“So what does that—” Oliver stopped. He looked back at the tree and listened. “Oh,” he said. In the distance, they could hear the sound of breaking ice. “I guess Nidhogg’s finished his cheese puffs.”
36
WE’RE GOOD AS GOLD
THE BOOK WEIGHED much more than Sir Edmund had imagined. It was about as tall as he was and also about as thick. His men struggled to heave it up the tree, back into the upper canyon. He tapped his foot and twirled his mustache while he waited for them. Ropes hung down the canyon walls from above, where he could just see the rotors of his helicopter waiting for him. It was only a matter of a few minutes before victory was his.
Once he had the book, of course, he’d have to find someone who could read it, but he had supercomputers and hundreds of highly paid experts at the ready to crack that book and give him, well, everything!
“Aren’t you proud of yourself?” A voice behind him snickered.
He spun around. “Who said that?” His head darted from side to side. “Who? Show yourself!”
“Who! Who!” The voice laughed. “I’m no owl!”
He looked up and saw a white squirrel with buck teeth perched on a branch of the tree above him. He glared at it while it chewed a nut. Sir Edmund squinted at it a moment, then shook his head. Squirrels don’t talk, he thought.
“Are you going to ask how I got a nut all the way up here on the North Pole?”
Sir Edmund spun around again, looking for the joker who was playing tricks on him.
“Navels? Are you there?”
“It’s me, you dolt!” the squirrel shouted. “I’m right in front of you!”
“Squirrels do not talk!” Sir Edmund shouted at it.
“And yet here you are talking to me.”
“I am not talking to you anymore.”
“Your loss,” said the squirrel.
“Nonsense,” said Sir Edmund.
“It’s not a nut, you know,” said the squirrel, nibbling. Sir Edmund couldn’t see its mouth moving. It was like the squirrel was speaking to him in his head. The squirrel just nibbled away at a little orange nut. “It’s a cheese puff.”
“Rubbish,” said Sir Edmund.
“Oh, it’s quite tasty,” the squirrel said.
“Quiet!”
“Okay, but I was going to warn you about the danger you’re in.”
“Poppycock!” yelled Sir Edmund.
“Here there be dragons!” The squirrel laughed.
“I captured the last dragon years ago, just a runt, a baby, not a hundred miles from here,” Sir Edmund declared. “It was the last of its kind, alone on the ice. There are no more dragons in the north.”
“But who do you think gave me the cheese puff?” The squirrel swallowed the last bit, its buck teeth stained orange.
“Dragons do not eat cheese puffs!”
“Everyone eats cheese puffs!” said the squirrel.
“Uh, sir, you okay?” His men were next to him, panting from the climb up the tree with the heavy book. They looked concerned.
“You got a toxic parasite or something?” one of them asked. “You’re yelling at a tree about cheese puffs.”
“I am not yelling at a tree.” Sir Edmund straightened his coat. “I am yelling at a squirrel.” He pointed up to an empty branch.
His men glanced nervously at each other.
“There was a squirrel!” Sir Edmund said. “Oh, whatever! We haven’t got time for this. Come on. We have to get out of here before the dynamite blows.”
He turned to the wall of ice and started to buckle himself into another harness so his men could hoist him up, when the canyon echoed with a terrible roar. His men pressed close to each other.
“Relax,” said Sir Edmund. “It’s just the ice shifting.”
Next came a shriek.
“That must be the shriek of a gentle snowfall,” mocked the squirrel.
“Shut it, squirrel!”
Sir Edmund’s men were frightened, as any sensible henchman would be, finding himself stuck in a canyon of ice at the North Pole with a devious billionaire who had gone as mad as a contestant on Bizarro Bandits.
We should note that, among henchmen, Bizarro Bandits is just as popular a show as it is among tweens.
There was a sound of shattering ice, boulders fell from above, smashing into the trunk of the tree, and a shadow passed over the canyon. Sir Edmund and his men looked up and saw the colorful underbelly of a giant flying lizard hanging above them.
