The Dragon in the Volcano (16 page)

But Emmy calmly folded up her umbrella and tucked it under her arm. Far from melting, she danced and splashed in the spray like a kid running through a garden sprinkler. The alarm shut off. The spray died back and then cut off altogether.

“You’re okay,” said Jesse in the dripping silence.

“You see, Keepers? Not wearing the rain gear wasn’t just a fashion statement,” Emmy said. “I never even needed it in the first place.” She splashed through a puddle. “Water doesn’t melt me because I’m a lucky goose.”

“Duck,”
said Jesse. “It’s lucky duck and silly goose. Of which you are both.”

Zircon, who looked extremely uncomfortable in his lumpy rain gear, said, “Does that mean I can take this stuff off now?”

Emmy stopped splashing. “No, Zirky! I’m different. There are puddles everywhere, and you would perish the instant you disrobed. That goes for all of you. Keep your gear on!”

Jesse looked around. “I’m thinking that St. George and Sadra must have heard that alarm,” he said.

“They’ll probably be here any moment now,” Daisy said.

“Then let’s take to the ramparts,” Emmy called out.

“For the greater glory of Emerald!” Jesse cried, and the others joined in.

“How embarrassing!” Emmy said.

They entered the castle and marched down flooded onyx halls, where the glossy black ceilings still dripped. The fairies, fearful of so much wetness even in their rain capes, perched on the shoulders of the dragons as the dragons sloshed up a flooded staircase. They poured forth onto a rampart, dragons, fire fairies, and Keepers arranging themselves along the crenellated wall facing the entrance to the courtyard. Inspired by Emmy, they now carried giant purple umbrellas as shields. They waited, elbow to elbow, in tense silence. It wasn’t long before they heard a thundering on the drawbridge, followed by the creaking of the portcullis
being raised. The small army on the rampart squeezed their bloodstones and braced themselves for battle.

“Wait until they’re in the center of the courtyard to open fire!” Zircon said, passing the word down the line.

Moments later, Malachite and her rumble splashed into the courtyard wearing black waterproof jackboots up to their stout middles.

Malachite looked around.

“Hey, you! Malachite!” Emmy shouted down. “Up here!”

The great dragon’s head jerked up, and then she smiled, as if the sight of Emmy made her day. “Emerald of Leandra!” she called out. “We meet again. I was hoping you would follow me here. For a powerful flying dragon, you are almost tiresomely predictable.”

“Won’t you be surprised,” Emmy muttered under her breath.

“I see your Keepers have joined you, in spite of my efforts to hold them at bay,” said Malachite.

“So
you
were the one who was blocking our view of the Fire Screen!” Jesse said.

“You probably stole the purple canteen, as well,” Daisy added.

“Apparently, I should have done more,” said Malachite. “I underestimated you.”

“That’s right,” Jesse said. “We know everything. We know you’ve thrown your lot in with St. George and Sadra.”

Malachite said, “And why shouldn’t I?”

“Your father’s going to be awfully disappointed in you,” said Daisy with a wag of her head.

“I have been a disappointment to my father since the day I hatched. But I don’t need his help or his approval anymore. With the help of my new boons St. George and his consort.”

Daisy was just beginning to feel sorry for Malachite when Zircon roared, “Enough talk! We came here to fight, not talk! Fire when ready!”

“Give me your best!” Malachite replied. “I doubt it will be good enough.”

Zircon belched a wave of flame that licked down the rampart, ran along the ground, and hissed at the feet of the rumble. Then the firestorm broke out, with the dragons on the rampart exchanging rounds with the rumble in the courtyard. All seven fire fairies flitted over the wall and came around behind the rumble, spitting small flames at them from behind and then dancing out of range of their swiping talons.

“Pssst,” said Emmy, drawing Jesse and Daisy into the shelter of a turret.

“We’re not flamers, so this is no place for us,” Emmy said. “Let’s go be plumbers!”

