We Sled With Dragons

by C. Alexander London

  “What? Yell at you?”

  “Shove me.”

  “You want me to shove you?”

  “Yeah.” He sighed.

  “Are you sure? You always complain when I shove you. Do you have a toxic parasite or something?”

  “No, just shove me,” he said again.

  Celia shrugged and threw herself forward into Oliver’s back. With a thud from Oliver’s head and a clatter of metal, the vent burst open and the twins spilled out into the tunnel next to a row of lockers down the hall from the room their parents were trapped in.

  They stood and brushed themselves off.

  Celia glanced up and down the tunnel.

  “What are you doing?” wondered Oliver.

  “I want to make sure Janice hasn’t come back inside.”

  “Good idea,” said Oliver, who was glad Celia thought of things like that.

  “The coast is clear.” Celia turned back to her brother. “Let’s go rescue Mom and Dad.”

  “As usual,” Oliver mumbled in reply.

  19

  WE CAN’T GO ON, WE’LL GO ON

  THEY MADE THEIR way back to the heavy steel door. They knew their parents were waiting anxiously on the other side. Oliver kept a lookout for Janice while Celia studied the chains.

  “There are too many of them,” she said. She yanked on one of the giant padlocks. It was almost too heavy for her to move. And it was only one of five holding the heavy steel chains Janice had wrapped around the door handles. They couldn’t pry them loose.

  “There’s no way to get Mom and Dad out?”

  “There’s no way through this door,” said Celia. “And the vent’s too small.”

  “Let’s see what they think we should do,” suggested Oliver. He hit a button on the intercom next to the door. “Uh . . . hi,” he said. “Oliver here.”

  “Are you all right?” his father’s voice crackled through the speaker. “We started to worry.”

  “We’re fine,” Celia said, pressing her face to the microphone.

  “Can you get the door open?” their mother’s voice crackled through.

  “It’s chained!” said Celia. “We can’t open it.”

  “Check for chain cutters in the supply lockers,” their father suggested.

  Oliver rushed back to the lockers and started rummaging. There was a lot of fancy cold-weather gear, but nothing that could cut chains. He ran back, out of breath, and delivered the bad news.

  “What do we do?” Celia called into the intercom.

  Silence hung heavy in the air. They waited for their parents to answer.

  “I think you know,” their mother’s voice came through at last.

  “She does?” said Oliver.

  “I do?” said Celia.

  “You do,” said their mother.

  Celia’s shoulders sagged. She looked at her brother, who watched her, wide eyed and expectant. She was three minutes and forty-two seconds older. She felt the weight of her age and responsibility heavy on her now.

  “I do.” She sighed. “Mom wants us to sneak out, take the dogsled, and get to the North Pole before Sir Edmund.”

  “What?” said Oliver. “She does?”

  “Yeah,” said Celia.

  “I do,” their mother’s voice crackled sadly.

  “But . . . but . . . we’re just kids,” said Oliver.

  “We’re tweens,” said Celia.

  “You’re tweens,” their mother said at the same time. “And I believe you can do anything.”

  “But what about you? We can’t leave you and Dad here!” Oliver objected.

  “The Lost Library is more important than your father and me,” she said.

  “Not to us,” said Oliver.

  It was their mother’s turn to feel the silence heavy in the air.

  “We’ll be fine here for a while. There’s food and water in the fridge in here, and it will take a few days for this place to be in danger of collapsing. We’ll figure something out.”

  “We’ll try harder,” said Oliver. “We’ll break you out! We can’t go alone!”

  “We can’t break them out.” Celia pulled Oliver’s hand off the button so their parents couldn’t hear. “We have to go on alone. If we find Atlantis maybe we can trade with Sir Edmund for the Lost Library. He frees our parents and lets us go, and he gets what he wants.”

  “But Mom would never let us do that,” said Oliver. “What about Sir Edmund causing fire and flood and famine and geo-whatever disaster, like she said?”

  “You believe in all that?”

