Jamie tried again.
Yep, his entire arm went through the man.
“Would you be so kind as to refrain from that, young James? It tickles mightily.” The rider smiled at him.
Jamie yanked his arm back out. “Sorry! Sorry!”
“No harm done.” Thomas turned his head back forward again, rushing toward the edge of the cliffs.
“Sir! I think that we might go over the cliffs …” Jamie’s breath gushed out in a terrified rush. They were so close now. It seemed impossible for them to be able to stop in time.
“Not at all.” Fylbrigg was quite calm. That was probably because he was a ghost and already dead.
Another twenty feet and they’d be over the edge. The waves pounded against the shore. Hard and unforgiving.
“Sir! I think—”
“Hang on, young master,” Fylbrigg ordered.
“Sir!”
Ten feet.
Jamie began to scream.
Five feet.
But instead of leaping off the cliff and falling to the rocky shore below, the horse turned downward, heading straight into the snow. Its hooves went through first, then its chest and head. Jamie’s scream stopped abruptly as they tilted and were suddenly through the snow and into the rock. They traveled through the rock as easily as they’d traveled through the walls of Aquarius House. Layers of dirt and sediment whizzed past Jamie before he could really understand what was going on. And then—poof—they were through and into a cave, and there in front of him waited a massive red dragon, a yellow-haired boy, and an undersize girl with too-big eyes and limp hair, standing right by the dragon’s fearsome mouth with its countless teeth.
“Annie!” Jamie yelled, vaulting off the horse and rushing forward, weaponless. “Don’t hurt her! Annie! Step away!”
And then—wonder of wonders—she smiled at him.
“Jamie! It’s okay! Everything is okay. Let me introduce you to Grady O’Grady, the dragon, and my new friend.”
He stopped dead still. “Friend?”
She smiled gently at Jamie and pulled him into a hug. “Definitely a friend. Now who is that with you? And can you help us with a riddle?”
“A riddle?” Jamie asked, completely confused by the cave and the dragon and how Annie and Bloom seemed so calm about the fact that they were standing next to something that resembled a winged brontosaurus. “You need a riddle?”
Quickly, Annie explained about dragons and riddles and how they needed to really stump him. Plus, it was a nice thing to do since dragons loved riddles. Plus, not to worry, because dragons spoke in thoughts and not aloud.
“Okay …” Jamie’s face turned thoughtful. “How about this? A wealthy man is murdered on a Sunday afternoon. The police arrive, of course, and they ask—”
“This isn’t the story about me, is it?” Thomas Fylbrigg interrupted.
“Of course not!” Jamie exclaimed. “Oh, sorry. This is Sir Thomas Fylbrigg, one of the founders of Aurora. He was just headless, but he’s a regular ghost now, and so is his horse, I think. He was cursed by the Raiff, but I managed to undo that by putting a piece of gold that Plutarch gave me in the bucket, which was cool, although, I mean, I only met him—Sir Thomas—because Gramma Doris locked me away in a secret room so nobody would kill me, which is sort of nice of her, I guess. I mean, she had my best interests in heart, is what she would say, but—”
Is he always like this? Grady O’Grady interrupted.
Annie put her hand on Jamie’s shoulder and sat him down by a pile of sea glass. “No.”
Bloom came and crouched in front of him, taking Jamie’s wrist in his hand and monitoring his pulse. “Are you feeling all right, Jamie?”
“Yes … It’s …” He pulled his hand free of Bloom’s and swiped it over his own face. “I think it’s just … things have been pretty crazy.”
“That’s an understatement, you poor guy.” Annie placed her hand back on Jamie’s bony shoulder. “You’ll tell us all about it later, if that’s okay? We really have to get going on saving Miss Cornelia, and in order to do that, we have to stump Grady O’Grady with a riddle. Or at least amuse him.”
Dragon rules, Grady O’Grady said apologetically. It is good to see you once again, Thomas.
Fylbrigg moseyed up to the dragon’s large red nose and affectionately placed a hand upon its tip. “You as well, my friend.”