Jesse and Daisy followed Emmy back down the stairs and then down another set of stairs, all dripping water, leading into the basement of the castle. At the bottom of the stairs was the mouth of a pipe as big around as a water storage tank. Tracks across the basement floor led from a wide opening in the side of the castle into the massive pipe.

“Let’s check it out, Keepers,” said Emmy. “Maybe we can figure out a good way to block the pipe.”

“When I was a toddler,” Daisy said, “I used to throw my socks in the toilet and then push the flusher. I was little and didn’t know any better. I thought it was fun. It used to clog the pipes and make everything back up and overflow, and my parents would have to call in the plumber. It happened a whole bunch of times, until I finally grew out of it. That’s when Grandma started sending me the socks. It was to replace the ones I flushed.”

“So that’s how the sock tradition began,” Jesse said. “I always wondered.”

“Daisy, you are brilliant!” Emmy said. “I can conjure more socks and block the pipes, just like
you used to when you were little. Come on! Let’s go down the pipe and see what we can do.”

The pipe might have been large enough to fit Emmy, but it still looked dark and creepy to Daisy. She shook her head vigorously. “Not me. You guys go,” she said. “I’ll stay here and stand guard.”

Jesse hesitated. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay here alone?” he asked.

“Better than I’d be with you guys down there,” Daisy said with certainty.

“Okay,” Jesse said, giving her a last worried look before disappearing behind Emmy into the mouth of the pipe.

Daisy took a look around. There was a wide square opening in the side of the castle, like a cargo bay in a warehouse or a picture window without any glass in it. She went to the edge of it and looked out. The tracks they had seen from across the way wound down to the bottom of the grotto. St. George and Sadra had hauled the gemstones up here on the tracks and then unloaded them and flushed them down the pipe. It was a long trip up from the bottom of the grotto to where she was standing.

Then Daisy heard the last sound she wanted to hear: the sound of a train of gondolas groaning and rattling up the tracks from the grotto below.

Daisy’s mind raced. She knew the rain gear and the umbrella were probably not going to offer enough of a defense against whatever was coming. She quickly conjured a suit of mail over her rain gear. She didn’t care if she looked lumpy and ridiculous.
Wasn’t it better to
be
smart and safe than to
look
smart and chic?

Daisy’s thoughts jumped to weapons. The bow and arrows she had made for herself weren’t going to do much good. The angle was too steep, and a bow and arrows were of no use in close combat. So she conjured up a sword like Jesse’s. Next, she made a scabbard that hung low on her left hip so that she could reach over with her right hand and remove the sword in one smooth move.

Drawing her new weapon, Daisy kissed the blade and whispered, “For the greater glory of the Order of Emerald. All hail Emerald!” to give herself courage. Hilt braced in both hands, she positioned herself to one side of the bay and waited as the sound of the gondolas rattling up the side of the grotto grew louder with every passing moment.

Suddenly, four red-and-white-striped fire salamanders slithered into the room and looked around hungrily, as if someone had told them there would be food waiting for them at the top of the tracks. Hitched to the salamanders was the long train of gemstone-filled gondolas winding down the side of the grotto.

“Sorry, fellows, but you’re about to lose your load,” Daisy said as she hacked through the harness that bound the fire salamanders to the gondola
train. The four freed salamanders immediately scuttled away.

The first car of the gondola teetered just below the lip of the bay. It was overflowing with sapphires that looked like pieces of a summer sky. Daisy resisted the temptation to run her fingers through them. Instead, she leaned against the car with her full weight and shoved. Gravity did the rest of the work as she stood back and watched.

The long train began to slide down the track, slowly at first, then faster, until the cars collided into each other. The train buckled off the rails. Cars crashed and spilled down the side of the grotto with a noise like an earthquake. Moments later, an enormous multicolored cloud of dust rose up and filled the air with swirling sparkles.

Daisy stood on the edge of the bay, her sword still drawn, and viewed with satisfaction the destruction she had, single-handedly, just wrought. And so easily, too! How she wished Emmy and Jesse had been there to see!

