Dragon Lessons

by Eve Paludan

  “Let me up! The Beowulf book! It’s going to turn to dust!” I said. As he rolled off me, I crawled through glass over the still-moving floor and quickly snapped up the old fragile book and cradled it to my chest.

  Just then, a tall bookcase with notebooks in it swayed and Nick screamed, “Look out!” He again pushed me out of the way and I dropped the book. I cried out, “Nooo!” when it opened because some of the pages ripped and fluttered out and flew into the debris, as if on a turbulent wind I couldn’t see.

  And something else flew out of the book, too.

  With a mighty roar, and smoke and flames shooting out of his nostrils and mouth, a floating two-dimensional color illustration of a dragon on a page transformed to a 3D version and stood up to his full height, smashing his head into the fluorescent light fixtures and breaking them.

  As Nick screamed like a little girl and hit the floor, the Beowulf book dissolved into dust in my arms and my eyes met the gleaming topaz gems of my dream dragon’s eyes.

  My heart beat wildly, and I could barely draw in a full breath.

  “Hello, Thorn,” I whispered.

  He stopped roaring, tilted his head, and gave me the side eye.

  Chapter 13

  TAMMY MOON

  I rose from the floor and without any hesitation, walked closer to the huge coppery dragon.

  “Tammy, stop!” Nick yelled.

  “It’s okay, Nick,” I said. “Thorn won’t hurt me. I know him.”

  “How?” Nick asked in a trembling voice as the dragon rose up to his full height and bashed into some more florescent lights overhead and broke them.

  I peered through the flickering darkness. “From a dream. And this wand is his actual quill. He gave it to me in a dream, or maybe I pulled it from his head, but all the same, I woke up with it in my bloody hand.”

  “I was right. You are a strange girl with everything strange.”

  “Even stranger things than you ever imagine.”

  I walked very slowly toward the dragon and sort of did a formal curtsey. “Greetings, Thorn,” I said to the dragon.

  The dragon nodded, and I heard him greet me in my head: “You need not curtsey to me, Lady Tam. I should bow to you, perhaps?”

  “That won’t be necessary. This is my friend, Nick, so please don’t hurt him.” I paused as the dragon tilted his head and looked at Nick with one narrowed eye. “You remember the night we met? The dream we shared?”

  The dragon stuck out his neck and sniffed me, hard, so close that I could smell his coppery scent and his smoky breath.

  “Can you smell my perfume?” I asked him. “I hope it doesn’t confuse you about who I am.”

  The dragon took a huge whiff of my neck that pulled my skin right to his nostrils, which tickled. He suddenly sneezed a massive dragon-sized sneeze. I ducked as a flame from his nostrils shot out and lit a shelf of occult books on fire.

  “Fire!” Nick yelled and ran to the other side of the room, punched his fist through the glass marked “Emergency” and got out a fire extinguisher. He ran back with his bleeding fist, pulled the pin out and let the foam loose, but the occult books that were on fire were using their book covers as flapping wings and flying around the room, lighting other things on fire.

  I looked upward for sprinklers but didn’t see any.

  When the fire extinguisher was empty and the fire kept growing, Nick shouted and took my hand, pulling me along. “It’s too big, Tammy! And it’s too crazy! Let’s get out of here! Now!”

  And then, on our way out, I pulled the fire alarm, the second time in a week that I had done so in a school from a fire that I had accidentally started. I was absolutely horrified. My first thought was, Boy, is Mom ever going to be pissed off. I’ll totally be grounded for life.

  As the flames got closer and the heat intensified, I screamed when I couldn’t see through the smoke to find the secret door.

  “We’re trapped!” Nick yelled and pushed me down on the floor and got on top of me to shield me from falling, flaming books.

  “Thorn, help us!” I yelled and in the semi-darkness, I could not find the secret door to get out of there.

  I heard his dragon’s voice say in my head, “Come with me. Now!” It was not a question.

