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Chapter Text

We went up the hill, and came face-to-face with a dragon.

At first, I didn’t see it at all. Then I saw an outline on the ground. Then it moved, and I realized it was alive.

I’d seen pictures of dragons before (who hasn’t?), but the supposedly-most-realistic ones made them kind of a matte reddish-brown, like old leather. They were wrong. They were totally wrong. The real thing was shimmering like a string of red jewels;–– carnelians or garnets or spinels or rubies or something;–– and he glided, instead of scrabbling and flapping like the movie dragons.

I asked, “Is that a robot? Like the one in Calais in France, or the one in Furth im Wald in Bavaria, or the ones they use at parades in theme parks and Lunar New Year festivals?”.

Clipson answered, “No, laddie; he’s as alive as you and me”.

I said, “That’s impossible!”.

Clipson answered, “No, my boy; we’re impossible. We’re the new, the strange, the new-comer on this world. He’s just as he’s always been’.

I said, “But there’s nothing about it in the fossil-record!”.

Clipson answered, “Dimetrodon, Edaphosaurus, Spinosaurus, Mosasaurus, sebecidae, Rhamphorhynchus, Quetzalcoatlus, Hatzegopteryx;–– there’ve been plenty of things like him before, and there are plenty even now, what with tuataras and monitors, iguanas and flying-snakes and little gliding-lizards. Why, we even classify gliding-lizards as Draco volans;–– Flying Dragon;–– and lophophores as Angle-Headed Dragons, and what have you”.

I figured that made some kind of sense;–– the list of therapsids, diapsids, and pterosaurs, anyway. That one was still alive (and if one, presumably others), was still enough to make my eyes pop. He was at least as big as any of the Azhdarcid family. And he talked, too. He came down like a jump-jet right in front of us, and said, “Good-morning, young Nathan Ransom. I am Traroth, of Green Wall Flight. I am honoured to make your acquaintance”, or something like that.

I’m afraid I wasn’t exactly so articulate. I said, “He’s alive! And he talks”.

He actually laughed (not exactly the way humans do, but a sort of rumble in the throat), and said, “Certainly! A little bit better than you do”.

Clipson was laughing too. He added, “‘Come, Traroth! You must forgive him; he’s only a boy’”.

Traroth said, “I see no boy; only a young man, about to embark on the adventure of his life, and face his worst fears”.

Clipson answered, “You’re right! I expect he’s faced one already, too. Losing a parent is the worst thing, as Mr. Martel remarked, for any young warm-blooded life. We’ve all got to, of course, sooner or later, but it’s a terrible thing when it happens. Now, don’t sulk, young Nathan! Talking about your troubles, putting your feelings into words, showing I understand them from the inside out, doesn’t mean I don’t care; quite the opposite. People’re always saying, He could never know if he didn’t care; and I’ve never believed that, but if it were true, I’ve proven I care, by knowing”.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was the way all our conversations ended up, for the rest of the trip. What I said was, “Yeah, well, it’s called Insensitivity when you talk about my feelings before I do, instead of lettin’ me feel ’m in decent privacy”.

He answered, “Privacy is for the bedroom and the bathroom, my boy! You’re in public, now, and if it’s Insensitive to recommend Sensitivity, as I just did, the bottom’s dropped out of the whole distinction! If it’s insensitive to look sensitive, and sensitive to look insensitive, we’ve all lost our minds. The point is, Let’s go”.

I asked, “Where are we going?”.

Traroth said, “To rescue your mother, and Jonas Work, of course!”.

With the luggage before and behind us, we settled down into a kind of saddle on Traroth’s shoulders, made so we were lying flat, faces forward, to reduce drag, with our arms and legs strapped down, helmets on our heads and visors on our faces. Also dressed really warm, in old-fashioned pilots’ jackets and scarves, gloves, boots, and heavy socks, which felt all sorts of uncomfortable in the hot weather, but made sense when I considered how high we were going and how fast we’d fly, and how cold flying always is.

I asked, “Hey! What’s with the design on this saddle?”.

Clipson answered, “It’s to stop us dragging the dragon, and lying flat doesn’t give the rider a sore backside. (I tried lying flat bareback for a few years, and it gave me sore thighs, too). When we were about your age, your mother and Cara and I used to sit upright; a dozen years later, we heard from a paleontologist that lying down was better, for both the above reasons”.

I asked, “Okay. Why a paleontologist?”.

Clipson answered, “She was the nearest we had to a dragon-expert. They study flying reptiles all the time”.

I asked, “What’m I supposed to hold onto?”.

Traroth said, “Me. Always trust the driver, or get off”.

I said, “I don’ wanna be rude, but you’re humungous”.

Traroth answered, “Thank you”.

Clipson interrupted, “What’s so surprising about that, youngster?”.

I said, “Well, I thought, what with the gliding lizard Draco volans and the Scansoriopterygid maniraptorans and other flying reptiles, a Western dragon would be a lot smaller than this”.

Traroth answered, “Your mother Nicole said the same thing when we first met”.

Clipson added: “Remember the Hatzegopteryx and Quetzalcoatlus again, my boy! There you have a winged creature with the wingspan of a small airplane. Likewise our friend here. Now, hold on tight”.

I got a grip on the saddle-bars right in front of me, and he kicked off and spread his wings and flew.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t exactly like an airplane. Not at all. For one thing, we were outside rather than inside, and we got the wind in our faces and the sunlight in our eyes, even through the visors. For another, the thing we were riding was alive, and we felt its muscles rising and falling with every beat of the wings. Not that the wings beat often; Traroth was mostly a glider. He soared from updraft to updraft, and coasted from wind to wind, so we moved in huge curves instead of straight along. I asked about that, and Clipson said, “Even airplanes don’t fly straight, dear boy; they fly in great-circles around the curvature of the Earth! Traroth here is doing the same: taking the shortest possible route to anywhere, which on a curved surface isn’t a straight line but a circle-segment”.

Something else occured to me. “About Traroth’s wings: shouldn’t they be attached at the waist, instead of just the shoulders?”.

Traroth answered, “Why should they? I’m not a bat. It's only bats and flying squirrels and gliding possums and such things with their wings attached at the waist; all more refined evolutions, like insects, birds, and most of the extinct flying reptiles (except the Longisquamata, the Coelurosauravus elivensis, and other winged lizards) had them attached at the shoulders. Even hummingbirds do, and they're the best flying vertebrates in the world”.

