Gork, the Teenage Dragon Read online

  ALSO BY GABE HUDSON

  Dear Mr. President: Stories

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2017 by Gabe Hudson

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Chapter 71’s title, “Back Into the Chamber Returning, All My Soul Within Me Burning,” is inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.”

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Hudson, Gabe, author.

  Title: Gork, the teenage dragon / by Gabe Hudson.

  Description: First Edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017004831 (print) | LCCN 2017021892 (ebook) | ISBN 9781524732479 (ebook) | ISBN 9780375413964 (hardcover)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Science Fiction / Adventure. | GSAFD: Fantasy. | Love stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3608.U345 (ebook) | LCC PS3608.U345 G67 2017 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2017004831

  Ebook ISBN 9781524732479

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover illustration by Matt Buck

  Cover design by Peter Mendelsund

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Gabe Hudson

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1: Here Begins the Story of How I Found My True Love

  Part I: The Clear Door

  2: The First Time I Blast Fire It Happens on Planet Earth, When I Am Just a Little Baby Dragon

  3: The First Time I Meet Dr. Terrible, It Happens on Planet Earth

  Part II: Crown Day

  4: I Try to Get Runcita to Be My Queen for Eggharvest

  5: Fribby the Silver Dragon, Plus a Word About the Datahaters Here on Campus

  6: Dr. Terrible’s Fiendish Poetry & His Towering Genius

  Part III: The Queen Quest

  7: The Zap Pad

  8: The Heart Is the Highest Law There Is

  9: Here Comes Rexro

  10: Poof

  11: How Dr. Terrible Revealed His Fiendish Evolution Machine at the Televised Press Conference Earlier This Week

  12: My Scaly Green Ass Gets Ambushed

  13: Thank You for Letting Me Live

  14: How Dr. Terrible Broke My Heart, and Then Gave Me My Spaceship Athenos II

  15: Now Let Me Get Back to the Main Story I Was Telling You About, in Terms of How This Robot Trenx Is Saying That Dr. Terrible Just Gave Him a New Spaceship Called Athenos III

  16: How the Unveiling of Dr. Terrible’s Evolution Machine Led to Dean Floop Executing All Those Cadets Over the Past Couple Days

  17: The Dark Fiery Corridor

  18: Rexro Goes Full Psycho, Plus What Happens When I Encounter a Mysterious Wormhole

  19: Splash, Turns Out My Scaly Green Ass Was Wrong

  20: Here in the Underworld, Professor Nog Shows Me My Mortal Forecast

  21: Here in the Underworld, Professor Nog Tells Me About My Mother and Father, Both of Whom Died While on Their Fertility Mission to Planet Earth

  22: Splash, My Scaly Green Ass Is Back from the Underworld

  23: Enter My Secret Weapon, Which Will Help Me Get on with the Business of Having Runcita Lay My Eggs

  24: Runcita’s Luscious Scent Makes My Nostrils Flare

  25: The Datahaters Will Go on a Robot Killing Spree

  26: How Dean Floop Blamed the Recent Deaths of All Those Cadets on Dr. Terrible, Which Resulted in Last Night’s Doctor vs. Dean Ragefest Out on the Campus Quad

  27: The Dining Hall

  28: The Mutant Has a Surprise in Store for Me

  29: Fribby in the Lava Lounge

  30: The Institute of Advanced Biokinetics and Neuroanatomy

  Part IV: Inside the Belly of the Beast

  31: Dr. Terrible’s Scream Operas Are in Full Effect

  32: What a Fitting Place for Me to Die, Here in the Belly of the Beast

  33: The Mysterious Dragoness with the Thick Tail

  34: Sword Play

  35: Metheldra the Swordupuncturist

  36: That Heartshrinker Sword Is a Miracle

  37: Dean Floop’s Hideous Lair

  38: Thwack-Thwack

  39: Runcita

  40: There’s Nothing More Important Than Getting the Right Chick to Lay Your Eggs

  41: My Big Heroics

  42: The Most Beautiful Toe Claws You Could Ever Hope to See

  43: A Cry for Help

  44: Flying Over Warwings

  45: I Come to Fribby’s Rescue

  46: The Warning

  47: Prepare to Die

  48: Flying the Deadly Skies

  49: Fear No Mechanical Creature

  50: Where Are We Going?

  51: Your Scaly Green Ass Is Already Long Gone from Where You Were Just a Split Second Ago

  52: Machine on Machine Crime

  53: The Case of the Missing Robot

  54: Help Me, Gork, Please Help Me

  55: I Think Something Bad Is Going to Happen to Me

  56: Tiny Daggers Through My Shrunken Heart

  57: The Teleportation

  58: Poof

  59: Busting Fribby Out of the Evolution Machine

  60: A Crack in the Evolution Machine

  61: The Evolution Machine Strikes Back

  62: The Dungeon

  Part V: Earth

  63: Poof

  64: The Metamorphosis

  65: The King

  66: The Rose

  67: The Full Moon

  68: Where Is My Queen?

