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The Mystery of Minstrel’s Haven 

        By Andrea Camoriano

           Chapter 2

            The dragons had been introduced to Minstrel’s Haven somewhat by accident about ten, maybe fifteen years before.  No one quite knew how they’d gotten there anymore; all anyone could remember was something about a Singing One with a specialty of animation of the inanimate (which for the purposes of the Singing Ones, included dreams and words, printed or verbal) and a fascination for legends the world over.  Apparently, he’d read a few too many dragon legends and inadvertently brought some dragons to life, and it had been decided that the safest place for them was Minstrel’s Haven, which had been given that particular name precisely because it was a refuge for Singing Ones, who were also called Minstrels.  The idea was that since it was a haven, the dragons should be welcome there as well, especially given the high number of Minstrels who, it was discovered, were also fascinated by dragons.

            Sano was possibly Andwan’s best friend among the dragons.  For the moment, the dragons tended to choose names out of the media they saw around them, or get their best friends among humans to choose names for them.  Orlando had been named for a friend of Andwan’s grandfather; Scooter had been named for his vocabulary and a hero Andwan had admired as a small child.  Sano, however, had been named out of Andwan’s growing vocabulary of Japanese names; Andwan had been reading Nobuhiro Watsuki’s Rurouni Kenshin series and had an admiration for the stubborn-minded Sagara Sanosuke.

            Sano the dragon was a strange one, though, more like a blending of cultures.  He basically (and quite strongly) resembled the Eastern dragons Andwan had seen in the mangas she read, but with a few differences.  He was covered in a combination of scales and fur; this was much as Andwan had read Eastern dragons looked, right along with the whiskers.  Andwan had read that Eastern dragons had whiskery kind of things along the side of their muzzles; Sano had them, also lightly furred.

            He also had a kind of hint of a protective ridge at the back of his skull; his fur covered it to the point where it was, for all intents and purposes, invisible, but it was there.  Andwan had heard that this ridge was a characteristic of Western dragons, although in them it was larger.

            Like the Eastern dragons, he was a bright, brilliant white, but somehow he managed never to blind anybody; Andwan thought he might have some kind of magic to tone down his fur to the point where you could actually look at him instead of in his general direction without risking your sight.

            Andwan had also read that shape-shifting was another Eastern characteristic.  Sano often shape-shifted into one of the cutest guys Andwan had ever seen; the blending of East and West was even more visible when he did that.  Andwan was on better terms with him as a dragon, but she enjoyed hanging out with him in human-shape, too.  He often shifted into a human shape like hers, so she wouldn’t seem to be as alone as the only human with wings that she knew.  She appreciated that; it made it easier to talk to somebody when his head wasn’t twenty feet off the ground, even if it was on a nearly-prehensile neck that could bend to look at you from any angle.  Much easier when the head in question was on eye level with you and not fourteen feet over yours at full height.

            Andwan had also read that Eastern dragons had a large pearl embedded in the base of their throats.  Sano wore a torque patterned with chunks of greenstone; he couldn’t afford a pearl-patterned torque.  Not that Andwan felt it would have suited him; the greenstone he wore now suited him well.  Andwan wore a matching torque, both on and off the job, also in greenstone, with her Celtic-knotwork pendants affixed to the bottom.  Sano was gifted in making jewelry; he’d made his torque and Andwan’s, and fixed them up to be capable of holding little pendants along the bottom edge.  For some reason, even when he shape-shifted into a human, his torque always fit perfectly.  He and Andwan wore their torques at all times, to show they were friends, the way some humans wore matching “Best Friends” charm bracelets.  Scooter would have one, too, when he was older.  Andwan and Sano were worried about deforming his spine before it had a chance to properly develop.  He’d get a torque that matched his two friends’, eventually.

            Andwan was still reading up on Oriental mythology, and while she wasn’t sure yet how else Sano resembled the two types of dragons and how far, she knew enough to suspect Sano had a parent from either China or Japan, and another from the West somewhere; if he did, he would tell her when he was ready to; Sano was like that.  She enjoyed his company even more for the blending.

