“Where are we?” the boy asked with an American accent.
“What’re your names?”
The girl looked around, as if the answer were in the air. Then she said, “Maggie Marks, miss.”
“And I’m Henry, her brother,” the boy said.
“Well, Henry and Maggie, my name’s Kay Kingfisher, and we’re on earth—in the United Kingdom, not that far from America. Don’t be scared. Everything’s going to be fine. Come and look. That kid over there is my brother, Artie Kingfisher.”
Henry and Maggie put their heads together and stared along the length of Kay’s outstretched arm. “Artie?” Henry asked.
“That’s right. And my name’s Kay. Don’t worry, guys. Everything’s under control. Everything is going to be fine.” Kay paused, and then she said, “Yep, from now on, everything is going to be just fine.”
EPILOGUE
HOW IT ALL ENDS
Three weeks later, life for the Kingfishers was back to normal.
Or normalish, at least.
Sure, there were a lot of odds and ends to tie up. Like how to dispose of a bunch of dragon carcasses; and how to explain to the people of Wales and England that they’d been under the spell of a wizard; and how to convince Bercilak that, no, there was no such thing as Mount Pepsi. And Tiberius had to unfreeze all the kids he’d put in stone, and Artie had to help them get back home. And finally, Artie, Kay, Dred, and Thumb had to go into Merlin’s caves and find the ball of sangrealite.
Within a week, Artie and Kay and all the knights became instant international celebrities. They had their pictures in every single blog, magazine, newspaper, and website the world over. The people and creatures of the Otherworld sang their praises—literally, since countless songs were made up about them. Artie had a heck of a time explaining everything, and he knew that never again would a day pass without him having to talk about King Arthur, or the Otherworld, or sword fighting. Artie got to meet the president, which was cool, and he presented her with a volume of liquid sangrealite that would be sufficient to help all the nations of earth rejigger their power-generating systems. The rest of the sangrealite went back to the Otherworld, where Dred would make sure it got redistributed so that magic could once again grow and flourish. Dred would also guard a precious reserve that Artie or any of his knights could tap, for whatever reason. As far as saving the environment on Artie’s side, there was tons of work to be done, of course, but the president promised to rally the leaders of the world to the task. It made Artie, Kay, and Kynder feel pretty darn good.
Perhaps surprisingly, the world accepted the Kingfishers’ story—though it was hard to argue with a kid who had the Seven Swords at his back, and Thumb and Shallot and Numinae and Tiberius at his side. It was also hard to argue with the power of sangrealite—a power that Artie did not hoard. Before giving the president the goods, Artie, Kay, Kynder, and Thumb made a two-minute YouTube video demonstrating how the metal worked, and then shared it with the world. Within one week it had over 100,000,000 views. It was the most popular video ever posted to the internet (at least until the one of Bercilak and Tiberius chugging their “lifetime supply” of Mountain Dew in one sitting went viral).
This all worked because, just like when the invisible tower materialized in downtown Cincinnati and tumbled to the ground, people exhibited the uncanny and baffling ability to believe just about anything. People wanted to believe—they wanted to believe more than anything.
Slowly, sadly, the group said their good-byes. Artie, Kay, and Kynder buried Merlin in the Kingfishers’ backyard, where Kynder planted a magical bed of ever-blooming wildflowers over it. Bedevere came to live with the Kingfishers, but Dred decided to return to Avalon as Artie’s regent. Artie forgave Erik for being a traitor—because without him, after all, the plan would not have worked—and Erik went home to a gaggle of very happy Erikssens who had missed him dearly. Sami got a flat in Stockholm (but kept his camp up north). Numinae and Bercilak went to Veltdam to live and work at the Great Sylvan Library, and Tiberius split his time between his cave in the Sylvan woods and Castle Tintagel. Lance and Thumb renovated and reopened the Invisible Tower gaming store, where they sold video games and board games and books and toys to hundreds of kids a day (Otherworld, however, was recalled and discontinued). Shallot went back to Leagon, where she eventually became lordess. And Morgaine was given a quiet but respectful burial in Fenland, attended by all of Artie’s knights.
Artie offered Excalibur to Nyneve for safekeeping, but she refused, since Artie was still very much alive. The Sword of David was FedExed back to Topkapi Palace, to the Turkish government’s great relief. But no one was quite sure what to do with the Grail. For the time being it was in Avalon, buried in a chamber deep under Tintagel. And there it would stay—at least until someone had a better idea of what to do with it.
