She’s right, Bradley Wallace Whilly suddenly spoke into the boy’s mind. I am stronger now. I know how to stop this volcano. But I need your help.
Bradley Wallace’s anger refused to die, and he flicked his head sharply in the direction of the girl. “Why don’t you just get her to help? She knows more about you than I do.”
Please don’t be snide, Bradley Wallace. It doesn’t become you.
“I couldn’t have said it better myself, Whilly,” the girl agreed smugly.
“You’re even beginning to sound like her,” Bradley Wallace told the dragon with annoyance, and then realized how childish he must sound. Suddenly ashamed of his behavior, he asked, “How can I help?”
Whilly nodded, pleased that the boy was controlling his anger. I need your strength as well as my own, Bradley Wallace. You are part of me, remember?
“But how can you stop the volcano now when you couldn’t before?” Bradley Wallace needed some kind of explanation. Anything would do.
“Does he always ask so many questions?” Josette asked Whilly with an exaggerated shake of her head.
Yes, the dragon answered, turning his twirling red eyes on the boy.
And in this case there isn’t time for lengthy explanations. You’ll have to take the answer from my mind as we fly up over the crater.
“That’s telling him,” Josette chimed in approvingly, casting a sidelong smug look at Bradley Wallace before clambering up onto Whilly’s slippery back without difficulty and with assurance. She gazed down at the boy with a self-satisfied smirk. “Well, we haven’t got all day, Assistant Good Humor Man!”
Stung by her forceful, condescending attitude, and feeling let down by Whilly, Bradley Wallace silently fumed as he slipped and sloshed his way to the dragon’s side and ungracefully clambered up behind the girl. She’d even usurped his usual position on Whilly’s back, he noted with increased indignation, and Whilly didn’t even protest. Some friend!
Hold on, Whilly cautioned, and with a powerful thrust of his legs, and a violent flapping of wings, he rose against the wildly buffeting winds, ascending as rapidly as the driving rain would allow.
Bradley Wallace attempted to pluck Whilly’s plan of attack from
the creature’s mind, but anger at being slighted continued to dominate his own thoughts and made penetrating the other’s impossible. He tried to curb his wrath, but this girl was too much. As his mother would say, “what nerve!”
“So this is dragon-flight! It’s so exhilarating!” Josette chattered on amiably, either oblivious to, or intentionally ignoring, his foul mood. “Of course, not in this awful weather!”
What an airhead! Bradley Wallace thought as he struggled to hold on against the lashing storm.
“I am not an airhead!” the girl protested aloud. “And what an odd thing to say, anyway.”
“How did you . . .?” the startled boy began.
“Your thoughts are Whilly’s thoughts, and I can read his mind,” she explained smugly. “So take care what you think.”
Oh, great! As if he didn’t have enough problems. Now he couldn’t even think in private. Whilly flew them high above the dangerously unstable volcano, already spewing bits of molten debris into the sky like the ultimate Roman candle. The lava dome within had risen to very nearly the rim, and looked to be on the brink of a massive explosion. Bradley Wallace’s anger was instantly replaced by fear. This was no game. It was real. And he could die. For real.
Are you ready, Bradley Wallace? Whilly asked gently, sensing the boy’s terror.
“Of course he is, aren’t you?” Josette piped up, apparently unafraid.
Bradley Wallace glanced back down at the steaming maw directly below, and tried to swallow. But his throat was dry, and there was no saliva in his mouth. “What do you want me to do?” he asked, fighting to keep his voice steady for fear of evoking another nasty remark from the girl. He had to forcibly contain the sudden, burning desire to cast her down into the open volcano.
Concentrate, came Whilly’s simple answer to his question.
Your mind must remain one with mine, totally, so that I may tap your strength into my own. Your thoughts must not swerve from my purpose.
The boy nodded, unwilling to admit he still didn’t know just what the dragon was doing. But he wouldn’t humiliate himself in front of this obnoxious girl again. No, sir.
Are you ready, Josette? Whilly asked the girl, and Bradley Wallace flinched slightly. He just couldn’t get used to sharing Whilly with someone else, especially someone who didn’t like him.
