Mache > Fantasy > Dragonhaven Read Online

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Dragonhaven Robin McKinley 262720K 2023-08-29

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I keep having these conversations with Dad

I'?"

I les on it so he already knohat I'

"Have you started on it yet, Jake?"

"No," I say, probably erently than I mean to But we've had this conversation so often

Dad sighs "Jake, I know I' you But it's important"

"So is the dictionary important!"

"It's not important to anyone but you if only you can read it," says Dad I glare at him, because he knows that I know that he knows it is important But that also it's an excuse

"I don't knorite it," I mutter Like, just by the way, I do knorite raphics package

"That doesn't matter Just write it" He tries to ood"

"I don't kno-I can't make it a story!" I shout, or rather, I don't shout, I sort of hiss it through clenched teeth I want to shout "It's notIt doesn't haveThere's no" I can't think how to finish I can't think how to begin

"It doesn't have to be a story It doesn't have to be anything Just put dohat happened Don't call it anything"

Yeah, right Make pizza without tomato sauce and mozzarella, just don't call it pizza and you'll be fine What's the use of pizza without tomato sauce and mozzarella? Like Alice said before she saw the White Rabbit: "What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?" Although the pictures are covered really well elsewhere, and the new coffee-table, drop-it-on-your-foot-and-spend-the-rest-of-your-life-on-crutches art-book version is co out soon Text, I have to say, by soht of it is one of the things that's gettinghere finally The sensitive version will probably be way too much like a story A fairy tale

But who lives a story, you know? With chapters and things And as a fairy-tale hero if soave et lost in the roves Life is just one day after another, even when the days are really, really strange

Dad looks atI prod a couple of keys and lier "Just do the best you can," Dad says, really gently "You're the only one who can tell it at all"

Yes That's the awful thundering can't-get-around-it thing I'm the only one who can tell you about Lois And the only way I can tell Lois' story is through omaniac! Really I'm not! I am a crazed Lois-iac Joke Sort of But it's not only the freaking hard work of trying to write it all out coherently that is stopping ot used tolike being able to look out s again and not worry about what I ht see

Also a lot of the stuff that's about me is stuff I don't want to tell anyone It's also a lot about Dad and me, and I don't want to tell those parts either, down on paper and everything, where he can read them Which he will

I may not knorite

There's another problem (I should make a list): I don't remember every day as every day, as different from the day before and the day after Sure, I kept notes-I kept lots and lots of notes-but I see bits All the conversations All the sane bits, if there were any sane bits I was just trying to stay alive, those days, keep Lois andto make a story out of it later on

And I sure don't remember every conversation I've had in the last four years I reot to me for one reason or another-but mostly, who remembers? Not me And I bet not you either

I don't mean the ordinary, everyday ones you have a lot, like "How are you?" and "What's for dinner?" (and "I thought it was your turn to cook") Those are easy Ito write so to read at all So that why-you're-writing stuff is a lot of stuff you can't reh to write

There weren't many conversations anyway Not a lot of he-saids and she-saids, or at least not till the end, and then they're peculiar

But I' to try to tell the truth Except for the parts I' to tell you Get used to it

And then, okay, I've got this far, I'ers are on the keyboard, the first finger is wiggling over the first key for the first letter of the first word (whatever that is)and then I stop all over again, because how do I get your attention? Not your newspaper-headline attention-your real attention How do I tell you the stuff you need to know if you're going to understand what happened? Because there's really no point if I' to make you understand a little

And, just by the ho are you?

Dad and Martha say that there are a lot of people-a lot of you (is it going to be easier to think of you as you? Or is that going to weirdand will only be picking this up because the headlines have made you curious about the whole show and if I want to rave on a little as background that's probably okay and et ht So blah they did say rave a little

It would be easier to start now and go backwards, but then you'd never understand I'o, and I don't kno to feel like I felt before Lois, or how to get back there to tell the story the way it happened, so maybe you'll understand At all A little

Mos like, " 'Lois and I,' dear, not ' me when it's "whom" and not "who" But she isn't Mom is one of the reasons I don't want to write any of this I keep wondering, would it have happened at all-would Lois have happened-if Moht kind of nutcase? Was being a nutcase necessary?

Eventually I thought about Eleanor She never worries about getting anybody's attention (and that "eventually" would really annoy her), or whether they're going to be interested, if she wants so And there are always he-saids and she-saids when Eleanor is around She-saids, anyway Eleanor doesn't have the hugest sense of huet this one That I' atis very rememberable

"JAKE!"

That's Eleanor She has a great future as an alars

"JAAA-AKE!"

