The Dragondain (12 page)

“How about day after?”

“Nope. Got a big play date with Anthony.”

Lily tried to smile. “Must be nice having a boyfriend.”

Isla continued her tight circles.

“He’s so much older,” said Lily.

“He’s only a year older than me,” said Isla.

“But he has his own car.”

“Movie night on Thursday?” Isla asked.

“Yes!”

“All right, then. Pick you up around six?”

“That would be wonderful!”

Isla veered onto the shoulder of the road, her brother’s bike tilting wildly from one side to the other, flag snapping. She rarely cut through The Wald on her way back—pedaling up a steep paved road was infinitely easier than going up a steep dirt one.

Lily found Myrddin in the western greenhouse, planting seedlings. He was in a very good mood and acted as if he didn’t remember the morning’s events, which may very well have been the case. Lily got out a seedling tray and spread potting soil over it, patting the soil into the small openings. While they worked, Lily chatted about horses and bonsai.

“Where’s Gwen?” asked Lily. Myrddin clamped his mouth shut at the mention of his sister’s name. “I’m going to take Hello Kitty out for a ride this evening, before it gets too dark.”

Myrddin straightened. “Keep out of the Far East field,” he blurted.

Lily was instantly curious, but she felt Myrddin had been troubled enough for one day.

“I will,” she said. “I promise.”

Myrddin smiled, evidently relieved. “Oh, a promise, is it? And to what do I owe this honor?”

“I’m going to circle the egg, to see if any lights are on at Uncle’s.”

“He’s not back,” said Myrddin, “Been there myself today. Don’t be goin’ in that house if you sees anything. You come tell your father first thing. Understand?”

Lily knew that Myrddin was just repeating the party line, but he sounded more serious than usual.

Lily nodded. “Okay.”

Noticing a pallet of boxes, Lily put down her tray and dusted off her hands. “Hey, when did these arrive?”

“Just today.”

Lily unsealed one of the boxes and pulled out what looked like a backpack. “So, is this what we’re giving away now with a purchase of a hundred dollars or more?”

Myrddin looked up. “Yep. Jac-a-backpacs they call ‘em. Pretty nifty, too.”

Holding the backpack by her fingertips, Lily spun the thing around. “Pretty lame, if you ask me.”

“Lame!” protested Myrddin. “No. Now look here.” Myrddin removed his gloves and took the jac-a-backpac from Lily. “Watch this.” And with a few snaps, some folds, and a little sleight-of-hand, it turned into a jacket. Lily had a hard time seeing how moments before it had been a backpack. “Now, what do you think about that?”

Lily grabbed another jac-a-backpac from the box. “Mine!” she announced.

Myrddin laughed. “And look here.” He pulled up a hood, then opened the jacket and stroked the lining. “A hood. And cotton lining all round.”

“Nice.”

On sighting Lily, Hello Kitty stomped in her stall. She wanted to nuzzle so much that Lily had to reprimand her repeatedly while getting her blanketed and saddled.

The heat of the day still warmed the air above the fields. It felt good to be on paths she knew well. The trail leading up to and around the egg was one of Lily’s favorites. Parts of it were very old, possibly Indian, and before them, deer. The ascent to the egg was short and steep, but Hello Kitty had no trouble scaling it.

The wide grassy field in front of the mansion was quiet. Fireflies winked underneath the boughs of the great tree, which stood like an enormous sentinel. Lily kept an eye and ear out for Mr. Clippers, as Hello Kitty was skittish around him. Lily took a slow lap around the tree, eyeing its upper branches. The tree was perfectly shaped and free of lightning strikes, which seemed odd, since it was the only tree on this side of the house. A never-evergreen, Lily had dubbed it. Always in full leaf, always a golden amber—forever autumn. Lily glanced at the ground below the tree. No leaves, no broken branches.

All the windows in Ebb’s house were dark. Lily hunted among them for hints of movement or odd shadows, but she detected nothing.

Uncle Ebb still wasn’t home.

Chapter Nine

Don’t Tell Dad

J
asper
was not present that night at dinner.

Lily wondered what extra chores her father had given him, but decided not to risk drawing attention to her involvement. Worse, she didn’t know what Jasper had told them. Complicating or compromising his lie was
not
an option.

After dinner, she retired to her room, busying herself with the delicate care of her three bonsai trees. She had space in her windows for all of them, but Lily liked to keep one on her bookcase, rotating the trees once a week.

