Dragon Keepers #1: The Dragon in the Sock Drawer (4 page)

“Fooooood,” Emmy cooed, blinking her big eyes at him.

“That's a huge help,” said Daisy. She paced up and down. “What
kind
of food, is the question.”

Jesse screwed up his face and said, “Let's try and remember, from books and movies and all, what it is that dragons eat.”

“Foood?” cooed Emmy hopefully. “For. Em. Meeee.”

The cousins put their minds to it. Finally, Jesse said, “I'm seeing a big pile of bones, picked clean, lying outside of this big dark cave.”

Daisy made a face. “Try seeing something else.”

The cousins fell silent, thinking.

At length, Daisy said, “What about small woodland creatures?”

Jesse said, “Remember my African rock python I wrote you about? I used to have to catch live rats to feed him. Not fun. Plus that snake had the worst breath—dead-rat breath.”

“Forget that,” said Daisy. “If she wants to eat rats, she'll have to catch them herself…
and
get some mouthwash.”

“Jesse! Day. Zee! Food! Food! Food!!” wailed Emmy, her volume increasing.

“I think my brother and his wife left a box of baby Paul's rice mush,” Daisy said, raising her voice over Emmy's racket. (Paul was Cousin Aaron's baby boy.)

“Let's try baby Paul's rice mush, then,” said Jesse. “I'll make sure Emmy doesn't fall off the table. You mix the mush.”

“Mush! Mush! Mush!” Emmy chanted, jumping up and down.

Jesse made a blockade on the table. It might have been safer to set Emmy down on the floor, but he was afraid she would scramble away or that they would accidentally step on her.

Daisy banged open cupboards until she found the box of her nephew's rice cereal. She poured some into a bowl, added milk, shoved the bowl into the microwave, and jabbed at the buttons. While the microwave hummed, she dug around in a drawer for a baby spoon.

“Don't make it too hot,” Jesse said.

Daisy yanked open the microwave door, took out the bowl, grabbed the spoon, and held them out to Jesse.

Jesse stared at them. “I guess this is my job,” he said.

“The first thing she said was
your
name,” she reminded him.

Emmy stopped jumping and peered curiously at the bowl of mush.

“Oh boy. This ought to be fun.” Jesse yanked off the purple kneesock and took the bowl and spoon. Then he set the bowl on the table and scooped up some rice cereal. Hand shaking, he held out the spoon. “Okay, Emmy, come and get it.”

“Mush! Mush! Mush!” Emmy made a running start and jumped into the bowl—SPLAT!—sending rice cereal flying everywhere.

Daisy grabbed a roll of paper towels and wiped the rice cereal off of Jesse's shirt and face. Jesse lifted Emmy out of the bowl and held her with one hand while Daisy wiped off her talons. Then he set Emmy down again and held out the spoonful of rice. “Mush is for eating. Not swimming.”

Emmy opened her mouth. The inside was bright pink, and her tongue was long and forked. Her mouth was the only part of her that wasn't some shade of green. There were two buds in front, but not much else in the way of teeth. Jesse tipped the spoon into her pink maw. Emmy closed her jaws. Jesse waited for her to swallow the cereal. He had the next spoonful all ready to go.

“Ptoooooie!” Emmy spat the rice cereal right in Jesse's face. “Bad!” she bawled. “Bad! Bad!! Bad!!! Not! Food!”

Daisy marched to the refrigerator and flung open the door while Jesse wiped his face. She tapped her foot. “Let's see what else we have.” She pulled out leftover rice and beans. “She probably won't eat anything that's bad for her. We're just going to have to keep trying until we find something that works.”

Jesse offered the rice and beans to Emmy.

“Blaaaaat!”

Jesse picked beans and rice grains off his face.

Then they tried some cranberry sauce.

“Guuuuuunk!”

Jesse fished a cranberry out of his ear.

“Marshmallow fluff?” Daisy proposed.

“Plooooook!”

Bits of marshmallow flew into Jesse's eyebrows and hair.

“No more sticky stuff, okay?” Jesse said.

Pickles.

Emmy spat pickle bits everywhere.

Mayonnaise.

“Hold the mayo!” Jesse shouted one second too late.

Emmy spewed chunks of salami, bologna, and tuna fish.

“You know what?” Jesse shouted over Emmy's hungry howls. “I'm thinking we need to buy some lizard kibble!”

