Clay backed up a few steps until only the very curious—or very lazy—bees were left on his hands.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he said, relief washing over him. “I will never get mad at Buzz’s bees for bugging me again.”
Then he tossed the honeycomb in a big arc toward Rover. The dragon lifted its head and snatched the honeycomb out of the air with about the closest thing a dragon can get to a grin.
The dragon dropped the honeycomb on the grass and, awkwardly holding the honeycomb with its talons, started licking pockets of honey with its tongue.
“How is it?” Clay asked.
Rover looked at Clay, tongue lolling like a big, dopey golden retriever’s.
Clay laughed. “Awesome.”
He was about to sit down and try to work his way into a conversation with Rover, when a telltale rumbling came from deep within the forest. The steady plodding of heavy footsteps grew closer and closer, until Clay was nearly bonked on the head by a coconut that had been knocked loose from a palm tree.
Clay backed up until he was half inside a shrub, trembling a bit as the other dragon drew nearer.
Bluebeard entered the clearing on slow and steady feet, the dragon’s long sharp claws digging into the ground, ripping the earth apart with every step. The blue markings on Bluebeard’s face made the dragon look especially fierce as it searched the clearing, sniffing around for the human intruder.
Then Bluebeard noticed the honeycomb dripping from Rover’s talons. With a contemptuous growl, Bluebeard looked from the hard-to-reach beehive to the big oaf of a dragon. It was pretty clear that Bluebeard didn’t think Rover capable of stealing that sweet golden treasure without assistance.
It was also pretty clear that Bluebeard didn’t like the idea of Rover’s cozying up to a human.
Clay considered his options: Give up on the dragons and run away—and most likely be found and eaten anyway. Or face Bluebeard and try to ally with the toughest, meanest dragon of the bunch.
Clay took a deep breath and stepped forward.
Bluebeard regarded the puny human through slit eyes; the ends of the dragon’s blue mustache-like lips curled upward as if to say, Aha! I knew it was you!
“Hey,” Clay said, trying to sound relaxed, though his heart was beating wildly. “Do you want some honeycomb, too?”
Bluebeard snorted, then turned to Rover and, with a lightning-fast swipe of a talon, knocked the honeycomb out of the clearing. Rover whimpered. The message: Bluebeard didn’t want any honeycomb that Clay had touched, and Rover wasn’t to have it, either.
“Right,” Clay said. “I know humans haven’t really been the coolest to you guys.”
Bluebeard stared at him. Rover lowered its eyes.
“Those collars—they really suck.”
At the mention of the collars, Rover sat up straight, and Bluebeard emitted a low rumbling growl.
“Oh, heh,” Clay said, raising his hands and backing up a little. “I’m just trying to say I’m not like those other humans.”
For some reason, this seemed to puzzle Bluebeard.
What is a human?
It took Clay a moment to realize that Bluebeard had asked him a question—telepathically—and that the dragon expected an answer.
“Me, I’m a human.”
Ah, a two-leg-no-wing. You put the collars on our necks.
“Yes. I mean, no, I’m not the one who—”
You try to control us, but soon we will kill you.
There was a chilling confidence to Bluebeard’s assertion.
“No, don’t kill me! I’m going to… turn off the collars and get you out of here. I’m not like the other… two-leg-no-wings. I’m friends with a dragon!”
Bluebeard looked at him contemptuously. What is a dragon?
“A dragon? You’re kidding.”
No, Clay thought, Bluebeard’s not kidding. How would these dragons know what a dragon was? They’re the only ones they’ve ever known.
“You. You are a dragon. You and Rover and…”
Bluebeard roared in fury. Liar!!! We are not dragons!
“Um, okay,” said Clay backing away farther. “But why do you say that?”
You said you were friends with a dragon. One of our kind would never be friends with a two-leg-no-wing monster.
Well, if anything proves you’re a dragon, it’s your attitude, thought Clay.
Aloud, he said, “Well, you don’t have to call yourself a dragon if you don’t want to, but I would be stoked to be one if I were you.”
