The crimson witch

everything was beautiful again. Until the second round of sirens broke the spell…

Chapter Sixteen: FUZZ
        
        Just before the patrol cars arrived, the police traffic copter fluttered overhead like some huge primeval dragonfly. There was a man leaning over the one doorsill with a rifle. Jake realized, suddenly, what the cop was trying to take a shot at: Kaliglia. But there were children on the dragon's back, and the man in the copter couldn't take a chance for fear he would hit the kids or-once he shot the dragon-it would roll over on them in its death throes. He stopped sighting and held onto the rifle with one hand, waiting for the kids to get off. Then, roaring through the gates of the park, the police returned in force, six cars of them with four men to a car. They opened the doors and dropped behind them, using them for shields. Some left the cars and spread out in a great semicircle, closing in like commando troops from all angles, riot helmets gleaming bright crimson in the sunlight.
        “What's this?” Cheryn asked. “What's happening?”
        “My people have a flair for dramatics,” Jake said, but he wasn't feeling as jovial as he sounded. He should have grasped the situation earlier, and he berated himself for his foolishness. A real, live dragon would cause quite a stir in a Twentieth-Century city. He had seen all the movies, hadn't he? He had shivered in dark theaters, sopping up the campy American International films, the way out slapstick Japanese things. Gorgo, Godzilla, the whole line of oversized lizards mauling office buildings and devastating the Works of Man. And the police had seen them, too. It was the only concept they had of a dragon now. A dragon, they were sure, had to be a ferocious, mindless, vicious monster bent on destruction, a horror that had to be stopped at all costs. And they were preparing the defense. They might even kill Kaliglia!
        The helicopter drifted across the top of the hill, swept over Kaliglia. The huge beast looked at it friendly enough and bleated a jarring hello. The copter pilot panicked at the rear and pulled straight up, almost stalling the machine. It choked, sputtered, caught, and fluttered down the slope to hover over the patrol cars.
        Kaliglia kneeled to discharge his passengers and pick up a new load.
        “Don't let those kids get off!” Jake shouted.
        Kaliglia stood up again.
        The commandos were slithering up through the grass like snakes.
        “Why not?” the dragon asked. “They've had their turn.”
        The commandos stopped dead.
        One of the line shrieked and ran back toward the cars.
        “Hold the line!” an officer shouted, but the commandos finally broke under the knowledge that the dragon could talk as well as any man, and every one of them ran pell-mell back to the cars and cowered behind the doors, peering through the windows and around the edges, but not daring to step out in full sight.
        “Never mind why not,” Jake said. “Just keep them on your back.”
        The kids already on the beast yelled with glee and slapped the scaly hide of their dragon.
        “There are only three more who haven't ridden,” Kaliglia said. “Suppose I pick them up, too?”
        “Okay. Yeah. The more, the merrier.”
        Kaliglia bent and waited while the last three climbed up his side and lodged themselves on his hump, each clutching the child before him. Standing, Kaliglia stomped up the hill, bellowed when he got to the top and galloped around to give the kids a thrill.
        “You there!” the officer who had been leading the commandos hollered.
        “Me?” Jake asked, looking down the slope to the patrol cars.
        “Yeah. You. Come here.”
        Jake winked at Cheryn and sauntered down to the cars. “Something I can do for you officers?”
        “You know anything about that dinosaur?”
        “He's mine.”
        “Yours?”
        “That's correct.”
        “He's tame?”
        “Perfectly.”
        The cop stood up from behind the door and scratched his riot helmet before he realized he was wearing it. He still held his pistol with the safety off, but some of the tenseness was gone from his face. “Where the hell did you ever pick him up?”
        “It's a long story.”
        “We have complaints from the mothers…”
        “The children haven't been hurt.”
        “I'm afraid,” the cop said, “that I'm going to