Currently, the feltleaf willow was on display. With a flourish, she unrolled her bonsai tools, a gift from Gwen on Lily’s seventh birthday, and picked up a kiri bonsai shear in one hand and a satsuki in the other. Clipping bonsai was like meditation for Lily and always made time pass quickly.

At nine o’clock, a very tired-looking Jasper shuffled in. He closed and locked the door behind him.

Lily wiped off her tools before rolling them up and swept the clippings into a pile for the compost.

“We gotta talk,” said Jasper, still standing with his back to the door.

Lily set a boombox on the floor, speakers pointing toward the door, and flipped on the CD player. Erin McKeown’s
Life On the Moon
filled the room.

Jasper sat heavily on the edge of the bed. At first, they just stared at each other, neither knowing what to say. Then a small smile began to twitch at the corners of Lily’s lips. Jasper raked his fingers through his hair and clutched his temples, slowly turning his head left and right, his eyes wide.

“It’s really real,” Lily finally said, “isn’t it?”

Jasper let out a blast of air from his lungs, then covered his mouth with both hands, as though he were afraid to speak.

“You’ve been there,” she continued, “haven’t you?” Jasper gave a slow nod. “They were
never
just stories.”

“‘A story can be made up as easily as you please, or not,’” quoted Jasper.

“‘But a tale, now that’s a moon of a different color,’” said Lily, trying to imitate their uncle’s voice.

Jasper clutched imaginary lapels of a coat of many pockets. “‘A tale is an account of things in their due order, often divulged secretly, or as gossip.’”

“‘Would you like to hear one?’” finished Lily.

There was a pause, then Jasper whispered, “I rode a Rinn.”

A big grin burst out on Lily’s face. “And not just any Rinn, you rode Nimlinn back to Sea Denn, didn’t you?”

Jasper nodded, laughing.

“I’ve been in the Great Hall of the Rinn!” he blurted. “It was just like the painting—only real!”

Lily closed her eyes and waved her hands up and down so rapidly the motion caused her to bounce lightly upon the bed. “The moons!” she said, spreading out her arms and looking up to the ceiling.

Jasper made a huge “I know!” face, but words escaped him.

“What are we going to do?” she asked, but even as she said it, she felt the only possible answer bubble up within herself.

Jasper said it first.

“We have to find Ebb.”

The dam holding back their words broke, and they began talking over each other excitedly, neither understanding more than a fragment of what the other said.

“Wait, wait, wait!” said Jasper, holding out his hands. “Let’s do this right. We each need to know everything the other knows. Start at the beginning. Tell me
everything
you said or did.”

Lily nodded, took a few deep breaths.

“All right,” she said, closing her eyes and licking her lips as she mentally slipped back to her first memories of Barreth.

In great detail, Lily described the crossover between Barreth and Darwyth: the terrible sight of the scaramann oozing down into the great valley of the Rinn; the web-like ropes attached to Fangdelve; and the streaming invaders dripping down the sides of the tower. She talked about the green bird directing her to run, and about cresting the earth mound and seeing Sea Denn for the first time: the ocean glimmering behind it; the upward and downward curves of Barreth’s and Darwyth’s horizon lines yawning away from each other; the thin dark gap between, where the moons—some huge, some small—stood out among the bright twinkling stars.

She told Jasper about the scaramann breaching the hill not two hundred yards away from her, the sudden arrival of the wyfling on wirtleback, and the coin’s ability to decipher its language so she could both comprehend and speak. Lily recounted her close call with the scaramann in the ditch, and how Roan and his clutter had rushed to protect her. She described the bugs attacking from all sides and Roan’s calling down the darkness. Jasper, listening as intently as a five-year-old to one of Uncle Ebb’s bedtime tales, leaned forward.

“How did you do that?” he interrupted.

“I didn’t,” said Lily. “I was just there, and it happened. I think it was the moon coin’s doing.”

Jasper considered the idea. It made as much sense as anything else, which was to say, very little.

“Okay. Go on.”

Lily explained how only the Rinn could see clearly in the darkness. She told about riding Roan to the Great Hall and about the grave speech delivered by the Wornot.

When Lily got to the part about the Tomb of the Fallen, Jasper made Lily tell him everything she’d taken. He was especially curious about the strange wooden ball that held the crystal sphere.

“Why did you take that? You don’t even know what it does!”

Lily shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. I guess it looked cool.”

“It looked cool? You took it because it looked cool?”

Lily rethought her decision and came to the same conclusion. “Well, yeah. Why not?”

“What if it’s dangerous?”

“It’s just a little orb. Maybe it’s like a crystal ball, for communicating with people.”

