Chapter 18
Pan sat at the kitchen table and watched as Noah put together the video and wrote about it, adding it to the rest of the videos and photos that he’d made and not posted in the special account he’d created for the town.
Over the last couple of weeks, he’d been taking photos and videos, documenting the damage, the dragons, and the palace.
But he hadn’t started sharing them the way other people shared the bad things.
“It’s a good idea,” Pan said for what had to be the tenth time today.
“I want to post good things, but it will draw attention. I don’t want to bring haters or protests here.”
Noah had interviewed the vet, Elise, about the dragon wing.
And he’d made another video demonstrating how he carefully fed them, reminding people that they were wild animals—Pan had recorded that one.
Noah had shown him how to make his own recordings.
Which had given him other ideas about recordings to make.
“The Strega liked the idea.”
“People are going to want to know about you and how you talk to dragons.”
“People don’t want to know me. They want to know what I can do for them.” For millennia, his life had been about magic, and while the rules had changed, the requests hadn’t. He was an intermediary, something people needed to get what they wanted.
Noah gave him a look that suggested he was missing the point. He probably was. Ever since the talk with the Strega, Noah had been full of ideas on how to spread hope.
“You could make a ‘how to befriend your local dragon’ video.” Noah smiled.
That sounded like a way to get people killed, and then they’d be in trouble. Noah always added some kind of warning to his dragon videos. “That kind of thing will encourage people to try talking to them, and they will get hurt.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“Trust me, I have seen and heard of people doing dumb things around dragons. People do not need encouragement.” On Tariko, if someone were foolish enough to tangle with a dragon, it was met with a shrug.
“Then a warning. Or what if you create a series of videos that can be broadcast to the dragons to teach them? Or—”
Pan silenced him with a kiss, not caring that David was sitting at the kitchen table, scowling at his laptop and other papers.
Noah’s cheeks reddened, and he shot a glance at David.
While Noah and Linda spent most of their time at the tavern, liaising with humans and Tarikians, Meredith was one of the few police officers in town, so she was working a lot of what Noah called doubles, which meant extra hours.
David was trying to get the school reopened, and neither of them ever looked happy.
Or was that just because he was there, taking up space in their house and spending too much time with their nephew?
He tried to stay out of the way, and the drak who followed him always cleaned the house and did the dishes—they loved putting on laundry and watching it spin in the machine.
He’d always thought of them as furry nuisances that were always underfoot, but they were very quick to pick up letters and language and would do anything for milk…
or cream. Liam had brought some cream that was out of date and couldn’t be sold to the tavern, and the drak had gleefully chugged the cartons, then lay on the floor in front of the fire, talking about how it was the best day ever.
Pan wished more people were so easily pleased.
At the moment, the two that had come with them to the house were curled up in front of the fire, asleep, having spent the day riding around town in Noah’s bike basket as they tried to finalize Samhain preparations.
It would have been an easy job on Tariko.
Here, there was paperwork and things that needed to be considered, and it was apparently human Halloween, where everyone dressed up as monsters to scare away the beings who came through when the veil was thinnest. Pan wasn’t sure if it was offensive or curious that humans had an ancestral memory of passing between worlds.
Jarot had agreed to make the memorial, and it had given him a reason to learn to hold his tools with his paw-like hands—that had involved much cursing in both Tarikian and English.
It had been over a month since the collapse, and it seemed like longer and less in the same breath. The god he’d been before wouldn’t recognize who he’d become. He still looked in the mirror and wasn’t sure, and not only because he had horns and no hoofs.
“We need to think bigger,” Noah said. “Do more.”
Pan appreciated his enthusiasm, but it needed to be tempered. There was only so much they could do, and helping their town to stand and walk was more important than teaching the world to sit up. Once this town was walking, they could do more.
“Yes…however, dragons do not assist out of love or honor. They do it for food and for protection. In our case, the male is willing because his mate needs extra help. Other dragons may not be so generous. They are not dogs…they are more like cats. Friendly when it suits them.” The last thing he wanted was people getting hurt or eaten.
“Okay, then maybe we should flip it. How do we get word out to stop them from bringing down aircraft? To protect the dragons.”
“Noah, why don’t you put some of your big ideas into helping the humans?” David snapped.
Pan had never heard David bark at Noah, or anyone, like that. The drak sat up, alert and expecting trouble and ready to defend Noah and Pan if needed. Their claws flexed.
“I am? We want to be able to get planes flying and such?” His eyebrows pulled together. “And we have been helping with supplies…”
David leaned back and scrubbed his hand over his face. “You’re treating this like a game, instead of understanding how serious it is.”
“How can you say that when I was pulling dead bodies out of buildings?”
Pan put his hand on Noah’s leg. This wasn’t about Noah. This was about David. “What is it that you need help with?”
David’s jaw worked. “The government wants the schools to reopen. But we still have people without homes. I lost teachers and have classrooms that cannot open because of damage, and students who have lost family and friends. And you’re teaching English to mythologicals like it’s going to help.”
“We need to learn the language, David,” Pan said carefully.
“We need to learn the way your society works with all its paperwork and processes, which are very different from our own. We have teachers who have resumed lessons in the rec center for those without housing. I could offer their services, but I do not think your students are ready to have an elf or a werewolf teaching human children numbers. I suspect that there are rules about who can be a teacher here, the same as there are in Tariko.”
David gave a bone-weary sigh. “There is a process to becoming a teacher. And I can hardly ask an elf to teach preschool if they cannot read.”
“Are there no substitute teachers?” Noah asked.
“No. There are some retired teachers, but some of them haven’t taught in a decade, and methods have changed.
It’s not only physical supplies, but supply chains for food and medicine and clothes and shoes and anything else you can think of.
We lost people, too. There are no extra nurses or doctors.
Anyone who has ever worked on a building site is being asked to pick up tools. ”
“We have carpenters and stonemasons. One of Linda’s friends is assisting with the repairs on Tarikian houses, because we know there is only a limited amount of time before you will want your rec center back. But if your classrooms need fixing…”
“It’s not that.” David shook his head. “They are a priority, and they are being dealt with.”
“Then what is it? Because I don’t understand.” And if Noah didn’t understand, Pan had no hope.
David was silent again. The house creaked, and rain began to patter on the roof.
“It’s everything. The government wants us to keep going as though nothing has changed, yet everything has changed.
There are some experts who were talking about economic collapse due to the supply chain disruption.
You might be able to convince one dragon to help…
but what about the others menacing the airspace, here and elsewhere? ”
Economic collapse would be as devastating as the physical collapse of Tariko.
He’d seen enough wars and invasions and even volcanic eruptions and tidal waves; he knew what devastation looked like, but back then, he’d had magic…
and he had never stuck around for the hard slog of rebuilding.
He’d merely checked in every few months or every year until order was restored, the same as every god.
Their duty was to the entire world, or worlds.
He’d been around when the Romans were spreading and invading, and he’d granted the prayers of many but had not stayed for the battles.
He’d been there as the banished one tried to erase the worship of the other gods, before turning away to stop this slaughter of the ones who still whispered his name.
Perhaps that had been a mistake, but at the time, it had been agreed it was the best thing to do—after all, this world wasn’t truly their domain.
There was less magic, and while humans had created technology to make up for the shortfall, it had left them missing something far more important…
the Strega called it hope, but that wasn’t the right word either.
Magic connected everything, and without it, humans had forgotten what it meant to be connected not only to each other but to every living being, including those they had never seen on the other side of the world.
While there had been wars and thieves and murders on Tariko, it was different. They didn’t lock people up in prison; they worked off their debt, unless they were truly black of heart and unrecoverable.