The Shadow Dragons (15 page)

“Of course,” Jack said. Charles also nodded his assent.

“Do you want to go by Trump?” Ransom asked. “It’s easily done.”

Bert shook his head. “I need to take the
White Dragon
in for repairs and restocking,” he said. “From the looks of things, we’ll need more armament as well.”

“Fine by me,” said Jack. “I could use the fresh air.”

It took only a few hours to make the preparations to leave in the
White Dragon.
Ransom went on ahead to announce their impending arrival, while Jack and Charles said their good-byes to their friends and the Caretakers.

“We’ll be back soon,” Jack promised Rose. “Artus and Aven will help us sort things out, you’ll see.”

Charles pulled Quixote aside. “Just a caution,” he said softly. “We were surprised by Kipling. I don’t want to be surprised again, so stay with Rose. If there are enemies here, they could be anywhere.”

“I understand,” said Quixote. “I shall guard her with my life.”

Bert, Jack, and Charles boarded the
White Dragon,
and, with a last wave, they lifted off into the air.

The airships were faster by far than the original seafaring-only ships had been, and it was only a matter of hours before they were over familiar waters.

It was a pleasant day, and Jack and Charles spent most of their time enjoying the trip, rather than rehashing the earlier events and the terrible situation in England. There would be time enough to do that soon.

Charles did a double take as he thought he saw something in the sky just ahead. He shaded his eyes and took another look.

“Bert!” he exclaimed. “We’re steering right into a flock of enormous birds!”

Bert laughed and rushed past the confused Charles to the railing. “They aren’t birds,” he said, waving his hand in the air. “They’re our royal escort!”

The cluster of birds suddenly split apart and flew into formations that spiraled around the
White Dragon.
It was then that Charles realized they weren’t birds at all—they were flying children.

For several minutes the ship was surrounded by shifting patterns of laughing, aerodynamic children—no, young adults— most of whom Charles had last seen on an island called Haven.

Three of the winged dervishes glided close, then landed smoothly on the deck.

The tallest of the three, obviously their leader, was dressed in tight leathers and laced boots, and she wore goggles that pinned down her light brown hair, which was sticking out in every direction. Her wings, long and majestic, were attached with a harness that crisscrossed her chest. She lifted up the goggles and flashed a dazzling smile.

“The first time I saw you,” Charles said, beaming, “you had smudges on your face, and you weren’t nearly as accomplished at flying. Also, you were shorter.”

“It’s wonderful to see you again, Charles,” she said, embracing the only slightly taller man.

“It’s wonderful to see you, too, Laura,” he replied.

“That’s Laura Glue,” she chided him gently, “as if you’d forgotten!”

“I haven’t forgotten, Laura my Glue,” said Jack as he came around the cabin to give her a welcoming hug. “That was the most impressive display I’ve ever seen!”

“Aw, we was just fooling around,” said the second flyer, a thinner girl with dark, spiky hair. “You should see us when we’re actually
trying”

“Sadie!” Laura Glue admonished. “Discipline.”

The girl snapped back to attention. “Sorry, Captain.”

“Captain?” said Jack. “Laura Glue—are you the leader of this group, then?”

“I am.” The girl nodded. “Captain of the Valkyries.”

“That reminds me,” said Jack. “I need to thank you for sending all those Lost Boys to the taverns and inns at the Crossroads to watch out for us. We would never have gotten Rose out alive if not for your boy Flannery.” He craned his neck to look at several of the other Valkyries who had landed on the
White Dragon.
“Is he here with you? I’d like to thank him myself.”

Laura Glue bit her lip and looked at her shoes. Sadie cleared her throat loudly, and Laura Glue looked up again. There were tears in her eyes.

“Three years ago, there was a skirmish with the Yoricks at one of the Soft Places,” she said, her voice steady. “It went up in flames. Flannery didn’t make it out.”

“I’m sorry,” said Charles.

