The Dragon in the Driveway (5 page)

The light ahead grew brighter and the noise of the machinery grew louder, and the trees slowed down. Finally, they came to a silent standstill at the edge of the clearing.

St. George was there.

CHAPTER FOUR
ENTER THE SHOVEL

He stood in the bed of a giant dump truck like an actor on a movie set, every detail of his handsome face visible beneath a circle of powerful spotlights blazing from atop high metal stalks. He wore his usual long black coat. A bright orange hard hat sat
incongruously on his head, his golden hair spilling to his shoulders beneath it. His round wire-rimmed spectacles reflected the glare of the lights and made him look as if he had a slice of cucumber over each eye. He was pointing with a gloved hand and shouting to a crew of workers in orange jumpsuits.

A steam shovel rumbled and swiveled on its base as it reached down into the hole. The scoop came up and swiveled back, dumping its load on top of the dirt mound, which had risen to mountainous proportions since the afternoon. A worker scrambled up out of the hole. He was covered in muck, a pickax slung over his shoulder. The muddy cuffs of his orange jumpsuit drooped around his ankles.

At first Jesse thought he was looking at a child dressed up in a grown man’s work clothes. Cautiously, he shimmied out to the end of the branch to get a closer look.

He sucked in his breath. It
wasn’t
a child. The muddy figure in the orange jumpsuit was broad and stocky through the shoulders. The worker used his pick to swing himself up onto the back of the dump truck. In a rolling gait, he made his way over to St. George. He was an odd-looking little man, with a huge head that was flat and wide on top, like an anvil. His bristly hair grew down to a point between
his tiny eyes, which were deeply set on either side of his large smashed snout. When the man flung an arm out to gesture at the hole, Jesse thought at first that he wore mittens. Then he realized that the man had only three fingers on his hand!

Jesse looked over to Daisy, who had also moved out to the end of a branch to get a better look. Jesse tried to catch her eye, but she looked totally absorbed in the scene before them. Jesse checked out the other workers. There were at least forty of them swarming over the site and, except for slight differences in height and weight and hair color, they all looked alike.

St. George leaped down from the bed of the truck and climbed up into the cab. He gunned the engine and the truck jerked forward. The little man in back grabbed on to the side of the truck as it rumbled across the clearing. On the far side, Jesse could just barely make out a sort of lumber mill where workers were feeding logs into a saw.

Jesse felt the needles on the branches all around begin to prick him, as if the spirit inside the tree were asking, “Well? Do you think you have seen enough?”

“Let’s get out of here,” he whispered.

The fir and the aspen began to back up very slowly, then they melted away down the path.

Emmy was already waiting for them at the edge of the Deep Woods when the trees lowered Jesse and Daisy down to the ground. Jesse’s hands and hair were sticky with pine sap. Daisy shook a small cascade of aspen leaves out of her snarled hair. They went to Emmy.

Emmy jumped up and down with excitement. “Did you see? Did you see?”

“Did you see their heads?” said Daisy with a shiver. “It’s like they were made to be stacked upside down. And those icky, tiny little eyes!”

“They had snouts!” Jesse said.

“I have a snout,” Emmy said, her enthusiasm rapidly dimming.

“What about their hands?” Daisy said, and held up her fingers to make mittens.

Jesse did the same and they pretended to shake hands with their mittens, giggling. Emmy did not join in.

The transparent dryads emerged from the solid trunks of their trees and floated over to join them.

Lady Aspen said gently, “B-b-b-beware, lest you judge any living creature b-b-based on physical appearance alone.”

“What the lady says is true,” Douglas Fir joined in. “St. George is a fine figure of a man, and yet we
know for a fact that inside he is as rotten as a tree stump in a beaver colony’s rank backwater.”

“Listen to my new friends,” said Emmy crossly. “It’s not nice to make fun. I think the little men are pretty.”

Daisy wheeled on Emmy. “How can you say that? They’re working with St. George!”

“That makes them as bad as he is,” Jesse said.

Emmy burst into tears.

Daisy and Jesse exchanged startled looks. They went to hug her. “We’re sorry, Em,” said Daisy.

