Bad Luck

  The rabbit raised its eyebrows—or would have if it had had any eyebrows.

  “No, I don’t know what the Midnight Sun wants—that’s the problem! The books, probably—”

  Before the magician could speculate further, his soliloquy was interrupted by a woman’s voice:

  “I thought I heard somebody back here…”

  Amber appeared backstage with a questioning smile.

  Startled, the magician pretended to sneeze and shielded his face with a handkerchief. Here she was: his old nemesis. He hadn’t seen her since middle school. Not since before she had joined the Midnight Sun.

  How much had she heard? Did she recognize him?

  “Are you the magician?” she asked.

  “Who—who else would I be?” he stammered as he fumblingly put on a pair of sunglasses.

  “I don’t know,” said Amber, “but you don’t look like somebody going onstage in half an hour. I don’t mean to be rude, but do you maybe have a change of clothes?”

  “Why? I just need to get out of the bright light, that’s all—” The magician stepped into a shadow, hoping to further obscure his face. “See, isn’t this better?”

  “A little…” Amber gave him one of her best smiles. “I know—why don’t I send someone to press your suit for you?”

  “Uh, okay… thanks?” said the magician, relieved. It certainly didn’t seem as though she recognized him.

  “Don’t mention it. My fiancé owns this ship, and a girl has to make herself useful, right?” Amber stepped closer to him. “Do I know you?”

  “No!” said the magician, fighting the urge to back away. “I mean, I don’t think so.…”

  Amber peered at him in the half-light. “What’s with the sunglasses? I hope you don’t have a black eye.”

  “Just, you know… bad night.”

  “Well, perk up,” said Amber, turning away. “I need you looking your best. There’s a new schedule. You’ll be doing your show five times tonight.”

  “Five times?!” the magician exclaimed, unable to hide his distress.

  Amber nodded. “And it better be the performance of a lifetime! It’s your job to distract the passengers.”

  “From what?”

  “From the sad reason that we’re all sitting out here in the ocean, of course,” said Amber gravely. “My fiancé’s son…?”

  “Oh, right. Sorry about that.”

  The magician studied her from behind his sunglasses. He had assumed that the son didn’t exist. Or at least that his fall had been faked. But her face made him wonder if there was some truth to the story.

  “So can I count on you?” she asked.

  “Sure, okay, but I have one request,” said the magician before he could think better of it.

  “Yes?”

  “Those chocolates they put on the pillows at night—I’ll need a bowlful of them. And a few carrots for my rabbit.”

  “Consider it done,” said Amber, about to head offstage. She turned back, frowning. “Are you sure we don’t know each other?”

  “Oh, I doubt we run in the same circles!” The magician fiddled with a box of props, hiding his face. “Actually, I don’t run in any circles,” he joked nervously. “I just… run in circles.… Get it? Like a dog runs in circles?”

  Before Amber could respond, an aide walked up to her.

  “Ma’am? Mr. Perry sent a message. He said they’re inside the mountain, and they found proof—it’s in there.”

  Amber’s smile returned. “That’s amazing news! I have to call France. Antoinette will want to hear right away…”

  After Amber walked off, the magician looked down at the rabbit, which was burrowed inside the hat.

  “How ’bout that? Ten years later and just as horrible as ever. How does she stay so… perfectly the same?” The magician shuddered; the encounter with Amber had rattled him. “Do you remember that school talent show when I made her disappear?” He sighed. “Best trick ever. Too bad it didn’t last.…”

  The rabbit peeked its head out of the hat and glanced anxiously around the stage.

  “Don’t worry, she’s gone,” said the magician. “The real question is, what’s inside that mountain and why is she so excited about it? For some reason, I don’t think it’s library books.…”

  The magician pulled the crumpled chocolate wrapper out of his pocket and looked at it as if it might hold the answer to his question.

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  DRAGONSLEEP

  According to popular myth, a Musca domestica—also known as a housefly—lives for only one day.

