We Sled With Dragons

by C. Alexander London

  “No,” said Celia, looking around at the new ring of the city they were on. “Everything we make is electronic. No one would even know what a TV was . . . it’d just look like some weird box.”

  “You don’t think they’ll have TV in the future?”

  Celia shrugged.

  “That’s not a future I want to live in,” said Oliver.

  “Me neither,” she agreed.

  The buildings were bigger in this ring of the city. Some had columns holding up their front walls even though the rest of the building had collapsed behind them. Some had ornate fountains pouring solid ice and others still bore traces of brightly colored paint.

  “So where do we find this library?” said Oliver. “I’m guessing they don’t have a tourist information booth down here.”

  “It’s probably that big building in the center of the city,” said Celia. “If I were going to put a library down here, that’s where I’d put it.”

  They made their way through the outer rings of the city toward the center. Celia felt more relaxed now. No dragons anywhere to be seen. She was silly to think there might have been. The squirrel had finally left her alone.

  They reached the base of the tall hill where the big building sat. Big stone steps led up to the entrance, which was surrounded by columns. All along the steps were more obelisks, rising on every tier. A few had fallen over and broken on the ground, but at least a dozen were still standing.

  “Here we go,” said Celia.

  “Yep,” said Oliver, starting up the steps. She followed close behind, looking back as they got higher and higher to see the view over all of the ruined city. It was a series of circles, one inside the other, and as she’d thought, the buildings did get bigger and fancier the closer you got to the center. This hill must be the most important place. The perfect place to put the library.

  She felt good about herself for figuring this out on her own. She’d done something no one else in the world had done . . . except that explorer whose journal she had. And her brother. But still, she felt special. Being the greatest at something felt pretty cool.

  “Hey, I can see the hieroglyphics on this one,” Oliver called from a few steps above her, rubbing off a thin layer of ice. Celia came up beside him. “I can’t read them.”

  “We don’t need to read any hieroglyphics,” she said. “We just have to find the library.” Celia went up the steps past him to the entrance to the building. “Come on!” she called again, rushing inside. Oliver stayed put to study the pictures on the pillar. He couldn’t read the writing—it was all just lines and squiggles to him—but there were images that he could make out.

  There was a picture of the great tree with a rainbow bridge running to the city ringed with moats.

  Next to the tree, he saw the symbol of the Mnemones, the old-looking key, and he saw the symbol of Sir Edmund’s Council, a scroll locked in chains. He was used to those symbols popping up everywhere. They were just like when you learned a new word, like enigmatic. You could go your whole life never hearing it, but then once you learn it, you start hearing the word all the time. Now that he knew these symbols, he saw them all over the place. And they were pretty enigmatic, he thought. Mysterious, but not really a mystery he wanted to solve.

  He cleared more frost away from the side of the obelisk and saw a picture of an island with a steaming volcano surrounded by giant squid. Again the symbols beside it. And there was another mountain with a picture of a monster, like the abominable snowman, the yeti that they’d found in Tibet, and another with a picture of a thick forest that, if he squinted, looked a bit like a jungle. And beside each picture, there were the symbols of the Council and the Mnemones.

  He walked around the obelisk and cleared more ice away with his glove.

  That’s when his blood ran as cold as the frozen city around him.

  He saw a picture of a man with a beard, just like the one in the explorer’s journal, that he’d thought was Santa Claus. The man had two ravens on his shoulders and he flying through the sky in a basket. Oliver wiped away more ice. It was the basket of a balloon. The man’s hair hung down over one of his eyes, just like Odd’s.

  Oliver felt his chest tighten and his heartbeat quicken.

  Just below the picture of Odd were two small figures on the ground, each holding a spear, a boy and girl with dark hair and puffy clothes. They looked a lot like Oliver and Celia.

  “Oh man,” Oliver groaned.

  In the picture they were fighting a dragon.

  “Celia!” he yelled. “Celia, come here! Quick!”

  She didn’t answer him. She’d gone inside to find to the library and she couldn’t hear him. In fact, at that moment, she was dealing with a terrifying discovery of her own.

  The grand building at the center of Atlantis was empty. There was no library. Not even so much as a single book.

  And the white squirrel was right beside her, his laughter echoing in her head.

  “Told you so,” he cackled.

  33

  WE’RE SQUIRRELED AWAY

  “I TOLD YOU, you were going the wrong way,” the squirrel’s nasal voice rattled in Celia’s head.

  “You be quiet,” Celia snapped. “You’re a squirrel. You don’t know anything.”

  “I know more than you do!” The squirrel laughed.

  “You do not.”

  “I do too.”

  “You do not!”

  “I do too!”

  “Stop it!” Celia said. “Just be quiet.”

  “I’m not making any noise,” said the squirrel. “I’m in your head.”

  “Well, if you’re in my head, then you can’t know more than I do.” Celia crossed her arms, feeling triumphant until she looked over the empty room of icy marble again.

  It was one big space with an altar at the far end, where a statue had toppled over. The walls of the giant hall were also marble, although in places it had broken off to reveal crumbled stone beneath. There were a few other fallen statues in the room, broken monuments to gods and heroes that history had long ago forgotten. There were no passages or hallways or nooks where a library could be hiding. There were no shelves or books. There wasn’t even a symbol of the Mnemones or the Council.

