Dragon Removal Service

by E. C. Stever

  The fire in the fireplace roared, flames licking out, burning the wooden mantelpiece. The flames almost hit the book that sat on the chair, and he had a second to read what it said. The book had Gulchima's name on it!

  He reached out to grab the book, but his hand passed right through it. A simple enough untouchable spell, but Hubward had too much sausage in his system to perform the counter spell.

  Ash rushed at him.

  Hubward pretended to aim at it, but at the last second, he dove and fired his glacier water into the fireplace. The fire sputtered, the flames drooped, but it did not go out.

  Ash swam above him, slowed, then looped back to face him. It glared with its one remaining eye, then disappeared into the dark of the dragon's throat.

  The dragon flame had gone down too, the color shifting from bright white to a dark green. The pool had stopped bubbling, but it was still steaming. Gulchima gasped in a lungful of air.

  "We can go and finish it off," Hubward said.

  "We have to leave, now," Gulchima said.

  "No!" Hubward yelled. "We have to kill this creature. This might be the Sorcerer. This might be the thing that killed my family!"

  "Your who?"

  Hubward grimaced. "My team . . . the magical team of assassins . . . That's my family. That's my dad, and my three brothers and three sisters. I thought the dragon killed them, but maybe it was this ash creature."

  "And your mom . . . ."

  "She's just regular dead," Hubward said. He sighed. "Not undead like the rest of my family. I have to go chase down Ash and defeat it. For once, I won't be just camouflage, I'll be the hero. I can avenge my family. Maybe cure them. You go ahead, save Novvy."

  "No," Gulchima said, she put her hands on her hips. "That's what it wants. It wanted me to go into the belly of the beast, and so that's the last place I'll go. It's weaker out here. It's isolated. And . . . I need your help Hubward. I need a friend."

  "We can kill it!" Hubward said. He took a step toward the dragon's throat.

  "And we will, at the right time," Gulchima said, quietly. "That's what I learned. You gotta have a plan if you're going to fight magical chaos. Planning is our best weapon against it."

  "So we let it live?" Hubward asked.

  "No, we make Ash come into our world, and we fight it there. Now that we know about it, it's only a matter of time before we can kill it. Ash knows that. It's desperate."

  Hubward licked his lips, his eyes bounced from Gulchima to the dark. From the fireplace, to the pool, and their escape route. At last, he dropped his sprayer.

  "Ok, but at least grab the book," Hubward said. "We're kids, dealing with magic. We need to research something at the library before all of this is over."

  "What's a library?" Gulchima asked. She slipped on the ice, where Hubward had missed. The dragon's tongue was as smooth as an ice-pond.

  "Just grab the book," Hubward said, in an annoyed tone. "It contains arcane knowledge."

  "What's an arcane?"

  "It means magical and old," Hubward said. "But listen, if you grab that book, it will get you out of the contract. It's proof you are being sabotaged."

  Gulchima shook her head. "Too easy. Magic wants me to read the spooky book? I don't read the spooky book. Magic wants me to go into the spooky woods? I don't go into the spooky woods. I'm the boss, applesauce. Magic works for me."

  Girls! They never listened when you told them what they should be doing!

  "I just compromised earlier," Hubward said. "Now you have to compromise. And your compromise will be to get that book!"

  "You're right," Gulchima replied coolly. She walked toward the high-backed chair with the velvet seat.

  In the distance, Hubward saw a single glowing eye, open and watching.

  But instead of grabbing the book, instead of even touching it, Gulchima kicked over the chair, and the book fell into the fire.

  The fireplace exploded, shooting coals across the entire room, igniting the chair and the book and the hairbrush.

  "Nooooo!" Ash screamed. It twisted out of the darkness, then dove for the book, trying to extinguish the flames. Gulchima had been right, the book was a trap.

  Gulchima slid Novvy away from the fire. He still sat on his eggshell, but the fire had melted it into an elongated oval, almost like a boat made of ice.

  "Hubward, let's go sledding. Spray the floor."

  It made sense. They could make a boat of ice. They could sled out of the dragon's mouth.

  First he sprayed all around Novvy, enlarging his "boat", making sure it was big enough for the three of them. Once that was done, he sprayed the floor, making a small icy ramp.

