Prairie Fire Read Free

something a dragon might need two bites to swallow.
    The third thing was that I needed to stop calling it “the army,” because that’s what people who aren’t in it think it’s called, and people who are in it can be sort of touchy about that sort of thing. I walked into the recruitment office a civilian, albeit a very unusual one, and I walked out a member of the Canadian Forces.
    We didn’t set out for New Brunswick right away. We still had to finish school, for one thing. The Oil Watch operated as part of the Canadian Forces, but thanks to its international influence, it also played by its own rules, and one of its rules was that all members had to have completed high school. Owen, as planned, had done well enough in his final year to squeak into the officer track, while Sadie was several steps ahead of him in that regard. I think her parents were kind of hoping that the first time a dragon died at her feet and ruined her shoes, she’d decide that she had made a mistake. I happen to know she kept those boots, looked at them often, and only worked harder as a result.
    There was also the not-small matter of my physical fitness. Yes, I could do the running and the push-ups and the marching for kilometres with heavy things on my back, but my burned hands still had very limited mobility. I think, had I arrived at the enlistment office with anyone other than Lottie Thorskard, I would have been sent on my way, but Lottie had been determined, and very little could stop her when she decided she wanted something done. Furthermore, while it was common for civilians to choose the Oil Watch, I was the first bard to enlist in decades, and they weren’t entirely sure what to do with me. Again, Lottie had been prepared.
    â€œShe simply won’t be able to do the work required,” the sergeant said. He was tall and broad and not from Trondheim, so he didn’t really care about what had happened there a year ago. The Burned Bard meant nothing to him. All he saw was a girl who had to wear Velcro shoes like a child.
    â€œShe will,” said Lottie, and proceeded to cite all kinds of precedents, most of which had been tracked down by Emily earlier in the week in preparation for this conversation.
    Eventually, the sergeant called his superior, who conceded. He glowered all through my paperwork and barely spoke to me. I looked across the room at Owen, who was filling out his own forms quite a bit more speedily than I was. His sergeant could barely control his delight.
    â€œThat’s going to happen a lot, isn’t it?” I said to Lottie as we finally left.
    â€œYes,” she said. “The military is good at a lot of things, but change comes slowly.”
    She opened the door for me to get in the car. I could handle regular doorknobs now, but I had problems getting my curled fingers around car latches, and even when I could, I was angled poorly to pull the door open afterwards. Lottie did all of these things for me with no attention called to them, and I knew she must have learned the trick from Hannah after her injuries. My parents did similar things, of course, but with them it was always a small production. Lottie couldn’t help me sign my name on the enlistment papers, but I had been practicing for months. My signature was new, but it was mine, and even the grumpy sergeant couldn’t fault it.
    We watched as Owen and Aodhan spoke briefly to the cameras before cutting through the crowd to get to the car. Once, it would have been Lottie they swarmed, but Owen was younger and newer and both his legs could bend at the knee. Also he occupied that tenuous space between folk hero and government menace, and the press loved him for that more than they loved the fact that the Leafs were likely to miss the playoffs for the third year in a row. I don’t think Lottie missed the camera’s attention that much, but sometimes there was a hungry look in her eyes, particularly if it had