“Then what’s this about nothing?” Jarrah asked.
“It’s not about nothing,” Mack said. “It’s about Nott.”
There was a moment or two of silence. Then Jarrah said, “You know, I could push you right off this dragon’s back.”
Mack thought that over for a second or two then said, “I’d prefer you not. Heh.”
And so the first three of the Magnificent Twelve flew aboard a pot-bellied dragon into the west. And Stefan was there, too.
Mack leaned close to Stefan, not wanting the others to hear him. “Dude, we’re cool, right?”
Stefan thought about that for a moment. “I’m cool. And Jarrah is definitely cool. So cool. But I’m not sure about you.”
“That’s not what I meant. I mean, you could have died. I probably should have gotten you to a doctor.”
Stefan shrugged. “Why? I’m all fixed up.”
“But I didn’t know that at the time. I kind of risked your life.”
Stefan laughed. “You’re under my wing. Not the other way around.” Then he punched Mack in the shoulder, one of those “friendly” punches. A buddy punch. Which knocked Mack clear off Shen Long’s back and would have sent him spiraling down to plow a hole in some very hard-looking ground except that Stefan snatched him back and settled him in place again.
“See? Under my wing.”
Chapter Twenty
They told knock-knock jokes over Mongolia.
They sang “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall” over Kazakhstan.
They stared blearily ahead with glazed, fixed expressions over Russia.
They stopped for water at a lake in Ukraine and used a porta-potty at an oil pipeline construction site.
They talked about their hopes and dreams and aspirations over Poland.
“I either want to be an extreme fighting champion,” Stefan said, “or a race car driver.”
“I want to be a surfer and go on the tour, you know?” Jarrah said. “Maybe get a sponsorship, right? Have lots of money but ride the big ones all day.”
“Wouldn’t that be boring after a while?” Mack asked.
“What, surfing? Boring?” Jarrah laughed like it was idiotic even to suggest such a thing. “Besides, I’d do a bit of archaeology in my spare time. Like my mum.”
“What about you, Xiao?” Mack asked. He didn’t like the conversation because he didn’t want to answer the question for himself.
“I will be a dragon, of course,” Xiao said.
“Yeah, okay, but aren’t there different jobs for dragons? I mean, there must be, like . . . um . . . you know, dragon firefighters, dragon bus drivers. Maybe not bus drivers. But you know, different dragon jobs.”
“We are born with certain duties,” Xiao said. “We learn and we think and we write.”
“Oh, please,” Jarrah said with a derisive snort. “Don’t give me all that good-girl, do-what-I’m-told stuff. No one wants to grow up to do just what their parents tell them.”
I have made new friends in detention. The first day I met Matthew and Helder and Dwayne. They are bullies. I think I sat in the wrong chair, and Matthew asked me if I would like him to punch me in the head. I said, “Yes.” Because it’s important to be positive. Matthew punched me and I thanked him. So he punched me again and I said, “Thanks!” again. We played this game until Matthew was tired. Camaro, who is a girl bully, said, “I always knew you were cute, Mack. But I didn’t know you were so tough.” Then she sat next to me.
Xiao sighed. Mack was sure she was going to stick to her previous statement. But then she said, “The truth is, I love playing sports. At the school, we sometimes play football or basketball. I love basketball.”
“You play hoops?”
“I like being part of a team. It is a very human experience, you know. We—we dragons—are solitary. We don’t have teams. Handing the ball to someone else so that the team will prosper, it is a new challenge. The idea that the individual must sacrifice for the common good, that is very dragonlike. But doing this within a team, as a strategy for victory, that is new.”
“So you want to be either a dragon or a basketball star?” Jarrah didn’t sound skeptical. In fact, she obviously liked the idea.
Xiao laughed. “I can’t help but be a dragon. But when I daydream, in the hour before sleep, I sometimes picture myself as part of China’s Olympic team.”
“Are your parents okay with that?” Mack asked.
“No,” Xiao said, sounding annoyed. Then, in a more resigned tone, she repeated, “No.”
