The Dragon in the Sea (15 page)

“Only one way to find out.” Jesse swam to the trapdoor. There was a small hook on one side of it. He put his finger in and lifted the door.

Coral Driftwood, with a bright green face and red-rimmed eyes, swam up into the cabin.

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN
PLAY BALL!

“Look out, she’s a Red Eyes!” Jesse cried, grabbing Daisy and swimming away from Coral.

“Yeah, right,” said Coral. She winked at them and gave her seashell necklace a little tug. “Hey, dudes! What took you so long? I’ve been knocking
on that hatch forever. I thought you’d never come. Star sent me.”

“You mean you’re not a Red Eyes?” Jesse said meekly.

“About as much as you are a merboy,” Coral said. “Did I wake you up?”

“As a matter of fact,” Daisy confessed sheepishly, “we fell asleep.”

“I don’t blame you!” Coral said. “It’s hot as Davy Jones’s mud bath down here.”

“How did you know where to find us?” Daisy asked.

“Star said they were taking you to a tug,” Coral answered. “This is the only tug down here. Best part about it is the nice big gaping hole in the aft hull.” Coral swam over and looked at the egg, an expression of awe on her face. She didn’t have a fish tail, but she did have gills behind her ears and her feet ended in fins that hadn’t come from any diving store.

Coral turned to Jesse and Daisy and said, “It’s getting close to hatching, isn’t it?”

“We think so,” said Daisy. “It can’t be moved. Besides, it’s too hot to handle.”

“Dudes, it
has
to be moved,” Coral said. “My mom says that if the egg hatches in the Coral Jungle, it will be stillborn, which would be a worldclass
bummer. So we
have
to get it out. We can handle it. I came prepared.” She opened a pouch on her belt and pulled out a bulky silver mitt, the heavy-duty kind made for lifting piping-hot pans out of the oven.

“Where did you get that?” Jesse asked.

“Dude, where else? From our kitchen,” Coral said.

“That beach shack actually has a kitchen?” Daisy said.

Coral leveled her blue eyes at them. “You have no idea what gnarly wonders that sugar shack holds,” she said. “You’ve been on
The Golden Dragon
, right?”

Jesse and Daisy nodded.

“Well, then, imagine what my mom can fit into a beach shack in the side of a cliff.”

“Wow,” said Jesse. “I want to play at
your
house after school.”

“My mom’s powers are bangin’. But enough talk. Let’s book. We can leave the way I came in.”

“Won’t the Red Eyes see us?” Daisy asked.

“I doubt it. They’ve got their beady little red-rimmed eyes glued to the pilothouse. They’ll never know we’ve left until we’re long gone. Come on, if we don’t show up soon, my mom will worry and she doesn’t need the agg.”

“How did you make your face green and your eyes red?” Daisy asked. “Magic?”

Coral snorted with mirth. “No, waterproof makeup.”

“Wait!” said Jesse. “We can’t leave.”

“You heard her, Jess,” said Daisy. “The egg’s in immediate danger.”

“Emmy’s in just as much danger and we can’t leave her down here,” Jesse said.

“Who’s Emmy?” Coral asked.

“Our dragon,” Jesse and Daisy said together.

“You dudes have a dragon?” Coral asked. “Like an already hatched one?”

“Six months old and as big as two elephants,” Daisy said.

“That sneaky little Star never said anything about
another
dragon,” Coral said.

“Yeah, well,” said Jesse, “Maldew’s got her trapped in a diving helmet.”

“Cowabunga! That must be some big diving helmet!” Coral said.

“It’s a long story,” said Jesse.

“Two dragons in trouble at the same time!” said Daisy, wagging her head. “What are we going to do?”

“Okay, okay, let’s all just try and keep it real,”
said Coral, looking from one cousin to the next, then returning to Jesse. “Dude, you look like the Man with the Plan.”

“Well, as a matter of fact …” Jesse smiled slowly, reaching into the pouch of his sweatshirt. The softball was still there. He had retrieved it from the abalone shell after the mollycoddle. He took out the softball now and showed it to Coral and Daisy. “Dudettes,” he said to them, “it’s time to play ball.”