“As am I,” said Jack. “We left him only a few days ago, but to everyone else, we’ve been gone for seven years. A lot can happen in that time.”

“A lot
has
happened in the last seven years,” said Laura Glue. “Not much of it is good. They’ll fill you in at Paralon. Artus is waiting to receive you.”

She moved over to speak to Bert about other arrangements that needed to be made at Paralon, and Jack pulled Charles aside.

“One thing’s for certain,” Jack whispered. “When this is all over, and we’ve gotten back to the time we’re supposed to be in, I’m going to make certain that Flannery is nowhere near that tavern, wherever it is.”

“Changing a history?” asked Charles.

“Making a prophecy,” said Jack.

As the crew of the
White Dragon
gently guided the airship to its customary spot in the Paralon harbor, a tremendous racket sprang up from the docks. It had the vaguest resemblance to music, but was more on the order of a collision of train cars that happened to be carrying musical instruments.

“The Royal Animal Rescue Squad,” Jack explained to Charles. “I’d forgotten you haven’t met them yet.”

Jack went through the group of mammals and made introductions, giving special attention to their friend Tummeler’s son, Uncas.

“I have a speech prepared,” announced Uncas. “Would you like to hear it?”

“A speech? In our honor?” said Charles, puffing out his chest. “But of course!”

“I think it’s honor enough that you chose to write it,” said Jack. “To hear it read aloud would only be anticlimactic.”

“Oh, uh, great!” said Uncas brightly while Jack winked at the deflated Charles. “Well then, since it’s on the way, would you like to come by the shop? We’ve now got the biggest operation on Paralon, and my son Fred would love to meet the great Scowler Charles.”

“You don’t say?” Charles said heartily. “Lead the way, Uncas.”

The badgers’ publishing enterprise, which had begun with Uncas’s father’s editions of poorly selling cookbooks, had grown exponentially with the release of the popular edition of the
Imaginarium Geographica,
then again with the abridged edition of the guidebook to everything, the Little Whatsit. But even then, the whole venture consisted of a single storefront and a backroom printing facility. It was nothing like the Herculean complex that Uncas was so proudly ushering them into.

The main building itself was the size of an airplane hangar, and was tall enough to have its own weather patterns—
indoors.
There were badgers of every size scurrying to and fro, very occupied with the business at hand. They were all smartly dressed in white shirts and frocks, and all wore black armbands.

“Grandfather Tummeler will be very sorry to have missed you,” Fred said earnestly. “He still speaks of you often.”

“Good old Tummeler,” said Charles jovially. “How is he?”

“Well enough,” Fred replied, “but quite far along in badger years. He’s basically in retirement at a house Artus had built for him next to the Great Whatsit. That way, he can use it for research as often as he likes.”

“Research?” exclaimed Charles. “Is he working on another book?”

“Several,” Uncas said, handing a stack of papers to his son. “He’s constantly offering revisions on the Little Whatsit, but he’s also working on his memoirs. I think he’s titled it
There and Back Again: A Badger’s Tale’”
.

“Really!” said Charles. “That’s extraordinary. I can’t wait to read it.”

“The title’s a bit bland, though,” said Jack. “We’ll have to mention it to John. Maybe he can think of a way to improve it. He’s very good with titles, you know.”

“Uncas,” Charles said, “what is the meaning of the black armbands? Are you in mourning for someone?”

On hearing the question, all the badgers nearby stopped what they were doing and, almost in a single motion, turned to look . . .

. . . at Jack.

“What?” said Jack, looking around at his feet as if he’d inadvertently stepped on someone’s tail. “Did I do something wrong?”

Uncas hemmed and hawed and stuttered and stammered until Fred sighed and stepped forward to answer. “It’s not so much what you done, Scowler Jack,” he began, “as it is what you’re
going
t’ do.”

Charles frowned. For Fred to both address Jack formally and to lapse into the slipped vowels of the less-formal badger-speak meant it was a grave matter indeed.