I tried again: “But even so, the surface ratio;––”

He said: “It's a mistake to imagine a larger wingspan is attached at more points. An eagle's wings or a ship's sails, or even the wings of a jet-plane, are all attached at a shoulder. That's where evolution begins. Same as I do”.

I tried a third time: “But even little flying lizards, which are even called ‘Draco volans’, have the wings attached to the middle of the body”.

He said, “They glide. I soar. It's a different evolutionary path through the air. I have to flap a little to get into the air; they have to climb. Flying snakes and the Oriental dragons had to spring up, exactly like coiled springs. Jet-planes have to leap”.

I tried once more: “But, to lift a body this size;––”.

Traroth snapped: “Come off it! Does an airplane need its own length and breadth in wingspan to get off the ground?! Does a penguin need as much to stay afloat in the water? Does an elk need pillars for legs, like a hippopotamus? An albatross has narrower wings in proportion than I have, and it stays aloft for days on end! Enough of this rubbish between you and me!”.

I okayed that. Seemed like not such a safe thing, to argue with a dragon. Which reminded me: “Do you also have a hoard of treasure, like the dragons in the stories?”.

He answered, “Having a hoard is an invitation to assassination. Fafnir on Gnita-heath, Smaug of Erebor, and countless others have met their end that way”.

That didn’t mean he didn’t have one, only if he had, he wasn’t telling. He was gliding, by now, with hardly any flapping wings, so I asked, “You’re not flapping, so how do you stay up?”.

Traroth made a kind of noise in his throat, which I guessed (correctly) was him laughing, and answered, “The bigger the bird, the less it has to flap. Look at condors, vultures, eagles, hawks, all the way down to falcons, not to mention albatrosses. They hardly flap at all, and nor do I. On the other end, small birds flap incessantly; the fastest flappers of all are the hummingbirds, and they’re scarcely more than the size of bees. There’s an inverse relationship between the size of the flier and the frequency of flapping wings, and you can chart it yourself”.

Clipson added, “He’s right, my boy. It was a big help when we learnt that, and it saved him a lot of work in the air”.

I asked, “Does he;–– I mean, can you blow fire?”.

Traroth answered, “Of course I can!”, and blew a long jet of flame into the air ahead of us. I blinked, coughed, and asked, “How’s that work?”.

Traroth answered, “It’s a chemical reaction: several different liquids combine and break apart, and that breaking of the molecular bonds heats up, and ignites on contact with the object at which it is sprayed”.

I asked, “How d’you spray it?”.

Traroth answered, “Through an organ like the venom glands in snakes; indeed, I rather like the idea of it evolving from a true venom gland”.

I asked, “You mean you don’t know?”.

Traroth answered, “Of course not. Do human laymen know they evolved from the same ancestors as apes, without some paleontologist finding out for them?”.

I said, “I guess not. Do you also have iron in your teeth, like monitor lizards?”.

Traroth answered, “I do. They’re very useful when cutting through bone, or chewing stones for the chemicals one needs to light a fire in one’s breath”.

I asked, “And iron deposits in your scales, too?”.

Traroth answered, “Yes. You can feel them yourself”.

I remembered a story I’d read, and asked, “So is it true, wildfires and stuff come from baby dragons learning how to blow fire?”.

Traroth answered, “Are avalaunches set off by Abominable Snowmen sneezing?”.

I said, “No;–– I mean, I guess they could be, but they’re mostly not”.

Traroth answered, “Exactly so. Most mother dragons have enough sense to teach their children not to blow fire in the midst of flammable leaf-litter, and enough presence of mind, if the young do so, to stamp it out”.

I asked, “How long’s he gonna live?”.

I was asking Clipson, but it was Traroth who answered, “As long as I will, unless something kills me first”.

“So dragons don’t die of old age?”.

Traroth answered, “No, we do not”.

Clipson added: “Is that surprising?”.

I said, “Well, yeah. Or, maybe not. I mean, whales live up to a hundred years, and crocodiles for eighty or ninety in captivity, and tortoises just as long, not to mention Greenland Sharks…”

Chapter Text

A little later, I thought of something else, and asked, “Where’d you get the idea you could ride him? Or, I mean;–– how’d he get the idea he could ride you?”.

Clipson asked, “Do you want this one?”.

Traroth answered, “No, you take it this time”.

So Clipson said, “It was your mother’s idea;–– Nicole’s idea. She used to read me her favorite stories, when I was too young for grown-up books like them. Some of them were tales of people who rode dragons. And when I got older I read them myself, and after that I saw pictures of saints and heroes riding dragonback: Lung Mo, Kannon, and Sun Wu-k’ung in Chinese mythology, Demeter and Medea in Greek, Adam on a dragon and Eve on a phoenix in the Falnama, the Muslim divining-book, Buddhist saints in Tibetan art, and many more”.

I turned that over in my head, filed it away, and asked my next question: “So howcome he doesn’t have horns?”.

Traroth answered, “That’s a common misconception, youngster. Eastern dragons had horns, but Western did not. It’s mentioned in the Weilue, the imperial Chinese ‘Guidebook to the West’, Europe had ‘red hornless dragons’, and again in the Western manuscript tradition, dragons had upright pointed ears, and sometimes crested heads, but no true horns such as Eastern dragons or even the Mesopotamian mus-hush-shu had; as seen even now on the Welsh national flag”.

I thought about that, changed my mind, and said, “Hey, you’re right! You even look like the dragon on the Welsh flag. But;–– howcome you were lying out there in the open? Don’t you have a cave or an underground lair or something?”.

Traroth answered, “No, not really, except in rainy weather”.

Clipson added: “It’s another common misconception: the Dragon Dwelling in the Cave; based on the same jump to conclusions as the notion of fairy-mounds: mistaking the tombs of the dead for the houses of the living. They only sleep in caves when the weather’s heavy, or when guarding something. Even Fafnir, the archetypal hoarding dragon, slept on Gnita-heath. For the most part they’re creatures of open country, or of rivers and lakes and seas”.

I filed this away in my mind, thought of another question, and asked: “So, how do you talk? I didn’t see any voice box. No offense meant”.

Traroth answered, “None taken”.

Clipson added: “Look again, dear boy. When we land, I mean. Did you notice a mass at the base of his throat?”.

I said, “No”.

Clipson answered, “Well, look again, as I said, and you shall. Some popular writers say it’s a second heart; others say it’s a second brain. It’s in reality a syrinx, the vocal organ, same as in birds and dinosaurs. You’ll see it there, right above the keel of the sternum where the flight-muscles attach”.

