Dragon Sleeping (The Dragon Circle Trilogy Book 1) (48 page)

“Sometimes all the best things will,” the Oomgosh agreed. “Now I think it is time we all went back to sleep.”

Jason returned to the pile of leaves he was using for a bed. He wished that this entire place were as pure and clear as the Oomgosh’s stories.

He ran a hand through his hair as he settled back down to sleep. A leaf had gotten caught up there. He grabbed the small piece of green between a couple of his fingers and plucked it free.

“Ow!” he cried.

He looked at the leaf. It was a tiny thing, with an equally tiny branch attached. It must have really been tangled in his hair. The way it hurt when he pulled it free, it felt like this little branch had been growing right out of his head.

“I
t was as simple as that?” Mills asked.

“Nothing is ever simple here,” the cloud replied. “We have alerted Nunn to our presence. Now, of course, he plans to betray us.” The cloud snorted. “Can you imagine that? We are in his head! What kind of wizard would I be if I couldn’t read his thoughts?” The cloud’s tone shifted, becoming so soft as to sound conspiratorial. “But I do believe I can get us outside.”

“Outside?” Zachs piped up. “Zachs prefers outside.” The light-creature flashed crimson. “Except—if we get outside, Zachs may eat you.” The crimson light shifted to blue. “Sometimes Zachs gets hungry. Sometimes Zachs can’t help itself.”

“Very nice of you to tell us,” the cloud remarked.

The light-creature flashed yellow. “Zachs tries to be honest with friends.”

“As, no doubt, does Mr. Mills,” the cloud remarked reassuringly. “And myself, of course. But I don’t think we’re going to leave here in the same way we arrived. We have reinvented ourselves once. We will do so again.”

Mills realized he hadn’t seen his other neighbor since Nunn tried to kill him. “Is Leo all right?”

“I don’t think he’s any worse off than he was before,” the cloud answered.

“Can Leo join us?” Mills asked. “I mean, outside?”

The thunderhead considered his reply for a moment before speaking. “Well, at the moment, Leo Furlong is not quite as independent as the rest of us. I think it might be best if we leave him here for safekeeping. Once we are more sure of ourselves, we will come and fetch him.”

The creature of light did a little dance in front of the cloud. “Zachs is ready! When do we leave?”

“I believe we will give Nunn a little time to mull us over before springing our final demands,” the cloud replied. “After all, I do know what he is thinking.”

With that, the thunderhead closed its eyes. They vanished in the shadowed oval mass.

Maybe, Mills thought, this was more than a cloud. This was the first time he realized how much the thunderhead looked like a brain.

N
ick didn’t want to open his eyes. It was morning, and he had to decide who he was going to be.

It seemed like he was two people now. One was the high school student who got along, who lived a rich fantasy life to keep him away from a reality that included a father who was long gone.

But the other Nick had been taken over by the fantasy. And a certain enchanted sword. At first, the sword had scared him, especially the way it liked the blood of his enemies. Actually, that still frightened him some. But he also found that the sword made him more than he was before.

In the beginning, he had been jerked around from one place to another as the sword guided his moves. Now he was starting to anticipate the swing of his blade, when he should step forward, when he should shuffle to the side, when he needed to raise his hand in defense. This sword was training him to be a swordsman. And Nick was a little frightened to realize that he liked it.

At first, Nick wanted to get rid of this sword. Now he was afraid someone would ask him to get rid of it.

He opened his eyes and looked up at the too-green morning sky. No one was going to take his sword until all this was over. He sat up and looked around.

“Hey, Nick!” Todd called. “Nice of you to join the living!”

Nick gave the other boy a sickly smile, the high school kid all over. Todd was always going to be a wiseass. But the day before, they had fought side by side. Todd had been pretty good with that knife. Of course, Nick could have taken him in a minute with his sword. Nick could take most anybody with that sword.

The Volunteers had gotten a fire going and were roasting some sort of small animal over a spit. Nick could hardly believe it. They were actually going to have breakfast.

He stood up and stretched. His mother waved at him from over by the cooking fire, where she was talking with Maggie. Nick stumbled in her general direction, doing his best to wake up.

“A long way from our backyard barbecue, huh, Nick?” his mother called. “No charcoal briquettes here!”