  But ice would float. He needed a piece of the dragon. He needed excess gravity from the dragon, or they'd just bob around on the surface of the pool. And the water was still too hot.

  "We're not heavy enough," Hubward yelled. "Ice floats, remember?"

  Gulchima took out her knife and started jabbing at the only part of the dragon she could get to. Its tongue.

  "It's not working!" Gulchima said. Her knife was just bouncing off the tongue, like it was made of stone.

  Its tongue! Hubward knew what to do. "Isn't it annoying when you get your tongue stuck to butter popsicles in the winter—"

  "Why are you eating butter popsicles in the winter?" Gulchima asked.

  Why aren't you?

  Hubward sprayed the dragon's tongue in a small controlled burst. The ice thickened, and he chipped a piece of it off. A small flap of the dragon's tongue tore loose. It was heavy, and would be much heavier in the real world, so he dragged it to the ice boat. Gulchima helped him to lift it into the boat.

  "Okay, now we're heavy enough."

  Gulchima and Hubward jumped in the ice boat, Novvy between them.

  "Yes I would like another candy," Novvy mumbled. "And two for my sick cat at home."

  They rocked forward. The ice boat started to build up speed, like a sled heading downhill.

  Ash bellowed, rocketing out of the smoke after them.

  Hubward spun in time to see its fangs, its one good eye, and the look of shock as he unloaded the last of his glacial spray water into its head.

  Ash's frozen body smashed into them, forming a roof that completely covered the top of their ice boat.

  "Hey we're an egg!" Hubward said.

  "I hope this egg is strong enough to—" Gulchima started to say.

  They splashed into the pool and immediately sank, as regular gravity took hold.

  Something about the transformation gave them great speed. They shot through the dragon's mouth, jarred against one of the teeth, then spun crazily through the boiling hot water, luckily (or perhaps magi-luckily) avoiding the worst of the dragon fire.

  Then they reached the top of the water.

  They bobbed to the surface of the river. The piece of dragon tongue dropped through the bottom of their boat, and the top of their ice egg cracked apart. It was still nighttime. Perhaps only a few minutes had passed for the rest of Baltica.

  They floated in silence in the open shell of their ice ball. The dragon was behind them.

  Gulchima, Novvy and Hubward. All alive. All unhurt except for Novvy's hand.

  They breathed heavily but said little, as they drifted back to shore.

  Gulchima reached out and pulled a white bone out of the ice. It was the tip of a dragon tooth. She hid it inside her rabbit-skin leggings.

  "I'm gonna make a necklace out of it," Gulchima said.

  Hubward patted his own pocket. He still had Ash's eye. It felt like a smooth cold stone.

  It was dark now, no moon, but the locals were out on the burgh's wall watching them. As they drifted to shore, Hubward saw a solitary figure there, waiting for them.

  It was Isolde. She had her hands on her hips. She looked like angry was her permanent face.

  "Hello Gulchima, I think I'd like to have a word with you, if you don't mind," Isolde said in icy-cold politeness.

  Just then, Novvy popped u
p from the middle of the boat, and smiled brightly at Isolde.

  "Hey Isolde! Guess what?" He held up his bloody hand. "A dragon ate my finger!"

  Chapter 34: Brunhild Hears Voices

  "I know what I saw, and I saw Rattbone kissing her!"

  Brunhild lifted her chief spy like a bag of dried moss and tossed him into the bog with a tremendous splash. The man had dared to disagree with her.

  Brunhild was not angry. Saying that she was angry would be like calling a volcano warm. Brunhild was molten.

  Brunhild corrected herself. No, one could not be molten. Magmatic perhaps? Fuming?

  For the sake of clarity, after Brunhild saw Rattbone kissing that Scythian princess, she merely felt as if she were liquefied rock, spewing from the center of the world with such heat and force that it would burn everything in its path. Brunhild would have to burn everything, she realized. Everything. Everything Rattbone loved. But she wasn't angry.

  Her spy paddled around in the center of the bog pool, just visible in the torchlight. A few of her River-Hag sisters helped him to get out. Her youngest River-Hag sister, SwampWeed, had taken a shine to her spy, she noted. Perhaps they would entangle romantically, and SwampWeed would enchant him, and they'd be married, and have children, and Brunhild would sit all alone at a table during their wedding feast, and eat each of the six pieces of cake set there, before leaving early because of a stomach ache.

