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“Hush, let Mr. O’Leary tell the story, Amy,” her mother told her.
“She’s right though.” Patrick closed his eyes, inhaling from his pipe. The spicy smoke wafted from its bowl in silvery warm circles, up to the ceiling. “The black dragon came to me first in the darkest part of the Korean night. There was no moon. I thought that he was an illusion, brought on by a temperature spike in my body. But he wasn’t. He was real. Very real. You may ask yourself, how does Mr. O’Leary know that?”
“How do you know that, Mr. Patrick?” Jena’s daughter, Kimmie, asked.
Several of the kids nodded that they were wondering, too. He clearly had them under his spell.
“You are right to ask, Kimmie. Many have. Most doubt my account. But none are able to explain how a malnourished man with a bum leg in the middle of a heavily guarded North Korean prison encampment was able to escape without a sound. No one. But I can. I was there.”
“Tell us,” Juan said, his eyes wide. “What did the dragon do?”
“Mr. Garcia, the black dragon saved my life. Did you know that their minds are far superior to ours? Their intelligence is stellar, except the purple dragons’, or so I’ve been told by two of their cousins.”
“They talk?” Juan blinked several times. The boy was hooked, now and forever, just like Lucas and everyone else. Dragon hunting up in the mountains was definitely going to be on the kid’s next outing.
“Yes, Mr. Garcia. Dragons talk, though they find our languages quite rudimentary and coarse. Their language is the most beautiful sound on the planet. Though I understand only a few words, I, like all humans, don’t have the vocal capacity to speak it. But for the first time, ladies and gentlemen and distinguished little guests, I have a recording of a few words from their ancient tongue.”
The crowd gasped.
“Scott, we’re going off script for a moment. I wanted to save this for later, but since the amazing Juan Garcia asked, please fire off number twenty-two.”
“Yes, sir.” Scott Knight’s voice came through the speakers. “One second.”
Everyone held his or her breaths, including Lucas. He looked over at Phoebe, who was doing the same. Hundreds of people were packed in the room but the place was as quiet as a tomb.
Then the most amazing sound came through the speakers. Beautiful and chilling. Clicking tones, high and low, tickled his ears, followed by long, deep rumblings. He closed his eyes and imagined the stirring of a sleeping volcano. Clacks came next, fast and furious. Finally a resounding roar, unlike any lion, tiger, or bear could muster. This came from none other than a dragon. Lucas’s belief was renewed once again.
The crowd rose to their feet, giving Patrick a standing ovation.
“That, my friends, was captured on my expedition last year in Nepal. We stumbled upon a sleeping green dragon. A baby. It still didn’t have its wings. When it stirred, my team vanished out of the cave, leaving me alone with the noble beast.”
“Your official count of seeing dragons in their physical form totals three now, doesn’t it?” Mitchell asked.
“Yes, Mr. Wolfe. It does.”
Another round of applause.
“What about the black dragon?” Juan asked. “What happened?”
“Thank you for getting me back on track, young man.” Patrick smiled. “Scott, we’re back on script.”
“Yes, sir. All set.”
“My first dragon sighting.” Patrick rubbed his chin. “His statue is in the northwest corner of our town’s park. I asked him his name, and he told me. But alas, it is unpronounceable from the human tongue. We talked for several hours. He told me that he’d been watching me since I fell from the sky. I asked him why. He said that my steely determination reminded him of his own hatchlings, all of which had died hundreds of years ago. I call him Father Dragon. He is one of the few black dragons still living in the world. Night after night, he returned to talk to me. My guards slept like the dead, which they’d never done before. I learned later from Father Dragon that he’d flown above, enveloping the air with his breath, which causes humans and animals to fall fast asleep.”
The sound of heavy monstrous breathing filled the room.
“I was immune because the night I first saw him was not the first time he came to me. The night before, he sent the whole encampment into slumber, including me. He came to my cell and breathed from another of his seven lungs into me. From then until now, I am immune to the impact of dragon’s breath, giving me a special advantage in the search for the creatures. My final night as a prisoner of my enemies, Father Dragon asked me a question that changed the course of my life.”
A deep bass voice that reminded Lucas of James Earl Jones boomed from the speakers. “Will you help to save my kind?”
Hell, with the O’Learys’ fortune, it just might’ve been Mr. Jones’s voice playing Father Dragon.
“I answered I would. His giant yellow eyes seemed to sparkle. Then he took one of his claws, which was at least five feet long, and broke my steel bars as if they were toothpicks. He gently lifted me up on his back and he flew into the air, the place I’d only been in a plane before.”
The sound of flapping reverberated off every wall.
Patrick ended the tale about how the black dragon saved him, dropping him off just outside an American base camp in South Korea, to everyone’s surprise.
