The Dragon in the Driveway (11 page)

“Thanks for dragon-sitting,” Daisy said to them.

“It was our d-d-d-duty and our p-p-p-pleasure,” said Lady Aspen.

“Could you spare us a moment of your time?” asked Douglas Fir.

“We’d like to, but we can’t,” said Jesse. “We’re here on Dragon Keeper business and it really can’t wait.”

“S-s-s-someone has heard about you and w-w-w-wants to meet you,” said Lady Aspen.

“It won’t take a minute, we promise,” said Douglas Fir.

The cousins reluctantly followed the ghostlike forms of the dryads as they slipped across the pasture to where a big old willow tree grew beside the brook. The cousins knew the tree well. When they were little, it was their pretend castle, but when they got older, they played mostly in the barn.

As they drew nearer to the tree, they heard a low wailing sound, like the wind in the willow, only louder and sharper. The sound soon resolved itself into words. “Oh, good grief! Here they come. Oh, no, this is terrible. What will they think of me?”

“There, now, old fellow, it’s not so bad. Help is on the way!” Douglas Fir said in a soft, kindly voice. “Look here, we’ve brought the children with us so you can see them with your own eyes.”

There, in the gnarled trunk of the willow tree, Jesse and Daisy saw a creature that seemed arrested midway between dryad and solid tree form. Its mouth was a jagged crack running across the bark of the lower trunk. Its large drooping knothole eyes, set just above the mouth, streamed with tears. “Go away! Go away!” he sobbed, as he shook loose hanks of green willow hair from his head and mopped his wet cheeks.

“Willow, please,” said Douglas Fir. “Can’t you
stop weeping at least long enough to say hello to Jesse and Daisy?”

“Hi,” said Jesse and Daisy awkwardly.

The willow hid his face behind two lower branches and howled, “Oh, no! Go away! Don’t look at me! Not now, please! I’m a wreck. I’m a pathetic mess. My leaves are a shambles, my bark is sodden, and I’m in no shape to entertain guests. I’m miserable, can’t you see?” And he fell into another fit of weeping.

“I get it,” Jesse said to Daisy. “This is the tree that’s holding the hobgoblin queen captive underground in his roots.”

“Right!” said Daisy. “Of course!”

Douglas and Lady Aspen both nodded their leafy heads in confirmation.

“Oh, sure, blame the victim!” said the willow. “It’s all
my
fault! But it’s that wretched St. George who’s to blame. I have no power. I’m nothing but a miserable weak wreck of a weeping willow. Do you think I
asked
to have my root-ball inhabited by a hobgoblin? I don’t care if she is the queen! Do you know what it feels like to be
infested
?” He shuddered and wept with his branches heaving and long pale green wisps drifting to the earth like ticker tape at the world’s saddest parade.

“Gee, that’s terrible,” said Jesse. He knew just
how the willow tree felt. Jesse had once been infested with parasites when they lived in Costa Rica. The doctor there had prescribed a medicine that tasted like skunk soup with mouse turd dumplings.

“We’re sorry about your troubles,” said Daisy, not sounding sorry at all.

“We’re going to try real hard to help you,” said Jesse. “Won’t we, Daze?”

“We’ll get the pickax and free both you and the queen,” said Daisy.

Instead of comforting the willow, this only gave rise to a fresh torrent of tears. “Oh, please don’t take that pickax to me. I can see it now. I’m to be chopped to kindling, whittled to wood chips, ground to sawdust! Sacrificed to Her Royal Lowness, the Queen of the Mud Puppies. Say hello to the Sacrificial Willow! That’s me!” he wailed. “Alas, alas!”

“They aren’t mud puppies,” Daisy told him crossly. “They’re hobgoblins, and they deserve our respect.”

“Oh, really?” said the willow. “I don’t see anyone respecting me!”

“We do,” said Jesse. “Don’t we, Daze?”

Not very convincingly, Daisy nodded.

After standing around listening to him carry on for a few more minutes, Jesse and Daisy pried
themselves away. When they and the dryads were standing once more outside the willow’s drooping canopy, Jesse said, “Well, he certainly lives up to his name.”

