Milo and the Dragon Cross

by Robert Jesten Upton

  Bori, who was nibbling on a fish head, agreed that walking to all the places this scavenger hunt was likely to take them seemed impractical. “How do you usually travel?” he asked.

  “My mom takes me in our car. But there aren’t any cars here, and besides, I don’t own one. I don’t even have a driver’s license yet.”

  “Then do you usually walk?”

  “That or use my skateboard.”

  “What’s a skateboard?”

  Milo told him about skateboards. Bori confirmed that a skateboard didn’t sound very useful for cross-country travel where there was so little pavement. “Anything else?” Bori asked.

  Milo thought of his bike, but that didn’t seem any better because he hadn’t brought it with him either.

  “You know, this Glass Tower sounds like it’s an imaginary sort of place anyway,” Bori observed. “So how would you get to an imaginary place?”

  “When I was a kid, I used to build imaginary conveyances out of boxes and boards and strings and stuff.”

  “Did they work?”

  “They worked fine for imagining,” Milo answered, unconvinced about the practicality of those contraptions applied to the current necessity of getting from here to some other place.

  “I think it’s worth a try,” Bori told him. “We’re not getting anywhere now, so if it doesn’t work, we’ll still be here.”

  As odd as it sounded, it was sort of logical, so when Bori insisted, Milo went along with it. Bori took Milo into the alleys behind the shops where things got delivered and showed him discarded packing crates and garbage bins.

  “This looks like a good place to build the sort of cart you described,” Bori observed.

  And rightly so. Milo started rummaging through stuff, halfheartedly at first, but with growing interest as the possibilities of the materials fired his imagination. He started having fun. He hadn’t built a fantasy contraption for some time, and when the creative knack for it took hold, he could really see the potential.

  “It has to be built without nails,” he told Bori, who was mostly watching. “Iron nails impede the flow of magic.”

  “They do?” Bori asked.

  “Sure,” Milo said, not because he knew that they did or didn’t but because it seemed right. Besides, he didn’t have any nails. There were, however, lots of pieces of string left over from opened packages. Instead of cardboard, there were wooden slats that merchants used for making boxes.

  Slowly the vehicle took shape. Someone looking at it without knowing what it was would have thought Milo was building a box with slatted sides, floor, and top, tied together in a fairly ramshackle way. But it was substantial enough to hold together when Milo pushed and pulled on a corner to test its structural integrity.

  “What does it do?” Bori asked as Milo demonstrated how to crawl into it through an open space at the top.

  “It flies,” Milo answered as if that were obvious.

  “Oh,” Bori agreed, perhaps a little less than enthusiastically. “How do you steer it?”

  Milo hadn’t thought of that yet, and acknowledged that Bori had raised an important point. Clearly it would need a steering mechanism. His eye caught on some shipping labels, and the answer was obvious. He began sorting through the junk, pulling out the appropriate labels that had been attached to various crates.

  He tore the label that read THIS SIDE UP so it read simply UP. He found directional arrows to use to point to the right and to the left, then found signs for DOWN, FORWARD, REVERSE, FASTER, SLOWER, and so on.

  By making a paste with old pieces of bread ground into powder and wetted with the juice squeezed from overripe grapes, Milo stuck his signs to the inside slats of his crate.

  “That’s our control panel,” he told Bori. “We need just one more thing,” he continued. “We need a navigation system.”

  “How’s that?” Bori asked.

  “You know how Tinburkin said that you can get to the Glass Tower only through the invitation of the Fisher King? It just so happens that I know what the Fisher King looks like. I have a book at home with his picture in it.”

  Milo was thinking of one of his books with stories about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. One of the stories was about the visit that Sir Gawain made to the Grail Castle. It included a picture of the Grail King, who was also known as the Fisher King. In the picture, he was on his boat, fishing in the lake that surrounded the Grail Castle, of which he was the guardian. Milo could see that picture as clearly in his mind’s eye as if he held the book open in front of his face.

