So now Martha and I both put our hands (delicately) on the hot red lip-margin of Mr. Dragon Chief and tried to tell him our news. I was thinking pair-bond-life-[that'showhumansdoit]-children-starting-just-now-hooray, more or less — pictures are better, but how do you put any of that in pictures? and stuff with high emotional content usually gets across the best even if there aren't any pictures — and Martha, who knew what I'd been trying to do with my dictionary almost as well as I did, was thinking something similar because I could actually feel her like an echo, "talking" to Bud.
And Bud, without moving, opened his eyes all the way and gave a huge sort of held-back (don't want to blow your tiny friends a few hundred yards across the cavern accidentally and bang them into the wall by unrestrained breathing) wooooooaaaaw, I mean with sound in it, and I've told you dragons don't use larynx noises much, and it sure sounded like "congratulations" to me. Furthermore Bud's wooaaw had roused the other dragons and there were little soft (little and soft as dragons go) rumbly wooaaws from the moving shadows, and one of the moving shadows slipped away — I'd also got pretty good at learning to hear the diminishing huge rustle of a dragon leaving the vicinity: You'd be surprised how confusing dragon noises are; makes most people dizzy (and nervous) till they get used to it, if they get used to it and while Martha and I were still sort of giggling and saying inane things to each other like "I didn't think dragons would be such romantics" there was a coming-toward-us gentle gigantic rustle and there was Gulp. And about two minutes later Lois was there too and for the first time in a year or so she forgot that she wasn't little any more and knocked me down. So Dad and Katie and Eleanor and Billy and Grace and Kit were only the second people to hear that we were getting married. The dragons were first. (Whatever they actually got out of what we told them.)
Now if you haven't already, this is probably the point where you talk about how it's creepy, me and Martha getting married, we'd grown up together, we were the only boy and girl either of us had ever really known (besides Eleanor, and it's going to take a better man — or woman — than me to tackle her), we should be like brother and sister, and at best we should go out and meet other people first, before we decide on each other, the implication being that then we won't. Well, in the first place, I don't ever remember feeling like Martha was my sister, although never having had sisters maybe I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about one. But while you're sitting there pitying me for being so limited, think about it this way, friend: What if you'd met the girl who was going to be the love of your life when you were four and a half and got to spend the rest of your life with her? Is that the biggest piece of luck you could ever have or not?
Growing up together had also made us able to communicate or anyway react to each other on levels that people who don't get to know each other till they're adults I think probably never can. I'm not using the "t" word again here. But it was like that sometimes — like what I just said about hearing her like an echo when we were trying to tell Bud we were getting married. Martha and I are in this together, and that's a big help. It makes it realer, saner, less just incredible. Even if it's more stuff that can't be taught. We'll figure out the teaching later. I hope.
I think both Katie and Dad had had those "they should meet other people first" thoughts, but life at Smokehill had got even stranger in the last few years and no one would understand any of it except those of us who'd lived through it. (Eleanor is going to use this to get elected president, of course, so her priorities in a partner are going to be different. If she changes her mind she could always marry a really tough Ranger.) And we'd waited till I was twenty-one and Martha was nineteen which meant they couldn't really stop us although we wouldn't have wanted them to try. And they took it really well after all. I could see them both worrying but I could see them both being glad too so that was okay.
We didn't tell anybody till it was all over — and we were back from our honeymoon. Dad's a JP so he could read the words, and Eric somehow got a license to do the blood test. Don't ask me how. Katie cried. Eleanor didn't. Eleanor said, "Great. I can have my room back." To Eleanor's tremendous credit, she'd let Martha and me drive her out of their cabin kind of a lot, so we could have the room — they shared a bedroom — a couple of hours in the afternoons sometimes, when Katie was on duty somewhere too so the house would be empty. It wasn't worth trying anywhere else at the Institute — and out at Farcamp and Nearcamp and Dragon Central privacy doesn't exist.
We had the wedding at Dragon Central. This was so great a piece of serendipity it made the whole wedding business even more . . . something. None of the adjectives will do here: great, wonderful, amazing, terrific. Maybe I should just say vvooooaativ like a dragon. But about twenty of us Smokehill lifers creeping off to do . . . something? No way somebody — some wrong body — wouldn't have noticed and maybe said something to some other wrong body and . . . but twenty of us lifers going to do some kind of private something at Dragon Central? Sure. Everyone goes all hushed and respectful and admiring and wishing they were a member of the magic circle too. It was . . . great. Plus having Bud and Gulp and Lois and some of the others there — watching the latest unintelligible human ritual.
I don't remember ever talking about a honey moon in Paris. Martha's always wanted to go to Paris and I've never wanted to go anywhere (no dragons). So we were going to get married . . . and then we were going to go to Paris. It was simple. I'd thought fine, I'll survive Paris because I'm going to be there with Martha, and she really wants to go, and I'll catch it from her. But I fell for Paris myself — loved it almost as much as Martha did. I kept thinking about being a freak who's barely been out of Smokehill, who's never even been on a plane before (two freaks, only Martha's always known the rest of the world existed, and she's visited her grandparents in Wisconsin a couple of times), and how Paris might have been Mars to us, and if this is what Mars is going to be like, well, those astronauts are going to have a great time when they get there, and I hope the lichen puts on a good welcome.
Dad's wedding present included five nights at this amazing hotel . . . all he'd said was that he'd "take care of it" . . . and I mean amazing. Reception was nearly as big as the Institute tourist hall and a lot grander, and our room was nearly big enough for dragons. There was one afternoon I'd actually gone out alone because Martha had admired this ring in a jeweler's window and — when did I ever go anywhere, right? — I hadn't bought her a ring although Katie had bought us plain gold wedding rings at a jeweler's in Cheyenne because she said (mildly outraged) that we had to have wedding rings and we didn't have to wear them after if we didn't want to. Rings hadn't occurred to me so then I thought that I hadn't done it properly (after all I'm Jake the Clueless Wonder Boy) so I was watching Martha fixedly like a dog watching you palming a dog biscuit, for any sign of wanting anything I could buy her in Paris, although it didn't have to be a ring. And there was this ring . . . so I went out to buy it, I can't remember what I told Martha I was doing.