“You’re a little tired, I guess,” said Jesse.

“And we’re all up way past our bedtime,” Daisy added.

Emmy nodded rapidly. “I need my cozy nest of socks,” she said.

“I think we’ve all seen enough for one night,” said Douglas Fir, heaving a heavy, pine-laden sigh. “We will walk you back to your house.”

As they made their way across the pasture toward home, Jesse and Daisy continued to talk about the creatures. “Revolting little pig-men!” Daisy exclaimed.

“Th-th-th-they are n-n-n-not
pig-men
,” Lady Aspen gently said. “They are the chthonic ones.”

“What’s ‘chthonic’?” Jesse asked.

“A race of beings that live in a kingdom f-f-far
b-b-b-beneath us,” the aspen said shakily, “in the b-b-b-bowels of the earth.”

Jesse shook his head sadly. “Unless we come up with a truly
serious
plan, we’re doomed! It was bad enough when we had St. George to deal with,” he said. “Now we’ve got … those flat-headed, hairy little pig-people.”

“Don’t call them that!” Emmy scolded. “Call them hobgoblins!”

Daisy pulled up short. “Really?” she said.

The dryads nodded solemnly.

“You see?” said Jesse. “That proves it. Everyone knows hobgoblins are bad.”

“Everyone thinks dragons are bad, too,” Emmy said in a small voice.

“Oh, that’s just because they haven’t met you,” said Daisy.

After tucking Emmy into her nest of socks, the cousins stumbled into the house and upstairs. They each fell into their beds and sank into a sleep so deep, they didn’t wake up until they smelled breakfast cooking downstairs.

Daisy got dressed quickly and went into Jesse’s room. Jesse, already dressed, was scowling at the computer screen, which refused to produce Professor Andersson’s site, even after repeated attempts.

Finally, he turned from the empty screen and said one word: “Hobgoblins.”

Daisy smiled and looked relieved. “I thought maybe I’d dreamed it.”

“If only,” said Jesse.

They went downstairs and joined Uncle Joe and Aunt Maggie at the kitchen table. As she nibbled at a crispy strip of bacon, Daisy asked her father the same question she would have asked the professor, had he been available. “Poppy, what’s ‘chthonic’ mean?”

“Whoa, Nelly!” said Uncle Joe, dropping his fork with a clatter. “You’re poaching on my territory now. ‘Chthonic’ comes from the ancient Greek
chthon
, which means ‘earth’ or ‘soil.’ You could say that rocks and minerals and crystals are of the chthonic world, because they come from the earth. But the word is usually linked with chthonic deities, which in the olden times were the gods of the underworld, otherwise known,” he said, with a wicked little grin, “as the dead.”

Jesse wagged his head woefully and said under his breath, “I knew it! Those guys are bad news.”

“‘Chthonic’!” Uncle Joe chuckled. “Where in Sam Hill did you guys dig up that word?”

Daisy shrugged. “Online,” she said.

“You’ve got to watch that online stuff,” said
Uncle Joe. “Not everything you read is true, and there are an awful lot of cranks out there.”

At the mention of “cranks,” Aunt Maggie’s head shot up from her plate and her eyes narrowed. “You two aren’t talking to strangers online, are you?”

Daisy’s eyes went wide. Jesse kicked her beneath the table.

“Never!” Daisy said, her elfin ears going all pink.

Jesse sat up tall and said, “Not us!” After all, Professor Andersson might be strange, but he was not a stranger.

Aunt Maggie went off to work muttering about creepy online strangers, and Uncle Joe headed for the Rock Shop. Jesse washed the breakfast dishes and Daisy rummaged in the refrigerator for breakfast for Emmy while they conferred about their next steps. If the professor wasn’t available, maybe Miss Alodie could explain more about the sashes around the trees. Then Jesse delivered Emmy her breakfast and left Daisy to pack their backpack with the day’s supplies: five energy bars, a canteen of water, and a head of cabbage for Emmy. As soon as Emmy finished her breakfast, they lit out, with her in dog form, for Miss Alodie’s house.

