by JL Bryan
Chapter One
When his phone woke him up, Jason's first thought was Wow, that hurts.
His back burned and itched from his left shoulder all the way to the lower right side. Right where the dragon had clawed him, naturally. His hair still stank like scorched sugar, just like the pink dragon after Jason hit it with a huge fireball from his guitar.
His phone rang again.
“Any plans on answering that?” Grizlemor asked. The goblin sat on Jason's windowsill, reading a cracked leather-bound book titled Gobblering Heights. His grandma-style reading glasses were perched on the tip of his snubby green nose. “That's the sixth time it's rung. Very annoying.”
“I'm in serious pain here, Grizlemor.”
“You said you were fine last night.” The goblin cocked an eyebrow. “You wouldn't have been lying just to impress your lady friend, would you?”
“Shut up.” Jason pushed himself to a sitting position, feeling the burn spread across his back. “Dragons aren't poisonous, are they?”
“Only if they're poison dragons.” Grizlemor licked his thumb and turned a page.
“Well?”
“Well what? I'm trying to read,” the goblin said.
“Was it a poisonous dragon that scratched me?”
“I'm not an expert on dragons.”
Jason sighed. He pushed himself to his feet and stretched, which made the pain in his back flare up. His cell phone rang again, rattling its way across his bedside table.
“Who keeps calling?” Jason asked.
“Had I been interested enough to look, I could tell you,” Grizlemor replied.
Jason picked up his phone. It was Mitch, the keyboardist and the creator of the Assorted Zebras. There were also several missed calls from different numbers he didn't recognize. None of them appeared to be from Erin, though.
“What does Mitch want?” Jason asked.
“Perhaps the best way to find out would be to answer the phone. Or put it on silent so it stops bothering me.”
Jason flicked his phone to silent.
“How long do you plan to keep living in my room?” Jason asked Grizlemor.
“Do you have any plans to return those instruments you stole from the fairies?” the goblin asked in return.
Jason thought of the concert the previous night, the roaring and applause of the huge crowd in Minneapolis. The delight on Erin’s face as the crowd lapped up their music.
“Not anytime soon,” Jason said.
“Then there's your answer. I can't go home until the matter of the stolen instruments is settled to the Queen's satisfaction. Otherwise, I'll get blamed for the whole fiasco. A human stealing fairy instruments.” Grizlemor snorted.
“All right, I get it. It was a good show, though, wasn't it? Last night?”
“Very impressive, for humans. I believe nobody left with bleeding ears. Your man-girl Erin seems unusually talented.”
“I’m not sure I like the term 'man-girl',” Jason said.
“We have much worse terms for humans where I come from.”
“Right.” Jason listened to his voice mail. The unknown numbers turned out to be kids from school, people who'd never spoken to him before, mostly girls. They all wanted to know when the Assorted Zebras were playing again. Then he reached Mitch's voice mail.
“The people have spoken,” Mitch said. “We're great. I'm putting together demo CDs today. We're going to mail these babies to every radio station from here to Chicago. And send them to the big record labels. Also, we need to pick some of these gig offers to accept. Wouldn't mind some help. Hit me back.”
Jason groaned.
“That guy's a workaholic,” Jason said. “Why can't he take a day off?”
“The early unicorn gets the cobra,” Grizlemor said.
“What does that mean?”
“Just a saying. I think it's talking about hard work and effort, or something. Will you fetch me some breakfast now? I'm hungry. And I don't think your parents would appreciate a small green man digging through their kitchen cabinets.”
“What do you want this time?”
“Oat cereal,” Grizlemor said. “Topped with ketchup and mustard. Don't go splashing that cow-sauce all over it.”
“Cow-sauce? You mean milk?”
“Would you hurry?” Grizlemor's pudgy stomach rumbled. “Hear that?”
“Be back in a minute.” Jason closed the door firmly behind him before heading downstairs.
He was surprised to see his mom had cooked a full Sunday-morning breakfast: pancakes and sausage and wedges of fresh cantaloupe. His parents and his six-year-old sister Katie sat at the table, his dad reading the Sunday paper while Katie read the comics.
“There's our little star!” Jason's mom said. “How was the show last night? We tried to stay up and wait for you.”
“It was good,” Jason said. He sat down and poured a glass of orange juice.
“Good write-up of the show in the paper,” his dad said. “Good for your group, anyway. They said everyone else paled in comparison.”
“Great.” Jason thought of how hostile the other bands had been to them at the festival. Jason's band, the Assorted Zebras, had been scheduled at the last minute, and the event organizers had bumped another band that had already auditioned and been accepted. The crowd of high school and college students had been restless and dissatisfied until the Assorted Zebras played, not really giving the other bands a chance.
“Says there was a big fire in an alley nearby,” Jason's dad said. “Did you see that?”
Jason thought of the huge dragon he'd destroyed with a blast of fire from the fairy guitar.
“I don't think I saw anything like that,” Jason said.
“How come I didn't get to see Jason play?” Katie asked.
“Maybe next time, Katie,” Jason's mom said. “When are you playing again, Jason? We would love to see you in concert.”
“I don't know.” The whole conversation felt weird. Only a few weeks ago, Jason's parents had insisted he quit the Assorted Zebras. Jason's mom wanted him to focus on the clarinet and the school band. Jason's dad wanted him to work a summer job. But the music from the fairy instruments had entranced his parents like everyone else, and now Jason felt like he could get away with anything. That was not a normal feeling to get from his parents.