But Daisy’s moment was short-lived, for the very next instant, Sadra leaped up into the bay. She was like a purple raptor, her red hair beneath the hood glittering with gem dust. Daisy backed away from her. She could almost
see
the fumes of fury rippling off the witch.

Sadra’s yellow eyes narrowed.
“Why, you little witch!”
she whispered.

“Isn’t that the cauldron calling the kettle black?” Daisy said, pleased at her cleverness in a pinch.

Eying Daisy’s sword, Sadra conjured one of her own. “Yours is quartz. Mine is diamond!” Sadra informed her. “Nothing’s harder or sharper than diamonds. That’s why they’re my favorite stone.”

“For Emerald!”
Daisy cried, lunging boldly at Sadra, but the witch parried with a slash of her diamond blade so swift that Daisy didn’t even realize what had happened until she looked down and saw that the sleeve of her raincoat had been neatly sheared off, leaving her arm bare to the elbow. Luckily, it was her left arm, and she could hold it behind her back to protect it while she continued to fend off Sadra with the sword in her right hand.

“En garde!”
Sadra cried triumphantly as she transformed her sword into a hot-pink dolphin-shaped water pistol.

“Touché!”
Daisy countered immediately, turning her sword into a silver umbrella. Unfortunately, it was a closed umbrella. Infuriated, Daisy struggled to open it with one hand, but she needed both hands.

“This will teach you to meddle in the affairs of
those far greater than you, little girl!” Sadra cried as she let loose a powerful jet of water from the plastic dolphin’s mouth.

Daisy felt an odd burning pain in her exposed left arm before it went completely numb.

Meanwhile, Emmy and Jesse had found the place where the pipe came flush against a long vertical crack in the onyx wall. It reminded Jesse of the crack in the wall at the bottom of the crater lake that had admitted them to the Fiery Realm on Friday. “This is it,” he said to Emmy. “This is the membrane.”

Emmy started to wedge lava socks into the crack in the wall. Jesse pitched in, and they were both working as fast as they could to stuff the crack when they heard Daisy scream. Jesse and Emmy stopped working and stared at each other. Daisy
never
screamed. They dropped their socks and tore back up the pipe toward the castle basement.

The first thing they saw was Sadra, standing halfway up the staircase, besieged by a ring of fire fairies. She was squirting them with the pink dolphin, but protected by their rain capes, they were plucking at her purple fire serpent coat and pulling off little pieces of it so that they could scorch the exposed flesh beneath. The witch was slapping at
them, screeching in pain and anger. She dropped the pink dolphin and it clattered down the steps.

“Where’s Daisy?” Jesse said, looking around.

He heard soft moaning, then he saw her, lying at the edge of the cargo bay looking so pale he barely recognized her at first. An umbrella with bent spokes lay on the floor next to her like a large black crow with broken wings. She was holding her left arm and slapping at it with her right.

“What’s wrong, Daze?” Jesse asked.

“My arm’s asleep,” she said, continuing to slap it. “I can’t get it to wake up.”

“You mean you’ve got pins and needles?” Jesse asked.

“It’s worse than that,” Daisy said. “Sadra hit it with her water pistol and now it feels heavy … almost dead.”

“You are lucky you didn’t lose it. Oh, my poor dear Keeper!” Emmy cried out, scooping Daisy gently up in her arms.

“Make the feeling come back,” Daisy said softly.

“Yeah,” said Jesse. “Fix up her arm with dragon magic. Drown her in dragon tears and heal her the way you did yourself.”

Emmy shook her head. “I wish I could. But dragon tears can’t fix mortal wounds.”

Jesse looked helplessly out at the grotto. “Then I’ll get a mess of jadeite. How about that? Jadeite heals, right, Daze?” he asked his cousin, who looked so small lying in Emmy’s arms.

Daisy nodded.

“Jadeite will only soothe her nerves,” Emmy said softly. “It won’t bring the feeling back in the arm.”

“You mean my arm’s going to stay dead?” Daisy asked.