That started up a chain reaction of furious laughter, amplified again and again as each of the lords took a turn teasing Johnny.
“How about Potman,” suggested Jett.
“No,” giggled Autumn. “He’s not a man yet.”
“Hey!” complained Johnny, but he took no insult. “Of course I’m not a man. I’m an Elf!”
“Skillet Boy!” suggested Kat, smiling at last.
“That’s good,” said Tommy. “I was thinking Stew-pendous Guy!”
“Oh,” said Jimmy, “that’s horrible. Really. I think we should call him Captain Crockpot.”
“You guys should stop,” said Kiri Lee, trying hard not to laugh. “We should be encouraging each other, not insulting.”
“No big deal,” said Johnny. “It’s actually kind of cheering me up.”
“Well,” said Kiri Lee. “In that case . . . I dub thee Sir Soups-a-lot.”
“Booo,” hooted Jett. “That’s worse than—”
A rumbling sound rolled out of the darkness, followed by a shrieking, “Aiieeeeeee!”
“It’s that voice!” shouted Tommy, stringing his bow.
“And something else,” said Kat.
“It’s not far away,” said Jett.
The growl intensified to a roar. The shriek became desperate.
“Come on!” urged Tommy, and he fled into the trees. Autumn whooshed by Tommy. “Wish she wouldn’t do that!” he grumbled. He broke into a clearing and stumbled to a stop right next to Autumn. Jett and Johnny ripped through next with Kat, Kiri Lee, and Jimmy close behind.
“We’re not going to like this,” said Jimmy.
They looked up and saw what Jimmy had glimpsed with his inner foresight seconds earlier. Half crouched in a thatch of crushed bushes and shrubs, a massive four-legged beast scratched and clawed at a tree on the far side of the clearing.
Thick bodied, with a long neck and tail, powerful limbs with long, slothlike talons, and an arrowhead-shaped skull—the creature’s form was that of a dragon such as each of the lords had read about in storybooks on Earth.
But this beast had no wings, and its glistening scale armor looked something like shingles of wet tree bark. Down the center of its neck and tail grew a whitish ridge of cartilage, and it was covered with irregular patches of dark green moss. The creature looked as if it had been knit together from the forest floor and risen like a woodland nightmare to terrify all who beheld it.
And so the Seven stood transfixed, watching the creature scratching and, at times, shaking the tree. Its luminous yellow eyes peered ever upward, casting eerie light into the higher branches.
“Aiieeeeeee!” came the shriek once more. “Help meee!”
The fearful plea woke Tommy from his trance. “Where are you?”
“Here!” cried the voice.
“Do you see anything?” Tommy demanded.
“No,” they each answered.
“Wait,” said Kat. “There’s something up there with thoughts like ours . . . and it’s out of its mind with fear.”
The tree that had only been swaying slightly before now rocked back and forth from the creature’s violent thrusts.
“Oooooooooh noooooo,” cried the voice. “Get me, do not let it! Pleeeeeease!”
Tommy had heard enough. He had an arrow nocked in a heartbeat and fired the shaft into the hollow behind the beast’s right forelimb. The arrow was right on target, but the shaft sprang back and fell harmlessly to the ground.
The creature did not seem to notice the arrow, but intent upon its purpose, it opened its jaws and belched forth a billowing stream of green fire. The plume rose like an oily explosion, and little licks of the wispy green flame danced on every branch and leaf.
“Ahhh, aiieeeeeee, ah, ah, ah!” Whatever was up there seemed to be crying.
“We’ve got to do something!” yelled Kat. “He’s in pain.”
“Tell him we’re coming,” Tommy commanded.
“I don’t know if I . . . well, I’ll try,” she said, staring into the tree’s upper limbs.
“Jett, Johnny, Autumn, . . . distract it,” Tommy ordered. “Jimmy, tell us its moves. Kiri Lee, standby to get up in that tree. I’ll cover you all.”
Kiri Lee raced into the woods on the right. Jett vaulted to the left and wrenched a massive stump from the ground. Johnny stepped into the middle of the clearing with Autumn behind him.
“We’ll handle this, Autumn,” said Johnny, whirling balls of flame in his palms.