“What's lizard kibble?” Daisy shouted back. She had lined up ketchup, peanut butter, relish, and chutney. She spun off lids and scooped up spoonfuls for Jesse to feed Emmy.

“Mealworms or live crickets!” Jesse shouted. He raised his arm and cowered as a storm of ketchup, peanut butter, relish, and chutney pelted him. It was like the world's biggest food fight, only it was completely one-sided and
very
unfair.

“What makes you think she'll like worms and crickets better than this stuff?” Daisy said, tossing Jesse a dish towel.

Jesse threw the towel over his head and wiped his face and hair. Then he swabbed off the table, the chair, and the floor. “She's got to eat
something.
She'll starve. Look at her!” he said.

The little dragon lay in a mess of food. She was panting.

“Maybe we should go online and find out what to feed her,” said Daisy.

Jesse sighed. “I guess it's worth a try.”

“We have to clean up first. You clean in here and keep an eye on her. I'll vacuum upstairs. Plan?” said Daisy.

“Plan,” said Jesse.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE CARE AND FEEDING OF A DRAGON

Jesse took Emmy to the sink and washed her off. She splashed about in the water and held out her long pink tongue to catch the droplets.

“You're thirsty!” Jesse said. He dried her off, then poured her a bowl of water. “Water,” Jesse said, setting both bowl and dragon in the center of the table. “Drink.”

“Wa. Ter. Goooood,” Emmy said, and began to lap it up. She lifted her head up and let the water dribble down her throat. Then she set to lapping again.

“Drink up,” Jesse told her, “and
don't move
from this spot.”

“Em. Meee. Drink,” she gurgled.

Keeping one eye on her, Jesse put everything back in the refrigerator and tackled the mess in the room. The kitchen was almost back in apple-pie order when he noticed a rather large splat of relish on the ceiling.

He sighed, then climbed onto the kitchen counter and went at it. When the spot was finally gone, he climbed down and leaned against the counter. He couldn't remember when he had worked so hard. And they still had a hungry baby dragon to feed! Jesse looked around. The bowl of water was empty, but Emmy was nowhere in sight.

Jesse heard Daisy switch off the vacuum cleaner upstairs. “Daze!” he called out. “Is Emmy up there with you?”

Daisy came pounding down the stairs and tore down the hall. “What do you mean? Where is she? Where did she go?”

“Look!” Jesse pointed to wet claw prints on the clean floor.

The cousins followed the tracks down the hall and into the living room, where the aroma of hot chili peppers told them they were getting warmer. They heard a faint crunching sound coming from the wall of bookshelves. In front of the books, the shelves were packed with boxes of rocks, all carefully labeled.

Emmy was crouching in a box marked
LIMESTONE
, munching away at a small rock. “Mmmmm. Gooooood,” she said when she saw them. Her voice had gone all gruff and gravelly.

“Uh-oh,” said Daisy.

Jesse regarded Emmy glumly. “Well, that's just dandy!” he said. Now he had something new to worry about. How could eating a rock be good for a baby
anything
? Even if rocks were good for baby dragons, she didn't have any teeth to grind them up with. She might choke! And even if she didn't choke to death, what was Uncle Joe going to say about the missing limestone?

Daisy said, “Emmy, that's Poppy's limestone rock specimen.”

“Em. Meee. Like. Rrrockkk!” she said. The word “rock” seemed to be packing a few extra
r
's and
k
's.

Daisy shrugged. “At least there's plenty more where that came from. And I can't say my mom is going to mind the slight reduction in the rock population around here.”

Emmy swallowed, smacked her lips, and burped. A puff of stone dust floated out of her mouth like a smoke ring.

With the baby dragon's hunger pangs quelled for the time being, Jesse and Daisy parked her in the sock drawer and went online to see what they could discover about the care and feeding of their dragon.

“Google ‘dragons,'” said Daisy.

“Googledragonsgoogledragonsgoogle,” Emmy babbled from the sock drawer.

“That's what we're doing, Em,” Jesse assured her.

Then he groaned. Googling “dragons” got him 36,100,000 hits. He scrolled through the first few screens. Half of the listings seemed to be about the game
Dungeons and Dragons.
Other sites had to do with dragon legends, art, tattoos, and movies.

“Not helpful,” Jesse said, frowning at the screen. “We need to narrow this down.”

