Prairie Fire by E. K. Johnston Read Free Book Online Page A

was grinning fit to split her face, and Owen was shaking his head. I could lie to almost anyone now, and he knew it. But I never lied to him, and the best lies were always the ones where I told the truth. I winked, and he smiled.
    The all-clear siren split the thick air inside the dragon shelter, and we all spilled out into the sunlight with some measure of relief. The sergeants were barking orders, cleanup related, mostly, because heaven forbid we miss the fun part of dragon slaying, but everyone was looking at me. The cornet-sergeant was watching me too, but his face was difficult to read. Finally, the recruits called to cleanup duty mustered themselves away from the main group, and the rest of us headed for the mess.
    There hadn’t been any structural damage, but the south woods were on fire, and it was a while before the flames were quenched. The firefighters used a lot of chemical suppressants, which made me nervous because water seems much more natural for that sort of thing. Of course, on patrol, chemicals are much easier to carry, and if there is no water source nearby chemical suppressants might be the only option you have. Since most of the trainers were out on fire duty, we were able to take more time than usual to eat. I celebrated by cutting up my Salisbury steak instead of just eating it off the fork, like I did when I was rushed. Sadie sat with us, which only happened these days when we were assigned to the same drill, because otherwise we arrived at the mess separately. It seemed like more people than usual were sitting with us, or maybe it was just that there were more people paying attention to us. This feeling, I remembered, was why I had wanted to spend the last year of high school eating lunch in the music room, even though Sadie never let me eat anywhere but the seat she’d saved for me in the cafeteria.
    I was going to have to get used to it. I’d thought I could be in the background here, like I had done when we were in school, but the Oil Watch required more of me.
    For the first time, I decided that it didn’t bother me.

UNIT COHESION
    It got easier after that afternoon in the dragon shelter. Not everything, of course, because there were a lot of things I had to do for myself, and they were still hard, but some things, small things, were taken care of while I was busy fumbling with something else. And most people stopped looking so openly disappointed when I was assigned to their drill. All that was left to survive was two weeks of training with the group that would make up the members of Owen’s support crew. I’d done this in high school, on unicorn stationery, no less. I was pretty sure I could handle it again.
    Every support squad had eight firefighters; a pair of engineers—one sapper and one smith—two medics, one of whom could double as a cook if you were on patrol; and in Owen’s case alone, one bard. All of them were older than Owen and I were. The Combat Engineer, Courtney Speed, was twenty-four and had a master’s in engineering from the Royal Military College. This was unusual, as most people in the Oil Watch, including our smith, Aarons, had at most only an undergraduate degree. The firefighters had all completed a two year college program, and the medics had bachelor degrees in addition to their year-long medic training course. Davis, the medic who was also the cook, planned to go to medical school when his tour was up. In those first days I despaired of ever learning their names, let alone coming up with ways to write them into Owen’s songs. I was more than a little bit intimidated, and I didn’t even have to be in charge. Owen was supposed to be in command and would eventually be given the highest rank. It was really important that everyone got along.
    â€œUnit cohesion,” as it was called, was accomplished by a bizarrely fake week-long camping trip, wherein each squad was assigned a portion of the forest to patrol. It was