We Sled With Dragons (16 page)

“Still bored?” she asked.

He swallowed hard. He wasn't the least bit bored anymore.

“Right,” said Celia, taking her brother's hand. “Let's go find Atlantis.” She nudged him forward.

“Hey, why do I have to go first?” he asked. Celia raised her eyebrows at him. “Oh, right.”

“Mm-hmm,” she said and stepped onto the ground after him. They stood side by side and watched as Odd's balloon lifted off again, rising between the walls of ice and disappearing over the edge.

The twins stood still a moment longer. The air was warming at the bottom of the canyon, so they lowered their hoods and listened. The ice creaked and groaned. Oliver's head snapped from side to side with every noise, thinking he'd heard the roar of a dragon. Or a herd of dragons.

He wondered if dragons went in herds. Or was it flocks? Or packs, like wolves?

“Do you remember your catchphrase?” he asked Celia.

“It's not fair?” said Celia.

“No, the other one.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Celia, with a long exhale. “Let's get this over with.”

“THEY'RE TEARING THE
place apart!” Dr. Navel watched on the little screen as Sir Edmund's thugs rampaged through the research station searching for Oliver and Celia. “I don't think they've even noticed the open kennel yet.”

“Good,” said Claire Navel. “We need to buy the twins as much time as possible.”

“How far do you think they've gone?” said Dr. Navel. “It took Robert Peary's expedition over a month to reach the North Pole on dogsleds. And they were experienced and well supplied. Oliver and Celia have barely been gone a day. What we've asked of them is almost impossible.”

“Almost impossible is a little bit possible.” Claire smiled. “And where Oliver and Celia are concerned, I believe that
anything
is possible. They'll be just fine.”

“How do you know?”

“I have faith, Ogden.”

Dr. Navel furrowed his brow. He wasn't ready to surrender his children's lives to faith. He started absently flipping channels on the security monitor.

“Stop that,” his wife said.

He didn't stop.

“Give it to me,” she said.

He kept changing the channels. His wife reached over to grab the remote from him. He pulled it away. She reach for it again. He pulled it away again.

“Stop being childish,” she said. She grabbed and caught it and they struggled over it for a few seconds, neither of them loosening their grip. Suddenly, the screen changed to a new image, an impossible image.

Oliver and Celia standing in an icy canyon, looking at a giant tree.

“Um.” Dr. Navel dropped the remote.

“They made it!” their mother cheered.

“That's impossible,” said Dr. Navel. “The distance . . . the tree . . .”

“There are more things in heaven and earth . . . than are dreamt of in your philosophy,”
she quoted
Hamlet
at him again. “And we could sure help them out if we stole Sir Edmund's helicopter.” She took a deep breath. “It's time.”

“The Polar Plot?” he said, his eyes still fixed on the screen as Oliver and Celia studied the tree. He took a deep breath. The image vanished. They were staring at the hallway of the research station again.

Dr. Navel flipped the channel a few times, cycling through all the images, but he couldn't find the picture of Oliver and Celia again. He touched the screen and exhaled. “Let's do it.” He braced himself. “I'm ready.”

His wife smiled at him and touched his shoulder gently. “We'll get there,” she said. “We'll help them.”

Then she balled her hands into fists and punched her husband right in the stomach as hard as she could.

“Oof!” He doubled over.

“You okay?” She crouched next to him.

“One more time,” he groaned. “It has to be believable . . .”

She punched her husband again. Sir Edmund was no fool. It had to look real. Dr. Navel was slumped on the floor, his face almost green. It was about as real as it could get.

“We're coming, kids,” Claire Navel whispered, closing her eyes and thinking of her children. Then she rushed to the intercom. “Help! My husband! He's ill!”

“Quiet in there!” one of the thugs answered, his voice crackling with static.

“But he's really sick!” she said in her best whining voice.

“Who cares?” the thug answered. “Soon he'll be dragon food.”