“Yes, Whilly,” she replied politely, almost with reverence. She held out her crystal in one hand, and gripped the dragon’s neck ridges with her other. Her face became a mask of intense concentration as Whilly suddenly plunged downward, catching Bradley Wallace slightly off-guard. He lost his handhold for a split second as the dragon streaked straight down toward the waiting, yawning crater, regaining a firm grip as fear engulfed him. He clamped his eyes shut and held his breath.
His eyelids flew up at the first blast of searing heat; so forceful it nearly knocked him back off the descending dragon. The temperature burned like a crematorium, and he nearly fainted from the effect. He could see that Josette, though holding out her mysterious crystal in defiance, was even more weakened. And the massive crater loomed ever closer and larger. He focused his squinting eyes on Whilly’s mouth, and gasped.
At first glance it seemed as though the dragon was shooting projectiles of flame to combat the rising lava dome and its incinerating heat. But the boy realized with amazement that Whilly wasn’t spitting fire, but rather blasts of frozen, icy breath that stopped the rising heat cold. Now he understood! Whilly sought to freeze the molten rock back into its natural solid state!
Concentrate with me, Bradley Wallace, Whilly screamed urgently into his mind. Your thoughts are drifting. The boy complied, fighting down the heat-induced nausea in his stomach and the reeling sensation in his head. But the heat was too much. He was going to faint. So, he realized, was Josette, whose desperate expression was a far cry from her earlier smugness.
“Are you all right?” he called to her, black spots dancing before his eyes.
“Of course I am!” she snapped, but her crystal said otherwise. Its radiant brilliance began to ebb and her eyelids fluttered unsteadily. As she slumped slightly forward, the pulsing shard started to slip from her fingers. Bradley Wallace stared in horror as the crystal dropped from the girl’s grasp and struck Whilly’s back. He watched, paralyzed, as almost in slow motion, the crystal slid downward along the dragon’s scales on its way to certain destruction in the bubbling bowels of the frothing volcano.
As the light from the crystal winked out, so did Whilly’s frozen breath, and the resultant blast of heat, which he’d been keeping at bay, very nearly incinerated them. But that blast snapped Bradley Wallace from his frightened paralysis, and he snatched wildly for the falling crystal. His scrabbling fingers missed, and he instinctively pushed his whole body forward to close in on the falling object. But his quick movement, coupled with Whilly’s erratic flailing, knocked him off-balance, and he fell.
Arms swinging crazily for a handhold, Bradley Wallace slid rapidly down the dragon’s slippery side. He felt the excruciating holocaust beneath him, and realized that this remote, desolate mountain would be his funeral pyre. He was going to die after all. He closed his eyes and began to pray the “Our Father,” determined not to act babyish and scream. Without knowing quite why, he opened his eyes quickly, and spotted the crystal just below him.
On impulse, he plucked it from the air, just as he felt his midsection gripped hard from above. His free-fall stopped abruptly, and he gazed up into the scorched face of Whilly.
The crystal, Bradley Wallace, the crystal. Whilly’s thought transmissions were weak, and he gasped for lack of air. His wings flapped frantically, fighting to regain some control over his plummeting body, but the searing heat was too debilitating. The companions plunged downward. Jos
ette opened her eyes and glanced weakly down at Bradley Wallace.
Bradley Wallace knew they had only seconds left, if even that much. Without thought or reason, he held up the crystal before him as he’d seen the girl do, and concentrated. He heard, as though from far
away, Josette shriek a terrified, “No!” but he ignored it. He emptied his mind of everything but the image of that crystal.
Almost immediately, a pulsing red glow appeared in the shard’s center, and began to spread outward to encompass him. Simultaneously, Whilly opened his mouth and a blizzard burst forth. Bradley Wallace felt a surge of raw power well up within him, and his whole body tingled excitedly, as though charged with a million volts of electricity. And then he felt the cold. It spewed from Whilly’s mouth, and spread outward, encapsulating them in its icy environs; a cold so intense that Bradley Wallace knew if he released his hold on this tiny, unobtrusive shard of crystal, the threesome would die instantly, not in fire, but in ice.