His henchmen dropped the book and ran, darting beneath the rainbows toward the ruins of Atlantis.
“Cowards!” Sir Edmund yelled, unbuckling himself as quickly as he could and racing to grab the book from the ground.
The dragon reared back its head and howled, then dove toward him. Sir Edmund jumped, arms wide, mustache flapping, and pounced flat on top of the ancient codex. “I can’t carry this tome myself!”
See? Tome is just another word for book.
The dragon just missed him, pulling up at the last moment and flying straight above him after the three henchmen. It scooped them up into its gullet as easily as Oliver tossing a handful of cheese puffs into his mouth. Henchmen, however, do not have a particularly satisfying crunch.
The dragon looped up again into the air, rising head over tail and twisting around again, landing face to face with Sir Edmund. Its giant head dwarfed the billionaire’s entire body. His mustache twitched. The dragon snorted once and, it must be said, its breath was even worse than Sir Edmund’s.
Sir Edmund started to inch backward on top of the book, dragging it with him toward the wall of the canyon. “Good lizard,” he said. “Nice lizard.”
The dragon matched him step for step. Sir Edmund heaved the large book in front of himself like a shield and peered out from behind its glittering golden cover. He fancied himself an expert in cryptozoology—the study of mythical beasts—but had no doubt forgotten the most basic fact about dragons and their love of gold. Had he done his own research (or ever bothered to watch an episode of Beast Busters) he would have known that hiding from a dragon behind a sheet of gold was like hiding from a teacher behind a blank quiz paper. That is to say, pointless.
“Now you back off!” Sir Edmund yelled. “I have one of your dragon kin as my prisoner and if you try anything, I’ll—”
The dragon roared and knocked Sir Edmund backward off his feet. The book fell down on top of him, pinning him beneath it. His arms and legs splayed out to the side and his head popped out from the top. He struggled and grunted, but could not free himself from beneath the weight. He tried to pull his phone from his pocket to call for help, but it was smashed.
The dragon moved above him, pouring rivers of hot dragon drool over the golden cover and soaking Sir Edmund’s head. His mustache sagged.
“Oh! The gold! Of course!” Sir Edmund remembered too late. “You want gold! I have lots of gold! Tons of it! Let me go and I will come back with more gold than your lizard brain has ever dreamed!”
Of course, as Oliver could have told Sir Edmund, you cannot reason with a giant lizard. Lizards were like sisters. They want what they want and usually got their way. And right now, this ancient lizard wanted to eat.
Sir Edmund turned his head away from the dragon’s face and saw Oliver, Celia, and Odd climbing up the tree trunk.
If there had ever been a time when he was truly glad to see the Navel twins, it was at that moment.
“Help!” he cried. “Help!”
He saw Oliver and Celia look at each other and sigh.
They started having a conversation. What could they be talking about at a time like this? Did that mean they were going to save him? Or that they wanted to watch him get eaten?
He really wished the Navel twins wouldn’t be so enigmatic.
37
WE TIE THE
KNOT
OLIVER AND CELIA shimmied up the golden tree trunk as fast as they could, but when they reached the top, they froze. The dragon had broken from the ice and towered over Sir Edmund and his stolen book just a few feet from them.
“It’s—” Oliver started but Celia shushed him.
The dragon hadn’t noticed them yet, and she’d prefer it if her brother’s big mouth didn’t announce their arrival.
“We can’t just stand here,” whispered Oliver. “The dynamite could blow anytime.”
“We need to get past somehow,” Celia whispered back.
Sir Edmund’s head turned and his eyes met theirs. “Help!” he cried. “Help!”
Oliver and Celia looked at each other and sighed.
“The dragon’s going to eat him,” said Oliver.
“He was going to leave us for dead,” said Celia. “And he’s tried to kill us before.”
“Plus all the stuff he did to Mom and Dad,” added Oliver.
