The Dragon in the Driveway (4 page)

“For a while, at least,” said Jesse. “Until Emmy-locks gets bigger.”

“Sweet dragon dreams,” said Daisy.

After the cousins had bid Emmy a final “good night, sleep tight” (even though it was still late afternoon), they tiptoed out of the garage and locked it. They both knew that if she needed them, she would bark very loudly three times and one of them would come running, even if it was the middle of the night.

Jesse and Daisy wearily trudged through the kitchen and upstairs. They were starved, but eating would have to wait. They went directly to Jesse’s room and turned on the computer. Jesse sat down and logged on to the dragon site. They were both grateful to see that Professor Andersson was in the mood for another visit. With his bushy brows deeply furrowed, he listened as Jesse and Daisy briefed him about St. George’s terrible path of destruction, the earthmover, and the hole leading down to the old mine.

“Old mines are dangerous places, and he’s got all this heavy machinery and we’re just a couple of kids, and … what are we supposed to do, professor?” Jesse said.

Daisy bumped Jesse with her hip and whispered, “You’re whining. He hates whining.”

But the professor didn’t seem to notice. Usually, Jesse and Daisy saw only his face close-up, but now the professor moved away from the screen and
leaned back in his chair. For the first time, they could see what he was wearing: an old-fashioned suit, a string tie, and suspenders. “I couldn’t really say,” said the professor, hooking his thumbs in his suspenders, which were striped.

Jesse and Daisy stared at the screen. Here they were expecting an ominous warning or a stern lecture, or, at the very least, the barest of hints about what to do next.

“I’m a dragon man myself,” the professor went on. “Ask me about masking, scrying, even spelling, and I’m the man for you. But mines and machines have always rather flummoxed me. They were never my forte.”

Jesse turned to Daisy and asked, “What’s a
fort
have to do with anything?”

Daisy shrugged, equally perplexed.

“Not my area of
expertise
,” the professor explained. “Never cared much for mines, I must say. All those tunnels snaking beneath the earth make me feel claustrophobic. Closed in.” The professor shivered.

“I feel the exact same way!” said Daisy, and just as she was about to tell him about her own worst encounter with enclosed spaces (getting stuck behind the claw-foot bathtub when she was three years old), the screen fizzled to a blank.

Jesse glowered at the computer and said, “Doesn’t that man ever say ‘good-bye’ or ‘over-and-out’ or ‘good night and good luck’?”

Just then, they heard Uncle Joe call them down to dinner.

Jesse and Daisy took a good look at themselves. They were covered with dried mud!

“Be there in five!” Daisy shouted, and they raced each other to the sink.

“I can’t believe it turned into such a glorious day!” Aunt Maggie said, beaming at Jesse and Daisy across the dinner table.

“Raining one minute, sunny the next,” Jesse said. “It was practically like magic!”

Daisy kicked him beneath the table. They had agreed upstairs not to tell the grown-ups about what was going on in the Dell. After all, the Dell was their special place. Its problems were their problems, not Daisy’s parents’. “Poppy, tell us about the mines around here,” Daisy said.

Uncle Joe gave his long graying ponytail an enthusiastic tug. If there was anything he liked more than talking about rocks, it was talking about mines. “The whole area is honeycombed with them. After all, this town was host to a prosperous gold mine operation in the early 1900s.”

“We know that, Poppy,” said Daisy. “That’s how Goldmine City got its name.”

“Yep, this whole area was overrun by prospectors burning up with gold fever. It was a boom city, with its own opera house and grand hotel and saloon and you name it, they had it. Then, practically overnight, the town shut down,” he said with a thoughtful expression. “It was a ghost town until the 1970s, when the college came in and things began to look up again.”

“Did the mine run out of gold?” Daisy asked. “Is that why Goldmine City turned into a ghost town?”

“Nope,” said Uncle Joe. “The mine blew up.”

“Blew up?” said Jesse, setting his milk glass down with a
clunk.

“Kaboom,” said Uncle Joe. “Some say the explosion was caused by underground gas. Others say it was a human being who caused it. Something to do with a feud.”

“What kind of feud?” the cousins chimed in eagerly.

“A feud between the mining company and the farmer,” said Uncle Joe, squeezing more ketchup and mustard onto his hamburger. “The farmer who worked the land behind this house, as a matter of fact.”

“
Our
farmer?” Daisy asked.

“The Magical Dairyman?” Jesse whispered.

