The Search for the Red Dragon (3 page)

“Jack?” Charles ventured. “Jack, we’ve come. It’s Charles and John.”

Jack tilted his head slightly, acknowledging their presence, but he did not turn around. Instead he asked a question.

“Was it real? Did it all really happen, after all?”

It took a moment for them to realize what he was asking.

“Yes,” said John. “If you’re asking what I think you are.”

“So…the Archipelago of Dreams…the
Imaginarium Geographica
…”

“Yes,” John repeated. “It’s all real.”

Jack turned to look at them, his face inscrutable. “Do you have the atlas with you? Can—can I see it?”

“It’s, ah, it’s in the backseat of the car,” John admitted sheepishly.

“In a lockbox, or a leather bag, I’d assume?”

“No,” said Charles. “It’s protected by a thick layer of lectures on Ancient Icelandic.”

Jack blinked and then snorted. “And they call you the Caretaker Principia. Did you at least mix in a few papers on old Anglo-Saxon? Or are you giving your professorship short shrift too?”

John and Charles stared at their friend for a moment before the somber expressions on their faces were broken by broad, transcendent smiles.

“Of course it happened, my good fellow,” said Charles, clasping Jack by the shoulders. “Our adventure in the Archipelago of Dreams has become the stuff of legend. And you are one of the heroes.”

Jack embraced each of his friends, then stepped back to look at them. “Charles,” he said with a hint of teasing, “you’ve gotten
old
.”

“Editors don’t grow
old
,” Charles retorted. “They just become more
distinguished
.”

“And you,” he said to John, “how are you finding teaching at your old stomping grounds?”

“I like it as much as I expected,” said John. “Although I think I’d prefer to be left alone to write if I have another crop of students like the current bunch. Hardly an inquisitive or creative mind among them.”

“It could be worse,” said Charles. “You could be teaching at Cambridge.”

At the mention of their old joke, the three friends doubled over in laughter. But soon enough a more serious mood settled upon them again, and the haunted look Jack had worn when they entered returned to his face.

“Why have you called us, Jack?” John asked. “What’s happened?”

“It’s hard to say,” Jack replied. “I came up here with Warnie to work on some of my poems—and perhaps a book or three—but several weeks ago I began to have nightmares, and in the last few days, they’ve gotten worse.”

“Warnie said you called out Aven’s name,” said Charles.

“Yes,” admitted Jack, wincing visibly. “I’ve tried not to think much about her since our return to England—but I’ve been dreaming about her. I—I think she’s in terrible trouble of some kind. But I can’t say what.”

“Hmm,” John mused. “What else has been in these dreams?”

“Well, dreamstuff, naturally,” said Jack. “Things that come bubbling up from one’s subconscious. Indians, and crows, and strangely…children.”

“Do tell,” John said, considering his own recent dreams. “If there were children, I’m assuming there were also…”

“…Giants,” finished Charles. “If there were children, then there were also Giants. I’ve been having the same dream.”

“As have I,” said John.
About the Giants, but not about Aven,
he said silently to himself.

Before any of them could elaborate further, they were interrupted by a knock at the study door.

“I’m dreadfully sorry to interrupt,” said Warnie, “but it seems we’ve, ah…” He paused and bit his lip, as a curious and puzzled expression came over his face.

“Warn?” said Jack. “What is it? What’s happened?”

“Oh, nothing bad—I think,” Warnie replied. “But it appears we have an angel in the garden.”

There was indeed, as Warnie had surmised, an angel in the cottage’s garden; or at least, something that was as close to a description of an angel as one might give if one was unaccustomed to finding such things in one’s garden.

Sitting in a disarray of just-blooming bluebells, mud, and free-floating feathers was a small girl. A small girl with
wings
.

Her face was smudged with dirt, and her clothing, a simple brown tunic, belted at the waist and across the shoulders, was tattered and torn. Her wings were spread out behind her in a manner that was more awkward than graceful, and they were bare in patches where the feathers had detached themselves in an apparently difficult landing.

“More of a cherub, really, don’t you think, John?” said Charles.

