The Dragon at the North Pole (7 page)

“The masking spell must have kicked in then,” Jesse said.

“And when I climbed into the sled, I felt even dizzier.” She reached out and grabbed his hand. “Jesse, we’ve been under his power ever since we got here!”

“A masking spell, for sure,” Jesse said. “But we must not have been enough under his power to sign the contract. That’s why he spelled the food. You might not have noticed it, but Emmy ate it, too, and she was as willing as you were to go along with the Claus’s plan.”

“Don’t call him that,” Daisy said.

“What should we call him?” Jesse said.

“Until we have a name, Mr. Unsavory will do,” Daisy said. “And the question is, what does Mr. Unsavory want with our dragon?”

“I don’t know,” said Jesse. “Maybe it has to do with that Toyland Vortex machine Emmy’s supposed to operate for him. Or whatever it is that Mr. Unsavory asked Emmy to give him from the Time Before. For whatever purpose he wants her, we stand a better chance against him if Emmy’s no longer under his power.”

“The blue goo cracker!” Daisy said. “Do you have any left?”

Jesse patted his hoodie pocket through his snowsuit. “Just enough for Emmy, I hope.”

“Excellent!” said Daisy. “Let’s find Emmy so we can feed her some blue goo.”

“First,” said Jesse, “I think we should take off these snowsuits.”

Daisy looked surprised. “Really? But they’re so warm,” she said.

“If the food’s bewitched, it stands to reason that the suits are, too. Don’t you remember feeling just a little bit more fuzzy-headed as soon as you put it on?” Jesse asked.

“Now that you mention it …” Daisy immediately began taking off her snowsuit, as did Jesse. Stripping down to their street clothes, they raced to put on their coats and mittens and scarves and boots. They were still so cold, they hopped around and slapped themselves.

“I think we need those gel pads now!” Daisy cried. She pranced over to the backpack and got the pads. They were stiff, but when Daisy cracked them over her knee, they got soft and squishy and started to heat up. The cousins stuffed them into their sleeves and pant legs and boots, anywhere they would fit. They immediately felt spots of
warmth wherever they had placed the pads. When they were finished, they were still cold, but at least they weren’t freezing.

“Okay,” Daisy said. “Where do we start to look for Emmy?”

“Before we do that, let’s look over the contract and see if we can figure out who Mr. Unsavory is,” said Jesse. “It would help to know who we’re up against.”

“Plan!” said Daisy.

They unrolled the contract and spread it out on the table. Because their and Emmy’s names weren’t written in the bird track language, they were able to pick them out. But they couldn’t find any hint as to the identity of their host.

“What language is this, anyway?” Daisy asked.

“Beats me, but let’s see if Blueberry Sal knows,” said Jesse. “My mom said it has a really neat translation program. She uses it all the time in Africa.”

Jesse got the Blueberry out of the backpack and peeled off his mittens. With his thumbs, he called up the translation program. Then he scanned the first line of the contract into the machine.

“Hmm,” Jesse said. “Sal says the language is Old Norse. This first line says, ‘The Keepers of the Dragon Emerald, being of sound mind and body …’ ”

“What’s Old Norse?” Daisy asked.

Jesse looked at the Blueberry screen. “It says that it’s an ancient Norwegian language that isn’t used anymore,” Jesse said.

“How weird is that?” said Daisy.

“Very,” Jesse said. He looked Daisy in the eye. “I think we should destroy the contract.”

“Really?” Daisy said, shocked. Destroying property, even if it belonged to Mr. Unsavory, bothered her.

“Sooner or later, he’s going to catch us in a spell and make us sign it,” Jesse said.

“And if we sign it, we lose Emmy,” Daisy said.

She picked up the contract and tried to rip it in half, but the paper wouldn’t tear.

“If we can’t rip it,” Jesse said, “we can ruin it.” He unscrewed the lid on the ink bottle and splashed ink all over the contract. But the ink beaded up and dripped harmlessly to the floor. Jesse replaced the lid on the bottle and shook his head, perplexed.

“Fire!” Daisy exploded. “Fire’s practically magical all by itself. We’ll burn it.”

She ran over and tossed the contract into the fireplace.

“The fire’s fake, remember?” Jesse called after her.

The scroll churned around in the flames like a
piece of laundry in a washing machine. The next moment, it wafted out onto the floor.

