Dragon Lessons

by Eve Paludan

  “Thanks, Mom. What are you having?”

  “The pleasure of watching you eat your ice cream.”

  When I came back into the cold shop with his hoodie, he was devouring Party Like a Cupcake ice cream. I handed him his hoodie and he put it on, one sleeve at a time, without stopping the progress of ice cream to mouth.

  I sat down to chill with him. Literally. Not that I’m not used to being cold. I am, being a vampire, but I could see Anthony had goose bumps, though he was ignoring them in favor of shoveling in the confetti cake, sprinkles, Kit Kat pieces, and cake batter frosting in lieu of, say, breathing. He was almost inhaling the treat in the waffle cone bowl and would soon be crunching down that edible bowl rather noisily, so I guessed I’d better hurry up and get my important questions asked.

  “Who’s your favorite dragon?” I asked him right off the bat.

  Anthony rolled his eyes. “Duh, Mom. You. Did I forget to say thank you for the ice cream or something?”

  I smiled. “No, you thanked me. Enthusiastically. And I didn’t mean me. I wasn’t fishing for compliments. I mean, who is your favorite fiction or nonfiction dragon? Male dragons.”

  “There are nonfiction boy dragons?” he said.

  “I suppose, though none come to mind at the moment.” I rolled my eyes and he grinned.

  “Me, either, but fiction dragons, sure. I’ve loved them since I was a little kid.”

  “So, which one is your favorite?” I pressed.

  “My favorite, how?”

  I thought for a moment. “Noble, trustworthy. Able to complete a massive quest without getting himself killed. You know, the usual.”

  “It has to be a boy dragon?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  He said thoughtfully, “Mom, what’s this about?”

  “I’m working on something for a friend.”

  “Is it an investigation case?”

  “Pretty much, but not a paid one.”

  For a moment, Anthony quit shoveling in ice cream and his eyes sort of glazed over.

  “Are you thinking?” I asked.

  “Massively. I have a huge databank of dragons in my head.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Books only or movies, too?” he asked.

  “Books only.”

  I could almost hear the wheels turning in his head. His eyes lit up. “I got it. Eustace Clarence Scrubb. Yeah, he definitely fits the bill as my favorite fictional dragon.”

  I was perplexed. “Who’s that? The name rings a bell, but I can’t quite remember him.”

  “He’s the cousin of Lucy and Edmund and he appears in three of the Narnia books. He’s kind of a pain in the butt at the beginning of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but I think he’s only ten. Then, by the time he’s in The Last Battle, he’s sixteen and he has his act together. In fact, he’s a hero.”

  “Is he a dragon in all of the books?”

  “No, only for part of Dawn Treader. But Aslan changes him back and then he is kinda boring again, not as good as when he was a dragon.”

  I chuckled at his assessment.

  “What is the quest for?” Anthony asked, getting ready to shovel more ice cream in his maw.

  “Hmm?” I said.

  “What’s the thing the noble, brave dragon has to get?” he asked with his mouth full. “Some sacred object? Or maybe he has to save a damsel in distress? Or both?”

  “Anthony, you’re too smart.”

  “I know, Mom. You tell me that every day.”

  “Get in the minivan, and I’ll tell you what it is.”

  “Okay.”

  We moved our ice cream party to the vehicle and I opened the windows to let in some fresh air, just in case Anthony suddenly decided that he was lactose-intolerant or some other excuse for doing what teenage boys do naturally.

  He sat in the front passenger seat and looked at me thoughtfully, even as he crunched the waffle cone bowl that had held the fancy sundae of cake and ice cream and toppings.

  “What’s the thing the dragon has to find or protect?” he asked again.

  I took a deep breath. “It could be dangerous for you to know all this, Anthony.”

  “It could be dangerous for me not to know it, Mom!”

  “Okay, okay. It’s the Holy Grail.”

  After a heartbeat, he asked, “For real?”

  I took a deep breath and let it out. “For real.”

  “I think then, that you are barking up the wrong tree with Eustace Scrubb.”

  “Why?”