They put their heads together and, by the light of the swarming phosphairies, plotted out their plan as quickly as they could, knowing how pressed for time they were. When they were finished, Coral carefully picked up the real egg and held it in the oven mitt.

Jesse said, “I’ll take the backpack. You’re going to be okay here alone, Daise?” It was less a question than a hope.

“Totally,” Daisy said. “I have my trusty phony Thunder Egg, don’t I?” She pointed to the softball, which was now nestled in place of the real egg in the center of an old life preserver.

“Take this, too,” Jesse said. He removed their grandfather’s boatswain’s pipe from around his neck and draped it around hers.

“Remember what Polly told us,” Jesse said. “Should you happen to find yourself beset by perils, blow on it good and hard: one long burst, two short ones. Help, in some shape or form, is bound to come a-running.”

“Got it,” said Daisy.

“Think you’ll remember how to use it if the time comes?” he asked.

“I’ll be fine, Jess. You guys need to go on and git before that egg hatches. Take the phosphairies with you.”

As if hearing their cue, the phosphairies swam back into the conch shells. Daisy watched Jesse and Coral swim slowly down through the trapdoor into pitch darkness through which the conch shell lanterns cut two bright green swaths. Then she lowered the hatch and got busy. First she arranged a pile of kelp until it looked like the body of Jesse sleeping in a heap; then she got a razor clam.

“Sorry, ball,” she said to the softball as she sliced a jagged hole in one side of it. Then she went to the cabin door and pounded on it.

When Rock opened the door, Daisy was holding the “egg” in a swaddling of kelp. “Finally!” she said.

Rock peered into the cabin behind her. Without the phosphairies, the cabin was dark. Daisy indicated the mound of kelp in one corner. “The White
Eyes is seasick,” she said. “He needs to be left alone.”

Rock’s eyes widened in confusion.

“Go and tell Maldew his egg is about to hatch. He won’t want to miss it,” Daisy said firmly.

Rock stammered, “But … but …”

“But
nothing
, Rock!” Daisy barked at him. “We need to get Maldew over here pronto, before this egg cracks wide open.”

“But Maldew can’t move!” Rock sputtered.

“What’s going on here!” Marino swam up, shouldering Rock aside.

“She says the egg is hatching soon,” Rock said. “Maldew must see it.”

“Let me see,” Marino said.

“Stay back!” Daisy held the kelp-swaddled ball to her chest. “It might hatch at any moment, and when it does, you will be blasted to smithereens.”

Marino gave her a sidelong look but eased away from her. “Where is the other White Eyes?” he demanded.

“He is seasick,” Rock said, gesturing into the cabin.

Daisy’s heart lurched as Marino swam past her into the cabin toward the mound of kelp.

“I wouldn’t get too close!” Daisy warned. “Seasickness is highly contagious.”

Marino lifted some tendrils of sea kelp, then started to sift rapidly through it, sending kelp swirling through the water. He swung around to Daisy. “Where is he?” he said.

Daisy thought fast. “He’s vanished. I turned him into a pile of kelp. I’m a sea witch. And if you don’t bring Maldew, I’ll turn you into kelp, too.”

But Marino was back to shuffling through the kelp. And it wasn’t long before he got down to the hatch in the floor. He snatched it open and disappeared into the darkness below.

Moments later, he swam back out of the cabin, his face grim. “He escaped through a hole. The master is right. You are a liar!” Marino said.

Daisy said with mounting ferocity, “Yes, but I’m not lying when I say that this egg is about to hatch, and if Maldew isn’t here when it does, he will not be its master.
I
will, and the first thing I will command it to do is destroy all the Red Eyes!”

The Red Eyes absorbed this information with blank faces before panic set in and they started to jabber among themselves.

“Quiet!” Marino shouted. “I can’t think!” He hunched his shoulders in thought. After a bit, he said to the Red Eyes who had been guarding the egg, “You four take the White Eyes and the egg to
the master. The rest of you, come with me.”

“Where are we going, Marino?” Rock asked.

“After the White Eyes. When I find him, I will turn him.”

“Turn him?” Daisy bleated.

“Red!”
said Marino.