Bluebeard nudged Rover, and they both roared at Clay.
We. Are. Not. Dragons.
The two dragons were standing on all fours now and looked like they were waiting for one more reason, any reason, to toss Clay in the air like a human volleyball. Panic like he’d never known engulfed Clay.
At least they couldn’t breathe fire. That was something.
Sing. He should sing. Like the Occulta Draco suggested. It was the only thing left. But he couldn’t think of a single song that seemed remotely applicable to the circumstances.
So just make one up, he told himself.
“Dragons are awesome. They’re old and wise,” he sang-shouted, aware that he sounded terrible, but pushing ahead as if his life depended on it (which it did). “They’re pretty much the all-around coolest guys.…” Bluebeard looked at him with a fury like Clay had never seen; it was as if he had just insulted Bluebeard, the dragon’s family, and everything the dragon held dear.
We. Are. Not. Dragons.
Singing wasn’t the answer.
The incensed dragon rose up on hind legs and opened its mouth, taking a big, deep breath.…
Clay inched backward, feeling the blood drain from his head.
Bluebeard let out a deafening and then suddenly, as if it had been waiting there all along, fire blasted out of the dragon’s mouth like out of the back of a rocket ship.
ROARRRRR!!!
A few stray hairs sticking out of Clay’s ski hat were singed; he’d narrowly avoided being burned alive.
So they could breathe fire after all. He had never been less happy to have been proven right.
Bluebeard looked briefly stunned. Then, with the thrill of a toddler taking her first steps—or, more to the point, the thrill of a caveman who has just discovered fire—the dragon reared back and released another fiery plume, even bigger and more powerful than the first.
Their conversation was over. Summoning his nerve, Clay forced himself to move.
With the sulfurous odor of dragonfire in his nose, he ran blindly into the jungle. Heedless of the branches scratching his arms and legs, he scrambled over rocks and tripped on tree roots. Anything to get away from Bluebeard.
Around him, one tree after another burst into flame. The dragon was in pursuit.
As he ran, panicked, panting, Clay gradually realized he wasn’t heading to the dome’s perimeter, as he’d intended; he was circling back in the direction he’d come from. When he broke through the tree line, he found himself once again facing the lake, but now he was at the upper end, which was bordered by a sheer rock cliff. A natural wall that Clay would have had trouble climbing even if he’d had all the right equipment and all the time in the world. He had reached a dead end.
Behind him, still partly hidden among the trees, but getting closer with every earthshaking step, was Bluebeard. And not far behind Bluebeard followed Rover, and now Snowflake as well, galloping after their leader.
One after another, the dragons spit triumphant fireballs into the air, leaving tree after tree in flames.
A trio of dragons that had just learned they could breathe fire.
In seconds, Clay would be at their mercy.
But out of the corner of his eye, Clay detected something: a dark sliver in the cliff, almost like an opening.…
The entrance to a cave?
Yes.
Clay sprinted toward it, relieved to see that the opening was big enough for him to get through
comfortably, but much too small for a dragon. Consciously deciding not to consider what creatures besides dragons he might encounter inside, Clay slid into the cave just as Bluebeard burst from the trees.
The dragon roared upon seeing his human quarry disappear, then repeatedly rammed the side of the cliff in frustration. Clay backed up against the inside wall of the cave as pebbles and loose dirt showered down on him.
Bluebeard, agitated, backed away from the cliff, huffing and puffing angrily. Then the dragon let out a roar and charged at the cliff again, sending a wall of fire inside the cave. Holding his breath, Clay jumped out of the way just in time to avoid being engulfed in flames. He could smell his arm hairs as they curled in the heat. If Bluebeard kept this up, he would be no better off than a chicken in an oven. Perhaps sitting in a cave and waiting to be roasted alive wasn’t exactly the best plan.
“Hey, Bluebeard,” Clay called out. “I just thought of something.”
Bluebeard huffed angrily, a puff of smoke rising out of the dragon’s mouth. Clay winced, worried that anything he might say could push the dragon over the edge.