I said, “Okay. So howcome you can carry both of us? I read somewhere even a four-meter-tall dragon couldn’t just pick up a man”.

Traroth replied, “Bosh. Even a jackass can carry a man. A fishing-bat can carry a fish as big as itself to a high perch to eat it. Large owls can carry grown foxes in the same way. An eagle can carry off a lamb. Arion the minstrel rode on a dolphin’s back, or so the legend goes, though a man is nearly as large and heavy as a dolphin. An elephant can curl its trunk around one like you and put you on its back with ease. I can carry off a water-buffalo in my talons, much less two men on my shoulders”.

I said, “Okay. So why red? Isn’t that a pretty rare color for reptiles?”.

Traroth replied, “I’m not a reptile, as I mentioned before. Like the dinosaurs of old, I’m more closely related to birds”.

Clipson added: “What’s more, as you should well know, with whose son you are, it’s all nonsense to think of reptiles as green. Anoles, mambas, some iguanas, and veiled chamaeleons are green, yes, but most snakes and lizards tend to be grey, or brown, or black-and-golden, or some combination of these. Even crocodilians only appear green underwater, or when algae grow on their backs. You know that”.

I asked, “And the spikes on the back? Are you related to stegosaurs?”.

Traroth replied, “No; tuataras”.

Clipson added: “He and I sometimes disagree on this (everyone likes to think of itself as unique), but I suspect the wings evolved from a sail, like those of the dimetrodons, edaphosaurs, and spinosaurs, and the sail in each case evolved from the spines along the back. Remember, those three genera are as near unrelated as any three mesothermic tetrapodal vertebrata can be, and yet as similar as any unrelated genera get; which proves the same features can evolve in different creatures, if one didn’t have sloths in South America and koalas in Australia to prove it even now. Or human beings and kangaroos, or jackals and thylacines, or woodchucks and wombats, or hedghogs and echidnae, or any other example you like, except the platypus. As experts used to say when I was a boy, the platypus ‘is like everything, but there’s nothing like it’”.

Chapter Text

I said, “Sorry for asking about this again, but was that Dickinson guy right? Do you have flight cavities full of lighter-than-air gas?”.

Traroth said, “I do, but not all dragons did. Some, like those in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean art, actually flattened their bodies and emptied themselves of bulk, so as to glide from peak to peak, like flying-snakes from treetop to treetop”.

I said, “But then how could they take off vertically, like they do in the art? Snakes can’t do that”.

Traroth said, “Snakes have no legs, and wingless dragons had. With legs, it was easy to take off”.

I asked, “What about you?”.

Traroth said, “I’m a slightly different breed; I have wings, and flight-cavities as well. I fly much as a pterosaur would”.

I said, “Okay, so let me work this out. You’re about 15 meters long, with a mass about 2,600kg;––”

Traroth said, “A little more, actually”.

I said, “Which puts your weight at that many newtons… but your wingspan is just about equal to your body-length, including the tail, or a little over twice the length of the torso. Your max altitude is about 115,000 feet, but there’s practically no lift at that altitude, so you normally fly at twenty thousand. What about ground speed? How fast can you run?”.

Traroth said, “Using wings for lift and tail for stability, running on its hind legs, any dragon can reach twenty miles per hour, about the same rate as a large dromeosaur, and by the same means”.

I said, “Okay. So, why’re things like you always drawn in leathery reddish-brown, when really you’re more of a fiery vermillion?”.

Traroth said, “Because those who drew those reddish-brown dragons, all muddy and dark, had either never seen a live specimen, or were working with a stretched and dried skin, or both. In fact, no reptile has such a dull coloration or rough texture, except crocodilians, which I’m not. Strictly speaking, I’m not a reptile at all, but a mesotherm, like the dinosaurs, though not as closely related as they to birds”.

I asked, “So, what other mythical creatures aren’t really mythical?”.

Traroth replied, “Many more than you’d think, and fewer than you’d imagine. You’ve only to consult the fossil-record”.

I said, “Don’t think me crazy, but I thought accepting you were real meant throwing out the fossil-record”.

Traroth actually laughed; so hard, I almost fell off. Clipson laughed too, and said, “You can’t mean it! The fossil-record’s verified more mythical monsters than all the monster-hunters since the days of Peter Scott, the great English naturalist. Four-tusked elephants, abominable snowmen, sea-monsters, cockatrices, giant rocs, unicorns;––”

I interrupted, “Wait a minute! Stop right there! Unicorns?!”.

Clipson rolled his eyes and moaned, and said, “The world’s turned upside-down, when a son of Nicole’s gets skeptical about unicorns. Goddess of Memory help me if it wasn’t she who taught me about them in the first place! They weren’t like you see in the pictures, of course: a silver antelope with a narwhal’s tusk. They were big, shaggy, hump-backed, woolly-rhino-sort-of-things, with the horn a little higher than on modern rhinos. Elasmotherium is the scientific name, or was when I first read of it. I suppose a white unicorn could be taken as a rare and wondrous sign of an auspicious year, same as white bison among the Plains Peoples, and for the same reasons”.

I asked, “Elasmotherium? Wasn't that the name of some water-reptile?".

Clipson said, “No, that's Elasmosaurus: the flippered round body with the long neck ending in a small flat head consisting mostly of wide eyes and needle-sharp teeth".

I asked, “And the abominable snowmen, sea-monsters, giant rocs, and whatever?”.

Traroth replied, “As real as real can be”.

Clipson added, “He’s right, my boy. The abominable snowman, or Bigfoot monster, or the troll as it used to be called, is known to primatologists as Gigantopithecus. Sea-monster is a generic sort of term, but as usually imagined, it might be identified easily with the mosasaurs, or as easily with oar-fish and eels. The Makara or sea-elephant in Indian art is a whale, as drawn by someone who’d heard one spouting but never seen one face-to-face. The giant roc is an old name for Harpagornis moorei, the only natural predator of the ratite moas of New Zealand (both unfortunately now extinct). And so on, so forth”.

Something occurred to me then, and I asked, “And is that why rhinoes were hunted for their horns? Because people couldn’t get unicorn horns anymore?”.

Clipson said, “Sad but true. Smart boy. Not that the real thing was much more use; it was only keratin, fingernail-material, like the rhinoes’ horns now”.

I asked, “So, Traroth: why did the ancient Chinese believe you came with rainstorms?”.