            But there was one point of fact in which Sano definitely resembled the Western dragons more than the Eastern ones Andwan had read about.  He had a pair of magical wings, like you saw on dragons from Western Europe.  Those wings were magical, in that they could either vanish or become transparent whenever Sano didn’t need them – and he rarely did, except on the job, to provide a bit of shade for his friends.  Andwan (and the other humans he worked with on a regular basis) weren’t as capable of going a long day in the sun without suffering heatstroke as he was, and dragons apparently drew some kind of great benefit from being in the direct sun all day (the more exposed they were to it, the better, apparently), so sometimes, he would materialize his wings, but make them invisible.  They might be invisible, but they did a great job of blocking the sunlight; even though for some currently-unknown reason, even when invisible, even when you could look straight up and see the sun right through it, Sano’s wing made the best-ever rain- and sun-shield.

            In Sano’s own nod toward his namesake, he had a green Japanese bandana which Andwan took pains to help him fasten on correctly.  She figured it made him look tougher and sweeter at the same time.  Not that he really needed to look sweeter, though; his face, personality and temperament were already a perfect match.  He already had every mature or nearly-mature female in the park cooing over him making lovey-dovey noises, every child making “curiosity-what-is-it-will-it-bite-can-I-be-friends” noises, and every male past the age of puberty asking him how the heck he managed to attract so danged many girls.

            Sano loved the attention, and used it to advantage.  He preened for the ladies, played games with the children, and bonded with the guys.  Scooter played with everybody – the whole thing was a big game to him – and Andwan would answer as many questions as she could, but Sano the big attention-getter in the group.

            As they rode through the park, all three kept their ears and eyes open.  There was no mention of the body the Soda Shop Club had reported finding backstage.

            Of course there wouldn’t be, she thought.  The park management purposefully hushed up word of even a bad nosebleed as fast as possible so the guests wouldn’t panic.  Of course, “hushed up” meant the employees voluntarily kept their mouths shut about it around guests; in their own company, or in their own homes, their lips could flap as readily as any guest’s.

            Among Andwan’s three closest dragon friends, Orlando seldom left the Lair by open daylight; he was valued too highly as a cook and known too well as a lover of gossip, and he knew how humans as a general rule feared to go outside after dark, so he did most of his exercising then.  Sano and Scooter were the ones who generally got out and about during the day; Scooter loved to hug and be hugged as much as Andwan enjoyed hugging him, so he stayed as close to her as a second shadow whenever possible.  The management allowed this on the grounds that they couldn’t get the baby dragon to leave her alone, so they left the pair together to avoid raising fuss.  Not that Andwan wanted Scooter to leave her alone; she loved him genuinely as a baby brother and enjoyed taking care of him.  Sano was admired by both Andwan and Scooter as an older brother who was more than willing and able to help them when they needed it and who was more than willing to play at all times.  Because of this, the three had quickly become a permanent trio on the in-park PR circuit.

            “So where are we going?” Andwan asked Sano as they paced out onto the park grounds.

            “The front gate, or near it, on the inside,” Sano answered.  “We’re going to be attracting guests deeper into the park, toward the Lair, so we’re going to have to take the long way around.”

            “Looks like it’s working already,” Andwan commented as a school group with about thirty kids – all under the age of ten – swarmed around Sano’s feet, each of them clamoring to get his or her question answered first.

            “Hey, hey, hey!  Settle down!” Andwan called forward over Sano’s shoulder.  As expected, the little fluffbrains didn’t listen to her, so she had to slide off and hike around to Sano’s forequarters.

            “Okay, break it up,” she said with a laugh as she gently pushed her way between Sano and the kids.  “Sano’s a dragon, not a jungle gym.  I take it you like him, huh?”

            “Yeah!” came the class’s strong unison call.  And then the questions started up again.

