Adventures in Dragon Sitting
A Silicon Jones Story from the Maven Fairy Godmother Universe
When the Harley cut off, Brewster "Silicon" Jones realized he was not in Kansas anymore, nor even in South Carolina, where he'd been riding through the mountains to take in the autumn colors. He'd borrowed the bike for a joy ride from Long Tom, who was still sleeping off the previous night's revels. Jones planned to get the bike back before sunset, none the wiser.
The two-lane black-top had become a meadow in early summer instead of fall, and noon-ish instead of late evening. He'd ridden through the dark, swirling zilchzeit from Mundane to Faery without even blinking, his mind lost in the timeless now of speed and wind, balance and oneness with the machine and the landscape, with no thoughts to confuse him.
He was reasonably sober after a long night of partying, but he knew that machines did not work in Faery, especially if they depended on electricity or internal combustion. That explained why the bike was not running.
He knew he was in Faery because all around the bike skipped a trio of baby dragons.
He could tell they were babies as he had dealt with adult dragons in his other trips to Faery. They looked cute and chubby, like the big, purple vegetarian T-Rex, about 7 feet tall, in varying shades of iridescent gold, green, and blue. Their wings were hardly buds on their backs, and their needle-like teeth were less than three inches long. They were just beginning to talk, so they were likely only 50 years old or so. Toddlers. Mama would be close by. Big, hungry, unhappy Mama.
He searched for a viable exit, trapped between dancing tons of deadly reptile cuteness.
The dragonets were skittish of touching the bike, maybe due to the incompatibility of iron and magic, but they weren't staying more than a six-foot tail length away. Each one darted in close, and then backed away.
"What dis, hooman?" asked one of the tykes, the middle-sized greenish cutie who was only about a foot and a half taller than Jones. "No see thing before."
Several thoughts flew through Jones's mind. No point in lying to a dragon. Even a baby could spot a lie wrapped in a long story.
"It's a motorcycle."
"Make it go," Greeny demanded.
"It doesn't work here." He sighed.
Baby dragons were as focused as baby humans when they found something interesting, and these little guys had never seen anything as intricately manufactured as a bright yellow Harley Fatboy.
"Where do it go?" asked the blue one, maybe a female.
He had no idea of what dragons were taught about Mundane as a dimension, but they were smarter than most other creatures about most other things. He'd been told that Fae children were frightened by stories of the Other Side and the evil beings who lived there—mostly true stories, unfortunately, from the Fae point of view.
"It works on the Other Side, but not here."
"Take us there now. We want to see." That was the gold one, the tallest but with the least sparkle of intelligence in his eyes.
"I don't think your mama would like that." Jones shook his head.
"A true and accurate statement, human." a voice growled behind him. "What are you doing here with my hatchlings?"
He turned to stare up at a hunter green reptilian face the size of 15-passenger van, complete with brimstone smoking nostrils and an eye the size of a beach ball with a narrow streak of black pupil in a golden iris.
He tried his step-to-the-left that would take him back home when he was on foot, but it would not budge the bike. How had he gotten it across? What would it take to get it back?
"I'd just snap you up, but you are hardly a mouthful." She backed off a few feet as if to get a better look at him.
The flush of adrenaline lit up his speech center and powered his lying tongue. He knew women, and though she was a reptile, she was a fine specimen of femininity. He could see that the dragon mom was tired, her scales a bit dull in the sunshine, and her dorsal spines drooping—they clearly hadn't had a good polish in some time. He considered offering some personal services—wash and wax, or a walking massage down her neck—but she didn't know him, and he didn't have any references to pull out of a back pocket.
She opened her huge mouth, her teeth as long as his hand and sharper than a mother-in-law's tongue. He was not ready to be snapped up by any female for any reason. He had to think of something fast, something that would shift her thinking from food to something else...anything else.
