riddle just the same. I think that deserved a little craziness and hopping around.
My flight with the rock bird had taught me the answer to the dragon’s riddle. I had thought it impossible for a rock to fly but the bird had proven me wrong. It could fly because of its special, secret power.
Magic.
Magic makes the impossible possible. Magic could certainly make someone capable of doing any of the things in the riddle.
I couldn’t believe we hadn’t thought of it sooner. We were stuck outside a wizard’s castle after all. Who knew more about magic than a wizard?
I ran to the dragon without waiting for Jozlyn and skidded to a halt in front of it. Jozlyn didn’t need to be standing next to me when I gave my answer. It was right. I knew it.
I pointed at the dragon defiantly. “Magic!” I hollered up at it. In response, the dragon opened its mouth and the red glow of a furnace roared out at me.
19: METAL MAYHEM
WITH a terrified shout, I stumbled and fell back. In front of me, the dragon continued to slowly open its huge mouth. Heat blasted me and the red glow from inside was like blood.
The heat and light told me what would come next.
Dragon fire.
“Run!” I yelled to Jozlyn. She was somewhere behind me but not far enough. If she didn’t hurry, she’d be caught in the coming fire right alongside me.
The dragon’s mouth opened wider and the heat grew hotter.
I clawed my way to my feet, but my body didn’t want to move. It hurt all over. My muscles ached and I was exhausted. I don’t know how heroes manage to have adventures all the time. Didn’t they get sleepy?
Jozlyn was at my side helping me to stand. I threw my hands against her shoulders and shoved with all the strength in my tired body.
“Run!” I yelled again, but she didn’t budge.
“Josh, no,” she said, stepping easily out of my weak grasp. “It’s all right. You saved us.” She pointed to the dragon behind me. “Magic was the right answer.”
Still ready to run, I spun around. The dragon had opened its mouth all right, but not for the reason I’d thought.
Through the fiery glow, I saw that the dragon’s tongue formed a stairway that climbed up through a hole in the top of the statue’s head.
I exhaled loudly with relief. We were safe.
What a dope I was! When was I going to start thinking things through? I’d thought I’d learned that lesson after mistaking Sheriff Logan for a troll, but apparently not.
“It’s all right, Josh,” Jozlyn told me understandingly. “I almost made the same mistake.”
Almost. She’d almost made the same mistake. That was some consolation. Almost making a mistake wasn’t nearly as bad as making it for real.
If I kept making dumb mistakes, I’d never earn a sword or be a hero.
Jozlyn must have seen the sour look on my face because she grabbed my arm and roughly pulled me to face her.
“Look, you, stop feeling sorry for yourself,” she said seriously. She wasn’t trying to sound like Mom or to be bossy. She was acting like an older sister with something really important to say. “If it wasn’t for you, we’d be dead. The dragon would have breathed its fire on us. I didn’t have the right answer. You did. Not me. You!”
She stomped off toward the dragon and stopped just outside its mouth. The red glow from inside mixed with the blue light emanating from the castle to bathe her in a shadowy purple.
“Do you understand?” she asked from over her shoulder. “Everyone makes mistakes and everyone lives with them. But not everyone answers a wizard’s riddle correctly. Think about that.”
With her arms folded, she tapped her foot dramatically. That meant I was supposed to get moving while I thought about what she’d said.
Together we walked timidly into the dragon’s gaping mouth.
If I’d thought it was hot outside, I quickly learned a new meaning for the word inside the statue. The mouth was like an oven. Worse, an oven in a bonfire! We were both drenched in sweat before taking ten steps.
Maybe the dragon isn’t going to breathe on us, I thought with a half-hearted smile. Maybe it’s going to roast us like holiday turkeys instead.
Trying not to think about that, I took the stairs two at a time. Jozlyn followed on my heels.
Gasping and fanning ourselves, we shot through the hole in the dragon’s head. Cool night air washed over us and we felt better immediately. The stone stairs along the dragon’s back were warm under our feet but comfortable compared to the temperature inside the mouth.
The double doors to the castle were closed when we reached them. Made out of dark wood, they were decorated with carvings and raised symbols. Stars, moons, strange letters, and odd-looking creatures covered them.