            Andwan sighed, and put her hands behind her back, as though about to admit defeat, but in reality giving Sano the thumbs-up behind her back.  Sano responded to the otherwise-invisible signal by taking a deep breath and roaring.  The silence that fell on the children was astounding.

            “Thank you, everyone,” she said.  “This is Sanosuke, Sano for short.  I’m Andwan Wingsweep, Sano’s partner.  I’ll be the one answering your questions, unless there’s something I don’t know and Sano does.  Now, I need you guys to do me a favor.  I need you to raise your hand before you say anything so Sano and I know where a question’s coming from so we can answer.  Think you can do that?”  The whole group nodded.  Andwan opened the floor for questions: “Okay, first question?”

            A little five-year-old girl raised her hand.  Andwan called on her.  “Does Sano have any brothers or sisters?” she asked.

            Andwan grinned at her.  “Why don’t you ask him yourself?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at Sano.  The little girl followed her gaze to Sano’s face.

            Sano smiled at her.  “No,” he said.  “I don’t have my own brothers or sisters, but I’ve adopted one, so that makes him mine.”

            “Scoo-scoo?” came the little voice from Sano’s back, and a little red head poked itself out along beside Sano’s neck.  Andwan grinned as she turned to face him.

            “Speak of the devil!  Come here, Scooter, I think you’ve got a new admirer!”  The baby dragon launched himself over Sano’s shoulder at the little girl; Andwan caught him in midair and staggered under his weight.

            “Oof!  Watch for low-flying airplanes,” she joked as she turned and carried him into the midst of the children and knelt.  “Give me a little room, everyone,” she said.  Everyone hastily backed up about five feet.  Andwan snorted with laughter.  “I didn’t mean that much room!”  The group scuttled back in to a respectable eighteen inches and gazed intently at Scooter.

            “This is Scooter,” Andwan said; Scooter answered his name with a small cooing noise.  “He’s two years old, and he loves to be scratched along the top of his head.”  She smiled at the little girl.  “Why don’t you come give it a try?  Come on, don’t be afraid.  Scooter’s not going to bite.”

            Scooter grinned up at the girl and yawned, but instead of snapping his jaws shut again as Andwan had feared he would, he closed them gently; he almost seemed sleepy.  Andwan wondered if she should start scratching Scooter on her own if the kids were too afraid; maybe if they saw there was no harm in Scooter, they wouldn’t be so scared.

            The little girl looked at Scooter, then, as if amazed at her own temerity, she slowly reached out a shaky little hand and, touching him along the center line of his skull, near the protective ridge at the back, started scratching.  Scooter’s eyes rolled back, the lids closed halfway, his wings and tail went limp, his jaw dropped, his tongue rolled out, he started cooing gently and he shoved his head harder into her hand, begging her silently to keep scratching vigorously.  The looks of fear vanished from the faces of every child present, and pretty soon, Sano had to intercede before his friends were buried beneath a wave of children who wanted to caress the baby dragon.

            “Hey,” he said, stepping forward and looking at the rest of the children, “what about me?  I like to get my head scratched as much as the babies do!”  The children’s chaperones caught on, and organized three lines, one to pet Scooter and two for Sano (one for each side of his head, since he was so much bigger than Scooter and the children couldn’t possibly hope to reach past the middle of his skull).

            All the while, the children peppered Andwan and Sano with questions, with the adults occasionally interjecting their own inquiries.  Sano had a much harder time than Andwan in answering because of all the children muddling his brains with such excellent scratches, but he managed.

            Finally, the kids started to get itchy to be up and on their way.  Sano and Scooter looked reluctant to end their scratching session, but Andwan promised them there’d be more opportunity to get excellent scratches soon.  Andwan told the kids that there were more dragons for them to play with in the Dragon’s Lair if they wanted and pointed out the way for them.  The kids tore off to the Lair as fast as they could, squealing all the way, with their weary-looking chaperones hoofing it as fast as they could behind them, calling for them to slow down.