“I know you’re all into your new firepower, but think about it: If you keep breathing fire into this cave, I’ll die in here, and you’ll never be able to get me out and eat me.”
Bluebeard made an incredulous sound.
What makes you think I want to eat you? Maybe I just want to kill you.
“Oh, well, then…” Clay stumbled, trying desperately to think of another argument. “Then maybe you should go find something else to eat now? I mean, you must be hungry. And you need energy to kill me, right?”
The cave shook again, but when Clay peered out the entrance, he saw that it was because Bluebeard had taken an emphatic seat right in front of it. Clay was now stuck inside a dark cave, smelling the lasting effects of dragon breath and staring out at a dragon’s immense butt.
No longer much concerned with their human prisoner, the other dragons lounged by the lake’s shore, intermittently practicing their fire-breathing technique. Rover took to this new talent with fervor, blasting a spray of white-hot flame through the air along the brush at the edge of the lake. Snowflake, meanwhile, breathed fire as lazily as if blowing smoke rings.
Clay watched them disconsolately. To think that only moments earlier he’d been trying to befriend the dragons—he’d even imagined that he would fly away on a dragon’s back! Now he couldn’t imagine any scenario in which they would let him out of the cave alive. Soon the world would have no more to remember him by than a pile of scorched bones.
All this time, the sun continued creeping westward across the sky. The dragons’ shadows grew long and thin, and Clay’s worries multiplied. He thought guiltily of Cass and Satya. Where was Cass now? Was she waiting for him by the clearing? What would Satya do when she turned off the dome and didn’t detect any of the dragons leaving?
He tried creating a distraction by tossing out a large stick he found inside the cave. But Bluebeard torched the stick before it hit the ground—target practice.
Clay felt around in his pocket for the exploding gum Pablo had given him, but decided that an explosion would only serve to further infuriate the dragons.
As for trying to reason with the beasts, so far he’d gotten exactly nowhere, and every wasted second brought him closer to the meeting time.
When the sun dipped below the edge of the crater’s rim, Clay was in a full-blown panic. He stared at the hands on his watch as they got closer and closer to 8:25. Tick tick tick. Soon his flight window would be closed. The best thing he could hope for at this point was to be caught by the Midnight Sun. At least they might save him from the dragons.
Eight twenty-five. He peered out into the night as if he might see Satya or Cass coming to save him, but how would they even know where he was?
And then something happened—a strange reaction from the dragons outside the cave entrance. Snowflake’s head was shaking back and forth. The dragon was fussing with its collar again, but tentatively, as if confused. Carefully, the dragon contorted its body enough to touch the collar with a talon.
Rover’s head was shaking as well. The big dopey dragon looked questioningly at Bluebeard, but Bluebeard was scratching, too, and looked lost in thought.
Finally, Bluebeard eyed Snowflake and barked at the smaller dragon, unmistakably giving an order.
Snowflake remained sitting. No way, Snowflake seemed to say. Not doing that again.
Bluebeard nodded insistently, looking upward. It was clear to Clay that Bluebeard was telling Snowflake to fly.
They must realize the dome was shut off, he thought excitedly. Would they leave?
Snowflake didn’t make a move.
Bluebeard grew impatient and let out a fiery roar. FLY! Snowflake growled a bit but finally stood up and, with a single flap of wings, launched into the air.
Snowflake flew up, and up, and up—to a point about as high as the helicopter had been on Clay’s tour of the crater—and then tentatively poked at the sky with the tip of a wing. Apparently hitting no barrier, the dragon joyfully spread its wings, dove briefly, then rose again in triumph.
Watching in disbelief, Rover jumped clumsily into the air and, flapping wildly, started flying loops around Snowflake.
Snowflake swooped down over Bluebeard’s head, seemingly expecting Bluebeard to join them. We can fly anywhere we want! This is our chance! Clay could feel Snowflake saying. The dragon waited, but Bluebeard didn’t make a move. Come on, Snowflake seemed to urge. Let’s move!
We will, Bluebeard said ominously. But first we eat.
