When Melissa was a little girl, her father, a nice man with a huge red mustache, gave her a special present. It looked like football. It felt like a football, leathery and bumpy. Only thing, it was larger and didn't have laces like a football. She didn't want a football. She was a very proper girl, feminine and sweet, what boys like best. Her father told her that it was a relic. She wasn't sure what a relic was, but footballs belonged in the garage. That's where she put it. She played with dolls and a pink pony plush toy. She forgot about the relic until her journey. Melissa lived in Sweden, the long skinny country dangling off the top of Europe. Her ancestors had been Norsemen, great, seafaring raiders. At least that's what her father told her. Her mother had a different story. She said that her ancestors had been merchants, great sailors who toured the oceans buying and selling exotic goods while cunningly foiling evil pirates' plots. Sad to say, Melissa became convince that neither of her parent was always a reliable source of family history. When she was nine, one of the best ages for girls, she had to cross the ocean for herself. She got sick. She got sick even though she was on a gigantic ship, not like the tiny boats that her ancestors would have sailed. The ship was named the Rebecca's Yam, whatever that meant. That was during the time when Melissa spoke only Swedish and before she'd mastered English. Melissa was sure that she couldn't have come from a family of seafarers, neither vicious raiders or clever traders. She was too sick. Her mother was too sick. Her father was so sick that he stayed in his cabin the whole voyage saying things like "why didn't we fly?" and "are we there yet?" The Ericksens were sailing to Canada. Mister Ericksen, Melissa's father, was getting a new job working on an oil pipeline. Mother, her name was Melissa, too, was going to have a baby. The baby was going to be named Hans. A fortuneteller at a fair wearing long yellow feathers in her hair had told Melissa's mother that the baby would be a boy who would grow-up to be a politician. Mother Ericksen decided to name her boy baby Hans after Melissa's father. Mrs. Ericksen believed in all those fortuneteller-kinds of things. She even had a box full of charms carried down from ancient times. It had a unicorn's horn in it. At least that's what Melissa's mother said. The family had packed up everything and sailed off to an exciting new life in Canada. Melissa even packed the football her father had given to her. She planned to give it to little brother, Hans, when he was born. Melissa was more a pink pony kind of child. Boys like footballs. When you go into a new country like Canada, you have to be inspected, even nine year-old girls. At customs, an inspector looked through all Melissa's possessions. She was searching for things that Canada didn't allow to come into their country, mostly dangerous things like guns. "What's this?" the inspector wanted to know when she found the football relic at the bottom of one of Melissa's big boxes. The inspector was a grumpy, white-haired woman in a dirty uniform. She smelled like stale breakfast. In Canada the inspectors speak English, or maybe French. Melissa spoke only Swedish, so her father had to explain that the football was a relic. It convinced Melissa that she should learn foreign languages, starting with English. The inspector shook the relic. It made a slight sloshing sound like shaking a coconut. The woman didn't seem to notice. Her name badge said "Sergeant Steinmetz," but Melissa didn't know what it meant because she could read only Swedish. It's hard, she decided, to be in a place where you don't understand what's going on. Learning foreign languages would be her top priority. Sergeant Steinmetz ran the relic through her x-ray scanner. She suspected that it might be a bomb or a secret compartment stuffed with smuggled diamonds, or something. On the screen there was just a jumble of odd little white marks. Melissa couldn't make anything out of them. "Is this an egg?" the inspector wanted to know. She was suspicious that the puzzle of white lines might be the bones of a fetus inside the egg. Inspectors are paid to be suspicious. Canada didn't let in strange animals. How about if the animal had some horrible disease and gave it to all the Canadian animals. Mister Ericksen didn't think it was an egg, just a relic. He'd inherited it from his father who'd found it frozen in ice on a mountain in Norway, Sweden's dangling neighbor. What kind of a bird would have such an egg? Even ostriches don't have eggs nearly that big, and ostriches are the biggest birds in the world. Although, once, there had been a very much bigger bird in South America. It was as tall as a two story house! The