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meant the dragons were staying close to the lake, no one complained. Except the cottagers, of course, but they complain about everything. There was a message on the machine from Aodhan, who tended to forget that he could call Owen’s cell if the landline went unanswered. He was bringing home dinner, though he neglected to say what it was.
    â€œI hope there’s pie,” Sadie said.
    â€œThere’s usually pie,” Hannah pointed out.
    â€œReal pie, I mean,” Sadie clarified. “Not store-bought crust.”
    â€œYou’re kind of a snob about that,” Owen said.
    Aodhan showed up after fifteen minutes of bickering about what makes a perfect pie crust with enough food for a week of dinners. This trend had fed them all year, to the point where Hannah had stopped buying perishables at the grocery store. I went home with as much as Owen could put in my backseat, though to be fair, some of that was bound for Sadie’s house.
    I helped her carry it in. It was possible, if someone loaded my arms for me and got all the doors. Sadie’s mother burst into tears as soon as she saw us, and it took me a moment to remember why.
    â€œMom,” Sadie said, depositing her stuff on the table and wrapping her arms around her mother’s neck. “We have to. Siobhan can’t do her hair, and I won’t have time.”
    â€œI know, darling,” Sadie’s mother said. “It’s just a surprise. You didn’t mention it.”
    â€œIt was kind of like jumping in the lake on Victoria Day weekend,” I said. “We had to do it fast, or we’d start second-guessing the decision.”
    â€œWell, you both have excellent bone structure,” she said, gulping and trying to laugh. “And it’ll grow back when your tours are done.”
    I drove home and sat in the driveway for a while before I went into the house. I ran my hands over my head. I could feel the skin with my fingers, but it felt rough because of the scarring there. If I used my wrists or the backs of my hands, it was different. Fuzzy. I looked at myself in the rearview. I was very pale, but that would change soon enough.
    Lottie was right. This was one less thing to worry about now. I could practice dressing. I could practice the horn. I could make sure that I was the most over-prepared recruit ever to show up in New Brunswick. Or, at least, I could try. Lottie was so sure. And she’d done so much to make it possible. I was nervous—no, I was terrified—but I was going to do it anyway. Owen was going. And even though he’d never asked, I’d go too.
    I checked the sky when I got out of the car—habit—and there were no dragons, so I went inside to show my parents what I’d done to my head.

GAGETOWN BLUES
    They don’t send everyone to New Brunswick for Basic Training, but they do send all the Oil Watch recruits there. Officially, this is both because New Brunswick is coastal (though the base itself is not), allowing for exposure to saltwater dragons, and because it is well-forested. Unofficially, it’s because after what happened in the Battle of the Somme, the government of Newfoundland had it written into the British North America Act that only Newfie dragon slayers could be trained on the island, and New Brunswick was the next best option.
    We arrived at CFB Gagetown early in the morning via train, along with approximately five hundred other recruits, less than one in ten of whom were dragon slayers. The Oil Watch employed a large support regiment, which would include engineers (both combat and smith), firefighters, medics, and for the first time in decades, one bard. I was not looking forward to being the novelty. The dragon slayers would be outnumbered, but at least they would have comrades in their work. Even if Owen ended up assigned to a small base, I could be outnumbered one to hundreds. Notoriety was all well and good in high school or a small town. In the