Dragon Keepers #3: The Dragon in the Library (18 page)

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afraid of
anything
. Maybe Emmy had used the right word earlier. Maybe, for a moment at least, he really was
invincible
.

"Ta-da!" he shouted, raising both arms high in the air.

Daisy looked at him and smiled happily, as if she knew exactly what he was feeling.

Before long, Emmy was soaring over the familiar rooftops of Goldmine City. She flew right above Main Street, where the people were shopping, going home from work, driving their cars, and not a soul looked up at the sky. No one saw them flying overhead, thanks to dragon magic.

Soon the roof of their own house came into view, along with the steel corrugated roof of the garage and the much smaller, bright orange roof of Uncle Joe's Rock Shop. Was Uncle Joe inside? Would he ever in a million years guess what they were doing at that very minute?

Emmy coasted over the front yard and down their street to the end of the block, coming in for a landing where Miss Alodie was polishing an emerald-green reflection globe. The globe stood at the end of a long rectangle of gleaming white stones running like a stripe down the center of the yard. Both globe and stripe were new additions to the back garden.

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"There you are!" Miss Alodie called to them. "I don't know when I have seen a more handsome set of wings, Emerald! When they told me you were cross and crabby, I knew there was a good reason for it. I was so sure you were fledging that I prepared a landing strip!"

"Thank you, Miss Alodie," Emmy said. "It's beautiful."

"You're just in time for high tea," said Miss Alodie.

"Do you want to come in for something to eat?" Jesse asked Emmy as the cousins followed Miss Alodie into the cottage.

"No, thank you. I'll just pop over the fence and hunt up a tasty tidbit or two," said Emmy.

"I knew it!" Daisy whispered furiously to Jesse. "She's going to feed on defenseless woodland creatures."

Jesse shrugged. Having experienced firsthand, even for a very brief period of time, what it was like to belong to another species, he was not inclined to be critical. Besides, he was so hungry himself, woodland creatures sounded a lot more filling than what Miss Alodie was whipping up for them in her kitchen at that very moment. They plopped down on the couch.

"So," Jesse asked Daisy, "what was I like?"

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Daisy wrinkled her nose. "What do you mean?"

"What was I like when I was a dog?" Jesse said.

Daisy smiled and shrugged. "Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails. About what you'd expect. Oh, and I was right."

"About what?"

"You were a mutt," she said.

"Was I a big mutt or a little mutt?" Jesse asked. "Short-haired or long?" For some reason, he really needed to know what kind of a dog he was.

"Let's see. You were about the size of a beagle. You had shaggy fur like an Irish setter. A skinny little tail like a whippet. Floppy ears like a spaniel, and the sweetest little plump muzzle sprinkled all over with white freckles. You were completely
adorable
. If I'd seen you in a cage at the pound, I would have taken you home like that," she said with a snap of her fingers.

Jesse didn't know whether to be flattered or insulted.

Just then, Miss Alodie came out of her kitchen with a tray of food, which she set down on the tea table in front of them. Daisy picked up one of the triangles of bread and bit into it. "Delectable!" she pronounced.

Jesse picked up a triangle for himself and pulled the bread apart. It looked like some sort of

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red jelly. He slapped it shut and nibbled one corner. It tasted spicy, like his father's aftershave. He took a few more nibbles and then washed it all down with a glass of mysterious-tasting juice.

Miss Alodie sat in the chair across from them and slapped her knees. "Tell me
everything
!" she said eagerly.

Between bites of aftershave sandwiches and sips of mystery juice, Jesse and Daisy told her of their adventure. They finished by showing her the coat and the Toilet Glass.

Miss Alodie took particularly wicked delight in seeing Sadie Huffington trapped inside the mirror. "Who's Top Dog now?" she asked, thumbing her nose at the furious little face.

Jesse took the mirror back and shut it tight, because it was clear that the miniature Huffington was cursing them all something fierce, and it made him feel a little jumpy.

"I'm not crazy about the idea, but we're supposed to add this to our Museum of Magic collection," Jesse told Miss Alodie. "Oh, and can you guard Balthazaar's coat until we get back?"

"Of course I can," said Miss Alodie with a wink. "I promise I won't let
this
one get away."

"And can you call Poppy and tell him we're staying for dinner?" Daisy asked.

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"I hope he won't be too mad at us for waiting until the last minute," Jesse said.

Miss Alodie ruffled his hair and made him feel a little like a puppy again. "I promise you, he won't mind a bit. In fact, he has wanted to take Maggie out to that new Japanese restaurant in town," she said with a twinkle in her eye. "And now he'll have the perfect chance to do so."

Miss Alodie walked them out into the backyard, where Emmy waited for them by the gazing globe.

"Can we fly to the Dell?" Daisy asked.

"You bet," said Emmy. "The sooner the better."

"But it's only a short distance," Miss Alodie said. "Just because you have a dragon who flies now doesn't mean that you two should stop making use of your legs."

"We promise to walk just as much as before," Daisy said. "But today we'd really like to get a close-up look at the weather vane on top of the dairy barn, wouldn't we, Jess?"

Jesse nodded. For nearly every summer of their lives, they had sat in the heifer yard next to the barn and stared up at the weather vane of the horse galloping whichever way the wind blew him. "When we learn to fly," they had promised each other, "we'll soar up there and--
whoosh!
--

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make that horse gallop wherever
we
want him to go."

The cousins climbed onto Emmy's back and the dragon took off, flying over the neat row of backyards on their block until they reached their house. There she swooped over the laurel hedge and down into the great green bowl of the pasture. The old dairy barn loomed ahead. The sun setting behind the Deep Woods made the shabby roof shingles look like pure gold.