“Yeah,” said Celia. “But isn’t there some rule about this?”
“Yeah.” Oliver sighed. “If we want to be the good guys, we have to help him.”
“Do we want to be the good guys?”
Oliver and Celia looked back at Sir Edmund, with foreheads wrinkled and lips pursed.
He smiled meekly in their direction.
They rolled their eyes.
“I guess,” said Oliver.
He and his sister sprang into action.
“Hey, dragon!” Oliver shouted, running around the tree. “Over here!”
The dragon roared, still rather cross about being tricked into the moat, and charged toward them. Odd dove out of the way as the great lizard charged and the twins ran around the tree. The dragon snapped at them, just missing as they took cover on the opposite side of the trunk. It darted around the tree and they ran ahead of it, spinning the monster in circles.
“I’ve got a plan!” Oliver yelled as they ran.
“Not again!” Celia yelled back.
“This is a good one!” said Oliver. “It’s called the Norwegian Knot!”
“Why does it need a name?” Celia stumbled, but Oliver caught her hand and pulled her up so they could keep running the dragon in circles.
“I named it with a silent-letter word!” said Oliver. “Plans with silent letters have to work!”
“That’s not a rule!”
“It is now!” said Oliver. “Keep running the dragon in circles!”
They raced around the tree trunk again and again and again. They got dizzier and dizzier, but so did the dragon. It began to smash into the walls of the canyon, losing its footing and flapping its wings, but still it circled, chasing Oliver and Celia. Someone watching from above might not have been able to tell if the dragon was chasing the Navel twins or if the Navel twins were chasing the dragon. In fact, the circle chase had grown so close that the twins were nearly stepping on the dragon’s tail.
“When I say jump, jump!” Oliver yelled.
“You just said jump!” Celia yelled back.
“Not that time! The next time I say jump!”
“Now?”
“No, not that time either!”
“Stop being enigmatic!”
“Now!”
Oliver jumped forward, catching onto the dragon’s tail, and Celia jumped forward, catching onto Oliver.
“Oh!” he yelled. “Don’t pull me off!”
In a rage, the dragon lunged at them, and Oliver shoved himself off the other side of the tail, pulling his sister with him. They hit the snow with a thud and rolled away. The dragon’s head roared and shot out toward them. Just as its jaws were about to clamp down, devouring the twins in one gooey bite, it came up short. Its head snapped back. It writhed and wiggled just a few feet from where they lay. It snapped at them but couldn’t reach.
Oliver smiled.
“It worked.” Celia gasped. “I can’t believe it worked.”
The dragon had tied itself in a knot around the great golden tree. When Oliver and Celia dove off its tail, it dove right under itself. With every lunge, the knot only grew tighter.
“See?” Oliver panted. “I’m nothing like Mom. My plans work.”
“Not quite.” Celia pointed. Sir Edmund had slithered out from beneath the giant book and was trying to tie a rope around it to haul it out of the canyon.
“Odd,” Celia yelled. “The book!”
“Celia,” Oliver yelled. “The dynamite!”
An explosion tore the ice near the top of the canyon. A dozen boulders, each the size of big-screen television, crashed down, blocking the path that led back toward the ruins of Atlantis. Another explosion next to the first sent a torrent of ice and snow raining down on the tree.
“You have to go!” Odd rushed over to the twins and picked one of them up under each of his arms. He dragged them to the ropes. “Climb!” he yelled. “Climb!”
“Why is survival so much like gym class?” Celia wondered.
“What about you?” Oliver asked.
“I think I’ll stay down here a while. That lizard and I have some unfinished business.”
“But you’ll be trapped forever!”
“I highly doubt that,” said Odd. “Someone will always be along in time.”
“Oliver, come on!” Celia started up, hand over hand.
“He’s being all enigmatic again!” said Oliver, following his sister.