“And nobody wearing a ‘Dad’s the Chef!’ apron,” Nick agreed.

He was sorry as soon as the words came out of his mouth. Why did he have to remind himself about his father?

“You surely come from a different part of the country,” Maggie said. “What in heaven’s a backyard barbecue?”

Nick’s mother laughed at that. “Oh, you have to have done that! Instead of cooking the steaks on the electric stove, where they’d get done in no time at all, you take them out to a grill on the patio. That’s where you’ve got the briquettes burning, which take forever, and you can never get them started without lighter fluid. And of course, if you use too much lighter fluid, the whole thing will blow up—”

His mother stopped abruptly when she realized all four Volunteers were staring at her.

“Maybe they don’t come from the same place, after all,” Thomas murmured.

“Well, maybe they just come from the big city is all,” Wilbert added. “We’re just a bunch of country folks from the wilds of New Jersey.”

“There aren’t any wilds in New Jersey,” Todd said. “My grandparents live there. Well, the Pine Barrens, maybe. And there’s some farmland in the west.”

“That’s Newton,” Wilbert agreed.

“One of the bedroom communities,” Todd said.

“What the hell is a bedroom community?” Stanley demanded.

The Volunteers didn’t seem to understand half of what the neighbors were saying this morning. It really was like they came from two different worlds.

Nick had an idea. “You say the dragon snatched you in western New Jersey?”

Wilbert nodded. “That’s right. In the woods ten miles outside of Newton.”

“When did the dragon take you?”

“December,” Wilbert answered. “Cold day, too.”

That still wasn’t what Nick wanted to know. “What year?”

“Why, 1906, of course.”

Nick exhaled. Even though he had suspected this, he still didn’t want to hear it.

“You’re kidding!” Mrs. Dafoe burst out. “You’ve got to be. That’s crazy.”

Nick looked over at Mary Lou’s mother. “What isn’t crazy around here?”

The Volunteers were looking at each other as if they might want to get out of this place before somebody else went crazy.

“What?” Maggie asked for all of them. “What’s the matter here?”

“We come from 1967,” Nick’s mother told them. “Mid-August 1967.”

The Volunteers all stared for another moment.

“Yep,” Thomas said after a moment. “That’s crazy, all right.”

“None of us are getting home, are we?” Todd asked, his voice a little strained. “Why are we stuck here? I never asked to be here! Who the fuck has the right to put me here?”

Nick moved over to the other boy. Todd was getting hysterical. “Hey, Todd, cool down,” Nick cautioned. “Yelling isn’t going to solve anything.”

Todd turned on him. “How would you know? Nicky Blake, the Goody Two-shoes of the neighborhood, always following your mother’s skirts. You can’t yell, Nicky. You gotta get your mother’s permission!”

“C’mon, Todd,” Nick replied. God, this guy could be an asshole. “Come on where?” Todd was suddenly in his face. “You want to fight? Goody Nicky always ran away. You need your mother’s permission to fight, too?”

Now this guy had gone too far.

“I don’t need my mother’s permission to do anything.”

“Nick!” his mother called. Nick turned away from her. He had to handle this himself.

“Hurry up, Nicky,” Todd called in a high, affected voice. “Run to your mother, Nicky.”

“Get off my case!” Nick yelled.

Todd shoved him. “You got no case to get on.” Nick almost fell. He’d show this asshole.

“Oh-ho,” Todd said softly. “We’re getting serious now.” It was only then Nick realized he had drawn his sword.

N
unn considered the King of the Wolves. The wolf was coming along nicely, a tiny bit of the dragon’s power festering inside that would make the wolf ten times stronger than before. The King would make a fine servant in the battle to come.

But the King was still untested. Nunn would rather use someone whom he had seen in battle, someone with a will of iron.

The King paced in the room where Nunn had placed him, impatient to be free. When the creature looked up at the wizard, Nunn could see the first traces of green fire in its eyes.

“You will have your chance at battle soon enough,” Nunn said quietly. “I have a group of humans that you will enjoy tearing into little pieces.”

The King reared on its hind legs. Already, it was almost twice the size of its former self.

“Ennnjoy!” the King agreed.

