As he dragged himself back to his feet, he was aware of other people stumbling and being trampled. He heard the screams and sounds of pain and wished to help, knowing he could not.
Meanwhile from above came that infernal sound again, the flapping of enormous rugs in the air. He nearly gagged with a smell of brimstone.
He risked a glance upward and saw a big, red bulk swoop around in the air and head for Government House again, which launched a fresh stampede, and new screams.
Dragon, the back of Meriwether’s head said. Dragon!
And just like that, he found himself running, not with the crowd in blind headlong flight, but against it. His movement was so fast, so desperate, that he bowled people out of his way with the force of it. He had the strange, irrational thought that only he could protect the people of St. Louis from the dragon. It was the same reckless feeling that made him go into fever-ridden households, to help and save whomever he might. Arrogance, perhaps, but some part of Meriwether Lewis’s constitution led him to the certainty that matters sometimes depended on him.
When he broke through the scattering crowd into the clearing in front of the Government House, he came upon sheer confusion. A carriage was now on fire, completely engulfed in flames. The horses, still in their traces, reared and pulled, spreading the fire to tree and bush as they went.
Government House was on fire, too, the tall wood and brick mansion set ablaze in an instant. Yellow flames and black smoke strained skyward.
Meriwether rushed toward the horses, desperate to free the screaming, terrified animals. Embers from the burning carriage sprayed on their hides, driving them into greater frenzy. He could not bear to let even the poor animals be consumed in his sight.
As he reached the horses, using all his knowledge of frightened creatures acquired through years of woodcraft, he avoided the pounding hooves and saw that another man was running to the horses from the opposite side. Without much thought, he registered that the man looked like the representations of old wizard Franklin he had seen, all the way down to the suit of inexpressible pink velvet. But this man looked maybe seventy years old, spry and showing his age, but far too young to be the ancient wizard, who was said to be very nearly a hundred years old. Now he was sidestepping the terrified animals with as much grace and ease as Meriwether himself.
Seeing him, the old man called out, “If we each get hold of the pins where they attach to the carriage, sir, we can release these unfortunate animals.” He puffed slightly, out of breath as he spoke. “Even if they drag the traces behind them, they will find it a better alternative than burning alive.”
Without wasting breath on an answer, Meriwether dashed to the burning carriage, using both hands to grab the pin that held the long poles to the burning carriage. With the spreading fire, the pin was hot even through his thin gloves. He inhaled smoke and coughed, but he grabbed hard at the pin, yanking it with all his might. The other man was fighting to do the same on the other side. Meriwether’s eyes watered, and he was sure he could feel ashes and embers sifting down on his head.
Though he struggled, the pin would not budge. Due to the heat of the fire, the metal had expanded and now fit more tightly than ever. He felt as if his flesh were burning. The horses screamed, dragging the conflagration with them.
The pin gave so suddenly that Meriwether stumbled backward, and the other man must have experienced success at the same time, because the horses galloped free and the burning pile of carriage lunged forward and collapsed. He jumped out of the way.
Now he watched the old man in fine clothes standing in place, waving a wand about, jabbing toward the sky. Up in the sky, the monstrous dragon had flapped away, gaining speed and altitude, and now came back for another pass. Like a cat playing with a mouse.
Any minute, Meriwether was sure, he and the old man would become cinders. The people had fled the square and the empty circle around them was like a killing zone. The older man stood defying the dragon, as if confident he would not be consumed by the furnace breath. There was nothing Meriwether could do to help.
Behind them, he heard the noise of feet and hooves retreating, or perhaps it was the sound of his blood beating a drumbeat past his ears, making it impossible to think. Meriwether could not make himself run away from what was sure to be certain death, and he couldn’t even tell why. It depends on me. He simply knew that as long as the stranger in his soot-stained pink velvet suit stood there, he could not leave.
“Sir!” he cried, but his voice came out unaccountably small and squeaky, as though he weren’t a full-grown man. “Sir,” he said.
Ignoring him, the man swept his hands apart and uttered words that Meriwether thought might be Greek. Maybe the man was a foreigner, trapped here for nearly fifty years since the magic severing of America from the rest of the world?
“Sir!” he cried again.
When the man spread his hands and swept his wand about like an orchestra conductor directing a great piece, cracklings of electricity and lightning united his two hands like a rope.
Meriwether could only gasp, his ears blocked by the panicked spinning of his blood. The back of his neck prickled, and his hairs attempted to stand on end. Seeing this obvious magic, he was more certain than ever that this was truly the wizard Benjamin Franklin. This was the great man he had come to see.
But he hadn’t counted on a dragon.…
The red monster hove into view directly overhead, its shadow darkening the sky, Meriwether realized that Franklin could not possibly defeat the thing. The creature was as large as the plaza, end to end. Meriwether felt the wind from its wings, smelled its hot pumice stench. Rows of fangs filled the gigantic mouth that yawned open, large enough to swallow whole buildings if it tried. At the back of the reptilian throat something flared like the spark given off by flint and steel.
Meriwether had no weapon to fight a beast like this, but he grabbed for the knife in its sheath at his waist, an affectation of his walks in the woods; he felt naked without it.
Before he could draw the blade, an explosion occurred—and it did not come from the dragon. A stream of light like a captive lightning bolt escaped Franklin’s hands, a roiling ball of electricity like a giant, spinning ball of dazzling blue and white. It hurtled through the air toward the dragon’s open mouth and struck the monster with a sound like a deafening, suspended musical note. It seemed to echo from the beginning of time and would sound until the world itself vanished in blackness and chaos.
When it ceased, two more balls of lightning flew from Franklin’s hands, slamming the dragon between the eyes, and the giant reptile keened like a creature slain. The second crackling sphere singed the great flapping wings. The old wizard from Philadelphia hurled two more electrical balls, and then two more.
Meriwether stood rooted on the street, his begrimed clothes rough and heavy upon him. His eyes and his throat burned, and his body seemed to vibrate with an echo of magic. And as he watched, aghast, the dragon shimmered and shifted. For a moment, hanging in midair, it wasn’t a great primeval beast, but instead became a conjunction of geometric patterns: circles and triangles, squares and shapes, all glowing angles and strange junctions flowing into each other.
He blinked the stinging sweat out of his eyes, and he found himself looking at the dragon again. The huge wings flapped like scaly rugs, and Meriwether felt something touch his mind for just a moment.
More ball lightning flew, fast, fast, from Franklin’s hands, too fast for Meriwether to even see which parts of the dragon were hit.
“Be gone!” The magic echoed in Franklin’s voice, resonating with the same loud and unbearable cadences he’d heard before.