The explosions had set off a cascade in the old ice. The outer walls of the canyon were collapsing in toward each other. The crack in the ice was closing up like a zipper, filling in the entire canyon. Sir Edmund was struggling on his own rope, barely a foot off the ground, unable to lift the weight of the universal book.
“Leave it!” Oliver called. “You’ll be trapped if you don’t leave it!”
“I’ve come too far to give up now!” Sir Edmund yelled. “I will get this book! I will control everything! I will not be beaten by two lousy coach potatoes!”
“We’re not couch potatoes!” Oliver yelled.
“We’re audiovisual enthusiasts!” Celia yelled.
“And the greatest explorers in the world.”
Celia looked at her brother; he smiled as he climbed. She figured she didn’t have anything else to add.
They climbed as quickly as they could; below them they heard the roar of the dragon and the grunts of Sir Edmund.
“Hurry!” Celia yelled. The avalanche was rushing at them, filling in the crack. They saw Sir Edmund’s helicopter tip forward and ride the rushing snow down into the abyss in a shriek of twisting metal. Sir Edmund didn’t even look up at it. He was hauling himself slowly, hand over hand, red faced with the strain of the book dangling from a rope on his waist.
The twins still had a few feet to go to reach the top. Oliver climbed with his hands and legs, inching up. Celia pulled ahead of him. She reached the top first, threw her arms down, and grabbed her brother. She pulled and lifted him the rest of the way. His foot snaked out just as the crack smashed shut in a burst of snow.
They slumped backward together on the ice. Above them was a striped barber’s pole covered in frost. It had a sign on it that read:
THE NORTH POLE IS WAS HERE.
“Why’s it say was?” wondered Oliver.
“Because the ice is always drifting,” said Celia. “The North Pole is just a spot on the ocean. The ice floats above it.”
“I think Sir Edmund got smushed by the ice,” said Oliver.
“We did our best to save him,” said Celia. “He wouldn’t have done the same for us.”
“I guess he gets to spend forever with that book he wanted so badly.”
“Yeah,” said Celia.
“I guess Atlantis drifts with the ice,” said Oliver.
“I guess,” said Celia.
“What do you think?”
Oliver didn’t have an answer. Destiny. Accident. There wasn’t much difference when it was done. The twins lay in silence a moment, listening to the crackles and groans as the ice floes at the North Pole shifted and settled again.
“Sir Edmund should have watched more movies,” Oliver said after long consideration.
“What do you mean?” Celia sat up.
“His last words were pretty lame,” Oliver said. “The last thing he ever said was ‘couch potatoes.’”
Celia nodded. “You know, if we hadn’t made it out, your last words would have been ‘greatest explorers in the world.’”
Oliver shrugged. “We found Atlantis,” he said. “And that universal book.”
“But no one else will ever see them. They’re sealed up under all this ice. And it’s always moving.”
“Yeah, but we saw them,” said Oliver. “And that’s pretty cool.”
“I guess so,” said Celia.
“Mom’ll be disappointed.”
“If we ever see her again.” Celia looked around. Other than the barber’s pole that had been set there by some previous explorer, she saw nothing but rough ice in all directions. There were boulders and ridges where other floes had smashed together, and little channels of water where the ice had pulled apart. There were no other canyons, from what she could see. Maybe that crack opened just for us, she thought. Destiny.
“So what now?” said Oliver. “I don’t think we can walk all the way back to the research station.”
Celia stood and helped her brother up. “We won’t have to.” She smiled and pointed toward the horizon. A strange creature was racing at them, half running and half flying over the frozen landscape. It looked like a little version of the dragon they had just trapped in the ice, but it had lots of little strands hanging off of it and it was pulling an odd bundle with many heads. It was moving so fast that the bundle didn’t even hit the ground. It sounded like it was barking at them.
“Is that a deus ex machina?” asked Oliver.
“No,” said Celia, squinting and shading her eyes with her mittened hands. “I think that’s Mom and Dad.”
We Sled With Dragons Page 19