“What if he has a toxic parasite?” Claire asked. “You wouldn't want Sir Edmund's dragon to get sick. He'll probably take the cost of the veterinary bills out of your paycheck.”

No answer came. Claire Navel waited, biting her lip.

“Just look on a security monitor,” she said. “There's a camera in here. You'll see—he's really sick.”

“Ugh,” Dr. Navel groaned. He wasn't faking it either; his wife really could throw a punch.

The seconds ticked past like hours. They waited. Dr. Navel groaned on the floor; Claire Navel tried to look worried. It wasn't too hard. She was starting to get worried for real.

Then she heard the snap of a lock opening and chains falling to the floor. The door creaked open. As soon as the guard walked in, she karate-chopped him in the arm so he dropped his weapon, and then she elbowed him in the nose so he dropped to the floor.

“Nicely done.” Dr. Navel pulled himself up, still clutching his stomach. A lump had formed where his head hit the floor.

“Good job writhing in pain.” His wife kissed him on the forehead. “Now let's go.”

They pressed themselves against the wall of the tunnel and scurried through the shadows. They ducked inside the rib cage of the pliosaur fossil when they heard Sir Edmund shouting from down the passage toward the cargo bay.

“Dogs!” he yelled. “You're telling me they set out on dogsleds! Who do they think they are? Dr. Frederick Cook?”

“Robert Peary beat Frederick Cook to the North Pole in 1909,” whispered Dr. Navel. “That's who he means. Peary. Not Cook. Dr. Cook was a fraud.”

“Now's not the time for that old argument,” his wife whispered. “Come on.”

“I'm on my way.” Sir Edmund stormed through the passage, brushing right past the Navels hiding in the skeleton.

“We need to get to the lockers and put on some cold-weather gear,” Claire Navel whispered. “Then we'll go to the helicopter pad.”

“Can you fly a helicopter?” Dr. Navel asked.

“Of course, honey,” she said. “Can't you?”

Dr. Navel blushed.

“It's okay.” His wife patted him on the shoulder. “Maybe I can teach you someday, when the kids get their helicopter licenses.”

“You think they'll want to do that?”

“I think they're starting to enjoy themselves with all this adventure. They just won't admit it yet.”

“We'll see,” said Dr. Navel. They crept to the lockers and dressed quickly in the first cold-weather gear they grabbed. Dr. Navel accidentally grabbed a ladies' parka, cut with luxurious curves, but they heard Sir Edmund's men coming so there was no time to change. They had to stuff themselves into a locker as one of the thugs came around the corner. He stopped right in front of their locker. They could just see his chest through the vents as he spoke.

“They've escaped!” he said. “The Navels have escaped!”

“I know that, you dolt,” Sir Edmund snapped back. They could just see the top of his head through the vents in the locker. He was standing only inches away. “That's why we're looking for them!”

“Not the Navel kids, the Navel
adults
!” said the guard. “They knocked out Little Francis and escaped!”

“His name was Little Francis?” Dr. Navel whispered.

“Maybe that's why he was so mean,” she whispered back.

“Idiots!” Sir Edmund yelled. “I am surrounded by idiots.”

“Hey,” said the guard. “I didn't do anything wrong. Don't yell at me.”

Sir Edmund didn't answer. They could hear him breathing loudly. He was so close they could smell his terrible breath.

“Prepare the helicopter,” he snapped at the guard. “The parents are of no concern to us right now. We have to stop the kids. I will not let the Navels beat me again. Once we have the children, the parents will fall in line.”

They listened as Sir Edmund and his guard stomped off toward the helicopter pad. The tunnel fell silent again.

“What now?” said Dr. Navel. “They're taking the helicopter. The Polar Plot depended on that.”

“We have to adapt, I guess,” said Claire.

“I hate to say it, honey,” said Dr. Navel. “But your plans and plots and gambits and ruses . . . they never seem to work.”

“This isn't over yet,” she said, climbing out of the locker. “Come on!”