“Grrrr,” Daisy said. She took the contract, wadded it up into a tight little ball, and flung it back into the flames. But once again, the contract smoothed itself and floated out of the fire.

“I am so sick of this lame flame!” Daisy said.

“Give up, Daisy,” Jesse said, pacing between the wardrobe and the fireplace.

Daisy pulled the mitten off one hand and passed her bare hand through the fire. She felt nothing. She stuck her hand in and held it there. She still felt nothing. But while her hand was in the flames, the fire began to make a noise. It wasn’t a crackly fire kind of noise. It was more musical than that. It sounded like icicles melting, each drop a different note.

“Hey, Jess?” Daisy said, staring at the colorful flames in fascination. She suddenly realized that they were red and green—just like the aurora borealis! Daisy remembered Emmy sitting up on the barn roof, insisting that the northern lights were calling out to her with a message she couldn’t quite understand. Were the lights in the sky and the lights in this fireplace somehow connected? And if so, were they trying to tell them something? “I think this fire might be trying to communicate with me.”

“Ignore it. It’s probably spelled, like everything else in this place,” Jesse said. “We need to stop messing around and find some fire that really burns.”

Daisy nodded. “There’s got to be real fire someplace in this palace,” she said, heading for the door. “And maybe while we’re looking for that, we’ll find Emmy, too.”

“Wait,” said Jesse. He shoved the scroll, quill, and ink bottle into the backpack, then followed her through the door.

The first thing they saw out in the corridor was an ice sculpture of a two-headed monster. It looked like a giant mutated horned toad.

“Ugh!” Daisy clapped a hand over her mouth. “What happened to the happy ice skaters?”

“I forgot to tell you,” Jesse said. “Another result of lifting the masking spell is that all the cheery Christmas ice sculptures are now kind of scary.”

Daisy nodded warily and skirted the monster. They proceeded down the hallway in the opposite direction of the main entrance. The next sculpture they encountered was a sea serpent with its tail coiled around a boat. Inside the boat was a bearded man with a horned helmet wielding a heavy sword.

“That looks like a Viking warrior,” Jesse said, “which makes sense. Viking warriors come from
Norway, and Mr. Unsavory’s contract is in Old Norse.”

“And trolls come from Norway, too,” Daisy added.

They continued down the corridor, passing ice sculptures of trolls swinging battle-axes and gnawing on bones. After a while, Daisy averted her eyes from the gruesome displays. But when they passed the ice sculpture of a giant hunchbacked monster with horns and fangs, holding a Viking warrior in his clawed fist, Daisy couldn’t help but stare. “
That
thing is terrifying.”

“It is, isn’t it? It looks a lot like how I imagine Grendel,” Jesse said.

“If that’s Grendel,” Daisy said with a snort, “I’d hate to see Hansel. Who’s Grendel?”

“He’s a monster that menaced the people of ancient Norway until a hero named Beowulf slew him,” Jesse said. “It’s a famous ancient Norse legend that took place a long time ago. Sometime in the eighth or ninth century, I think.”

As they continued down the hall, they stopped at each door and tried the doorknob. All of them were locked. Finally, they came upon a giant door that had something very familiar about it.

“Well, now,” Jesse said. “Isn’t this a sight for sore eyes?” Carved into the ice above the door was
a very lifelike sculpture of Emmy’s head.

“This must be Emmy’s room,” said Daisy.

They knocked on the door but weren’t surprised when there was no answer. They turned the knob and found it was also locked. “Still off serving the Claus,” Jesse muttered.

“I guess we’ll give her the blue goo later,” Daisy said.

They continued until they arrived at a wide dead end. A set of doors loomed before them. Two wolves carved out of ice crouched on either side of the doors, ready to spring. One of them had a bone in its mouth. Daisy expected the wolves to leap forward and have her for lunch. She had to keep reminding herself that they were ice.

Jesse turned the knob. The door was locked.

“Surprise, surprise,” Daisy said dully.

Jesse put an eye to the rather large keyhole and peered inside while Daisy stared at the wolf with the bone in its mouth. The words
skeleton key
popped into her head. On a hunch, she reached into the wolf’s mouth and removed the bone.

The wolf’s jaws snapped shut in a puff of cold smoke. Daisy looked at the bone. Carved into the end that had been hidden inside the wolf’s mouth was a crude key.

She held it up to Jesse. He grinned as he took
the key from her, slid it into the keyhole, and turned it.

There was a clicking sound, and the door swung open.