  69: The Scream

  70: The Clear Door

  71: Back into the Chamber Returning, All My Soul Within Me Burning

  72: Runcita

  73: The Fog

  74: Dean Floop

  75: The Firestream

  76: The Question

  77: The Monster

  78: The Ring

  79: The Wing

  80: Gulp

  81: The Sword

  82: Dr. Terrible’s Head

  83: The Bloody Chamber

  84: Slay the Dragon

  85: The Mountain

  86: Sacrifice

  87: Soup

  88: Sing

  89: The Power of the Red Rose

  90: The Poet

  91: The Cave

  92: The Dragon King

  93: The Doomsday Squad

  94: The Evolution Machine

  95: Will I Be Fiendish Enough?

  96: The Prophecy

  97: Quest for Miracle

  Acknowledgments

  A Note About the Author

  To Deborah Treisman, Edward Kastenmeier, and Susan Golomb:

  With love & gratitude.

  The dragon began to belch out flames

  and burn bright homesteads; there was a hot glow

  that scared everyone, for the vile sky-winger

  would leave nothing alive in his wake.

  —BEOWULF (TRANSLATED BY SEAMUS HEANEY)

  [ 1 ]

  HERE BEGINS THE STORY OF HOW I FOUND MY TRUE LOVE

  My name is Gork The Terrible, and I’m
a dragon.

  And here begins the story of how I went searching for my true love and then made her my Queen. And I should warn you that when it comes to dragon love stories, well mine is the most terrifying tale of them all. But also the most romantic. For inside my scaly green chest, there beats a grotesquely large and sensitive heart.

  Now some folks get a little confused when they first hear me say that.

  And I’m not talking about when I roar it at them and I’ve got my tail raised in a Threat Display and I’m shooting big scary firestreams out of my nostrils. No sir. I’m talking about when I say it real calm and normal, like I’m doing right now. So just to make sure you don’t get mixed up here at the beginning of my story, let me try and make this as simple as possible for you.

  My first name is Gork.

  My middle name is The.

  And my last name is Terrible.

  And like I said, I’m a dragon.

  Plus I’m a poet.

  Now if you happen to be a man-creature here on planet Earth, then you should know I have read your books and stories about my species. And not only are your reports about us dragons wildly inaccurate, they are downright insensitive and repugnant. You man-creatures sure do seem to get a big bang out of spreading ignorant lies about my species. About how vile we are. About how disgusting we are. About how uncivilized we are.

  I mean take old Beowulf, for instance. That book isn’t nothing but a pack of slanderous lies about my kind, written by a bum poet who didn’t have the gumption to sign his own name to the book. It’s like even the man-creature who wrote Beowulf knew it was a bunch of flapdoodle and so he was too ashamed to stick his own damn name on the cover. And now you man-creatures go around passing that book off down the centuries as a bona fide classic.

  Well if that don’t beat all. Seems to me from where I’m sitting, all’s you have to do is stick a bunch of mean-spirited lies about dragons between two covers and voilà—you’ve got yourself an instant classic.

  But you know what? Beowulf isn’t even the half of it. No sir.

  Because the most offensive book out there about us dragons is the lunatic rantings of a man-creature that goes by the name of Mr. J. R. R. Tolkien.

  Now this nutjob Tolkien’s book The Hobbit is so full of balderdash and nonsense about my glorious species that it makes my toe claws shudder just to think about it. That bastard Tolkien paints us dragons out to be a bunch of ignorant and repulsive savages. Well as far as I’m concerned, this Mr. Tolkien was a real low-hearted sonuvabitch.

  Look at how Tolkien portrayed that dragon Smaug in that book The Hobbit.

  Ever seen a red dragon? I haven’t, and Smaug appears to be the most slovenly and debased creature in the entire universe. Shoot, like us dragons’ personal grooming habits are so skeezoid that we wouldn’t notice when a scale on our left breast had fallen out, exposing the soft pink skin underneath. And like we’d just stupidly go about our business and leave that soft pink spot on our left breast exposed to the elements. So some little fool named Bard who lives by a lake can come traipsing along and slay us with one well-placed arrow.

  Please.

  No lake-dweller is going to get the drop on my scaly green ass. With an arrow, no less. Especially not some jerk who goes by the name of Bard.