The ran up the tunnel and out into the arctic air. Above them, they heard the rotor blades of the helicopter starting up. They rushed around the side to the staircase and took the steps two at a time, just as the helicopter lifted off. Sir Edmund saw them from the copilot seat and frowned. He shouted something into his headset.

“What'd he say?” yelled Claire Navel over the roar of the helicopter and the swirling snow.

“Duck!” shouted Dr. Navel.

“He told us to duck?” she yelled back.

“No,” Dr. Navel yelled. “We have to duck! Duck!”

The back of the helicopter opened and one of the henchmen leaned out with a rifle. Dr. Navel dove at his wife, knocking her off the helicopter pad and down into the snow below, just as the man opened fire. The bullets made a
twacking
sound as they plowed harmlessly into the snow. The helicopter banked hard to the right and lifted higher, flying away over the ice toward the North Pole.

Lying on the ground, the Navels watched the helicopter fly away and felt their hearts sink.

Just then, they heard the barking of dogs coming toward them. They looked up and saw a team of six sled dogs hauling a battered sled across the ice.

“That's Oliver and Celia's sled,” said Dr. Navel in despair. “What's happened?”

The dogs rushed to where he was lying and started licking his face and barking. They jumped and spun in circles.

“Do you think—?” Dr. Navel wondered. “Do you think they'll take us to Oliver and Celia?”

“Yes,” said Claire. “I think that's just what they want to do. Sled dogs are fiercely loyal. Come on!” She stood and raced back inside the research station.

“Wait! Where are you going?” Dr. Navel had to sprint after her.

“I just want to check one thing!” she called back over her shoulder. She ran right to the cargo bay, where the long crate with the dragon sat alone, unguarded and abandoned. It rattled slightly, held closed by the flimsiest of latches. “They just left the poor creature here. It would have been crushed when the station collapsed under the melting ice.”

“What are you thinking now?” Dr. Navel asked.

“Dogs, a dragon, and the Doctors Navel,” she said, hope creeping back into her voice. “I'm thinking I've got one more plan. What do you think of the Arctic Adventure?”

“If it gets us to Oliver and Celia,” said Dr. Navel. “Then I love it.”

Claire Navel cracked her knuckles. “I think we're gonna need a bigger sled.”

OLIVER AND CELIA
had never seen a tree like the one at the bottom of the ice canyon before.

Of course, Oliver and Celia had never paid much attention to trees before, so it should not be terribly surprising, yet this tree was unique among all the trees of the world. In fact, some might say it was not a tree of the world at all, but a World Tree. In Norse myth, it held the worlds of gods, men, and monsters together.

Of course, it couldn't be
that
tree, thought Celia. That tree was just a story.

And yet, here they were, looking at a tree growing from a hole in the ice at the bottom of a canyon made of ice, floating on the ocean at the North Pole.

She supposed anything was possible.

Oliver went to the edge of the trunk, where it rose from the hole in the ice. The tree's bark was gold. It sparkled like it had been encrusted with diamonds, but it was smooth to the touch. The ice around the edge of the trunk played with the light, casting a rainbow down the center of the canyon above them.

“A rainbow bridge,” said Celia.

“But it's not a bridge,” said Oliver. “It's just a reflection from the ice.”

“Maybe it'll lead to a bridge,” said Celia.

“Maybe it'll lead to a dragon,” Oliver grumbled.

“Only one way to find out where it goes.” She started walking past the tree.

“I wouldn't go that way,” a nasal voice said as she stepped forward. “That's the wrong way.”

She looked around. She didn't see anyone but her brother. She took another step toward the trunk.

“He'll get you, but good!” the same nasal voice squealed.

“Stop that!” Celia scolded Oliver.

“What?” he said. “I'm not doing anything!”

“Did you hear that voice? That nasal voice?”

“What? No.” Oliver listened just to make sure. “I don't hear anything. Just the creaking ice.”

“Not now, a second ago. A voice. It warned me.”

“No,” said Oliver. “I didn't hear a voice.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Are you sure you're, um, okay? Did you get a toxic parasite?”

