“Not with me, no.”
“With the dragons?”
“With David. He knew of Lorel’s presence before I did.”
“Impossible,” Aunty Gwyneth snapped. “Where was your listening dragon? Asleep?”
David squinted at the dragon on the top of the fridge. It may have been the wacky thermostat, but he could swear that the little creature was trembling.
“David’s … sensitive,” Liz replied edgily. “He has a special dragon he named Gadzooks. A writing dragon. Their auma is high. It was Gadzooks who found the name Lorel.”
“A writing dragon?” Aunty Gwyneth’s tone became deeply nasal. She picked up the dragon book and leafed through its pages, dropping it again with a disapproving snort. “A writing dragon and a storytelling bear? Are you saying that your tenant drew the Teller here?”
“I don’t know,” said Liz, sounding flustered. “It’s hard to know what David’s capable of. He’s inquisitive; that leads him into mischief sometimes. But he’s confused about the dragons, and that includes Gadzooks. He doesn’t know what he has.”
“He knows about Gawain,” Aunty Gwyneth said coldly.
“I told him the legend; it’s a fairy story to him.”
“Then why is the boy in pursuit of the tear?”
“He’s not,” Liz insisted, touching a tired hand to her forehead, “at least, not in the way you think. He’s doing an essay, for college. He wants to write about the fire so he can win a competition.”
“And the prize?”
Liz paused and her breath became a sigh. “A field trip — to the Arctic.”
“North?” Aunty Gwyneth wheeled around. “He wants to travel to the land of the bears and the Teller of Ways is on his doorstep?”
“I agree, it’s odd,” Liz said, becoming gritty. “But I’m telling you, all David has are half-truths and fantasies. He’s a geography student working on a project. It’s nothing more sinister than that. Neither he nor Gadzooks could have brought Lorel here.”
“But something did,” Aunty Gwyneth said in a voice fortified with dark suspicions. “This must be addressed. The boy must be watched and the dragon tested. Removed if necessary. Returned to the clay.”
Tested? thought David, jerking back. Zookie? Returned to the clay?
“No,” said Liz. “I won’t let that happen.”
“You have no choice, I — wait, what was that?”
In the hall, Bonnington had suddenly come thundering down the stairs. He had skidded around the newel post, careered into a plant stand (spilling the pot, which had broken on the floor), and continued his breakneck flight into the living room. He was either having one of his “wild half hours” or he was trying to escape from something. David didn’t hang around to find out what. The thought of being caught eavesdropping by Aunty Gwyneth filled his heart with a sinister dread. At the moment the kitchen door whooshed open he was carefully dropping the latch on his. Heart thumping, he dashed to the wardrobe, opened it quickly, and grabbed Gadzooks. “I’ll come back for you,” he promised Grace. Then snatching his overcoat off the bed, he rolled Gadzooks up in it and raced across the room. Within seconds he was out of the window. Lucy, hunkering by the brambles at the top of the garden, was too preoccupied to hear him touching down. Crouching low, David hurried across the slippery gray patio. With the mildest of creaks, he was through the gate and running — to the only immediate sanctuary he could think of. The house at 40 Wayward Crescent. The home of Henry Bacon.
15
A SURPRISE AT HENRY’S
Henry was in his small conservatory, stripping dead leaves off his yucca plant, when David arrived. He almost jumped into the branches in shock when David knuckled the window and mouthed, “It’s me. Let me in.”
Henry stormed to the back door and threw it open. “What are you playing at, boy? Can’t you use the front door, like everyone else?”
David glanced back the way he’d come, anxious that his flight had not been discovered. “I was, erm, in the garden, with Lucy. Took a shortcut. Didn’t think you’d mind. Can I come in? I’m sort of in a hurry.”
Henry raised a hand. From his trousers, he pulled out a folded sheet of paper. Two sheets of paper, stapled together. It was a list of house rules. He handed them over. “Read, inwardly digest, and observe.”
David glanced at the rules and winced. There were thirty on the first sheet alone. He refolded them and pushed them into his pocket. “Anything you say. Now, can I please come in?”