inspector wasn't satisfied. She put the relic aside and finished going through the rest of the Ericksens' things. At the end, she announced that Petulance, Melissa's cocker spaniel, couldn't enter Canada. The poor little dog would have to be quarantined, put into a kennel for a month to see if she had any diseases. But, Mrs. Ericksen was too smart for the inspector. From her purse she produced some neatly folded papers. They were the medical approvals that they'd gotten for their pet before the family left on their journey. Petulance would be spared quarantine. Wagging all over, that's how cocker spaniels are, the little dog was allowed to enter the country, but not the relic. The inspector wasn't convinced that it wasn't an egg. It would have to be quarantined at the laboratory where they check out exotic plants and animals. If it was found to be safe, after a month, the Ericksens could claim it. So, off Melissa went with her parents to a whole different part of Canada, almost on the other side of the wide country. This time they took an airplane, even, wiggling little brown Petulance, their pet cocker spaniel took the airplane ride. Left behind, the leathery relic was dropped into an old wire basket. In time, it found its way to the agricultural quarantine laboratory. Busy with their exciting new life in a town called Chanchalla (which is Indian meaning "Storyteller-Wind,") the Ericksens forgot all about their football. Melissa went to school. She studied foreign languages starting with English. She was smart and learned so fast that she was able to write a poem in English for her mother's birthday. After only a few months, although she was aware that she had a little Swedish accent, she was confident to conduct conversations even on the telephone. She sang in the school choir and the kids called her the Swedish Nightingale after an old-time entertainer. In the spring, right after she turned ten (ten years-old is an especially good age for girls), Melissa answered the phone to somebody babbling in French. Canada is like that, they don't know if they want to be French or English. French is not so useful a language as English, so Melissa hadn't studied it much yet. She thought it was silly and primitive. It sounded like chewing mashed potatoes. The conversation with the Frenchman was, therefore, very confusing. The call was long distance, Melissa was sure of that. After a while she realized that it was from the government, the place where her football was in quarantine. It hadn't just been a month since it had been seized, it had been several months. Melissa couldn't figure out at first what the man on the other end was trying to tell her. It was about her "toy." He thought the relic was a toy. He said that she should come get it out of quarantine. Why had she waited so long he wanted to know? The girl tried to explain that she had forgotten all about it, but it wasn't a toy as the man kept insisting. It was a relic, or a football. She told him that she lived much too far away to come to pick it up. The man said that he knew that they were far away. He'd been trying to locate them for months. If she didn't want the toy, he would destroy it, but if she wanted it, he would send it by mail. Canada has a very good postal department and pretty stamps. "Yes," Melissa said, she did want the relic. It wasn't a toy, but her mother had had a baby boy. She'd give the football to him. They'd named him Hans. The government man from the laboratory seemed agitated. He was willing to send the relic, but it must be a toy, it had started to make noises like one of those silly electronic gadgets. It took Melissa a while to translate "noises" and she though she had it wrong. How could an ancient ball plucked from the ice by her grandfather be making noises? The man just jabbered on and on in French until Melissa finally said good bye and hung up. She though he'd been saying that the relic was a toy rattlesnake. You know how some eggs, like say fly's eggs, will hatch in a few hours and other eggs, like a frog's eggs, will hatch in a few days and that even other eggs, like say chicken's eggs, take a few weeks to hatch? Well, as it turns out, there are other kinds of eggs which take longer, much longer, to hatch! They take years. You know how eggs have to be kept warm by a mother or father bird sitting on the nest if they are going to hatch? Even on farms they have special brooders which are warmed by sun lamps or something so that the eggs will stay warm and hatch. There are some kinds of eggs, however, which can get cold. They can even be frozen. Then they don't hatch until they get warmed up stay warmed up for the right amount of time. That's how it is with human eggs and with dragon eggs, too. In case you didn't know