The dragonets began to argue amongst themselves—not really dangerous to themselves, as yet, because none of them were old enough to fly or breathe fire, but three seven-foot tall lizards with six-foot tails and three-inch claws could stir up a ruckus with a mere man. Like all children, their voices were shrill, and their roughhousing soon had them shrieking and rolling in the dirt.
It gave him an idea.
"Here's an offer—how about I babysit the kids for an hour or two, so you can get some time for yourself?" He stood up straight, pulling himself up to his full 5'10" in his thick-soled clogs, to look as upstanding a citizen as possible. "You could take a nap, have bit of a sail on the thermals, or sort your hoard."
That was a mistake. He saw the greedy gleam in her eye as her focus shifted to the machine between his legs. The bike, bright yellow with hard black saddlebags studded with chrome, was just the sort of sparkly that a dragon might want in her special collection. There could not be many bikes in Faery, none that would run, but she'd have something no one else had.
Think, Man, think.
Dragons were smart, but maybe he could con his way out of the situation with both skin and machine intact.
The dragon shifted to a smaller size, only about twice as large as her children. "Even if I accept your proposal, what's to keep me from taking your machine and eating you as well?"
"Nothing," he said, "except that I'm scrawny—not enough meat to keep a bird alive. Eating me would just make you hungry." He turned his tongue loose, depending on his subconscious desire to stay alive to save him. "I doubt you could even make broth from my bones. An hour's nap would do you a lot more good."
The dragonets wrestled themselves across their mother's tail, probably leaving a bit of a bruise where they rolled over one of the scutes, bending it down to the ground.
"Stop that," she said with that tone mothers use which suggests that death would be preferable to disobedience.
"Come here now." She herded them over with a flick of her tail. "This human..." She glanced at him.
"Jones, Ma'am, Silicon Jones at your service."
"This Jones is going to watch you for the next two hours while I do some errands. Do what he says, and stay out of trouble."
"Yes, Mama," the dragonets chirped.
Jones could see their claws crossed behind their backs and their tails nudging one another, clearly plotting his doom. It was better than being eaten, at least for the moment. He had lots of experience with his siblings' children, so he would play Uncle Human, keep them entertained until he could figure out how to escape.
Mama Dragon stretched out her wings with a few tornado-generating flaps, leaped into the air, and was gone.
Immediately, the dragonets started giggling, a most incongruous rumbling sound like a landslide of a thousand blackboards, each with its own phalanx of screeching chalks. Banging tails and bumping elbows led to snickering, a more threatening sound.
He had to take charge right now, or it was all over. His nieces and nephews had taught him that much, even if he had been bigger than they were with more guile and experience.
What was he going to do with these kids? He didn't have a ball to throw to them, and no props to do simple magic. Besides, they were dragons and could do real magic, even without much training.
"Come here," He waved them over.
The baby dragons towered over him as they peered at the bike. Dragons like anything shiny, and this bike was beautiful, if a bit dusty from the ride. Could he get away from them if he gave it to them?
It would be hard to explain to Long Tom why he was back without the bike. Long Tom was particularly fond of the bike, and he would likely separate a limb from Jones' body for taking it. A problem to deal with later.
“Make it go!” Greeny said.
“Wanna ride!” Goldy said.
“Push it!” Bluesy said.
“I'm sorry, guys. The magic from..." he lowered his voice for dramatic effect. "The Other Side does not work here."
They were suitably impressed. For a second, they rocked back on their tails, pulled their heads back, opened their eyes wide, and dropped their very toothy jaws. They looked like cats on their haunches, hoping for a piece of chicken. Did he taste like chicken? He did not want them to find out.
"Shall I tell you a story about…" he glanced over each shoulder and into the sky to see if anyone was listening, especially any big, aggravated Mama Dragons. He barely whispered, "…over there?"
Now he had their attention. They leaned forward, a fan of snouts, like three alligators converging on the same skinny dipper.
"The people I know on this side, and not just humans, call my side Mundane." He leaned over and put his hands over his mouth as if to shout. He murmured, "We call it 'Real.'"