  Perhaps. Perhaps one's future was unalterable. But first, she had to burn everything. And Bayadev would burn first.

  [The world mill grinds us all.]

  "Brunhild I assure you," the spy said from the edge of the bog pool. "Rattbone is merely working day-and-night with the younger exotically-beautiful Scythian princess, in order to find a traitor in the Soldier-King's inner circle." The spy smiled appreciatively at SwampWeed, whom he saw as a tall fair young woman with striking blue eyes, and not the short wart-covered monster with black oily eyes that she really was. "The war against the Gutlanders is going well, but there is a mystery at the Soldier-King's camp which must be unraveled."

  "He dared—HE DARED—to kiss another woman!" Brunhild screamed. She picked up her scale armor, and started to slip it on. "A Scythian princess! Our sworn enemies from the east!"

  She'd been spying on Rattbone, waiting for her chance to entreat him to rejoin her, and put all of this debt business behind them. But what a faithless man! To think she had almost allowed herself to be impressed by him, by his strength in the clinch. Now Rattbone had shown his true colors. Cavorting with Gutlanders, drinking ale from those horns they wore on their heads? Befriending an exotic princess, with olive complexion and fluttering eyelashes? Whose side was he even on? The Soldier-King would hear about this.

  "It's merely the heart-pounding adventure of a lifetime shared by two extremely attractive people," her spy said. "There's nothing romantic about that, I assure you." He was toweling off, and SwampWeed just happened to be close enough to help him. Brunhild could almost taste their wedding cake.

  Brunhild snapped up the last ties on her magical scale armor. It was a bit snugger than usual, she noted.

  [A moth to the flame!]

  Yes. She would make sure Rattbone had a reason to come to her. He'd be a moth to her flame, when she burned Bayadev and the houseboats.

  That's why she had assembled this army. She started to cackle.

  Brunhild walked down the wooden platform in the center of the bog, inspecting her army in the torchlight. Her sisters, the River-Hags were ready for revenge. They'd armored themselves against potatoes. Tonight, the white haired Uncle Roog would pay for what he did to them.

  Her brothers-in-arms, the bad bandits, were ready for the plunder. They stood in a slouching line, dangerous glints flashing off the magical weaponry and enchanted armor she had given them. They were ready to rob-and-pillage a bigger burgh. Villages were just too easy.

  The River-Hags on her right, and the bandits on her left, represented the two sides of Brunhild's nature. Worse and Worser. Magic and magically enhanced.

  The torchlight flickered. Kondo, former leader of the band of bad bandits, finished his speech. "Now on to wealth and victory!" he yelled, waving his magical sword in the air. The bandits, with their odd assortment of magical gloves, boots, weapons, and even a magic diaper, hooted.

  BogStench the oldest River-Hag finished her speech. "Rowg wrog, tiew rerth rand rirooorrry!" she screeched. The River-Hags sang in unison, but a bit off-key to avoid enchanting anyone. They flailed their weedy arms in excitement.

  But that was not all.

  Rattbone and his family had angered many creatures these past months.

  A dozen angry fairies buzzed about, saying the naughty things they'd like to do to ears, and a lone wonder worm sat in a cocoon of glowing silk, doing whatever it was that those things did.

  The lunkers were here too. Hundreds of long furry fingers reached out from underneath the walkway, slapping at the wood to show they were ready for the fight. One of the lunkers accidentally touched the bandit with the magic diaper, causing him to lose his pin, drop his diaper, and show his bare bottom to the night air, much to his embarrassment. He covered up.

  But Brunhild would not cover up. Brunhild would not be ignored. She put on her Strondem helm, feeling the weight of it, the tingling as it fused to her skull.

  She would not be ignored.

  [No, we will not!] her voices rejoiced. [We will not be ignored!]

  There! Even her old friends had returned, along with her fury. Her voices . . . her one constant in a world of uncertainty.

  What was she to do now, Brunhild wondered.

  [Use a body for a soul's return] her voices told her.

