“Climb on my back and hold on to my neck,” said Pan. Alex obliged, and soon Pan began the awkward trek down the inside of the cylindrical island with Alex clinging to and swinging from her neck.
Soon she settled into the water with the young dragons, which climbed over her tail and blew tiny blasts of fire from their throats.
Alex dodged the fire and hung on tightly to Pan’s neck, just out of the young dragons’ reach. He lit a highlighter so he could study them—their structure and skin, their coloring, their proportions and center of balance, and the way they moved. He put the highlighter behind his ear to hold it steady, pulled out his notebook and produced a pencil from it, and eased over to a small rock ledge above Pan’s back so he could sit and sketch.
While Alex carried out his job, Pan began to speak in a strange, soothing language that he didn’t understand. But clearly the young dragons understood it, for they soon settled down and stopped their attempts at breathing fire.
After a while, Alex looked up from his notebook. “Could I see the orange one a bit closer, please?” he asked.
Pan called the orange dragon to her, and when the young thing drew near, Pan wrapped her tail around its legs, picked it up, and moved it to Alex’s side. She looked at the mage. “She won’t hurt you. Mind the spines, though. They’re quite sharp.”
Alex looked warily at the ridge of spikes that rippled down the dragon’s back, and noted them in his sketch. “Hello,” he said to it, and put his fist out, remembering to greet her first before doing anything else. “I’m, uh, I’m Alex.” He tried not to tremble.
The orange dragon turned her oversized face toward Alex and tilted her head, bringing her nose nerve-wrackingly close to Alex’s hand. After a moment she pulled away. Apparently she accepted Alex, or at least she didn’t seem intent on eating him.
Alex stared at her, memorizing the landscape of her body and noting there was no plume of scales bursting from her head, like Pan had. The young dragon’s scales didn’t cover her body—instead they were found in large patches, with bare skin in between.
Alex strained his neck to look closer, and then glanced at Pan. “Is it all right . . . ?”
“It is,” said Pan.
Tentatively Alex reached out to touch the dragon’s side next to a patch of shimmering scales. The snakelike skin wasn’t slimy like he’d expected. It was soft and pliable. Silky, but thickly so, and it hung a bit loose on the dragon’s frame as if the dragon were still growing into it. A few scales dangled and came away in Alex’s hand. Perhaps they would be useful. He glanced at Pan again. “May I take some scales from each dragon to use for their wings?” he asked Pan.
“You may.”
“And will they . . . ,” Alex began, then hesitated to ask Pan another question, but he needed to know the answer. “Will they grow to be as big as you?”
Pan hesitated. “Yes,” she answered after a moment. “Eventually.”
“Then their wings will have to grow along with them,” Alex muttered, jotting down notes and then sizing up Pan in comparison to the young orange. “Perhaps twenty times over,” he muttered, “or they won’t be able to fly when they’re bigger. Unless I make them oversized now. . . .” He shook his head. “No, no, no. They’ll be too heavy, and the dragons won’t be able to lift them.” He turned to Pan. “How long before they are full grown?”
“A hundred years or so.”
Alex wasn’t too fazed. He was used to things living hundreds of years by now.
“And how long will the young dragons stay their current size?” he asked.
“Perhaps ten more years,” said Pan. “And then they’ll grow rapidly.”
The task seemed nearly impossible. How was Alex supposed to make magical wings for nonmagical living creatures—wings that would automatically grow when the dragons grew? He understood how Simber’s wings had grown with him when he was first made. It was because Simber was entirely magical. But these dragons had not been created by some human magician. They’d been born, and they existed without magic—at least without the kind of magic Alex knew. How could he possibly connect magical wings to the living, nonmagical creatures in such a way that the two parts would communicate with each other and grow in tandem without a mage stepping in to help? Alex couldn’t figure out how to do that. He thought of Aaron, how sure he’d been that it could be done. Alex lifted his chin. “Of course it’s possible,” he muttered, trying to convince himself.
After a long time of sketching and thinking and sketching and worrying and sketching and agonizing, Alex wrapped his arms around the young orange and lifted it up, trying to see how heavy she was. The dragon squirmed, then licked Alex in the face.
Alex laughed and set the dragon down. He thanked her and petted her neck.
The orange dragon closed her eyes and rested her head on Alex’s shoulder. A purrlike rumbling came from its throat.
“Aw,” said Alex. “I think she likes me.”