  In reality, assuming no hungry frog catches up with it, a fly may live two weeks or longer. Still, two weeks is a short life span compared to those of many other animals. Tree frogs, for example, tend to live for over twelve years—plenty of time to catch the housefly’s descendants, and the descendants’ descendants’ descendants.

  Now, dogs live slightly longer on average than frogs. No doubt you have heard that one dog year is equivalent to seven human years? I don’t know that this is true in the strictest sense, but let’s say it’s true in a general way, and that a twelve-year-old dog is like an eighty-four-year-old person. Going back to houseflies for a moment, an equivalently elderly fly would be twelve days old. That is, twelve days from our human perspective. A lifetime from the fly’s perspective.

  In an equation, the relationship might look like this:

  To put it another way, a human lives seven times as long as a dog and 2,555 times as long as a fly.

  Of course, it would be presumptuous of me to pretend that I could ever truly understand a dragon’s perspective on humans. (Dangerously presumptuous if a dragon ever got wind of it.) I think it is safe to say, however, that to a dragon, a human is more like a fly than like a dog. Certainly, we are more like flies in terms of our life spans.

  That is, just as a person lives 2,555 times as long as a fly, a dragon lives 2,555 times as long as a person.

  More or less.

  If there is such a thing as dragon years to compare to human years or dog years or fly years, the equation would go something like this:

  How do I know? I don’t. It’s just guesswork based on my readings on the subject.* Nobody really knows how long dragons live, or even if they age at all.

  I am reasonably certain, however, that dragons sleep; and the question I am coming to via this very circuitous route is the following:

  If a dragon day is 2,555 times as long as a human day, then for how long does a dragon sleep?

  Assuming a human sleeps, on average, eight hours each night, and that a dragon sleeps proportionately as long, then a dragon would sleep for an average of 20,440 hours, or 851.6 days, or 2.3 years.

  Unfortunately for my math (which has never been very good), I have reason to believe dragons sleep much, much longer than that. In effect, they hibernate.

  How long? I’m glad you asked. From a physiological standpoint, dragons’ closest cousins appear to be reptiles. (Although, of course, dragons predate modern reptiles by thousands of years.) Most snakes and lizards hibernate—or, technically, brumate*—for almost half a year. That is, half a human year. That is, half the time it takes for the earth to circle the sun. Assuming a dragon hibernates proportionately as long, it would sleep for 1,277.5 years at a stretch.

  And that, I think you’ll agree, is a long time by any measure.

  Which takes us back to our story.

  When we left them, Clay and Brett were being regarded through a pair of big golden eyes. I don’t think you will be surprised to hear that these eyes did not belong to a fly or a dog or even a person.

  They were dragon eyes. And they had just opened after a long dragon sleep.

  How long? I can’t say that it was 1,277.5 years exactly, but that number should give you an idea.

  I don’t know about you, but the longer I sleep, the crankier—and hungrier—I am when I awaken.

  Our friends probably should have run when they h
ad the chance.

  Now their backs were against the wall.

  Literally. The cave wall.

  They looked at the dragon. The dragon looked at them.

  Its eyes were the size of headlights. Its head was the size of a car.

  A small car, perhaps. But for a head, big enough.

  The dragon’s many fangs stuck out of its mouth, zigzag-style, forming a zipper of teeth that made the creature look like a mutant crocodile.

  A very big mutant crocodile.

  The zipper hadn’t opened.

  Yet.

  And the rest of the dragon? Still hidden under mounds of rocks.

  For the moment.

  We are going to die.

  Clay and Brett had the same thought. There was no need to say it aloud. The dragon was going to eat them, and that was that.

  They might as well have been staring at a ticking bomb.

  Tick.

  Tick.

  Do nothing.

  That was the main piece of advice Clay had garnered from Secrets of the Occulta Draco. Already, he could tell that the author was right: Doing nothing in the presence of a dragon was much harder than it sounded. It was like mindfulness. Only with his life hanging in the balance.

  Or, rather, his death.

  Tick.

  Tick.