Uncle Joe snapped his fingers. “Now, what was his name? It’ll come to me in a second…. Anyway, according to the stories, the farmer got all worked up and told everyone that the mining company was tunneling onto his land when they didn’t have a claim,” said Uncle Joe, biting into his burger.

“So what happened?” Daisy asked.

Uncle Joe shrugged and spoke with a full mouth. “The farmer blew the mine to smithereens, according to some people,” he said, swallowing hard and smiling. “Buried the mine under so many tons of rubble, no one’s ever dug back down. Oh, yeah, and the explosion killed the head of the mining company.”

“Did the farmer get in trouble?” Jesse asked.

Uncle Joe shook his head. “The investigation was inconclusive. It might have been human mischief, but it might also have been natural gas. The farmer fled overseas. He’s long dead now, of course—this was over a hundred years ago.”

“Who owns the Dell now?” Jesse asked, stealing a look at Daisy.

Uncle Joe said, “That’s a very good question. No one knows. The land’s held in some kind of complicated trust. A bank in Switzerland pays the taxes every year, but no one knows who or where
the current owners are … which is lucky for you guys, because you get the Dell all to yourselves.”

“Not anymore, we don’t,” Jesse muttered as he dropped his half-eaten hamburger onto his plate.

Late that night, a sudden noise awoke Jesse. He sat up in bed and blinked at the clock until it came into focus. It was two o’clock in the morning, but the full moon lit up his room like daylight. He went over to the window and looked out.

Emmy was standing in the driveway, staring right back up at him. She was in full dragon form, her beautiful blue-green scales resplendent in the moonlight. Jesse’s heart pounded. They had been careful, as always, to lock her in the garage. How had she gotten out?

Jesse jammed his feet into his sneakers, ran through the bathroom to Daisy’s room, and shook her awake.

“Emmy’s out,” he told her in a loud whisper. “Get your sneakers on!”

“Yikes!” Daisy popped up and peeled away the covers, her hair a nest of snarls. She groped around under the bed for her sneakers and fumbled with the laces. Then the two of them tiptoed down the stairs and through the kitchen. They opened and closed the back door, careful not to let it slam.

Then they ran down the path toward the dragon in the driveway. Daisy whispered frantically, “Emmy! What are you doing? What if someone sees you?”

“No one sees me,” Emmy hissed back at Daisy. “Mrs. Nosy-Britches is fast asleep in her nest.”

“How did you get out?” Jesse wanted to know.

“My new friends opened the door,” Emmy said happily. “I love them.”

“New friends?” Jesse asked.

“What new friends?” Daisy asked.

“Those new friends,” said Emmy, waving her arms toward the trellis by the side of the garage.

Two figures as tall as trees towered in the dappled shadows. Daisy gasped and reached out for Jesse’s arm as one of the figures stepped forward into the moonlight. His hair was long and dark and snarled and full of pine needles. His feet were bare. His toes were very dirty, tinged with green, twice as long as anyone’s toes ever grow to be, and covered with long pale hairs.

“I’m Douglas Fir,” he said in a voice that was powerful yet full of warmth. A waft of clean, fresh pine air enveloped the cousins, and they found themselves taking great deep breaths of it.

“And this is my lovely companion,” said Douglas Fir. “Lady Aspen.”

A second towering figure strode to his side. She
was as tall as he was, but where he was greenish brown, she was as pale as paper. Her head was wreathed with little round leaves that shook when she walked. Her voice shook, too, as she said, “H-h-h-hello, D-d-d-d-dragon K-k-k-k-keepers. It is a pleasure to m-m-make your acq-q-q-q-quaintance.”

Jesse stared hard at the two figures and realized he could actually see right through them to the trellis. Their images shifted and wavered with the evening breeze, breaking apart like reflections on the surface of a pond. They were wrapped in coarse fabric—his green, hers white—and around both their middles were sashes made from brightly colored fabric.

“Wow!” said Jesse. “Tree spirits.”

“Dryads!” said Daisy.

“Yes, Jesse Tiger and Daisy Flower,” said Emmy proudly. “You have hit the nail on the bull’s-eye.”

“On the head,” Jesse corrected automatically.

“On the bull’s head,” Emmy said. “In The Time Before, the dryads and the dragons were like family, like Jesse and Daisy, like cousins.”

Daisy asked the trees, “Why didn’t you talk to us when we saw you in the woods?”

“We speak more clearly when our spirits break away from our bodies,” Lady Aspen explained. “Our bodies, y-y-you see, are back at the
edge of the Deep Woods. Our spirits can wander. We c-c-c-can’t always leave our bodies during the d-d-d-daylight hours.”