Emmy was just homing in on the weather vane when she stopped short in midair and craned her neck downward. "Jesse! Daisy! Look!" she called out to them in a hushed voice.

The big red book was laying facedown, draped over the ridge of the barn roof.

"Mother!" Emmy said.

At the sound of Emmy's voice, the red leather covers rose an inch or two and then dropped again, as if they were too exhausted to do anything more.

"It's me!" Emmy tried again. "Your daughter: Emerald of Leandra!"

At this, the covers of the book did a little flip. The book lifted itself and flew up level with them. Book and dragon fluttered in the air before each other.

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"You look tired, Mother," Emmy said gently. "Come with me."

Emmy led the Book of Leandra, gliding downward across the pasture. Dragon and book landed side by side in the softest, greenest part of the pasture between the barn and the brook.

Jesse and Daisy climbed off Emmy and stood back as Emmy went to her mother. "Isn't this better than that rough old rooftop?" she said kindly. "Have you been up there all this time? I'm sorry I kept you waiting, but we've been very busy."

Daisy felt Jesse tugging on the sleeve of her shirt. She tore her eyes away from the touching scene.

Jesse said, "Sorry, but I really think we should give them some privacy, you know?"

"Oh!" said Daisy, blushing to the tips of her ears. "Of course, we should. Sure."

They slowly walked away, Daisy stealing an occasional look over her shoulder. They went into the barn and haggled a bit about where exactly on the Museum of Magic table to place the Toilet Glass. Jesse thought the animal skulls would make excellent sentries. But Daisy felt the Sorcerer's Sphere would exert greater power. Jesse finally gave in and agreed to place the Sorcerer's Sphere smack on top of the Toilet Glass. That way, the magic of the

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sphere would keep Sadie Huffington locked up good and tight inside the mirror.

"Can we go back outside now?" Daisy asked Jesse when they had completed their task.

Jesse nodded. "Sure," he said. "Let's see how the mother and daughter reunion is going."

They found Emmy hunkered down over the book, which now lay open, its pages tinged pink from the rays of the sun setting over the Deep Woods. Daisy and Jesse watched from a short distance away as the pages of the book fanned in front of Emmy's face. Whether Emmy was reading what was written on the book's pages, or listening to her mother, or simply absorbing through her magical scales all that had once been her dragon mother, who could really tell? But it was clear from the changing expressions on Emmy's face that she was having the experience of a lifetime. When at last the book snapped shut, there were tears pooled in Emmy's green eyes.

Daisy caught her breath when, in the next moment, the ghostly form of Leandra, a great, dark, red-scaled dragon four times Emmy's size, emerged from the book and enveloped Emmy gently in her wings, rocking her like a baby.

Now it was Daisy who had tears in her eyes as she watched Emmy discover what it was like,

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for the first time, to be held by her own mother.

Soon enough, Leandra evaporated into a cloud of dark red smoke and bubbled back into the book. Emmy heaved a great sigh and came to join Jesse and Daisy.

For the longest time, nobody spoke. The three of them stood in the pasture and watched the sun drop behind the trees and a tide of darkness steal over the pasture, leaving in its wake a damp green fragrance laced with late-summer wildflowers.

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Chapter 12 CHAPTER TWELVE EMERALD'S TURN

At last, Emmy began to speak: "She wanted to be there when I hatched. So she checked herself out of the Scriptorium and went to the big, high mountain covered with snow. That's where she hid my thunder egg a hundred years ago."

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"On High Peak," said Jesse, "where we found you."

Emmy nodded. "A hundred years ago, she had foreseen her own death. So she hid me there to keep me safe from the Dragon Slayer."

"She was a good mother," Jesse said.

"She was the best," said Daisy.

"But she arrived too late," Emmy said. "By the time she got to High Peak, you and Uncle Joe had already left, taking me home with you."

"We're sorry," said Jesse.

Emmy's eyes hardened. "But the Dragon Slayer was still there on the mountaintop," she said.

"And that's how St. George got her," Daisy said.

Emmy nodded sadly.

"How come she didn't just escape?" Jesse asked.

"St. George had once drunk her blood, and it gave him special power over her," said Emmy, wagging her head. "For the longest time, my mother said, she was senseless, trapped inside the book. After I hatched, her pages began to stir. I didn't know it then, but she began sending me messages."

"That's why you were always calling for your mother," said Jesse.

"And that's how I learned those spells. She was teaching me, even though I didn't realize it at the

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time. For a book, she is a very good mother."

"Yes, she is," Jesse agreed.

"The best," said Daisy again.

"She was very happy for a while at Miss Alodie's cottage," Emmy said. "She was still trapped, but at least she could see me when I visited her every day. But then I stopped visiting--"

"Because you stayed home to read your library books," Daisy said.

"Plus you were a junkyard dog," Jesse added.

"I was, wasn't I?" Emmy laughed softly. "Maybe it was just as well that I stayed away."

"But she missed your visits, so she went out looking for you!" Daisy said.

"Yes!" said Emmy.

Then Jesse said in a halting voice, "I guess it would have been better for you and for her if she had gotten there on time that day at High Peak. Then you'd have had your mother from the time you hatched, instead--instead of us."

"Oh, no, Jesse Tiger!" said Emmy, smiling sweetly at him. "Leandra was powerless against St. George. She never would have been able to protect me...not like my Dragon Keepers."

"Really?" Jesse asked.

"Truly?" Daisy asked.

"Really
and
truly," Emmy said.