Dragon Keepers #1: The Dragon in the Sock Drawer (2 page)

“I wouldn't want you to do that, Uncle Joe,” Jesse said. “Thanks for trying.” Now he felt as if the voice inside was being a poor guest. Did it or did it not want out? And if it did, why wasn't it cooperating? And why was it being so hard on Uncle Joe's equipment?

“Can we try just one more time, Poppy?” Daisy pleaded.

Uncle Joe sighed. Then he put in the biggest, sharpest, strongest blade he had. It had long, jagged teeth, like a hyena's.

Daisy pulled Jesse one more step back. Uncle Joe switched on the saw. This time, when the blade touched the rock, purple and green sparks flew every which way. The machine shrieked like a banshee. Then the blade exploded, sending bits of sharp metal flying as the rock shot out of the vise.

The cousins yelped and dived for cover.

The rock flew clear across the room and crashed through the window.

CHAPTER TWO

THE MILLION-DOLLAR CAR

For a few moments, they all just stared at the broken window.

Finally, Uncle Joe spoke. “You guys get out of here. I'll clean up the mess. I don't want you to get cut. Look out for broken glass on your way out.” He stooped, picking up two jagged bits of saw blade. He tried to fit them together, like pieces of a puzzle. “I don't get it,” he muttered to himself.

“Sorry, Jess,” said Daisy. “Thunder eggs are so cool when you can see inside them. Almost as interesting as wildflowers. It would have been a great addition to the museum.”

Jesse slowly walked outside and picked up the thunder egg. He sniffed it. It smelled funny, like red-hot chili peppers. It was piping hot, almost too hot to hold. He turned the thunder egg around in his hands. There wasn't a single mark on it. He cast a look over his shoulder. It seemed like Daisy was staying behind to help her father after all.

Jesse put his mouth to the rock and whispered, “Are you okay in there?”

He put the rock to his ear. It was silent.

Jesse wondered if the rock was in shock. Maybe after a good night's rest, the rock would feel better and talk to him again. Or maybe the rock was angry and needed some quiet time—a chance to cool down.
Maybe you imagined it all,
he told himself. But just in case he hadn't, he whispered “Sorry” to the rock.

Jesse plodded up the back steps of the house and opened the screen door to the mudroom, which was next to the kitchen. Sighing, he wiped his feet on the mat. Even though his shoes were probably perfectly clean, he knew that Aunt Maggie would appreciate it and he wanted to make her happy. After all, she was his mother's only sister.

Aunt Maggie was standing at the stove, and there were pots and pans on every burner. Jesse figured she must be leaving soon on a trip for work. She always cooked a big, fancy dinner the night before she left on a business trip. Whatever she was cooking smelled delicious, but Jesse wasn't hungry.

“How was High Peak?” she asked. Then she saw his face. “Are you okay, honey?”

“I'm fine,” he said, but he felt a heavy weight pressing down on his chest.

Jesse went through the kitchen and down the hall toward the front of the house. In the living room, the TV was tuned to the news, even though no one was there to watch it. He switched it off. Across the hall, in the dining room, the table was set for dinner. He trudged up the stairs and paused in the doorway of his bedroom. The back door slammed. He heard Aunt Maggie and Daisy talking down in the kitchen. He couldn't make out the words, but he could tell from their tone that they were talking about him.

Jesse went to his bedroom and closed the door. The room he slept in belonged to Daisy's two big brothers, Aaron and Noah. Aaron was already married, with a baby of his own. Noah was in college in Scotland and hardly ever came home. Even so, Jesse kept to Aaron's side of the room. He slept in Aaron's old bed, with Aaron's initials carved into the headboard. He used Aaron's old bureau, with the yellowed
Star Wars
shelf paper lining the drawers.

Jesse took the rock out of the pouch of his sweatshirt. He held it to his ear again. The rock was cold and silent. He sniffed it. It still smelled faintly of chili peppers. He opened the top drawer of the bureau and laid it among his many socks. For some reason, his grandmother sent him socks in the mail every two weeks. She sent regular shipments of socks to all her grandchildren, Daisy included. “Children never have enough socks,” she liked to say.

