The Dragon in the Driveway (6 page)

“The spirits of the flowers you say I talk to,” said Miss Alodie with a wink. “Call them devas.”

Checking their magical inventory was the first order of business. So Jesse, Daisy, and Emmy went directly to the barn from Miss Alodie’s house. Even
though they were pretty sure that St. George wouldn’t be around during daylight hours, just to be on the safe side, they asked Emmy to wait until they were inside the barn before she transformed. Daisy slid the heavy barn door shut behind them, Jesse set down the backpack, and Emmy turned into a dragon.

“Please come here, Emmy,” said Daisy, going over to the Museum of Magic. “You’re the one with the dragon magic, so you try first. Is there anything here that looks useful … practical in a magical kind of way?”

Emmy shuffled up to the display, which was arranged across some old boards on top of two sawhorses.

“I like
this
one,” said Emmy, reaching out and taking up her favorite item, the crusty old metal ball about the size of a peach, and cradling it in her paws.

“The Sorcerer’s Sphere,” Jesse said in an encouraging tone.

“I like it a lot!” said Emmy brightly.

“We know you like it,” Daisy said patiently. “You always have. But what we want to know is … are we supposed to
use
it—against St. George and his minions?”

Emmy shut her eyes and then opened them
quickly. She shook her head. “Not now. I am sorry, Daisy and Jesse. I am not a very practical dragon.”

Jesse pressed her gently. “You’re one hundred percent
certain
sure?”

Emmy nodded. “Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a beetle in my eye,” she said.

“It’s
needle
,” Jesse corrected. “Stick a needle in your eye.”

“Ouch,” said Emmy, flinching. “That would give me a very bad boo-boo, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, it would,” said Daisy. “So maybe you’d better not be swearing it. Okay, now I guess it’s my turn to try.”

While Jesse and Emmy looked on anxiously, Daisy closed her eyes and held her hands out over their magical collection. She waved them slowly over the rocks and feathers and skulls and horseshoes and doorknobs, hoping to feel a tug in one direction or another, like on a Ouija board. After what seemed like a very long time, she opened her eyes and shook her head. “Guess I’m not very practical, either. You try, Jess.” She stood aside.

Instead of closing his eyes and doing the Ouija board routine, Jesse simply drifted around the table, looking at the items as he went, giving each one the full power of his concentration. He had
homed in on the green crystal doorknob when something bumped him so hard, it knocked the breath clean out of him.

“Ouch!” he said, rubbing his shoulder and looking around with a frown. “Who did that?”

Daisy and Emmy both stared at him in amazement.

“Did you see that?!” Daisy asked.

“The shovel fell down on you,
crash-bang-boom
!” said Emmy, clapping her paws in amusement.

“It just … fell off the wall where it was hanging and hit you!” Daisy said. “Nobody even touched it! Look!”

Jesse looked down at the rusty old shovel lying at his feet. He looked up at the wall where a bunch of rusty old farm implements hung. They had never paid much attention to these tools. Sometimes they thought the tools might be magic, but most of the time they just figured they were old and maybe even a little dangerous.

Reaching down, Jesse picked up the shovel by its worn wooden handle. He cried out as the shovel jerked him forward with a violence that nearly dislocated his arm. It was as if someone, a mighty strong someone, were yanking the shovel for all he—or she or it—was worth.

“It’s pulling me!” he shouted to the others, feeling scared and happy at the same time. “What should I do?”

“Yikes!” said Daisy, dancing nervously in place. “Hang on tight, I guess. See where it takes you.”

Jesse held on to the handle with both hands as the shovel powered him out through the barn’s sliding door.

“Stay with me!” he hollered over his shoulder. “Please don’t let it run away with me!”

“You are a very brave boy, Jesse Tiger!” said Emmy. “Emmy Dragon loves you.”

“Daisy Flower does, too!” Daisy said breathlessly. “And we’re right behind you, don’t worry!”

