquering Canada and her dragon slayers would be “a mere matter of marching,” American soldiers crossed into Canada to come face to face with the children of those they'd happily tarred and feathered only three decades before. It did not end well for the United States.