“Try ‘dragon
food,
'” said Daisy.

“Foooooood,” Emmy crooned from the sock drawer.

That entry produced at least three million listings, many for something called Bearded Dragon Medley.

“What's a bearded dragon?” Daisy wanted to know.

Jesse, who had owned many exotic pets in the far-off lands where he had lived, said, “A lizard native to Australia. But I don't see anything here about feeding a
real live
dragon.”

“I know!” said Daisy, leaning over the back of his chair. “Try Googling ‘The Time Before'!”

Jesse did just that and counted 1,480,000,000 responses that started with “the big bang” and went on to
The Land Before Time
. “It would take us five years to go through all these, and by then there would be a million more,” he said.

Daisy sighed. “We'd better go to the library.”

Jesse pointed to the sock drawer. “And are we taking
her
?”

“You bet we are…unless, of course, you came across any listings for
dragon-sitters
?” Daisy said with a sly smile.

“I guess I could carry her in the pouch of my sweatshirt, like I did when she was inside the thunder egg,” Jesse said. He switched off the computer and pulled on his hooded sweatshirt, thinking that it was a good thing early summers were cool. “Come on, Emmy,” he said, putting Daisy's purple kneesock over his hand and reaching into the sock drawer.

“Where. Go?” said Emmy, scrabbling on board.

“We're taking a little trip,” he told her.

“Lit. Tell. Trip. Where?” she wanted to know, her eyes swiveling as if in search of the “lit tell trip.”

“To find out some stuff we need to know,” he told her.

“Find. Some. Stuff?” she asked, her eyes still searching.

“Yeah…about how to take care of you,” he said.

Her eyes came to rest on him. “Jess. Eee. Tie. Ger. Gooooood. Dra. Gon. Kee. Per.”

Jesse Tiger, Dragon Keeper!
He liked the sound of that. “Aw, thanks, Emmy. Well, your Dragon Keeper says you have to stay under cover when we go out.”

“Why. For?” she asked.

“We need to hide you,” Daisy said.

Emmy said, “Hide. Em. Meee. From. Bad. Man.”

“No. There's no bad man.” Flashing on the man in the million-dollar car, Jesse wondered. “At least I don't
think
there is. But it's important that nobody sees you. So you have to ride in the pouch of my sweatshirt,” he told her, putting her gently in one side. Emmy quickly crawled out the other side, scratching Jesse with her talons. “Ouch!”

“Em. Meee. Not. Like!” she said, scrambling into his hand.

“No kidding,” he said.

“Maybe she'd like to ride in your hood instead,” said Daisy. She got the other purple kneesock and pulled it over her hand. Then she took Emmy and held her so they were nose to nose.

“Hey there, Emmy!” Daisy said, smiling.

“Hey. There. Day. Zee,” Emmy said.

“I'm going to put you in the hood of Jesse's sweatshirt,” she explained. “You're going to be riding piggyback, and you have to try very hard not to scratch Jesse, okay?”

“Pig. Gee. Back. Oh. Kay. Day. Zee,” she said.

Daisy put Emmy in Jesse's sweatshirt hood, which hung down his back. Jesse felt the slight weight of the dragon.

“Are you okay back there?” he asked her.

“Em. Me. Oh. Kay.”

“Brilliant,” said Jesse.

         

Daisy's house was only a short distance from downtown Goldmine City, where the library was. It was close enough to walk, but the cousins decided to ride bikes there. Daisy had her own bike, and Jesse rode Noah's old blue ten-gear Schwinn racer.

When he leaned over the handlebars to pedal, Jesse felt Emmy creep up his back and perch on his shoulder.

Jesse and Daisy had agreed that if anyone saw Emmy, they would explain that she was a green basilisk from Costa Rica. They figured this would work because (a) she was nothing if not green, and (b) who in Goldmine City, other than Jesse, had ever even seen a green basilisk? It seemed as good a story as any. They only hoped no one would hear her talking.

“Like. Bike! Like. Bike! Like!” Emmy said as they set out.

“Bikes are nifty,” Jesse agreed.

“Bikes. Niff. Tee!” she said. “Go. Jesse. Go.”

“She sure likes to yak,” said Daisy. For Emmy's sake, they pedaled as slowly as they could while still keeping their bikes upright. Emmy talked a mile a minute. Out of the corner of his eye, Jesse saw her head darting left and right.