If it was possible, the ghost seemed to be fading even more.
“I think that now our ride has finished, I may not be much longer for this world.”
Jamie stood back up, alarmed. “But—”
The man put his hand awkwardly on Jamie’s hair. “You will be brave and save this town without my assistance, young James. Did you say your middle name was Hephaistion? How curious. Nonetheless, I have great faith in your abilities.” He moved his hand to tap Jamie’s parka in the chest region. “And in your heart.”
Something warm seemed to fill Jamie’s heart as Thomas Fylbrigg stared at him. Fylbrigg suddenly groaned and shrank back against the dragon. Keeping his voice low, he said, “I feel it is now my time to depart to whatever the next destination has in store for me.”
“Maybe you’ll come back?” Annie offered. “Are you okay? Does it hurt?”
“Yes … perhaps I shall. Stopper strength to all of you. Keep our town a haven, children.” Thomas spoke quietly as his horse whinnied and pawed at the floor. Then his body twisted and turned, faster and faster, before becoming a white spinning cloud. The horse’s body did the same, and then both launched through the ceiling, a backward tornado, and were gone.
The cave was horribly silent.
“I miss him and I didn’t even know him,” Jamie said softly.
Annie stood behind him. Bloom muttered strange, quiet words beneath his breath and moved his hands through the air as if searching for something, but whatever it was he was looking for, he didn’t seem to find it.
Nothing happened. Thomas Fylbrigg and his horse did not return.
“It’s pretty sad,” Annie said finally. “He seemed nice.”
“I know he was just a headless man pouring buckets of deadly blood on things, but I liked him,” Jamie admitted. “It makes no sense.”
You saw through to the soul of him, Jamie, Grady O’Grady said. Thomas Fylbrigg was one of the greatest, kindest Stoppers to have graced this world. Even when cursed, you could probably sense that.
Annie froze.
Bloom grabbed her hand.
“He was a Stopper?” she whispered. “Like me? And Miss Cornelia? And then he became—a ghost—a headless, evil ghost?”
Nobody said anything. There was nothing to say. Annie already knew the answer.
“We need a good riddle, right?” Jamie asked, awkwardly breaking the solemn moment.
We do! Grady O’Grady announced. A riddle to take our minds off our troubles, and our recent reloss of Thomas.
“Okay … So … Yeah …,” Jamie began again, sniffing. He rubbed at his nose and continued bravely with his riddle. “So, let’s say a very wealthy man was murdered on Sunday afternoon and the police officers went to his home to get the body and investigate the murder.”
Annie gave him a thumbs-up, but she was obviously nervous. Circles had made homes beneath her eyes. He hated to see her that way—so stressed. He cleared his throat again.
“The investigating police officer questioned the brounie chef, the dwarf butler, and the mermaid in the fountain who was in charge of … um …”
Swim lessons? Grady O’Grady suggested.
“Right. Swim lessons. So the detective asked the brounie, the dwarf, and the mermaid what they had been doing when the man died. The brounie said she was getting the mail because she’d been expecting a package of special paprika. The dwarf said he was cleaning the front drapes because some vampires had been a bit rowdy the night before. The mermaid said she was setting up cones for a swim race. So who was it that murdered the man?”
They all stared at him. Annie?
??s eyes grew big, and it was obvious that she got it. Bloom stared at him blankly. The dragon was the one who mattered, though. A tiny bit of steam left his nostrils.
Oh, I like that … I like that … The brounie did it because she lied. Mail doesn’t come on Sundays … It’s good …, the dragon said slowly. He lifted a large front arm to give Jamie a thumbs-up.
Annie perked right up. She grabbed Bloom’s upper arm, leaning forward. “So … So … you’ll take us to the Badlands?”
“What?” Jamie shouted. “What are you talking about, Annie? You can’t go to the Badlands! The Raiff will kill you!”
“We have to go rescue Miss Cornelia,” she quickly reminded him. “The portal has been destroyed. What’s important is that dragons can bring people over and back. Stoppers can make portals, but I can’t. I don’t know how. And I’m probably not strong enough, so it has to be a dragon.”