They followed him outside to where a ramp ran up the side of the barn to a door that was boarded shut. There, not ten feet from the barn, the earth rose in a gentle grassy hummock. The shovel blade rocketed skyward. For a brief giddy moment, Jesse’s feet dangled in midair.
The shovel is shooting me right to the sun!
he thought. Then the blade came swooping back around and sank itself into the heart of the grassy hummock. After that, it proceeded to do what shovels do best: it started digging.

“It’s digging a hole!” Daisy exclaimed in wonder, watching as the shovel dug into the earth, scooped
up dirt, and heaved it off to one side, dragging Jesse along with it like a rag doll.

“Guess I better hang on!” Jesse shouted to Daisy and Emmy. “It’s way stronger than I am!”

“Do the best you can!” Daisy called to him.

Then Emmy said, “I will be a dog and dig with my puppy paws,” transforming into her dog shape and beginning to dig enthusiastically alongside the team of Jesse and Shovel.

The hole got deeper and the mound of dirt higher as both Jesse’s shovel and Emmy’s front paws burrowed their way into the earth. Jesse wanted to reach up and wipe off the sweat that was stinging his eyes, but he was afraid to let go. True to her word, Daisy stuck by him. She stood on the sidelines and watched, arms raised to protect herself from the storm of flying earth while she called out encouragement.

For at least an hour, the digging went on. It wasn’t long before Jesse was so tired and dizzy that he shut his eyes. And just as he was drifting off into a feverish swoon, the shovel flew up out of the hole and planted itself in the loose dirt.

Jesse opened his eyes. He staggered out of the hole and sagged against the shovel.

Daisy ran and brought him back a cup of icy cold water from the old pump.

Jesse pried one stiff hand off the shovel, took the cup, and drained it in one gulp. “Another,” he gasped, holding out the cup.

Daisy got another.

He poured this one over his head, still leaning on the handle of the shovel. He hadn’t quite caught his breath yet and his legs were weak and wobbly.

“I know … that the shovel … did most of the work … but I still don’t think I’ve ever worked this hard … in my whole life,” he said to Daisy between deep, shaky breaths.

“You were great,” Daisy said. “Emmy, too. Oh, look!”

Emmy lay on the barn ramp, too tired to turn back into a dragon, with her pink forked tongue lolling out of her mouth and her filthy furry side heaving.

“Poor thing! I’d better get some water for her, too,” Daisy said, taking the cup and returning to the pump.

“Get one for my shovel while you’re at it!” Jesse called out to Daisy, and she let out a nervous hoot of laughter.

Gingerly, Jesse left the shovel in the dirt and looked at the palms of his hands. They were dotted with white blisters. He blew on them. “Well, I think that’s enough digging for one day,” he said.

As if in response, the shovel pulled itself out of the dirt, moved back down into the hole, and continued digging all by itself. The next minute, the shovel began to make scraping noises.

“I wish I’d known it could dig by itself,” Jesse said as he peered down into the hole. “Is that wood?” he asked.

Daisy and Emmy, dragon-formed once again, went to the edge of the hole and stared down into it. The shovel had, indeed, uncovered something that looked very much like wood. The shovel stopped and stood aside, as if to give them all a chance to get a good look.

“It’s old wood,” Daisy said.

“Painted wood,” said Jesse.

The shovel went back to work now, only more slowly and carefully than before. It became obvious to the cousins and their dragon that the shovel was digging up a door: a plain wooden door, painted pale green. Soon the door was completely uncovered and surrounded on all four sides by a neat trench. It lay in the earth, an inviting rectangle set on a slight angle, with the high end sloping upward, toward the barn.

CHAPTER FIVE
THE DOOR IN THE EARTH

The shovel rose up in the air, spun around several times, and buried its blade once again in the mound of loose dirt as if to say, “Ta-da!”

Jesse waited a moment, then went over and, blisters and all, pulled the shovel out of the dirt. He
hefted it. “The magic’s gone,” he said to the other two in wonder. “It feels like a regular old shovel now.”

“That’s because it’s allllll done!” said Emmy happily.

“If it’s finished digging, maybe we should hang it back on the wall, where it belongs,” Daisy suggested.