“No, you don’t,” she said, whacking him affectionately on the shoulder. “Remember what Grimwarden taught us.”
“I know,” he grumbled. “Every part matters. I guess you’d better go, then.”
Autumn drew her axe and, in a blink, stopped next to the tree, a little farther than she’d meant. At high speed, she backed up, raised her axe, and went full throttle for the creature’s left foreleg. Her momentum added weight to the blow, and the axe bit into the creature’s shin bone.
“FIRE, right at yu, Autumn!” yelled Jimmy. “Go fifty meters to yur right!”
Incensed, the beast growled, turned, and fired a burst of green flame at Autumn, but she was already fifty yards into the woods.
Perplexed, the creature swung its neck back toward its business at the tree. Jett was there. He swung the stump like a comically large baseball bat and hit the dragon so hard that it rolled away from the tree and lay stunned for a moment. But only a moment.
“Look out, Jett!” yelled Jimmy. “DIVE right!”
In the span of a breath, the creature curled into a ball, used its tail as a lever, and propelled itself toward Jett. He hadn’t heard Jimmy’s warning, and the creature slammed into Jett like a freight train. A huge briar bush broke his fall. He could feel the new wounds healing, but he knew they would not mend fast enough. Jett looked up as the beast uncoiled and sprang.
“Now!” said Tommy. “The fires in the tree are burning out. Go!”
Kiri Lee was already climbing the air. She sprang up unseen stairs and strode across the clearing into the tree. “Where are you?” she called.
“No, no! Stay you away!” came the shrill voice, still higher in the boughs.
“I’m a friend. I’m here to help you! Where are you?”
“Be I here!” it said.
Kiri Lee had little but the flickering fires below to give any light. Stare as she might, she could see no creature, no being up in that tree. Wait! There was an odd clump in the crook between the topmost branches. The shape was strange, but its surface looked virtually the same as the tree’s bark.
“I still don’t see you!” she said. The words were hardly out of her mouth when, “Oomph!” something heavy thudded into her shoulder.
“Drop me not!” the shrill voice warned. The thing was clinging to her for dear life.
Kiri Lee twisted her body to regain her balance and stop from sinking. She felt the sudden heat from a great burst of fire that flared beneath her. Whatever was on her shoulder felt it, too, and scrambled to climb, getting no farther than the top of her head. “Oh, stop squirming!” she exclaimed. “Or you might fall.”
Kiri Lee stepped out and gained some altitude once more, moving quickly back toward Tommy’s position.
“How walk you on air?” asked a voice in her ear.
“Long story,” said Kiri Lee.
“Long stories, Migmar likes.”
Ten descending strides later, Kiri Lee set her feet on the forest floor. “Down put me, please!” came the voice.
“Did you save it?” asked Tommy, but because he was aiming his bow, he did not look to see for himself.
Kiri Lee grabbed whatever it was at her shoulder and, with some effort, placed it on the ground. A burst of light from the fires at last showed her what it was.
A tsunami of flame crashed into the airborne dragon, engulfing it in hungry, flickering tongues of red and orange. Johnny’s burst propelled the beast sideways against the trunk of a thick tree, and it slid to the ground. The
forest floor and all the surrounding woods kindled immediately. The fire did not quench, but the creature was not defeated. Like something demonic, it rose, a monstrous dark shape wreathed in the inferno. Fierce yellow eyes glared out of the maelstrom and locked on Johnny.
“Come on!” Johnny baited it, making sure that it wouldn’t turn its attention back to Jett. “C’monnn!” He flared the fire on his palms.
The creature roared and vomited a spurt of green flame. Johnny’s orange fire met the beast’s burst, and the two fires strove against each other between them. The bright flames tangled and writhed, but the orange flame was mightier.
Johnny took a huge breath, felt the tingling above his eyes, and pushed the heat to an entirely new realm. The orange flame went white and overwhelmed the green, sending a sharp blast into the dragon. This time, the fire bit into its scales and found flesh beneath. The beast rolled, flailing its neck and tail, trying to put itself out.