  Thorn grabbed each of us in a talon and lifted off the floor, busting out ceiling panels with his head as he did and crashing through the bank of windows and into the night. We were showered with shards of glass and I shook my head, trying to get it all out of my hair. He held me so tightly that I felt safe and didn’t scream or anything. But Nick did. Boy, did he scream like a little girl.

  I heard the dragon’s voice in my head. Prithy, tell that boy to stop screaming unless he wants me to drop him on his head.

  “Nick, it’s okay. Stop yelling. Dragon’s orders.”

  Nick managed to pull himself together enough to say, “You read his mind?”

  “Yes. And he reads mine. It’s how we communicate.”

  Nick pointed to the fire engines coming down the street. “That was quick.”

  “Pull over somewhere, Thorn,” I said aloud so we could see if the library was going to be saved. “I mean, land somewhere that we can be hidden and see what’s going on. Please?”

  Thorn landed us high up in a huge leafy tree for cover and we watched the flames from a short distance away from the library. I had never been in so much trouble in my entire life.

  “Tammy,” said a voice from below.

  I looked down to see a shadow at the foot of the tree, looking up. All I could see where bright-green eyes. “Oh, no, I’m in even more trouble.”

  “Who’s that?” Nick asked.

  “I’d know those eyes anywhere. It’s Archibald Maximus, keeper of the occult books and alchemist extraordinaire.”

  “Oh, boy,” Nick said.

  “Hi, Max?” I said tentatively and wiped my eyes on my sleeve.

  “Don’t ‘hi’ me. What on earth have you done, Tammy?” Max asked.

  I gulped. “I accidentally-on-purpose let this dragon loose from the Beowulf manuscript.” I grimaced. “I didn’t mean to. And then I did mean to. I was just wishing and suddenly, he was loose.”

  “Oh, dear heavens, I was afraid this would happen someday.”

  “What were you afraid would happen?” I asked.

  “Wishcraft.”

  “Witchcraft?” I corrected him.

  “No, wishcraft. Your mind has become so powerful that mindreading is only one of your skills now. Apparently, now, when you want something to happen, you can manifest it by wishing.”

  I didn’t tell him about the wand. It was none of his business at this point that I didn’t do all this on my own. That information was on a need-to-know basis and Maximus didn’t need to know. If he did, he would probably take the wand away from me.

  “Wishcraft? That’s awesome,” Nick said under his breath and looked at me with admiration in his eyes.

  I mulled that over for a few seconds, that I was capable of wishcraft as we watched the fire department raise the truck ladder to the third floor and a flood of people poured out of the ground-floor doors.

  “I really made Thorn come into this world?” I asked.

  “You must have wished it so,” Max said. “Did you even stop to think about what you were wishing?”

  “You mean, I needed to be careful what I wish because it might come true?” I asked.

  “That the dragon is here is living proof of your wishcraft powers.”

  “I have no regrets. I didn’t want Thorn to get killed by Beowulf in the book and I guess somehow, that had a bearing on his escape to our world.” I didn’t tell him about the rhymed spell I had made up on the fly.

  “No doubt,” Max said, shaking his head at the flames pouring out of the library. “Just answer me one question: Is the Beowulf manuscript safe inside its nitrogen case?”

  “No, but I didn’t break the glass.” I pointed to the dragon. “He did.”

  “Don’t throw h
im under the bus,” Nick said. “He’s an animal who can’t explain himself or defend what he did.”

  “A sentient animal who understands English, in our minds, too.” I held a finger to my lips and gave Nick a hard look.

  “Sorry,” he apologized to Thorn.

  Thorn sniffed Nick and then looked back at me.

  “I guess you passed the sniff test,” I said to Nick.

  “Did the manuscript burn up?” Max asked me, his hand over his heart. He looked like he was going to faint. Or puke. Or both.

  “I don’t know what happened to it,” I said. “Nick tried to put out the fire with the extinguisher, but the occult books started flying around, flapping their covers like bird wings and then, the flames spread off their burning ‘wings.’”