As he ate, he thought about Grizlemor waiting upstairs. It wasn't going to be easy to sneak out a bowl of cereal topped with condiments while his whole family was in the kitchen.
His phone rang in his pocket, and his heart jumped when he saw the caller ID picture. Erin.
“I'll be right back,” Jason said. He started to stand, but his mom took his arm.
“Oh, here's a thought,” his mom said. “Your cousin Tori is about to have her thirteenth birthday. Maybe your little band could play at her party.”
“In Sheboygan? That's all the way across the state!” Jason's phone rang again. “I really need to answer my—”
“It would be such a nice gesture. Don't you think so, George?”
“She's your cousin,” Jason's dad said.
“We're kind of looking for bigger venues than Uncle Ned's back yard,” Jason said.
“Don't go getting a big head,” his mom said.
“Why would his head get big?” Katie asked.
“Sometimes people can't handle a little bit of success,” Jason's mom said.
“And it makes their head bigger?”
“It's a figure of speech, Katie,” his mom said.
“I have to go.” Jason hurried out of the kitchen.
“I'll just call your Aunt Polly and tell her you'll play at Tori's birthday party,” his mom said.
“Wait!” Jason walked back into the room. His phone had stopped ringing, and he'd missed Erin's call. “I don't control the whole band. They all have to agree.”
“Why wouldn't they agree to do a nice thing like that?” Jason's mom asked.
“They're wild kids,” his dad commented.
“Maybe they have big heads!” Katie added.
“I'm sure that Erin Kavanagh girl is a bad influence,” his mom said. “You don't want to spend too much time with someone like that, Jason.”
“Gotta go,” Jason said. “Don't call Aunt Polly, okay?”
Jason hurried upstairs and closed his door. He raised his phone to call Erin back, and then noticed Grizlemor on the windowsill.
“Can you go somewhere for a minute, Grizlemor?” he asked.
“Where's my bowl of Oatie Smacks?”
“I couldn't get it yet. I need to use the phone, though.”
“Then use it.”
“It's private.”
Grizlemor lifted a dirty eyebrow. “Calling your man-girl?”
“It's none of your business.”
“If you want me to go, I will.” The goblin disappeared in a green puff, then reappeared on the carpet below the window. “I'll just hop down to the kitchen...”
“No!”
Grizlemor folded his arms. “Where do you expect a thirty-inch-high green man to be inconspicuous?”
“I don't know. Just go into your room, I guess.”
Grizlemor shrugged, lifted the hem of Jason's bedspread, and walked under the bed.
Erin had left a voice mail, so Jason listened instead of calling her back.
“Hi, it’s Erin,” she said. “Just checking to see about your, um, dragon wound. I know you said it wasn’t too bad, but it looked pretty deep. So I hope you’re okay. Call me sometime.”
And that was the message. The tone of her voice sounded a little distant and awkward to him. Just “call me sometime.” Like she wasn’t in any hurry to hear from him. Maybe she regretted kissing him. It sounded that way to Jason.
His back was still burning and itching. He walked to the mirror, raised his shirt, and turned around.
The claw mark on his back was hot pink, swooping down from his left shoulder, passing just behind his heart and down to his right hip. More veins of hot pink snaked out on either side of the main wound, like the tributaries of a river.
“When will this telephone conversation begin, exactly?” Grizlemor asked from under the bed.
“Forget it. Does this look poisoned to you?”
Grizlemor appeared in a green puff on top of the bed. He looked at Jason’s reflection in the mirror and made a sucking-in-air-through-his-teeth sound.
“Is it bad?” Jason asked.
“Looks bad.”
“Poisoned?”
“Wouldn’t know. I’m sure you’ll feel better.”
“That’s it? You don’t have any like, magic help, or advice, or anything?”
Grizlemor sighed. “I suppose I could whip something up. Meet me in my office.” He disappeared in another puff of green smoke.
Jason knelt slowly by the bed, wincing at the pain in his back. He lifted his bedspread.
In the space under Jason’s bed, next to Grizlemor's small mattress and end table, the goblin was rummaging through a miniature armoire full of tiny glass bottles stoppered with bits of cork.
“Potions, potions...” Grizlemor muttered.
“You have a potion armoire?” Jason asked.
“No. It’s a regular armoire. I just happen to use it for potions.” Grizlemor took out a few bottles. “Tea tree oil...garlic drippings...vinegar vinaigrette...Ah! We just need a fresh luck-clover or two and we’re all set.”
“A luck-clover? Is that like a four-leaf clover?”
“Yes,” Grizlemor sighed. “I suppose one might call it a ‘four-leaf clover.’ I suppose one could also refer to poison ivy as a ‘three-leaf vine,’ if one wanted to avoid mentioning anything important about the plant.”
“Sorry, I didn’t know you were so picky about words.”
“If we don’t use the proper words, we sound like blithering stupids,” Grizlemor said.
“You mean blithering idiots?”
“Do you want the dragon-scratch ointment or not?”
“Yeah, why not?”
“Then go and find a fresh four-leaf clover.” Grizlemor flopped back on his small mattress and raised his book.
“Where do I find one of those?”
“In a clover patch, we might imagine.” The goblin looked at Jason over his glasses. “Simply find one with four leaves instead of three. And don’t come back without my breakfast.” Grizlemor pulled Jason’s bed comforter down like a curtain.
Jason walked downstairs and out into the yard, to begin what would turn out to be a long and fruitless search for a four-leaf clover. His back itched and burned the whole time, and he couldn’t quite manage to scratch it.