Still burning, the giant lizard came to its feet and looked to charge. But it fell limp as if something had pulled its plug. One of Tommy’s arrows had put out one of the beast’s glowing eyes and plunged deep into its skull. It did not get up again.
24
The Moonchildren
“WHAT IS it?” asked Tommy, staring at the thing Kiri Lee had rescued from the tree.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Kiri Lee.
“It looks like a person . . . made of tree roots,” said Jimmy. “Look at it. It’s got arms and legs.”
At twenty-five inches from head to foot, the small being stood with its gnarly rootish hands pressed indignantly into its gnarly rootish sides. Green acorn-shaped eyes glared out from its gnarly rootish face. “Am not a person I,” it said. “Am not an it, certainly either. Am Gnome! Am Migmar!”
“A Gnome?” Tommy repeated, his eyebrows raised.
By this point the other young lords had joined the circle surrounding the Gnome.
“One of the Seven Highborn races,” said the Gnome. “Know you surely?”
“You mean like the little guys we use for lawn ornaments?” asked Johnny. “My uncle had a couple of them in his garden, but he never liked them. He’d have me take my slingshot and—”
“Probably best not to finish that thought,” said Kat.
The Gnome’s eyes narrowed, and one of his knobby hands reached into a knotholelike pocket. It pulled out something the Elves could not see and plopped it into a crevice of a mouth.
After chewing audibly for a few moments, the Gnome began to shake. Pearl white droplets bled out from all over its flesh. It began to trickle and pool, giving rise to still more trickles until it seemed the rootish texture of its flesh was melting away.
“What’s happening?” cried Autumn. “You didn’t hurt it, did you?”
“No,” said Kiri Lee. But she began to back away. Gnome or not, the transformation happening before her was nothing short of alarming. Too much like a Wisp.
“Well, would ya look at that?” said Jett, wonder written in his eyes.
Where there had stood a diminutive figure made of root and bark just moments ago, now there stood . . . a diminutive figure with flesh, hair, and clothing. A proper Gnome. The eyes were still the same acorn-shaped green eyes. But everything else had changed. This little fellow, for fellow he seemed to be, had a hay-colored shock of hair and long sideburns that stopped just short of his shiny chin. Resting like clouds over his eyes were bushy brows that seemed to be made of just three or four single strands curling and curling and curling around each other. He had ruddy cheeks like a schoolboy just home from sledding and tiny lips that, at this moment, were pressed in a taut frown. With perfect balance he lifted up one of his stubby legs to look at his foot.
“Awww,” said Autumn. “It got burned.”
“Not it. Migmar! Come sooner, if you had,” said the Gnome, “burn me not, that forest dragon.”
“So that’s what that was,” said Jett. “Makes sense. That thing looked like it came right out of the ground.”
“Yes, came from the ground, he did,” said Migmar. “Nasty thieving things, they be.”
“But I thought dragons have wings,” said Johnny.
“Huh?” Migmar’s eyebrows seemed to leap off his forehead. “Is fire boy not too smart? Be burrowers, dragons. Need wings not.” Migmar stopped rubbing his singed foot. When he stood upon it again, a strange look came upon his face . . . a mixture of confusion, deep thought, and then . . . relief.
“Thanks be to you,” said Migmar. “Owe you life. Come you to my village. Celebrate.”
“Is your village far?” asked Tommy.
“No, not far,” said Migmar. “Standing, you are, on Gnome special land.”
“I don’t know if we should,” said Kat, but she didn’t say aloud what she thought she’d heard in the little person’s thoughts.
“Thank you, Migmar, for the invitation,” Tommy said. “I think we’d all welcome a village right about now. But we’re on an important mission north.”
“Going where?” Migmar asked.
The Seven looked at each other nervously. “Honestly,” explained Tommy, “we’re looking for a, well, some sort of object. But . . . uh . . . it’s kinda hard to explain, and . . . uh . . . we don’t exactly know where it is.”
“Interesting. Come then to Appleheart,” said Migmar. “Experts in maps, Gnomes are. Wander far and wide. Help to you. A big help.”
Tommy looked to his friends, received many nods, and said, “Okay, Migmar, lead the way.”