They saw Miss Alodie’s green beanie, which looked like the top of a zucchini, bobbing along the
line of rosebushes. The roses seemed like their spiffy old selves, and the black-eyed Susans had their heads on straight again. The garden, however, still had the weird fence surrounding it.

On the way over, Daisy had already decided on the direct approach, so she stepped over the fence and marched around the roses, right up to Miss Alodie. Pointing a finger at the little woman, Daisy said, “We know that you’re magic.”

Miss Alodie’s blue eyes danced as she tucked her garden shears into one of the many pockets of her fisherman’s vest. “Well, now, what gave me away? Was it my glittering wand or my blue wizard’s hat with the silver stars on it?”

Jesse didn’t so much as crack a smile. “It was this fence, right here,” he said sternly.

“Plus the cloth you wrapped around those two trees,” Daisy said. “You know the ones I’m talking about: the Douglas fir and the quaking aspen. Both the fence and the tree sashes are charms to ward off St. George’s spell, so there’s no use denying it. And let’s not forget, there’s this superhumanly gorgeous garden of yours.”

“How do you know I’m not just a cracking good gardener?” Miss Alodie asked with a lingering twinkle in her blue eyes.

“Because you talk to your flowers,” said Daisy.

“And they probably talk back to you,” added Jesse.

Miss Alodie threw back her head and laughed until her blue eyes were bright with tears. “Well put, cousins!” she said at last. “Would you care to come inside for a tisane and some fairy cake so we can further discuss matters magical?”

No way was Jesse ready for that. “Uh. We’re good,” he said, backing away.

“We just had breakfast,” Daisy said. “And we don’t really have time.”

And then it all came tumbling out, as first Daisy and then Jesse told Miss Alodie
everything.
“I guess you can see why we need your help,” Daisy said in conclusion.

Miss Alodie cocked an eyebrow and regarded them for several moments. “Poor defenseless little children,” she said after a pause. “But listen to me, you two. You are a far cry from helpless. Not with an entire Museum of Magic at your disposal!”

Jesse and Daisy turned to look at each other. Then they looked back at her.

“Go on with you,” she told them, shooing them back to the curb. “Check your inventory. And remember, no matter how bad things get, you have
dragon magic
on your side.”

Emmy barked in agreement. Jesse and Daisy were leaving when Miss Alodie called out, “Wait! I do have a thing or two to give you …
if
you do one thing for
me.
”

They turned around. In one hand Miss Alodie held out a big ball of string. In the other was a jar full of fat pink wriggling earthworms. Daisy took the string and left the jar for Jesse.

“Thanks, Miss Alodie,” Jesse said dutifully. “What do you want us to do?”

Miss Alodie’s face went flat. “I want that book,” she said in a low, urgent voice.

“What book?” said Daisy blankly.

“The big book?” Jesse asked slowly.

Jesse raised an eyebrow at Daisy. St. George’s big book was just possibly the one detail they had left out of their story.

“You mean the great big book covered in red leather?” Daisy asked. “The one with the iron ring on the cover and the funny gold writing all over it?”

Miss Alodie nodded solemnly. “The very one. I want you to bring it back to me.”

Emmy barked enthusiastically. The cousins looked at her carefully. Of course. Emmy wanted the book, too. Hadn’t she said so just the day before?

Daisy laughed uneasily. “Okay, but how are we going to get it? It’s way too heavy for us to carry,” she said.

“When the moment is right, unscrew the lid of the jar and let the worms out,” Miss Alodie said.

Daisy shook her head slowly. “Why? And what would be the right moment, exactly?” she asked.

Jesse turned so that Daisy could unzip the backpack and tuck away Miss Alodie’s gifts.

Miss Alodie was already back at work, down on her hands and knees, pulling up weeds. “Oh, you’ll know the right moment when it comes.”

“
How
will we know?” Jesse asked, resettling the weight on his back.

Miss Alodie looked up, her blue eyes dancing. “Oh, you’ll know … I’m sure of it … two brave, resourceful Dragon Keepers like yourselves. Something will surely hit you. And incidentally, they are devas.”

“What are day-vahs?” the cousins both asked at once.