Wolves are less brave than they seem. —Angela Carter
I.
Ruby inherited the dragon from her Uncle Pierce when he died. She’d seen the dragons advertised on TV: small, domestic ones with brown scales and sand-colored bellies. They even breathed little fires on command. The bank delivered it to her house, leash tied to a rope around its neck. About the size of a terrier, the dragon’s defining features were its ochre claws, extending from the joint of each wing, and the brown scales that crested into a wave at the dragon’s forehead.
“It eats meat, raw or cooked, twice a day,” was all the bankers told her.
After just a few weeks it became clear to Ruby that the animal wasn’t right. All it did was wheeze and growl and sputter foul-smelling, ash-colored phlegm along the fence. And the neighbors were furious about the howling, which combined with the seemingly endless thunderstorms, made for some sleepless nights in the neighborhood. With every clap of thunder, the dragon would raise its head and unleash a bellow that sounded like a cross between a chainsaw and waves crashing.
“Hey,” Ruby’s neighbor Cash said one afternoon when she was outside feeding the dragon some raw hamburger meat. Cash had been Ruby’s neighbor for over ten years, but they’d only ever talked when he’d wanted to scold her for something. “You gotta do something about that dog.”
“It’s a dragon,” Ruby said, watching it chew the pink coils of meat she’d given it with its beak-like mouth. From that angle, its forked tail wagging in the dirt, she thought it resembled a giant, winged lizard more than a dog.
“Does it breathe fire?” he asked, leaning over the rotting wood fence that separated their backyards. The fence came up to his chest, so he could easily peer over. Besides, it was missing several planks.
“No, but it’s not its fault. I don’t know if these thunderstorms will ever let up, and I guess dragons don’t take to the humidity.” If she got up close to it, she could hear its lungs rattling with phlegm. Her uncle hadn’t mentioned anything about treating dragon sicknesses in the will, so she had to try and figure it out for herself.
“What? Ruby, I can’t hardly hear you. Can you speak up?”
She repeated what she’d said before, this time loud enough that it felt like yelling. People told her she spoke too softly all the time—she’d learned over the years that what felt like shouting to her was just barely audible to others. She never did get used to speaking loudly, though, or to repeating herself.
“Does it fly?” Cash asked. They were both looking at the dragon, which had its wings outstretched as if to help balance itself while it ate. Ruby kept the dragon tied up on the back porch so it wouldn’t run off, but still, she’d never seen it attempt to fly.
“I think it’s like a turkey that way,” she shouted. “It has wings but more for decoration than anything else.” She felt terrible about the dragon’s condition and thought it reflected poorly on her.
“Well, my daughter can’t sleep with all that noise it’s making,” Cash said. He had thinning red hair, small blue eyes, and a crooked nose, but there was something about his face that Ruby could admit she found handsome. Maybe it was the cleft in his chin.
“I can’t argue with you there,” Ruby said. “I’m sure that’s just the worst when your kid can’t sleep.”
She just stared at the dragon. With scales that felt like steel wool on her fingers, it was no good for petting. Maybe she could charge to view the dragon at children’s parties if she kept it in a cage, she thought.
“Well can’t you train it or something?” he asked.
“I’ve never heard of a dragon trainer, have you?” she asked.
Cash looked toward his own dog, a lab pit-bull mix chained to a tree, as if to find an answer in its mud-stained hide.
“You got me there, but believe me, my daughter just has to get her sleep.” He shifted his weight to his elbows and leaned on the fence posts in a way that suggested authority—he had the arrogance of a man who believed in fairy-tale heroes.
“Would you mind if I took a shot at training that dragon?” he asked.
Ruby let out some air and puffed up her cheeks. If this dragon ever did learn to breathe fire, maybe she could make some money from it, and she could stop sewing knockoff handbags in her living room and selling them on Etsy.
And these neighbors, all they saw was a barking dog, and Ruby knew what came next if the dragon didn’t stop bellowing: Somebody, whether this neighbor or the other one, Cash’s brother Clay, would call the cops, which was the last thing she needed.
So, sure, she’d told him. He could go ahead and take a shot at training the dragon. Maybe it’d work out fine.
II.
When the cop walked around to the back of Ruby’s house, the squirrels were going haywire. Ruby didn’t know if it was because the rain had finally stopped or because the neighbors’ dogs on both sides of her house were barking up a storm. Either way, squirrels were running across the top of Cash’s shed and vaulting into the old pine tree, sending showers of rainwater down on both of them. Drops clung to Cash’s red goatee and flew off when he yelled.
“I told you already Ruby, I ain’t giving back the dragon!” His jeans were caked in mud, and she could tell from the redness in his eyes that he’d been working the night shifts again at the hospital and probably hadn’t slept in days.
“Would someone like to tell me what the problem is here?” the officer asked.
“Evening, officer,” Cash said in a voice so slow and articulate Ruby hardly recognized it. He eyed her, and his anger seethed out and hit her like a fist. She knew he didn’t want cops snooping around any more than she did, but now that the officer was there, she was glad to have someone on her side.
