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Sally raised her voice to be heard over the hubbub. “I know how to calm the dragon down. Please, if everybody will listen to me. I’m a veterinarian. We’ll be safer if it calms down.”
The exotic beauty was in Sally’s raft, and she didn’t look so put together anymore. But she still held her poise and her presence. She called out to the pilot and the other stewardesses, and they all managed to quiet their passengers enough to hear Sally.
“This will sound crazy, but I promise it works. We need to sing Baby Shark.”
Harry looked at her askance. “What?”
“It’s scientifically proven that dragons calm down when they hear the song Baby Shark. I’ll start it. The more people who join in, the better it will work.”
She took a deep breath and began to sing. It was a horrible, revolting children’s song she loathed with every fiber of her being, and she had a horrible, revolting voice, but if that’s what it took to save the dragon’s life, that’s what she had to do.
The dragon looked right at her. Its wings stilled, although they remained outspread. It tilted its head to the side, as if it were trying to hear her better.
Apparently, whatever therapeutic value the song had wasn’t nullified by her singing off-key.
Harry joined in—on-key—and then the exotic beauty—also on-key, with a voice that would put Céline Dion to shame. And as more and more people began to sing, an amazing thing happened.
The dragon stopped flailing. It stopped moving. It tucked its wings to its sides and just stood there on the sinking plane, golden eyes locked on the choir singing its favorite lullaby.
“Everybody, keep singing!” Sally instructed, and then she said to the stewardess in a lower voice, “We need to get closer to the plane. I need to get that dragon free before it drowns.”
If Sally’s bizarre intervention hadn’t just soothed a frightened, violent dragon, nobody would have agreed to that. But accomplishing an impossible thing allowed for the possibility that she could do more impossible things, so the stewardess communicated with the other flight personnel to keep their passengers singing, and she directed a few passengers in her raft to help row the raft closer to the plane.
There were more than a few nervous glances exchanged between the passengers of all the rafts, but none more so than Sally’s raft. Most of them shuffled to the back of the raft as it neared the dragon.
Sally couldn’t blame them. The closer she got to the dragon, the more nervous she became, too.
She’d never even seen a dragon in real life. She wasn’t an exotic veterinarian. She was a small animal veterinarian who treated dogs, cats, and on very, very rare occasions, agreed to see a guinea pig or a rabbit a very, very good client owned, with the clear disclaimer that she really didn’t know what she was doing, and the only thing she was qualified to do with exotic animals was euthanize them.
And here she was. Clambering out of a raft onto a sinking plane in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean to rescue a baby dragon who was more than capable of killing her.
Darn that veterinarian’s oath. And her conscience. And her innate compassion that wouldn’t let her turn her back on a suffering creature, even when her entire world was falling apart.
The dragon was looking at her now. Still unmoving except for its head. Golden eyes following her as she approached on shaking legs.
How to free it?
She hadn’t really thought that far ahead. The dragon’s talons were buried deep in the plane’s roof, all the way to the nail beds. Its frantic efforts to free itself had only made its situation worse. The black-scaled tips of each toe were all she could see outside of the plane now, some bleeding where the base of the claw had torn or twisted from the dragon’s futile struggle.
Sally took a deep breath.
“Hello, I’m Dr. Fields, and I’ll be your veterinarian today. What seems to be the problem?”
She almost laughed at herself, but how many times had she seen the effect tone and mood had on her patients? If she was cheerful and relaxed, they settled down and responded to her better.
“Hm, looks like you got her talons stuck. Well, I can fix that.”
She was right next to the dragon now. Juvenile though it was, it was still taller at the shoulder than she was, and she was tall for a woman. Six feet tall, to be precise.
That made dating difficult.
That and a previous marriage, two kids, and an all-consuming job.
The image of Gracie bound and gagged sprang into her mind, and suddenly, she couldn’t breathe.
A puff of hot hair blew her hair back.