  “Oh, no.” Max leaned against the tree for support. “If the manuscript is destroyed, then we have a big problem, even more than the library burning down as we speak. And worse than the loss of one-of-a-kind occult books.”

  I bit my lip, shocked and dismayed.

  “What’s going to happen now, Mr. Maximus?” Nick asked, scrambling off the dragon and climbing down the tree to stand next to Max.

  “It’s Dr. Maximus to you, by the way.” Max shook his head and gave us the grim news. “What’s going to happen now? Besides potentially evil occult books being either burned up or let loose into Fullerton, California, you mean?” Max looked at Thorn. “Here’s the biggest problem, believe it or not: This dragon cannot go back into the story from whence he came.”

  “Good!” I said defiantly. “Then Beowulf can’t kill him now. I did the right thing and I know it.” I hugged Thorn around his coppery, hot neck.

  “You don’t understand, Tammy. He cannot go back to a previous place in the story, but he cannot proceed forward in it either.”

  “If he proceeded to the end of the story, he would—” I said stubbornly.

  Max shook his head sadly. “Yes, he would have, but now, because he’s trapped here, he might yet live, but countless others may die, not just physically, but spiritually, too.”

  “Spiritually? Why?” I was confused.

  “Because Beowulf stole the Holy Grail from him in that version of story. In that particular manuscript that I was translating from ancient languages, the dragon had to recover the Grail before Evil Incarnate got his hands on it. The same Evil Incarnate who is currently pursuing you here in this world. And, you probably let Beowulf loose, too, along with some demons. Who knows? It remains to be seen just what evildoers you let loose when you brought Thorn to this dimension, Tammy Moon.”

  The magnitude of what had happened began to dawn on me. “The Grail. Oh. My. God.”

  Max said grimly, “I see you understand.”

  “Excuse me but I need to get my car out of the parking lot,” Nick said. “My dad left me that car, and I don’t want anything to happen to it.”

  “You can’t go there. Fire trucks are everywhere.”

  “And police,” I said as a police car screeched up to us and two officers leaped out and shouted for us to come down out of the tree. They pushed Archibald Maximus to the ground and handcuffed him.

  “Stop, he didn’t do anything!” I shouted.

  “Come down with your hands up,” came the order.

  “How do we do that?” Nick asked and helped me climb down out of the tree.

  “Lie down on the ground, face down, and put your hands behind your backs.”

  “Why?” I said as we did what they asked. I laid on top of my backpack that had the quill wand in it, knowing they would take it off me and go through it. I couldn’t lose that wand!

  “You were seen going into the library and taking the elevator to the third floor and that’s where the fire started. You were not seen exiting. Did you start the fire?”

  Nick looked at me with a defeated look and whispered, “Goodbye football. Goodbye life.”

  “No!” I said to the cop. “You don’t understand. We didn’t—”

  “Don’t talk!” Maximus said as the cop searched his handcuffed body and kept pulling out weird item after impossibly large items from Max’s pockets, as if he had a Mary Poppins carpet bag in his pants. But he had pockets full of much stranger things than an English nanny would carry. There was a full-sized fencing sword, a few glowing test tubes with corks, fireworks, a bag of various crystals, and infrared binoculars. The cop used his gloved hands to get evidence bags from the trunk of his car.

  “I’m sorry, Max,” I said.

  “I said, don’t talk,” he replied in a low voice.

  “I didn’t—we didn’t…” I was so scared. None of this was Max’s fault, and we were all going to get arrested.

  Just then, the cop looked up in the tree, saw Thorn crouched up there, and drew his weapon. I couldn’t let him shoot Thorn! So, I did the only thing I could think of. I used my newborn wishcraft powers and pressed my body against the quill wand in my backpack and said, “I wish the library fire had never happened.”

  And suddenly, there we were—me, Nick and Max, all sitting in the grass under the tree and there were no fire engines, no smoke, no fire and, best of all, no cops arresting us.

  I looked up into the tree and Thorn told me in my mind, “Lady Tam, despite what the alchemist said about you possessing wishcraft powers, I must tell you that your ‘power’ comes from the quill wand. But it is not an infinite fount of magic.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked him silently.

