The Dragon of Lonely Island

by Rebecca Rupp

  “Of course you may,” said Mother, when asked, “but remember the rules: Stay close to shore, stay together, and wear your life jackets.”

  Mrs. Jones helped them pack a picnic basket. There was a thermos of lemonade, apples, oatmeal cookies, cucumber pickles, hard-boiled eggs, and packets of peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches. “Enough food for an army,” Sarah Emily said.

  Zachary took first turn at the oars. It was a beautiful day and the water was calm and blue. Hannah chanted “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” and then “Anchors Aweigh” and “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.” Gulls circled overhead and the wind lifted the children’s hair.

  “You’re awfully quiet, S. E.,” Hannah said. “What’s the matter?”

  Sarah Emily, sitting in the bow of the boat, turned toward her brother and sister.

  “Look how deep the water is,” she said. “There could be anything down there. Even right under the boat. Sharks or giant octopuses or some huge sea monster. What if we tipped over?”

  “Oh, come on,” said Zachary. “Stop fussing. Look how close to shore we are. And you can swim. You won that ribbon in the swim race at camp last summer.”

  “Second place,” said Sarah Emily. “I wasn’t very good.”

  “You always say that,” Zachary said.

  “No sea monster could possibly come in this close to land,” said Hannah. “It would scrape its stomach on the bottom.”

  Sarah Emily still looked worried.

  “Anyway, this is as far as we’re going,” said Zachary. “Look, there’s Drake’s Hill. Let’s land and eat lunch.”

  He turned the boat toward shore. As they reached the shallows, Hannah jumped out and helped haul the boat up onto the sand. Zachary carefully turned the oars and propped them on the stern seat. Hannah lifted out the picnic basket.

  “I’m starving,” she said. “Let’s eat right now. Mrs. Jones even packed a blanket for us to sit on.”

  The children spread the blanket on the sand. Zachary began to unpack the food. Hannah poured lemonade into paper cups.

  Presently, Zachary, his mouth full of hard-boiled egg, said in a muffled voice, “I can’t wait to see Fafnyr.”

  “Me either,” said Hannah, finishing the pickles. “It seems like forever.”

  “I hope he’s awake,” said Sarah Emily.

  Hannah frowned. “He always woke up before,” she said.

  Zachary hastily gulped his oatmeal cookie.

  “Let’s hurry,” he said.

  The children scrambled the leftovers back into the picnic basket, shook the sand out of the blanket, folded it, and carried the picnic things back to the boat.

  “Put your sneakers on,” said Hannah. “You can’t climb Drake’s Hill barefoot.”

  The children set off across the beach, then up a rocky slope to a wide grassy field dotted with black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace. Across the field, dark against the bright blue sky, rose Drake’s Hill. Excitedly, all three started to run.

  They reached the hill, climbed up the rocky ledges — easier now that they knew all the handholds and footholds — and edged cautiously around the stone shelf to the entrance to Fafnyr’s cave. Again, the ocean spread out before them, blue, green, and glittering. From the sea came the briny scent of salt water, from behind them, the magical scent of cinnamon, incense, and bonfire smoke — the elusive odor that they now knew as “dragon.” Silently, one by one, they slipped through the entrance and into the cave.

  “It seems rude to barge right in without knocking,” whispered Sarah Emily. “What if he’s sleeping? Or he just doesn’t want to be disturbed?”

  A slithering, shifting sound came from the back of the cave, then a soft hiss as a dragon flare blossomed in the darkness. The third dragon head stared at them with cool metallic silver eyes.

  “She,” the dragon said pointedly, “is awake.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sarah Emily said. “I didn’t mean . . .”

  “Two brothers and a sister,” Hannah whispered. “Fafnyr told us on our first visit, remember?”

  “It’s just that it’s funny to think of a dragon as a girl,” said Zachary.

  The dragon snorted. “We are both male and female,” the silver-eyed head said snappishly. “Female, young man, not girl. And I’ll thank you to remember it.”

  “I will,” said Zachary hastily. “Ma’am.”

  The dragon inclined its head. It managed somehow to look like the portrait of Queen Victoria in Hannah’s world history textbook: regal and unamused.

  “Jumping to conclusions,” the dragon said, in a schoolroom tone, “is a characteristic human fault. The thoughtless assumptions, the inability to see what’s before one’s very eyes . . .” Its voice trailed off. It lifted an admonishing golden claw and fixed the children with a sharp silver eye.