Daisy said, “It’s hard to feel sorry for someone who feels quite that sorry for himself.”

“Th-th-thank you for taking the time to pay your r-r-r-respects all the same,” said Lady Aspen. “Believe it or not, it meant a great deal to him.”

“And to every one of us,” said Douglas Fir.

With that, the two dryads went back beneath the canopy of willow leaves to be with their friend.

CHAPTER NINE
THE FERN BRIGADE

Jesse and Daisy were just entering the Deep Woods when Jesse noticed a stirring in the ferns growing near the base of the Douglas fir. Maybe it was just a chipmunk, but Jesse didn’t want anything messing with the tree while its dryad wasn’t in residence to
defend it. “Hold up,” he said to Daisy. “I need to check out those ferns.”

Daisy nodded and stopped, but she wasn’t paying much attention. Her mind was on their plan. It would be a long drop from the side of the ramp down to the ground of the cavern. What if they figured out a way to drop down
on top
of the big book? Perhaps the magical shield would break their fall. On the other hand, it might squeak and give them away. She looked over to Jesse to share these thoughts, but he was nowhere to be seen!

“Hey, Jess!” she called out, looking all around. “Where’d you go?”

“What do you mean?” he said.

He sounded close by, but Daisy couldn’t see him. “Are you behind the Douglas fir?” she asked.

“I’m in front of it. In the ferns … in plain sight. Do you need glasses?” he asked.

“Maybe, because I’m looking right at the fir tree and I can’t see you,” Daisy said.

“Well, look a little harder,” Jesse said, popping back into view as he walked toward Daisy.

Daisy said, “Whoa! Wait a sec, Jess.” She held up her hand.

Jesse stopped.

“Back up to the ferns again,” Daisy said.

This struck Jesse as a pretty strange request,
but he backed up. The ferns made a swishing sound around his ankles. He stood there and watched her face. There was a look of amazement on it.

“Jess, this is completely incredible!” she said, jumping up and down and flapping her hands. “I see the ferns moving, but I don’t see you. You’re invisible!”

“I’m
what
?” he asked.

“When you stand in the ferns, you’re one hundred percent
invisible
,” she said. “Let’s change places and see if it works for me.”

Jesse stood where Daisy had been and Daisy went to take his place in the ferns. Jesse watched as his cousin simply slipped out of sight.

“Do you realize how great this is?” Daisy’s voice said.

Jesse thought it was cool, but it was also kind of creepy. What was causing it?

“Come here, Jesse,” said Daisy. “Help me choose a couple of nice, fat ferns. The bigger and bushier, the better.”

Jesse hesitated and then joined Daisy in the fern bed. He still couldn’t see her, but he heard her breathing right next to him. He asked her, “Why are we fern-picking?”

Daisy said, “Because ferns have magical properties,
Jess. I read about it in one of my plant books, and you
proved
it.” Before he could stop her, she had launched into one of her botanical lectures. “The fern is one of the most ancient plants on the earth. In medieval times, people thought the fern could make them invisible. The Green Man, a mythical character that dates back practically to cave days, covered his face with a mask of ferns to make himself invisible.”

“So you’re thinking that Emmy’s hatching made the ferns magic again, like in olden days,” said Jesse thoughtfully.

“Exactly!” said Daisy. “And the reason St. George hasn’t sucked the magic out of them is ’cause they are growing in a safe place, beneath one of the two free trees.”

“So Miss Alodie’s protective spell is covering them,” Jesse said.

“Exactly!” replied Daisy. “It makes complete sense when you think about it. These two look good. Let’s step away from the fern patch and see what happens.”

Jesse went back to the path, but he couldn’t see Daisy. “Are you still in the fern patch?” he called out.

She laughed in his ear. “I’m right next to you! Funny, I don’t
feel
invisible.” The next moment, she
was visible and two large ferns floated to the ground between them. “Can you see me now?” she asked.

“Wow!” Jesse said.

“As long as I hold the ferns, you can’t see me,” said Daisy.

“Cool,” Jesse said. “My turn.”

“Try it with just one fern,” Daisy said.