  “C.S. Lewis is too modern. You need a dragon as old as the Grail, or almost as old. Somehow, the Narnia tales are more of a metaphor, I think,” Anthony reflected.

  “But what book with a dragon in it is as old as the Grail?” I pondered.

  “I dunno, Mom. I think Narnia’s Scrubb and company are too modern to go on a Grail Quest. Their time outside of Narnia was during a World War, right?”

  I nodded. “So, what am I looking for?”

  “Maybe the dragon in your book was written on parchment or a scroll or something like that.”

  I smiled. “What an intriguing thought. I think you’re wonderful, Anthony.”

  “You don’t even know if I’m right. I’m just guessing here.”

  “You’re a pretty good guesser.”

  “I probably get that from my favorite real dragon.”

  My heart was full of Anthony. He wasn’t just buttering me up for something. He meant it.

  On the other hand…

  My phone alarm went off. “Time’s up. We need to go pick up Tammy from the high school,” I said, “before she gets in more trouble than she can handle.”

  “What about your dragon-in-literature quest?”

  “I’ll get back to Max on that after I get you kids home safe. Maybe Kingsley is done with night court and he’ll sleep over, so I can continue my search for the dragon who can find the Grail.”

  “I like it when Kingsley comes over. It makes me not miss Daddy so much.”

  I swallowed a lump in my throat and ruffled my son’s hair. “I’m glad you like him, son.”

  “I do. Very much. He cares about us, too, Mom. And he’s super-nice to you.”

  “Yeah, Kingsley’s my favorite werewolf in real life,” I said.

  “Mine, too,” Anthony said.

  I drove us to the high school in the still-pouring rain, only to discover that the building was emptied out and Tammy was nowhere to be found. I called her phone a bunch of times and she didn’t pick up. I would have left voicemail every time except that Tammy’s voice mailbox was full. As usual, she failed to take care of important things like that.

  Now, alarm bells were going off in my head.

  My daughter was missing. I hoped to hell the devil didn’t have her…

  Chapter 15

  ARCHIBALD MAXIMUS, THE ALCHEMIST LIBRARIAN

  After Nick went home, Tammy said her phone was dead, so I called Samantha and got her voicemail. I left a message: “Maximus here. Your daughter is with me at the Cal State Fullerton Library on the third floor. She’ll explain when you come and pick her up… when you’re through with whatever it is you’re doing.”

  We walked to the Cal State Fullerton Library and went in through the lobby doors. Librarians were picking up hundreds of books off the floor.

  Tammy asked a library employee, “What happened?”

  The woman replied, “It felt like an earthquake a while ago. It knocked all these books off the shelves.”

  Tammy and I looked at each other.

  Someone else piped up, “Calm down. The USGS said it wasn’t an earthquake. The engineers just checked the building and said all was well, that it must have been just a sonic boom.”

  “Sonic boom? It sounded more like a movie monster’s roar. And all I know is, we have a big mess to clean up and books to shelve,” the first librarian said. She bent over to gather up more books and sort of collapsed to the floor, saying, “Oh, I hurt my back!”
r />   I helped her up.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Don’t forget to fill out the worker’s comp form,” I said.

  “You work here, right?”

  “I’m just here a lot.” I smiled and kept going.

  Tammy folded her arms across her chest and grimaced as we headed to the elevator. Inside the elevator, we were alone, and she said, “I see what you mean that I changed history. That lady hurt her back because I let a giant dragon loose.”

  “Before the fire that now never happened?” I asked.

  “Yeah, there are broken windows and your lab is… wrecked. Once again, I’m so sorry.”

  My heart sank. “I had critical experiments going. Alchemy compounds spinning. An irreplaceable Beowulf manuscript written by him, one of a kind. I wasn’t even finished translating it.”

  “I know it’s heartbreaking.” She paused. “The holographic storytelling translation in English was really cool.”

  “Thank you. Now, explain to me why you let the dragon loose.”

  Her lips tightened. “I had my reasons.”

  “I see. Not going to tell me the background details?” I asked the teen.

