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The Mystery of Minstrel’s Haven

Chapter 2, Part 2

By Andrea Camoriano

          “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 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 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 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.

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