“The moonlight helps to draw us out,” Douglas explained. “And that squirt of dragon piddle must have helped, too.”

“Did Miss Alodie give you those sashes?” Jesse wanted to know.

“S-s-s-she did indeed,” said the aspen.

“We’re very lucky that she did. The charm she put on them warded off St. George’s spell,” the fir explained.

Daisy turned to Jesse. “I knew it! Didn’t I always say that Miss Alodie was magic?”

Jesse shrugged and grinned. “I just thought she was wacky.”

Lady Aspen broke in, “W-w-w-we are the only t-t-t-trees in the Deep Woods that have n-n-n-not fallen under the power of St. G-g-g-g-eorge. Follow us, p-please. There is n-n-no m-m-more time to lose.”

“In our pajamas?” Daisy asked.

“The moon won’t mind,” said Douglas Fir. “And we won’t, either.”

“It’s a pajama parade!” Emmy said.

“Pajama
party
,” Jesse corrected.

Emmy looked sad. “But where are
my
pajamas?” she asked.

“You don’t need pajamas, Emmy,” Daisy told her. “You have beautiful green and blue scales!”

“That’s true, I am very beautiful,” Emmy said, recovering her good spirits. “Let’s go!”

The tree spirits wheeled around and headed into the backyard, with Emmy trotting along between them. The cousins followed them across the grass, which was so wet with dew that their pajamas were soon soaked up to the knees. When they came to the laurel bushes, the dryads stepped over them like circus performers on stilts, while the cousins and Emmy burrowed through the tunnel. Daisy thought she heard a faint whispering in the laurel leaves as they brushed past them. “Jesssssssssssseeeeeee! Daisssssseeeeeeeee! Helllp usssssss.”

The cousins had been to the Dell at night a few times. How hushed and magical it had been then, with the peepers’ voices throbbing in the dark greenery. Now a harsh blue-white light shone out from the heart of the Deep Woods. Instead of the throbbing of peepers, the air was filled with the ominous rumble and roar of heavy machinery.

Douglas Fir and Lady Aspen stood waiting
while Jesse and Daisy and Emmy took it all in.

“So that’s why St. George wasn’t around the college this afternoon,” Jesse said. “He works at night.”

“Why would he do that?” Daisy asked.

“Because he’s a bad, bad man,” Emmy said in a fierce whisper.

“And because what he’s doing is illegal. You heard your dad. This isn’t his land,” Jesse said.

“It’s the farmer’s land,” Daisy said, nodding. “And the farmer’s not here, so we’re going to have to represent his interests.”

Jesse gave her a weird look. “Really?”

Daisy grinned. “I don’t know. But it sounded good, didn’t it?” she said. “Let’s go.”

The motley group, led by the trees, marched down the hill and across the pasture, over to the path that led into the Deep Woods.

“You must take matters in hand now,” said Douglas Fir. “Start by climbing us,” he said as his transparent spirit stepped back into the solid trunk of the tree.

“P-p-please do,” said Lady Aspen as she, too, disappeared into her pale trunk.

Jesse turned to Emmy. “Did they just say to climb them?”

Emmy shook her head and nodded in rapid
succession. “Yes. No. Dragons do not climb trees. Yes, boys and girls do. Boys climb boys and girls climb girls,” she said, as if it were common knowledge.

Jesse looked up. The lowest branches of the Douglas fir were way over his head and the trunk was too wide to shimmy up. Just as Jesse was about to protest that it wasn’t possible, he found himself engulfed by pine needles as the tree bent over him and picked him up into its branches. The quaking aspen did the same for Daisy.

Jesse wrapped his arms around a stout branch.

“Look at me!” Daisy called softly from her perch in the crown of the quaking aspen.

Jesse could make out her silvery hair shimmering among the pale green leaves, and then her hand waved in the moonlight. “Whoa!” he said, hanging on tightly as the Douglas fir uprooted itself with a soft grunt and began to move over the debris-ridden path. When he was eight years old in India, Jesse had ridden in an elephant’s howdah, one of those fancy cushioned saddles with the tasseled canopies. He discovered that if he let go and went with the motion of the elephant, it could be quite comfortable. Applying the same principle to the tree, he relaxed and began to sway along.

Jesse caught the occasional glimpse of Emmy’s
moonstruck scales as she kept pace with them, moving steadily under cover of the trees of the Deep Woods.