it, humans come from eggs even though they never get laid. They stay inside the mother. And dragons come from eggs too, or at least they used to in the far long ago when here were still dragons nesting on far corners of the Earth. When Melissa got home from school on Friday, there was a man waiting at the door to her house. He wore a tired uniform and was sitting uneasily on the upturned end of a wooden crate that he's been trying to deliver. Since there was nobody home, he used his parcel as a bench. It was an official delivery. Someone had to sign for the package. The postman had to be convinced to allow Melissa to sign his receipt book. She was only ten years-old, but that's an especially good age for girls, so the man relented. In the crate was the relic, none the worse for its months in quarantine. Well, it wasn't really a relic. It was an egg, a dragon's egg, but Melissa didn't know that yet. As soon as she pried open the boards, she could hear that the laboratory men had been right. The relic was making noises, squeaks and bonks like an electronic game. Besides that, it was warm; not like it had been heated from the outside, but as if it were a living thing and was making its own heat from the inside. Melissa was at last convinced that it wasn't a football. She didn't know what it could be, but it certainly wasn't a safe kind of thing to give to her baby brother, Hans. In fact, from the way it sounded, like doors squeaking and banging, she wasn't sure that it was a safe kind of thing even to have in the house. How about if it was a bomb? It could be. It had been found in the ice on a mountain in Norway. One time the evil Nazis had had a war with just about the whole world. They dropped all kinds of bombs all over the place, even on Norway. The relic could be one of them left over from the war, shaken back to life by being bumped across Canada in the mail. Melissa was glad that there weren't so many Nazis around nowadays. Now they are all cops and prison guards. Being from liberty-loving Sweden, she knew that Nazis weren't nice people. She put the suspiciously noisy gadget into the garage. That's where she'd always put everything she didn't know what else to do with. It was chilly in the garage. Most of Canada was still pretty cold even in May. Melissa didn't realize it, but the cool garage delayed the hatching of a dragon which had been waiting to be born since before Egyptians built the pyramids. In the last weeks of the term, where Melissa went to school, there was a special day called "Stump George." It was a tradition which had started many years ago when there was a principal named George. He invited the students to bring in puzzles, problems or strange objects for him to try to solve. Over the years the tradition had expanded into a day-long event where the kids tried to stump their teachers with bizarre riddles or objects. The ones who beat their teachers got a chance to stump the principal. Nowadays that was Mister Reagan who was also the math teacher. He was so smart that almost nobody could stump him, but if they did, they got an award in the shape of a miniature golden tree stump with a grinning squirrel peeping out from its hollow interior. Right away, Melissa knew what she was going to take to that year's Stump George. She'd take her noisy relic. It was silent when she stuffed it into her bag to carry it to school, but by the time she got off the hot school-bus, it was clattering again. Melissa's teacher, a pretty, pregnant woman who chewed her fingernails, Mrs. Parr, solved every one of the puzzles brought in by her class, but she was stumped by Melissa's toy. She thought it might be some kind of a ball, but it was making a lot of strange sounds by then (the classroom was pretty warm, you see) and sometimes it even bounced around of its own accord. Melissa was one of the nine children in the school who got to confront Mister Reagan in the finale in the afternoon. He easily solved the first two problems. One was just a math problem (figuring out "x" when 17 to the x power equaled 9) and the other one was one of those move-the-matchsticks to make a special shape kinds of riddles. Jimmy Morgan, the third boy had brought in a large cube of stone and Mister Reagan failed to identify it as galena, an ore of the mineral lead. The assembly hooted and cheered. Jimmy would get a Golden Stump! The Principal redeemed himself by rattling off the next three puzzles without the slightest difficulty, an antique buttonhook, a foreign phrase, "gnothi seauton," which is Greek for "know yourself," which was their town's motto and an anagram for Shakespeare's name. An anagram is a word puzzle where you rearrange letters to make a hidden word, like "dog" is "god." There were only three students left. They