Henry stood aside at last. With a sigh of relief, David swept past him into a kitchen that was a mirror image of number forty-two. Unlike Liz’s, which bore the trademark clutter of the presence of a child, this kitchen was fastidiously clean and tidy. The tiles around the countertop glinted like stars. There wasn’t a single dragon in sight.
Henry closed the door and put his hands on his hips. “Where’s your luggage, boy?”
“This is all there is for now,” said David, carefully unwrapping Gadzooks. “He’s precious. Is there somewhere safe I can hide — I mean, put him?”
“This is a house, not a bank,” Henry barked. “Put it on your bedside table if you must. And don’t scratch the polish. Rule number twenty-four: Tenant will be financially liable for breakages, scratches, stains —”
“Stains?”
“— and blemishes of any kind,” Henry finished darkly. “Suppose you’d like to inspect your quarters?”
“Pardon?”
“Your berth, boy. Place of rest.”
“Oh … yeah. Love to. Do you mind if I make a phone call first? I need to call Zanna. It’s really urgent.”
Henry stiffened his shoulders.
“What now?” groaned David.
“Rule number three, boy.”
David checked the list. “No cuddling?”
“On sofa or elsewhere,” Henry said sharply. “Far too good for you, anyway, that girl. Can’t see what the attraction is.”
“Henry, Zanna and I are not an item.”
Henry threw him a quizzical glance.
“We’re not going out — not courting, OK? And we certainly don’t cuddle — not if I can help it.” David frowned and dug her card from the pocket of his jeans. “Where’s the phone?”
Henry nodded at the living room. “Table, by my chair. Twenty-five cents, minimum charge. In the tin.”
“That’s robbery! You’re worse than Bonnington.”
“What?”
“Oh, never mind,” David grumbled. He fished a quarter from his pocket and went.
Like the kitchen, Mr. Bacon’s living area was light, airy, and extremely well furnished. The wall that would have separated David’s room from the living room in Liz’s house had been knocked out to create one large, long space. Not a cushion was out of place. A wide-screen television and an expensive-looking music system dominated one corner. A lengthy aquarium dotted with a selection of brightly colored fish also caught David’s eye. He put Gadzooks on a coffee table inlaid at its center with frosted glass, then twisted down into a leather recliner. He lifted the phone and dialed Zanna’s number.
Hi, this is Zanna, her answering machine crackled. Probably in the shower or journeying in the astral or listening to something very loud right now. Leave a message. You know you want to. Mwah!
David switched the phone to his opposite ear. “Zanna, get out of the shower, now. It’s me, David. I’m at Henry’s. Gotta talk. Call me, pronto: Scrubbley … four, double five, triple seven, zero. It’s major.”
He put the phone down and flopped back, sighing.
Immediately, Mr. Bacon’s face appeared — upside down over the top of the chair. “Comfortable, boy?”
“Very,” said David, swinging gently from side to side.
Mr. Bacon stared at him, hard. It was the sort of upside-down look that said, The next time I catch you lounging in my chair you’ll be sleeping outside in the gutter. Got it?
David leaped up (and brushed the seat clean). “You haven’t got a
computer, have you?”
Mr. Bacon bristled with indignance. “I’m a librarian. Of course I’ve got a computer.”
“With Internet access?”
Henry jiggled his mustache.
“Can I use it? Please?”
“Certainly not.”
“But Zanna might be online in the college library.”
The word library seemed to soften Henry’s heart. “Oh, very well,” he said in a blustery fashion. “It’s in the upstairs study. Come on.”
Grabbing Gadzooks, David followed Mr. Bacon up the lushly carpeted stairs. They paused on the landing by a door marked STUDY where Henry laid down yet another of his rules. “Entrance prohibited without permission, understood?”
David nodded.
“And don’t touch the models.”
“Models? What models?” Henry swung the door open.