            Andwan laughed.  “Well, that was fun,” she said as she hoisted Scooter back up onto Sano’s back.

            “Oh,” moaned Sano.  “Scratches – those kids had such beautiful little fingers!”  Andwan giggled softly to herself; Sano was still punch-drunk on the scratches the kids had given him.  And why should he not be?  A good scratch was to a dragon what a good massage was to a human; Andwan had never had a professional massage herself, but her sister had learned how, and had administered a few to Andwan when she had a bad day; they always left her limp and bemused, and at the end, also a bit regretful that it had come to an end.  Also, Andwan had read plenty of stories (not romances; those drove her away faster than a bad smell) in which a good massage artist figured in as one of the primary characters; the good ones always left their customers drowsy and able to sleep deeply and immediately.  Andwan just gave Sano a hug, and then used his leg and torque as a ladder to get up onto his back.  He put up with it, as always; Andwan was better at flying than climbing, and it was difficult for her to get enough altitude from the ground for that to be a feasible means of mounting.

            As they moved toward the front of the park, the scene repeated itself over and over.  Andwan had a couple bottles of Sano and Scooter’s favorite fluids in her saddlebags as well as her bottle of frozen lemonade; whenever one of them started getting thirsty, she’d fish out the appropriate bottle (Sano’s was more of a barrel and he wore it on a harness on his flank opposite Andwan’s saddlebags; it was too large for Andwan to haul around) and help the dragon in question get the nozzle in question into their mouths (Sano’s was a tube he used as an extra-long straw).

            It took them an hour to get across the bridge over the Outer Moat, which hid the employee rest area, the General Store, the training area, and the warehouses for all the food and supplies.  It took them another hour to make a circuit of the front half of the Haven; fortunately, they had all trained themselves not to need more than a few gulps of fluid every few hours; they just couldn’t afford to stop long enough to drink.  They were mobbed by a constant stream of Sano’s admirers and Scooter’s playmates.  Fortunately, dragons Sano’s size were able to provide shade due to their sheer size; Sano was able to ensure that Andwan and Scooter always had some shade to work in.  Scooter was a baby; he couldn’t absorb much sun or cast much shade yet.  And Andwan, like all of her kind, had a human constitution; prolonged exposure to the direct sun dried her out in the form of perspiration, and the nature of her job – answering questions, some hiking to get within speaking distance, and much climbing and sliding to keep up with Sano by staying on his back – ensured that her mouth was open much of the time, either in answering questions or trying to ensure proper oxygen intake to her lungs, which dried out her mouth and throat that much sooner.  Frequently, Sano would stop and insist she take a moment to drink; Andwan’s ancestors on every side were strong-willed, stubborn personalities, and Andwan and her sister had inherited those tendencies in full.  This in turn meant that Andwan sometimes pushed herself too far on purpose, trying to prove she could last as long as her friends could – and her friends were mostly dragons, who were born with more strength and stamina than humans, or else they were males of her own species with athletics training, which had toughened them to the point where they could handle difficulties like this when they had to, which they mostly didn’t.

            It was during one of their pauses to take a drink that they met up with Jamie from EMS.  He motioned them off to the side so he could have a word without having that word spread to every guest in the Haven.  As they talked, he held Scooter’s water bottle so the baby dragon could suckle and still let Andwan and Sano have their own fluids.

            “I don’t mind telling you, Andwan,” he said, “this one’s got us baffled.  We’ve never had to deal with a situation like this at the Haven before!”  He meant the body Ben and Tory had found in the changing area, but company policy forbade him from mentioning it here in the open, where the guests could hear.

            Andwan nodded; this was serious and she looked it.  “So has the company brass decided what’s going down?” she asked.  “Where do we go from here?”