waited their turns in a line across the side of the stage. Melissa was the last one in line. She hoped things would move along pretty quickly. Her relic was starting to wiggle and jump around in her warm arms. Mister Reagan had some trouble solving the next student's problem. Theresa Greenland had brought in an old-time Japanese puzzle box where parts of the box slide and move in a secret pattern to unlock the lid. After trying for a little while, the Principal got it open. He wanted to know if Theresa's mother knew she's brought the box to school. He said that it was very valuable. All Melissa cared about at that point was that things were going too slowly. Her puzzle was becoming boisterous and restless. No matter how snugly she clutched it against herself, it was about the bounce right out of her grasp. Mister Reagan easily identified the next puzzle. Lisa Blivens had brought in a strange kind of cloth. It was "chino," Mister Reagan correctly identified. He was a very smart man. It was made for soldiers during the Second World War, he elaborated just to show off that he knew his old curiosities. At last it was Melissa's turn. She set her relic uneasily upon the table in the middle of the stage in the auditorium. She had to hold it in place. It wanted to bounce off onto the floor. The bald Mister Reagan walked around the table inspecting every side of the relic. He looked stumped. Finally, he picked it up in his hands. "It feels like a football," he observed, "but it feels alive. It's hot." About to admit that he was stumped and that Melissa had earned a Golden Stump award, too, the Principal joked that it must be a dragon's egg. He had no idea how right he was. At that very moment, a sharp thing like the point of a knife, pushed up through the leathery skin of the object. It stuck Mister Reagan right in the palm of his hand making him drop it. For a moment he though that Melissa had given him a dangerous booby-trap as a trick and he was about to become angry. Instead, he became scared. With a loud, but muffled grunt, the relic bounced on the table. It then fell off onto the floor. All the kids in the auditorium stood up to see what was happening. As the leathery ball wobbled around across the stage, the sharp object that had stuck Mister Reagan in the hand, sawed along through the skin of the relic, slitting it open like a zipper being pulled along ever so slowly from the inside. Fearful that her relic might be ruined and that her father, usually a sweet and mild man might fly into a rage, Melissa chased it across the stage and snatched it up into her arms. There was a loud squawking sound. Slowly, up through the slit that had just been sliced in the relic's skin, wiggled a wet lump. It was a head, a long, narrow lizardie head. It looked right into Melissa's face and blinked. Melissa blinked. She was stunned, frozen in alarm. Everyone else in the auditorium gasped and shrunk back. They though that it was a snake head or, maybe an alligator. The creature squawked again, but less loudly. It looked happy to see Melissa. The knife-like object which had sawed through the leathery shell had been the animal's long central tooth. It seemed to grin a delighted greeting at Melissa. She screamed. Everybody else in the auditorium screamed. The creature joined in with loud shrieks of its own. Melissa dropped the egg onto the table and backed away. Like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, slowly and in stages, the struggling animal wiggled itself up out of it's egg, but this was no butterfly. It was big, the size of a fully grown duck, or maybe bigger. It looked like a dinosaur of some kind. As it pushed its way into the world, it continued to stare at Melissa. It was making little gurgling sounds, like a hungry baby. Pretty soon it stepped free of the remnant of its shell. There was no doubt that it was a reptile, but not a snake and not an alligator. It looked more like a bird, standing on two legs, wobbling back and forth. Shrugging and grunting, the animal undertook the difficult chore of unfolding its wings. They didn't have feathers, just paper-thin delicate membranes stretched like sails between slender fingers of bone. They weren't like bird wings. They were very very long. When they were extended, each one was longer that a man is tall. The animal looked like a miniature airplane exercising it's wings in the middle of the table. For thousands of years it had been brooding in its reptilian husk. Now, at last, it was born into the world, the first dragon on Earth since the days when Merlin had one as a pet in old Britain. It was wet from the yoke in the egg and it smelled funny like boiled cabbage. The animal was still making little sounds as it hopped down off the table and rushed toward the