“Do you know kung fu?” Stefan called up to her. “You could give me lessons.”
Xiao turned her head as far around as she could and stared at Stefan. “No. No, I do not know kung fu.”
Stefan blushed.
“What about you, Mack?” Jarrah asked. “What are you going to be when you grow up?”
“We’re almost there, probably,” Mack deflected.
“You’re deflecting,” Jarrah said. “Come on, we all told.”
“Chef,” Mack said.
“What?”
“A chef. Okay? I want to be a chef when I grow up.” Then he added, “If I grow up. Which is seeming less and less likely.”
“That’s like a cook, right?” Jarrah asked.
“Kind of,” Mack said. It was embarrassing to him to talk about this. He was twelve. Twelve-year-old boys were supposed to want to be cops or firefighters or soldiers or wizards or at least game designers or billionaires. Not chefs.
But at the formative age of three, Mack had watched his father putting ingredients into the blender as he made a so-called health shake. Strawberries, okay. Banana, okay. Yogurt, sure. But even at the tender age of three, Mack had known the raw potatoes were a mistake.
Since then, Mack had become a student of his parents’ cooking. His father had a habit of odd substitutions. (“No,” Mack would say, “you can’t substitute American cheese for butter in a cake; it won’t work.”) And his mother tended to cook foods until they were not only done, not only overdone, but reduced to a flavorless gray goo you could suck up through a straw. (Brussels sprouts are bad enough—liquid brussels sprouts are even worse.)
As Mack had grown, he’d experienced much bad cooking. But then, one day, his parents had taken him to a dress-up restaurant to celebrate his mother’s promotion. The restaurant had a white tablecloth and crystal glasses. And the food! Baby vegetables cooked just right. A piece of fish that was not a stick or a patty or a cake. Just fish! And a dessert that was neither Costco ice cream nor Sam’s Club cookies.
It had opened Mack’s eyes. Since that day he’d wanted to wear the toque, learn to cook, become a chef.
Now, he reflected, he was stuck in a very different “job.” He was riding on the back of a dragon. Not quite what he’d dreamed about.
“I’m riding on a dragon,” Mack said out loud.
“Yeah. Cool, huh?” Jarrah said.
“This is what I do now,” he said. “I ride dragons and fight monsters.”
“And save the world,” Jarrah said.
“It is an honor,” Xiao offered.
“It’s a kick,” Jarrah said.
“Huh,” Stefan said.
“We are near the spot,” Shen Long said.
Mack looked down and saw mountains. And a lake. And a lot of trees. The sun rose behind them and cast a delicate gray-pink light.
Shen Long circled the place slowly. “I remember this place,” he said. “I know what is here.”
“What is here, Uncle?” Xiao asked gently.
“Help for you in your quest, I hope,” Shen Long said. “But only painful memories for me.”
“If you saw her again . . .”
“No,” the big dragon said, and shook his head. “Old wounds are best left alone.” Then his tone of voice changed. “And new wounds are best avoided.”
Mack was looking at the ground, so Jarrah spotted the problem before he did: two jets painted in dark green camouflage inscribing a shockingly fast t
urn across the blue sky.
“It’s this newfangled radar thing,” Shen Long said tersely. “I really don’t approve.”
“The Pale Queen has fighter jets?” Jarrah cried.
“I don’t know,” Mack said. “But the German air force does.”
“We have to land,” Shen Long said. “There’s a town ahead. Hold on tight!”
The dragon dived toward the ground. The trees rushed up toward them as the two Eurofighter jets roared overhead.
Shen Long landed at a gas station—it was early, so the station was closed—and Mack and his friends quickly climbed down.
“May fortune smile upon you,” Shen Long said, and rose from the ground.
“They’ll blast you out of the air!” Jarrah cried.
“I command the winds, child,” Shen Long said. “No missile will harm me.”
Mack walked around to look Shen Long more or less in the face. “Thanks, um, sir, for the ride.” He wasn’t quite sure if “sir” was what you called a dragon.
“No, youngster, thank you,” Shen Long said. “You have undertaken a dangerous task. You face almost certain death.”
