Dragon Magic (21 page)

Ras leaned closer. “Hey, look here, you guys—he’s right! There’s sure a lot of dust. And you don’t get that much dust, even in an old place like this, just overnight. Even if someone took the puzzle away last night, there wouldn’t be all this dust on the table. Look, I can even write my name on it!”

And with a fingertip he printed G-E-O-R-G-E on the table’s surface.

“But,” Artie protested, his voice shrill, “I
know
it was right there—on that table! I saw it there—there was the silver dragon, and the blue one, and the red I worked—and a lot of yellow pieces—and the box—all right there!” He put down a finger in turn, stirring up more dust.

“I saw it”—Sig slowly nodded his head—”and so did you, Ras. And Kim was after us, he worked the last dragon. I know he didn’t make up that story—it fits. A different dragon, but the story was like ours. And we all know ours were true. But—the puzzle is gone—and the box—and all that dust—It just doesn’t make sense!”

“Maybe,” Kim said—he had been trying to think straight ever since he had come to the empty table—”maybe we weren’t supposed to keep the puzzle. Maybe it was only meant to be worked once.”

“But why?” Artie asked the question none of them could answer.

“Who knows?” was the best Ras could say. “Just this—I
know
what I saw, though it may be gone now. And I know what I did when I was Sherkarer of Meroë. Even if the puzzle is gone I am going to remember that.”

“Yes, and maybe Kim’s right,” Sig said. “Maybe we each were to have only one chance at the puzzle, and we had it.”

“But the dust—where did the dust come from?”

“How do we know? That old guy—the one who used to live here—he got queer things from all over the world. Maybe there was something extra queer about the puzzle—”

“Do you mean
magic
?” demanded Artie. “Magic—that’s silly, nobody believes in that but little kids.”

“Something like magic,” Kim returned firmly. “You’ve heard of mind reading, things like that. There was that TV program they showed last month—the one about people who knew about things happening a long way off at the same time they were happening. It doesn’t need to be the storybook kind of magic, it could even be a kind of magic, it could even be a kind of science we don’t understand yet. Look here—I’m Chinese, so I have an adventure back in Chinese history. You, Sig—what country did your people come from originally?”

“Granddad was German.”

“So—you have an adventure in Germany. And Ras—he has one in long-ago Africa, and Artie—did your people come from England?”

“Wales.”

“Well, Wales is part of old Britain. So we may just be living over things that happened to our great-great-great—about a thousand times back—grandfathers. That makes a kind of sense, doesn’t it? Anyway, the puzzle is gone—but Ras is right, we can keep remembering what happened to us. Maybe that was what was meant to happen, that we could remember.”

Artie was already on his way to the door. “No use staying here any more,” he said a little too loudly. “I don’t like the feel of this place now.”

He only put into words what the others sensed. The room which had once welcomed them now pushed them out, the house wanted to get rid of them. They hurried through its rooms to obey an order they had felt though not heard.

“I wonder where it went—the puzzle,” Sig said.

“We’ll never know ” Ras answered. “But I think Kim’s onto something—maybe we did have great-great-greats who did those things we did. And—I’m sure glad I had a chance to fit together Sirrush-Lau!”

Even Artie could only nod “yes” to that. He was not sure about what Kim had said. But—he wished it were true—he liked to think that Artos, son of Marius, namesake of the High King, was a great-great-great who had lived somewhere far back in time. Artos was
real
!

Sig flexed his hand. It was not pulled into any claw. But he could remember how it had been once—Sig Clawhand—Sig Dortmund—there was a tie there, he knew it.

Kim heard a rustling of the dead leaves through which they were tramping. But he marched to something else—the drums of Chuko Liang’s small, beleaguered army. He swung his book bag and for an instant or two he could almost believe its weight to be that of a sword in a red lacquer sheath.