“And you would know this how?” asked John. “When have you ever seen a cherub?”

“Look,” said Charles, “when he said ‘angel,’ I was expecting something a little more grown-up. This cherub can’t be more than five years old.”

“I’m eight, I’ll have you know,” the girl piped up. “Next Thursday, anyway. And I’m not a cherub or an angel, whatever those are. I’m Laura Glue, and Laura Glue is me.”

“Your name is Glue?” asked Charles.

“Laura Glue,” the girl protested. “There is a difference, you know.”

She stood up and dusted off her clothes, all the while keeping a wary eye on her accidental hosts.

“How did you get here?” Warnie asked, looking around. “Are
you with your parents, or on a school outing, perhaps? This is a private garden, not a picnic spot.”

Laura Glue looked at him like he was speaking Swahili. “I flew here, I’ll have you know. What d’you think the wings are for, anyways?”

Jack began examining Laura Glue’s wings, and quickly discovered they were not naturally hers, but were in fact artificial. Delicately made, of extraordinarily inventive design, but constructs nevertheless.

“Hey!” Laura Glue cried, stepping back defensively. “You should ask permission b’fore poking someone’s wings, y’know.”

“My apologies,” said Jack with a deferential bow.

“’S okay,” Laura Glue said. “Longbeards
never
ask.”

“I would not have been able to tell,” said Charles. “From a distance they looked like they were quite real.”

“Uncle Daedalus makes ’em for all the Lost Boys,” the girl said proudly, “but ol’ Laura Glue’s the only one what can fly with ’em. This far, anyways.”

“Uncle Daedalus?” John exclaimed. “You don’t mean to tell me these wings were made by the Greek Daedalus of myth? The one who lost his son Icarus when the boy flew too close to the sun?”

“What, are you daft?” said Laura Glue. “He’d have to be a thousand years old.”

“Exactly,” Charles agreed.

“You’re thinkin’ of Daedalus the Elder,” explained Laura Glue. “The one what built my wings is Daedalus the Younger.”

“A descendant?” John asked, teasing. “Or Icarus’s brother, perhaps?”

“Pr’cisely,” said Laura Glue. “An’ the reason he don’t use wax anymore when he makes the wings.”

“All right,” stated John. “So where were you flying to? Or do you mean to tell us that you planned to crash in Jack’s garden?”

“Planned to crash, no,” said the girl, “but this is where I’m supposed to be. I’m looking for the Caretaker. I got an important message from th’ Archipelago.”

John, Jack, and Charles exchanged terse looks with one another at the mention of the title. It could apply to any or all of them, but it most likely meant John. Warnie, of course, had no idea what she meant.

“I told you,” he repeated, “this is a private garden. There is no caretaker.”

“I’m not looking for a
gardener
,” the girl retorted. “I’m looking for the Caretaker of the
Imaginarium Geographica
.”

She rummaged around in her tunic and drew out a delicate flower that seemed to be made of parchment, on which three symbols had been carefully rendered. The flower also seemed to be glowing faintly.

John recognized the first symbol as the seal of the Cartographer of Lost Places—the man who had created the
Imaginarium Geographica
. The second was the seal of the High King of the Archipelago. “What’s this third mark?” he asked.

“That’s what makes it work,” replied Laura Glue. “This is a Compass Rose. The seal of the king gets it through the frontier, the seal of the Cartographer tells it where everything is, and the third mark is what lets you find what you’re looking for. In this case, the Caretaker. The closer I gets, the more it glows. And when I flew over your cottage, it went so
bright it blinded me, and I crashed in your bluebells.

“So,” she continued, marching around them with a determined look on her face, “where are you hiding him, anyway?”

“Look here, Jack,” Warnie began.

“Perhaps you should go in and put a pot on to boil,” Jack suggested. “She’s obviously a troubled young girl, but I think we can sort it out.”

Warnie nodded and headed for the cottage at a trot without looking back.

John knelt before the girl and noticed that the Rose was still glowing but got no brighter because of his proximity.

“I’m the Caretaker Principia, Laura Glue,” he said gently. “Now can you tell us what this is all about?”