  In his thoughts, Clay kept returning to his dreams. They weren’t really his dreams, he felt sure; they were the dragon’s dreams. He, Clay, had only viewed them as a guest. He remembered the dragon’s fury at the hunter who had shot the arrows at the dragon, the fire that raged in the dragon’s belly. Had the dragon really killed the hunter? What about the dead body in the cave—the one with the spear? Was that the last time the dragon had seen a human being?

  Yes or no, it didn’t bode well.

  Tick.

  Tick.

  Clay found himself staring deeper and deeper into the dragon’s eyes. He felt as though he were falling into them. He fought to stay aware of his surroundings—he suspected that the dragon was hypnotizing him—but he kept feeling drowsier…

  … and drowsier…

  Tick.

  Tick.

  … and draggier…

  … and draggier…

  Tick.

  Tick.

  … and dragon-ier…

  … and dragon-ier…

  Tick.

  Tick.

  Until he could have sworn he wasn’t a boy anymore, but rather a dragon looking at a boy and about to—

  Bzzzz. Bzzzzz. Bzzzzzzzzz.

  A buzzing sound brought him back to the present.

  “What’s that?” Brett whispered.

  “It sounds like a fly,” said Clay.

  It was a fly. Buzzing around one of the dragon’s eyes. The dragon blinked and shook its enormous head, spilling more rocks to the ground, but the fly kept coming back, attracted to the shiny golden eye as if it were an eighty-watt lightbulb.

  Although quite big by fly standards, the fly was microscopic by dragon standards. Even so, Clay could tell the dragon was irritated.

  Very irritated.

  Why didn’t the dragon just swat the fly away? he wondered. Maybe it was too small for the dragon’s big claws to catch?

  And then the fly stopped flying—

  —and landed on the dragon’s nose.

  The dragon shook its head again. More rocks and pebbles flew off.

  But not the fly.

  The dragon’s big nostrils—now very obviously nostrils and not steam vents—twitched.

  “Uh-oh. I think he’s going to sneeze again,” Clay whispered.

  “So do something,” said Brett.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know—make the fly go away?”

  Clay took a breath, reached out, and—

  CLAP!

  —smashed the fly between his palms.

  Right in front of the dragon’s eye.

  Brett stared at him in shock. “Do you have a death wish?”

  “Sorry. You said—”

  “I didn’t mean like that.”

  The dragon didn’t blink. But its eyes narrowed a bit.*

  CHAPTER

  FIFTEEN

  BOOM!

  Clay just stood there in the lava cave, unable to breathe, imagining the many and various ways the dragon might kill him.

  For example, the dragon might slash him open with a swipe of a claw.

  Or throw him against the jagged rocks.

  Or toss him into the pool of lava.

  Or step on him like an ant.

  The dragon might breathe fire on him, toasting Clay like a marshmallow until he was a perfect golden brown, and then nibble him slowly, bit by bit.

  Or did the dragon prefer its humans more well-done?

  Maybe the dragon would keep breathing on Clay until he was fully roasted, his skin charred to a crisp, and then swallow him whole?

  Or maybe the dragon would just scare him to death. He was already halfway there.

  And then Clay’s mind cleared.

  Or not cleared, exactly—more like the opposite.

  Fogged. His mind fogged.

  Vogged?

  All thoughts of his death were gone, replaced by another thought.

  Well, not a thought exactly, more like a feeling.

  Not his own feeling, but a feeling he was experiencing nonetheless. In the way one experiences a temperature or a smell. Something that’s around you and that affects you but that doesn’t come from you.

  It was an odd and amorphous feeling, but also a comforting feeling.

  If he had to put it into words, the words would have been these:

  Thank you.

  The dragon was thanking him for getting rid of the fly.

  Or rather, since it clearly wasn’t a question of politeness, or of the dragon actually thanking anyone, maybe a better way to explain it is that the dragon was thankful, and he, Clay, was feeling the dragon’s gratitude.