terrified Melissa. It looked and sounded hungry. There's a thing called imprinting that works for birds and some reptiles. You realize that reptiles and birds are related kinds of things. The one evolved from the other after it figured out how to fly and grow feathers. Imprinting is a natural instinct whereby the very first creature that the newly hatched bird sees becomes its mother. The chick recognizes a hen as its mother because that's the first thing the chick sees. Then the chick follows the hen around, learning what it has to do in order to survive by mimicking its mother. In this case, there wasn't any mother dragon. There hadn't been one for a thousand years. Instead, the hatching had first seen Melissa. It figured that Melissa was a mother dragon. After all, it had no idea what it, itself looked like. It simply assumed that ten year-old girls in pink skirts and yellow shirts are how mother dragons look. The newborn dragon was resolved to follow Melissa around until it learned how to care for itself. Melissa was not pleased. She was terrified, as a matter of fact. She ran. The dragon ran after her. Everyone screamed. The dragon, thinking that the other children were just its nest-mates, screamed, too, a menacing, reptilian, hungry scream. But what do dragons eat? Damsels in distress? That's what the fairy tales said. Even as a newborn, it had the sharply pointed teeth for it. When Melissa stopped running, the dragon stopped and gazed lovingly at her, a smile upon its toothy dinosaur face. By that time, Mister Reagan and the contestants had long since fled from the stage. They urged her to run for her life. "It really is a dragon," Mister Reagan muttered repeatedly to himself. The Principal was the kind of man who liked to mutter things to himself . Nobody else much listened. One of the teachers had already called the police to come to the rescue. Most adults don't yet realize that the police are, generally speaking, more of a problem that a cure. Along with Mister Reagan, everybody was, by then, sure that Melissa's strange animal was a real, live dragon. Assuming it to be dangerous (that's what the fairy tales claimed), the teachers hurried the students out of the auditorium and out of the school. It was almost the end of the day anyhow, so the children, still chattering excitedly about the dragon, climbing on to their school-buses. To Melissa, the dragon seemed friendly. Mustering her courage, she patted it on its scaly head. It was very hot. It seemed to purr a low pitched, contented hum, enjoying "mother's" affection. Melissa wondered if it was a girl or a boy dragon. With dragons how do you tell? Whatever it was, it was going to be a lonely animal. Melissa was certain that there wasn't another dragon in the whole world. It seemed sad, somehow. Since there wasn't anybody to shoot, the police didn't hurry to get to the school. They though it might be just a prank, what with talk of a dragon and everything. If it wasn't a prank, it might be dangerous. Nobody at the station had ever dealt with a dragon. They thought they were just mythical. Even in Canada, the police much preferred shooting people than dealing with anything dangerous. Exotic animals might be dangerous, so they took their time. Only two of the younger, more aggressively gung-ho officers were willing to take a look. Melissa wasn't sure what she should do. She tried to sneak out to her bus without the dragon noticing. She was a feminine, proper little girl who liked dolls and babies and cooking, not dangerous beasts. She'd had quite enough excitement for one day. She wanted to go home, but the dragon followed close behind her. All the other children fled in noisy panic as the pair approached. They wanted no part of an animal with teeth like that. Melissa tried to shoo the animal away, but it wouldn't listen. It just smiles like a puppy waiting for its "mother" to feed it a treat. She started to call the beast Remmy after a very ugly woman she'd known once. "Go away, Remmy," she hollered, but the dragon only tried to make sounds to imitate its "mother." Melissa tried food. All babies like food and Remmy was acting very hungry, licking its chops and slobbering. The girl wasn't sure what to feed to a dragon. She threw a candy bar as hard as she could. Remmy rushed after the treat and downed it with a single flick of its lizard-like tongue. The animal was very fast. It was back at her side before she could dash for her bus. Since she was pretty close to the door, she tried again. She was out of candy, so she threw her shoe. She figured that a dragon wouldn't know the difference between a shoe and food. Like a dart, Remmy gulped it down, silver buckle and all and was back squawking at her side before Melissa had taken two steps. It turned