Her reaction wasn’t what John expected. The girl’s eyes grew wide with surprise, then narrowed in suspicion.

“You’re not the Caretaker!” she exclaimed. “Where is he and what have you done with him? Tell me now, or I shall be very, very cross.”

“But your Compass Rose is glowing,” said John. “And I have the
Geographica
nearby. I
am
the Caretaker. Why would you think I’m not?”

“Because,” answered Laura Glue, who had taken a defensive, defiant stance, “he called you John, and I know the
real
Caretaker’s name is Jamie.”

“Jamie?” Charles exclaimed, turning to the others. “It’s no wonder she doesn’t know any of us. She’s looking for the
last
Caretaker—the one John replaced.

“She’s looking for Sir James Barrie.”

The small, slight man was barely five feet tall…

Inside the cottage,
it became evident to Warnie that there was something happening among Jack, John, and Charles that didn’t include him. So once he had served them all tea, he made the excuses a gentleman makes and cloistered himself in his own study, shutting the door behind him.

Jack saw the hurt expression in his brother’s eyes and regretted it deeply, but there was simply no way he could begin to explain everything Warnie would want to know, and still have time to deal with the matter at hand: namely, Laura Glue. Never mind the fact that she’d mistakenly found them when she believed she was searching for one of the most famous playwrights of the time.

The girl sniffed at the tea Jack offered her, then wrinkled her nose in distaste. She allowed Jack to pour her a cupful of cream, which she sipped at dutifully, but she was more interested in the tea biscuits.

“You don’t have any little ones, do you?” she asked.

“What, smaller biscuits?” asked Jack.

“Yup,” said Laura Glue. “They’re called Leprechaun crackers, although I’m pretty sure there ain’t any real leprechauns in ’em.”

“Really?” asked Charles with a knowing smirk. “And how can you be sure?”

“Because,” the girl retorted, “usually you have to smoosh ’em up separate and spread ’em on top.”

“Ew,” said Charles.

“That’s not part of the official recipe in the book, mind you,” she continued, “but I added it in myself.”

“Laura,” Jack began.

“Laura
Glue
,” she reiterated. “Just calling me ‘Laura’ is just as bad as calling me ‘Glue.’ My name is my name.”

“Very well, Laura Glue. Tell us about the Caretaker you came to find. Tell us about Jamie.”

“That’s about all I knows,” the girl admitted. “I’ve only ever seen him twice myself, and that was before I went to the Well. The first time, anyway.”

Charles leaned close to John. “Not possible,” he whispered. “She wasn’t even born yet when we went to the Archipelago—and that was long after Barrie had given up being Caretaker.”

“I knows what I knows,” said Laura Glue, “and my ears hear like a fox.”

“Well, er, ah,” Charles stammered, “it’s just that you
can’t
have met him—”

“Can too!” Laura Glue exclaimed, standing and stomping her foot. “He said I was sweet, and he gave me a kiss. Look,” she continued, as she fumbled around inside her tunic, “I still have it.”

She held out her hand and showed them her “kiss”—a small, tarnished silver thimble.

“All right, Laura Glue,” said John with a placating look at his friends, “we believe you. But you must also believe us. James Barrie isn’t the Caretaker anymore. The
Imaginarium Geographica
was
given to us, and we are the Caretakers now. So tell us what you need, and we shall do all that is within our power to help you.”

Hearing this, Laura Glue slumped back in her chair and deflated like a spent balloon. It was not the reaction they had expected.

“Then I’ve come too late,” she said mournfully. “I’ve failed. Grandfather will be so unhappy.”

“Your grandfather,” said Jack. “It was he who sent you?”

She nodded. “Yup. And he was sure that Jamie was still the Caretaker. So he sent me to find him, to help. Because he is who he is.”

“He is what, Laura Glue?” asked Charles.

“Grandfather’s enemy,” the girl replied. “There is something happening in the Archipelago. Something terrible. And Grandfather said that sometimes something is so important that the only ones who can help are your enemies. And he gave me the Compass Rose and said to fly to the Summer Country and find his enemy, the Caretaker Jamie, and he would come and help us.”