I thre open "I'! Keep your hair on!"

She glared up at me "You're late"

I looked at my watch "I won't be late for anothertwo minutes"

"We'll be late by the tiet there!"

I closed hed, put my shoes on, and ran downstairs Our apart is very far fro at the Draco family charts that stand at the way into the diorama and the tiny ift shop and cafe, waved at Peggy in the ticket booth as she said, "Jake, don't run," and was standing beside Eleanor in forty-five seconds She hadn't finished glaring yet, and stoh the thickets of tourists like a cavalry charge I followed

Offer to hold Eleanor's hand? Not if you don't want it bitten off Of course there are no highways for her to run across without looking both ways inside the park gates The only vehicles that coers' jeeps, which were bought e and the effects of the surfaces they run on, tend to kind of lurch along Our park tour buses crawl even slower so everyone has a chance to take lots of photos and go "oooh" They're solar powered and can't go any faster Tourist cars and coaches stay in the parking lot outside Even the garage for the staff's private vehicles is outside the gates (This is not a major issue If you work here, you probably can't afford a private vehicle) And the nearest highith like more than two lanes, is fifty miles away, on the far side of Wilsonville

This was Eleanor's first week being allowed to help out at the zoo, and she was a little crazed I was a little crazed, because the grown-ups had decided that Martha was too young to h I'h to ood at it I'ot there, and in another week or two Eleanor should have calmed down a little (I hoped) but ed elephant tru under my

A nor feed baby raccoons at the orphanage Not Eleanor Nobody comes to Smokehill for the raccoons, and she wants to be where more of the action is

I don't really h In so to remember my mom very well, or Snark If you think that sounds really sicko, you try being twelve years old when yourat you and thinking of her and feeling sorry for you It doesn't help that I look like her Right after she died-right after we knew she was dead-and people started looking ata lot of tiers Well, ers, because I started leavingmy beard would come in early I didn't say, Because then people won't look at me like I'm my mother

Dad was almost the only person who didn't look at me in that neay, but then he was the only other person asher as much as I was Dad said, "Oh" He didn't ask uessed Dad has a beard which he keeps short and tidy so he can rant administrators He scratched his own hairy cheeks for a minute and added, "Youmy cheeks And noo and a half years later andin, but people didn't look at me so much like that any more so I could wait

Okay, Eleanor and I usually were about aout the buckets and checking that the labels were all still legible If anybody got the wrong grub there'd be trouble, fro else Trouble froh however

"Hiya," she'd say

"Huh," Eleanor'd say, really offhand and casual "What've we got?" It's quieter inside the big shed where the food lives-no tourists That's another of the big draws for Eleanor, of course, being seen by a lot of grown-ups to be going soer cared about that aspect of it (but if nagged I would ad away froood It's a weird life, living at S, wonderful empty (I mean human empty) space just behind you, so to speak, but you live in like this tiny pered encampment where you have to kind of take a deep breath and bolt for it when you go from one cranny of no-tourists to the next

I don't particularly want to because it makes me feel more of a mutant than ever but I suppose I should emphasize that life at Smokehill is kind of bizarre Certainly us kids were always being told (or asked) that wasn't the e lived peculiar Uh, pardonasked (or told) Other kids were the worst They said things like, No pizza? Like you en? Of course we have pizza But no, we couldn't call up the local Super Pizza to deliver, that's true

Eleanor wouldn't touch the bugs and beetles, and the bigger live (or soon-to-be-knocked-on-the-head) stuff Eric or Katie would deal with, but she'd put the vegetables and fruit in the buckets after Martha or I cut it up if it needed cutting (Madagascariensis is such a lazy slob it won't eat its carrots unless they are chopped up first) She wasn't really that much help since we had to keep a sharp eye on her; she felt that fairness , but most of the fun food is whatever the Wilsonville and Cheyenne super us of the stuff that's still around after its sell-by date and, for exaet older, and living at Sood if you feel involved But how et to help out at a zoo? Who needs normal?