  “How will that help?” Bori asked. “The book is there and we’re here. Besides, how is a picture of this king going to help us get to the Glass Tower?”

  Answering all those questions seemed like a lot of trouble to Milo, especially since he didn’t have the answers, but he felt like he was on to something. If he could pull it all together, then having the answers wouldn’t be important because he could show how it worked.

  “I don’t need the book,” he told Bori. “What I need is some paper and colored pencils so I can draw the picture.”

  Although he didn’t boast of it just then, Milo knew that he was a pretty fair artist. Drawing pictures was, in fact, a major factor in why his teachers got upset with him. Although they believed that drawing fantasies was an inefficient use of his time, he felt that this was an opportunity to demonstrate just how practical that particular talent could be.

  “Where can I get the things I need?” he asked Bori.

  Bori, though he seemed less than convinced that Milo’s plan was one hundred percent reliable, took Milo to look for paper and colored pencils.

  “Let’s go, Boss,” he said to Milo, and led off with his tail about half raised. “Let’s see what we can do.”

  Bori took Milo to a stationary store stocked with cards, paper, pens, pencils, notebooks, calendars, planners, and so on. There were things for everyone from schoolkids to housekeepers, tradesmen, and merchants. Milo quickly found what he wanted: a notebook with blank pages and a box of crayons. He took them up to the counter.

  “How much will this be?” he asked, wondering how he could buy them.

  “That comes to one kuzurian fifty,” the clerk said. She was a nice-looking woman who sort of reminded him of his favorite teacher from last year.

  “Would you like me to put them on your credit?”

  “My credit?” Milo asked in surprise.

  “Yes, your credit’s good with any merchant in the Kingdom of Odalese.”

  “Oh! Why...sure!” Milo said in relief.

  As soon as he and Bori got outside the shop, Milo sat down on the curb and started to draw. A picture rapidly took form. Bori watched Milo with great interest, at least until he spotted a mouse fiddling along the wall beside the garden gate on the opposite side of the street.

  When Milo finished coloring in everything, he called Bori.

  “Got it! Bori, let’s go!”

  Off he dashed, the cat galloping behind as fast as he could to catch up. Back at the crate, Milo got in and Bori hopped up to be lifted inside. Milo opened the notebook to show him the picture of a misty lake with a skiff where a man sat with a fishing pole and line, waiting for a fish to take the bait. In the background, you could make out the top of a tower and some parts of a castle wall that were obscured in the mist.

  “Hold on tight,” Milo warned Bori. “We’re off!”

  Milo touched the sign that said START.

  Bori didn’t notice anything, but he kept quiet, not wishing to disturb Milo’s fierce concentration. Milo’s fingers moved from START to UP. To Bori’s amazement, the crate shuddered and slowly lifted off the ground. Milo’s other hand touched the FASTER sign, and the box began to lift more quickly. It cleared the eaves of the houses that surrounded them until they were looking down at the roofs. The Kingdom of Odalese opened up beneath them. Up and up they went, watching the town shrink and the world expand.

  4

  The Crane Ki
ng and the Glass Tower

  A raven surfing the air currents sailed near, giving them a curious look-over with his black winking eyes. Milo let out a whoop. Bori dug his claws into the floorboards, unused to the sensation of being cut loose from Mother Earth.

  A few wisps of cloud cued Milo that they were high enough, and he moved his fingers to touch the FORWARD sign. The craft obeyed, moving now straight ahead. He and Bori could see the vast expanse of countryside down below, with the neat but irregular layout of the town directly underneath them, threaded by the silvery snake of the River Dulcy coming from the distant blue of mountains, through woods, and past checkerboards of farms, then going away in the other direction in reverse order. Milo saw roads, paths, farms, meadows, hedgerows, ponds, forests, lakes, and higher mountains behind the wooded hills, their stony joints angled out through holes in their cloaks of trees. Soon they left the valley of the River Dulcy.