“And what was it that Jamie was supposed to do?” John asked.

The girl shrugged and sipped her cream. “I don’t know. Grandfather said that the message would tell him everything he needed to know. He is, um, was, the Caretaker, after all.”

“What message, my dear?” Charles asked.

“Oh!” the girl exclaimed. “I forgot.” She stood at attention, as if preparing to recite a composition in school. “‘The Crusade has begun.’”

“And?” promted John. “Is there more?”

“That’s it and that’s all,” said Laura Glue. “May I have some more of the big crackers?”

The three friends left Laura Glue munching on biscuits and moved into the hallway, where they could discuss the situation with some privacy.

“It’s an incredible story,” said Jack. “But there’s too much credibility in it to disregard her.”

“I agree,” John said. “But I’m at a loss as to what we should do. Obviously someone there meant for us to do something. But I have no idea what.”

“She does have that rose,” mused Charles. “It bears the marks of both the High King and the Cartographer. I can’t imagine they’d allow just anyone to use them.”

“I concur,” said John. “So how should we proceed?”

“Obviously,” Charles said, “we should take her to see Barrie. He’s in London, and colleagues of mine have often pointed out his residence to me. We can deliver her straight to his front door. And then perhaps we’ll find out what this is all about.”

“That sounds like a plan,” said Jack. “It’s time I was out and about for a bit anyway.”

“Excellent,” agreed John. “This sort of adventure I can handle. A little mystery, a little drama, and it’s all wrapped up and done with a quick excursion into London.”

It was decided that they would have to take John’s car into the city. To take the train, especially from the Oxford station, would risk the three of them being seen on nonuniversity business and would engender too many questions that they’d have to make up answers for. And that was before any queries about their keeping company with a small winged girl with a penchant for yammering on about something called the Archipelago.

John went to make some adjustments to the engine, followed by a very inquisitive Laura Glue, while Jack and Charles made apologies to Warnie about having to leave. Warnie himself had already decided that this was a business he’d rather have no part in—and so nodded in agreement when they presented their plan to go into the city to locate the girl’s family.

“I call navigation,” said Jack as they walked out to the car.

“What does that mean?” asked Charles.

“It means I get the front passenger seat,” said Jack, “and you have to sit in the back with Laura Glue.”

“What?” sputtered Charles. “That’s not fair. I came in with John. I get the passenger seat.”

“What are you two arguing about?” John said, wiping his hands on an oilcloth. “The car’s ready to load, if you haven’t something more pressing to settle.”

“We’re arguing about the seating arrangement,” Charles told him. “I wanted to sit in front—”

“But I called navigation,” said Jack.

“Well, there you have it,” stated John. “Can’t be helped if he called navigation. Sorry, Charles.”

“Drat,” muttered Charles.

It was fortunate that Laura Glue’s wings were artificial, because they would not have fit in the small cab of the car and still allowed room for any other passengers. It was difficult enough to get them into the boot, and then only with some amount of judicious folding and positioning.

Laura Glue was twisting her hair into knots with nervous concern for her wings, until John pointed out that he was putting
the
Geographica
in the boot as well, so she could be assured it was a safe place for them to be.

Wings and atlas secured, Charles and Laura Glue bundled into the cramped backseat, and John and Jack climbed into the front.

“Okay,” said Laura Glue, pointing at the threadbare seat covers. “There’s an invisible line down the middle. This side is for girls, and that side is for boys. And you aren’t allowed to cross the line.”

“It’s a little close in here for boundaries,” Charles noted. “What happens if I cross the line?”

Laura Glue scowled. “I’ll have to cut out your heart and feed it to the fairies.”

Charles stared, wide-eyed and speechless, before the girl’s face split into a broad grin to indicate that she was teasing him.

“You’re not exactly a normal little girl, are you?” asked Charles.

“You have a funny-looking mouth,” said Laura Glue.

“This is going to be a very long ride,” said Charles.