Although Martha and I both put our hours in at the orphanage But then the orphanage is pretty good too I like little furry baby things, which there aren't any of at the zoo Maybe I'mware too, even if it may throw up all over you And then there's warm and furry like a Yukon wolf cub If Eleanor's lucky soet to hold the broouy with the sedative gun gets into position

We'd only just started by the time Katie arrived Katiethere, even her daughters I mean, even Eleanor Martha is a lot like Katie herself But after Katie got there Eleanor stopped arguing that since she didn't like celery nobody else was going to like celery either (Madagascariensis, I swear, likes celery because the sound itit up reminds it of the crack of s You'd think carrots would be even better, but no Maybe it only hunts things with osteoporosis)

Then Eric showed up and things went into a decline again-even Katie can't do ood keeper and not everyone wants to live a hundred miles from the nearest real restaurant, work twelve or fourteen hours a day, soet paid badly, and we're lucky to have hi "shut up" It's a lot better than saying "shut up" but nothing is ever going to make me like Eric

We got the buckets sorted and started carrying theest but she's not exactly large even for seven (Martha's se too but she's twelve) and only an Eleanor-type seven-year-old would insist on carrying a bucket too big and heavy for her, but of course she does "I'll take russo," she says every day Russo's her favorite Russo is also at the far end of the row of cages and Martha and I have to dawdle getting the others set out to give her time, and then she and Martha have this little ritual of Eleanor pretending not to notice that Martha has to lift and duh the chute, because Eleanor can't

"She's going to wear that bucket out, dragging it like that," snapped Eric

"You tell her," I said Eric glared at ood glare

Once Eric was there to deal with the serious food Katie and I could get started on the cages Here's a good example of what passes in Eric's case for a sense of hurown-ups decided it was time I had so unpack and stack stuff for the gift shop Especially givendrifts of Styrofoam munchies and stomp-popped bubblewrap in my wake It had kind of seee should have counted, butboy needs his sleep, etc) and because there was always an adult there withunderfoot at the orphanage since I was a baby and Mo while she put in her tiular and nobody noticed

Anyway I volunteered for cage cleaning because I knew odoratus doesn'tit I knew I'd get extra slack for when I screwed up elsewhere, which was definitely an issue Eric accepted o without telling everyone that the reason I didn't e boy Very funny, Eric That doesn't explain Katie, who also volunteered for odoratus, who is not only a girl-I hters And her slob of a husband isn't around any more if the idea is you have to live with slobbishness to be able to deal Katie's husband isn't dead but hehis daughters That may be another reason I kind of like Eleanor really I don't think feeling sorry for people is ever going to come easily to Eleanor, but it wouldn't occur to her-to feel sorry for me because my mom's dead As far as she's concerned we're even, because her dad's dead Eleanor has a very black-and-white view of the world That's restful too sometimes, except when you're on her hit list

She didn't get it from Katie Katie has no hit list Katie volunteered for odoratus so no one else had to do it That's what she's like (And between her, me, and Eric, no one else does have to do it Aren't we just the three stooges of wonderfulness) And she tried really hard to be careful afterbut it's like she got it too well instead so when other people started forgetting she didn't I ive you an exaot the okay to start "helping" at the zoo

You clean any of the Draco cages by halves, with you in one half and the Draco safely imprisoned in the other half, but odoratus is unique in that he and his harelass partition as well: We say it's for the tourists, but even us tough guys can only take so et it over faster But ere doing it really macho that day, no masks and helet aith it with the overhead vent open, and you're going to need a shower afterward anyway), so when this school group led by this thu assho -Ihis ears (odoratus ears are huge and frilly, you know, the better to wave odoratus odor around, except, of course, when there's a glass wall in the way) and showing off, right next door, we could hear exactly what he was saying to his students

He had one of those bellowing voices, like he was used to lecturing to thousands, so I mean we could hear exactly The kids looked a little older than me, and that made it worse so and posturing and odoratus flapping and posturing back, but it wasn't I probably started to get sort of maroon, which could have just been the smell, but Katie knows me pretty well "Steady, Jake," she said

"It's all crap," I muttered, so he couldn't possibly overhear me: it doesn't et, ays think of how so to teach those kids-"

Katie's usually brighter than this Maybe the sot syently "There's a lot of crap out there It's not worth getting s to do Think about the gate et the rest"

I stared at her, feeling as ifredder and redder, like if they turned the lights off you could have seen in the dark by the glow ofthis tothe truth Crap was crap and there's a lot of it around But it was probably crap that killed my mother-nobody will aduide she'd been promised didn't show and didn't show, and she had to sit there watching her six- (that much we knew for sure), and she found soh and either got her into trouble or let her get herself into trouble and then fled But we'll never know, okay?

After Mo, only seventoup ere both the biggest and acre for acre the poorest national park in the country Because of the Institute we're sitting ducks for all the dragon nuts out there, and lots and lots of them come, and while most of them are happy with the diorama and the film clips and the bus tour, and are perfectly normal okay humans with like manners, way too many of them want to bother the staff of the Institute and waste our ti restrictions inside the park and the information available at the tourist center and the brush-off they get froers