The Dragon in the Sea (8 page)

“I don’t know, Chief. I’ve never swum in one,” Fluke said.

“But in
theory
, it’s delightful, don’t you agree? Altogether less starchy and dense than the salt water,” said Yar.

“Quite so, although I delight in the density, don’t you?” said Fluke.

“That I do, Cap’n, especially because you’re here,” said Yar with a twinkle in his golden eyes. “We call this next portal the Armory.”

This portal was made of charred wood, and it opened to Fluke’s touch with a long, loud creak. They peered in and saw heaps of weapons lying on acres and acres of ocean floor.

“Doesn’t look like a good place for a dragon nursery to me,” Daisy whispered to Jesse.

Yar said, “This portal is my personal favorite. I’ve been known to while away hours here. One has
only to touch a relic to relive some of the most rousing sea battles of all time: Young Caesar battling pirates in the Med, Nelson on the bounding Main, U-boats in the North Atlantic. Good show!”

Under other circumstances, Jesse would have loved to stay here and “relive” a few great sea battles. But he wasn’t here for his personal amusement. Then he spied it, a pile of barnacle-covered Revolutionary War solid-shot cannonballs. It struck him that each one was the approximate size and shape of the missing Thunder Egg.

Daisy, thinking the exact same thing, had already swum through the portal and was digging through the pile of cannonballs in search of one with golden speckles.

Suddenly, her left arm started to tingle and heat up. She stopped what she was doing, shoved up her sleeve, and stared at her arm. Each of the hundreds of fine white hairs had a little tiny flame on it. It still worked, even in the water! Her Fire Arm
—a war wound sustained in a battle in the Fiery Realm—only acted up when Emmy needed her or was in trouble.

Daisy looked around for Emmy. The dragon hovered in the open portal. Her red scales had faded to pinkish gray, her mouth was full of foam, and she was making a harsh hissing sound.

Daisy dropped the cannonball she was holding and swam back out of the Armory to Emmy’s side, where Jesse was already tending to her.

“It must be all the iron in there,” Jesse said.

Daisy said to their hosts, “Can you please shut the Armory door? Our dragon fish is highly allergic to iron.”

“You don’t say?” said Yar.

“I thought only dragons were allergic to iron,” said Fluke.

“Well, one learns something new every day,” said Yar, closing the door tightly. “So sorry, all! I trust the little duffer will make a full recovery?”

Emmy was already beginning to look better. And the flames on Daisy’s arm had died down.

“Let’s move on, shall we?” Fluke said.

Jesse whispered to Daisy, “They’d never be stupid enough to hide the egg in the Armory.”

“You
hope
,” Daisy whispered back.

The next portal was painted bright blue with a picture of a polar bear balancing on a red ball while juggling pins. It proved to be the polar bear tank of a large zoo. Through the murky, fishy-smelling water, enormous gray-white bears glided as gracefully as bulky ballerinas. Beyond a rail, they could make out the feet of the visitors, women and children and stroller wheels, gathered around the pool.

“They join us up on deck now and then, the polar bears,” Fluke explained.

“We provide them with a bit of relief from always being in the public eye,” Yar said. “Helps them cope with being in captivity, don’t you know?”

Jesse cocked an eyebrow at Daisy. They both shook their heads, silently agreeing that this would be a very poor place to hide a dragon egg. What if the zookeeper found it while he or she was cleaning the tank?

“Ot ere,” said Emmy with an impatient shake of her head.

“No, it’s not here. But we have to exhaust all the possibilities,” Daisy said.

“Aste of ime,” Emmy said.

“It may be a waste of time,” said Jesse, “but it’s the best we can do.”

The next portal was an ordinary gray door in an office building. The plain block letters on it spelled out LOST AND FOUND.

“Things are looking up,” Jesse said, rubbing his hands together.

“Why so?” Daisy asked.

Jesse explained. “We
lost
our egg, didn’t we? So we might
find
it here.”

The three of them swam through the office
door after Fluke and Yar. They set about browsing the aisles of neat piles arranged according to category: life preservers from a thousand different ships and boats, wristwatches, footwear (usually singletons), toy boats, sunglasses, kites, and balls. In the last pile, Jesse spied something that looked like a Thunder Egg, but it turned out to be a soggy old softball.

“You know,” Jesse said, tossing it in his hand and watching it rise and fall in slow motion, “I think this might be the one I lost last summer.”

“Then by all means,” said Fluke, “feel free to claim it.”

Jesse tucked the softball into the pouch of his hoodie and couldn’t help remembering how, when he had first found Emmy’s Thunder Egg, he had slid it into the pouch of the same sweatshirt.

Fluke permitted only the briefest glimpse of the next portal, which was studded with gold and silver and precious stones. Jesse and Daisy got a fleeting impression of open treasure chests overflowing with ancient coins, jeweled crowns, and toppling piles of gold bars. The same thought ran through both Jesse’s and Daisy’s heads: Dragons thrived on gold and silver and precious stones. This would be the perfect hiding place.

“Buried and sunken treasure,” Yar explained briefly. “This room’s only for special occasions, as you might imagine.”

Jesse and Daisy stared at the closed door and wondered how and when they might get a chance to conduct a thorough search of this portal.

When Jesse turned around, he was startled to find that they had come to the end of the hallway. Moments before, the hallway had seemed unending, but now it had somehow shortened itself.

“Here we are,” Yar said.