  Oliver shrugged. “I believe in a lot of stuff.”

  Celia just gave him her look, her long look for a long time, and eventually Oliver shook his head. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll do it.”

  “Good,” said Celia, glad that she could still get her brother to do what he needed to do without her needing to say anything. “Now you have to go back through the vents and get our backpack. We’ll never find our way without the journal and the compass.”

  “Why do I have to go back?”

  “One of us has to get the cold-weather clothes together so we don’t freeze to death and keep a look out in case Janice comes back.”

  “Why not me?” said Oliver.

  “I thought you might want to hug Mom and Dad good-bye,” Celia suggested.

  “Yeah, I do . . .” Oliver kicked his toes into the floor. “Don’t you?”

  “I’m gonna do it when we get back,” said Celia. She didn’t want to tell him about the moment she’d had with her mother or about the Mnemones’ ring. It seemed somehow private.

  “Oliver’s coming back to get our stuff,” she said into the intercom. “And then we’ll go save the world.”

  “See you soon, honey,” her mother and father said. “We love you.”

  “Uh-huh,” Celia replied. “We’ll leave you the remote control,” she said. She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  20

  WE MUSH-MUSH

  WHEN OLIVER RETURNED with the backpack, his face was streaked with sweat and maybe, thought Celia, a tear or two. She didn’t ask. He’d never admit it, and anyway, that was his business. She had raided the lockers and it was time to get bundled up in cold-weather gear.

  All of it was much too large for them.

  To get their pants and sleeves to fit and to seal them against the cold required the aggressive application of duct tape. They had floppy wool hats under their oversized hoods and shiny space-blanket strips covering their faces and necks. Goggles protected their eyes.

  As they crept back through the tunnel toward the freezing arctic air, they looked more like alien explorers rising from the center of the earth than two eleven-and-half-year-olds going for a reluctant walk in the snow.

  Celia glanced sadly at the thermometer by the mouth of the cave, which told the outside temperature: –19º F.

  She thought about the safety poster in the room they had escaped: Why not stay inside?

  Oliver must have been thinking about it too, because they sighed in unison just before they stepped out into the biting cold. Janice’s tent was a glowing bubble in the snow, but it was zipped up tight. They could make out her silhouette against the fabric. She couldn’t see out, and they could hear her singing the theme song to World’s Best Rodeo Clown to herself.

  “Red noses ride! Red noses ride! Hi-ho! Hi-ho! Hi-ho, Red Noses, put on your big shoes and riiide!”

  The twins glanced at each other and thought about trying to surprise her and get the keys to all those locks. When they looked back, they saw that she was holding her pistol and twirling it. Trying to get the jump on her would be way too dangerous. They’d stick to Plan A. Travel to the North Pole by themselves and save the world.

  When they thought about it, Plan A was pretty dangerous to
o.

  They snuck around to the back of the research station, creeping low and staying close to the snowy walls. They saw the bear-proof fence and the rows of doghouses and supply sheds for the kennel, just like they’d seen it on the security monitor.

  “Well, up you go,” said Celia.

  “You sure the fence isn’t electric?” asked Oliver.

  Celia bent down and made a quick snowball. She raised her arm and threw it. Oliver ducked and the snowball hit the fence, breaking apart.

  “What’d you do that for?” Oliver demanded.

  “The fence would have sizzled if it was still on,” said Celia.

  “You could have warned me first.”

  “But that wouldn’t have been any fun.” She smiled, but Oliver couldn’t see it under her scarf. She couldn’t see him stick out his tongue under his.

  He scurried up the icy chain link. It was so cold that his gloves stuck to it as he climbed. He swung his legs over the top and dropped down into the snow on the other side with soft crunch. He felt like Agent Zero breaking into a secret Arctic base. He looked through the fence at Celia and gave a thumbs up.

  “Watch out behind you!” she warned.

  Oliver turned just in time to see six big Siberian huskies, white like wolves, come charging out of their doghouses and race toward him, howling and barking.

