The Search for the Red Dragon (6 page)

“You’re three steps ahead of me, young Jack,” answered Bert. “She’s fine, mostly—but she’s smack in the center of the crisis. Crises. One of the crises, anyway.”

“Just how many, um, crises are we dealing with, Bert?” Charles asked.

“All in one and one in all, it seems,” said Bert, “and what the child has just told me only confirms my worst fears—that the crisis that began it all, and happened slowly enough that no one knew it was happening until it was over, may not be over after all.”

“What crisis, Bert?” asked John.

“Someone has stolen all the Dragonships,” said Bert. “They’re all gone, and no one knows where.”

“Gone?” exclaimed John. “How can someone have simply taken them? After all, they have wills of their own—I don’t think a Dragonship would go anywhere it didn’t want to go. Not easily, anyway.”

“That’s part of the mystery,” said Bert with a sigh. “There are no signs of struggle, or damage, or even cut anchor lines. The ships have simply disappeared. We think the
Green Dragon
went first, then the
Violet
…but there’s no way to really be sure. It didn’t take much longer to confirm the others—the
Orange
,
Yellow
, and
Blue
dragons—were also gone. Even the
White Dragon
is missing.”

“And the
Black Dragon
?” queried Charles. “What of it?”

“Ordo Maas dismantled that beast long ago,” Bert said with a shudder. “And good riddance, I say.”

“Why was the
Indigo Dragon
spared?” asked Jack.

“She’d been completely rebuilt as an airship,” Bert replied. “I think she was either just overlooked, or she no longer suited the thief’s purposes.”

“You haven’t said how Aven is involved,” noted Jack.

“That’s how we began to discover the missing children,” said Bert. “The prince—Aven’s son—was aboard the
Yellow Dragon
when it disappeared. In fact, every place a Dragonship has vanished, many of the local children have disappeared as well.”

“Aven has a son?” said Jack, casting a glance at Jamie. “I…I didn’t know.”

“A strapping lad, almost nine years old now,” said Bert. “I was already preparing to come and seek you out regarding the missing Dragonships when she and Artus contacted me and told me about the prince.”

He turned and took John by the shoulders. “I know this is very sudden, John—but we need the Caretaker’s help. I don’t think we can discover the answers we need to find here. We must go back to the Archipelago.”

“I…I…of course I’ll help,” said John. “Of course.”

“I’m coming too,” put in Jack. “Charles? Are you with us?”

“My poor wife will never understand,” Charles answered, “but I am loath to let the two of you go traipsing off to the Archipelago without any adult supervision at all.”

“I beg your pardon,” Bert huffed.

“No offense, Bert,” Charles reassured him.

“I can send messages to your families,” offered Jamie. “I’ll give them an excuse about emergency business for the university.”

“Thereby ensuring that we return to find ourselves in hotter water than when we left,” said John. “Best make it attending to a friend in need. That’s closer to the truth, anyway.”

“Excellent,” said Bert. “We have a plan. Let us now put it into action.”

John and Charles quickly wrote out messages to their wives and children for Jamie to pass along, and Jack wrote a brief note to Warnie and one to his friend Paddy’s mother, a Mrs. Moore. It was also decided that given the unusual circumstances in the Archipelago, Laura Glue would be safer remaining in London under Jamie’s care. In fact, once the decision was made, she immediately set about building herself a nest—in the storage room upstairs, inside the great wardrobe.

Being able to close the doors made her feel safe, she explained, as if no one would be able to reach her there.

“And safe you will be,” Jack said gently, tucking her in amidst the furs and the blankets Jamie had provided. He also had a small electric torch, which he gave her in case she should become frightened during the night.

“Now,” he told her, “I want you to listen to me. This isn’t just an ordinary wardrobe. It’s a
magic
wardrobe.”

Laura Glue’s eyes widened and she gave him a lopsided grin. “For really and truly?”

“For really and truly.” Jack nodded.

She looked at Jamie, who also nodded. “More than anyone knows, my dear girl.”

“And if you need it to be,” added Jack, “it can become another world altogether. It can take you wherever you want to go, for as long as you want, and in an instant, it can bring you back, as if no time had passed at all.”

“Wowww…,” said the girl with a yawn. “How do I make it work, Jack?”

“That’s easy,” Jack told her. “Just close your eyes, and dream where you want to go, and suddenly, you’re there.”

“But I do that anyway,” Laura Glue said, leaning back and closing her eyes.

“Yes,” Jack replied as he closed the door, all but a crack, on the drowsing girl. “But here, you’ll always come home. And here, someone will be watching over you. Always.”

“All ready, Jack?” said John.

“Ready. Are we all loaded?”