Jesse closed the drawer and sighed. Then he left the room. At the top of the stairs, he turned around. He went back to the bedroom and opened the sock drawer a crack, just in case the rock needed to breathe.

         

“I found some really interesting basalt specimens for this new project I'm working on,” Uncle Joe was saying as he chewed on a chicken drumstick.

Aunt Maggie laughed. “Just what this house needs,” she said. “More rocks!”

The house was full of rocks, a fact that did not exactly thrill Aunt Maggie. She was in the “ad biz.” She understood advertising. She did not understand the secret language of rocks. But she loved her husband, so she put up with him, rocks and all.

“Eat up, kids,” Aunt Maggie said. “This is your last chance for real food this week. I'm off to Paris tomorrow for an ad shoot.”

Jesse had guessed right. Aunt Maggie was going on a business trip. That was okay, because Uncle Joe was a stay-at-home parent, at least mostly. He worked part-time during the school year, teaching earth science at the College of Mining and Science in town.

“Sorry about your thunder egg,” said Aunt Maggie.

“That thing is
not
a thunder egg,” said Uncle Joe, wagging his fork at her.

“It isn't?” Jesse asked.

“Then what is it, Poppy?” said Daisy.

“I don't know,” said Uncle Joe. “I need to do some tests to find out.”

“No!”
Jesse shouted.

Everyone turned and stared at him.

Jesse shrugged and smiled apologetically. “I'm sorry. It's just that I don't want my rock to have to go through any tests….”

Uncle Joe laid a hand on Jesse's shoulder. “Hey, guy, it's your rock. I just thought you might be curious, is all.”

Daisy's eyes narrowed, as if a secret theory of hers had just been confirmed. “You act like that rock's a living being,” she said softly.

Jesse pushed green beans with almonds around on his plate. He gave her a look that said,
Let's discuss this later.

Daisy nodded and smiled. “Jesse's got himself a pet rock!” she teased.

“The best kind of pet, if you ask me,” said Aunt Maggie. She looked around at her family. “Rocks make the perfect pet, don't they? And we ought to know.”

Everyone laughed, and Jesse was relieved when Aunt Maggie turned the talk to Paris. Jesse listened with one ear. He had the other ear cocked toward the stairs. If the thunder egg started calling to him, he would go running. But so far he hadn't heard a peep.

After everybody had pitched in to do the dishes, Daisy went to help her mom pack and Jesse returned to his bedroom to e-mail his parents. He always wanted his e-mail to be the very first thing they read in the morning before they went off to the clinic. But first he peeked into the sock drawer.

The thunder egg was gone!

Frantically, Jesse rummaged through the rolled-up socks. There it was! It had sunk to the very bottom of the drawer. He placed it back on top, tucked between a pair of tube socks with brown and yellow stripes and Daisy's purple ones, which Uncle Joe had absentmindedly tossed in the wrong sock drawer. “Don't move,” Jesse told the rock firmly.

With that taken care of, he went to his computer and switched it on. His screen saver was a series of photographs of him and his parents in a Jeep on a game preserve near Nairobi. He began writing:

Dear Mom and Dad, Uncle Joe took us with him to High Peak today. I found a thunder egg. It's supposed to have crystals inside, but mine was so hard it broke three of the blades on Uncle Joe's band saw and I didn't get to see the crystals, but that's okay….

He skipped the part about the rock talking and went on to tell his parents how cold it was up there on the mountain and how the view took his breath away. He also didn't mention how scared he had been. Or the wave of homesickness that seemed to be swamping him tonight. More than once he stopped keying and checked the sock drawer to see if the thunder egg had moved from its spot. Jesse was disappointed to find that it hadn't moved at all.

After he had logged off, he wandered over to the window. His bedroom—along with Daisy's next door, linked to his by a shared bathroom—was at the front of the house, with a view of the street. It was a quiet street that dead-ended in a vacant lot. Everyone on the road parked their cars in their driveways. It was strange to see any cars parked on the street. That's why he noticed the big black car right away. It was one of those cars his dad called million-dollar cars because people with a lot of money usually drove around in them. Someone was sitting in the driver's seat, with the headlights off and the motor running.