“Officer,” Ruby said, “Like I said on the phone, Cash offered to help me train the dragon, and now he won’t give it back. He stole it from me, and I inherited it from my uncle fair and square.”
The officer stared hard at Ruby, and she worried he might ask to go inside for some reason, even though she’d hidden the handbags, but then she saw his eyes move over her mouth like it was broken, and the vacant look on his face told her he hadn’t heard a word she’d said.
“Thank you, Miss Graves,” he said, and she realized that whether he heard her or not made no difference in his assessment of the situation.
“Is that true, sir?” he asked Cash. The officer held something that looked like a cross between a cell phone and a credit-card machine, and he poked at it with a stylus pen.
“Course it’s true,” she mumbled. Ruby hadn’t mentioned that over the past three weeks, the dragon had undergone a complete transformation. Under Cash’s care, the dragon had stopped wheezing and did flips, which involved using its wings to hover upside down in mid-air. Crowds of children gathered in the driveway, and Cash had charged them each fifteen dollars to watch.
“I started training her dragon for her because it was sick and howling all the damn time,” Cash said.
“I asked you to give it back last week,” Ruby said. “And the past three days, I wake up to find cars parked around the block, people trampling through my yard to get to your house to see my dragon.” She pointed to the dragon, which was laying on a piece of cardboard in Cash’s backyard. His dog had stopped barking, and so had the other neighbor’s, but just then a squirrel launched from the metal roof of Cash’s shed and flew, arms outstretched, right into the old pine tree above them. Fat drops of water landed on the officer’s machine and Ruby’s shirt, turning spots of it red. Cash frowned at Ruby, and she knew it was because she fed the squirrels, for which he’d reprimanded her several times.
“Is your Daddy still selling those car batteries over by the Dairy Queen?” the officer asked, apropos of nothing.
“Yes he is,” Ruby said. He didn’t seem to have any trouble hearing her that time, she noted. Her father had amassed a small fortune buying and selling car batteries and was well respected in the town.
“Officer Cooperman, Miss Graves gave me that dragon to get it to stop making that awful howling that keeps my daughter up all night,” Cash said.
A high-pitched squeal tore through the backyard, and all three turned toward the dragon to see it slinging a squirrel back and forth in its mouth until the squirrel fell silent. The dragon dropped it on the ground, and a bit of smoke puffed out of its nostrils before it tore the squirrel’s head clean off and chewed, crushing its skull.
“It sure does love squirrel meat,” Cash said to Ruby, laughing.
Ruby gave him a dirty look. How could someone so careless with life be good at training a dragon? It didn’t make sense to her.
“Listen,” said the cop, “here’s what we’re gonna do. Cash, you’re gonna give that dragon back to Miss Graves, and Miss Graves you’re going to keep it inside the house so it stops bothering the neighbors. You’re both gonna stop causing me trouble, you hear?”
“Yessir,” they both said, trying not to stare at the blood-soaked maw of the dragon and the pieces of grey squirrel fur stuck to its claws.
“Tell your Daddy I said he’s got the best quality batteries in town. I’ll be by sooner or later to pick one up for my wife’s truck,” he said.
To Cash, he said, “And tell your daughter she’d better get her rest if she’s gonna keep on cheerleading at the football games. The players are countin’ on the both of you to do your part, okay?”
With that, he clipped the stylus onto the machine and trekked through the mud to the front of Ruby’s house where he’d parked his squad car.
III.
The cut on Ruby’s cheek left by the dragon’s claw didn’t need stitches, which was good because she couldn’t afford them—already had an unpaid hospital bill from an emergency room visit the year before when she’d caught pneumonia. She held a cotton ball soaked in diluted vinegar to her cheek and winced.
“Uncle Pierce didn’t leave you any instructions?” Ruby’s sister Olivia asked. Olivia was visiting from the city for the weekend. She had dark brown hair and full eyebrows, and she always wore a maroon shade of lipstick, even at home.
“It’s my fault for getting too close,” Ruby said. She’d made a nest for the dragon in the laundry room, and when she’d lowered her face to see why it was whimpering, it had hissed and struck her face.
“I don’t understand why he left it to you in the first place,” Olivia said. She was examining the flakes of dragon skin on the tile that, no matter how much Ruby sprayed with bleach, still retained the smell of rotten eggs. Olivia opened the trashcan and dropped in a translucent scale.
“It should’ve gone to you,” Ruby agreed. Olivia was, after all, the oldest of Pierce’s nieces. The last time any of them had seen him had been ten years ago at Olivia’s wedding. Well known among the family for his extreme wealth and thriftiness, he’d brought as Olivia’s wedding gift a book on manners for women.
“I would’ve sold it,” Olivia admitted.
“You think I should sell it?” Ruby asked. She placed two butterfly stitches over the wound on her cheek.
“I bet you could get at least ten thousand for it, even if it’s sick,” Olivia said. She held one of Ruby’s handbags and pulled at the seams, examining the stitch work, nodding with approval. “How did your awful neighbor get it to behave?” she asked.