  But whose body should she take? Whom should she kidnap? Whom was most dear to Rattbone?

  [The girl] her voices answered.

  Yes. Brunhild would kidnap Gulchima. Gulchima was Rattbone's favorite.

  And then she'd burn Bayadev until it was ash. Until it was hot as the magmatic molten fuming volcano of fury in her heart.

  [The volcanic ash of revenge is a meal best served with pumice on the side.]

  Brunhild grimaced. She itched the back of her head. That one needed a bit of work. Still, one could not ignore their good advice.

  [No . . . you cannot ignore our good advice] her voices agreed.

  [Go now Brunhild, get the girl and bring her to us. We await you. Out of Time. Out of Place.]

  "Can you be a bit more specific as to the address," Brunhild whispered.

  [Bring Gulchima back to the dragon. Where we wait.]

  Chapter 35: Gulchima Lies, Ties, and Binds

  Gulchima was beyond tired. It was close to midnight, and she wanted nothing more than to find her sleep sack on the houseboat, and close her eyes. But sleep was not on tonight's schedule.

  Tonight she had to argue.

  Isolde had asked to meet her up at Lake Pepsid, so that they might have some privacy, and not have to be near the darned dragon. Gulchima had agreed. She was glad to get away from Ash, that horrible thing that lived inside.

  So Gulchima, Hubward, and an injured Novvy, had walked up the path to the rundown cottage, where Hubward's team waited for them.

  On the walk up, she and Hubward had exchanged notes and came to some conclusions. Lady Keyhide was the Sorcerer, though any real proof was back inside the dragon. Gulchima had a dragon tooth, and Hubward had stolen Ash's eye. But neither of those things seemed very useful right now.

  Together, they had decided that Ash, the creature they'd encountered, was a magically powerful being called a Zeitgeist, but it wasn't the Sorcerer. If anything, it may be worse than the Sorcerer, Hubward had told her.

  They had laid Novvy down in the garden next to the abandoned cottage. Hubward worked on cleaning Novvy's wound, and he promised to go and find Ninestone the herbalist once he was done. Novvy would be safest with Hubward's family of magical assassins, for now. Gulchima had agreed.

  Novvy had done as he'd promised, as
well. He'd written a short note on a piece of birch bark. It read, "Isolde. Don't sell our boats, and I am a pickle. Signed tootday, Novvvvy."

  He gave the note to Gulchima before lying down to rest.

  Now, as Gulchima approached her sister on the dock overlooking Lake Pepsid, she felt her stomach fluttering. But her anxiety was blunted by her tiredness.

  She's going to try to convince me to sell the houseboats. She'll be polite at first. I'll say something mean. Then we'll fight and I'll show her Novvy's note. I'll win the argument.

  Was losing her sister worth it?

  Isolde stood at the end of the dock, staring out at the island. Gulchima joined her, the boards creaking underneath her feet. The first glimpse of moonlight illuminated the water.

  "So, you wanted to yell at me . . ." Gulchima said, attempting a joke.

  "I wanted to thank you," Isolde said. Her mouth was set in a tight line.

  "What?"

  Was this a trick?

  "Novvy told everybody what happened, after you first landed. About the dragon, about the monster inside, about using non-magical glacier water."

  "You forgot the Sorcerer," Gulchima said. "Though I don't have any proof of that."

  Isolde looked at Gulchima out of the corner of her eye. "Novvy said he snuck onto your boat."

  So, this was it. Maybe Isolde was forgiving her. It would be easy enough to lie, or just say nothing. But then what? Isolde would find out the truth eventually.

  Gulchima had broken one promise already, she wasn't going to cover it up with lying. She was too tired.

  "Novvy didn't sneak," Gulchima said. "He asked, and I let him come. His finger—"

  Isolde looked at her, surprised. "The truth?" She shook her head. "Uncle Rattbone was right about you. You have changed. I was just about to catch you in a lie."

  "I thought you'd be mad," Gulchima said.

  Isolde put her arm around her sister. "Mad at what? Doing whatever it takes to save the family business?" She sighed. "That's what I'm doing, that's what Uncle Rattbone's doing too. We're all fighting about how to do it. But magic—" she spat into the water. "Magic keeps changing the rules."