It was actually a shorter ride than they expected, as the weather was good and there were few other vehicles on the road. Traffic became more congested once they arrived in London proper, but Charles’s familiarity with the city streets aided with their navigation considerably.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” remarked Jack.

“Oh, shut up,” Charles said crossly. “Turn left up here, John, then park as close as you can to the house. The shorter the distance we have to walk in public with Laura Glue, the better.”

“Hey,” the girl said. “Why don’t you want to walk with me?”

“Because,” Charles told her with a teasing smile, “we’ve decided we like you, and we don’t want some shady fellow swooping in when we aren’t looking to carry you off.”

Instead of the laugh or sarcastic retort he was expecting, Laura Glue’s eyes grew wide with fear and she seemed to shrink back into the recesses of the seat.

“Don’t,” she whispered in a fragile, frightened voice. “Don’t ever tease. Not about that.”

Charles hesitated, but Jack saw the look on the girl’s face and reached out a hand to her. “Don’t worry,” he said reassuringly. “You’re with all three Caretakers. And do you know we’re not just Caretakers of a musty old atlas? We’re also Caretakers of everything else there is in the entire Archipelago of Dreams. Even little girls named Laura Glue. And as long as you’re with us, no one will ever harm you.”

Laura Glue blinked back a tear, then took Jack’s hand and smiled. “Okay,” she said. “But I still want to find Jamie, just the same.”

It was the twilight hour when they finally trooped up the steps and rang the bell at the place Charles directed them to. The stately, well-situated town house was brightly lit within, but there was no answer to the bell, or to their repeated knocks on the stout mahogany door.

“Now what?” John wondered. “He must be out for the evening. Do we wait for him? Or is there another place to look?”

“There may be,” said Charles. “Kensington Gardens is just down the way. Perhaps he’s inclined to take evening walks there.”

“It’s certainly worth a stroll,” Jack said. “Now that we’ve come
this far, I’m just happy to have had reason to leave the Kilns.”

Both John and Charles had noted the drastic change in Jack’s countenance since the unusual apparition had crash-landed in his garden. He looked fully engaged once more, as if the girl were a fulcrum that had levered him out of his melancholy. And as such, neither one of them was inclined to mention their shared dreams again, until it seemed necessary to do so. The mystery at hand was more than enough to consume the evening anyway.

The gardens were indeed just a short distance away, and the lights of the city were just beginning to twinkle in the fading cobalt light of dusk when they arrived.

“It’s a good-size park,” said John. “Where should we begin looking?”

“Where else?” Charles replied. “The statue.”

“Of course,” said Jack, slapping his forehead. “The statue. It was erected for May Morning, was it not? I could be drummed out of Magdalen for forgetting that.”

“Or worse,” said Charles. “They’d make you take up residence at Cambridge.”

Set just along one of the walking paths, the tall bronze statue of Sir James Barrie’s most famous creation towered over passersby, who strolled along at a leisurely pace, hardly pausing to glance at the sculpture. Except for one.

The small, slight man was barely five feet tall, with a mustache and fringes of white hair that stuck out around the edges of his top hat. He stood holding a cane in one hand and a leash attached to an enormous Saint Bernard in the other. He looked at the statue with an expression that might have been construed as
fondness, or longing—if it were not also for the immense sadness that seemed to lie underneath.

Charles, deciding that this was no time for furtiveness, called out to the man from some twenty yards away. “I say, are you James Barrie? Might we have a word?”

The man’s eyes widened in surprise as he saw a cluster of people eagerly rushing toward him, and he quickly pulled down his hat, turned up his collar, and began walking briskly in the opposite direction, dragging the reluctant dog behind him.

“Didn’t he hear me?” Charles said, puzzled.

“Oh, he heard you,” Jack said wryly. “You have all the stealth of a wet badger.”

“In some places that’s a compliment,” retorted Charles.

“Do shut up, you two,” John scolded. He quickened his pace after the swiftly receding forms of Barrie and the Saint Bernard.

“Wait!” John shouted after him. “We only want to speak with you!”

“It’s no use,” said Charles. “We’ve frightened him off.”