If they were supposed to mean something, I didn’t know what it was. That was probably why I wasn’t a wizard.
Jozlyn and I both shrugged at the symbols. “Think we should knock?” I asked. The doors didn’t have any handles.
“That’s the polite thing …” Jozlyn started but never finished. She inhaled sharply and took a step back.
The doors swung silently inward to reveal a round room lit brightly by torches on the walls. There was no one inside, so we went in and the doors closed by behind us with a soft click.
The round room reminded me of a museum. Colorful paintings, gleaming weapons, and polished shields with fancy crests hung on the walls. Sculptures of marble and various metals lined the shelves of tall wooden display cases. Banners and strange objects with wings dangled from the ceiling.
Everywhere I looked I saw mysterious works of arts and ancient relics. Most of them I couldn’t identify.
“Jozlyn, take a look at this,” I called, peering curiously at a tangled heap of metal on the floor. It looked as if a display had collapsed on itself. The pile of objects blocked the way to a curved staircase that led farther up into the tower.
Other than the doors where we had entered, the stairs were the only exit.
As I approached the metal heap, it started to vibrate and tinkle musically. I threw an arm out to prevent Jozlyn from coming any closer. Musical or not, I didn’t trust a moving pile of metal.
Rumbling now, the pile started to spin like a tornado. Metal pieces clanged loudly against one another and the whole pile floated up off the ground in a funnel.
The sound of scraping metal became deafening as the pile rotated faster. It screeched and shrieked, and I had to cover my ears.
“Look out!” Jozlyn screamed.
I dropped to the floor and rolled in time to see a painting hurtle through the air toward the spinning pile like a piece of metal toward a magnet. It crashed into the metal tornado and disappeared.
But the painting wasn’t our only worry.
“Behind you!” I shouted, and Jozlyn dove to the floor. A flaming torch just missed smacking into her back. Like the painting, it flew directly into the whirling pile and disappeared in the confusion.
With our arms covering our heads, we watched more artifacts and artwork speed through the air and smash into the pile. They whizzed over our heads like arrows into a target. They came from all over the room.
Clang! went a sculpture.
Thunk! went another painting.
Cling! Clung! Glong! Things too fast or too small to see crashed into the pile.
Then everything stopped—the noise, the spinning, the objects racing through the air. There was only silence.
Jozlyn and I looked up, way up. In place of the pile, a tall metal creature stood in front of the stairs. It looked like a giant rusty skeleton. Torches burned where its eyes should have been.
Screeching like twisted metal, the creature reached for us with its enormous hands.
20: WIZARD AGHAST
THE metal giant scooped us up in hands the size of wheelbarrows. There was nothing we could do to stop it.
“Whiz-click. M-M-Master Ast will s-s-see you now,” the giant stuttered in a metallic voice. It
sounded like it needed a good oiling. But where, I didn’t know. The skeleton didn’t have a mouth that I could see.
It spun its metal head all the way around the way an owl does. My neck ached, seeing it. I guess not having real bones will let you do things like that.
The creature carried us up the stairs, through a rounded stone arch, and down a long passage with many turns. I tried hard to pay attention to where we were going but the way became too confusing.
We were lugged through more doors carved with symbols, down long corridors lined with shining suits of armor, and up winding flights of tall stairs.
I couldn’t have found my way out if I’d needed to. I could only guess that we were probably up very high in one of the castle’s nine towers.
We passed through another set of wide double doors and the giant stopped. “Biz-clack. Y-y-your guests, Master,” the creature buzzed in its mechanical stutter, and I turned my head to try to see in front of us.
“Put-set them down, Mephello, thank you,” said a cheerful voice. “That will be all for now.”
I assumed that Mephello was the giant’s name. Funny, I hadn’t thought of it having a name. It was just a monster to me.
Mephello plunked us down hard on our backsides and left the way we had come. Lucky for us the room was carpeted.
We looked around eagerly for the speaker. It had to be Wizard Ast.
I felt pretty good about myself right then, almost like a hero. We’d done all right for a couple of kids. The Wizard-Seekers had found the wizard.
We stood up tall and brushed ourselves off. Mephello hadn’t hurt us, but he left a kind of rusty, dusty feeling on our skin. In front of us stood a big desk cluttered