shouted, pointing up.
Following Candle’s finger, Timothy spotted a huge winged creature among the clouds, closing in as it disappeared and reappeared, passing from one cloud to the next. “A dragon?” he asked.
“What else is big enough?” Candle half closed one eye at him. “You don’t ride on birds, do you? The altered tribe uses birds.”
Timothy tried to smile, but it probably looked more like a frozen grimace. “I have … never flown … on a bird.”
With a powerful beating of its wings, a huge dragon landed. The splendid creature flashed purplish scales and breathed a thick vapor that crystallized and rained to the landing platform in icy pellets.
Three seats had been tied in single file to the dragon’s back, fastened with wide straps that wrapped under its belly. As the dragon lowered its head, the rider waved at them. “Hurry aboard! Ichabod looks cold!”
His teeth still chattering, Timothy nodded at the female rider, Angel, now wearing a black leather jacket and corduroy pantaloons instead of green scrubs.
“Ever since Father died,” Candle explained, “Mother has had to fly our dragon herself.” He stepped up the dragon’s spiny stairway. “Come on,” he called back, waving. “Grackle will warm you up.”
Still burying his hands in his pockets, Timothy climbed the neck, trying to keep his balance in the stiff breeze. When he made it to the top, Candle and his mother reached out their hands. He finally had to expose his frigid fingers again as they guided him to the seat in the middle.
As soon as he sat down, Angel shouted. “Give us a bit more heat for our guest.”
A soothing radiance rose from Grackle’s scales, instantly thawing Timothy’s fingers and toes. The dragon swung his head close to Angel and blew a series of high-pitched whistles.
Twisting her body, Angel reached for a belt attached to Timothy’s seat. “Grackle wants to know if you’re comfortable now,” she said, fastening the belt over his waist.
Timothy unzipped his jacket halfway. “I’m fine. In fact, it’s quite warm.”
“I’ll tell him to lower the heat a notch.” Turning back to the dragon, Angel whistled a sweet, warbling tune. Flashing a set of eight sharp incisors, Grackle nodded and stretched out his wings.
Candle tapped Timothy on the shoulder. “Hang on! Grackle loves to give new riders a thrill!”
Timothy gripped the back of Angel’s seat. “Thanks for the warning.”
As Grackle lifted off, Timothy looked back at the hospital, expecting to see the usual high-rise building shooting up from a medical office complex. Instead, a narrow, single-story, tubelike metal rod hovered in the sky.
“How does it float like that?” Timothy asked.
“It’s not floating,” Angel replied. “It’s flying. We keep the hospital moving to protect it from the altered tribe. A circuit of magnets on the ground keeps it in motion.”
“I don’t remember anything this advanced. How long was I out?”
“Candle found you in the birthing garden about a month ago. We don’t know how long you were there already.”
Suddenly, Grackle plunged. With his stomach pressing into his throat, Timothy rose an inch from his seat, but the belt kept him from flying away. Still, he felt no fear, only a sense of exhilaration, even joy.
Candle lifted his hands and belted out an ecstatic cry. As the flight leveled, he called forward. “Good dive, Grackle! Maybe the best one yet!”
Releasing Angel’s seat, Timothy laid a hand on his chest. “That was good,” he said. “An excellent ride.”
Grackle flew around a village, a group of low buildings nestled in a thick forest of tall evergreens. Thatched roofs of bright yellow covered the majority of the humble cottages, while a few carried dark reddish tiles on sharply angled decking. To Timothy the hamlet looked like a cross between an African tribal community and a low-income development in urban America.
They passed over a massive garden, a field of black soil and spots of greenery that lay just outside the village boundary. Several rows of tall, bushy spruce trees encircled the garden, like sentries protecting the harvest. As the dragon descended, a grassy meadow came into view beyond the village’s opposite border. A fruit-filled orchard lay between the grass and the village, and a mountain ridge hemmed the meadow in on the far side.
The dragon settled into the lush field, spreading his wings gracefully and landing with hardly a bump. After unbuckling his belt, Timothy stood and stretched his arms. The air, though still crisp and cold, was far more tolerable than at the hospital, more like temperatures he remembered from somewhere in his past.