Jesse stepped inside. Daisy, heart hammering, followed. The door closed behind them with another click.

It was an office. Though the walls and floor and ceiling were made of ice like everything else in the palace, the furniture was real. There was a big wooden desk with six drawers and a hefty leather-upholstered chair, a leather blotter on the desk with a neat stack of stationery, and a mug filled with pens. There was a drafting table and bookshelves filled with ancient leather-bound volumes. Photographs hung on the walls showed a hulking, broad-shouldered man with long white-blond hair, a neatly trimmed white beard, and chiseled features. He wore a dark business suit and was shaking hands with important-looking men and women. In all the pictures, he stood a head taller than everyone else.

Daisy and Jesse stared at the pictures. Jesse said, “Could that be …?”

“Mr. Unsavory?” Daisy finished.

“It is!” Jesse said, looking closer. “I’d know those deep-freeze eyes anywhere. And if that’s him, then this is his man cave.”

“What’s a man cave?” Daisy asked.

“A place a man goes to be alone and do his own thing. My mom says a man cave tells a lot about the man … his desk especially. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll find out who Mr. Unsavory really is. If we’re
really
lucky, maybe he keeps matches in his desk.”

Daisy wandered over to the drafting table, and Jessie started looking through the desk. He picked up a piece of paper and held it out to Daisy. “Does the name Wolf ring any bells for you?” he asked.

“Nope,” Daisy said. She was looking at another sheet of paper taped to the drafting table. It was a diagram of the earth with something poking out of the North Pole that looked like a giant tower or scaffold surrounded by swirly marks coming down from space. Other bits of paper tacked here and there were variations of the same design.

She called Jesse over. He cocked his head at the diagram. “I’ll bet that’s the Toyland Vortex machine Emmy mentioned. She didn’t say it was sitting directly on top of the North Pole. It looks like a plan for a giant oil rig.”

“Then Mr. Unsavory is an
oil tycoon
?” Daisy said. “Instead of a toy-making machine, Emmy’s helping to build an oil rig?”

Jesse thought about this and then shook his head. “Plenty of people drill for oil in the Arctic and
they don’t need dragon magic to do it.”

Daisy moved over to the shelves and started examining the books. “These look like they’re all in Old Norse,” she said. “Maybe Mr. Unsavory is a professor of Old Norse.”

Jesse followed her and ran his fingers along the spines. “This one is in English,” he said, pulling a volume down off the shelf. “What do you know? It’s
Beowulf
.”

“The Norse hero who slew Grendel?” Daisy asked, just as the section of bookcase Jesse had taken the volume from swung inward.

“Whoa!” Daisy said, pulling back. A passageway yawned before them. “Should we go in? I mean, what if he comes?”

“Let’s chance it,” Jesse said. “We still need to find matches. There weren’t any in his desk.”

Gingerly, they stepped through the small passageway into the room beyond. This room was nearly twice as big as the man cave, with a soaring vaulted ceiling made of ice. Medieval weapons hung from hooks and spikes pounded into the ice walls. There were broadswords and battle-axes and shields as tall as a grown man.

“You know what this is, don’t you?” Jesse said in a voice filled with awe. “This is the
bad man
cave.”

Daisy felt a chill work its way up her spine.
Numbly, she watched Jesse walk past the weapons, examining them without touching them. “I saw stuff like this in the British Museum,” he said. “Definitely Viking. The Vikings were fierce warriors.”

In the center of the room stood a seven-foot-tall ice mannequin clad in armor—a golden helmet and a fearsome suit of mail. Jesse, still carrying the book from the other room, said, “The trolls, the ice sculptures, the Old Norse, the armor … it all adds up.”

“Adds up to what, Jess?” Daisy asked.

Jesse didn’t answer. Against one wall stood a stout wooden barrel. He turned the tap and a stream of golden liquid poured out. Jesse dipped his finger in the stream and tasted it. “It’s mead, Daisy,” he said. “It’s a beverage made from fermented water and honey. It was the drink of choice of the Viking horde.”

“How come you’re such an expert on Vikings?” Daisy asked.

“One of my parents’ friends in Doctors Without Borders was Norwegian, and he—”

Jesse didn’t finish. Something caught his eye, and he darted toward a table that looked like a museum display of household items. Among them was a primitive-looking meal kit: metal pot, cup, fork,
spoon, and a small metal box shaped like a cylinder.