  “A dragon, on the other hand,” the dragon said, “is judicious and observant. Tolerant and generous. Polite. Tidy. Brave. And self-reliant.”

  Sarah Emily gave a little sigh. The dragon bent its golden head down toward her, gazed at her for a moment, and its eyes softened.

  “And you, I understand, are the Last Awake?” it asked gently.

  “I’m the youngest,” said Sarah Emily. “I’ll be nine in November.”

  The dragon nodded understandingly. Its silver eyes, studying her intently, were kind. “I see,” the dragon said. It flexed its golden wings and rearranged itself on the cave floor. “And what do you do best, my dear?” it asked.

  Sarah Emily looked flustered. “I’m not really good at much of anything,” she said. “I like to read. And I might take piano lessons this fall, but I’m not sure yet. It looks awfully hard.”

  “A challenging instrument,” the dragon said. “But quite rewarding with practice.” It gestured with its claws. “Relaxed wrists,” it said.

  “S.E. always says she’s not good at things,” Zachary said, “but it’s not really true.”

  “Mother says it’s because of self-esteem,” said Hannah. “Sarah Emily doesn’t have much, so she’s afraid to try new things. Sometimes she won’t try to do anything at all.”

  “It’s not that I won’t try things,” Sarah Emily said defensively. “It’s just that everybody else always does things so much better.”

  “Ah,” the dragon said. “I see.” For a moment it seemed lost in thought.

  Then it turned once more to Sarah Emily, and said, “I once knew a child very much like you, my dear. Very like. Perhaps you would care to hear her story?”

  “Please,” said Sarah Emily. “Yes, please.”

  Hannah and Zachary nodded.

  “Make yourselves comfortable,” said the dragon.

  The children curled up at the dragon’s feet to listen, and Sarah Emily lay back against the smooth golden tail. Once again, as the dragon spoke, the cave walls seemed to fade and disappear. This time there was a swirl of fluffy clouds, a smell of oil and leather, the rhythmic sound of an engine, a rush of moving wind. They were in another place, living someone else’s life, seeing through someone else’s eyes.

  “Hitty and Will,” the dragon said, “were on their way around the world. Hitty was ten years old that year, and her brother, Will, was twelve. Will was having a wonderful time, but Hitty worried because they were traveling by airplane — airplanes were still new in those days — and she never really liked to fly. . . .

  The little silver plane had been in the air for almost the whole day, ever since taking off in the bright sun of early morning — a lifetime ago, thought Hitty — from a grassy field near San Diego, California. It was the fourth day of their journey. They had flown all the way across America —“From ocean to ocean,” said Will proudly — stopping only for food, fuel, and sleep. Now Hitty, Will, and their father were airborne again. Will and Hitty’s father was not only a pilot, but a freelance journalist. He wrote magazine and newspaper stories. “This will make a terrific story,” Father had said a month ago, when the idea first popped into his mind. “FIRST CHILDREN TO CIR
CLE GLOBE BY AIR! I can just see the headlines. You’ll both be famous, just like Charles Lindbergh.”

  “Lindbergh crossed the whole Atlantic with just one ham sandwich to eat,” said Will cheerfully. “Let’s remember to take more than that. Flying gives me an appetite.”

  “Now,” Hitty thought, looking giddily down at the waves of the blue Pacific far below them, “we’re more likely to be famous for something much worse. FIRST CHILDREN TO DISAPPEAR FOREVER, OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE.”

  The little plane coughed and stuttered, veering uncertainly back and forth across the sky. Father struggled with the controls, his face set in grim, worried lines.

  “What’s happening?” asked Hitty in a voice that tried to come out brave but, in spite of itself, trembled a little.

  “I’m not sure,” her father said. “We’re losing altitude.”

  He tried the radio again, which answered with a choking sound and a chatter of static. The plane continued to drift downward, its engine making a jerky hiccupping noise. Will, sitting next to her, reached over and gripped Hitty’s hand. It helped to have Will there. “At least we’re all together,” thought Hitty miserably, “except for poor Mother, all by herself back home.”

  Father squared his shoulders and adjusted the goggles that he wore over his leather flying helmet. He’s going to tell us that this is it, Hitty thought, her heart beginning to bang painfully against her ribs. It’s all over. We’re all going to crash into the ocean and die. She squeezed Will’s hand harder. But Father said none of those things.