  Then again, I doubt dragons ever feel anything as human as gratitude, so the whole thing is a bit of a mystery.

  “What’s going on?” Brett asked, unable to contain himself any longer. He’d been watching the strange silent exchange between Clay and the dragon, and naturally he was feeling very antsy about the outcome.

  “I don’t know,” said Clay hesitantly. “I think maybe I… made a friend?”

  Brett looked at him quizzically. “With me? Seems like a funny time to mention it, but… thanks?”

  “With the dragon.”

  “Oh, right.” Brett’s smile faded. “I mean, obviously—”

  “Oh, c’mon—” said Clay, his eyes never leaving the dragon’s.

  “No, no, I get it,” said Brett. “So maybe he doesn’t say much, but if you like the strong, silent type, and you can live with all the nose lava…”

  Clay shook his head. “Dude, you saved my life, waking me up back there. I think that makes us friends.”

  “It does?” Brett brightened—whether out of happiness at being called dude or being considered someone’s friend, or both. “Of course, you coming down here in the first place counts as saving my life, so—”

  “We’re even? Sounds like friends to me,” said Clay.

  “But we’re really not, because you saved my life on the beach, too.” Brett’s smile vanished again. “Does that mean I’m unfriended?”

  Clay put his finger to his lip. “Shh. The dragon’s telling me something.”

  “With his eyes?”

  “Yeah. Or his mind, I guess.”

  “Well, I hope his mind is saying that he decided not to eat us,” said Brett, who knew he should stop talking but couldn’t. (I sympathize.) “Tell him I recommend a nice eggs Benedict. It’s my go-to for brunch.”

  “Oh! Sorry!” said Clay to the dragon, turning red.

  “What did he say?”

  “She, er, I think,” said Clay, concentrating. “Or, no, actually, it says dragons aren’t really male or female. We have no use for
such things, it says.”

  “It talks in the royal we?”

  “Um… yeah,” said Clay, not entirely certain what that was.* “And I think it’s saying we’re supposed to call it they, not it.… Sorry! I mean, we’re supposed to call them they. It’s more polite.… Also, they say I made a mistake. We’re not friends. I mean, the dragon and me aren’t friends, because friends are equals, and dragons are infinitely superior to humans.” Clay paused, as if listening, then continued. “But don’t worry. It… they won’t eat us. Humans don’t taste very good. We have no flavor. Dragons prefer game animals. Deer… antelope…”

  Brett stared, incredulous. “The dragon told you all that?”

  “Kind of. It’s hard to explain. I just know it. Almost like I thought it myself.”

  “Okay. I understand. Sort of…” said Brett, although clearly he didn’t. “So does… they have a name?”

  Clay nodded. “Ariella.”

  “Ariella? That’s pretty girly, isn’t it, considering…? Hey, maybe it’s the dragon’s drag name!” Brett laughed at his own joke. “Get it, drag-dragon?”*

  “Well, I think Ariella is an awesome name for a dragon!” said Clay pointedly. (If his mind talked, it would have been saying, Don’t upset the dragon, you idiot.) “And by the way, aren’t you the one who’s always complaining about bullies?”

  “I wasn’t being a bully! That was just a dumb joke.”

  Clay shrugged. “Just sayin’.”

  “Besides, how can you bully a dragon? That’s ridiculous,” said Brett. “Anyway, it’s… they’re the one saying we have no flavor! I take offense to that.”

  “Hi, Ariella,” Clay said softly. “Still itchy?”

  Bravely, he reached out and scratched the dragon on the nose. The dragon’s scaly skin was so tough it was like scratching on the cave walls. And yet Clay felt sure that the dragon appreciated what he was doing.

  Until suddenly the dragon batted Clay away with its nose and reared its head back.

  Clay and Brett ducked, ready for the dragon to sneeze again.

  Instead, the dragon rose on its forelegs and shook itself like a giant dog shaking off water. As Brett and Clay watched in wonder, centuries of accumulated rocks and crystals cascaded off the dragon’s back.