his eye, Arnold noticed that Jo had a funny look on her face. Then her jaw went slack and she seemed to be gazing at something impossibly far away. It was a look Arnold often had himself when he was daydreaming. I wonder if people give her a hard time about it, too. But then she shut her mouth with an audible click and said to her visitors in a stage whisper, “Here she comes!”
A few moments later the crowd turned as one to the left, eastward toward Assateague. They ooh-ed and ah-ed like people watching fireworks, and no wonder—something enormous was soaring toward them from the direction of the ocean, something so big that when it passed over Assateague Channel it cast a shadow that easily bridged the watery gap.
Arnold shaded his eyes with his hand and looked up, and his mouth went dry. Something as big as an old-time fighter plane was passing overhead, and it was alive! The dragon was mottled green, like military jungle camouflage. Its head was as big as a house, but it came to a sharp point—an isosceles triangle, Arnold thought, proud of remembering the word at a moment like this. As the dragon soared directly overhead it flapped its wings once, twice, and a powerful downdraft blew people’s hats off their heads. There was a gust of nervous laughter. The creature banked over the village and turned around, just as a biplane came sputtering along over Assateague Channel.
Arnold tried to remember if he’d ever seen one before outside the pages of a book. He didn’t think anyone had ever seen one quite like this, painted mottled green in obvious imitation of the dragon, with shiny, curly struts connecting the two wings in a curvy, filigreed pattern. It was beautiful, a work of art, and “Oh my God, it’s going to crash into the dragon!” Arnold yelled, covering his eyes. Spots danced behind his squeezed-shut eyelids and he heard the crowd let out a gasp. Then someone elbowed him.
“Ow! What did you do that for?” he said, opening his eyes and rounding on Alison.
“Because, nerd-face, you just missed the most amazing thing ever! The dragon and the biplane did a loop-de-loop around each other—I think they’re going to do it again!” They did, to applause and cheers. Then another biplane joined them, and a third!
Arnold felt dizzy watching them, but it was exhilarating, too, like the time Mom and Dad had the Olympics on tri-vee two years ago and he thought it was going to be the most boring thing in the world, especially gymnastics, which held unpleasant memories for him—but watching those girls just a couple of years older than him spin and leap around the bars Arnold had felt something soar inside him. And this was on a much grander scale.
Arnold watched in awe until he felt an elbow in the ribs again. He clenched his fists to take a swing at Sis, but checked himself when he saw it wasn’t her, it was Jo. “Sorry, but I just had to tell you—I’m going to ask Ashley to do a figure eight in the air,” she whispered in his ear.
“Huh? How are you—” Her face went slack again for a moment, and then the dragon did just as she had said it would, drawing a perfect double loop around the biplanes. Applause again, and cheers.
“So you’re the ‘mindspeaker,’” Arnold whispered in Jo’s ear.
She nodded. “Now you know my secret,” she said quietly.
Arnold was mostly silent watching the surreal air show, though it was hard not to flinch when a plane or Ashley’s tail dipped too close to the ground. It was like the way he felt about fireworks: he loved the colors but had only recently learned to control his fear of the noise they made. Dad and Alison also seemed overwhelmed, and Sis’s eyes were shining with unshed tears. Was that from excitement, or sorrow that she could never be as powerful and free as the dragon soaring through the air? Arnold could empathize because he felt the same.
As if at a signal the biplanes zoomed back the way they had come and the dragon floated away toward Assateague. “She spends the night in a pond she dug herself over there,” Jo said. Her voice was hushed.
“Does she sleep?” Arnold asked.
“That’s a good question. No, not the way people do. But she does dream—often, about her family that was massacred by the early settlers.”
“You mean she’s not the only dragon?”
“Well, of course not. And since Old Carolina Joe knocked her up, she’s had a brood of dragonets, six of them. People have given them boring names, but their real names all start with their noble family name, Ir. My favorite is Ir’gassaphet. I think that’s a much nicer name than ‘Nigel,’ don’t you?”
Mr. Purnell was speaking into the microphone again. “That’s our show, folks! I hope you enjoyed it.”
“How come Ashley didn’t breathe fire, Mike?” someone yelled.
Mr. Purnell smiled the smile of someone who has heard the same dumb question a thousand times but still has to answer it politely and in detail. “She has barely started growing her beak back from the last time she had to do it. Dragons don’t breathe fire for fun—they don’t really breathe fire at all, of course, they mix fatty acids with hydrogen peroxide inside their beaks and—”
“Mike, stop boring everybody!” a woman called out. There were chuckles.
“That’s Mum,” Jo whispered, indicating a short, blond lady who was standing nearby. Standing with her was a young man who looked like a skinnier version of Mr. Purnell, and a chubby girl with curly brown hair and a mischievous gleam in her sparkling brown eyes.
“Nobody wants a chemistry lesson, love!” Mrs. Purnell added cheerfully. “What they probably do want is tea and biscuits, courtesy of the Gingo Teag Tourism Advisory Council! Come by the town hall, everybody!”
“Can we go Dad? Please?” Alison asked, beating Arnold to it.
Dad smiled. “Of course! Sounds like fun. Gloria said she could take us back home whenever we wanted.”
“Back home where?” asked Mrs. Purnell. She had made her way through the crowd and was buttoning up Jo’s coat for her, over her protests.
“Hmm? Oh, just over on—”
“They’re from Alaska, Mum,” Jo interrupted. “Like Teresa.”
“Alaska, eh?” Mrs. Purnell looked Dad over more carefully, from his scuffed brown shoes to the “Russian” black hat with the dopey-looking flaps that he wore whenever the temperature dipped below fifty degrees. Then she smiled. “I am so sorry, where are my manners! Vivian Purnell, at your service.” And she curtseyed to Dad!
Arnold had only ever seen anyone do that in old movies. Dad startled him even more, by bowing and taking Jo’s mother’s hand and kissing it.
“I’m Teresa,” the curly-haired girl said in a normal American accent. She smiled and shook hands with Alison, then with Dad, and last of all with Arnold. Why can’t I ever be first?
Teresa leaned toward them and explained quietly, “I’m from America, like you. Well, not exactly like you—long story. Anyway, we tell people I’m from Alaska so they don’t ask too many questions, and you can do the same. In this world, it’s a separate country.”
Mrs. Purnell introduced the young man as “my little Tommy,” although he was at least five centimeters taller than her.
“Mum, you are embarrassing me,” he complained as she pulled his cap firmly down over his reddening ears.
“That is a mother’s job,” she said. Jo and Tom’s dad joined them and there was another round of introductions before the group set off down Maddox Boulevard. A cutting wind was blowing, but before they had gone a single block Alison had linked arms with Teresa and they were chatting like old friends. Arnold shoved his hands in his coat pockets and watched them enviously.
He’d almost forgotten about Jo. She startled him by saying softly she hoped he had enjoyed the air show.
“Enjoyed it? I’ve never seen anything like it! I wish I lived here so I could watch Ashley—Ir’befunzu—every day.”
“I love her more than anybody,”