Traroth replied, “How should I know? I’m not a Chinese dragon. If a fire-dragon like myself were seen near rainstorms, it’s because we were flying away from them, just as fire-salamanders are so called for their habit of springing out of burning logs”.

I said, “Okay. But in medieval times, people saw the salamanders do that and guessed wrong that they were born from fire, or incubated and hatched in it, like tadpoles hatching early when a snake bites the eggs, and sometimes they used to draw things they called salamanders but looked like your kind of dragon. What’s with that?”.

Traroth replied, “Those illustrators believed the fire-salamander to be a juvenile form of dragon, just as you know a tadpole to be a juvenile form of frog. ‘We have no need of that hypothesis’, as Laplace told Napoleon, but it was both plausible and fascinating while it lasted”.

I asked, “So how do your species reproduce?”.

Traroth replied, “We mate and lay eggs, like most animals. Some dragons are even capable of laying viable eggs without a mate, if need be”.

I said, “I thought that was Komodo monitor lizards. Or is that why they’re also called dragon lizards?”.

Traroth replied, “It’s both. Also sharks and rays, condors, crocodiles, lovebirds, boas, some geckoes, a few agamids, and more”.

I said, “So howcome you’re strong enough to carry two people? With your size?”.

Traroth replied, “Large owls, as an expert has written in children’s books, ‘have been seen carrying grown foxes in their talons, and have been known to go after animals the size of a small deer’. A falcon can carry a partridge, or present a mallard to his mate, even if falcon, mallard, and partridge are all the same size. The fishing-bats of Central and South America can carry a fish as large as themselves to a lofty perch to eat it. You can believe in my strength if you believe in such things and take them as a matter of course”.

Clipson added, “He’s right, my boy. You’re a zoologist’s son yourself; you should know these things!”.

I remembered something he'd said before, and I said, "But gigantopithecines were herbivores, and trolls in stories eat meat!".

Clipson answered, "And there the authors of troll-mythology prove themselves no better at primatology than the author of Tarzan. You'll remember, my boy, Tarzan's apes are as big as gorillas, but behave like chimpanzees, because the author didn't know any better. Same with everyone who's ever written about trolls, ogres, or anything similar. It's either instinctive or a long-held habit in human beings to think of any big animal as dangerous until proven otherwise, and you know the rest".

Chapter Text

“So what’d the tooth-fairies really do with teeth?”.

I asked as kind of a joke-question, not really expecting a serious answer, but Traroth replied, “Teeth can tell a lot of things: what their former owner ate, how it moved, how old it was, how it grew, how long it took to grow, what chemicals were in the air it breathed and the water it drank, where its ancestors lived, to what accidents, injuries, hardships, and diseases it was most susceptible, or actually suffered, what made it healthier, and more. All this can be seen under the microscope. Tooth-fairies, in the legend, took it further; they could see into the creatures’ very memories, and these they preserved, and blessed the children for new teeth to grow in and stronger. All bodily tissues (hair, skin, feathers, a whale’s baleen, a turtle’s shell) carry that much information and more, and it’s quite easy to read them under the right sort of microscope. Any scientist worth its salt can do so”.

I got curious and looked at his own teeth. They were ivory-white, curved, pointed, and red-edged where the iron in them showed, and even the smallest was as long as my hand. That made sense. He was about the size of a large therapod dinosaur, and probably ate like one, and so of course his teeth would like like theirs. That made me ask, “So, does that mean allosaurs and tyrannosaurs and dromeosaurs and gigantonos and acrocanths and all the rest had iron in their teeth, too?”.

Traroth replied, “‘Nothing is more probable. Bless me, what do they teach you in these schools?’”.

Clipson added, “Legend has it, there were people who could read all that from a drop of blood or a lock of hair with a look or a touch alone; but that talent now is virtually extinct, and so it takes all the machinery of a lab to do it”.

I decided to change the subject back: “So, if you’re real, what about the Loch Ness Monster?”.

He answered, “It was there; it is no more; there are stories of that kind all over the world. Phra Naagk in Thailand, O-gon-cho in Japan, Cadmus’ serpent at Thebes, Tiamat slain by Marduk, Pytho slain by Apollo, Apophis on the Nile, the Horned Serpents in Canada, the Mokele-mbembe in the Congo River Basin, the Cuero, also called Nahuelito, of Nahuel Huapi Lake in San Carlos de Bariloche, in windswept Patagonia, the sacred serpents at the well of the Acropolis in Athens, the other one slain by Cadmus, and the monster at Jaffa killed by Perseus. In India, you have the Black Serpent subdued by Krishna. Ladon in the Garden and Fafnir on the heath lived by water, and so did the dragon of Krakow and many more. All are dragons in the waters, just as I am of the air”.

I said, “You don’t really act like the dragons in the stories”.

He answered, “I am not. I was not raised among the cruel throng of such as Gonggong, Pytho, Fafnir, Smaug the Dreadful, or Ancalagon the Black, who saw all the world as a feast laid out for them. Nor among the cringing Eastern dragons of the Four Oceans, who waited endlessly on the word of the gods. I was raised among men and women, to learn the best of them and teach them to share the world with other intelligent beings. Now, let that matter alone, and cheer up”.

Chapter Text

Ten days on the road, and every day practically the same as the days before and after. Same hotels, motels, and potels (postal hotels) all the way, run by the same-looking people, all with the same family-name (Patel). Same oversized beds, same dull-blue carpet, same uncomfortable chairs nobody uses, same overshaded lamp, same unthumbed Gideon’s Bible in the nightstand drawer. It’s a boring book of badly-written stories, about nations that never existed in parts of Syria-Palestine. The least boring part of this trip was flying, which was more like a World War One pilot’s experience than a modern jet-passenger’s. The rest of it: all the same. Same little towns and littler villages, with the same businesses on same-named streets; same things to be said to the same-looking people on the same point of every Main Street, and the same things said by those people (‘Hi there! How ya doin’? Where y’ guys f’m? Where ya goin’? O, seriously?! That’s a long trip! Have fun!’). Same little general stores with barely room to walk between bales and bags and boxes piled to the ceiling, and bottles and more boxes, and bottles in boxes, stacked on the floor. Same routine: breakfast at 8:00, on the road by 9:00, lunch around noon, on the road again until 5:00, dinner at 7:00, in bed by 9:00. The only differences are the food, the scenery, and the names of the towns. Not even so much the food; it’s pretty much all the same, too. Toast, waffles, eggs, fried bread, potatoes, fruit, cheese, fried tomatoes, and juice (or tea, or coffee, or hot chocolate, all of them thick, black, and hard-boiled) in the morning; sandwiches twice, once in the early afternoon and once in the late, or else pizza, with the same kind of toppings on both (margherita, pepperoni, or arugula, heirloom tomato, and melted smoked brie); soup in the evening, with bread and roast vegetables and pickles and whatever else we can find. Same toasters and waffle-makers in the hotels, too, which we had to turn over multiple times to get the toast and waffles cooked. Same so-called Best Pies in the Nation, the State, the County, or whatever: pumpkin, apple, cherry, lime, quiche, banana-cream, or blueberry.