Jesse bent and picked up a fern. He could tell by the look in Daisy’s eyes that she could no longer see him. He sneaked around and stood behind Daisy, tapping her on the shoulder. She whirled to face him. He dropped the fern, grinning. “We can each hold a fern, sneak down into the cavern and steal the Golden Pickax. St. George won’t know what hit him,” said Jesse.

“That’s what I call a
plan
!” said Daisy.

They did a quick happy prospector’s dance before choosing two fresh ferns and continuing down the path toward the clearing in the Deep Woods.

On the way, Daisy noticed that Jesse kept getting in her way and jostling her. She kept stepping on his toe. “We’re going to need to stay close together when we use these,” she said as they walked.

“Of course,” said Jesse.

“I mean, really close. We’ll have to hold hands,” said Daisy.

“Really?” said Jesse. “How come?”

“Because otherwise we won’t know where the other one is,” she said. “If we hold hands, at least we can
feel
each other’s presence. Get it?”

“Of course!” said Jesse. He took Daisy’s hand, just to practice. It felt funny, like being a little kid again. “We shouldn’t talk or make any kind of noise, either,” he said. “The ferns might make us invisible, but they won’t hide our sound.”

“Good thinking,” said Daisy as they came to the edge of the clearing.

They stopped and stared. The clearing was empty. There were no St. George, no hobgoblins, no machinery. Not a single tool lay anywhere about. Even the high mountain of dirt had disappeared. For a minute, Jesse was afraid that St. George had gone and removed all traces of himself, as he had from the college. Then he saw a large, dark rectangular patch in the middle of the clearing. Jesse led Daisy toward it. With their invisible hands locked and their ferns held tight, Jesse and Daisy stood and looked down into the hole.

The wooden ramp they had walked up earlier that morning was still there. They both took big
deep breaths and tiptoed down it into the underground cavern.

Halfway down the ramp, they stopped. They could see St. George. He was lounging on the hobgoblin queen’s throne, holding the Golden Pickax. But it didn’t look very golden. It looked crusted with dirt and rust. St. George was rubbing the pickax briskly with something that looked like a scrubbing brush. The Slayer paused and lifted the pickax to examine it. The very tip of one prong was now bright gold. St. George lowered the pickax and went to work again.

Jesse felt Daisy tugging him slowly but steadily backward, up the ramp and into the clearing, where she stopped and laid down her fern. He did the same. “Okay,” she said. “So we didn’t plan for him to be actually
holding
the pickax. I say we go back down, get up super-close to him, and the minute he lays down that pickax,
whammo
! We grab it and take off—”

“Through the tunnel to Her Royal Lowness,” Jesse said. “But what if he doesn’t take a break? Did you see that thing? It’s filthy! He could be cleaning it for hours! And what if one of us burps or sneezes or something while we’re waiting around? He’s bound to hear us and then what?”

“Good point.” Daisy went back to thinking.
“So you think we should … what? Just go down there and yank it away from him?” she said.

“I think if you can distract him, I can get it away from him,” Jesse said.

Daisy was surprised. “Really?” she said.

Jesse said, “Yes!”

They quickly revised their plan. It wasn’t completely satisfactory. They didn’t know for a fact that the pickax would become invisible once it was in Jesse’s possession, but they had to assume that it would. The pack on Jesse’s back was as invisible as he was when the fern was in his hand, so it seemed possible. When they were finished planning, they nodded solemnly and picked up their ferns.

“All right, then,” said Jesse. His heart was thudding. They were as ready as they were ever going to be. They reached out and found each other’s hand, held tight to their ferns, and stole back down the ramp. They walked all the way down it and across the cavern to the hobgoblin queen’s throne. They stopped about a foot away from St. George. Jesse recoiled from the man’s rotting-meat breath, and his hand that held the fern trembled. The hand holding Daisy’s was slick with sweat.

St. George went completely still for a moment. Then his nostrils started to twitch.

He can smell us
, Jesse thought.

St. George slowly lowered the copper brush and looked first to the right and then to the left, his nostrils working all the while. The light flashed on the disks of his wireless glasses as his eyes came to rest directly on Jesse. Jesse stopped breathing—one second, two seconds, three seconds—as time seemed to stretch into eternity.