  Celia couldn’t believe that they’d come all this way for nothing. How would they ever save their parents now?

  “Pardon me for being so rude.” The squirrel scurried around the base of a statue that might have once looked like dolphin. Or a swan. It was hard to tell with ruins. Celia wasn’t an expert on these things. She didn’t care to figure it out. “My name is Ratatosk, and I am very pleased to meet you.”

  Celia huffed. She didn’t answer. She was not about to be friendly with a figment of her imagination, especially after it had laughed at her and then acted like a know-it-all.

  “I wouldn’t go acting so high and mighty,” said the squirrel. “If I’m only in your head, how did I know that you were going the wrong way? Hmm, smarty? Figure that one out!”

  “Maybe because I sort of already knew there’d be no Lost Library,” said Celia. “Because I never really believed in all this stuff anyway and you were, like, my own mind telling me what I already knew.”

  “You watch The Daytime Doctor, don’t you?” he asked.

  Celia nodded and then realized she was nodding at a squirrel and stopped herself. Of course, the squirrel would know that she watched The Daytime Doctor because he was her hallucination. He knew everything she knew. She’d just gone crazy like one of the losing contestants on Bizarro Bandits.

  “Another explanation is that you aren’t crazy at all,” the squirrel said, hearing everything she’d been thinking. “Perhaps I really am talking to you in your head. And if I was telling the truth when I said you were going the wrong way, then . . .” The squirrel raised its voice to a high pitch, trying to get Celia to finish his se
ntence.

  “Then what?” she said. “Stop being so enigmatic!”

  “Guess.”

  “This isn’t a game show. I am not guessing.”

  “Just try!”

  “No!”

  “You’re no fun,” said the squirrel, and just like that he scurried away, up the pillar, along the frozen ceiling, and out into the ruins of Atlantis.

  “Hey, tell me!” Celia shouted after him, but his laughter was the only reply she received. She was left standing alone in the great empty temple, wondering what the talking squirrel could have meant. “If he was telling the truth about us going the wrong way, then . . . what?”

  “Celia!” Oliver called, running inside. “Celia, we’ve got to get out of here!”

  “There’s no library,” she told Oliver. “Look.”

  “I see that!” he said. “The squirrel wasn’t lying!”

  “I know,” said Celia. “We were going the wrong way.”

  “Not just that!” Oliver cried. “About the dragon! They’re real! And if we don’t get out of here, we’re going to have to fight one!”

  “Oh come on!” said Celia, who was really quite sick of all this nonsense. “Are you hearing voices too now? We can’t both be crazy!”

  “No, it’s, like, a prophecy! First, Odd flew us here, then you talked to a squirrel, and now we fight a dragon! I saw it on an obelisk outside!”

  “You can’t believe everything you see on obelisks,” said Celia.

  “Come on,” said Oliver, dragging her outside to see the hieroglyphs. When they got to the top of the stairs, overlooking all of Atlantis, Celia stopped. “Just down here,” Oliver pulled her forward, but she resisted.

  “I believe you,” she said, pulling back against him.

  “Just like that, you believe me?” Oliver stepped closer to her. Maybe she had gone crazy. She’d never believed him about anything so easily before.

  Celia nodded and raised her finger, pointing across the city. Her face had gone the color of ice. Oliver looked over the ruined buildings of Atlantis, its frozen moats and crumbling bridges, and he saw what had frightened Celia. His shoulders slumped.

  “Oh great,” said Oliver. He really hated lizards.

  And a dragon was a very big lizard.

  34

  WE THINK DRAGONS ARE A DRAG

  THE GREAT LIZARD came scrambling across the ruins of Atlantis, its yellow eyes fixed upon the temple steps where Oliver and Celia stood. It had a body like a snake, long and thick, but it also had four muscular legs and its massive claws crushed entire buildings like they were made of tissue paper. From where the twins stood, the city looked like a miniature model being attacked in a cheesy sci-fi movie.

  The dragon flapped its leathery wings as though they were encrusted with ice and it couldn’t fly. A cold wind swirled in the great cavern and knocked boulders of snow from the high walls above.

  The dragon roared, the air filled with its piercing cry, and the twins pulled each other to the ground, expecting a jet of hot flame to come bursting their way. When they were not barbequed, they looked at each other and shrugged.

  “I guess dragons don’t shoot fire in real life,” said Oliver.

  “There shouldn’t be any dragons in real life,” said Celia.

  “I liked it better as bones frozen in a wall.” Oliver was sure this had to be a relative of the pliosaur whose fossil they had seen in the research station.

  “The squirrel told me that this one’s name is Nidhogg,” Celia told him.

  “It has a name? Why does a giant lizard need a name?”

  “You’ve got a name, why shouldn’t it?”

  “Don’t defend the lizard,” said Oliver. “It’s going to eat us.”

  “No,” said Celia. “We’re going to get out of here. Come on.”

  She pulled her brother to his feet and they ran down the steps, hoping to lose the dragon in the narrow streets of the ruined city. The dragon roared and changed course to follow them. Huge chunks of ice fell from the ceiling, and the earth shook as they ran.