“Just done,” called Charles from the window. “Jamie’s given us a few stores from his larder, and Bert is anxious to get back to
start looking into this. Although,” he added, “I think he’s greatly relieved that we’re coming with.”

“Was there any doubt?” said John. “Even under these circumstances, now that the opportunity’s here, I find I can’t wait to get back.”

“Same here,” agreed Jack.

Bert’s face, upside down, appeared in the window. “All aboard, lads. It’s time to go.”

Farewells were said to Jamie, and each of them looked in quietly on the angel sleeping soundly in the wardrobe. Of them all, only Jack had noticed that before she fell asleep, Laura Glue had carefully sealed her ears with plugs of beeswax she had had tucked in her tunic.

With Jamie steadying the rope ladder from below, the companions ascended it and climbed into the carriage of the reborn
Indigo Dragon
.

“It sounds like she’s purring,” Charles exclaimed.

“That’s the engine driving the props,” said John, looking around in awe. “I do kind of miss the old masts and sails, though.”

“Magic lets you skip a lot of steps,” Bert said, “but that doesn’t mean one can completely disregard principles of engineering.

“Ladder up? Good, good,” he continued. “Let’s be off, then.”

“Remember,” Jamie called from the window below, “to get there, just look for the second star on the right….”

“That’s not funny,” Bert replied. “Farewell, James.”

“And you, Bert,” Jamie called back, waving. “Tell your daughter I hope she will not think too ill of me in the future.”

With a final wave, Bert spun the wheel, and the
Indigo Dragon
whirled about and began to rise into the night air.

Below them the lights of London spread out like glittering pebbles in a dark pool. Everything was edged in a cool light from the rich moon hanging above. And in the distance, clouds had begun to gather. In moments they would be passing into another world. Somehow it seemed less eventful to be doing it in the air, instead of on the more physical surface of the water below.

“That last joke Jamie made,” John said to Bert. “He was quoting his book, wasn’t he?”

“Book?” said Bert, puzzled. “Was that in the book? No.” He shook his head. “It’s an old game he played with Laura Glue’s grandfather, when they were young and could still bear each other’s company.

“In the Archipelago, navigating by the second star to the right—the North Star—makes you sail in a circle. You never get anywhere except where you already are.”

“Who is Laura Glue’s grandfather, anyway?” asked Charles.

Bert looked at them all in surprise, as the clouds began to close about the ship. “Didn’t Jamie tell you? He probably figured that as Caretakers, you already knew.”

“I think I do,” said John, “but it seems impossible to believe.”

“We’re into the rarified air of the Archipelago now,” Bert informed the others, gesturing to the waters below—and back to the now vanished lights of London. “It’s required to believe sixteen impossible things before breakfast.”

“Who are we talking about, John?” asked Jack.

Charles pieced it together first. “There’s a statue of him in Kensington Gardens,” he said quietly. “Am I right, John?”

John nodded and leaned over the railing, face to the wind. “Laura Glue’s grandfather,” he explained, “Sir James Barrie’s best friend, who became his greatest enemy, was the boy who never grew up.

“We’ve been summoned to the Archipelago by Peter Pan.”

The armored scarecrow was chewing something…

The crossing into
the Archipelago was as smooth and uneventful as they’d remembered. One moment they were above the waters of the world, and the next moment they were not. And in the transition, the English night gave way to a crisp morning light.

The crew were many of the same cloven-hoofed fauns that had operated the ship when it sailed on water, although this time the companions were far less hesitant to interact with them.

“Excellent ship you’ve got here,” Charles said to a passing crewman. “Uh, lovely decks.”

“Humph,” replied the faun, shoving past.

“Nice chatting with you,” said Charles.

“I returned the
White Dragon
to Ordo Maas, then set about salvaging the wreckage of the old girl,” Bert said, patting the hull. “It took us a long time to decide how to proceed, but fortunately we had lots of support and funding from Paralon. Artus and Aven have ruled very well, if, ah, unconventionally, and are widely loved.”

“That’s good to hear,” John said, noting how quickly Jack moved away at the mention of Aven’s name. “I’m going to have a hard time calling the High King ‘Artus,’ though.”

“Oh, he insists that his personal friends still call him ‘Bug,’” said Bert. “Says it helps him keep ‘the common touch,’ although between you and me, I think he just misses the adventures we had, before all this running-a-kingdom business got dropped on him.”

“What was Samaranth’s opinion on all of this?” John asked. “I assume he was consulted?”

“First among the royal advisers,” said Bert. “Even more so than I. Since the war with the Winter King, the dragons have never been far from the Archipelago. At times they have intervened in certain affairs, but nothing that ever dictated a formal summoning from the Ring on Terminus.”