  “There’s an island down there,” Father said. “Just a little scrap of a thing, but I think we can make it. I’ll try to set us down on the beach. Then we’ll get the radio patched up and somebody will come out to pick us up lickety-split. It’ll be all right, you’ll see. Hang on, kids. We’re going in.”

  There was a stomach-turning swerve and drop as Father angled the plane over and down, aiming for a miniature green-and-brown speck that Hitty and Will could now see, just bobbing up amid the endless sea of blue. The engine bucked and sputtered. The wings tilted ominously. The whole plane seemed to slide and catch itself, slide and stop, like a sled scraping over rocky ground on its way downhill. “Just hang on,” Father kept repeating, as though he were praying. “Just — hang — on —”

  Hitty hid her face against Will’s shoulder. Then there was one last roller-coaster-like dip and a shuddering thud as the plane hit the sand, followed by a violent jerk and a crash. The plane had swiveled around, skidded, and smashed into a clump of palm trees. Hitty and Will were thrown forward against the pilot’s seat. Their father was flung against the windshield. For one endless moment, all three lay perfectly still.

  Then Hitty, her head spinning, began to struggle to sit up. Will was on top of her, his elbow in her mouth, his right knee in her stomach. “Will! Are you all right?” she cried.

  Will moaned and cautiously rubbed his head. “I think so,” he said. “What about you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hitty, in a shaky voice. “Everything hurts. Where’s Father?”

  “Can you move your arms and legs?” asked Will. “Come on, Hitty. Try.”

  Hitty wiggled cautiously, first her arms, then her legs. “I can move everything,” she said. “But it still hurts.”

  “Then there’s nothing broken,” said Will. “It’s just bumps and bruises. Father? Are you all right?”

  “Father!” cried Hitty.

  There was no answer from the motionless form in the pilot’s seat. Will managed to get unsteadily to his feet, leaned forward, and examined their father’s still body. “He’s breathing,” he said, his voice high with relief. “He’s breathing, Hitty, he’s alive. But his head is bleeding. We’ll have to get him out of here and carry him someplace where he can lie down.”

  Will managed to open the crushed door of the cockpit partway, by beating at it with his foot. It made a metallic screaming sound as it opened, which made Hitty grit her teeth and wince. One after the other, they wriggled through the narrow gap and dropped to the ground.

  “Oh, no!” Will gasped in dismay. “We’ll never fix that!” The children gazed miserably at the wreckage of the little plane. Great curving marks in the beach sand showed the path the plane had taken, ending in the trees where it now lay. It was tilted nearly on its side, its wings broken and twisted, its propeller wrenched out of shape, its silver body dented and deformed. Will rubbed his hand across his eyes. “She’ll never fly again, Hitty,” he said sadly.

  “But how will we get home?” Hitty asked. She sounded frightened and her eyes began to fill with tears.

  Will shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, “but first we have to get Father out of there. Do you know where there’s any rope?”

  There was a coil of rope in the little cargo hold in the belly of the plane. “There are all sorts of useful things in here,” Will shouted, burrowing headfirst, his legs kicking in the air. “Here, Hitty! Catch! There’s a first-aid kit and a couple of blankets.” Will emerged, squirming backward, his arms full. He held a tin box of matches, a gallon bottle of fresh water, and a sealed box of soda crackers. “Dinner!” he said, pointing with his chin at the cracker box.

  Next, looping the rope over his shoulder, Will climbed back up to the cockpit, followed anxiously by Hitty. Father was still unconscious, his face chalky pale, his eyes closed. The children looped the rope under his arms and knotted it, wrapping the other end firmly around the copilot’s seat. “This should hold him steady while we lower him to the ground,” Will said. Gasping and straining, they managed to force the crushed cockpit door farther open. As gently as possible, they tugged their father’s legs free and swung them around, positioning them so that his feet dangled through the door. Father stirred for a moment and moaned, but his eyes stayed closed. Then, Hitty, steadying from beneath, and Will, manning the rope above, managed to lower his limp body to the sand.

  Will jumped down after him and knelt to untie the rope. “We’ll roll him onto one of the blankets and then we can drag him up into the shade of the trees,” Will said. It was a hard job. Father lay unmoving and heavy. The sun beat down relentlessly on their unprotected heads. Sweat beaded on Hitty’s forehead and dripped down Will’s nose. They hauled the blanket, their arms aching. Finally they reached the shelter of the trees and dropped, panting, to the ground.

