The Story of Owen Read Free

least of our worries. One of the fringe benefits of tutoring a dragon slayer was that it occasionally got you excused from your homework altogether.
    Most teenagers only ran afoul of dragons as a result of their own carelessness or inattention. It was not uncommon for a new driver to be stranded on a gravel road with a flat tire and an engine belching carbon. There were also stories of field parties ending badly when a dragon came out of the corn and closed in on the bonfire in the dark. Dragons didn’t get much from carbon in terms of nutrition, but they came after it like candy whenever it was in the air, and since humans were usually located close by, they didn’t exactly want for nourishment.
    Owen, of course, was not most teenagers. He never had been. He didn’t precisely chase dragons—that was his father’s job—but he didn’t run away from them either, and that madehim unusual. And if Owen was unusual, then so was I. That’s why I was sitting at his kitchen table, genuinely hoping he’d ask me to drive him to meet whatever kind of dragon was headed our way. I didn’t let myself think about what my parents would say. They were nervous enough that I was hanging out at Owen’s house. I was pretty sure they would not be at all sanguine if I arrived home with even slightly scorched tires. Maybe I had overestimated my use on a dragon slaying expedition, anyway. It wasn’t like I was doing this professionally.
    I wasn’t sure how much longer I could cling to that excuse, though. I was hardly an amateur anymore. I’d been there when Owen’s family slayed a couple of dragons, but his aunt Hannah usually insisted that I hide in the dragon shelter until after it was done, which, for the record, was fine with me. But I couldn’t stay underground forever, not if I wanted to do my job.
    I wasn’t exactly in a hurry to face any of them, but I was hardly going to let Owen go off on his bicycle when my car was parked in the driveway. Still, I didn’t want to push my luck. It was entirely likely that Owen would rather face this dragon by himself. I did my best to sound as neutral as possible, a steady chord waiting for the composer to push it to minor.
    â€œI can lock up, if you need to go,” I said.
    Owen looked at me for a few moments, and when I didn’t meet his gaze, he looked down at the pencil I still held in my hands. I could almost hear his mind putting things in place, shuffling his sense of duty with his sense of adventure. I was in and out of the house more and more now that Owen was training harder, even though he was doing better at school than he had been when classes had started in those first few weeks of September. Practically one of the family, Hannah liked to say.
    When he looked up at me again, his smile was even wider, almost incandescent on his face. There were tightly wound strings shivering in the air as the overture began in full. We were definitely getting out of that math test.
    â€œWanna come?” he said.
    That’s not how it started.

FIRST DAY DETENTION
    I met Owen Thorskard on the first day of grade eleven. He was lost, looking for English. Apparently the principal had decided that, as a future dragon slayer, Owen would be able to find the classroom on his own. When I found him, bouncing on the balls of his feet as though the first few bars of the National Anthem had rendered him incapable of walking, he looked a little bit shell-shocked. I stopped beside him because being caught in the halls during opening exercises was embarrassing, and I couldn’t bring myself to walk past him. I didn’t recognize him. The pictures we’d seen were mostly of Lottie and Aodhan, and Owen wasn’t exactly what crossed your mind when someone said the words “dragon slayer.”
    Even though Trondheim had passed the summer in a state of near euphoria on account of miraculously acquiring a dragon slayer of our very