Page 15 of Magpies & Mayhem
“No!” I grabbed his snout and clamped it shut with my hands. He coughed and sputtered through his closed muzzle, and his breath had the familiar pungent smell of lighter fluid. “No, baby, no. Don’t start that yet! You’re too young to make fire.”Right?Otherwise, a two-week-old dragon the size of a full grown Corgi was going to set my bed on fire. Not good.
I scrambled up to look for some tape. “Joshua!” I yelled for my brother, pulling open drawers and searching cluttered tabletops. My room looked exactly like a magpie lived here. I had interesting sticks and rocks and jewelry and glass bottles placed artfully—and sometimes not-so-artfully—atop my dresser, and it wasn’t hard to find seashells tucked away in random drawers. It made it hard to find anything else in a hurry, though.
Josh came stumbling sleepily through my door. “What?” He was bleary-eyed but had an urgency that meant he’d clearly taken notice of the panicked note in my voice.
“I need tape!”
“You need tape… at—” He looked at his watch. “—four o’clock in the morning?”
“He is making sparks in his throat!” I pointed an accusing finger at Huck, who blinked his giant dark eyes at us from his comfortable spot on my bed.
My brother stared at me like I had two heads.
“He could burn the apartment down, Josh! This isn’t a joke.” The smell of lighter fluid still lingered in the air.
“So, you’re going to… tape him?” Josh asked, frowning.
“I’m going to tape hismouthshut. People do it all the time with alligators!” Josh continued to stare at me. “Do you happen to have a better idea? I don’t have a baby dragon size muzzle on me now, so unless you want to take him out on a tour of the desert where he can’t light anyone on fire, I need you to help me find some tape.”
Josh left, then stumbled back through the door a few minutes later, holding a roll of sports tape and paging through one of my borrowed dragon books. I snatched the roll from his hand and stalked toward Huck, who edged away from me on the bed. When I peeled up the edge of the tape, he launched himself off the bed and scrambled underneath it. He’d gotten wary of me tackling him when I first tried to wrestle food into him and now I was paying the price.
“What’s that smell?” Josh asked.
“It’s his breath. It smells flammable, right? Freaks me out. Heeere dragon, dragon.” I crouched to peer under the bed and found him against the far wall where I couldn’t reach him.
“Try calling him by his name,” Josh said distractedly.
“Here, Huck,” I tried, keeping my voice soft and sweet.
“Use his full name.”
“I’m not calling him that.” I could barely fit if I turned my head sideways, but I couldn’t quite reach him.
“It’s Humphrey Herbert Hucklebee, the Fierce.”
“Shut up, Josh. Help me get him out; I can’t reach him.”
“Just go in the other room,” he muttered. “He’ll follow you out.”
I squinted at Huck. That wasn’t a bad plan, but I didn’t trust him not to start sparking under the bed. After clambering back out, I grabbed the underside of the bed and started to pull. “Help me out, dork.” Why was he letting me do all the work?
Josh reached out to pull on the bed with one hand, still reading the book. “Looks like they have a gland under their tongue that squirts flammable liquid. They create the spark in their throat and breathe out, and they can shoot flames the same length as they are.”
“Oh, god.” Huck was already three feet long, including his tail. “So, I guess a greater dragon could roast an entire mountainside in one go.” I knuckled down and pulled, dragging the bed several feet with a loud squeal across the hardwood. Huck tried to scurry under the bed again, but I dove across it and latched onto his tail. “No, you don’t! Josh, put the book down and help me with the tape,” I said, straddling the dragon and trying not to squish him. “I’ll hold him, and you wrap it around his jaws to keep his mouth shut. Make sure it’s not too tight. This’ll have to do until the stores open and we can find him a real muzzle.”
“Can’tyoujusttakehim to the wildlife rehabbers today?” Elara asked, shooting a puzzled look at Huck. He was giving us all the stink-eye from the nest of blankets I’d made for him in the corner of the room. Josh had picked up a properly sized muzzle as soon as the pet shops had opened, and Huck seemed even less happy about it than the tape, for some reason. “We can always finalize the last of this wedding stuff another time, Sidney. Does it really matter if the flowers match the cake?” She was probably just trying to get out of event planning.
I tried to ignore how the thought of taking Huck somewhere and leaving him made my skin feel itchy. It was the right thing to do for all of us. “I can’t yet,” I said, rubbing my face with both hands. “They’re not open for drop-offs today.” Today was Saturday, and the intake clinic was only open on weekdays, even though there were people there every day to care for the animals.
Levi squatted on the floor next to Huck and stroked the scales on the top of his wings. “He’s socute. I’m petting a baby dragon! How cool is that?” He’d been making baby talk at Huck all morning.
“Super cool, until he burns the apartment building down with all my neighbors in it,” I grumbled. Levi sounded just like my brother.
“Aww, he’s only making sparks so far. But yeah, don’t burn the house down, little buddy. People could die!” Still in the ridiculous baby talk. His enchantment was stronger than usual too. He must be really enamored with Huck. I ignored him, trying not to feel possessive of my dragon, and he stood and paced to the kitchen window.
“If you’re hoping for a repeat of last time, it’s not going to happen,” I said. “Delores hauled those boys to their mothers by their ears. They haven’t stepped foot near her rose bushes ever since.”
Levi broke into a wide grin. Why was watching kids getting caught doing ludicrous stuff always so fun?