They leaned back again, front legs crossed and looking away from him. He had said a bad word.
Goldy pouted, not easy for a reptile to do, but he had the head twist, the big lip, and the stink eye. "Not believe 'Real.' That baby story. We not babies."
Ooops! His mind was already racing to think of a story they would like and that they might understand just enough of not to get him killed when Mama overheard them talking about it. Now every drop of adrenaline in his body spurted into his muscles, and his brain stopped working. Must. Not. Run. Away.
Lucky for him, his mouth was still open, and the operative muscles there usually by-passed his conscious mind anyway.
"Of course not. I can see how big and strong you are," he made a show of leaning way back to look up at them—not that they weren't still a foot taller than him, as they squat on their haunches.
"Tell about shiny yellow con-trap-tion," Goldy, the tallest demanded. He was thin, but his scales were the odd shade of greenish-yellow that would be golden when he grew another dozen yards of neck and tail.
The middle dragonet, Greeny, looked him dead in the eye, like many a father when he showed up to pick up a daughter for a date. "No lies. We know."
And they would, but that never stopped him before.
"All right, then," Jones said. "This con-trap-tion is called a mo-tor-cy-cle."
"Mo. Tor. Cy. Cle." They repeated.
"It uses two different kinds of magic, chemistry and physics." He pointed to the bike like Vanna White turning over a vowel. "You guys will soon be breathing fire, right? This little machine takes a liquid and makes tiny fires that make the parts move."
"Alchemy?" Bluesy frowned. "We learn that next year."
He nodded, anything to keep their attention. "Sort of like that, yes." He pointed to the gas tank. “A liquid fuel goes in here, and a little pump pulls it into the top where a magic called electricity makes it explode.”
"Oooohh!" they whispered.
"And that makes the piston inside move down and turn the crankshaft. And then it goes back up while the other piston fires on the other side."
Bluesy stared at the motor, as if she could see inside. Maybe she could. Who knows what dragons can do?
He pointed out the drive, the brakes, the headlights…every single piece and what it did and how it worked. But even he could only drag out a story for so long, and it would be another hour before Mama came back.
"Why can't you make it run?"
"It's made of iron, and iron does not work in Faery. Neither does chemistry, except for alchemy, and physics is a bit iffy. "
"What is physics?" Bluesy asked. "Is it like magic?"
"Physics explains how something works," Jones said, "and if you can't explain how it works, then you call it magic."
"You some kind of wizard?" Greeny sounded very skeptical. "Don't look like wizard."
He could tell they were losing interest quickly. He was sure they would not be impressed if he pulled a quarter from their ears, even if he could reach them and had three quarters in his pocket.
"I am a wizard in Real," he raised an eyebrow at Greeny, "Whether you believe in it or not. But my chemistry only works over there."
"I wish we could do magic," Goldy said, his face sagging into sadness.
"How you get here, then?" Greeny wasn't buying it.
Truth will tell. "I don't know. I was riding along in the countryside, and all of a sudden I was here with you. But enough about me. "
"You can't go back, can you?" Bluesy propped her short forelegs on her flanks. Her insight and forthrightness proved her feminine nature.
"I've gone back before, but now, I don't know." He so needed a distraction now. "This motorcycle is made of iron, and that might be the problem."
Bluesy stuck out a stubby claw to touch the bike, which caused a spark. She sucked her claw and stood back a few feet.
A solution appeared in Jones's brain. "I bet you guys could build your own bike out of wood. You might even be able to ride it."
That gave the dragonets a new thought, and they rocked back on their haunches to consider it. It would take at least an hour for them to get going, and then he'd find a way to escape while they were busy tinkering.
He took a stick and drew a schematic in the dirt of two wheels on two forks with a branch between. There might even be a way to steer it, but if they wanted to try to build one, he'd figure out the mechanics of it. He remembered building stuff as a kid, most of which never worked, but it was fun ruining his dad's tools in the process of learning.