“I do?”
“You all do,” Shen Long said. “Do you not know the fate of the original Magnificent Twelve?”
“Um . . . I know Grimluk’s looking kind of grody.”
“Of the Twelve, very few survived the battle with the Pale Queen.”
“Ah.”
“And those who made it were taken one at a time in battle chasing her foul daughter. Until only Grimluk survived. And he is alive only because his hiding place is unknown to all.”
“Sounds a bit grim then, eh?” Jarrah said cheerfully.
Xiao came and sort of hugged the dragon. Shen Long said, “Be careful, Niece. Those you go to see were quick to anger in their youth. And if you happen to see . . .” He trailed off.
“If I see Nott, I will tell her that you remember her with great fondness.”
The dragon tilted his massive head, a little embarrassed. “Just say . . . Yes, as you said. Great fondness. But don’t make me seem desperate.”
“Of course not.”
“Or needy.”
“Absolutely.”
“And don’t set anything up.”
They watched him go up, up into the sky. Mack still had a hard time believing something that big and that pot-bellied could fly. Of course, he reflected, the poor fighter pilots would have an even harder time believing it. On radar Shen Long would have just looked like an unknown plane.
“Now what?” Jarrah asked.
“Breakfast,” Stefan said.
Chapter Twenty-one
DID WE MENTION IT’S A LONG TIME AGO?
Paddy—newly remonikered as Nine Iron—Trout was wondering just how much farther down they had to go. Already the Gudridan had led him so far down that the edge of the volcano’s bowl towered so high above him he felt like he was at the bottom of a well.
It was getting warmer. And the air smelled less and less like air and more and more like someone had bought a lot of expired eggs and then fried them up with some rancid goat meat.
The lava bubbled in sullen pools not thirty feet below them. One wrong step on the narrow path would plunge Nine Iron to his death. There was no guardrail. There wasn’t even a warning sign.
To make matters worse, the Gudridan walked very quickly—as you might expect from a creature with legs that long—and Nine Iron had to trot to keep up.
Suddenly the Gudridan stopped. Nine Iron looked around, baffled. The path just ended. Sheer rock wall to the left, sheer fall into percolating magma on the other side. And the path, which had only been maybe four feet wide to begin with, suddenly narrowed to inches and then to nothing at all.
“Here,” the Gudridan said.
“Where?”
The Sasquatch-looking creature pointed at a circle cut into the rock. It was right around chest level for Nine Iron. Words in an alphabet he didn’t recognize were chiseled in a ring around the circle.
“Is that supposed to be a doorbell?”
The Gudridan shrugged. Clearly he was not going to be helpful. So Nine Iron pushed against the inset circle. The rock gave way, and Nine Iron was just congratulating himself on having gotten it right when his hand plunged in way, way too far.
The circle was no longer a circle; it was a mouth ringed with very sharp, curved teeth. The teeth bit down just enough to keep Nine Iron from pulling his hand back out.
When Nine Iron peered into the hole, past the ring o’ teeth, he saw what looked like a pulsating red tube.
“Hey!” Nine Iron yelled.
The Gudridan smiled cruelly. “Pay the blood price.”
“Pay the what now?”
“The Mother of All Monsters wants a taste.”
“A taste of . . . ?”
“Blood.”
That was really not the answer Nine Iron had been hoping for. On the other hand, he respected irrational bloodthirstiness as a character trait. (How could he not?)
He took a deep breath and began to pull his hand out. The teeth never clamped down, but they never withdrew, either, so as he pulled his hand away, the teeth cut shallow but still painful grooves in his skin.
More disturbing than the pain was the fact that as the blood ran in streams from his hand, the red tube began sucking, sucking hard. Like a kid with a milkshake and a narrow straw.
Nine Iron drew his hand all the way out, leaving behind a bit of skin and a bit of blood.
“Next time don’t ring the bell,” the Gudridan suggested. “Just knock.”
The stone wall that had seemed so stonelike just seconds before now grew soft and pulpy. Like stone-colored flesh rather than stone-colored stone.