They hovered before a lacquered door with a polished brass knob and a plaque upon which was etched in fancy lettering
CAPTAIN BELLEWEATHER
.

“Is this the captain’s personal portal?” Daisy asked.

“It’s the
door
to the captain’s
cabin
,” Fluke said. “Would you care to inspect it while we’re here?”

“Ess,” said Emmy emphatically.

Jesse and Daisy nodded in agreement. Perhaps the captain’s cabin would tell them something about the character of its former occupant.

Yar swung open the door and stood at attention next to it. Fluke bowed and waved the three of them in. They floated over the high threshold and entered the cabin.

It was a proper captain’s quarters with a big
square table strewn with charts with a brass lamp hanging over it. On top of the charts was a navigational tool, called a sextant, which Jesse recognized from the one in Polly’s house. There was a high row of windows, with a porthole on either side. Standing before the windows was a long brass telescope mounted on a tripod that was bolted to the floor.

Jesse looked through the telescope and saw a rainbow of water sprites streaming past, riding dolphins. The sprites whipped their tasseled hands over their heads like rodeo cowboys swinging flaming lassos.

“Try the captain’s chair on for size, why don’t you?” Yar said to Jesse.

Jesse wasn’t particularly interested but he didn’t want to be rude. He sat in the captain’s chair and gave it an obligatory swivel. “Very nice,” he said politely.

Yar and Fluke watched him indulgently.

“Jolly good, what?” Yar said to Fluke.

Fluke nodded. “Now the pet,” she said.

Emmy flitted over to the chair and circled above it, then settled down in the seat, fluffing her fins like a red hen.

Fluke and Yar stared at Emmy long and hard; then a knowing look passed between them.

“What’s wrong?” said Daisy.

“Oh, nothing at all,” said Yar. “Thought I felt a tremor is all. Underwater quakes, don’t you know?”

“How about you, miss?” said Fluke to Daisy.

Daisy took her turn in the captain’s chair. “I could get used to this,” she said as, tail tucked neatly beneath her, she giddily swiveled around and around.

“What’s the big deal with the chair?” Jesse muttered to himself as he turned back to examine the wooden counter that ran beneath the windows.

There were quills and pots of ink and a leather portfolio incised with gold lettering that spelled out the initials
M.B
. He stopped when he came to a large crystal sphere on a platform carved from pink coral. He tried to lift it but it seemed to be fastened to the counter. While it might be some nautical instrument he had never seen before, he was pretty sure it was a crystal ball. Suddenly, he was seized by curiosity.

Jesse looked around. Seeing the others were distracted, he rubbed his hands on the crystal the way he had seen gypsy fortune-tellers do it. In the crystal ball’s cloudy depths, the Driftwood family appeared, Bill and Mitzi, with their son and daughter, Reef and Coral. They were standing around the fire on the beach in front of their ramshackle abode, toasting marshmallows. They looked
up and smiled and waved at him, like a family in an old-fashioned home movie mugging for the camera.

Jesse was just about to wave back when Fluke’s voice broke in upon him as he said, “Your cabin is right next door and ready for your inspection.”

“Lead the way,” Daisy said.

Before Jesse could show her what he had seen in the crystal ball, Daisy rose from the captain’s chair with a neat flip of her fins. The others all swam out of the captain’s quarters. Reluctantly, Jesse left the crystal ball and followed.

To the port side of the captain’s quarters was a second lacquered cabin door with a knob of gleaming gold. The plaque on one side of the door said
HERS
. The plaque on the other side said
HIS
.

With a polite bow to each of them, Fluke said, “I trust you will find everything to your satisfaction?”

Jesse put his hand on the golden knob, opened the door, and swam inside. The cabin was divided exactly down the middle. The “His” side was done in shades of blue and the “Hers” side in sea green and deep purple. If you excluded electronic gadgets, there was everything that a boy like Jesse could ever want on his side. It was all compact and built-in, from the bunk to the table beneath the stern window where there was a wooden puzzle of
a Man-o’-War jellyfish. There were trays of paints and boxes of wooden models of dolphins and flying fish and fantastic submarines and diving bells.

Above the table, a bookcase was built into the wall and contained every book that Jesse had ever read and loved, from
The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet
to the Chronicles of Narnia to
Ozma of Oz
, beautiful linen-bound editions with gold lettering on the spines. There were also books he had never heard of, with intriguing titles like
The Griffin and the Walrus
and
Norie, Nereid of the North Sea
.

The picture gallery on Daisy’s side of the cabin featured prints of seashells:
Periwinkle
and
Cowry, Cup-and-Saucer
and
Angel Wings, Horn
and
Scallop
. Above a table beneath whose glass top seaweed was pressed, she, too, had a bookcase built into the bulkhead.

Jesse and Daisy were just beginning to browse the books in her collection when Fluke appeared in the open doorway. “Now, we’d like to ask that Emmy come with us,” she said.

“Why?” Jesse asked.

“Where are you taking her?” Daisy asked.

“If you’ll come along, I think you’ll find all your questions will be answered,” Yar said.

Exchanging wary looks, Jesse and Daisy, with
Emmy between them, swam out of their cabin and followed Fluke and Yar back down the passageway in the direction of the amidships hatch.

“I wonder what they have in mind?” Daisy asked in a low voice.

When Jesse didn’t answer, she turned to look for him. But he was no longer at her side. What had happened to Jesse?

C
HAPTER
S
IX
THE SECOND EGG