Daisy closed her eyes and prayed that Jesse and Coral were out of the Coral Jungle by now. In the meantime, she had no choice but to carry out her part of the plan and hope for the best.

With two Red Eyes behind her and two leading the way, Daisy set out for the Inner Circle.

When they got there, Emmy was still where she had been when Daisy last saw her, huddled in the ancient diving helmet. She lifted her head when she saw Daisy and waved a feeble fin.

“Just a little while longer,” Daisy whispered to her, even though she doubted Emmy could hear through the iron and glass that imprisoned her and the junkyard of iron that surrounded her.

“Well, White Eyes,” Maldew bubbled at her. “What news?”

“The news is good,” Daisy said, lifting the softball toward the Mermage’s mouth.

“It has cracked!” Maldew said in excitement.

“That’s why I had the Red Eyes bring me to you,” Daisy said. “It could hatch anytime now.”

“Where are the other White Eyes?” Maldew said.

One of the Red eyes started to say something but Daisy cut him off. “Don’t worry about them,” she told Maldew. “I’m the White Eyes you want for the job.”

“Is there anything you need, White Eyes?” Maldew asked.

Daisy had no idea what to say to this. She was supposed to be an expert. On TV and in movies, people assisting in births always asked for hot water and strips of clean cloth. If there wasn’t any cloth, they asked for newspapers, which Daisy had never really understood. But none of these items were available at the bottom of the sea, so she said, “We’re good. All we can do is watch and wait and hope for a healthy hatchling.”

“You had better hope,” said Maldew in a menacing tone.

“I know, I know,” Daisy said wearily. “Otherwise the consequences will be unspeakable.”

Daisy made the egg hop around in her hand like a hot potato. “It’s really beginning to heat up. I’d stand back if I were you. If it explodes, I can’t be responsible for the damages. Oh, that’s right, you can’t stand back. You can’t move. Well, then, I’ll stand back. Whoopsie!”

Daisy deliberately opened her hands and let the egg drop. It fell slowly through the water and bounced back up from the seafloor. “Wow,” she said, catching it one-handed. “This dragon egg’s pretty bouncy. You’d think it was a ball or something.”

Maldew bristled and the water around him boiled. “It
is
a ball. White Eyes, you have fooled me. WHERE IS THE REAL EGG? TELL ME BEFORE I STRANGLE YOU WITH SEA SNAKES!”

“I could have sworn this was the way out,” Coral said to Jesse.

“I think we’ve been swimming in circles. I’m pretty sure we’ve passed that twist of coral before,” Jesse said. “I remember thinking it looked like a charred pelican.”

Coral bit her lip and looked around. “I don’t get it. The widening spot that leads to the exit we always use is supposed to be right there.” Where Coral pointed there was an impenetrable thicket of coral.

“Maybe the stuff moves around,” Jesse offered.

“It never has before,” Coral said.

“Is it me or is the whole jungle thicker than it was before?” Jesse said.

“Now that you mention it,” Coral said, looking warily about her, “I am feeling kind of dizzy.”

“Maldew did this thing earlier,” Jesse said. “He sucked a bunch of iron out of the jungle. All sorts of things were blowing around. It was like this huge undersea hurricane. Maybe he rearranged the jungle when he did that.”

“Maybe,” Coral said.

“Also, we got him really mad,” Jesse said. “Maybe when he gets really mad, the coral gets denser.”

Coral nodded. “Okay, then maybe we should swim
up
instead of
out
of the jungle. This egg isn’t getting any cooler.”

They both looked down at the egg in the oven mitt. It was giving off a dull red glow.

“We’d better get moving,” Jesse said.

But when they began the upward swim, they saw that the coral was every bit as dense above them as it was around them. Still, they had no choice but to begin weaving in and out of the coral, squeezing through the narrow places between branches. It wasn’t long before Jesse’s arms were covered with stinging welts.

When the six Red Eyes came crashing down upon them through the thicket, Coral was so startled she nearly dropped the egg.

“Watch it, dudes!” Coral yelled. “We’ve got a live egg here.”

Marino said, “That is not the egg. The egg is back with the other White Eyes.”