"So, you see my drawing. What can you find and how can you use it?" He used the stick to point to the parts of the sketch. "You need two wheels about the same size, and they need an axle. You need two forks to connect the wheels with the axles, and a crossbar to connect the forks." He gazed up at them. "It needs to be sturdy to hold you up, not little, like my machine."
Goldy looked down. "Not shiny."
"Let's see if we can build it first, then maybe we can find some shiny for it." He planned to be long gone before then.
The dragonets went looking for materials, one of them always keeping an eye on him. Such suspicion was good in children, however unhelpful for him. He tried again to step-to-the-left, but he was as stuck here as if he had concrete galoshes.
Soon the dragonets had an impressive pile of materials—tree branches, vines, a few rocks, and an impressive rack of moose antlers that were, he was happy to see, not freshly removed from the moose.
They might actually be able to build something.
While the dragonets were babies by dragon standards, they were more than 50 years old, and had been using their claws for quite a while. They all worked like carpenter ants, as focused on their tasks as only children could be, taking joy in doing something.
Goldy worked on making a hole in the top end of the forked branch to connect the moose antlers to make handlebars. He dug in with a claw and made slivers of wood to drive into the branch with a rock to hold the antlers steady. The antlers made a wicked set of ape-hangers for the rider with the right reach.
Greeny wanted to see how the handlebars worked. He had an idea for the crosspiece. Making the back wasn't too hard since the back wheel only needed to spin on its axle, not steer. Jones showed him both on the bike, and with his two hands, how the steering worked.
The dragonet started on a fair-sized sapling, drilling with a sharp pointed rock for the rear end fork. Nevertheless, on the front, since Goldy had already made the fork with the handlebars, he carved out a space for the fork, and was working on a plug to hold it in place.
Bluesy took on making the wheels from sticks and a heavy vine that looked a lot like poison ivy, as thick as his wrist. She didn't appear to be affected by it. She had some magical talent as well. Every time she began to work on something, the hair on his neck rose right up as if a bear was after him. She didn't seem to notice.
Jones walked around them, making a comment here or there, praising for craftsmanship, which was excellent, and found himself happy.
He stared off into the distance for a few moments, realizing that it had been several hours, now late afternoon, and Mama was nowhere in sight. Was she coming back, or did she really intend for him to be the kids' afternoon snack? He did not know much about dragon parenting skills.
As the sun sank in toward the horizon, the dragonets assembled their bike.
He heard a deep sigh. Goldy was staring at the bike, with a sad, longing look in his eyes.
What could they use for shiny? He dared not suggest that they even think about hitting up Mama's hoard, assuming they knew where it was, though that was his first thought. He put out a mental cry to the collective unconscious—surely more accessible here than in Mundane—asking for an answer to make a dragonet happy, and secure his own immediate safety.
"Let's do some testing before you ride." Jones told them to push the bike, turning the front wheel side to side to see if it would stay in place. He was truly glad they were in a flat place, as he could just imagine one of them bumping down a hill, while the bike splintered and the dragonet smacked headfirst into a rock.
The eventual argument started as to who would ride first, but Jones was ready for that. He had them draw straws, a game that any child could see was fair, but when Greeny won, Goldy looked ready to cry.
"Wait! We need the final touch!" Jones stood on one side of the wooden masterpiece, the dragonets on the other. "I want all of you to lay your claws on this wonderful machine you have made, and put your best magic in it all together. Make it shiny. Make it pretty. Make it safe, binding the parts together. Close your eyes, concentrate and 3. 2. 1. Do it!"
While they concentrated, humming an eldritch tune, the air shimmered around them and made the earth vibrate below his feet.
He straddled the Harley, and said every prayer he knew, every incantation, and even drew as much magic as he could soak up from the dragonets' spells. He could not budge the bike. He could not even push it. It seemed rooted to the ground.