  “You only have one wish left on the quill wand. Do not waste that final wish.”

  “One more wish? Wow! But what should I wish for?” I asked in his mind.

  “I cannot tell you what to wish. You must reflect upon all possible outcomes and choose wisely.” He paused. “The fate of the world rests in your hands at this very moment.”

  “Thorn, you’re serious?” I thought to him.

  “Verily! Forgive me, but I must take my leave, Lady Tam, to allow you to reflect on that third wish without my undue influence.” With a snap of his thick tail, Thorn took off into the night with a dragon’s cry and a near-deafening flap of his great wings.

  “Thorn!!” I screamed aloud and in my mind.

  But he was gone. I burst into sobs. We had only just found each other and now, he was lost to me again.

  Nick said, “I better drive you back to the high school before your mother flips her shit that you aren’t there when she goes to pick you up. If I go fast, we have just enough time to make it.”

  Max shook his head. “No. Nick, you should retrieve your car from the library parking lot and just go home.”

  “Why?”

  “Nick, I really don’t want you anywhere near Sam when she finds out you gave Tammy a ride to Cal State Fullerton instead of… what were you supposed to be doing?”

  “Attending a sort of detention class at the high school.”

  “I rest my case.”

  Nick asked, “Tammy, are you okay with this guy until your mother comes to get you?”

  “Sure. Thanks, Nick.” I paused. “You won’t say anything to anyone about what happened tonight?”

  “No way. They wouldn’t believe me and besides, you’re my friend. I wouldn’t betray you.”

  “Thanks, Nick.”

  “Don’t thank me. We still need to do our assignments on Beowulf.”

  “I know. We will. Give me a call in a couple of days,” I said.

  Nick nodded. “I hope you find your dragon. I’ll see you at school.” He inclined his head toward Max. “Bye, Dr. Maximus.”

  “Goodbye, young man. I hope you will not skip school with Tammy again.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.” Nick walked off in the direction of the library parking lot to retrieve his Mustang.

  Max looked at me, hard.

  “I reversed the fire,” I said hesitantly.

  “And thereby changed past history, and who knows what resulted from that?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

&n
bsp; “When you reverse an event, which I have never done, by the way, you risk folding time onto itself and making wrinkles. Very problematic wrinkles.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Oh, so do you think the lab is a wreck and the book turned to dust?” I asked, remorseful.

  “I’ll tell you when I find out what else went wrong when you made the fire not happen, but everything leading up to it may have.”

  “Oh, that’s just great. So, now what?”

  “Tammy, you should call your mother and tell her that you just let loose the dragon from Beowulf. The very dragon that she and I were seeking to save the world. And that now, he’s at large somewhere over Fullerton.”

  “Thorn,” I said. “His name is Thorn.” New tears shimmered in my eyes at I looked at Max. “I’ll go to your lab with you. Help clean it up while I call Mom and wait for her to come and lecture me and ground me for life.”

  “You need to step outside of your own little teenage world that revolves around your own personal needs and think about the greater good.”

  I felt ashamed. “What do you mean?”

  Max sighed. “All this happened and what are you worried about? You worry about being ‘grounded for life.’ I need to tell you that it may be a very short life, for more than just you if Thorn doesn’t find and recover the Grail.”

  Now, as dread overcame me, the seriousness of the situation finally started to sink in. I was now responsible for a lot of people’s lives.

  “Help me. I don’t want to mess this up, Max.”

  “Then, don’t.”

  Chapter 14

  SAMANTHA MOON

  Anthony was starving after coaching the kids’ kickboxing class and we still had an hour before I had to pick up Tammy at the high school. So now, Anthony and I were at Cold Stone Creamery in Fullerton.

  “It’s like a meat locker in here,” Anthony said, shivering.

  “You’re the one who wanted to come here.” I smirked and handed him a ten-dollar bill. “You go get your ice cream. I’ll get your hoodie out of the minivan.”