All the restaurants looked the same, too: black-and-white tiled floors, shiny mock-chrome counters and tables, red synth-leather chairs, and bright-looking lamps that cast all the corners into shadow; and the servers ordered things for the customers like, “A double triple balty deluxe, on a raft, 4x4 animal style, extra shingles with the shimmy and a squeeze, light axle grease, make it cry, burn it, and let it swim”, or, “three Montagues, one no cukes, one no stinkers, one wet one, four cubers, and four from the vine”. The customers, on the other hand, hardly spoke at all; most didn’t, and those that did would say things like ‘Yup’, ‘Nope’, ‘Burp’, ‘Snuff’, etc. Once in a while, they’d add “Umph”, for variety. Same cakes and sandwiches rolling on stainless steel rods, same coffee stations, same videophone cards, same bins of stuffed animals wearing T-shirts embossed with whatever big university football team was nearby.

Sometimes, for variety, we’d stop at a campsite instead, and put up tents and solar panels (for a hot breakfast in the morning); sometimes it was just a hobo-camp, where nomads stopped overnight and swapped stories and passed drinks around. I tried the drinks; most of the time, they tasted like nothing, but my mouth felt white and I couldn’t talk or breathe without taking some water first. Then Clipson, Traroth, and all the hoboes’d laugh and clap me on the back. Other times it was a really raw imitation of navy-coffee, and my head rang like a bell. Once in a while we’d stop at a really nice campground, with hedges and lawns, fishing-ponds and paved roads, and we saw all kinds of strange people there. At one camp, there was a really clean rectangular white tent, with three or four rich oldies next to it, getting served by a robot; and right across from them, a dusty-looking tent with a band of ragtag musicians half in and half out of it, playing guitars and flutes and other instruments and singing. Right behind them were an acting troupe rehearsing a play. There was one family all dressed up in tuxedoes and ball-gowns, and another all in holey casuals. There were bulls in corrals, with ranch-hands in old-fashioned costume roping them while the campers watched. There were hikers looking tired on their way down the mountainside, and Boy-and-Girl Scouts looking tireless on their way up, and vice versa.

Sometimes, I saw Clipson giving Traroth some pills, so I asked, “What’s that you’re giving him?”.

Clipson replied, “Calcium. Dragons need it to light their fires. Simple chemistry: calcium reacts with hydrochloric acid in the entrails to release hydrogen, and hydrogen supplies lift, which makes the dragon light enough to fly. You were talking about that yourself a few days ago, when you mentioned Dickinson; it was his idea, and it seems to work. When there’s too much gas, they blow fire. And if they blow too much, they need to take calcium constantly; mostly from the bones of prey, or limestone and calcite when they can find it, and sea-shells, and other natural occurrences of the substance”.

I asked, “Is that where dragon pearls come from?”.

Clipson replied, “No. Dragon pearls are gastroliths; the leftover gems they swallow and regurgitate, originally to grind the calcium in their gizzards. That’s not the only thing they are, of course. There are many reasons for a dragon to carry a pearl or moonstone or some other large white gem in their mouths, and not all of them pure instinct. For the most part, it’s simply a treasure, carried around because the dragon in that case is a nomad and has no lair for a hoard. Even a dragon with a lair might sometimes have a single jewel it prizes above all others: a magic ring or a great white gem or a book of secret names, or so the novelists have it.

There was a time (he added) when I believed, like Dickinson, blowing fire was only an exhaust-pipe evolved into a threat-display, and the idea of a dragon burning things on purpose like a flame-thrower was as loose a way of speaking as that of a porcupine ‘throwing’ its quills. But I was wrong. It really can be jury-rigged as a weapon, and I’ve seen it done”.

I asked, “What about dragons who don’t breathe fire? In Chinese myth and art, I mean?”.

Clipson replied, “Isn’t it obvious? Hydrogen combines with oxygen to form water, and so they blow mist instead of fire. Exactly like a hydrogen-powered car or bus, train or plane. Traroth here is the only internal-combustion-engine I’ll ever drive again, Fate willing”.

I looked inside the mouth, and I saw there were sharp teeth in front and blunt teeth in the back, not all the same shape like I'd expected. For some reason I'd always thought a dragon's teeth would all be sharp and the same size and shape, like a tyrannosaur's.

I asked about it, and Clipson said, “Even if he were not fully omnivorous, the which he is, he’d still have sharp teeth in the front and blunt behind, for the same reason camels do (which is one reason dragons are said to have ‘the head of a camel’), and I think you know that reason, don’t you?”.

I said, “Yeah. To fight with, right?”.

Clipson replied, “Right”.

Chapter Text

Another time, I came outside in the early morning, looking for them, and Artax was polishing Traroth with a rag and a bucket of oil. He looked like a car-owner waxing his car.

I asked, “Do you have to do that every day?”.

Clipson replied, “If we have time, and I feel up to it. As often as possible, anyway”.

Traroth said, “I think we could do it every day, if you could bring yourself to do it”.

Clipson replied, “I suppose you’re right”.

I said, “I can help”.

Clipson handed me the bucket and another rag. “You do one side; I’ll finish the other”.

So we polished, and polished, and polished some more. It was almost like grooming a horse, which I had done, only he was a lot bigger. It felt like hours before we were done.

I said, “It’s like my Mom says: ‘There’s more to riding a horse than just sitting on its back and going wherever you want’”.

Clipson said, “Hah! She still says that, does she? It’s comforting to know some people never change. And the other way too”.

I asked, “What other way?”.

Clipson replied, “Well, if you want or expect something to change one way, and it changes the other way or not at all, you’ll be disappointed. That’s basic; that’s what disappointment is: the feeling you get when that happens. That’s why the ascetics say, Live without wants and expectations, and you’ll be at peace”.

I said, “That’s hard”.