Jesse grabbed his pajamas and went into the bathroom to change in the dark. He didn't usually dress in the bathroom, but there usually wasn't a strange black car parked outside his window. After he finished brushing his teeth, he went back into the bedroom and turned out the light. He paused at the window. The car was still there.

Jesse's eyes were closed but he was awake when Daisy came in and planted herself on top of his feet. Jesse knew she was waiting for him to explain himself. He wasn't sure how to do this, so he just kept silent and breathed loudly and deeply.

Not at all fooled, she sighed and said, “We need to go to the Dell tomorrow.” Daisy waited for Jesse to answer.

“Um, Daze?” he said, opening his eyes. The light from the hallway lit her long blond hair, turning it silver. “About this pet rock thing…”

“Yes…?” she said.

Jesse felt her tense up, waiting for him to go on. “Well, it wasn't a joke. I think—at least I'm pretty sure it's for real—the rock talked to me.”

Jesse heard Daisy suck in her breath. Was she angry with him? Was she worried? Was she thinking he had finally cracked from homesickness? Was she going to tell Aunt Maggie and Uncle Joe to send him back to his mother and father? He saw himself on line at airport security. He saw a man opening his luggage and finding the rock. Was he even allowed to take the rock out of the country?

Daisy let out her breath and said, “I know it, Jesse. I know the rock made a noise.” She tucked her hair behind her elfin ears, then looked right at him and smiled. “I heard it, too,” she said.

“Really?”
Jesse sat up. His heart did a little jig.

“When the saw was screaming? It sounded like the rock was screaming too, only even louder. It was really weird,” she said with a thrilled shiver.

Jesse was so happy, he wanted to jump out of bed and do the happy-prospector dance. But he calmed himself down and said, “I know what you mean. I've been thinking about it for hours—we think of magic flowers and magic amulets and magic cauldrons and magic wands…”

“But who ever heard of a magic rock? I mean, how can a
rock
make
noise
?” Daisy said.

Jesse nodded, excited. “Right. It doesn't have lips or a tongue or anything.”

“On the other hand, the Native Americans believed that everything has a spirit,” Daisy said. She was on her knees now, waving her arms around. “Mammals and fish and birds and even things without faces, like rocks and fire and trees. Holy moly, Jess, maybe the rock's spirit is crying out to you!!” She sank back down on the bed and added softly, “Maybe to me, too?”

“Oh, definitely to you, too!” said Jesse.

“You know, Poppy says it's not a thunder egg. But I disagree. I think it's just a very special thunder egg. One in a million, maybe.” After a short silence, she added, “Did I tell you where the term ‘thunder egg' comes from?”

“I don't think so,” he said.

“From the ancient Native Americans. They believed that thunder eggs didn't come from the earth. They believed that thunder eggs rained down from the heavens,” she said.

Jesse shivered, and Daisy reached out and took his hand.

“Do you think…?” Jesse started to ask.

“Who knows?” Daisy sighed and squeezed his fingers. “Maybe it came to us from outer space. I was thinking…”

“What?” Jesse said.

“You know how we checked out all the closets?” she said.

Jesse nodded. Last week, they had finished reading
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
for the fourth time. Afterward, they had investigated every closet in the house, hoping one of them would be the wardrobe leading to Narnia, a gateway to another world. All they had gotten for their trouble was noses full of musty air, dust, and the overpowering odor of mothballs.

“Maybe what we needed to get through the doorway was a
key,
” said Daisy.

“A key?” Jesse asked.

“Yeah, like a key to the magic world. Don't you see, Jesse? The thunder egg! Maybe it's a key!”

Jesse nodded. He didn't know how to tell her this, but he didn't think of the thunder egg as a key. It felt distinctly more like a
she.
But he didn't want to dampen her enthusiasm, so he said, “Who knows? Maybe it is!”

“We'll check it out tomorrow,” Daisy went on. “Meanwhile, let's get some sleep. Mom's leaving early. Then we'll see if the key fits.” She hopped off the bed and gave his knee a pat. “Plan?”

“Plan,” said Jesse.

Jesse fell asleep and started dreaming right away. He dreamed he and Daisy were pushing the thunder egg in a stroller. They pushed it past the million-dollar car. A man with no eyes jumped out, snatched the thunder egg, and drove away. The thunder egg started crying and calling his name.