It was like walking into a maritime museum. On the walls were a number of small glass cases, each containing a model of a sailing ship. Charts and maps were everywhere: some rolled up on an antique desk, on which sat a globe and an ancient-looking compass; others pinned to the walls below the ships. There were books, of course — hundreds of them — in rows of maroon and burnished blue on solid wooden shelves showing no signs of bowing. And photographs, lots of photographs, mostly in sepia or black and white — in frames on the desk, on a corkboard on the wall, propped up here and there against the spines of the books. One image stood out above all others, a striking monochrome poster that took up half the chimney wall. It was a close-up of a polar bear, photographed head-on. The bear was poised by a lead of water. It had its head bent low as though about to take a drink, but its darkly rounded eyes were raised in full and lordly awareness. One glance made David feel strangely humble.
“Lorel,” he whispered, and for a moment the room seemed to whisper back, as if every book had rustled its pages and every sailing ship had creaked its beams.
“What’s that, boy? Did you utter something?”
“No, nothing,” David said, turning and looking more closely at things. It occurred to him now that this room was set in a certain age, somewhere at the start of the twentieth century. The ships were old-fashioned sailing vessels, the maps all charted the polar regions, and the photographs … He popped Gadzooks down beside the computer (he looked a little incongruous among so much memorabilia) and picked up a small framed photo of a group of men dressed in heavy sweaters and crumpled, baggy pants. They had the look of wartime aviators. They were standing on an ice field, resting on shovels. Behind them rose the bow of a three-masted ship.
“My grandfather, polar explorer,” explained Henry. “That’s him there, boy, second on the right. Just lost an ear and two toes to frostbite. Didn’t stop him doing his share of digging. Took sixteen men to free that ship from pack ice in the South Weddell Sea. If they hadn’t, Bacon grandson, H., wouldn’t have been here to tell the tale.”
“I can see the likeness,” David said, nodding. He put the snapshot down. “Who photographed the bear?”
“Ah,” said Henry, turning away. “Interesting tale behind that one, boy. Man who took that disappeared in unusual circumstances in 1913. Lost, presumed dead, on an exploration to the Hella glacier.”
“Hella? I’ve heard of that. Isn’t it one of the oldest and largest glaciers in the Arctic? What happened?”
Henry picked a reference book off the shelves. He used a handkerchief to flap some dust off the spine, then flipped the pages, talking as he searched. “No one knows. Bit of a mystery. People say he wandered off to find his watch.”
“What?”
“Had a risky incident a few months before. Found himself stranded near a native settlement with a large male polar bear for company. No rifle, and too far away from camp to summon help. All he had with him was a pocket watch. Played a tune when you opened the casing. Our fellow set it down in front of the bear. Story goes, the beast swaggered up to the watch, sat down, and listened. Our man backed off and escaped to camp. Went back with his comrades twenty minutes later, but the watch and the bear had both disappeared.”
“Who was this man?” David asked nervously.
Henry turned the book around. He pointed to a plate at the bottom of a page. “Third from the left. Fair-haired. Scandinavian.”
David cast his eyes down.
It was Dr. Bergstrom.
16
TO THE LIBRARY GARDENS
As David’s mind wrestled with the incredible conundrum of how a man in his forties who lectured at Scrubbley College could look exactly like a polar explorer reported missing in 1913, the house came alive with the trill of telephones. David thought he detected four at least. Henry snapped the book shut and returned it to the shelf. “Something amiss, boy? You look a bit pale.”
“I’m fine,” said David, “just … thinking, that’s all.” He cupped his hand around Gadzooks and looked through the slatted window blinds. There was a good view of the Pennykettles’ garden from here. He picked out Lucy right away, still by the brambles, puttering about with her hedgehog book. A slightly moody-looking Bonnington was sitting near the rock garden, paws tucked under his tummy, watching. And in the center of the lawn, as if a cloud had dripped and left a great white blot, lay the hunk of ice that had once been a snowbear, still surviving despite the rain. As Henry lifted a phone and the house became silent, David thought about Lorel and turned to look at the bear print again. For a fleeting moment he became the bear, looking back into the lens of Bergstrom’s camera. And from somewhere between the bear and the man, from the bright cold wilderness of frozen ages, from the leaves of books, from the creaking timbers of icebound vessels, came a voice like a wind from another world, saying, There was a time when the ice was ruled by nine bears….