She looked up, and the dragon’s face was right in front of hers, inches away. Golden eyes staring into hers. Nostrils flaring with each inhalation, hot air blowing across her with every exhalation.
It trusted her.
Or maybe it was considering eating her, but that seemed unlikely to her. She had a sense about animals, after all.
“What, is this How to Train Your Dragon?” she quipped, cracking a smile. “Is this where I hold my hand out and you put your nose against it?”
It just looked at her.
She took a deep breath and squatted down beside the problem foot. Sedation and manual removal with tools, or even removal of the talons, were out of the question. No sedatives, no tools, no training, and, oh, yes, no time.
But the song really had soothed the dragon. Maybe enough for her to manipulate the toes herself?
“Okay, I know we just met, and I don’t have my white coat or stethoscope to prove I know what I’m doing—which I don’t, by the way—but I need you to hold still.”
She reached one tentative hand out and touched the nearest toe. The black scales were smooth and cool against her sweating palm.
The dragon didn’t move. She knew it was watching her by the continued gusts of hot air over her.
“My hair is going to be such a mess when this is over,” she said, keeping up her light, casual tone. “Not that it isn’t already.”
She put her other hand on the toe and felt along the digit, gauging how much it had twisted. Then she took another deep breath, wrapped both hands around the nail bed, and carefully twisted the toe toward her.
Another breath—from her, and the dragon.
She flexed the digit back in what she thought was a natural flexion. The base of the talon emerged above the wrecked roof of the plane.
So far, so good.
She shifted her left hand to the talon and kept her right under the toe at the level of the nail bed, applying pressure to maintain the flexed pose as she eased the talon straight out. When she saw the sharp tip, she grabbed it with her left hand and gently set the toe down, guiding the talon to rest on the plane roof ahead of the bloody hole.
One down. Four to go.
No, three. No dewclaw.
Wait, there should have been four.
She spotted the fifth toe then, positioned at the back of the foot and facing the opposite direction from the four front toes, rather like a bird of prey.
One at a time.
The endless chorus of Baby Shark continued in the background as the sun sank below the horizon, and Sally worked each talon free, one by one, moving faster and with more confidence with each success. Salty sweat trickled down her face and into her lips, and when she finally finished, cold, salty water licked at her toes. But five clawed digits rested in a normal pose on the metal before her.
“All done.” She stood, every muscle stiff from holding the awkward squat for so long, and shone a bright smile at the dragon. “Now, I don’t usually do this, but you are a first-time patient, and I like you, so I’ll give you a one time free office visit coupon. That removes the basic examination fee, but you still have to pay for the house call and the professional service time. Will that be cash, check, or card?”
A low rumbling emanated from the dragon’s throat. She took a quick step back.
“Hey, now, I don’t like it, either, but I have to make a living!”
The dragon growled again, but this time, it looked up at the sky. So did she.
After everything that happened, she’d thought nothing could surprise her. She was wrong.
Two bright white parachutes were set against the star-studded black sky. Occasional puffs of colorful fireworks came from what seemed to be the parachutists’ rear ends, pushing them toward her. A child and an adult, judging by their sizes.
The song was fizzling out. People had started cheering for her, but now they were pointing and shouting at the sky.
The dragon was getting agitated.
The water was up to Sally’s ankles now.
She didn’t know what to do. Self-preservation instincts told her to leave the dragon and return to the raft, but she worried the dragon might lash out in fear at the parachutists, or maybe even go into another frenzy and wreak havoc among the rafts. Then everybody would be in danger again.
More so than they already were, of course.
A roar thundered from the sky above.
“Sally!” Harry called from the raft.
The dragon in front of her growled and shifted its foot.
She reached out and put a hand on its shoulder. “It’s okay. Calm down. Everything’s okay. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
Those golden eyes turned to her again. It brought its face closer to hers and sniffed, and then it pulled back and tilted its head to the side. Studying her. Deciding what it thought of her without the almost hypnotic effect of the song.