            “We’re keeping it quiet for now,” he told her.  “We’ve told the guests that the Dramatic Flair is closed down due to technical difficulties and redistributed all the remaining shows between the Castle’s Amphitheatre and Starship Way.  We’re also sending him” Andwan caught the emphasis Jamie used to indicate the body without saying it, “to the nearest hospital, pending identification and autopsy.”  Jamie held up his hand – the one he could spare from holding Scooter’s bottle.  “And don’t you dare tell me to go to Orlando with this – company policy is to tell Orlando everything that happens anyway because if we don’t, he’ll ferret it out sooner or later.  When we figure out what happened to this guy, we’re planning to put Orlando in charge of interrogations; there’s nobody better at intelligence gathering than him!”

            Andwan grinned.  Jamie had that right, at least.  Then her ears pricked up.  “At the Amphitheatre and the Way?” she asked.  “I get off at eight, but they’ll probably let me off at seven; what time are the Soda Shop Club’s last shows?”

            “At seven at the Castle and eight at Starship Way,” Jamie answered.  “You plan to go?”

            “Yup; just hope I have enough time to clock out before the show at Starship Way,” she answered.  She saw the American Rock show whenever she could, which basically meant she hadn’t seen the whole thing through once yet; she’d only caught the tag end of one on her way to break one time.

            “All right,” she said.  “You go back to work and tell Orlando about all this; we’ll get back to work and help gather information.”

            Jamie smiled and gave Scooter a scratch as he held up the empty bottle.  “I’ll just take this back to Orlando and have him refill it for you, shall I?”

            Andwan laughed and handed over the water bottle she was currently drinking out of, removing another from her saddlebags.  “Ask for a refill for me too, would you please?  Thanks, Jamie; now let’s get going.”

            Jamie gave all three of them a quick examination to make sure the heat hadn’t gone to their brains (Andwan was particularly susceptible to heat-induced nosebleeds) and then headed off to Orlando’s to get the water bottles refilled.  Scooter would share Andwan’s lemonade with her until Orlando sent the bottles back.

            They didn’t move away from the shade just yet; even Sano needed a break from the intense heat of the sun.

            Andwan took a huge swig of her lemonade and poured some of it down Scooter’s throat.  “I’m dry, Sano,” she said.  “Any chance we can go by the dojo and cry sanctuary?  Maybe the sensei will let us do PR after the show ends.”

            Sano’s flexible neck bent around until he was looking her straight in the eye.  “You just want a few minutes in the shade where you don’t have to run around wagging your tongue off, don’t you?”

            Andwan grinned at him and raised her right hand.  “Guilty as charged, pal – is it just me, or is it hotter out here than usual today?  I’m flipping boiling!  I need a few minutes with no movement, no scorching sun, and no blasted fluffbrains!”

            Sano gave her a funny look.  “Are you jealous?”

            Andwan laughed.  “Am I jealous of not having to do crowd control?  Of having all the itty-bitties scratching my head until all the blood goes south?  Of not being the one who has to answer every idiot question ever thought of?  Of not being the one who gets the heat-induced nosebleeds?  Of course I’m flipping jealous!  What put that fool idea in your head?”

            Sano nodded his head and blinked in that sleepy way dragons have which says better than words that they’re amused, and chuckled, which only emphasized the fact.

            “Point well taken,” he said, “and we will – eventually.  Brass wants us to stay outside and attract attention from the busiest rides for awhile.  Do you think you can take another half-hour or so of PR before we make it to the dojo?”

            Andwan considered it for a moment.  “I think so,” she said.  “I’ve gone ten, even eleven hours on this job in the heat – I think I can make it to the dojo in an hour.”

            Sano nodded briskly.  “That’s good – that’s what we’ll do, then.  What time does the next show there start?  I put the schedules of all the various shows in your saddlebag.”

            Andwan opened the saddlebag in question.  “Where exactly in the saddlebag did you put them, Sano?”

            He glanced back at her.  “Ah, they should be in the green binder with the inch-wide spine.  Yeah, that’s the one,” he confirmed as she pulled out the object in question.

