Read Online Prairie Fire by E. K. Johnston - Free Book Online

who, using the power of public opinion, made the original respondents look like Conservative lackeys who were more afraid of losing a favourite summer getaway than they were of a death toll. Which, to be fair, they pretty much were.
    â€œShe’s unnerving,” Lottie had told me. “You should be taller before you can control people like that.”
    â€œI think it’s funny,” Owen’s mother, Catalina, said. “It’s like watching a mouse grow teeth and take down a siligoinis .”
    â€œI’ve told you that joke’s only funny in Spanish,” Owen said, and his mother waved him off. “But seriously, Emily is really good at this.”
    â€œTell me what’s happening,” I said. “We don’t have cable in here, so I’m only getting the CBC broadcast if the weather is good.”
    â€œAodhan’s looking into that, by the way,” Hannah said. “He pointed out that with regular dragon slayer patrols, he’ll be able to protect the towers. We might even get cell phones.”
    â€œPut her out of her misery, love,” Lottie said, her fingers linked with Hannah’s.
    â€œFine,” Hannah said, all business. “Locally, we’re doing very well. The people who lost property are angry, of course, but it’s a relatively small number from what it might have been, and people seem to understand that had we let the eggs hatch, it would have been much worse.”
    â€œThat’s good then.” I hadn’t been looking forward to going back to school if everyone was angry with us for getting their houses burned down.
    â€œNationally, it’s a bit less rosy,” Hannah continued. “The government is kind of put out with you.”
    Lottie snorted.
    â€œI was trying to ease her into it!” Hannah said.
    Every now and then, usually after a big public dragon disaster, there was talk about whether or not we should just try to force them into extinction. The debate always split into two sides: those who felt we should just do our best to get rid of the menace and deal with the fallout, and those who argued that, in addition to the environmental damage, there was no way of knowing what sort of trouble a mass extinction would cause. This invariably degraded into conversations about the fate of the dinosaurs and general name calling, and by then something else would have happened in the news cycle, and everyone would forget about it until the next disaster. The government rarely stepped in, and when they did it was usually with some fabricated science that no one could really test anyway.
    With us, they had apparently decided to take another tack. MPs and MPPs across the country were either denouncing us or hailing us as heroes of a new age. There was no split by party line, though as a rule the Conservatives were generally not our biggest fans. Queen’s Park, currently held by the Liberals, was taking a softer approach, questioning our ages and whether we should have been permitted such a dangerous task without supervision. But the Prime Minister cracked down nationally and cracked down hard. Our MP had already been kicked out of the cabinet, where he had been Minister of Agriculture, and relegated to the backbench because he had spoken in our defense (which, for the record, I thought was very nice of him; I hadn’t been old enough to vote for his opponent, but I had actively campaigned for her). And he was not the only one to lose his seat at the big table before Emily stepped in and turned at least the Internet to our favour.
    â€œThere are really only two things holding them back at this point,” Lottie had said. Her dislike of our Prime Minister was both quite personal and very public knowledge. “The first is that we are all very popular right now—not with them, obviously, but with a growing number of their constituents.”
    â€œWhat’s the second reason?” I asked, though I had a bad