  “Now what should we do?” Hitty asked. “He looks awful. He needs a doctor. Will! I’m scared.”

  “Well, there isn’t a doctor here,” Will said. He fished a grubby-looking handkerchief out of his pocket. “First I’m going to clean away all this blood.” He ran down to the water’s edge, dipped the handkerchief in the ocean, and ran back. Carefully he bathed Father’s face, wiping away the dried blood to reveal a deep cut on his forehead.

  “See what’s in the first-aid kit, Hitty.”

  The kit was in a white metal box with a red cross painted on the cover. Hitty snapped it open. “Castor oil,” she said, wrinkling her nose and making a face. “Why would they put that in a first-aid kit? Lots of bandages. And iodine. That might help.” Cautiously they dabbed the wound with the iodine and wrapped Father’s head with strips of gauze bandages.

  Father slowly opened his eyes. “Will?” he said weakly. “Hitty? What happened? Are you all right?”

  “We’re fine,” Will said, “but the plane isn’t.”

  “We crashed into some trees,” said Hitty. “The plane’s over there.”

  Father tried to lift his head to look, but dropped quickly back to the sand. His eyes closed again. The children gazed at each other worriedly.

  “We have to find help somewhere,” Hitty said. “He could die without medicine. Do you think there are any other people on this island?”

  “We’d better find out,” said Will.

  Leaving Father carefully covered with the second blanket, the children walked along the sand, peering back into the leafy tangle of trees and vines that bordered the beach.

&nb
sp; “We can’t get in there,” said Hitty. “It’s too thick. We’d need a machete.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Will. “Look. Isn’t that a trail?”

  There was a wide tramped-down swath through the wilderness, as though many stamping feet —“Or some very large animal?” Hitty said nervously — had often passed through.

  “It could be people,” said Will. “Perhaps it even leads to a village. Let’s follow it.”

  The trail meandered lazily, twisting and turning through trees and underbrush. Hanging vines with dangling watermelon pink flowers swooped down and brushed the children’s faces. Bright blue butterflies fluttered past. High above their heads in the trees they saw small green-and-yellow birds — “Parakeets?” asked Will — and tiny iridescent flashes of scarlet and blue, which Hitty thought were hummingbirds. The only sounds were bird songs. There was no sign of human beings.

  “We’ve been gone a long time,” Hitty said finally. “Maybe we should turn back. I don’t want to leave Father alone for too long.”

  “The path seems to be getting wider up ahead,” said Will. “Maybe there’s a village there, or a house. Let’s go just a little farther.”

  They walked on, rounded a gentle curve, and came abruptly to the end of the trail. It stopped at a wide clearing in the underbrush, in the middle of which sat an immense hut, roofed with branches and woven vines. The children stared at it in astonishment. There was no door. The huge hut stood open to the sun and wind. Will and Hitty cautiously tiptoed closer. A sign next to the front step read TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED in elaborate Gothic lettering.

  “Not very friendly, whoever lives here,” said Will. “Anyway, no one’s home now.”

  “Who could live here?” wondered Hitty. “It’s so strange. Like a Robinson Crusoe house for a giant.”

  “It’s full of wonderful things,” said Will, peering curiously inside. “Look, Hitty! There’s a giant clamshell!”

  A mammoth clamshell, as big as the copper laundry kettle back home, leaned against one wall. Next to it was a grass basket, almost as tall as Hitty herself, which seemed to be full of glistening pearls. A crude wooden table held a collection of beetles carefully labeled and pinned to boards, a terrarium containing an energetic pair of shiny red frogs, a pile of strangely shaped seedpods, a fish skeleton, and a magnifying glass. Against the back wall stood an upright piano with a row of wax candles stuck in colored bottles on top of it. There was a bookcase stuffed with leather-bound books. “The Voyage of the Beagle,” Will read, “by Charles Darwin. Chesterton’s Practical Shipbuilding. Astronomy for Amateurs. The Handbook of Wildflowers. Fossils and How to Find Them.” There was an easel holding a half-finished painting — a seascape with a lot of splashy blue waves — and a bench on which sat a row of large clay pots. Hitty touched one experimentally with her finger. It was still wet.