“I'm fine,” said Celia. “Probably just nervous.”

“That makes two of us,” said Oliver. But I'm not hearing voices, he thought. He kept that thought to himself.

“Don't go
that
way!” Celia heard the voice again. She whipped around and saw a powder-white squirrel scurry up the trunk of the tree.

“There!” She spun Oliver around so he could see. “That squirrel! It just told me not to go this way!”

“The squirrel?” Oliver looked at his sister.

The squirrel stared back at the twins, sniffing the air with its little squirrel nose, but otherwise stayed completely still. It had two oversized front teeth sticking out of its mouth.

“Squirrels don't talk,” said Oliver.

“You talked to a yak once,” said Celia.

“That was in a dream.”

“I talked to a giant squid when I was trapped on Sir Edmund's ship,” said Celia.

“Yeah, but the squid didn't talk back,” said Oliver. “And anyway, that squirrel isn't talking.”

Celia studied the squirrel. It wasn't talking. It was just a squirrel. It was strange that it looked the squirrel in the journal, and stranger still that it was on this mysterious tree growing from the ice on the North Pole, but it could not have talked. In spite of everything Oliver and Celia had seen, she knew that there were limits. Squirrels couldn't talk.

She turned her back to the tree and continued alongside her brother, farther into the canyon.

“He's gonna eat you!” Celia heard the voice calling.

“Okay! Enough! You stop that!” She whirled around and marched back up to the squirrel, who didn't move. “Squirrels don't talk!”

“Celia!” Oliver ran back to his sister. “You're yelling at a squirrel.”

“I know I'm yelling at squirrel!” she snapped.

“Well, um . . .” Oliver scratched his head. “Is it, like, answering you?”

“Do you hear it answering me?” Celia said.

“No,” said Oliver.

“Then I guess it's not, huh?”

“But I didn't hear it before either,” said Oliver. “What'd it say?”

“It warned me that ‘he' was going to eat me,” said Celia.

“Who's he?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, I guess you could, uh, ask?” Oliver suggested. He couldn't help glancing around again for hidden cameras. He had just told his sister to ask a squirrel for an explanation. This had to be an episode of
Bizarro Bandits.
Sometimes it felt like their whole lives were an episode of
Bizarro Bandits.

Celia exhaled sharply. She didn't like the idea of asking a squirrel questions. Why would only she be able to hear the squirrel? Her brother was the one who believed in Santa Claus. If anyone should be hearing voices from talking animals, it should be him. She looked over at Oliver. He didn't hear anything. He was busy looking around the icy canyon for dragons . . . as if they were real.

“Oh, but they are real,” said the nasal voice. “And the big brute's gonna swallow you whole!”

“Aha!” Celia turned back to the squirrel.

It scurried higher up the branch.

“Did it talk again?” Oliver wanted to know.

“You really couldn't hear it?”

“No,” said Oliver. “What did it say?”

She thought for a second. If she told Oliver what the squirrel said, he'd probably freak out. He was freaked out enough already. Other than Beverly, he hated lizards. And a dragon was a giant lizard.

Maybe that was why only she could hear the squirrel. Maybe her brother couldn't handle it. She was three minutes and forty-two seconds older, after all. Perhaps that gave her certain talking-squirrel responsibilities. So be it. It was unfair, but she would shoulder her burden like any good sister should. She would protect her brother from the frightening news.

“Nothing, I guess,” said Celia. “It must just be in my head. Squirrels don't talk. Let's go.”

She turned her back to the tree once more and walked away.

“Nidhogg's his name,” the nasal voice called. “Child of the trickster god! And he's as fierce as time itself! Little children are nothing to him. You'll be a snack before brunch!”

Celia ignored the voice and kept walking beneath the rainbow. She tried not to make a face like a squirrel was shouting at her in her head.

“Appetizers! Hors d'oeuvres! Tapas! Cheese puffs!” the voice called.

She set her eyes forward and walked faster.