Clipson replied, “True, and that’s why ascetics live such a hard life: giving up their worldly goods and sometimes their very names, and treading as lightly as they can on this world, more lightly than ghosts”.

That sounded too heavy to think about when my arms were so tired, so I looked at my hands instead and said, "I bet dragon-riders get really good skincare, huh? With all this oiling?".

Clipson replied, “Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't, my boy. There're times there's a lot left, and other times, none. Those who don't believe in dragons would call it an excuse to oil my own skin and hair; but really, I don't need one, and neither do you. Human beings need it as often as any sea-bird".

I asked, “So, howcome dragons don't secrete their own oil, like sea-birds?".

Traroth answered: "We do. But it's more fun this way".

Clipson added, "Horses could groom themselves too, you know. But their trainers groom them, so as to do something together at leisure, and because working a horse scruffs up its coat. Same reason here. It was your mother Nicole's idea to start oiling him, actually; he was having skin-trouble at the time, and she told me about stories she'd read about riders oiling their dragons, so I tried it, and here we are".

I asked, “Ever tried milk, for the calcium?”.

He replied, “No, I’ve not. I remember reading milk was a narcotic for dragons; more proof, if any be wanted, they are not true reptiles. (Why, even English bluebirds used to peck open milk-bottles for the cream!). And so, I never have, except in tea and hot chocolate when we both drink some”.

I asked, “Where’d you read it was a narcotic?”.

He replied, “In the legend of the Worm of Lambton Hall, of course; same as you, I expect. In which, you’ll remember, the local people offered milk to the great serpent to keep it from eating the cows instead (now you see the logic of vegetarian diet! And in England, no less!), until the young lord tired of it, and decided to kill the creature and put an end to such offerings once and for all. And so he consulted a wise woman (a good witch, if you like), who told him he could destroy the worm, if he afterward sacrificed the next mortal he saw. Unfortunately for him, that next mortal was his own father, Lord Lambton the Elder; and rather than slay him, young Lambton accepted the worm’s curse, and so his own descendants all died young. Dragon-slayers seldom end happily, in stories. Hercules killed the Lernean Hydra and used its venom to poison his arrows; then died in pain when some of that venom was mistakenly given to himself, years later. Cadmus killed a dragon to build his city in its territory; but he himself died in shame thereafter. Sigurd or Siegfried killed Fafnir; but his wife’s brothers murdered him for the treasure, and she, their own sister, had them all killed to avenge him. Undoubtedly, the author of The Hobbit had that on the brain when he wrote of dwarves, elves, men, goblins, and eagles fighting over Smaug’s plunder. In another inspiration of the same author’s, Beowulf killed another dragon, but died of its venom on the spot, and his tribe died fighting among themselves. George saved Una from sacrifice to the great serpent; but where now is Silene, her city, and its great brazen tower? Etc., etc.”.

It took a couple of hours for the oil to soak enough into Traroth's skin for us to put the saddle on him and ride again without ruining the polish, so we sat around and played chess with a portable chess-set Clipson kept in his pocket, until it was dry again. As we took off again, I looked back at the clawmarks on the ground, and said, “I don’t think I’ll ever disbelieve again in the legends of whales carving out coastlines or elephants changing the course of rivers”.

Clipson answered, “No-one these days will disagree with you. I remember, when it came out that tyrannosaurs could swim after all, one of the evidences consisted of clawmarks on the shallower sea-beds, buried and preserved by some wondrous chance, and exposed again after millions of years;–– though not so extraordinarily, if it happened so often as all that”.

I said, “I guess it kind a’ makes sense to go back to a Stone Age myth to explain something even older”.

He replied, “Bravo, my boy! I thought so myself”.

Chapter Text

Another time, when we didn't have any oil, we stopped at a car-wash, and Traroth made himself look like a car: folded his wings and legs, compressed his body (like an iguana), curled his head and neck over the back, and wrapped his tail around himself, so he looked like a big reddish car with a decorative dragon’s head over the top.

The car-wash-attendant fell for it. He said, “Hey, that’s a pretty neat car. Custom-made, ’m-I-righ’?”.

Clipson replied, “You could say that. D’you think he’ll fit in the wash?”.

The car-wash-attendant said, “I’ th’ outdoor manu’l wash, maybe. I don’ think i’ll fit inna th’ inside auto-wash tunnel”.

Clipson replied, “That’s okay. Outdoor manual wash it is. Let’s get started. Come on, young Nathan; come here and wash one side while I do the other”. Just like that, we got started.

First, we hosed Traroth down with a fine spray. Then we added soap and mopped him all over with long brushes shaped like an old-fashioned janitor's broom in the days before cleaning-robots. The soap came out of a hole in the brush-head, hidden in the bristles and connected to a pump with a long hose. Then we rinsed him again. Next, we put on a different spray with minute particles of wax, to give him a finish. Finally, we dried him with a giant blow-drier. He was shining all over when we came out, and sort of purring. He stayed in car-shape until the attendant stopped waving and looked away; then we got on his back and he spread his wings and flew, looking like a dragon kite at the Lunar New Year.

Chapter Text

I thought of something else, and said, "You told me dragons fly and breathe fire because they eat calcium, which breaks up the hydrochloric acid to free hydrogen, which gives lift and fuels the fires. Right?".

Clipson replied, "So we did. What about it?".

I said, "Okay. But what about the leftover chlorine, then?".

Clipson replied, "Well, chlorine could combine with calcium to make calcium chloride;–– calcium salt. This, in turn, would be secreted through the tear-ducts, the way marine iguanas and saltwater crocodiles are said to do".

I said, "Oh, yeah. Crocodile-tears. So that's where it comes from".

Traroth said, "Not only that. Crocodiles also shed tears under pressure when they bite something. I'm closer to an iguana in this respect".

Clipson added: "And if it weren't for that, perhaps the chlorine'd be blown out with the excess hydrogen, and that'd account for references to green smoke or green-tinged flames in some dragon mythology".

Chapter Text

When I asked Clipson where he got Traroth, he never told the same story twice. The first time, he said, “He was bred in a lab by a mad scientist who made him grow to the size of a skyscraper, so he could send him here and there and terrorize the world. Your father’s crew (including myself) shrank him down to a tiny size, and let him grow up at a natural rate; and I kept him. I remember Belfast and Dallas and Hammer asking me and Nexa and Gable what to do with him, and I said, I’ll keep him; I always wanted one”.

Another time, he said, “I got him from an uncle who found him still in the egg on a misty strand, just outside an enchanted forest”.

