Grace is a saint. After all, she was there all the time — Billy mostly wasn't. She'd used to go hiking to find her own plants for her drawings, but once we moved in she stayed home. The Rangers brought her what she asked for, plants and photos, but it wasn't the same — not that she said so. But I knew she was trapped too — that she'd just let herself be trapped. And nobody had asked her. We just showed up, that first day, after my interesting interview with Dad. I was too shell-shocked to notice much after that so I can't tell you about the expression on her face when we arrived. I don't remember what Billy said, or whether he said it in Arkhola or English. I don't remember anything, except I also don't ever remember Grace being anything but Grace, which is to say kind and unfrazzled, all the time Lois and I were infesting her space. (Her Arkhola name translates as Beautiful Dancer. I think I was raving to Kit about the way Grace put up with us and he's the one told me. So "Grace" is a pretty good job.)
And I've said that everyone at Smokehill would sell their grandmothers to be invited for a meal that Grace cooked — she liked cooking for people, and now she couldn't do that either, or only for the few of us official secret Lois society members. And she lost her studio because Lois and I took over Jamie's room — she had to set up her drawing board in the kitchen. But the funny thing is that Lois learned not to whang into the drawing board first, when she was still really little and tottery. She was still crashing into the kitchen table occasionally when she was big enough to make a glass standing on it fall over, just from not paying attention. (Maybe she picked it up from me. I've made a few glasses fall over in my time.) But she never did that to the drawing board. And it wasn't that Grace was ever mean to her about that or about anything. Made you wonder just what she was learning by all that bumping.
But the stuff about the poacher and the dead dragon — Lois' mom . . . I mostly didn't know how bad it was till a lot later. Even at the time I knew that everybody was trying their damnedest to make sure I didn't know . . . but I was trying not to know too. I know how much of a jerk this makes me look. But I had really, really, really as much as I could handle with just Lois. And the dreams. And the headaches. And the no-way-out. I don't want to get all moany and whiny about this but even if it's a unique scientific opportunity giving up your life to keep someone else alive is kind of hard, and pain is tiring and headaches, you know, hurt, and while the burn marks weren't too bad, they were tender, so if they got clawed or gouged that hurt too.
And the dreams . . . sometimes, after a really vivid one, it was like I never quite woke out of it all day, like if I only went a little bit farther into this trance I was trying to hold off (or maybe I was trying to bring it on), I'd see big bus-wheel eyes shining at me from the trees around the house. I wasn't putting on the Space Cadet thing, I was there. And I'm sorry I was a jerk. But Lois pretty much blotted everything else out.
I don't know how everybody else stood it, everybody else who knew about Lois, even if it wasn't them she couldn't be more than three feet away from all the time. Being a Space Cadet was also kind of a help, for me, being so out of it.
Anyway. However boring — and painful — scrubbing up to go to the Institute was, I had to do it. I had to go on leaving Lois by herself so she could be left (of course I worried about stressing her till she had a heart attack or whatever dragons have, and died; from my perspective at the time we could have afforded to lose a few staff members, they were only human) and I had to start going to the Institute as soon as I could and keep going because it would have looked even weirder than it did — about my conversion to early Rangerhood I mean — if I never came. And if the "nightmares" hadn't cleared off pretty soon, they'd've had a psychologist in to test me for echoes, and I'd probably've resonated like a cave full of bats. Besides, there were the school testers and I really didn't want to get on their suspicious side. So I went up to the institute every day and tried to be as conspicuous as possible so it seemed as if I was up there more.
My time at the zoo and the orphanage of course got cut down to almost nothing. Eric was really pissed off (surprise) and tried to make out that I didn't really want to be a Ranger, I was just looking for a way to get out of doing any work, i.e., at his zoo, because I'm a teenage boy and teenage boys are always lazy and dishonest. (Made you wonder what kind of a teenager he'd been.) But hindsight even makes Eric being his normal super-avoid-worthy self look different. Eric was the head of the zoo and the orphanage — if anyone would know about an orphan baby dragon, it would be him — and all he was doing was kvetching about that worthless lump Jake . . . like maybe he had a suspicion it would be a good idea to distract anyone from wondering if the worthless lump had a reason for disappearing, besides being a lazy and dishonest teenage boy?
I did start cleaning odorata's cage again. The smell was still awful but it wasn't as overwhelming as when I lived like a human being rather than an australiensis mom, and as another sign that I had lost my mind I began to notice how beautiful the damn critters are, no matter how they smelled: The parrot-green and crimson-and-yellow frills on the big male are really amazing, and if you can hold your breath long enough to appreciate it the way he flaps 'em around is almost choreography And I was used to taking really violent showers these days so the prospect of another one after I took the last radioactive odorata barrowload to the pit where we buried the stuff was no big deal.
It's funny though — another thing that's funny — I got all kind of loosened up about all the things in the zoo. They were what they were and they were probably pretty interesting, even if they weren't dragons. I almost missed having some herpetologist around studying the Effect of the Tourist Gaze on Draco something-or-other-ensis. Hey, you lizards, how's it going? Eaten any nice celery/rhubarb/beetles/snails lately? But the zoo was happening on another planet, which was almost like relaxing I'm only a visitor and boy do I not belong here.
But not belonging here was an advantage, dealing with f.l.s. I'd smile at them and let what they said (because smiling only encourages them) roll over me. I found myself nodding calmly to a major f.l. one day from sylvestris' cage, saying mmm hmm as I kept on with my shovel. He was talking about how something or other, I don't remember which one he liked, is the real dragon, and most of that stuff at the tourist center about australiensis is just hooey to pull the tourists in, everyone knows australiensis is extinct, because when's the last time anyone's ever seen one, and it wasn't like that even when it was alive . . . but then his wife interrupted to say that something had killed that poor man and it was criminal the way the Institute was flogging the story about his death to draw media attention when any half intelligent person knew that there'd been some human screwup and they just didn't want to admit it and. . .
I was starting to straighten up over my wheelbarrow and reconnect with my surroundings and I don't know what might have happened next but Eric came along and snarled at me to stop standing around wasting time when I was supposed to be cleaning that cage and then the f.l. and his wife turned on him and said that that poor boy should be taken away from this den of scoundrels and liars and given to good honest folk who would try to reverse the effects of the warped and wicked Smokehill brainwashing . . . but I'd picked up the handles on my wheelbarrow and was trundling as fast as possible out of earshot, and I hope Eric had a good time. Those letters to congress people about cutting off our funding never mention Eric, so he must actually know how to weasel. More hidden depths in our Eric.