"Right," Martha said, reappearing as suddenly as she'd vanished. "That's my bit. Ten minutes, you've got." A small shrug. "More or less."
       The three guards lay on the barn floor. The alarm I'd felt when we came across them was only a fraction of what I felt moments later when my accomplice disappeared into thin air, and the guards began to crumple to the ground.
       Ten minutes. . . I had to focus. My piece of the job was an iron-wrought safe, two feet on each side. I took a moment to let my heart slow, my pulse stop thundering in my ears, before stepping over the nearest guard and getting to work.

       Jimmy Shingles hooked us up. I was down the pub, trying to make the one ale I could afford last all night -- not a good way to get a buzz on -- when he sat beside me.
       "Got a bird for you," he said in that over-enunciated manner he used when a couple of drinks past tipsy.
       "Pass." Jimmy Shingles was many things. A matchmaker was not one of them.
       "A bird with a job, mate."
       I turned my eyes from the telly. The game was shit anyway; Klaus Fischer had just scored to put the West Germans up 3-nil. "What kind of job, Jimmy?"
       He mimed putting a stethoscope in his ears, holding it up to something, and turning a knob. "Your kind of job," he added, rather unnecessarily, I thought.
       I sipped my ale carefully and eyed the level in the glass before placing it back on the bar. Jimmy Shingles wasn't always trouble. . .
       "I could do with a spot of work," I said.
       Jimmy smiled. "Couldn't we all?"

       It was gray and drizzly when I stepped outside the next day to head to the park where Jimmy had told me to meet our mutual friend. I left early, partly in case one of the Free Wales protests jammed up the streets and partly because I was tired of watching raindrops race down my windowpane.
       The streets were clear, and I got there ten minutes early. Martha was already waiting, the red trench coat Jimmy had said she would be wearing precisely as unsubtle as it sounded.
       "What's the job?" I asked as I sat.
       "What do you know about dragons?"
       I stood up. "Enough to know that we're done here."
       She reached up, touched my arm. "Even if it's a tiny dragon?"
       Blackwood dragons, she explained, were born small. While they grew big as any other dragon, they did so over decades. "I've a friend -- well, more a friend of a friend, I suppose -- keen to own one, but their available funds won't meet market prices." They would, however, cover a few hours' time of a dragon trainer and a safecracker, even when asking them to work in dicey conditions.
       I hesitated a moment, then sat back down.
       "The Pritchards, past the old mill, the father bought a Blackwood then kicked the bucket. The kids couldn't give a toss about a dragon, but they'd be happy for a pile of cash. So, the poor wee thing's going to auction Tuesday next."
       "Unless we --"
       "Liberate it," she said.
       "It's small?"
       "Small enough to fit in a safe so big." She held her arms out, not too wide.
       I thought, only for a moment, then nodded.

       The safe was a custom-build, my knowledge of default combinations useless here. I'd done some research on the family and tried a dozen or so likely combinations. None of those panned out.
       That left me doing what Jimmy Shingles had acted out. I put the stethoscope to the safe, hesitated, then turned to Martha with a frown.
       "What's wrong?" she asked.
       "I don't hear anything."
       It was her turn to frown. "You're not doing anything yet."
       "I mean, no heartbeat, no breathing. It's dead silent." Not the most-tactful phrase I could've chosen, I suppose.
       Martha shrugged. "Dragons are magic, right? I'm sure it's fine."
       I wasn't as sure but decided that if I couldn't get the safe open before the guards came back around that it'd be moot. I got to work, listening carefully as I turned the dial, hoping to hear the movements of the safe's mechanisms.
       "Five minutes," Martha said.
       Was that a click? I waved my free hand to shush her. Sweat dripped down my back. There, that had definitely been a click.
       Time passed, Martha staying quiet as long as she could manage.
       "Thirteen minutes," she whispered. "We need to --"
       One last turn of the dial and the door swung open. Inside was a small gray dragon, curled up on itself, scales faintly reflecting the light. Matching the lack of heartbeat or respiration I'd heard, it was utterly motionless. If it wasn't dead, it did a very good impression of dead.
       Martha practically knocked me over, reaching past to retrieve it from the safe. As soon as she had the dragon in her arms, its eyes opened, gold and green.
       "Hello there, beautiful," she said, stroking its scales. It looked bigger here, outside the safe.
       "We should go," I said.
       She ignored me, continuing to stroke the dragon, looking into its eyes, speaking an unfamiliar tongue. The dragon, I was sure now, was bigger than just a moment before, bigger than the safe would allow. Martha strained to hold it.
       The dragon nodded its head, and she set it on the barn's floor. It spread its wings and puffed an experimental jet of fire, bringing a smile to Martha's face.
       Now it was as big as either of us, bigger. Past the dragon and Martha, I saw one of the guards starting to stir.
       "Time's up," she said, climbing on the dragon's back. "Fancy a ride?"
       I hesitated. I didn't like heights, and I didn't trust dragons. Or, come to think of it, Martha. I was sure that more than one accomplice had found themselves taking a skydive without a parachute, though, admittedly, usually not from the back of a dragon.
       One of the guards let out a strangled cry, and Martha must've figured I'd taken long enough to decide. She slapped the dragon's side, and it sprung into the air. "Sorry, love," she said to me, "Here's where we part ways."
       The dragon roared and burst skyward, blasting through the roof. I shielded my head as debris rained down from the hole the dragon had made. When I looked up again, I saw two of the guards had made it up onto their hands and knees. In the distance, sirens were howling. I scarpered.
       Safe at home, I was too busy considering myself lucky to be neither jailed nor barbecued to lament too much my continued poverty.
       Blackwood dragons, I learned, indeed grow slowly over decades, but not if they're kept in a confined space, in which case they go into something like hibernation but even more profound. When they're released, though. . . well, then they grow quickly.
       An envelope showed up a few days later through my mail slot. No stamps or addresses but several nice twenty-pound notes with the Bard on the back along with a little note saying "From a friend of a friend of a friend." Not even half the promised payment, but better than nothing, which is all I expected at that point.
       So, I'm back at the bar now, feeling free to have a second ale and watching Martha on the telly. I've seen a lot of her up there recently, tending to what I like to think of as "our" dragon. The leaders of the Free Wales movement have been making the most of the attention their new prize has brought them.
       Still and all, even with a second ale in my belly and dreams of a third dancing in my head, if Jimmy Shingles shows up, he's gonna hear exactly what I think of his jobs.