The companions looked at one another with somber expressions. A formal summoning could only be done by the High King, using the Ring of Power—the great circle of stones they had discovered in the conflict with the Winter King. It was an action Artus would take in only the gravest circumstances.

“Until now?” John guessed.

Bert nodded. “At Samaranth’s suggestion. Every dragon alive has scoured the islands but has found no sign of the missing ships or children. As far as we can determine, they are nowhere in the Archipelago.”

“Could they be in our world?”

“Not likely. They would stand out more, not less. Look at the complications you had with just one little girl.”

“Jamie told us that he remembered an old Archipelago legend about a Crusade,” said John. “Do you know of such a story?”

“It does sound familiar, I’ll admit,” said Bert, “but I can’t put my finger on it. I’m hoping we may be able to ask the Morgaine what it refers to, and get right to the heart of it.”

“You could do that without us,” John pointed out, “and with all these things happening in the Archipelago, I must admit I don’t see how we can help. We came because you asked us to come. But what good are the Caretakers going to be in finding missing ships and kidnapped children?”

“Maybe more than you know, John. You are here because you are supposed to be here, and you
are
the Caretakers, after all. You well know that the responsibility is far greater than just looking after a book. Even if you were not the Caretakers, you are still friends of the king and queen—and it is in times of peril that one must call on one’s friends, wherever and whoever they may be.”

“Even if they are enemies, according to Laura Glue.”

“Yes,” Bert said. “Even if they are enemies.”

“I can see the smoke coming out of your ears,” Charles said, sitting on the deck next to Jack. “What are you considering so mightily?”

“Something I’ve been thinking about for nine years,” replied Jack. “When we were trying to keep the Winter King from getting his hands on the
Geographica
…”

“Yes?” said John, coming to sit opposite Charles.

“The first plan was to try destroying it, right?”

“Correct.”

“But we couldn’t, because only the Cartographer could destroy the book.”

“Right again,” said John. “What are you driving at, Jack?”

“Stay with me here,” urged Jack. “Part of the Caretaker’s job is to annotate maps, add new maps, and also to improve the translations attached to existing maps, right?”

“Yes,” John said, “although I haven’t yet had the opportunity to
add any maps, only make corrections and notations to the existing ones. What of it?”

“I’m afraid I don’t see it either,” said Charles.

“What he’s asking,” Bert said without turning from the wheel, “is why you didn’t simply vandalize the atlas, or scumble in false notations, or simply pour ink all over the pages, effectively destroying its usefulness, if not the book itself.”

“Well, yes,” said Jack. “That’s exactly what I was wondering.”

Bert turned his head and squinted at them. “Don’t you think that hadn’t occurred to me, or Jules, or Stellan long before you were ever recruited as Caretakers?”

“Then why didn’t you do it?” asked John.

“Would
you
have been able to?” Bert shot back.

“We tried,” said Jack. “We threw it on the brazier.”

“No,” said Bert, “
Nemo
threw it on the brazier. And when he’d proven it wouldn’t burn, that was the end of any thoughts you had of destroying, or even damaging, the book.”

“He’s right,” Charles said. “We never even considered it after that.”

“Clever,” noted John. “We’d eliminated the idea in principle, so we overlooked other specific aspects of it that may have solved the problem.”

“
Would
have solved the problem,” Jack corrected. “We could have solved a major problem with a relatively minor sacrifice.”

“Jules and I had a similar discussion once,” said Bert. “He offered me a hypothetical situation. What if a young man, say, a painter from Austria, seemingly normal, absolutely unremarkable, was destined to one day become a terrible ruler, responsible for the death of millions?

“If, knowing this future, and knowing what might be averted if this single, then innocent artist were to be killed, would you do it?”

“There’s no way to know a man’s future,” observed John. “Not for certain. So it would be murder.”

“Jamie told me Nemo was foretold of his death,” said Jack. “And he did nothing to change that event. So is that a reverse-murder? Or a self-murder?”

“That decision was Nemo’s to make for himself,” said Bert. “It wasn’t someone deciding his future for him. But answer the question: Would you kill the painter who had done no evil, to save the millions from the evil that he might one day become?”

“No,” John and Jack answered together.

“I don’t know,” Charles admitted. “Maybe if it were real and not hypothetical, I could make that choice.”

“Well, in a way, that was the choice you were making with the
Geographica
,” said Bert. “A little murder, with pen and ink as the instruments of the death, and you could prevent the book from being used in greater evil. But that wasn’t the choice you
wanted
to make, so you didn’t.”

“That’s all well and good,” Jack said, “but it still irritates me to no end that the option didn’t at least occur to us. Maybe all we needed to alter were a few key maps, or the summoning….