out that dragons, at least babies, will eat just about anything. Remmy even swallowed the girl's geography book when she tossed it. The driver wouldn't let Melissa get on the bus with the dragon. He drove off as soon as she started through the door. He didn't want any dangerous reptiles aboard old Number Eighteen. For a moment, Melissa thought that Remmy was breathing fire. She realized that it was only smoke, or really vapor. It was chilly outside. The dragon's overheated breath turned into vapor as it exhaled. Powerful jets puffed from its nostrils as it scurried around its "mother" begging for more treats. At almost the same moment, the police and Melissa's mother arrived. The cops, their siren blaring, raced the wrong way up the school's driveway just as Mrs. Ericksen pulled up from the other direction. Police like to break the rules. It lets people know that they are important. The siren frightened Remmy. The dragon tried to hide behind Melissa. Leaping from their car, the police waved their guns wildly. In Canada, the police are a lot more civilized that in the United States, but cops are still cops. They all have a fondness for guns and violence. They hollered to Melissa to get out of the way so that they could shoot the animal. Mrs. Ericksen dashed to the rescue. The teacher who had called the police had the good sense to also telephone Melissa's mother. With the infant Hans strapped tightly on her chest, Mrs. Ericksen scolded the police, telling them to put away their weapons. "Are you men crazy," she wanted to know. "Don't you see the are children here?" Chastened, the cops lowered their rifles and let Mrs. Ericksen take charge. She didn't seem at all afraid of the dragon even when it growled as she rushed over to Melissa. She tried to pull her one-shoed daughter away to the waiting car, but Remmy jumped in the way. It didn't like the stranger harassing its "mother." It made growling sounds and blocked the way until it got a look at Hans. Then it made slurping sounds. Apparently the dragon thought boy-babies would be tasty morsels. That made Melissa angry. She slapped the animal right on its scaly nose. The savage beast yipped in startled dismay and bounded backwards. "No!" the girl commanded. "We don't eat people!" Remmy tried to make sounds mimicking Melissa's words. Dragons are a lot smarter that people give them credit for. All the while Mrs. Ericksen was trying to drag her daughter to the safety of the car. She pushed Melissa through the open door and slid in beside her. The dragon tried to jump in behind them. Risking the animals dagger-sharp teeth, Mrs. Ericksen, pushed at the dragon, fending off it's huge beating wings. She managed to get the door closed, leaving the startled animal standing alone on the curb. The police raised their guns as if to open fire. Mrs. Ericksen just glared at them. Like all civilized people, she hated guns. Her scolding look was enough to deter the cops. They again lowered their weapons. Unable to get inside the car, the dragon made do by jumping up onto the hood. It stared through the windshield wondering why its "mother" had abandoned it when it wasn't even two hours old. Undaunted by the unwelcome rider, Mrs. Ericksen jerked the car into gear and started off down the driveway past the bewildered police. Before they'd gone a hundred feet, the dragon had spread its gigantic wings, completely obstructing Mrs. Ericksen's view of the road. The reptile tried to dig its way into the car through the windshield. It had long wickedly sharp curved claws. Unable to get in through the glass, Remmy tried the roof. Instantly it leaped up onto the roof, clearing Mrs. Ericksen's view of the road, the woman hit the gas and zoomed off like a racer. On the roof, the dragon loved it. Remmy unfolded its wings. In a moment, the air had caught it like a kite. The ancient animal soared up like a mighty bird, blue and gold in the afternoon sky. It turned two happy circles above the car as it gained altitude. Then the dragon banked and dove like a plane out ahead of the speeding auto. It banked again and turning toward the South, it rapidly vanished from sight. If some evening, you look up into the sky and see a strange flying thing, it's not a UFO, it's Melissa's dragon. A man with his scaredy-cat dog were startled by it one summer evening in West Virginia. A girl in Washington swears that she saw it eating cabbage off the back of a speeding truck on the intestate and a sailor on Lake Ontario saw it, grown as big as an airplane, swooping into the water after fish. If you're a ten year-old girl, be a little careful of wearing pink skirts and yellow shirts. Remmy is still looking for its mother.

For Melissa's Dragon Part Two,

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