Yet Whilly continued to beat down the rising heat with his freezing breath, and the plummeting companions disappeared beneath the crater’s jagged rim.
They struck the rising lava dome, and then everything exploded, knocking Bradley Wallace into black nothingness. The mountain shook to its foundation, and massive shudders threatened to topple not only the volcano, but the surrounding countryside as well. Shock waves rumbled through the earth for miles around, making the earlier earthquake seem pale by comparison, splitting the ground asunder into gaping fissures. The tiny town of Waikii and its evacuating residents shook violently, causing panic and a frantic scrambling about.
But then, as suddenly as it exploded, Mauna Kea settled back into its formerly quiescent state, and the bewildered townsfolk picked themselves up from the unpaved streets to gaze in awe and astonishment at the massive, almost god-like mountain towering above them. Its crater, which moments before glowed red with impending eruption, now gleamed pure white under a mantle of fresh snow and ice. Many of the silent observers crossed themselves reverently at the sight, bowing their heads in prayerful thanks.
Near the base of the silent, watchful volcano, tossed into a mud filled ditch like rag dolls from the force of the explosion, three battered figures lay in a heap.
Bradley Wallace stirred under the cool wetness of a forked tongue stroking his blackened face. His eyelids fluttered open, and he gazed up
into the bruised and charred muzzle of Whilly. He smiled weakly.
“You’re okay,” he muttered, raising his head slightly, and wincing from a sharp stab of pain.
Yes. Are you? There seemed to be genuine concern in the dragon’s transmission, and Bradley Wallace felt a surge of affection for his friend. He nodded, his throat momentarily too parched to utter any sounds. Even though pain lanced through his head, he shook it in the hopes of regaining at least some of his senses. Then he remembered.
“Josette.” He sat up quickly and glanced around the ditch. The girl lay sprawled a short distance away, unmoving.
She’s alive, Bradley Wallace, Whilly assured him. Just unconscious.
Bradley Wallace nodded, eliciting another painful twinge. He felt around his head until he discovered a large lump nearly the size of a Ping-Pong ball protruding from the upper cranium. His fingers came away bloodied. He felt so weak and confused. And Whilly looked horrible, all black and wet and frail. Bradley Wallace shuddered with remembered fear.
“What happened, Whilly?”
Look, was the dragon’s simple reply, his gaze directed toward the mountaintop so far above it was almost lost in the rolling black clouds.
Bradley Wallace followed the dragon’s gaze, and gasped aloud. The snow and ice glinted beautifully, even in the overcast sunlight, and seemed so completely out of place amidst all this greenery.
“How did you do that?” the astonished boy asked, his eyes wide with wonder. For the first time, he realized that the rain continued to fall in a steady sheet, making the transformed mountain appear almost mystical.
Don’t you remember what happened? Whilly asked him, in a strange, unfathomable tone. The battered boy turned to answer, but a groan from somewhere behind distracted his attention.
Turning around, Bradley Wallace saw that Josette had begun to stir. He scrambled weakly over the rough, lava-encrusted terrain past several loose, and already melting, chunks of ice, to the girl’s side. Her flowing dress had been practically seared off by the volcano, and Bradley Wallace noted with embarrassment that her legs were visible all the way up past her thighs, a somewhat tantalizing sight. He forced his eyes to settle on her face, which was blackened everywhere except around her eyes. She looked so comical, he couldn’t help but giggle.
Her eyelids fluttered open, and those brilliant blue eyes narrowed immediately as she noticed his giggling.
“And just what are you laughing at?” she muttered weakly, but caustically. It obviously took a lot more than a volcano to tone her down, the boy noted sardonically. “You,” he told her, with an obvious effort to keep from smiling. “You look like one of the chimney sweeps in ‘Mary Poppins.’”
“Must you always speak in such riddles?” Josette asked as she fought her way to a sitting position. Bradley Wallace reached out a hand to help her, but she glared at him so icily that he demurred. She sat up, and paused a moment to clear her muddled senses. Her movements caused the tattered dress to slip even further, revealing more of her thighs, and Bradley Wallace’s eyes were automatically drawn to the sight. Why did her legs seem so fascinating? They were only legs, after all.