  Milo touched the picture he’d drawn of the Fisher King, breathless to know if this, too, would work. The crate—craft, that is—slowed and turned in a testing circle and then stopped, adjusted itself, and moved off once again in an altered direction.

  Milo let out a sigh of relief. He gave Bori a pat of assurance, and the cat immediately responded by pushing his hindquarters high to receive it, tail awave.

  “Well, we’re finally on our way,” Milo told him. “I bet you thought I couldn’t do it.”

  “Why would I think that?” Bori said, nonplussed. “You’re the Hunt contestant, not me. Why wouldn’t you be able to do what you need to do?”

  Milo couldn’t answer that. He realized that he, not Bori, was the one who was surprised that this had actually worked. He considered for a moment as the craft zoomed ahead, thinking about how he had always just assumed that he wouldn’t be able to do all sorts of things expected of him.

  By afternoon and many miles later, they were both shivering with the altitude. Milo touched the SLOWER sign and then the DOWN sign to bring them closer to the ground where they could look for a place where they might find shelter for the night. Shadows stretched long across the land, converging to gather into pools of evening.

  They were over an enormous, unbroken forest. Its borders, if there were any, were lost in the velvet robes of drawing night. Looking for a way to reach the ground, Bori spoke.

  “There! There’s a point of light.”

  “Where?”

  “There. See?”

  Milo saw a break in the treetops, albeit a small one, and a thread of white smoke. As they came over the spot, they could see a small campfire, and began to carefully descend. They could make out a lonely figure squatting near the fire, feeding twigs into it.

  “Hello?” Milo called, not wishing to overly startle the fire maker. “Mind if we come down?”

  The person looked up. With a start both of gladness and dread, Milo saw that it was Analisa.

  “What? You! How did you find me?” she demanded, standing up with defiance.

  “Why...I didn’t find you; I...we just came down here,” Milo answered. We need a place to put down for the night, and this is the only one we could find.”

  They sort of hovered in the crate a few feet off the ground, rocking back and forth from Milo’s uncomfortable shifting, while Analisa glared at him.

  The glare softened a little. “All right,” she said at last. “Come down.”

  The crate landed with a bump. Milo found that he was quite stiff as he stood up and then lifted Bori out of the crate. Bori stretched and yawned, then hopped down and disappeared almost immediately from the small circle of light that the fire made. He blended into the darkness as if his gray fur had turned him as invisible as Stigma.

  Milo climbed out next. “Where are we?” he asked.

  “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you,” Analisa said. “Milo, tell me the truth. Are you following me?”

  “No,” Milo said, his feelings hurt. “I’m not following you. I may not know where we are, but I got here entirely by my own effort. I don’t mean to intrude.”

  He began to move away, but Analisa stopped him. “Since you’re here, you should share my fire. It’s not much, but it’s pretty lonely. I wouldn’t mind having somebody to talk to.

  “To tell the truth,” Analisa continued, settling down near her fire again, “I don’t really know where we are either. I’ve been flying over this forest for hours without a sign of anybody or anything.”

  Milo noticed her broom, an implement made of a stout, rather crooked wooden handle with a bundle of pliant willow switches bound tightly to its end. It was lying on its side near the fire.

  “Have you seen any of the others?” she asked, meaning the other contestants.

  “No, but I got a late start.”

  “I was beginning to think I’d taken a wrong turn,” she said, chafing her arms against the cool night air. “Do you think we’re on the right course?”

  “I’m positive,” he said with conviction while wondering what knowledge she had used to pick the route she was on.

  His answer seemed to make her feel better. She put some more sticks on the fire, then settled a small, round pot onto the glowing bed of coals. “It isn’t much, but you’re welcome to share my porridge.” She smiled at him for the first time. “To return the favor.”

  Milo took out his pocketknife (something that would have gotten him in big trouble if his teachers at school had known about it), picked up a branch from Analisa’s pile of firewood, and began whittling it.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, curious.