“Is that your mother up there?” she asked, stroking the cool scales over its shoulder, smooth from their tight overlap when it didn’t move, ridges palpable when it picked up its foot and shifted again. “Did she come back for you?”
“Hello down there!” called a high-pitched feminine voice from the sky. “If you give it a hug, it won’t attack!”
Well, she’d seen weirder things today. Why not listen to the mysterious stranger spouting a rainbow of firework farts from above?
She took a step closer to the dragon and stood on tiptoe to wrap her arms around its neck. A collective gasp arose from the rafts. Another roar shook the sky. Water lapped at her knees.
“Easy now. You’re okay.”
“Crystal, go to the raft. I’ve got this,” that high-pitched voice said, nearer than before.
The fireworks made no sound. Sally just held onto the dragon as the plane sunk faster and faster, and she wondered if it would fly away with her.
“So, I have a fear of sharks,” she said with a nervous laugh. “And I know I’m supposed to be comforting you, but I’m getting kind of scared…”
“Hello! I’m Emma.”
The little parachutist landed on the dragon’s back, right over its shoulders. And she wasn’t a child. She was a full-grown woman—a three-foot-tall full-grown woman. Wearing a neon pink jumpsuit and a bright smile. Detaching the parachute as if everything were normal.
“Bring the raft closer!” Emma called. “Hold on,” she said to Sally. “The plane has sunk enough for the raft to sail right up to you.”
“And for sharks to eat me?”
Emma smiled. “Don’t worry. There’s a shark repellant coating on the parachute. Every shark within a five-mile radius just got a really bad taste in their mouth and turned to swim the opposite direction from us. What’s your name?”
“Sally. How… What…?”
“My husband is a mad scientist. He made me this shoe organizer the other day, and it’s so amazing. It’s voice activated. I say what I want, and the shoes get up and come to me. Cool, huh?”
Sally swallowed. The stress had finally gotten to her. This was what it felt like to go crazy.
“Sally! Give me your hand!”
That was Harry’s voice behind her. She almost sobbed in relief.
“You can let go of the dragon now. I’ve got her,” Emma reassured her.
“Thank you. Thank you so much.”
Sally released the dragon and turned around, and Harry was at the bow of the raft, reaching out to her with both arms. She lunged for him, and he caught her, pulling her into the raft and a tight embrace.
“Oh, Sally, I was so afraid of losing you…”
Suddenly, he was kissing her, and she was wrapping her arms around his neck, holding on to him as if her life depended on it. A cheer arose from the stranded passengers and flight crew.
“Okay, I’ll be off to get Lily now,” Emma called out.
“Well, what am I supposed to do?” another woman asked in a surly voice. “Just float here in the middle of the ocean with a hundred strangers?”
“Three hundred,” the pilot’s booming voice rang out.
“And what about Lily?” the woman demanded. “I thought you needed my magic to help steer the ice floe.”
“Well, I have a couple of dragons now, so that won’t be necessary,” Emma said, cheerful as ever. “Just stay with them and make sure they’re okay. The rescue team should arrive within an hour, and then you can call me and let me know where you are, and I’ll pick you up on the way back.”
“I didn’t agree to any of this!”
“Goodbye!”
Sally half-turned around, her left hand still on the back of Harry’s neck and her right on his chest, his right arm around her waist and his left hand on her shoulder, and the dragon’s wings unfurled. The little elf seated on its shoulders waved, and the dragon crouched down and launched upwards with a powerful downstroke of its wings, blowing Sally’s hair into her face. When she brushed it aside, the odd pair were high in the sky, a single dark shape only visible by following the stars they blocked from view.
All the strength drained out of Sally.
“You need to sit down,” Harry said. “Let’s go over here.”
He half-carried her to another part of the raft while the stewardess resumed her position at the bow. The irritable woman Emma had left behind was arguing with the stewardess about something, but Sally didn’t care to listen. When Harry sat down cross-legged on the raft floor and pulled her onto his lap, she curled up against him, trembling all over.
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