“He said the dragon ‘just took to him,’” she used air quotes, “‘because he’s an animal person.’”
“You took it to the vet, right?” Olivia asked. “I’m pretty sure they treat dragons now.”
Ruby shrugged. There was a sickness in the pit of her stomach that came from knowing this dragon was just more bad luck for her. It could’ve been a nice dragon that helped her survive by performing tricks like it did for Cash. Instead, it apparently harbored such revulsion for Ruby that it became physically ill around her. Now she was going to have to spend more money to try and fix it.
“I’ll pay for it,” Olivia added.
A few days later when Ruby picked up the dragon from the vet, he showed her how to scrub the scales with a circular motion but told her not to clip its claws, which were far too strong for any clippers they had on site. He’d managed, though, to swab its ear holes and brush its teeth in addition to examining its overall health.
“This is what I wanted to show you,” he said as Ruby entered the treatment room. The dragon lay in the fetal position on a padded table, its claws curled up into its belly. The veterinarian, who was a thin man with glasses and two full sleeves of tattoos, used a metal pointer to lift the scale at the base of the dragon’s neck, revealing a small puncture wound.
“Somebody has been drugging this dragon,” the vet said.
Ruby gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. Her sister had painted her nails a shade of burgundy called Wicked.
“It’s a darn shame, but there’s an illegal drug that people have been using to make the dragons fight.” He lifted the dragon from the table and handed it to Ruby. “But I don’t see any other signs of fighting on this here dragon,” he said.
“Thank you,” Ruby said. She paid the vet and left.
That evening, while feeding the dragon on the back porch, Ruby pretended to go inside but instead crouched behind a shrub and didn’t let her sight leave the dragon. Before long, she heard the door to Cash’s house open and someone step outside. The dragon lifted its muzzle and sniffed the air, then lowered its head into the bowl of chicken hearts.
Through the gap in their fence, a tiny arrow whipped past Ruby and landed in the dragon’s shoulder joint. The arrow fell to the ground noiselessly. After Cash went back inside, Ruby picked it up to discover a dart with a red-feather tip. She looked around the yard and collected three spent darts before ushering the dragon back inside.
IV.
At dawn, when the dragon’s bellowing brought Cash out of his house, Ruby confronted him through the fence.
“I know you’ve been shooting my dragon,” Ruby said. This time, she had both elbows on top of the squat fence posts. She held the darts toward him in her open palm.
“What’s that Ruby?” He said, cupping his ear and walking toward her.
“I said, I know you’ve been drugging my dragon,” she said and snatched the darts away. Cash leaned on the fence and avoided Ruby’s gaze.
“What are you going to do about it?” he asked.
“So you admit it? Dragon fighting? I never would’ve given the dragon to you in the first place if…”
“Dragon fighting?” Cash interrupted. “No, no. It’s a tranquilizer. I know it makes the dragon sick, but you don’t know how to train it. The dragon can’t even hear what you’re saying for Christ’s sake. Nobody can.” He turned toward his house, avoiding Ruby’s gaze.
She glared at Cash, and the part of her that had found him handsome soured. Ruby withdrew from the fence. She had nothing left to say to Cash, so she went inside and called her sister.
“I’ve been insulted before,” Ruby said on the phone. “I can handle that, but he put the dragon at risk and made me feel like it’s my fault the dragon is sick.”
“You’ve got to turn him in to the police,” Olivia insisted.
“You don’t know the police out here,” Ruby said. “They’d probably take his side.” After a brief pause, she added, “I’d sell the house if I could.”
“No, Ruby. You can’t let him bully you out of your own house. You worked too hard for it.” Maybe Olivia was right. Ruby had bought the house, the nicest one on the block, right out of college and even remodeled part of it, so her sewing studio had an entire wall of east-facing windows.
“What about the fence? Can you repair it?” Olivia asked.
Olivia and Ruby agreed to split the cost of a new, eight-foot brick wall that would enclose the house on three sides. The only contractor Ruby could find on short notice was Cash’s brother and Ruby’s neighbor on the other side, Clay. To make room for the fence, Clay had to remove the old pine tree separating Ruby and Cash’s yards.
While Clay cut the trunk into pieces, hoisting them with a shovel into the back of his truck, Ruby went inside to focus on her sewing. She took a scrap of pink leather and fed it into the machine. She sewed a collar for her dragon, then a matching tag with the name “Princess” etched into the leather. She outfitted the collar with a gold clasp and held it up gleefully. “That’s it,” she said, and quickly sewed three more collars with matching tags.
The sound of stumps crashing into the metal truck bed made Ruby wince. She looked up to see a squirrel hanging from a metal bird feeder she’d placed in her yard outside the studio windows. The squirrel was so lively and gambolled so freely that it gave her the confidence to go back outside. She found Clay standing beside his truck, holding a shovel between his hands.
“What are you gonna do with all those stumps?” Ruby asked.
“I can’t hear what you’re saying,” he said.