The third time: “I won him in a lottery from a mad scientist who was breeding extinct species back to life”.

The fourth time: “I got him at a raffle at a gems-and-fossils show. They thought (and so did I) it was a petrified tyrannosaur egg. Imagine how surprised and delighted I was to be proven wrong!”.

The fifth time: “I liberated him while working with a group of volunteers interrupting the exotic-pet trade”.

The sixth time: “I stole him from a bushmeat market. Luckily, he was the only dragon those carrion-eaters had! Goodness and Evil alone know where they found him”.

Eventually, I decided to try one of these stories out. With no better way to choose, I settled on the first one. “You said he was bred in a lab by a mad scientist. How’d you get him then?”.

“We stole him, of course. The first hint of the shape of things to come was a fresh set of reports of a ‘monster’ appearing off the coast, over the mountains, over the plains, and even in cities. Such things are the stock-in-trade of sensational papers, but your father totted up all the sightings in the ship’s computer and decided it was real after all, and sent us to investigate. So, investigate we did, and followed the dragon (for such indeed it was) to a secret lab run by a corrupt business. Once there, we blinded the surveillance-gear, thumped the guards, dressed in their uniforms, stole top-secret-clearance badges, and slunk about the lab until someone sent us to the right place in the heart of the laboratory”.

I asked, “And so what happened? What’d you do?”.

“Well, there we were, and we heard Dr. Lowe say that, and Amy said, ‘So that’s how this madman created his monster! With a miniaturizer in reverse!’.

Belle said, ‘Let’s use it on me; I’d like to be taller!’, but Amy answered, ‘Never mind making you taller! That big red fire-engine out there is gonna be shorter!’.

So, when the evil genius and his people vacated the room, we sabotaged the surveillance-gear again and set the ray-machine to Miniaturize instead of Maximize. Then I said, ‘Okay, Amy! Ray reversed! Fire away, an’ don’t miss!’.

Amy said, ‘How can I miss anything that big?’, and zapped him down to size; so small I could pick him up in my hands, like a kitten. Amy asked, ‘What’re we gonna do with him?’, and I said, ‘I’ll keep him; I always wanted one of these’, and we’ve been together ever since”.

Chapter Text

I decided to test his other story, so I asked, “So how’d you keep the egg warm? How long’d it take to hatch? What’d you feed him? How long did he take to fly?”.

Clipson answered, “Questions, questions, all these questions! I kept him warm in cloth wrappings beside a water-boiler, and he hatched in three months. I fed him on insects and mice and little things like that when he was small; canned fish when I couldn’t get anything better. When he got older I found he could also eat lettuces and cabbage and other fruits and vegetables. When he was full-sized he started hunting and foraging for himself. He started to fly the same way an eagle does, with practice-runs, hopping about, and more practice-runs, until at last he spread his wings and took to the air”.

I asked, “So what made you think you could ride him?”.

He answered: “Dragons have been semi-domesticated for thousands of years, my boy. Legend has it, in both Greek and Chinese mythology, the gods and prophets and demi-gods and magicians used to harness dragons to pull their chariots; and Chinese alchemists spoke of ‘riding the dragon’ or ‘rising like a dragon’ just as European alchemists spoke of discovering the Philosopher’s Stone: that is, to represent true wisdom. What’s more, there’s a constellation (not often marked these days) called the Kneeling Man [Engonasin], or the Phantom, which seems to have the shape of a man with his leg thrown over the neck of Draco. More than one medieval Book of Hours showed some such figure in the marginalia; I even once saw one with a lady riding a dragon bareback side-saddle. Some say Merlin the Enchanter himself rode away on a dragon (with a wounded hand, no less) after he led the father of Arthur to the bed of the Duchess Ygraine. Chinese and Bhutanese art often shows gods, bodhisattvas, and heroes riding dragons, and a Muslim book illustrated in the same style depicts Adam, the mythical first ancestor of humanity, riding a dragon, while his consort Eve rode a phoenix beside him. Etc., etc.”.

I asked, “But;–– but;–– but why’d you keep it warm anyway, if you thought it was a fossil tyrannosaur egg?”.

Clipson answered, “When I first brought it home, someone joked I was keeping it warm in case it’d hatch, so I took the joke seriously and did exactly that. Then one day we came home and found no egg at all, but a hatchling sitting on the boiler, licking itself clean. It hopped into my arms straight away, like a kitten or a litter of puppies. Everyone, naturally, wanted to play with it; when he was big enough to ride, I took my brother and sister and one of our cousins on his back with me; and later, your own mother and her friend Cara. But I haven’t taken anyone else on his back with me since, except my wife, and once in a while the children have gone up, even without their parents”.

I said, “Okay; but what’d dragons even evolve from? Some kind of pterosaur?”.

Clipson shook his head and replied, “I don’t know. We had to figure it out ourselves; there are no living experts on dragon anatomy. I mentioned before, this bodily-structure’s evolved several times, what with Dimetrodon, Edaphosaurus, Spinosaurus, Mosasaurus, tuataras and monitors, iguanas and flying-snakes and little gliding-lizards. As you can see, his wings aren’t really a modified foreleg, as among Rhamphorhynchus, Quetzalcoatlus, Pteranodon, or modern bats, or the Scansoriopterygid family of maniraptorans; more like the gliding apparatus of the modern gliding lizard Draco volans, or the Mesozoic Kuehneosaurus, Icarosaurus, and C. elivensis; evolved from spines along the back or flanks, rather than an extra arm-and-hand”.

I said, “So all those are basically tiny dragons?”.

Traroth answered, “No. They and I are examples of convergent evolution”.

I turned to Clipson and said: “In all these stories, you always found him as a baby”.

Clipson answered, “True enough, boy-O. One should never try making an adult dragon imprint on you. That’s why books on the care and feeding of dragons always say, Don’t try to tame them. With all domestic animals, human beings have always started with capturing the newborns. The principal exception I know is the elephant, which do get captured and tamed as adults; and your parents would never forgive me if I didn’t add, It takes a really first-class and legendary horse-breaker to capture and tame a wild horse. (Hence the legend, I might add, of Pecos Bill and other such riders on the wind.) With dogs, cats, cheetahs, horses, goats, sheep, cattle, hogs, birds, mustelines, aquarium fish, or whatever, the first to be domesticated were caught wild as newborns and raised in captivity. With dragons, it’s the same. One can capture grown-up reptiles, amphibians, and rodents, perhaps, and other things of similar size, but one can’t tame the whole species except from infancy”.