“Say,” he said, tapping John’s foot. “Why don’t we give it a try, just for the sake of scientific experimentation? We can pick a minor map and ink in a ‘No Trespassing’ sign or a unicorn or some such. What do you say, John?”

Bert groaned and slapped his forehead. “Spinning in his grave. I’m certain Stellan is just spinning in his grave. I’d have
been better off leaving the book with Harry and Arthur.”

However irritated he tried to sound, Bert also produced a quill and a bottle of ink, which he proffered to Charles with a barely disguised grin.

“Okay, John,” said Charles. “Let’s have it. Time to deface a little history.”

“Now, I’m not going to just…,” John began, before a strange expression came over his face. “Um.”

Jack looked from Charles to John and back again, shrugging.

“Where did you put it when you brought it aboard?” Bert asked over his shoulder. “In the cabin, perhaps?”

“You did bring it aboard, didn’t you, John?” said Jack.

“Oh dear,” murmured Charles. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”

“The
Imaginarium Geographica
,” John said with rising horror. “It’s…it’s…”

“Don’t tell me you’ve lost it,” said Bert.

“Nothing of the sort,” John stated. “I know precisely where it is.”

Jack and Charles looked at each other in disbelief as the meaning of John’s words sank in.

The
Imaginarium Geographica
was exactly where they had left it when they arrived in London—next to Laura Glue’s wings, safely covered with academic papers in the boot of John’s car.

John spent the remainder of the short voyage to Avalon pacing the foredeck and cursing to himself in Anglo-Saxon. The crew of fauns exchanged glances of “different dance, same song” and kept working to keep the ship in order. Bert, Jack, and Charles huddled around the wheel to discuss this awkward turn of events.

“Can we go back for it?” asked Jack. “We’ll have lost only a few hours….”

“Hours I’m afraid we cannot spare,” said Bert. “Remember—the
Indigo Dragon
is, for the time being, the only Dragonship available to the Silver Throne, and the only ship left that is able to cross the Frontier.

“Inconvenient as it may be, we will have to do without the original
Geographica
, and hope that no circumstance arises in which it is needed.”

“Original
Geographica
?” Charles exclaimed. “I don’t understand.”

Bert grinned. “Do you recall your little friend Tummeler? He was as good as his word—he published a facsimile edition of the
Imaginarium Geographica
, and practically everyone in the Archipelago has a copy now.

“It’s nowhere near as complete as the original, of course,” he continued, “but it’s annotated in English, and shows all the major islands. It would do in a pinch.”

“Good Old Tummeler,” said Charles. “I’ve often thought of him—usually during breakfast. Never looked at a muffin in the same way since, I can tell you.”

John finally quit pacing and approached the others. “There was a lot going on, you’ll remember,” he said apologetically. “In all the confusion and commotion…”

“Five ham sandwiches,” stated Jack. “That’s all I’m going to say about confusion and commotion and no time to retrieve the
Geographica
. The Caretaker Bloody Principia.”

“All right, Jack,” Charles said quickly. “No need for language.”

“Avalon, ho,” said Bert, pointing. “We’re at the boundary. Let’s get off here and collect ourselves, and then we’ll decide what to do next.”

Once the ship had been anchored to a spot on the sloping hill above the beach, the companions climbed down and took deep breaths of the sea air.

“Very nice,” said Charles. “Makes me feel like I was young again. Not that I feel particularly old, mind you, but this adventuring business is much more a young man’s game.”

“You called?” Jack said, grinning.

“You’re a college tutor,” Charles told him. “That means you age exponentially with each semester.”

“How about him, then?” Jack said, hooking a thumb at John. “He’s a full professor.”

“Dog years,” said Bert. “Professors age in dog years.”

“And how about you, old hat?” asked Charles.

“Oh, I took the easy way out,” said Bert. “I figured out that if I age all the way to the end, I just start over. So, practically speaking, I’m the youngest one here.”

The first order of business was to announce themselves to the Guardian of Avalon—the Green Knight.

“I shouldn’t mind seeing the dutiful old fellow again,” Charles said jovially. “He was very affable—after he quit trying to behead us, that is.”

“There’s something you really ought to know,” Bert began, when they crested the hill and stood in front of the entrance to the ruins of Avalon.

There, slumped against one of the fallen pilasters, arms akimbo, the Green Knight turned his head and regarded them with a resigned expression. He seemed younger than before but was still a mishmash of rusty armor, wooden limbs, and twigs that seemingly stuck out of every joint and crevice. But, oddly, he also affected a tattered top hat and trench coat over his armor.

It occurred to John that this apparition might be what would result if the Tin Woodsman and Scarecrow from Frank Baum’s Oz were squeezed together.

The armored scarecrow was chewing something, his mossy beard swaying with the motion. Then he swallowed hard and spoke.