The Dragon at the North Pole (11 page)

The moment Beowulf took out the iron sword, Emmy said to herself,
Emerald, old girl, it serves you right!

Considering that she had not only been taken in by Beowulf’s Santa Claus masking spell, but had
actually gone to work for him, she deserved to have her powers stripped. She dragged herself along after Beowulf as he went to his study and hunched over his desk, quill scratching across parchment, drawing up a new contract. When he was finished, he rolled it up and stuck it in his belt.

Afterward, he stalked around the ice palace, rounding up trolls. It was a big palace, and it seemed to take a very long time. And all the while, he grew increasingly frustrated, as if there were fewer trolls than he expected to find. Emmy wondered whether the trolls, like Blitzen, had run off somewhere. When Beowulf had gathered as many trolls as he could muster, he led them outside.

Oh, how Emmy wished they had stayed inside! Sure, it was as cold as a freezer compartment in there, but at least there was no wind. With Beowulf’s iron sword cutting into her powers, she was keenly sensitive to the cold. The arctic winds slid beneath her scales like a thousand ice picks.

As if all this weren’t bad enough, a band of trolls armed with ice axes shambled along behind her like a parade of trained apes. Despite her waning powers, her nose worked all too well. There was only one word for the way trolls smelled:
malanky
.

When they arrived at the Vortex Interceptor, Beowulf frowned. He walked around and around
the base of the machine. “They have been here,” he muttered. “Those two children have been here, and they have been meddling.”

“Your precious machine is still standing,” Emmy said. “What’s the problem?”

She too saw her Keepers’ snowshoe tracks, but she also saw the tracks of a big wolf. She began to fret.

Beowulf swung around to Emmy. “Did you tell them where to find the Thunder Eggs?”

“Why would I do that?” Emmy snapped. “They’d never be able to protect them from you.”

Beowulf nodded thoughtfully. “I believe you. But now you will tell me where you have hidden the eggs.”

“You’re the Easter Bunny,” Emmy said. “Find them yourself.”

“Bah! You are a maddening creature.” He shouted to the trolls, “Go and search for the eggs! They can’t be far from here! They will be buried in the snow.”

The trolls, grumbling, stomped off in all directions. Emmy heard the steady
chunk-chunk-chunk
of their ice axes hitting the snow.

“I will search, too,” he said. He took up a shovel from among the tools lying in the snow at the base of the Interceptor. “You,” he said to Emmy, stabbing
the sword into the snow next to her. “Stay here and don’t move.”

Emmy couldn’t have moved if she had tried. The power of the iron sword nearly paralyzed her. She had been in fixes before: trussed in chains by St. George in Queen Hap’s hobgoblin throne room, and stuck in the deep-sea diver’s helmet in which Maldew the Mermage had confined her. But there was something about this particular fix that made all the other fixes seem like a walk in the dark.

Or was it a walk in the
park
?

She had no idea which was right. It was certainly dark enough at the North Pole, so maybe this really was a walk in the dark, in which case, those other fixes were walks in the light?

Without Jesse’s guidance, she was lost. She missed Daisy every bit as much. Daisy was so brave. Just being around Daisy made Emmy’s courage soar.

“Where are you, my Keepers?” she wondered aloud. “Are you safe from the wolf?”

Beowulf, who was about thirty paces away, heard her. He stopped digging and leaned on his shovel. “Wherever they are, I hope they return soon.”

Emmy snapped, “I hope they are a million, trillion miles away from here, because I no longer deserve to have them as Keepers.”

“Now you’re making sense,” said Beowulf with a wolfish grin. “You deserve me. Your Keepers are bound to come here, sooner or later, to rescue you. And when they do, I will threaten to harm you, and they will sign the contract. It will be that simple. After they sign, I will put you to work intercepting eggs for me, your perfect Keeper.”

Emmy stared up at the scaffold and thought back to before the adventure started, when she’d been sitting on her barn roof, watching the colored lights in the sky. Now she knew that the singing she’d heard had been an SOS from the Aurora, the spirits of the northern lights. She’d been on the brink of understanding their song when Beowulf had come along in his sleigh, masked as Santa.

Now she saw with her own eyes what Beowulf’s spell had prevented her from seeing before, that the machine Beowulf had designed to intercept Thunder Eggs also pierced the ozone layer, the same area of the sky where the Aurora dwelled. The sharp top, which crackled with elemental power, was all hung about with the limp husks of dead light spirits.

Not only had Emmy not helped the Aurora, but she had thrown her lot in with their enemy.

Beowulf probably didn’t even know he was hurting the Aurora. He didn’t care who he hurt. All he cared about was getting his hands on Thunder Eggs. Beowulf was a bad man, worse than St. George on his worst day. Maybe it was a good thing that she couldn’t remember where she had hidden the eggs. Maybe the eggs were better off lost forever in a frozen wasteland than in the clutches of a man who wanted to hatch them only to drink their blood and extend his life.

Emmy had to wonder what her mother would say if she knew what Emmy had done. There was a better word for Emmy than
autochthonous
. It was
trattor
! Oh, if only she could regain her powers and redeem herself.

Emmy was just about to open her mouth and tell Beowulf that Jesse and Daisy would never sign her over to him when her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. It was frozen stiff. The arctic temperatures were freezing Emmy, encasing her in an ever-thickening coat of ice. Inch by inch, scale by scale, with a creaking sound like a giant door shutting, the ice was stealing over her body.

Beowulf stopped his digging and approached her, his arms folded across his muscled chest. “I
prefer you like this,” he said with a laugh. “It will keep you out of trouble until you are completely mine. You should be pleased. With the continual supply of dragon blood you will provide me, your Keeper will be not only the king of Geatland but also the king of the world. Because the man who lives forever rules forever.”