I can only bring one at a time on the way back. The dragon sighed.
“I can’t just let the Raiff have Miss Cornelia. Not without a fight!” Annie was every bit as passionate as Eva, but instead of yelling, she was whispering. Her intensity almost frightened Jamie. “Can you imagine what he’s doing to her? I can’t let him hurt her, Jamie. I just can’t.”
“But … but how are you going to stop him?” Jamie asked, looking from one to the other. He couldn’t believe Bloom was going along with this. “You need a plan. And weapons or something. You need … I just don’t think … He will hurt you, Annie …”
His words trailed off beneath the intensity of Annie’s stare.
“You don’t have to come, Jamie,” she said softly. “It’s okay. Nobody will be mad.”
“Of course I’m going to come!” Jamie said, but the horror of what might await them rushed to him—monsters everywhere, the stench of the evil. Trolls, just as bad or even worse than the Alexanders.
I shall take you all. Grady O’Grady heaved out a heavy sigh. But first you must help me. I just brought someone back from the Badlands, actually. It’s a boy and he’s sick. My goal was to get him back to Cornelia, but then—Cornelia was gone, Grady explained. And I must admit I became flustered. It was—It’s all—It’s a lot of responsibility, and I am afraid I am not one who can handle a lot of responsibility, not anymore.
“Why didn’t you keep him with you?” Jamie asked, eyes narrowing.
Annie could tell that he wasn’t quite sure what to think about the dragon. She had to admit she wasn’t 100 percent sure either. She just knew that she wanted to go and hurry up about it.
I am a loner, Grady O’Grady said.
“So you just sent him back to Aurora unescorted? When there are trolls around? How could you just leave him alone?” Jamie burst out.
Annie had never seen him so upset.
I didn’t know about the dangers. I had assumed Aurora was still protected, the dragon answered. He coughed. It was a no-win situation for me. Whenever I go to Aurora, the Big Feet scream. People can’t know that dragons still exist. They will torture me and kill me because they are afraid I will breathe fire and burn down their buildings. Or they will use me to fly them places. Fire lighting and portal crossing are rare skills.
The dragon seems to feel guilty about it, Jamie thought. He knew how it felt to have people just want you to serve them, to make their food and clean their toilets with toothbrushes, to just use you over and over until you forget how not to be used. It was no good.
“I get it. It’s okay,” Jamie said, placing his hand on the dragon’s neck. “We’ll help you.”
That was that, Annie thought. There was no way they weren’t going to go help a boy who had survived in the Badlands, somehow. Plus, he might know something about the Badlands, some way to defeat the Raiff, some way to find Miss Cornelia. Plus, it was just the right thing to do.
“Yes, we will help you, dragon,” Annie said. “And then you’ll take us to help Miss Cornelia. Deal.”
The dragon sent them to the woods where he’d last left the boy, just into the edge of the tree line near the carnival site. And so they left, making a plan to rendezvous on the beach after they found the boy.
“Are you sure this isn’t a trap?” Jamie asked as they finally made it across the barrens and into the woods. “Are you sure you trust this dragon?”
“We have no other choice,” Bloom answered.
11
The Boy in the Woods
They searched through the woods. Bloom would touch the ground, hunting for faint imprints in the snow. He would sniff the air. He would get frustrated. And then he stopped, tilting his head; Annie did the same thing beside him. Bloom’s magical balls of light illuminated the way as they scurried about.
“He has to be somewhere,” Jamie whispered.
They both shushed him, obviously intent on something his human ears couldn’t hear.
“I heard a boy’s voice come from over here,” Annie said, pointing at a copse of trees. “Bloom?”
“Hello?” she called out.
There was no answer.
Bloom pointed. There was a hole in the ground, just beyond another spruce tree. Annie steeled herself and crawled toward the hole. Once there, she peered into the cave. Reaching inside, she pulled out the things her hands came in contact with: some rubies missing from the Ferris wheel, a sword, a diamond, a dwarf’s dagger, and a golden shield, and then she finally found something soft and mushy. It was the hand of the boy himself.