  “You’ve done it now!” the squirrel said, running along the rooftops by their side. “He slept for thousands of years, you know? I bet he’s very grumpy to be woken up by little morsels like you!”

  “Shut up!” yelled Celia.

  “I didn’t say anything!” yelled Oliver.

  “Not you.” Celia pointed up. “The squirrel!”

  “He’s talking again?” said Oliver. Celia grunted in the affirmative. “Ask him where we can hide!”

  “Too late!” Celia called.

  The dragon leaped into the middle of the boulevard behind the twins, half running, half slithering straight for them. They turned a corner and dove behind a marble column that had fallen across the street. They pressed themselves against it and held their breaths. The dragon clomped past, the foul stench of eons rising from its scaly feet as it stomped by the other side of the pillar.

  Its footsteps faded.

  Oliver exhaled.

  The dragon’s head snapped up over the building. With a roar, it leaped to the street in front of them.

  “Aaaaa!!” The twins jumped up and ran, sprinting back out onto the boulevard, racing toward the icy bridge to the next ring of the city.

  “Ha-ha!” the squirrel laughed. “You’ll never get away!”

  “Help us!” Celia shouted.

  “Me?” the squirrel scoffed. “But I’m just a dumb squirrel, remember? How could I possibly help you? You know everything.”

  “Okay!” Celia yelled. “I admit it! You aren’t in my imagination. You’re real and you know more than I do and I need your help!”

  “Oh, that’s priceless,” laughed the squirrel. “The know-it-all admits she doesn’t know it all! You’re as good as gold, Celia Navel. Just as good as gold!”

  Cackling, the squirrel scurried up the side of a building and raced away from them.

  “Wait!” Celia called after him. “Help us!”

  “I just did,” the squirrel called back before disappearing into the city.

  The twins kept running. The dragon crashed around corners and plowed through buildings. They ran over bridges and through old houses, but no matter where they tried to hide, the dragon found them.

  Their legs burned and their lungs ached. They dove behind the base of a statue that looked a lot like the mailman, Odd.

  “That looks like—” Celia began.

  “Yeah, I know,” said Oliver. “I don’t think Odd was totally honest about who he really was.”

  “We gotta remember never to accept rides from strangers in balloons,” said Celia. “That should be a new rule.”

  “Yeah, I think—” Oliver stopped. The dragon snaked down the street behind them. It sniffed at the darkened doorways of old buildings, then slithered down a side street, growling and hissing.

  “This really makes me miss Beverly.” Oliver sighed.

  “This makes me miss Mom and Dad,” said Celia. Oliver looked at her, raising an eyebrow.

  “I know,” she said. “They get us into trouble all the time, but they usually have an emergency parachute or something. It’s like, adventure isn’t so bad when they’re around.”

  “Yeah,” said Oliver. “I kind of like adventure when they’re around, actually.”

  “Okay, well that’s crazy talk,” said Celia.

  “You’re calling me crazy?” said Oliver. “You talked to a squirrel.”

  “Yeah.” Celia grunted. “And some help he was.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “He just made fun of me and called me a know-it-all.”

  “We gotta go back to that tree where he told you we were going the wrong way,” said Oliver. “Maybe we can find the right way to go. Maybe we can still find the library and save Mom and Dad.”
/>   “What about the dragon?” Celia wondered.

  “I’ve got a plan,” said Oliver.

  “Your plans don’t usually go well for us,” said Celia.

  “This one will,” said Oliver. “I’m calling it the Atlantis Antic.”

  “You sound just like Mom.”

  “Thanks.” Oliver smiled and took his sister’s hand. She nodded. They ran for the bridge over the moat at the outermost ring of Atlantis.

  A screech pierced the air. The long scaly body of the dragon roared overhead, flying.

  “I guess its wings thawed!” said Oliver.

  The dragon landed in front of them on the opposite side of the bridge, blocking their way back to the tree.

  “Now would be a good time for your plan,” said Celia.

  Oliver pulled his last bag of cheese puffs from his pocket.

  “That’s your plan?”

  “Everyone likes cheese puffs,” said Oliver, tearing open the bag. The dragon cocked its head to the side.

  “We’re doomed,” said Celia. “Your plans really are just like Mom’s.”

  Oliver pulled out a bright-orange cheese puff and held it aloft. The dragon’s eyes narrowed to slits. Oliver tossed it and the dragon’s tongue shot out and snatched the cheese puff from the air. It vanished into the great beast’s maw without so much as a crunch.

  “See?” said Oliver. “Now that he’s got a taste, he’ll want the whole bag.”

  Oliver wound up his arm and threw the bag as hard as he could off the side of the bridge so it slid along the icy surface of the moat away from them. The dragon watched it slide, made to move after it, but then took another deep sniff of the air and let the bag go.

  “But . . . but,” said Oliver. “No one can resist eating the whole bag!”

  The dragon roared.

  “I think this dragon can.”

  “But everyone loves the golden crunch of cheese puffs!”

  “Oliver,” said Celia. “That’s it!” She reached into her pocket.