  “Gah!” He jumped up the fence to climb back over—he didn’t know how long it had been since someone had fed the dogs and he had no desire to become dog food—but they were too fast for him.

  “Shh!” Celia warned. If her brother was about to be torn apart by dogs, she didn’t want Janice coming out to shoot her too.

  The first dog to reach Oliver jumped up and caught the back of his jacket in his teeth, pulling Oliver to the ground. Another big dog put his massive paw on Oliver’s chest so he couldn’t get up, and then the other dogs rushed in to attack.

  “Don’t eat me!” Oliver tried to get his hands up to protect his face, but it was too late. He felt a warm wet nose knock his goggles off and then a big wet tongue licked from his chin to his forehead. Soon the other dogs joined in, covering him in licks, nuzzling and rolling about on the snow next to him. Ever since the researcher had been kidnapped, no one had played with them. Dogs, even giant Siberian huskies trained to work, need to be played with.

  Once he realized he wasn’t going to be eaten, he wriggled out from underneath the dogs and got up to open the gate. As soon as he swung it open, Celia received just as excited a greeting from the sled dogs. They knocked her off her feet and licked her face until it was soaked and the doggy drool had frozen.

  “Gross,” she said, wiping her face on her sleeve, but smiling just the same. It felt good to get normal affection from a normal pet. They’d only ever had exotic lizards and fierce monkeys and, lately, one ex-pirate chicken named Dennis.

  The twins scurried over to the supply shed and slipped inside, the dogs wagging their tails and heeding Celia’s constant warnings to shush.

  Inside, they saw a state-of-the-art fiberglass dogsled, already loaded with supplies for an expedition. The researcher must have been planning to go somewhere before Janice kidnapped him.

  “Hey cool,” said Oliver, lifting the tarp on the sled. “He packed cheese puffs! And freeze-dried soup!”

  “It’s too cold for soup,” said Celia. “Let’s drag this outside and get the dogs hooked up.”

  There was one thick rope with six smaller ones branching off the front of it, and each of those ropes had a harness on the end of it. As Oliver went around to pull from the front, Celia grabbed a canister marked BEAR REPELLENT and slipped it into her pocket with her mother’s gold ring. The she grabbed the ropes beside her brother and pulled. The twins heaved and hauled to get the sled outside, while the dogs watched them with their heads cocked to the side and their piercing blue eyes wide.

  “Aren’t they supposed to pull the sled?” Oliver grunted.

  “We’ve got to get them into the harnesses first,” said Celia, giving the sled one more tug before flopping down into the snow to rest.

  “How are we gonna do that?” Oliver wondered.

  The twins looked up at the dogs. The dogs looked down at the twins. Neither side moved.

  “Go!” Celia tried.

  The dogs didn’t move.

  “Hut! Hut! Hut!” Oliver tried.

  The dogs still didn’t move.

  “It’s not football,” said Celia.

  Celia tried giving them her “do what I tell you” look, but it didn’t work. She threw her arms in the air. Siberian huskies were harder to control than younger brothers.

  “Well, this is even worse than being stuck inside,” said Oliver. “I need a snack.”

  “That’s it!” Celia hopped off the snow and rummaged on the sled. She pulled out a bag of cheese puffs and held it up.

  “They can’t have those,” said Oliver.

  “You don’t think dogs eat cheese puffs?”

  “Everyone eats cheese puffs!” said Oliver. “But we need those for ourselves!”

  Celia shook her head at him. “There’s plenty to go around.” She ripped open the bag and the dogs immediately snapped to attention. They bounced over to her and sat. One by one Oliver hooked them into the harnesses and Celia rewarded them with a handful of cheese puffs.

  When they were done Oliver turned to her, as eager as a puppy. She gave him a handful of cheese puffs too.

  There was enough room on top of the sled for one person to sit with the supplies while the other person stood with one foot on each of the runners at the back of the sled, holding the handlebars. That person would be the “musher,” who steered the sled and kept them going by calling out “Mush! Mush!”