“Why are you going so fast?” Oliver scrambled after her. “Slow down!”

He slipped and slid on the ice. He didn't like that his sister was acting crazy. She was supposed to be the one who kept
him
from acting crazy. If she lost her mind, they were both in trouble. He would have to do something to help her keep her wits. Arguing always helped.

“I wonder if this is where we'll meet Santa Claus?” he tried.

“Mm-hmm,” Celia said like she wasn't even listening.

“I wonder if he's a bigger Corey Brandt fan than you?” Oliver continued, hoping to get some reaction from Celia.

“Mm-hmm,” she said again. There was a loud crashing sound in the distance. Just ice falling, she told herself. It had to be just the ice.

“I'm glad Corey ended up with Lauren on
Sunset High,
” Oliver declared, although he really didn't care.

“Whatever,” said Celia.

“Okay, stop!” Oliver ran ahead and blocked her path. He stood right in front of her and put his hands out to the sides so she couldn't get past. “You don't believe in Santa Claus, you're the world's biggest Corey Brandt fan, and you'd fight a polar bear single handed if it said that about
Sunset High.
Why won't you argue with me? What's going on?”

There was another rumbling of shifting ice.

“We can't stop here,” said Celia.

“You have to tell me what's going on first,” said Oliver. “That squirrel really was talking to you, wasn't it?”

Celia nodded.

“And he said something scary, didn't he?”

Celia nodded again.

“And you didn't tell me because you wanted to protect me?”

She nodded a third time.

“Well, I don't need protection,” he said. “I'm your twin brother, and if something bad is going to happen, I want to know about it.”

“You sure?” said Celia.

“I'm sure,” said Oliver.

“He said we were going the wrong way,” said Celia.

“Is that it?”

“No.” She sighed. “He also said there's a dragon named Nidhogg and he's going to eat us.”

“And you believe him?” said Oliver.

“Why would he lie?”

“Why would he talk at all?” said Oliver. “He's a squirrel.”

“So you aren't scared of a dragon?” Celia was surprised. “It's a big lizard.”

“Sure I'd be scared if we saw one,” said Oliver. “But I know the squirrel was lying.”

“How do you know that? You couldn't even hear it.”

“Because it said we were going the wrong way,” Oliver said. “And we're not. Look.”

He lowered his arm and pointed around the bend in the canyon wall. Celia peered around the corner and saw the rainbow go straight through an archway; on the other side, the canyon opened up into a huge chamber, ringed with a frozen moat. The rainbow disappeared right into a bridge of solid ice, and on the other side Celia saw the ruins of a frozen city.

Every building, every statue, every wall was covered in ice. Even the sky above was a dome of ice, although the light from the polar sun above made its way through, casting everything in a hazy blue. Small cracks in the ice above let light shine through, making more rainbows in the air above, like an underground light show.

“Very sci-fi,” said Oliver.

At the start of the bridge was a large statue of a man with a trident, half crumbled, but it had to have once been Poseidon. There was a frozen moat ringing the outer wall and then a narrow strip of rough ground with icy buildings on it and icy statues of dolphins and sea monsters and men with squids for heads, and then another frozen moat with an icy bridge and another icy wall and on and on. The circles of walls and moats were nested, one inside the other, all the way to the center, where a great building lined with columns stood on top of an iceberg.

“Um,” said Oliver, which Celia understood. He didn't mean “um.” He meant, “I think we have just discovered the lost city of Atlantis frozen beneath the Arctic sea ice at the North Pole.” He just couldn't find the words. “Um,” he repeated.

“I guess people were right about it being underwater,” said Celia. “If the ice all melted, it would be.”

“Uh-huh,” said Oliver, still at loss for words.

“Oliver, do you realize what this means?” Celia asked him.

“That we'll get our own TVs in our rooms?” he suggested.

“That the prophecy is true,” Celia sighed. “We really are the greatest explorers in the world.”

“Cool,” said Oliver.

Celia glared at him. She didn't think it was cool at all.