Mother.
She is staring into the camera, but it seems as if she’s looking right at me. She’s in the spaceship ATHENOS. Behind her I can see the clear door, which is covered in flames. She glances nervously over her left wing at the burning door, and then looks back at the camera. Her spiked tail is whisking around, behind her, over her head.
You can tell when this Prophecy was recorded.
They’re plunging toward Earth right now. This is right before they crash.
She looks into the camera and says, “Now Gork, I hope one day you will see this. Professor Nog promised that you would receive my Prophecy. Do you know Professor Nog? He’s my faculty adviser at WarWings. He’s the one who told me your name would be Gork.”
I feel the scales on the back of my long green neck stand up.
“Your father and I tried to come to this planet Earth to start a new way of life for us dragons,” she says, looking into the camera. “But it looks like Dr. Terrible has somehow managed to sabotage our escape. We wanted to come to this planet and live in harmony with all the creatures on Earth. Including the man-creatures. We didn’t want to conquer anybody.” She smiles a beakful of fangs. “Your father calls it Conquer by Not-Conquer. Your father has a big heart, which is why I chose him for my King. But in his desperation to find a way for us to escape from Dr. Terrible, your father got mixed up in time travel and became addicted to it. With his time-travel device. Our spaceship has broken the space-time continuum and we’re going to crash and die. But I know Dr. Terrible is behind this. I don’t know how he did it. Your father says something’s wrong with his time-travel device. Please be careful of Dr. Terrible. If you turn out like your father, then Dr. Terrible will try to kill you.”
She pauses and glances nervously over her left wing at the clear door covered in flames. Then she turns back to the camera. “Even right now as I’m recording this, your father’s in the cockpit fiddling with his time-travel device. He still thinks he can fix things before we crash. Now what I want to tell you is—”
At that moment in the holovid a young dragon fella comes into the room and looks around suspiciously. I recognize him instantly. It’s my father. Small horns, a gentle manner about him. My God, he must have a Snacklicious ranking too. But you can tell he’s got the time-travel sickness. Even though he’s young, his hooded reptilian eyes look haunted.
He flaps his wings and looks at my mother. “What are you doing in here, my love?” he says. “Don’t tell me you’re recording a Prophecy?!”
“Well,” says my mother weakly, smiling a beakful of fangs. “You know, just in case. I want to take every precaution. Professor Nog said I couldn’t be too careful. With the Prophecy and all.”
The fire around the clear door is even bigger now. It’s pretty obvious their spaceship is going nowhere good fast.
“I know you’re scared, my dear,” says my father, with a warm smile on his beak. “But I still believe we can pull out of this. I know Dr. Terrible is behind this. If I can just figure out what he did to my device, then I can fix it. And then we will land on this planet Earth and make friends with all the creatures. Live in harmony with them. I still believe. We can chart a new path for our species. We’ll raise a happy family. We’ll spend our time helping, not hurting. It will be the next step in dragon evolution.”
My mother gives a look into the camera, as if to say, Isn’t he wonderful and dreamy, even if he’s also a little delusional, considering we’re about to crash and all?
And it’s true. Just looking at my father squatting there in his red cape, you can tell that scaly green dragon wouldn’t hurt a flea. But that he’s also in complete denial about their imminent death. He’s a big-hearted dreamer is all. A gentle fool.
My father turns around and strolls back to the cockpit, saying something.
My mother shouts, “OK, I’ll be right there, honey! Just give me a second.”
Then she turns and looks at the camera. “Now watch carefully, Gork,” she says. She holds up a giant egg in her talons. “This is you,” she says.
And then she goes over and pulls open the fiery clear door and tosses the egg outside into the blue sky.
“ATHENOS,” yells my mother.
“Yes ma’am. How may I be of assistance.”
“You’re tracking the trajectory of that egg, yes?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“And you remember everything we discussed? You won’t forget?”
“Yes ma’am. After the crash, I will find Gork and I will raise him as my own. I will protect him. And I will make sure he receives your Prophecy, ma’am.”
Then my mother comes back over to the camera and says, “You will grow up to become a great and generous dragon, Gork. You will do what your father and I failed to do. You will learn to live in harmony with the animals and creatures on this planet Earth. This is my Prophecy. Some man-creatures will help you. Some man-creatures honor dragons. Some man-creatures honor the animals. But there are many who do not. You will change their minds. Your big-hearted ways will become legend and set a new example for our species. Now listen to me. You will feel scared and frightened. That’s normal. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do what you want to do. You have all the WILL TO POWER you need to be generous of spirit. The hero and the coward both feel afraid. It’s the hero whose actions are different. You will be a great hero and a great poet.”
My father shouts something from the cockpit.
My mother looks at the camera. “I have to go now, Gork,” she says.
Her leathery wings spring out behind her as if she’s anticipating the crash any second. “Now you make your mother proud,” she says. “Do you hear me, Gork? Soon this spaceship is going to crash. But I know that you will live. And I know that you will fulfill the mission that your father and I set out to do. Please say hi to Fribby for me. Professor Nog told me all about her, and she sounds wonderful. I have been friends with many robots in my time, and I have the utmost respect for machines. And you will be famous one day. You will be a legend on this planet. And you will be the last thing I am thinking about when this spaceship crashes.”
She stares at the camera with tears in her eyes. She raises one talon in the air, palm forward, claws extended.
She says, “Gork, I love you. Always know this. Your mother loves you.”
And that’s where the Prophecy holovid cuts off.
[ 97 ]
QUEST FOR MIRACLE