  “No,” she said defiantly.

  “Tammy, I think you probably have the power to set everything back to the way it was before 9 p.m. tonight, but frankly, I’m truly afraid to have you try to do that. It might cause a further wrinkle in time that might be so serious that who knows what might come of it. Our world, as we now know it, might become irretrievable.”

  “Even if I did have the power to change the past again, and I’m not saying I do, I wouldn’t anyway. I want Thorn here.”

  I tried to convince her, “But the Grail’s not here and that’s what matters.”

  “The Grail?”

  “Yes. It’s buried in the story in the ancient manuscript. I’m eager to see if it survived being out of the nitrogen chamber for this long.”

  She visibly cringed. “It may have turned to dust. The book, I mean. I didn’t see a Grail or a Cup.”

  “Did the book turn to dust before the fire or after it?” I asked quickly.

  “I don’t know. Everything happened so fast. I’m sorry. I can’t remember the order of it all…” Her voice trailed off.

  We headed for the secret door and went through it. Seeing the resulting disarray of the occult book room sent dismay and fury through me. I turned to the dark-haired girl and said, “This is my life. This room and these books and these walls. The lab. Look at this mess, Tammy.”

  Her chin trembled. “I’m sorry. I’ll help you clean it up.”

  “I can do it,” I insisted. I waved my arm at the fallen books and said, “Back you go, tomes, to your orderly places. Be not swayed again by dragon faces.”

  Her face showed wonder as the fallen books, both good and evil, rose up off the floor and used their covers to flap like wings and rearranged themselves in the stacks. “How did you do that?”

  “I am the books’ keeper and they must obey me or be locked away in a cold, airless vault where they can make no trouble.”

  “So, Max,” she asked slowly. “You’re magic?”

  I laughed. “Nothing so cliché as that. What I am is none of your affair, but I am not magical. They are.”

  Her mouth made an O and vague understanding crossed her face. I tried to be patient because of her youth. I looked up at the broken florescent lights. “I have some replacement bulbs in a supply closet and I’ll replace those after your mother comes to fetch you. Until then, we’re in half-darkness and flickering light.”

  “It looks like a strobe light effect when we move around,” she said.

  “Quite so.”

  Tammy headed toward the room marked Private, my lab. She looked back at me apologetically. “There are no words to tell you how much I regret what happened.”

  When we walked into the little glass room, I saw the pile of papery dust on the floor.

  “The book is gone,” I said, my heart breaking.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  She burst into tears and I hated that. I could bear almost anything but tears from a female. I resisted the urge to give her a mini-lecture on the scientific makeup of the three types of tears. I asked, “Why were you here in the first place?”

  “Doing research for my Beowulf paper, and Nick had an assignment about Beowulf, too.”

  “I also had an assignment about Beowulf and I brought your mother into the case.”

  “Wow, then something is going on in the universe to make all of us come together in this moment, all pursuing the mysteries of Beowulf,” Tammy said.

  “That’s true!” I said. “Now you’ve got me thinking on a higher plane. Hmm.”

  “What does that hmmm mean?”

  “It means that forces greater than us are at work to help us achieve our related or common goals.”

  “Like angels or spirits or something?”

  “It remains to be seen if those forces are good or evil.”

  “Or a combination of the two,” she added.

  “That can happen, too.”

  “So, do we keep going in a forward direction?” Tammy asked, her face scrunched up in fear.

  I nodded. “Yes. No more time travel for you, young lady. That was incredibly dangerous.”

  “Right.” She paused. “So, did I just make time travel happen in the library?”

  “No!” I said sharply. “Everywhere.”

  “Oh, my gosh.”

  “There are words stronger than that for my dismay at your spell or however you turned back time a bit. On the entire Earth.”

  She put a hand to her mouth, horrified. “Will scientists know it happened?”

  “Doubtful. They’ll be puzzled but blame things on sunspots. Ordinary people will be struck by a sense of déjà vu.”

  “Science isn’t my forte, but, Max, tell me this. Is the orbit of the earth affected? Or anything like that?”