Then an X appeared in the middle of this fleshy panel. The X grew, and each triangle became a sharp tongue. The four tongues then thrust out, and Nine Iron was confronted with one of the more unusual entryways he’d ever see.
He had to step on the bottom tongue to go through. It was spongy beneath his feet, and so hot he could feel it through the soles of his shoes.
He stepped into a tunnel that was not at all what he expected. No musty old boulders, no stalactites or stalagmites. No park ranger tour guide or souvenir shop.
The tunnel was twenty feet in diameter, and it was as alive and fleshy and moist as the sharp-tongued entryway. He was not in a cave; he was inside something alive.
The “door” closed behind him with a sound like smacking lips. The Gudridan had not come inside after him.
Nine Iron was a tough guy. But he was starting to get just the slightest bit nervous. Something about being inside a living thing was unnerving. But he walked steadily forward down the pulpy, red-glowing, gently pulsating tunnel. Because judging from what he’d seen so far, whimpering and begging to be let go probably wasn’t going to work. And there wasn’t much he could really shoot.
He walked for two minutes at a steady pace, and then noticed that the “floor” was sloping upward. The tunnel was coated with a viscous goo—not too thick, but enough that it made things slippery—so going uphill was not easy. Nine Iron wished hiking boots had been invented since those would be more helpful than the slick-soled Goochies he was wearing.
Soon he was on hands and knees, slipping and sliding and cursing freely as he made his way up the slope. Then, quite suddenly, he reached the end.
The tube or tunnel, or whatever it was, opened onto a sort of cavern the color of liver. In fact it might have been a liver: the only anatomy Nine Iron knew was the best places to stab someone. (His Nafia education was a bit one-dimensional.)
This chamber was a sort of massive eggplant shape with dozens of openings similar to the one in which Nine Iron now stood.
The bottom of the eggplant chamber was a membrane, like the skin of a drum. Tendrils rose like living stalactites or stalagmites (depending on which is the one that goes up) and they made a sort of forest like something you’d see on the floor of the ocean.
r /> Suddenly what looked like a very large wad of mucus (we try to avoid words like snot) came shooting from one of the tubes. It was followed quickly by two more. The wads—each the size of a boxing heavy bag, the color and consistency of a spit-saturated cigar, and coated with what you get if you leave chewed gum out in the sun—plopped onto the membrane.
There the stalactendrils seized each pellet and began sucking away the goo. This eventually, after way too much straw-sucking-on-the-last-of-a-milkshake noise, revealed three insectoid creatures like the one Nine Iron had shot on the pathway.
They didn’t seem to notice him but, once freed of encumbrance, began searching for the right tube. This involved counting on their fingers (not exactly base ten, as you can imagine) and then counting off tunnels. Finally they seemed to agree on the right tube, scampered up the slick side of the chamber, and slid into it.
Nine Iron was somewhat at a loss how to react to this. But he didn’t have to wait long, for now his eyes were drawn irresistibly to the prettiest girl Nine Iron had ever seen. She had an amazing amount of wavy red hair, skin so pale it was practically see-through, and eyes like emeralds. She walked through the sea of stalactendrils like one of those impossibly pretty girls who are always walking through fields of flowers in TV commercials for pharmaceutical products that turn out to cause oily discharge or make your hair fall out.
Of course TV had only recently been invented, so they didn’t have TV commercials for dangerous pharmaceuticals that cause oily discharge and hair loss yet. So Nine Iron could only note that she was quite an attractive girl.
Quite . . . attractive.
“Hi; you would be Paddy Trout,” the girl said.
She smiled engagingly so that Nine Iron thought he might just ask her out to a nice oat-gruel dinner. Then afterward they could attend a bearbaiting, or a bare-knuckle prize fight, or even, if she played her cards right, a cockfight.
“I’m Risky,” she said.
Nine Iron leered and said, “Risky, eh? I’ll bet—”
And right then he noticed that he couldn’t breathe. At all. Like something was choking him.
And then he noticed that the something was a snake that seemed to form from Risky’s long, luscious red hair.