I asked, “What happens if you try? To imprint an adult dragon on you, I mean?”.

Clipson answered, “Nothing good. I’ve never seen or done it, of course (do I look it?), but in all the stories I know, except one, either the would-be-rider got hurt, or the dragon went insane, and I’d rather not have either”.

I asked, “All the stories? Don’t you know the facts?”.

Clipson answered, “There are none. This is a very new field of endeavor, my boy, with nothing to go on but legends and making things up as we go”.

I asked, “So is he;–– I mean, are you related to those really big Indonesian monitor lizards? The Komodo Dragons?”.

Traroth answered, “I’d rather be related to a Galapagos Marine Iguana than those lazy, cannibal, stupid monitors”.

Chapter Text

I asked, "So how'd you figure out the calcium thing, where he needs it to fly and blow fire? Was it just from the Dickinson book?".

Clipson answered, "Yes and No. It was your then-future-mother's idea. She and Cara and I were talking it over one evening…

Cara asked, ‘Does Traroth by any chance blow fire?’.

Artax answered: ‘We’ve tried, but no success so far. He might be too young still. I remember hearing something about that’.

Said Nicole: ‘But then again, he can fly, and flight is supposed to be co-related with fire’.

Artax asked, ‘How’s that?’.

Nicole answered: ‘Well, according to Dickinson’s Flight of Dragons, a fire-dragon would sometimes ingest limestone, which reacted with hydrochloric acid in the digestive system to give off hydrogen, which filled the flight-cavities in the dragon’s body to make it light enough to fly. Excess gas, if any, would be exhaled through the mouth; and if it happened to be ignited by anything, the dragon would blow fire’.

Said Artax: ‘I suppose that’s why dragons are portrayed living in limestone caves and karst landscapes: to scrape off the stone for their fires, like those macaws and howler-monkeys you told me about last year, Nicole’.

Cara added: ‘There’s other explanations, too. Brown Falcons and Black Kites in Australia snatch up burning branches from bush fires and drop them into the nests of small reptiles and amphibians, to smoke out prey. So do ravens, which goes to explain the Haida stories of the Raven stealing fire from the gods, like Prometheus’.

Nicole added: ‘And male humpback whales blow giant bubbles to show off for their rivals, which is basically the same thing’.

Artax asked, ‘And my own father believes the fire was poetic license referring to the scorch-marks left by a dragon’s venom, if it were sprayed or spat at the victim. But which of all these ideas do we want to try out?’.

Said Nicole: ‘Let's start with Dickinson's, because it's the most chemical and needs the fewest extra explanations (that's more scientific). Let's give him some calcium (the active ingredient in limestone), and maybe put some flint and iron under his tongue to ignite the fire, and see what happens'.

With that, the children fetched some calcium pills from Artax's house and fed them to Traroth, and Nicole unpocketed some flint and iron mineral-samples from her rock-collection and curled those into the triple forks of his tongue. Said Traroth: 'That tickles; I think I'm going to…'

Said Nicole: ‘Well, blow it out, then! That's the idea!'.

Cara added: ‘Nicole! Artax! Everybody duck!', and duck they did, and Traroth blew a great flame over their heads and filled the skies with it. As soon as it stopped, the children rose and held hands and danced around him.

And so it began. We experimented a little more with this and that (to find out, for example, whether he needed the flint and iron at all, and whether he had a crop to grind limestone in, and things like that), but that's the way it went".

I asked, "And is that the way the oiling went, too?".

Clipson answered, "Clever boy! Yes. It was your mother's first big-animal case, we might say, and started her along the path to tending whales and elephants and horses and lions for a living… though I confess myself surprised she took to working on eyes, instead of skin. It was skin in this case, of course; Traroth came down with some corrosion or corruption in his hide, and Nicole suggested putting oil. So I did (and it took all day), and he was well again".

I thought of something else, and asked, "But how d'you digest calcium anyway? I thought too much was poisonous?".

Traroth answered, "The same way the Burmese Pythons and venomous lizards do, dear boy. Specialized enterocytes in my body precipitate the calcium and any other excess mineral in small spheroids for future use and (finally) excretion".

I thought about that, decided it made sense, remembered something else, and asked, "What about your tail? Howcome it's so flexible? Shouldn't it be stiff, like a lizard's?".

Traroth answered, "Have you ever seen a crocodile's tail? It too is flexible from the mid-point to the tip, to row the crocodile through the water, at once steering-oar and rudder. Mine is the same way, to steer me through the air. The only evolutionary alternative was to lose it altogether, as with birds and pteranodons".

Chapter Text

Every day or two, we had to stop and build up supplies again: crackers, apples, cheese, pecans, oranges, honey and flour to make bread in the wide-opens where there weren't any bakeries, medicines, vitamins, and water. Also stuff for Traroth: anything from smoked fish to mishmashes of venison, salmon, chocolate sauce, and motor oil, not to mention lots of lettuce and cabbage, and oil to rub on his skin. We stopped to do that every couple of days.

The first time I saw him eat, I said, "I thought dragons burned their meat before they eat it".

Traroth said: "A waste of fire".

Clipson added, "That's a jump to conclusions, young Ransom. As you know, a dragon's fiery breath is a threat-display, used when showing off for females and bullying other males, or smoking out prey, or frightening attackers. It isn't a built-in cooking-stove; in fact, among believers like myself, it's a well-known saying, 'It is ill done to chain a dragon to roast your meat'. (Much the same as 'Using a bomb to swat a fly', if you take my meaning). Not that there aren't stories about it: one of my favorite pizzerias used to have a picture on the walls of a dragon baking the pizzas, with a wizard giving directions, and the ads for a well-known greaseburger chain featured a dragon grilling the hamburgers, and everyone knows the tale of a dragon who baked apples for a boy like you… to name but three. But it isn't the sort of thing a dragon would do for itself".

I asked, "Why'd you say Believers? I mean, if he's real an' all…"

Clipson answered, "Because, my boy, there are still nonbelievers in the world, even now he's real-and-all. Come to think of it, there are nonbelievers in far more established realities than this: I've heard of people, and even met a few, who disbelieved furiously in vaccines, fluoridation, washing hands, eating vegetables, lost cities, solar power, space travel, nonhuman intelligence, evolutionary biology, birds evolving from dinosaurs, innocent victims of war, the lawfulness of peaceful resistance, and the Copernican model of the solar system".

I said, "That's crazy!".

Clipson answered, "So it is".