could see that Billy knew I was lying but I just kept looking at him andâ¦he looked away. I didnât get into staring contests with Billy because I knew who won and it wasnât me, and furthermore Iâd had this one standing there naked and stinking (and red-spotted). The maternal instinct is sure powerful.
The dragonlet hated all of this. I started getting so worried that it would explode or something that I sort of hurried up. Besides, thereâs only so much embarrassment you can take at one time.
The dragonlet wasnât crazy about clean clothes either but I guess it was so glad to see its pouch equivalent again it wasnât going to complain. And Billy had come up with some new kind of salve for my stomach (and my back, and my arm) which the dragonlet seemed to like a lot, so we smeared some all over it and then wiped some off again which kind of cleaned it up too, but the salve made it fantastically slippery like a sort of extra-large watermelon seed with legs, and by the end of the process my clean sweatshirt and sweatpants were almost as sticky and disgusting as my shirt had been, although we smelled a lot better than we had. And Billyâwhich may be the single best thing heâs ever done for me in my entire lifeâhad rigged up a kind of diaper for the dragonletâit didnât have any tail to speak of yet, just a kind of vaguely pointy lump at the back endâso I stayed poopless.
This was so blissful my third night of almost no sleep seemed almost okay. Even if Mom was in a lot of my dreams, when I got near enough to being asleep to have dreams. Although you may have noticed that you can dream even when youâre only about half asleep, and know it, like you know youâre still lying on a thin little rubbery mattress under mousy-smelling blankets curled up around a pillow supporting a dragonlet against your stomach. I even said to her once, Iâm too tired to be dreaming. Even about you. Bang bang bang went the headache. The headache never slept.
If youâve ever been for a long time without anything like enough sleep you know that you get pretty non compos pretty soon. I was forgetting things the moment Billy said them and couldnât really think of anything but feeding the dragonlet. (And talking to it. I was still doing that. Although I was still calling it Ugly.) It was like my life had become feeding the dragonlet and I hadnât noticed or minded . This was just the way it was now. A haze punctuated by feeding the dragonlet. Speaking of the maternal instinct. Maybe the headache was the fourteen-year-old boy with a dragonlet version of postnatal depression.
The haze was also stabbed and ripped up by visions of the dying dragonâs eye. The cavescape was still there when I looked into her eyeâwhich is where the dreams about her always startedâbut I seemed to get farther in now, when I did that weird stepping-forward thing, till there was nothing behind me either except more cavesâreddishy purply and shadowy and smoky and twinkling and something else, I donât know what, some presence. Sometimes I got so far in I imagined seeing her with a lot of other dragons there, in those magical-looking caves that Iâd got into by looking into her eye. Real Arabian Nights stuff. I didnât try saying âopen sesameâ but Iâm not sure I wanted to leave.
I donât know why I thought the caves had to be magical except that like Iâve told you thatâs the way Iâve always been about caves. And these didnât look anything like the caves near the Institute. These had stalactites and stalagmites that were landscapes and worlds all by themselves, and in colors you canât even really dream. Iâd be looking at some stony sculpture Michelangelo would have killed his grandmother to have been able to do, and thinking, I donât know that color, that color doesnât exist, but like wow . Those
The dragonlet hated all of this. I started getting so worried that it would explode or something that I sort of hurried up. Besides, thereâs only so much embarrassment you can take at one time.
The dragonlet wasnât crazy about clean clothes either but I guess it was so glad to see its pouch equivalent again it wasnât going to complain. And Billy had come up with some new kind of salve for my stomach (and my back, and my arm) which the dragonlet seemed to like a lot, so we smeared some all over it and then wiped some off again which kind of cleaned it up too, but the salve made it fantastically slippery like a sort of extra-large watermelon seed with legs, and by the end of the process my clean sweatshirt and sweatpants were almost as sticky and disgusting as my shirt had been, although we smelled a lot better than we had. And Billyâwhich may be the single best thing heâs ever done for me in my entire lifeâhad rigged up a kind of diaper for the dragonletâit didnât have any tail to speak of yet, just a kind of vaguely pointy lump at the back endâso I stayed poopless.
This was so blissful my third night of almost no sleep seemed almost okay. Even if Mom was in a lot of my dreams, when I got near enough to being asleep to have dreams. Although you may have noticed that you can dream even when youâre only about half asleep, and know it, like you know youâre still lying on a thin little rubbery mattress under mousy-smelling blankets curled up around a pillow supporting a dragonlet against your stomach. I even said to her once, Iâm too tired to be dreaming. Even about you. Bang bang bang went the headache. The headache never slept.
If youâve ever been for a long time without anything like enough sleep you know that you get pretty non compos pretty soon. I was forgetting things the moment Billy said them and couldnât really think of anything but feeding the dragonlet. (And talking to it. I was still doing that. Although I was still calling it Ugly.) It was like my life had become feeding the dragonlet and I hadnât noticed or minded . This was just the way it was now. A haze punctuated by feeding the dragonlet. Speaking of the maternal instinct. Maybe the headache was the fourteen-year-old boy with a dragonlet version of postnatal depression.
The haze was also stabbed and ripped up by visions of the dying dragonâs eye. The cavescape was still there when I looked into her eyeâwhich is where the dreams about her always startedâbut I seemed to get farther in now, when I did that weird stepping-forward thing, till there was nothing behind me either except more cavesâreddishy purply and shadowy and smoky and twinkling and something else, I donât know what, some presence. Sometimes I got so far in I imagined seeing her with a lot of other dragons there, in those magical-looking caves that Iâd got into by looking into her eye. Real Arabian Nights stuff. I didnât try saying âopen sesameâ but Iâm not sure I wanted to leave.
I donât know why I thought the caves had to be magical except that like Iâve told you thatâs the way Iâve always been about caves. And these didnât look anything like the caves near the Institute. These had stalactites and stalagmites that were landscapes and worlds all by themselves, and in colors you canât even really dream. Iâd be looking at some stony sculpture Michelangelo would have killed his grandmother to have been able to do, and thinking, I donât know that color, that color doesnât exist, but like wow . Those
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