Other than a few brief moments, Morv and I did not really talk. I watched them loiter around the bus stop for most of the day, and then they’d wander off to who-knows-where for some hours before suddenly reappearing when I least expected it. I sat in the trailer waiting for customers and reading a novel about some kids who were amateur botanists. When I got bored of the book I got out a pen and paper and redrafted a letter I’d been working on to Lola.
I was beginning to wonder if we’d be in Schenectady long enough that I could open a P.O. box and actually have somewhere to receive a response from. It had been four months since I’d left Lola and I’d written her four letters. But I was yet to receive a response. I had no return address to include on the envelopes. For all I knew, Lola had moved and no longer even received my letters. Maybe she’d never even received a single one to begin with.
Or maybe she’d gotten all of them, but she didn’t care.
And, as the five days passed, I could not bear to ask Morv about Mom. I kept thinking: they know something, but someone is listening. If they tell me, that could endanger Mom. If they tell me nothing, Mom is no more or less safe than before, because I probably can’t do anything anyway.
Except I felt Ishouldbe able to do something. At least I should be able to convince Morv that something could be done.
But worst of all was what kept nagging at me deeper down: What if this was a perfectly legal arrest, because Mom had violated some kind of dragon law, and that was why we had always moved around throughout my life? What if it had nothing to do with me, or the business, and everything to do with Mom?
What if, this whole time, I had just been along for the ride withher, not the other way around?
I had the tendency to think of myself as the center of the universe—I knew this because Mom had told me I tended to, in a scolding voice, on many different occasions. I thought of Mom’s story about the dragon with no face, and the human-like voice. Was there a moral to the story? Is that how it ended? I tried to remember, but I came back empty-handed: that was the full, clear story in my mind, and I had no reason to believe I completely forgot about the ending when I was able to recall the rest in vivid detail. The dragon’s voice sounded odd. It was like a human voice more than a dragon voice. He had no face. He was a nice dragon, he did nice things for the other dragons, but they still didn’t like him. All because he had no face.
Could that really be the whole story?
There was another story she had always told me, one which I had paid less attention to, because its moral seemed more obvious. It was about an evil frog who had stolen something from a dog who was asleep, and the frog puffed himself up because he was so proud of how good he was at stealing, and then the dog found him and burst him open with one claw and he died in a pile of smelly, froggy innards.
Clearly, the moral was not to steal. But now that Mom had been stolen from me I wished I could ask her about the story again. Because maybe there was something else there, something I wasn’t getting, which meant something, after all.
So on the fifth day, burning with curiosity, I didn’t ask Morv about Mom. Instead I asked, “How’d you learn how to be a proper dragon, anyway?”
I was in the trailer, dusting our tchotchkes, with the trailer door reeled all the way up, wide open. Morv was sitting on the ground in the parking lot, eyes closed, face turned up toward the sky. They seemed to do that a lot; I figured it was some kind of dragon thing, just another thing I didn’t know about, that is.
“Hmm?”
“I said—how’d you learn. How to be a proper dragon.”
Without turning around, they said, “I was lucky.”
“With what?”
“My elders. I grew up around elders, I learned from them, I studied their ways, and I’m still learning—but they’ve taught me how to learn from the world. So if I have a question, it’s okay, now.”
“Your elders?”
“You know. Aged dragons, who’ve seen the world. I had four as parents.”
It was hard for me to imagine growing up with four dragon parents, all old. “But did you go to regular human school?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“No.”
“Then—how’d you learnmathand stuff?”
Morv turned to look at me, finally. “I’ve learned some math.”
“You can count.”
They looked affronted. “Yes, of course I can count.”
“You can do long division.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know. 720 divided by 8.” I said it because I could think of the answer off the top of my own head without paper.
Morv paused a moment, and then said, “Ninety.”
“202 times 12.”
This time Morv took a beat longer, but I also hadn’t figured out the answer to my own question by the time they answered. “2,424.”
I didn’t know why I was impressed. After all, Morv was seventeen. Seventeen-year-olds should be able to do that. “And you’ve read books.”
“Some books for humans, some books for dragons,” Morv said. “As you know—sometimes books can be a little hard.”
I frowned. “What do you mean, as I know?”
“Our eyes are not meant to see so up close.”
“But I’m near-sighted,” I said. “And my glasses help with far away.”
Morv stared at me. “You wear glasses forfar away?”
“Yes,” I said defensively.
“No,” Morv said. “Your long-distance vision is much better than your short-distance vision.”
“Are you an eye doctor now?” I asked, slightly affronted.
“I’m a dragon,” Morv replied, without a trace of arrogance. “Take off your glasses.”
I took them off, ready to prove Morv wrong.
“Look up into the sky.”
I did so.
“Tell me—how many birds are underneath that cumulonimbus cloud, the one that looks like a sailboat?”
“I don’t even know what a cumulonimbus cloud is.”
“The one that looks like a sailboat. North-east direction.”
“I don’t know the directions.”
“The one that looks like a sailboat.”
“I don’t see it.”
“Do you see the birds?”
“No—it’s, like, what, ten thousand feet? At least? You think I can see that far? Without my glasses?”
I looked back at Morv again, unspectacled, and tried to focus my gaze on their face with a defiant stare. But their two beak-like noses slid in and out of each other, one the shadow of the other.
“I’m the runt of the dragon litter,” I said. I laughed, even though I didn’t know what I thought was funny. “Cut me some slack.”
Morv gave me a long stare. “Maybe it hasn’t been long enough.”
“What hasn’t?”
“Enough time eating real food.”
“I kinda miss Taco Bell.”
“It’s not good for you.”
“Bananas, then.”
“Worse.” Morv looked utterly serious. “The human food depletes you.”
In truth, I didn’t miss human food at all. I looked forward to swallowing a ruby whole no more or less than I looked forward to eating a burrito: it made me feel full, warm inside, and a little sleepy.
What I missed was the occasion of meals itself—talking. Spending time. With Mom.
But I knew I couldn’t bring the topic up directly. I had to be discreet, and we needed privacy.
“But more than food,” I continued, trying to keep my tone level, “there’s—you know. What happens downstairs.”
Morv glanced at me again, their expression inscrutable.
“You know. The bathroom situation. The private… conversation.”
I thought I saw some sign of understanding in the way they turned their body toward mine, listening harder—realizing there was something to listen for.
“Maybe the little compost toilet in Ruby’s just not cutting it, you know? I think I’d like to go somewhere—if there’s a mall around here—where I can get somerealprivacy.”
Morv seemed to want to smile, but was resisting the urge. “Yes, I understand.Realprivacy. For your—bowels.”
The whole conversation had itself felt like forcing out a too-large poop, and I was relieved for it to be over. Without saying another word to each other, we began to walk away from Ruby, hands deep in our pockets, Morv leading the way by gesturing to me in the smallest of ways.