“Fair. Eee?” Emmy asked Jesse.

Jesse flicked a look over his shoulder and saw that she was staring at the plaster figurine on a lawn. He grinned. “That's not a fairy. That's a statue. It's a garden gnome,” he told her.

A few seconds later, Emmy said “Cass. Sell?” as they wheeled past a big new shingled house with a turret.

“No,” Jesse said. “That's not a castle. It's a house.”

Just then a car turned the corner up ahead and came down the street. It was the first moving car they had seen. Jesse said, “Car. We use them to get places quickly.”

Nostrils flaring, Emmy said, “Smell. Like. Dragon. Piddle.”

The vehicle was practically on top of them when Jesse realized that it was the million-dollar car from the night before. He braked hard. “Hide!” he whispered to Emmy. She went as still as a stone against his back. Jesse froze, too, as the car glided past. Moving only his eyes, he tried to look through the tinted windows, but he couldn't see anything.

Daisy came circling back. “What's up?” she said, braking in front of him.

Jesse turned his head to stare at the car. Then he turned back to face Daisy and was preparing to tell her about it when their friend Miss Alodie called out to them from her garden on the corner up ahead. “Yoo-hoo! Cousins!”

“Hey, Miss Alodie!” Daisy waved at her.

Miss Alodie had the most beautiful garden in Goldmine City, the envy of everyone who saw it. Miss Alodie's daisies were bigger than sunflowers, her sunflowers were bigger than fruit trees, and her tea roses were as big as Frisbees. Practically everything Daisy knew about flowers, she had learned from Miss Alodie.

Jesse heard Emmy say, “Gar. Den. Gnome. Foooood?”

Miss Alodie was pruning a bush of giant yellow roses. She wore bright pink garden gloves, clunky sandals with socks, plaid pedal pushers, and a flower-patterned blouse. Her green beanie, which reminded Jesse of the top of a zucchini with the stem still attached, came up only to Jesse's chin.
She does look like a gnome!
he thought.

“Good day, my young friends!” Miss Alodie said. Her sparkling blue eyes were a perfect match for the paint on the shutters of her cottage.

“Beautiful roses, Miss Alodie!” said Daisy.

“Why, thank you, Miss Daisy. I like them, too,” said Miss Alodie. “You know, roses are not native to the Americas. They originally came from the Far East.”

“Interesting,” said Jesse.

“Foooood?” Emmy asked.

Daisy said, “Jesse and I are making a Museum of Magic up at the barn. It's got a great section on wildflowers, and you're invited to visit.”

“Just say the word and I'll be there with bells on,” Miss Alodie said.

Jesse felt a prickling on the back of his neck as Emmy scrambled out of his hood and perched on his shoulder.

“Land's sakes!” Miss Alodie said. She came out from behind her rosebush, planted her feet wide, and tipped back her head to look at the baby dragon. “Is that what I think it is?”

Emmy stared down at Miss Alodie and blinked.

“She's a green basilisk from Costa Rica,” Jesse said quickly. “We found her at the Dell.”

“Is that a fact?” said Miss Alodie, her blue eyes dancing. “She's certainly a long way from home, isn't she? Well, take very good care of her. Keeping a pet is a responsibility. Do not take it lightly, my young friends.”

“We won't,” Jesse said. Then he gave Daisy a meaningful look and added, “We have to get going now, right, Daze?”

“Right,” said Daisy. “We have some important research to do at the library. See you soon, Miss Alodie.”

“I'll be seeing you two kids at the Museum of Magic!” Miss Alodie said, returning to her rosebush.

“Niff. Tee. Gnome!” said Emmy.

Uncle Joe liked to say that Goldmine City needed a new name because the gold mine had been boarded up for over a century and the town wasn't big enough to be called a village, much less a city. Jesse and Daisy rode down nearly empty Main Street and chained their bikes to the rack in front of the library. Like the few other buildings in town, the library had stone pillars and a grand flight of steps. It was a leftover from the days when the town had boomed.

Daisy drew Jesse behind a tree and said to Emmy, “There are no pets allowed in the library. So you need to get back in the hood and not show your face.”

“Lie. Brare. Eee?” Emmy asked, cocking her head.

“It's where we keep books. Where we store lots of our knowledge,” Jesse explained.

“And there's
no
yakking allowed in the library,” said Daisy. “Because people want to read their books in peace and quiet.”