“And just you keep your eyes to yourself,” she snapped, yanking the shredded fabric down around her exposed limbs.
Bradley Wallace flushed with acute embarrassment, and looked down at his feet - the rubber tennis shoes had partially melted, he noticed, and his mother would kill him when she saw that.
“What happened?” Josette asked suddenly, rising to her feet and gazing upward at the snow-capped volcano with the same look of wonder that Bradley Wallace had displayed.
The volcano has been stopped, Whilly told her matter-of-factly, glancing uncertainly toward Bradley Wallace, who noticed a brief, secret exchange of indecipherable looks between the girl and the dragon.
“My crystal!” Josette cried suddenly, as though just remembering. “Where is it?”
In all the confusion, Bradley Wallace had forgotten that he still clutched the small shard in his left hand, chain and all. He quickly thrust his open hand toward the girl, and she snatched it from him without so much as a grunt of gratitude.
“You’re welcome,” Bradley Wallace muttered sourly, totally unable to comprehend this girl.
Now that she once more held the treasured crystal in her hand, Josette’s features softened somewhat, and her tone of voice became almost pleasant. “I’m sorry,” she relented. “Thank you for saving it. You don’t know how important it is. But you will, someday.”
She exchanged another of those indecipherable looks with Whilly, making Bradley Wallace feel more left out and confused than ever. “Look, what happened after I held it up?” he asked both of them. “I remember trying to find the center, and then everything went blank. I did hear you tell me to stop, not to touch it. Why did you do that?”
For the first time since they’d met, Josette appeared uncertain of herself. She hesitated before answering, and even when she did, the explanation was very unsatisfactory. “I did not know if what I’d been told was true, and I thought we might be killed if you touched it.”
“We were gonna die anyway,” he pointed out, unable to follow her confusing train of thought. He shook his head, almost as if to jar something loose. “But why can’t I remember what happened?”
Bradley Wallace, I don’t wish to interrupt, but I thought you should know there’s a massive wave approaching Waikiki, Whilly interjected, and Bradley Wallace knew at once his friend was not joking.
“How do you know that?” he asked sharply.
“Never mind how he knows,”
Josette put in pointedly, “just take his word for it. This ‘massive wave’ as he called it will do even more damage than this mountain if it isn’t stopped.”
“Well, come on, then!” Bradley Wallace exclaimed, thoughts of his defenseless family flashing through his mind as he leapt to Whilly’s side. He scrambled awkwardly and painfully up onto the dragon’s scorched back, causing Whilly to wince with discomfort.
“I’m sorry, Whilly,” he apologized, gently patting the dragon’s slippery neck.
He looked down at the girl, who hadn’t budged. She merely stood there in the ice-flecked mud, tattered gown whipping in the wind, rain streaming unnoticed down her face. Her expression as she gazed into his eyes was curiously unfathomable. “Well, hurry up!” he snapped, figuring to give her a taste of her own medicine. But his snippy tone didn’t seem to faze her.
“I can not,” she answered calmly, the old assurance back in her voice. “I’m afraid I’ve already done too much. I was only supposed to assist you with the mountain.”
Bradley Wallace was becoming frantic, and in no mood for her girlish games. “What are you babbling about?” he shouted in exasperation. “We need your help!”
“Honestly,” she said with a shake of her head, “Can’t you do anything without my help? Why, I’m not even a full-fledged sorceress yet.”
“But you have magic!” the boy insisted, pointing to the crystal dangling innocently from her delicate white hand. “I can’t stop a tidal wave!”
She laughed lightly, airily, but for once, not condescendingly. Had the circumstances been different, Bradley Wallace might have enjoyed the sound of that laughter. “Of course you can, silly,” she insisted. “Whilly can simply fly in circles above the water and his natural earth power will create a maelstrom that will suck that wave right down to the bottom. Is that not correct, Whilly?”
Whilly mulled this over momentarily before agreeing. She’s correct, he assured a dubious Bradley Wallace. Somehow, in a way neither of them understood, the dragon’s contact with Josette’s crystal had awakened many dormant powers Whilly hadn’t previously known existed.
A Boy and His Dragon Page 30