“This isn’t about the giants again, is it?” said Jack. “I told Bert—”

“No, no, nuthin’ like that,” said Fred. “It’s just that . . . that . . . well, y’r an
Oxford
man, Scowler Jack!”

“As I always plan to be,” Jack said with a trace of defensiveness.

“Well then,” said Uncas morosely, “in th’ Summer Country, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and fifty-four, y’r in for a
big
surprise.”

“All this because I supposedly—in the future, mind you—take a post at Cambridge?” Jack whispered as he gestured around at the armband-wearing badgers. “Is it possible to feel guilt over something I don’t plan to do, and won’t do anyway for
years?”

“That’s an interesting question,” replied Charles. “I wonder how the intention or non-intention plays into the concept of repentance.”

“Repentance?” Jack sputtered. “But I haven’t done anything! Or at least, not yet! And even then, at worst it’s because I go teach at another university?”

“Not just another university,” Charles said.
”Cambridge.
Not only have we been joking about it for all these years, but according to Bert, the only Caretakers who have ever really botched the job came from Cambridge, not Oxford. It’s basically a cursed place, as far as these little fellows are concerned.”

As if to punctuate Charles’s point, a smallish badger intern carrying a bundle of ribbon markers stopped and looked at them, whiskers quivering.

Jack gave it a little wave, and in response the tiny mammal burst into tears and went running from the room.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Jack.

“I’d better do all the talking while we’re here,” Charles said, laying a comforting hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Apparently I don’t do anything controversial at all in the fifties.”

The great palace at Paralon was still recognizable, as it was a massive edifice that would resist change or alteration—but the regal air that had permeated the entire island capital of the Archipelago had been replaced with something . . .
different.

“Mmm,” said Charles, inhaling deeply. “Smells like bureaucracy.”

“I’m sure you meant to say ‘democracy,’” said Jack.

“What’s the difference?” Charles replied. “Either way, I suspect that Artus got in over his head.”

“He’s probably been reading too many American Histories, I’m afraid,” said Jack. “There’s a lot to advocate for, and I believe his ambitions are nobly based—but I think he may have been better off with his parliamentary-oriented monarchy.”

Instead of the Great Hall, where visitors would normally have been received, the Valkyries led the companions to a large storeroom which had been converted into an office. Artus, the former king of Paralon, rose and greeted them warmly.

“My dear friends,” he said happily. “It’s wonderful to see you. I’m so glad you’re not dead!”

“As are we,” said Jack, “but we’ve apparently missed out on a lot of new developments, including, ah, fashion trends.”

“Oh, yes, the armbands,” Artus said with a sheepish expression on his face. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Apparently the controversy that’s fired up the badgers involves my future,” Jack said, “or one of them, at any rate. We’ve accidentally leaped some seven years ahead of where—uh, when we were meant to be, so I realize that there will be articles of common knowledge to you that will be incomprehensible to us. But how is it that the badgers know things that won’t happen for another decade?”

“It’s the Time Storms,” Artus explained. “They ebb and flow, and occasionally deposit something here that shouldn’t be. It’s all fallout from the destruction of the Keep of Time. So Bert has occasionally had to share something he knows about the future, so we don’t completely derail it in the present.”

“Is there any way, maybe something Samaranth or the Cartographer might know, that can keep the Time Storms from getting worse?” asked Charles.

“That’s the problem,” Artus said with a grimace. “They haven’t gotten
worse,
they’ve gotten
better.
In fact, they’ve almost completely stopped.”

“Pardon my ignorance,” said Charles, “but wouldn’t that be a good thing?”

“No,” Jack interjected, realizing what Artus was getting at. “It wouldn’t. If the fall of the keep and the loss of the doors are what threw a myriad of portals into time itself to the four winds, then the only way that they can be reined in again is—”

“Is if someone’s repaired the tower,” finished Charles, “and restored the doors.”

“Worse,” said Artus. “Someone may be building
another
tower altogether.”