The Gnome smiled broadly and raced into the woods. The Elves followed as quickly as they could.
“Do you smell something?” asked Johnny.
“Yeah,” said Jimmy. “Horrible, really. Probably just the burned-up dragon.”
“I don’t think so.” Johnny glanced at Migmar. Then he scrunched up his face and tried to hold his breath. And like that, the Seven followed the little Gnome into the woods.
Where the Seven had stood in the clearing just moments before was now filled with smoldering dragon remains. The violence over, birds settled in their roosts, cicadas started singing, and small animals darted along the forest floor. The full moon cast a pale light into the clearing, permitted by a clear evening sky full of stars. And passing over the grass came an immense black shadow, shaped like a massive bird, and on its back the silhouette of a lone figure with weapon drawn.
It was a longer tangent than Tommy expected. For two solid hours they marched, but Migmar certainly seemed to know the forest well. He led them across deep gullies where there at first seemed no crossing, through rock faces where at first there seemed to be no passage, and over a swift-moving stream where at first there seemed to be no ford. At last they came to a strange and beautiful glade. In this wide place only two kinds of plants grew: tall, graceful trees with smooth white bark and red leaves and waist-high, feather ferns with yellow flowers shaped like stars.
Migmar stood at the edge of this sea of ferns and said, “Wait you here. Be me back!”
Before any of the Elves could ask a question or say, “Hey, wait!” Migmar was gone into the ferns. Here and there, moving away from them, the Elves saw the ferns jostle or sway, but otherwise they saw no sign of Migmar’s departure.
“Do yu think he ditched us?” asked Jimmy.
“I don’t know,” said Tommy. “He seemed a good little fellow. Kat, you had some concern about him. Did you pick up his thoughts?”
Kat nodded. “It’s a little hard to explain,” she said. “Gnome thoughts aren’t like people thoughts—er . . . Elf thoughts, I mean. They think of a single topic, sometimes a single word. And all around this word, a hundred phrases and sentences whirl like moons around a planet. Emotions come rushing in around it all like an endless wave. It’s confusing . . . and noisy.”
“But you thought you heard something . . . something that bugged you?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It was that central word . . . well, it kept coming up ‘lawbreaker’ or so
mething like that. But the emotion was what worried me. It was fear.”
“Come you forward!” came Migmar’s high voice from up ahead. A patch of the ferns quivered ahead. “My village is this way. Come on.”
Tommy looked at his friends and shrugged. They marched together, into the ferns, hearing the stems snap beneath their boots. An unseen bird cawed overhead. Choruses of crickets, tree frogs, and who knew what else serenaded them with chirps, breek-breeks, woos, and zip-zeeps.
About two-thirds of the way across the lake of ferns, the Seven saw Migmar pop-up from the foliage ahead. His back very straight, chest puffed up, and a very stern look upon his face, Migmar held up a hand.
“That’s far enough, my friends,” he said.
When the Seven, confused by the strange command, continued on a few paces, Migmar turned beet red. “I said STOP!” he yelled. “Stop you must now or face consequences!”
It might have been the comical, overly dramatic look of authority on Migmar’s face or the fact that his best commanding voice sounded like someone who’d inhaled a helium balloon. But while the Seven did stop, they also burst into spontaneous laughter.
“Migmar, what are you talking about?” Tommy asked.
Migmar didn’t answer at first, but from the ferns all around the Seven there came a strange sound, kind of like a collective gasp. Kat looked around the ferns. “We’re not alone,” she said. “Gnomes . . . lots of them.”
“Um, it looks like they’re goin’ to attack us,” said Jimmy.
“Autumn, get to safety,” said Johnny.
“I don’t know where safety is,” she replied.
“Should I roast them?” Johnny whispered to Tommy.
“No,” he replied, feeling pleased that they were looking to him for leadership. “No, not yet. I don’t know how or why they mean to attack, but I still don’t think they’re a threat.”
“Migmar,” Tommy said. “What’s this about? Why are your people surrounding us?”
Migmar’s emerald eyes widened. “Regret you having to come in this fashion, I do,” the little man replied. “Is the way of my people.”
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