The dragon spread its enormous wings and took off, rising up into the dark sky and turning to head toward the castle. Snowflake and Rover followed, thinking hungry thoughts.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
THE GUM IN CLAY’S MOUTH
When the sun dipped low in the sky and the first few twinkling stars were visible, Satya stood in the control tower, watching the seconds tick away on her wristwatch. She’d managed to finagle quite a distraction: After making sure that all the doors and windows in the nursery were closed so that the little dragons couldn’t escape, she’d released them from their cages. At this very moment, Hero was flying through the nursery, wreaking havoc and taunting the dragons, who would be trying to get to the open coolers full of prime red meat. Every security guard at the Keep would be called in, as would her father.
Satya scanned the clearing again and again, but to no avail. She’d been standing in the tower for almost thirty minutes without seeing any sign of Clay or Cass—or of a dragon. But a plan was a plan, and at 8:25 on the nose, Satya took a deep breath and turned the key in the dome’s master lock. She pointed her finger at the big red button, then pressed down without allowing herself another second of hesitation.
The dome died with a strange electric hiss, as if it were deflating. Satya hadn’t noticed how pervasive the sound of the dome had been until it was gone. Suddenly, the sounds of dusk—the buzzing of insects, the cooing of hunting birds, and the whispering flaps of bats’ wings—seemed as loud as fireworks.
Come on, Clay, she thought. Come on. The seconds on her watch ticked on and on, but still there was no sign of a large winged creature escaping with two puny humans on its back—not in the dark jungle depths, not in the starry night sky.
Thirty seconds…
Forty-five seconds…
A minute.
The time Satya had promised had come and gone. Her heart sank. Clay must have failed to mount a dragon; she only hoped he had survived the attempt.
Just as Satya’s finger hovered over the button, preparing to turn the dome back on, a large figure flew into the night sky, its blue-black body a shifting shadow in the dark. Bluebeard. Satya’s heart lifted—Clay! He made it!—until the dragon opened its mouth and…
ROAWRRRR!!!
Unlike the other times Satya had seen a dragon roar, this roar was accompanied by a blinding streak of fire. Her jaw dropped almost
as fast as her stomach. Clay had been right; dragons could breathe fire after all. As if that wasn’t terrifying enough, the white-hot exhalation lit up the night long enough for Satya to be sure of two things: Bluebeard was loose, and there was nobody on the dragon’s back.
“Oh no.”
As she watched, aghast, Bluebeard slowed and started circling above like some monstrous bird of prey.
Shaking with fear and adrenaline, Satya tapped the dome button, about to turn the power back on, but then she realized Bluebeard was already well outside the boundary. If she turned the dome on now, it would actually repel the dragon, rather than keeping Bluebeard enclosed.
“Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.”
Bluebeard was soon joined by the two other dragons. They circled one another, looking as though they were discussing their plan of attack. Or at least two of them looked that way. Rover was doing cartwheels in midair, like a frolicking puppy who happened to have wings and to be the size of a whale.
Suddenly, Bluebeard’s head spun in Satya’s direction. The dragon was too far away for her to really see its face; nonetheless, Bluebeard seemed to her to be looking through the dusky night, right into her eyes.
Then, with a single stroke of wings, Bluebeard was off like a shot—diving straight toward the tower.
At the same second, the hatch door flung open with a bang, and Satya screamed. She spun around and saw Clay, his feet still on the ladder, sticking his head through the hatch.
“C’mon!” he shouted, breathing heavily. “We’ve gotta run!”
Clay grabbed Satya’s hand and dragged her toward the hatch. “There’s no time to climb down. Slide, like this—”
He grasped the side of the ladder and started sliding down as if it were a fireman’s pole. She followed close behind.
“Faster!”
They were descending quickly, but not quickly enough. Bluebeard was closing in. In a second they would be within range of the dragon’s breath. Another second and they would be within range of the dragon’s teeth.
They were still a dozen feet off the ground, but Satya and Clay looked at each other, both thinking the same thing:
“JUMP!!!” “JUMP!!!”