  “You can go first,” said Celia, climbing onto the sled with her backpack.

  For once, Oliver didn’t complain about being made to go first. Celia knew he wouldn’t. She could tell that he was excited about driving a dogsled, and that suited her just fine. She was looking forward to putting her feet up and going for a ride.

  “So, uh,” said Oliver. “Where do we go?”

  Celia sighed. “I guess we look in the journal.” She rummaged in her backpack and pulled out Percy Fawcett’s journal.

  “You really think that book can help us?”

  “Listen.” She read aloud, “I begin my journey in the frozen north. I am gripped, I admit, by fear of what lies beyond. Will I be pulled off course by drifting ice? Will I meet the dragons of old? I cannot know.”

  “Dragons?” Oliver swallowed. “That’s not real, right?”

  “Shh,” said Celia. She continued, “But I will follow the compass, and I shall prevail; no explorer, even one greater than I, should he exist, could follow this path I take. I shall be the last.”

  “So what? So this guy was really full of himself,” said Oliver.

  “The greatest explorers shall be the least,” said Celia. “That was our prophecy. So we can follow his path.”

  Oliver looked doubtful.

  “Also, we have his compass,” Celia added.

  She rummaged around in their backpack and pulled out the small brass compass with the initials P.F. on the back. She held it flat in her hand. Instead of an N where north was on most compasses, it pointed to the symbol of a key, the Mnemones’ symbol, and it would lead them as far north as a person could go in the world: the North Pole.

  She handed the compass to Oliver. “Don’t lose it,” she said.

  He squeezed it in his hand. She raised her eyebrows at him. Oliver had a way of losing things.

  “I won’t lose it!” Oliver grumbled.

  “Don’t.”

  “I won’t!”

  “You won’t?”

  “I won’t!”

  “Don’t.”

  Oliver rolled his eyes at her, then
he looked at the dogs. He felt his heart beat faster. The dogs looked back at him expectantly. The lead dog let out an eager bark, which the other dogs quickly copied, and soon it became a canine chorus of howls.

  Oliver felt that same thing he felt when he was skydiving with his mother. Not safe or even comfortable, but happy in way he’d never felt, even during a special Agent Zero presented with limited commercial interruption by Cheese Puffs Brand Cheese Stumps. He wondered if Corey Brandt was back in Hollywood yet, and who he was going to get to play Oliver in the movie. If it weren’t for the danger they were all in and the fate of the world resting on their tiny shoulders, he might even be enjoying himself.

  “You know what to say?” asked Celia.

  “Oh yeah,” said Oliver with a grin. “I’ve almost memorized every episode of Extreme Grandma Races.”

  Celia rolled her eyes.

  “Mush! Mush!” Oliver shouted, and the dogs turned and took off, pulling the sled through the gate with a wild lurch.

  “Aack! Eeek!” Celia gripped the sled, but her scream was mixed with laughter. Oliver leaned to the side and the dogs turned with him. Celia laughed again. “You drive like a lunatic!” she shouted, but not unkindly.

  “It’s my first time!” Oliver called back. He straightened the sled and blew out a frosty breath. Celia looked toward the horizon at the top of the world and shoved her hand into her pocket, feeling to make sure her mother’s gold ring was still there.

  “We’ll be back,” she whispered, because that was just the sort of vow that heroes made before they set out on an adventure. She hoped, even more than usual, that she was right.

  21

  WE ABSQUATULATE

  CELIA LEANED BACK on the sled as they slid quietly across the ice. If she didn’t think too much about the danger their parents faced or the terrible ordeal that lay ahead, she could almost enjoy herself.

  Oliver was thinking the same thing as he held the handlebars and practiced leaning from side to side to steer the dogs.

  “Mush! Mush!” he repeated and the dogs picked up speed. The freezing wind bit into the tiny part of his face that was exposed. He pulled up his scarf all the way to his goggles and felt pretty cozy.