Just then, Jesse and Daisy came sliding on their snowshoes toward the Interceptor. Emmy no longer had the power to cry out, as she wanted to with every fiber of her being. Oh, how she wanted to scream at her Keepers to run away before it was too late!

Frantically, Emmy tried to send them Mind Messages, but her Mind Message Center was out of order.

“I thought you’d return,” Beowulf growled at them.

Jesse and Daisy stopped just outside the ring of floodlights. The trolls dropped their shovels and moved closer, looking on with their goggle eyes. Beowulf started toward them as well, but Jesse raised his arm. “Keep your distance, Buster,” he said.

“Yeah, we don’t want to catch any dragon slayer cooties,” Daisy said. “And don’t even think of siccing the trolls on us.”

Inwardly, Emmy beamed with pride. How brave they were, her Keepers! How noble and forthright! And how
sassy
!

Jesse said, “We’ve changed our minds about signing our dragon over to you. If you want to draw up another contract, we’ll sign it.”

For a moment, Emmy was shocked.
Her
Keepers would never willingly give up their title! It wasn’t an easy job being a Dragon Keeper, but they liked it and were good at it.

Then Emmy thought about all the grief she had brought to them over the months they had been together. Still, surely the good times outweighed the bad. It had to be a trick.

Beowulf, apparently thinking the same thing, narrowed his eyes. “Why are you so eager to let her go?”

“Ha!” said Jesse. “Wouldn’t
you
like to know?”

“Wait a minute, Jess,” said Daisy. “He’s entitled to know.” Daisy turned to Beowulf. “It’s a lot of work being a Dragon Keeper.”

“Yeah, we never get to play like regular kids anymore,” Jesse said. “We want to go back to the way things were before we found that Thunder Egg, back to being mindless and irresponsible. But we can’t just give our dragon up for adoption. There are
no adoption agencies for dragons. So you see, you’ve solved the problem for us.”

Inwardly, Emmy sagged. It wasn’t a trick after all. Her Keepers really
did
want to give her up. If that was the case, then all was lost and she no longer cared what happened to her or to any dragons, Autochthonous or Ethereal.

“Oh, and by the way, where
is
our dragon?” said Jesse.

“She’s standing right in front of you,” said Beowulf. “Like a mastodon, perfectly preserved in ice.”

Jesse flicked his eyes over at Emmy. And that was when Emmy saw it. There was something not quite right about Jesse’s eyes. Emmy had been so busy listening to what her Keepers were saying that she had failed to notice how they looked. But now she saw that they both looked a bit too shiny and colorful, like pictures in a slick magazine.

Were they under some sort of a spell? Was that why they were so ready to give her up? In that case, spells could be reversed. Hope stirred in Emmy’s breast. Perhaps all was not lost.

“But we do have one condition,” said Daisy. “First, you have to throw that iron sword into the abyss.”

“Once you’ve done that,” said Jesse, “you can
go back to the palace and draw up another contract.”

“We’ll sign it,” said Daisy. “And she’ll be all yours.”

Beowulf seemed to be thinking it over. At length, he nodded and said, “So be it!”

To Emmy’s astonishment, he yanked the sword out of the ice, swung it around and around over his head, and sent it whistling through the air in the direction of the abyss. Immediately, Emmy felt an itching in her talons and in the tip of her snout that meant her magical powers were returning, one teeny-tiny fraction of an inch of her body at a time.

Why had Beowulf thrown away his sword? He had to know that once the sword was gone, her powers would come back.

Then she understood. Her Keepers were thinking that it would take time for Beowulf to return to the palace and redraft the contract, time enough for Emmy’s powers to return, and they would be off. They couldn’t know that Beowulf had already drawn up the contract and was carrying it with him at this very moment. He would leave her Keepers no choice but to sign the contract—before Emmy’s powers had time to return!

“Very well, then,” said Beowulf, turning to the Keepers. “I have done what you asked. And as good
luck and careful planning would have it, I have already drawn up a new contract.”

He pulled the roll of paper out of his belt and unfurled it with a wicked grin.

Oh, if only she could thaw a little more quickly!
Emmy had to stop her Keepers from signing, but her powers were maddeningly slow in coming back to her.

Jesse produced Beowulf’s ink bottle, and Daisy pulled out his quill and dipped it in the ink.

“Okay, Beowulf,” she said, holding out her hand. “Give us the contract. We’re ready when you are.”

Beowulf stepped past the lights to hand the contract to Daisy, but the contract passed right through her arm! It was as if she were no more than a ghostly apparition. And then it became obvious to everyone—the real Daisy wasn’t there. Neither was the real Jesse.

They were both nothing more than a trick of the light.

Their images flickered and began to melt, like statues made of colored sugar, leaving Beowulf snarling, crushing the scroll in his fists.

It had been almost too easy, like working puppets by remote control. All Jesse and Daisy had to do was stand inside the Aurora as they hovered over the abyss, while a hologram of Beowulf shimmered in front of them. Whatever they said to the Beowulf
hologram, their holograms down at the North Pole repeated to the real Beowulf.

Not being physically next to Beowulf made the cousins much bolder. For instance, had Daisy actually been standing face to face with the hulking Norseman, she never would have dreamed of accusing him of having dragon slayer cooties. That would have been nuts! But it was like talking to an actor on a television screen who was playing a very scary character. It was easy and safe and even sort of fun.

And better yet, it had worked. Beowulf had fallen for the trick of the light. He had pitched the iron sword away, assuming he could force them to sign the contract before Emmy had her powers back. He couldn’t have been more wrong. And now that Emmy was free, the Army of Light was ready to spring into action.

When the Aurora invited Jesse and Daisy to join the Army of Light, neither had been sure what to expect. The last thing they’d anticipated was that they would be an army of only two.