“With who? Communicating—with who? We sure don’t want to be talking to Wrengfoul anytime too soon!”

Lily slumped a bit. “I didn’t think of that.”

“Promise me you won’t fool with it until we find out what it does.”

“Okay, I won’t,” said Lily. “So what did
you
take from the tomb?”

Jasper quickly told
his
story of the Tomb of the Fallen, and the things that he had taken from there.

“Did you notice anything familiar about the murals?” he asked.

Lily shook her head.

“Well,” said Jasper, “they looked awfully familiar to me, like I’d seen them someplace before—some of them, anyway.”

“It’s probably just your mind playing tricks, filling in some of the places and creatures from the bedtime tales, and from Uncle Ebb’s paintings.”

Jasper nodded. “Maybe. But there were other things, too, like the stonework on the pillars, and the designs on the lamps.”

He told Lily about his experience with the quarterstaffs.

“What could that have been about?” he asked aloud. Lily just shook her head, not knowing what to say. “Okay, so back to you.”

Lily described the shearing of Nimlinn and how Twizbang and Snerliff had saddled her. She told him about the secret passage that led to their encounter with Tanglemane, and the flight to the Blight Marsh. Jasper made fun of her for closing her eyes during the descent through the mountains. When Lily got to the part about falling asleep in the saddle, she paused, suddenly feeling stupid. She weighed how important the next part was to the story. Did she really need to include the dream? It had felt so . . . private. At the time, even
she
had felt like she was eavesdropping. So she skipped the dream and went straight to the near-rendezvous with Aleron.

Next she told Jasper about meeting the misfits on Dain, about Tavin being first tied up and then cut loose to fight the dragon. When she told him how, with Curse’s help, Tavin delivered the death blow, Jasper interrupted.

“Wait—Tavin killed the dragon?”

“Well, it
was
a group effort. He couldn’t have done it without them, but they couldn’t have done it without him either.”

Jasper frowned. “Why are the people of Dain killing dragons? Did the dragon say anything that would explain it?”

“No. The dragons on Dain aren’t at all like the ones in Ebb’s tales. They don’t talk, and they’re wingless.”

“Wingless?”

“Yes, wingless.”

Jasper looked away in thought. “What happened to their wings? I don’t remember any tales about wingless dragons, do you?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Lily. “There is
kind
of a story.”

“What do you mean?”

“
Grinchink the Poacher.
Remember it?”

“Of course: the story about Dik Dek’s seahorses. But what does that have to do with Dain?”

“Hear me out.
Grinchink the Poacher
takes place before the second calendar of Rinnjinn was established, when the Realm was more lawless.”

“How do you remember all those dates?”

“I just do. Now listen: Grinchink and his smelt of dragons were routinely crossing over to Dik Dek and feasting on its oceans, totally pigging out, not caring one whit about who they were eating. Right?”

“Go on.”

“The merfolk complain to Dain, where it goes all the way up to Fendragon himself, but the attacks keep coming.”

“Yeah, that Grinchink was a piece of work.”

“Correct. So the merfolk set a trap.”

“By lying in wait with the Great Clam.”

“Exactly. After several near misses, they finally get the jump on him. And using the pearl, they deprive all the dragons in the smelt of their wings.”

“Grinchink and his smelt fall into the sea, where the merfolk alter them further, giving them gills and fins, until they become creatures of the sea. But I still don’t see where you’re going with this.”

Lily smiled, pleased that she could bring her brother this close, and still not have him understand. “How many dragons are in a smelt, do you think?” asked Lily.

“Oh, I don’t know . . . a perch of dragons holds around thirty-six, so . . . somewhere between twelve and eighteen?”

“I’ll go along with that. So, how fast do you think one pearl, even the pearl of the Great Clam, could remove their wings?”

“Uncle described it as shining a ray of light. So one at a time, I would think—but pretty rapid-fire.”

“Who would you target first?”

“I’d go for Grinchink—first thing.”

“Yeah, me too. And while the merfolk are blasting the other dragons, what do you think Grinchink is doing?”

“Screaming bloody murder, I would imagine. He would want to be—”

“—rescued.”

A look of recognition dawned on Jasper’s face. “So Grinchink,” began Jasper, suddenly excited, “and a few others, are saved. They return to Dain.”

“And the rest stay in the drink,” said Lily. “To become seahorses.”

“The wingless dragons are Grinchink’s descendants!” shouted Jasper. “No wonder they’re so angry.”