  “Shh!” I said because I heard a noise behind us in the stacks, stealthy footsteps crunching over broken glass and whirled around. Shocked, I saw a raggedy man with a wild tangled beard and a sword and he was heading right for us with the business end of the blade.

  “Get behind me, Tammy!”

  She did.

  “Stop!” I shouted to the man.

  But he didn’t stop. He said something in the ancient language that I had been translating from the Beowulf tome and it was clear to me, who he was—because he said in his language, “I conquer this castle in the name of King Beowulf!”

  I hurriedly tried to tell him in his own language that we were in a library, not a castle, and there was no need for violence, but he was hell-bent on killing whoever had kidnapped him from his kingdom.

  I drew out my telescoping sword from my pocket, rather like a telescoping fishing pole, but sharper.

  Tammy peeked out from behind me. “Holy smokes. It’s him, Beowulf!”

  “I said to stay behind me!” I yelled at her.

  As our two swords clashed and we circled, Tammy tried to stay behind me without tripping me.

  The king and I began the dance of two men with swords, smashing and clashing and grunting, but his sword was much, much heavier and mine was quickly damaged.

  While trying to fend him off with a bent sword and fancy fencing footwork, I shouted, “Books awake, for pity’s sake! Pages, fly, or watch me die!”

  Tammy screamed for help, too. “Mommy, I hope you can hear me in your mind. Beowulf is loose and he’s trying to kill us!”

  Chapter 16

  SAMANTHA MOON

  I heard my daughter in a panic in my head as clearly as if she were standing right next to me. I knew where she was, and after the experience with Queen Autumn, I knew that it was possible for there to be other worlds. And crossovers to and from them.

  I pulled a U-turn suddenly and Anthony asked, “What’s happened? Why aren’t we going toward home to look for her?”

  “Tammy’s at Cal State Ful
lerton. At the library. In the occult book room.”

  “Why would she go there, Mom?”

  “I don’t know, but she and Archibald Maximus are being attacked by Beowulf.”

  “Wait a minute, a guy dressed up like Beowulf?”

  “No, the Beowulf.”

  “Mom, pull over and fly over there. Hurry!”

  “I can’t leave you, Anthony.”

  “You have to go and save Tammy and Max!”

  “You’re right.”

  My son looked at me, his eyes serious. “I’ll drive over there as fast as I can.”

  “No, you’ll wreck. Only the speed limit.”

  “Deal!”

  Chapter 17

  ANTHONY MOON

  Mom pulled over, jammed the gearshift into park, and leaped out before the minivan was completely stopped. She grabbed her backpack from behind the driver’s seat and ran. Faster than it took me for two breaths, she had stripped off her clothes behind a bush, changed into her primitive flying form and taken off like a bat out of hell with her backpack of clothes gripped in one talon. Mom was a sight to behold as the primitive flying creature—I always got choked up seeing her like that.

  I got in the driver’s seat and moved the seat back, then realized that this was the first time that I knew of that Mom had ever let anyone else drive her precious soccer mom minivan. I wanted to be careful, but lives were at stake. So, I gunned the motor and laid a big scratch on the asphalt as I peeled out and headed to Cal State Fullerton to help my mom defend Tammy and Max from some bad-ass, ancient ugly dude named Beowulf.

  It was about ten minutes later when I caught up to Mom and by then, the sword battle was on the lawn in front of the library. Mom was in her usual vampire woman body and she was bloody—Max was on the ground and Tammy was standing over him, using her backpack as a shield for them.

  I saw fire in my soul and before I knew it, I transformed into my Fire Warrior body with the flaming arms.

  “Don’t kill him!” Max screamed at me.

  Well, shoot. A guy hurts my mom, I’m gonna hurt him back. At least that.

  I got in a few licks and knocked down Beowulf and then put my flames on his broadsword. The hilt got hot and he screamed and let go of it. I kicked away the red-hot sword and put my foot on his back and held him there. Once he was disarmed of this giant sword, he was kind of a weak old man.