            Andwan flipped through it to find the schedule for the Minstrel’s Haven dojo, which gave demonstrations and lessons of armed and unarmed combat from around the world, which were sometimes combined so that the lessons were the demonstrations for the visitors.  Lessons generally involved dragons like Sano, who were interested in such things, and Singing Ones like Andwan and her Time Teens, who were not only interested but might actually have a need for such lessons.

            Andwan finally found the schedule she was looking for.  “Uh, what time is it right now?  Six-thirty, right?  Right now, Miss Gail is in the middle of the last beginner’s tae kwon doe lesson, the one that’s open for observers.  In about twenty minutes, she’ll be moving to the day’s last observation-permissible class, the intermediate-level bunch that’s been taking lessons here for a few years.  According to this, they’re still on hand-to-hand, but they’ll be progressing to nunchakus, plastic knives and bo staffs within the next few weeks.  I started taking that class before I got this job because I’m interested; does brass want us to get in there?”

            Sano looked back at her with apparent delight.  “That’d be great!  They’ve been wondering how to get someone in there for good PR!  Shall we get moving?”

            Andwan grinned, put the binder and water bottle back in the saddlebag, boosted Scooter back up onto Sano’s back, and hoisted herself up using Sano’s leg as a ladder.  “I thought you’d never ask!  On we go!”

            The three hotfooted it as fast as they dared – company policy forbad them from actually running; it made it look like there was an emergency and caused a panic – toward the Haven’s dojo, and actually made it to Miss Gail’s class with five minutes to spare.  Andwan had started keeping her class uniform in a locker at the dojo after she got her job so she could make it to class and her job on time.  When her employers had discovered that a member of their PR circuit actually took classes on the property on a regular basis, they had consulted with Miss Gail and provided her students who were also park employees with a second martial-arts uniform that fell within the company’s interdepartmental dress code.

            Andwan’s uniform was all-blue, since she was in the Rides department, with the park logo on the left breast.  Sano had joined the class a week ago, after he had learned his friend was a student there.  He was usually paired with Andwan as a combat partner during sparring practice because of his shape-shifting tendencies toward Andwan’s physical limitations, but both of them were rotated frequently with the rest of the class to get some variegated practice.  Since he was a park employee, a dragon, and on the PR circuit, his uniform was white, with a teal top, the park’s logo on the left breast and a dragon’s head on the right.

            His locker was next to Andwan’s; they kept their uniforms and pocket gear (wallets, money, hand sanitizer, and park ID tags) in their lockers during class because they couldn’t afford to have it falling all over the place and getting in the way.  When she was a child studying under Miss Gail, Andwan had nearly broken the knuckles on her left hand throwing a punch once because she hadn’t removed her ring before donning her padding for sparring practice.  When their lockers weren’t full of their work gear and their friendship torques, Andwan and Sano both stored their martial-arts equipment in them.

            Now, the two friends spent their five minutes before class changing their park uniforms for their combat uniforms, and Andwan deposited her glasses in her locker.  Her vision without them was poor, but not so poor that she couldn’t move.  She could navigate her way safely across a busy New York thoroughfare without them, for example, but she wouldn’t be able to read anything printed in letters smaller than eighteen inches or so in a plain block font from farther away than twenty-five, thirty feet or so without intense concentration and a bit of squinting.  Surprisingly, it was actually easier for her to do that in the rain – she didn’t have to worry so much about glare off the sign in question.  She just didn’t wear her glasses in martial-arts practice because there was too much risk, either of her taking a blow to the side of the head (which would jab the earpiece into her head and might break something – she’d certainly come out with a headache) or of her glasses being struck from the front and either broken or causing her a concussion.

            Scooter was a regular participant in classes as well – as an observer or, when (rarely) necessary, Miss Gail needed his help for something, such as a minor repair involving melting a bit of string or something, so he had his own set of padding which he wore into practice as his own uniform.  The three friends made it into class with seconds to spare.

(Photo insert)

(What photo shall I use here?

Chapter 03

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