“Yes, but I think it’s more than that: there’s something terribly wrong with the land dragons of Dain. I don’t think Grinchink was inherently evil. I think he merely saw the oceans of Dik Dek as a feeding ground, and anything swimming in it as food.”

“But it still doesn’t explain what happened to the ones with wings. Where are they? And why can’t the wingless ones talk?”

“That I don’t know,” said Lily, “but it’s important we find out.”

Lily picked up with her story again, describing in great detail the harvesting of the fallen dragon. When she reached the part about Tavin tricking her into letting him go and almost killing her, Lily’s sentences got quieter and further apart. Dubb’s assertion that it was Curse, not Tavin himself, that had attacked her, was about as reassuring to Jasper as it was to herself.

They both were silent for a time.

“Curse is dangerous,” said Jasper. “I saw it eating away at Tavin in Bairne. He sure wasn’t in control then.”

Lily was surprised. “In Bairne? But he’s supposed to be better in Bairne, something about being around lots of people.”

Jasper wagged his head slowly. “He was all covered in sweat and very pale, and he was acting feverish. Oh, and he was limping something terrible.”

“The dragon bite!”

“What?”

“When he fooled me into letting him go, he said he was going out to destroy the dragon clutch. But some of the eggs had already hatched. While he was destroying the eggs, one of the hatchlings bit him in the leg. Maybe it’s gone septic. He could have some raging infection. Who knows what you can catch from a dragon bite?”

Lily went on, detailing how Dubb, Andros, and Marred had tracked down Tavin and brought him back; the trip to the healer witch’s house; and how she had been riding next to a backpack stuffed with two dragon eggs and didn’t even know it. She told him about meeting Ember and her hunch that Uncle Ebb must know Ember, because she knew about the moon coin and how it worked. Finally, she described Ember’s attempt to heal Dubb’s sword using the little verse their mother sang whenever they were hurt or sick, and how it had gone so badly. When she got to the part where she had placed her own finger to the blade, Jasper looked impressed.

“How did you know to do that?”

“I didn’t. I didn’t know what to do, but I could see that she was being hurt each time she flubbed a bit of the verse. And
I
knew the verse perfectly. So I just finished what she started—saying the verse right. After that, I came home, hid everything as best I could, and tried to wake you up. You know the rest.”

“Ember knew the little verse mom sings?”

“Yep.”

“How?”

Lily shrugged. “Maybe Ember knows Mom? Maybe she’s been right in this very house.”

Jasper stared dumbly.

“Your turn,” continued Lily. “What did you do, and how did you lose the note I gave you?”

“Note?” said Jasper, puzzled.

“Yes! The note! I told you who to trust, and how long it takes to get back, and to go to only one—” Lily swung her pillow, smacking Jasper upside his head for emphasis, “—moon! Just one. One!” Jasper raised his arms defensively, but Lily kept raining down blows.

“I told you how to identify the moons on the coin.” Wham! “I told you how to—” Lily stopped her pummeling. “—use it. Oh, Jasper! Tell me you still have it!”

“I didn’t see any note!” said Jasper, flinching as Lily raised the pillow threateningly. “I’ll look for it, but I didn’t see it. Where was it?”

“With the LUNA Bars in your coat pocket. How could you have missed it?” Lily dropped the pillow and covered her mouth. “Oh! What have I done?”

Jasper instantly understood what Lily was worried about.

“Listen,” he said reassuringly. “You wrote it in English, right? No one knows English in the Moon Realm. It’ll just look like scribbles to anyone who finds it. They’ll never know a thing.”

Lily sat back down. “I hope you’re right,” she said, unsure.

“Are you finished?”

“I guess.”

“Stop worrying about it, Lily. Nothing is going to come of it.”

Lily didn’t seem so sure, but nodded her head.

“Okay, it started like this—” Jasper recounted waking up in the nest in the Blight Marsh, and how he had at first thought it was all just a dream. Lily laughed when Jasper described Nimlinn’s reaction to being thought a dream.

“She’s very proud,” said Jasper.

“And rightly so. She’s Nimlinn Goldenclif, of the clan Broadpaw, Queen of the Rinn!” said Lily.

Lily was unhappy to hear that Fangdelve was still in the hands of the scaramann, and the idea of them breeding hordes of fire-breathing dragonflies was too awful to consider. But she was very interested in Jasper’s conversation with Greydor, and specifically in Jasper’s plan to bring Dainriders to the Rinn. She interrupted him on many small points and made him repeat them until she was satisfied she understood completely. At one point Lily grabbed a pad of paper and pencil and wrote
Dainriders
.