“Okay,” said Jesse, taking the shovel back into the barn. When he rejoined them by the side of the hole, they continued to stand there and stare down.

“I guess we should get in there and check it out,” said Jesse finally.

“I guess,” said Daisy dubiously.

Jesse slid on his behind down into the hole. Standing in the trench to one side of the door, Jesse bent down and examined it. Where the doorknob should have been, there was only a hole. He put his eye to the hole and peered in. He had a sensation of open space. It was definitely a door that led somewhere. He put his nose to the hole and sniffed. It smelled musty, like roots and rot and something slightly fruity.

Jesse hooked two fingers into the knob hole and tugged hard. The door wouldn’t open. He ran his fingers along the side of the door and tried to lift
it like the lid of a large chest. But the door held fast.

Above him, on her hands and knees, Daisy stared down at him, with Emmy peering brightly over her shoulder. A grin slowly spread across Daisy’s face. “You know what you need?” she asked. “A
doorknob
! And I’ve got just the one for you.” She leaped to her feet with such enthusiasm that she sent a small shower of dirt pattering down onto Jesse’s face.

Daisy returned holding the green crystal doorknob from their Museum of Magic collection.

“One Magic Doorknob, coming up. Catch,” said Daisy, tossing it down to Jesse.

He caught it. Then he bent down and fit it into the hole in the door. It slipped in smoothly, fit perfectly, and turned with a smart, satisfying
click
. Jesse pulled the knob. The door opened a crack. Heart hammering, Jesse opened it the rest of the way with a loud, long, rusty creak. A gust of earthen-smelling air enveloped him. Through the open door he saw a set of stone stairs leading steeply downward into darkness.

“We’ve got some stairs here,” Jesse announced to the others. “Let’s see where they lead, okay?”

“Oh, goody!” Emmy called down to him.

When he didn’t hear anything from Daisy, he
turned and looked. She was rising slowly to her feet, backing away from the edge of the hole. Jesse scrambled out after her.

“Wait’ll you see how neat these stairs are, Daze!” Jesse said.

Daisy had a very odd look on her face.

“That knob … it fit the door like it was made for it. It’s magic!” Jesse paused, then asked, “What’s the matter, Daisy?”

“What if it’s the
wrong
kind of magic?” she asked in a small voice.

Jesse looked down through the doorway and then up at Daisy. “First the shovel, then the door, then the knob, now the stairs … Daisy, we can’t stop now. Don’t you see?
Going down the stairs is the right thing to do.
”

Daisy shivered and held her elbows tightly. “I never told you this, but when I was little, I got wedged behind Grandma’s claw-foot bathtub. I crawled back there to find my ball. I was stuck there for hours until they found me. They had to pour olive oil all over me to pull me out. Ever since then, I’ve had a thing about tight, dark spaces….” She looked into the doorway. “Like
that.
I don’t think I can go down there.”

“I can!” said Emmy merrily. “I think I can, I
think I can, I think I can,” she said as she slid into the hole, turned herself neatly around, and began to back down the stairs.

“Be very, very careful!” Daisy called to Emmy.

Emmy stopped chanting. “Don’t worry. I am a very careful dragon,” she called back. Then she resumed the chant as she lowered herself down the stairs.

The cousins watched her disappear, her golden voice echoing out of the darkness. “I think I can. I think I can….”

Then the chanting faded away.

Daisy gasped and fell to her knees, shouting through the doorway. “Emmy! Say something! Emmy? Jess, she’s not saying anything. I’m going down there.” Daisy swiveled onto her backside and was just about to slide down into the hole when Emmy’s eager face appeared in the doorway. Her great green eyes shone with wonder and excitement.

“Jesse, Daisy, come down now!” she said with such urgency that Jesse dropped down beside Daisy and they both scooted into the hole and through the door. Jesse went down the stairs first, but Daisy wasn’t far behind.

It was at least ten degrees cooler down there. The cousins found their arms immediately covered
with gooseflesh. Hugging themselves, they stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked around. They appeared to be in a small room.