And after everything was said and done, Pammy and Kynder actually moved in together. Then, only weeks later . . . they got married! They chose the Kingfisher house to live in, keeping the Onakea house for Otherworld guests whenever they happened to cross over.
That meant Artie had a new sister—Qwon. Which was weird, because he still kind of liked her, even though by then it was obvious that Qwon (who, like all of them, visited Avalon regularly), was moony-eyed for Dred. The family kept a runt dire wolf for a pet, and Kynder constructed a backyard coop that housed a dozen passenger pigeons, all named Martha.
Eventually, Artie, Kay, Qwon, and Erik returned to school, where, as Pammy had predicted, they would be forced to repeat their year. Bedevere, who also had to go to school, tested and placed in the ninth grade. All in all, though, they didn’t care. School was actually fun—and a lot easier than fighting huge battles for the fate of the world. It also didn’t hurt that all of a sudden they were, and always would be, the most popular kids in, well, the world.
On a disturbingly warm January first—a Sunday that year—two days before they would go back to Shadyside Middle School, Artie found himself in the basement game room. Since getting back from the Otherworld, he hadn’t played a single video game—and neither, to the shock of all, had Kay. Artie hadn’t even played Ninja Caretaker or Monster Ate My Minivan or Angry Unicorns on Kynder’s iPad. The thrill, quite simply, was gone.
Artie looked around the room. Excalibur, Cleomede, Kusanagi, and Merlin’s owl-headed cane were mounted in a glass case on one wall, and opposite it, in another glass case, were Flixith, Carnwennan, Bedevere’s ginormous claymore, the infinite backpack, and a bag of moongate coins. Sitting on the coffee table in the middle of the room was the Otherworld cell phone that they used almost daily to call Dred, Bercilak, Numinae, or Shallot. Sitting at the far end, under the TV, was the Xbox, collecting dust. Artie stood there and stared at it, and as he stared he played with the two trinkets he kept on a single platinum-and-sangrealite chain around his neck at all times: the black key that opened the door inside the King’s Gate, and the small golden disk that read, “No more games.”
Artie turned these words over in his head.
After ten or more minutes of contemplation, he tucked the chain into his shirt and went to the case on his left. He opened it and took down Excalibur, pulling it from its scabbard, which he leaned against the wall. Taking the sword in both hands, he walked to the TV, looked down at the black plastic Xbox, and calmly and smoothly impaled it with the sword. Electricity shot up and down the blade and dissipated. Artie pulled the sword free, resheathed it, and put it back in the case. As he was closing the glass, Kay yelled from upstairs, “Hey, Art—whatcha doing?”
“Nothing,” Artie yelled back.
“Well, get up here! It’s so warm out, Kynder’s making lemonade—in January! He’s going to barbecue, too!”
“Cool. I’ll be right up,” Artie yelled back. Kay’s footfalls pounded overhead and out the patio door into the backyard.
Artie looked at the vanquished Xbox, but all he could think about was his friend and enemy, the dead wizard, Merlin Ambrosius.
Artie smiled. “No more games,” he said quietly.
Then he spun and dashed out of the room, and up the stairs, and outside, into the sun that had brought the New Year, to play with Kay and everyone else.
BACK AD
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NILS JOHNSON-SHELTON is the author of the Otherworld Chronicles series, including The Invisible Tower and The Seven Swords. He is also the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller No Angel: My Harrowing Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels. Nils lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his family.
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CREDITS
Cover art © 2014 by Brian Thompson
Cover design by Ray Shappell
COPYRIGHT
OTHERWORLD CHRONICLES: THE DRAGON KING
Copyright © 2014 by Full Fathom Five, LLC
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Johnson-Shelton, Nils.
The dragon king / Nils Johnson-Shelton.
pages cm. — (Otherworld chronicles ; #3)
Summary: “Artie Kingfisher’s quest to claim his throne as King Arthur reborn approaches its end as he reaches the mythical isle of Avalon, sets off in search of the Holy Grail, and prepares to face off in battle against the wizard Merlin”— Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-06-207097-5 (hardback)
1. Arthur, King—Juvenile fiction. [1. Arthur, King—Fiction. 2. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.J6398Dr 2014
2013032168
[Fic]—dc23
CIP
AC
EPub Edition © December 2013 ISBN: 9780062070999
13 14 15 16 17 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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