He'd sacrifice the bike. He got off of it and moved a few feet away. The bike was a good trade for his life, and somehow he'd pay for it back in Mundane—even if he had to go to jail for grand theft Harley.
With a gesture and an image of his room at home focused clearly in his mind, he took that step to the left that had always brought him back home from Faery.
Nothing happened.
He clicked his heels three times, repeating, "There's no place like home." He tried again, wiggling his foot first, giving it a bit of energy. He jumped up and down, and then tried a quick step-ball-change-turn.
Nothing. Stuck. In Faery.
With hungry dragon kids.
And Mama Dragon, whenever she came back. If she did.
He was dead either way. Dragons never broke promises or lied, but he hadn't done nearly enough negotiation for when Mama came back. There was no reason she would not eat him herself or chop him up for the kids. He couldn't outrun the kids, much less Mama, and dragons can smell humans like a heat signature on infrared.
The sun was a red ball hovering on the horizon above the darkening landscape when the dragonets broke off their incantations.
The silence spread into the twilight.
Jones stood up from the bike and stared at the contraption the dragonets had ensorcelled.
It was a Harley, golden, copper, chrome, with diamonds everywhere that his bike had a screw, a nut or a rivet, at 150% scale. Liberace, Elvis, or RuPaul would have been proud to straddle it.
All glamour, he was sure, but they'd made a wonderful spell for it.
He clapped his hands, whistled, and stomped his feet in appreciation.
Greeny got on, kicked the pedal, and rolled away with the most wonderful potato-potato-potato sound a rider could hear. They'd never heard a Harley before. How did they know? It was a damn good illusion too, since Greeny rode it back with the front wheel a foot off the ground.
Dragons are beings of many dimensions, times, and places. If this was his last moment on whatever Earth he stood on, he was happy and proud to see what the kids had done. It would have been nice to take a little credit, but who would believe him? The kids had done all the work.
Each dragonet rode for a few moments, taking to it as if they'd been born riding. Of course, they were hardwired to fly, so being able to ride made some sense, and who knew what magical controls they'd built into their contraption. Subtle as the serpent, innocent as doves.
Jones felt a glow of love for his adopted students of an afternoon.
As Goldy took off last, having drawn the shortest straw, Bluesy came over.
"Mama will be home in a few minutes." She was as serious as only a five-year-old can be. "You know she will eat you or feed you to us."
Jones nodded, swallowing hard. What could he say to that?
"You showed us something we didn't know that we didn't know, and we worked together." She looked down at him with a tender expression. "You showed us how to make something new. We even did magic, and nobody taught us. We have something to start a legendary hoard because of you."
He nodded again, his eyes moist with taking in her sincerity, working up to apologize for his imminent demise.
"So get on your bike, and get Real." She propped her forelegs on her flank and gave him that why are you still here? look.
He shrugged, shaking his head. "It won't…"
She squatted down to his eye level. "Try it again."
He straddled the machine, cranked her up, and she purred under him like a tiger full of gazelle.
"Use the left turn signal," she suggested, pointing into the last glow of sunset. "Now."
He did as she said, taking off, and leaning just a bit to the left. He found himself in the no-place-darkness zilchzeit. He felt a vibration in his ear, not really a sound but a telepathic vibration, a mental image like a memory.
He heard Mama Dragon coming back and landing. She wrapped her wings around her babies. There was no sound of the new bike, and he got the impression that it was no longer where it could easily be found.
"Did you take care of the wizard?" She asked.
"Yes, Mama," Bluesy answered, "We got him good."
He felt a bit sad that he wouldn't live long enough to see Bluesy grow up, but then, he would live to see another day.
The rubber hit the road, landing him on a dark, two-lane strip of asphalt running straight through a dark forest, a chill in the air, and an orange half moon rising in front of him.
He was alive.
He opened the Harley up to 90 and became part of the landscape. He'd get the bike back to Long Tom tomorrow. But he'd stop to get a case of beer—always good for an apology.