The wizard removed himself from the room, passing through the wall into the adjoining chamber.

“Mr. Sayre?” he asked gently.

Sayre rapidly turned his head, which bobbed as if his neck muscles weren’t all they used to be.

Sayre shook a finger at Nunn, a finger that had lost a good part of its skin. “What do you want now? This dark is no good. My lawn needs light!”

Nunn smiled like a father. “Oh, Mr. Sayre, you’ll get all the light you want. And you can do whatever you want with your lawn. I only need you to do one job for me.”

Sayre looked at Nunn warily. “Job? Who are you to tell me I have to do a job?”

“Only someone who can give you a better lawn, a bigger lawn, than you ever dreamed of. Look here.”

He let both of his dragon’s eyes glow. Sayre’s frown vanished as the light filled the room.

“Green,” Sayre murmured as if mesmerized.

“And this green can be yours. Here, let it touch you.”

“Green,” Sayre agreed as the light poured into him. He grunted as the light shook him, forcing his decimated body to stand straight and tall.

Sayre coughed, expelling a couple of small, flying things. “Haven’t felt this good in days.”

He looked far better, too. Almost human. It was unfortunate how wisps of green seemed to leak out of the hole in his stomach.

“Now can I work on my lawn?” Sayre asked in a tone that said he did not like to request permission.

“Would you like more?” Nunn held his hands up, palms forward, so Sayre could see the glowing gems.

“Green!” Sayre agreed. “Green for my lawn!”

“I’ll be glad to give you more,” Nunn said cheerfully, “as soon as you do a little job.” He closed his hands into fists.

Sayre blinked. “Well, why didn’t you say so? I always like a man who appreciates a good lawn.” He made a small, hiccupping sound as a salamander slithered from his nostril. “But those who defile my lawn will still have to pay!”

“Oh, they will, my dear Sayre,” Nunn replied. “They’ll pay deeply.”

M
rs. Smith had been many of these places before. She had to have passed through here to do those things she had accomplished back on the island. It was only now, though, that she really opened her eyes to see them.

One of the places was filled with light, as if fire and lightning and the stars above all vied with each other to see which could be the brightest. Another seemed to hold all the sounds in the world, perhaps all the worlds: bells rang; engines grumbled, birds sang, creatures cried and screamed; a cacophony one instant, the sweetest blend of melody the next.

The place Garo led them through now seemed defined by darkness. Not that Mrs. Smith couldn’t see. The dragon’s eyes took care of that. Perhaps the dragon provided its own kind of light, everywhere it went. But her real eyes saw nothing, so that she had to let the dragon gem lead the way.

“This is more like it,” Garo whispered.

She wondered what he meant by that. There was another sound, a deep rumbling, very far away. Was that what Garo had been searching for?

She had begun to wonder why she was here. Oh, she had a certain power, and she had wanted to free Mary Lou. When this youngster had suggested flying to fight the dragon, she agreed, caught up in the spirit of the moment.

But this rescue was not taking mere moments. In fact, Mrs. Smith seemed to be losing all track of time. They had left the neighbors behind, defenseless against an attack by Nunn.

In fact, this course of action seemed even less well conceived than their fight against Nunn. It was as if, as soon as these magicians were confronted by some magic, they immediately took leave of their senses, gallivanting off on one adventure after another. And she was no better than the rest of them, blindly following, never raising her voice. This would have to stop now.

“She’s very close,” Garo announced before Mrs. Smith could speak.

“And the dragon is, too,” Obar added.

The stone felt warm in Mrs. Smith’s hand. Perhaps something would happen, after all. Now that they had gotten this close, even she didn’t want to turn back.

But how could they hope to find Mary Lou in a place as dark as this?

“Mary Lou!” Garo called out loud.

There was no answer but the rumbling, although that seemed closer now.

“I thought it was worth a chance,” Garo whispered. “Perhaps there is some way your eyes could lead us to her.”

Her dragon gem was pulsing, in time to that low rumbling that seemed to fill this world.

“What?” a voice called back, full of echo, as if the sound came from the end of a great tunnel. “Did someone call my name?”

“Yes!” Garo shouted. “Mary Lou!”

There was another pause before her voice shouted back. “Prince.

Is that you?”