  Shoot, I’ve got so many nanobots in my bloodstream that if I ever did somehow manage to lose a scale, it would regenerate itself before you could even pull the arrow from your quiver. Or pull the trigger on your laser pistol. Or whatever your weapon of choice may be.

  So if you’ve come here hoping for yet another tale wherein we dragons are portrayed as nothing more than a bunch of vile wyrms, well then you can do us both a big favor and buzz off. Because I can assure you this sort of old-fashioned speciesism and bigotry has no place here. That whole crusty line of thinking is deeply offensive and strictly for the birds.

  Because dragons are nothing if not sacred creatures.

  This much I can promise you.

  Now I’m only sixteen. And I’m an orphan, on account of my parents died right before I hatched.

  But my grandpa is six hundred and eighty-four years old. And my grandpa’s name is Dr. Terrible.

  And this right here is the real deal, a true love story told by a real dragon. A dragon who may not be the smartest of his kind, but who is a damn sight more sophisticated and evolved than what Mr. J. R. R. Tolkien would have you believe.

  And like all tales told by real dragons about their true love and the quest to find their Queen, this story starts with the first time I blasted fire.

  Shoot, every dragon knows the rule of how your proper true love tale’s got to start with first fire.

  Now maybe you’re kind of surprised to learn that we dragons have some storytelling traditions of our own. Well get used to it.

  Because my name is Gork The Terrible, and I’m a dragon.

  And this is my story.

  Part I

  THE

  CLEAR

  DOOR

  [ 2 ]

  THE FIRST TIME I BLAST FIRE IT HAPPENS ON PLANET EARTH, WHEN I AM JUST A LITTLE BABY DRAGON

  The first time you ever spit fire is a seminal event in every dragon’s life.

  The first time I spat fire, it happened on planet Earth. Yes sir.

  Even though my family hails from Planet Blegwethia, I actually hatched on Earth. And my grandpa Dr. Terrible always blames my early feral years growing up alone on Earth for my pathetic WILL TO POWER.

  Anyway, I still remember what it felt like to be scrunched up inside the egg right before I hatched. And I also remember what it felt like as I used my tiny black beak to try and peck my way out of the egg, and how each time I poked a hole through the shell a blinding sunbeam poured down in there and made my little eyes blink like crazy.

  And I remember how as I pecked away at the shell, I was thinking:

  This feels very important!

  And I was thinking:

  Ready or not, here I come!

  And if you want to know the truth, I nearly killed myself trying to break free.

  There’s even an old Blegwethian riddle that goes like this:

  QUESTION: What’s the hardest part of a dragon’s life?

  ANSWER: Hatching.

  So I just kept pecking with my beak and I could hear the shell cracking and my little lungs were heaving because of how hard I was working, and I felt dizzy. But I kept pecking anyway and then there was a superloud crack! And somehow I managed to break free of the white shell which had been holding me prisoner.

  And I thought:

  Way to go!

  And I thought:

  I can’t believe I made it!

  And then I thought:

  Look at this beautiful forest!

  So, suddenly there I was on Earth, though of course at the time I didn’t know this. And I was standing on my own two hind legs for the very first time, and I found myself alone in this forest with all those little pieces of eggshell scattered around my webbed feet.

  Now I remember how as I stood there that morning, well suddenly this glorious feeling shot straight up my spine and it caused my wings to shiver. How can I describe the feeling to you? Well it felt like the entire forest was jumping up and down and cheering with excitement at the sight of my little scaly green ass. I could even hear the wind moving in the trees, and the trees were singing:

  “Welcome, Gork! Welcome!

  We’ve been waiting here for you all along!

  Now that you’re finally here,

  we can sing this joyous song!

  You will be a famous dragon,

  the stuff of legend and lore!

  You’ll bravely lead us to victory,

  of this you can be sure!

  After many a pitched battle,

  you will win the Great War!

  Now that you’ve arrived we have nothing to fear,

  we could not be more excited that you’re finally here!

  Welcome, little baby Gork!”


  Now upon hearing those trees singing to me like that, well my chest swelled near to the point of bursting.

  And I thought:

  These sure are some friendly trees!

  And then I thought:

  What the heck do these trees mean when they say they’ve been waiting for me all along, anyway? And what’s this “Great War” they’re jabbering on about?

  And then I thought:

  Well they must mean I have some very important mission to accomplish with my life and that one day I will be a great hero!

  Now I felt grateful to these trees for giving me this piece of secret knowledge about my life, and I wanted to give them some sort of assurance that I was up to the task. So right then and there I tilted my tiny green head back and opened my black beak and then I cut loose with a mighty roar. And this roar came welling up from the center of my being and then exploded out my beak and trumpeted throughout the forest.