  “Something my grandfather taught me how to do. I’m making a spoon.”

  She laughed. Milo thought he detected a tone of surprised admiration instead of derision, so he kept on whittling.

  “Milo, you are an odd one.”

  They sat in silence for some time while he worked, Analisa staring into the dance of flames and Milo turning his work this way and that in the fire’s light, looking for where to take the next curl of shavings. From time to time she stirred the contents of her pot with a stick. The pot was bubbling softly, emitting an inviting aroma that made Milo’s mouth water.

  “Analisa,” he started, then faltered. “I know I’m sort of an idiot at times, and I don’t know much about any of this.” He gestured in a general way with his pocketknife. “But I intend to do my best to play fair and not take advantage of anybody else. I just want you to know that.”

  She looked at him for a minute.

  “Milo, you’re sweet. That’s the problem, or at least part of it. The Hunt is serious business. Do you think for a minute that any of the others will play fair? The judges know they won’t, nor do they expect them to. Do you think, for instance, that Count Yeroen paid your fee out of kindness? No. He did it as a ploy. He calculated that it would build his image, humiliate you, and possibly add an element of confusion that he could profit by. And you, instead of registering the insult that you are inferior to him, turned it on him by letting me in.

  “I owe you for what you did,” she continued, “but I still haven’t decided what to think of you. Either you are very clever and deceitful—much more so even than Count Yeroen—or you really are a complete...” She stopped herself and groped for a different word than the one she had been about to use. “...innocent.”

  She turned to gesture toward Milo’s crate. “Now you show up in that incredible contraption and sit here like...” She didn’t complete the sentence, but after an awkward silence, she faced him. “Milo, if you’re as big a fool as you say you are, how in the world were you able to build that out of...out of trash?”

  Milo set the newly finished spoon on the stone next to Analisa’s pot and retrieved the next stick he’d chosen to work on. Analisa picked up the spoon and looked it over. It was crude, but it was a spoon. She stirred her porridge to test it.

  “Milo, do me a favor. Don’t tell me anymore how clueless you are.”

  Milo wanted to protest, feeling his need to share how conf
used he felt. But she had taken that away from him. She had beaten him to it. He was stuck now with the responsibility of being a fully qualified Hunt contestant.

  Bori saved the moment just then by strolling into camp, obviously pleased with his own prowess and appeased appetite. He sat down between them by the fire and began washing his face as he always did after a meal.

  “Thank you for not sharing,” Milo told Bori, imagining in spite of himself what the cat had had for dinner.

  Analisa broke out in a laugh. “Oh, you two!” she said. “Milo, Bori—thanks for dropping in.”

  That made Milo’s night. Not even the meal from Analisa’s little pot made him feel as warm and welcomed as that.

  Warm is a relative thing. Before dawn, they were all three huddled together and wishing for morning. It came, however tardily, and the new day sent them on their separate ways. Analisa left first, mounting her broom while Milo studiously looked down at something he was doing so she would see that he wasn’t watching what direction she took.

  After making sure that the fire was completely out, Milo and Bori got back into the crate and lifted off. “One of the floorboards is a little loose,” he told Bori. “Remind me to tighten the lashings when we land again.”

  They flew on and on, the forest reaching out endlessly beneath them. Milo flew lower today, and perhaps a little slower—the better to see where they might be. He felt that he needed to be vigilant. Without being able to say why, he believed that they were getting close. By noon, the forest canopy had thinned, revealing stretches of open ground with tall grass.

  “What’s that up ahead?” Bori asked.

  Milo knew that Bori’s eyesight was much sharper than his. He squinted to see where Bori indicated.

  “Looks like a bunch of animals,” Milo said, “all milling around the base of that granite outcropping.”

  “It looks to me like a pack of dogs that has a cat cornered,” Bori asserted.

  Milo brought the craft lower and slowed it as it came in at treetop level over the commotion.