“Nine …” David whispered — then nearly hit the ceiling as he took a sharp prod in the ribs from Henry.
“Suzanna. For you.” Henry handed him a phone. “I’ll be downstairs. Don’t touch anything.”
David waited for his pulse to return to normal, then said a clipped hello.
“Rain!” she breezed back. “You called. I’m dazed. You sound kinda toasted. What’re you doing at Henry’s?”
“Liz needed my room for Aunty Gwyneth. I’m staying with Henry till she goes.”
“Gee whiz. Have a medal. What’s happening in dragon land?”
“Lots. We need to meet.”
“Sure. Come to college. Remember college? Big stone building. Holds things called lectures, which you frequently miss on Monday mornings.”
“Too public. I need to see you somewhere quiet.”
“Steady, you’re making my tassels dance.”
“Zanna, get serious. Listen to this: Mr. Bacon’s just shown me a picture of Bergstrom.”
“Bergstrom?”
“Yeah. It’s over ninety years old.”
“Um, right. Time for a slight reality check, David.
I’ve just seen the fair-haired doctor in the parking lot. I know he’s kind of old, but he’s not a pickled wreck, which he’d have to be if —”
“Zanna, this isn’t a joke. There’s something weird going on here, believe me. We need to talk. Do you know the library gardens in the middle of town?”
“Course.”
“Meet me there in twenty minutes.”
“Rain, I’ve got a lecture. So have you, come to think of it. And it’s miserable outside — Zannas don’t like wet.”
“Fine. Bring an umbrella.”
“Rain!”
“This is urgent. Liz is sort of … pregnant. She’s going to have a dragon child!”
There was a gulp at Zanna’s end.
“Twenty minutes,” said David. And he put down the phone.
They sat in David’s favorite location: a small wooden bench along the narrow paved path where David, Lucy, Liz, and Sophie had once fed a host of gray squirrels by hand. No squirrels were there to greet them today, just the rain, misting through the leafless trees, casting a gray shee
t over the gardens. Zanna, dressed in her usual black with only a fishnet cardigan around her shoulders, shuddered and couldn’t stop her teeth from chattering.
“We need help,” she said.
David nodded. A droplet of rain ran down his forehead and splashed off the middle button of his overcoat. “Sure you don’t want to wear this?”
Zanna bunched up close. “A cuddle will do.”
David swung out a hesitant arm and Zanna shuffled up closer again. She felt surprisingly frail in the wrap of his shoulder. He squeezed her unintentionally as she nestled.
“Thank you,” she whispered, pushing her hand inside his coat. “How’s Zookie doing?”
David, who’d been holding Gadzooks in his lap, brought him up to chest height. “Better than us.” He ran a thumb down the dragon’s snout, smearing water off the smooth green glaze.
“Aunty Gwyneth scares me,” Zanna said, shivering. “We shouldn’t mess with her. She’s … I don’t know what she is; more than a dragon midwife, that’s for sure.”
David lowered Gadzooks again and blew a cloud of breath into the air. “I want to know why she’s really here. She didn’t come to the crescent because of the egg; finding it quickened surprised her, I think.”
“If you ask me, it’s obvious why she’s here,” said Zanna, her warm breath flowing over his neck. “You’ve drawn everyone into this space because you made a wish to know about the tear. Somehow you’re going to get an answer — and when you do, Aunty Spooky will be right on the scene.”
“But no one knows where the fire tear’s hidden.”
Zanna flexed her fingers. “Lorel does.”
“A ghost bear? He’s hardly going to tell me his closely guarded secrets.”
“He told you that nine bears ruled the ice.”
“Yeah, and what’s that s’posed to mean?”
“Exactly what it says. Once, nine bears ruled the Arctic.”
“Yeah, I know that,” David said impatiently. “But what’s it got to do with the tear?”
Zanna lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know — yet. But Lorel wouldn’t say it without good reason. Don’t look now, but there’s a squirrel on the fence.”