Annie, Bloom, and Jamie heaved the boy out, huffing and puffing before they could get a good look at him. She laid him across the mossy ground and let his head rest on her calves. She was too tired to do much more.
Bloom fell to his knees.
“Bloom?”
Her friend said nothing. Bloom just kept staring at the boy who, like Jamie, had the look of someone who had never had a good meal. He was a skinny, blond-haired, dirty boy who really was much smaller and thinner than even Jamie. His dyed green tunic was torn and dirty and seemed to be sewn together from potato bags. A tremendous amount of blood crusted in some places around his arm. Annie wiped at it carefully, wetting it down with a water bottle. She found a bite mark festering beneath the blood.
Annie studied the boy’s eyes but saw nothing there. “I’d like to help you, but you aren’t making it easy. We called out to you. Why didn’t you let us know where you were?”
“I don’t know that I can trust you.” His voice was like a sad bird song.
It broke her heart.
“Bloom, a little help over here.” She motioned the still-stunned elf forward.
It took a moment for Bloom to realize Annie was talking to him. “Yeah … Sorry … Okay …”
She sighed and took off her jacket. Then she removed her sweater and carefully ripped two pieces of cloth off the sleeve of her shirt. The first piece of fabric she wrapped around the boy’s wound. Annie surveyed her work on the boy. On the whole, she thought she’d done quite a good job.
Bloom didn’t speak.
The boy’s face, in its stillness, looked terribly sweet and not like the face of someone who had been in the Badlands, or at least not how she imagined it.
The boy tried to scuttle back into his hidey-hole. Annie grabbed him by the shoulders, and he turned and bit her hand, drawing blood. She yelped but did not let go.
“I—am—trying—to—help—you,” she muttered fiercely. “Will you please stay still?”
He dived to the right, just in front of Bloom, who looked as if he was still in shock.
Annie dived after him since the boys were just standing still. “Look, you’re hurt. You have to take it easy. Grady O’Grady sent us here to help you. We just want to know who you are and where you’re from. We need to do something about your arm, and you look really tired. Grady O’Grady said you came from the Badlands and that you might know about Miss—”
She caught him by the foot. He twisted around, snarling. In his hand he held a shiny short dagger, and he looked only an instant away from using it
. Annie cringed, and without thinking about it she grabbed at the boy’s arm with her bleeding hand, using all her strength to keep him from slashing the weapon into her.
The boy’s face was devoid of emotion. There seemed to be nothing in his eyes.
Jamie sprang forward and grabbed his other arm. “Bloom?”
There was no answer.
“Please, we want to help you,” Annie begged the boy. This shouldn’t be so hard, she thought.
The boy’s expression did not change. He seemed to grow stronger.
“Please,” Annie pleaded, her hand beginning to shake.
The boy paid no attention, and Annie lost hope. She could already feel the dagger at her neck. She could imagine the bite of the cold steel.
Bloom’s voice suddenly broke out of the darkness. “Let her go or I shall kill you with one shot.”
Bloom stood fiercely, finally taking action. The darkness had stolen the color from him, but he glowed silverish in the light of the moon. He seemed taller than normal, more regal. He never looked much like a normal boy—not if you really looked at him—but he certainly looked nothing like a boy now. He was all elf. Any doubt about his worth, about his heritage, appeared to have vanished from him. He exuded confidence. In his hands, he held his bow. Notched on it was an arrow, and it was aimed right at the other boy’s heart. Two extra arrows dangled from his hand.
The younger boy dropped the dagger.
Jamie grabbed the weapon with his hand. He pointed it at the boy and said, “Bloom. Um? Help?”
His name escaped Jamie’s lips like a breath, and Bloom was immediately at Annie’s side, arrows and bow stashed again, before he took the dagger from Jamie.
“He’s wounded you. I’ll kill him,” Bloom said.
Annie touched his shoulder and leaned on him for a moment. “No, you won’t, Bloom. He’s just scared. You okay? You were zoning out there for a bit …”