The Dragon in the Driveway (9 page)

Jesse and Daisy each went awkwardly down on one knee. The hobgoblins scrambled down onto both knees and put their foreheads to the ground. Daisy looked over and shook her head at Jesse. “No way,” she whispered.

“As you were!” croaked the queen.

Jesse and Daisy climbed to their feet again.

“How do you do?” Jesse said politely.

Daisy blurted, “If you’re a queen, what are you doing inside some dirty old root-ball?”

The queen bellowed, “We have not given you permission to address us!”

Daisy rolled her eyes and mimed zipping her lips.

“But to answer the question, nevertheless,” said the queen, “which, we might add, is most astute, we are prisoners and this foul ball of fibrous cellulose is our jaily-waily.”

“Jaily-waily?”
Jesse mouthed.

Daisy had to cover her mouth to keep from giggling.

“We find ourselves in a uniquely helpless, not to say hapless, situation,” the queen said huffily.

Daisy and Jesse bobbed their heads in silent sympathy.

After a pause, the queen snapped, “Oh, very well, you may address Her Eminence.”

Jesse went first. “Did St. George put you—eh, Your Eminence—in there?” he asked.

“Good guess!” she croaked. “So far we have one good question and one good guess. That’s a better score than most Upper Realmers could earn.”

Daisy moved even closer to the ball and stared
into the riot of roots. Sure enough, in the very center of the root-ball, a hobgoblin squatted on her haunches. She looked just like her subjects, except that she was softer and rounder-looking, with big moss-green eyes (which really
were
magnificent!) and reddish hair with a bit of curl to it. Instead of the orange jumpsuit, she wore a robe decorated with tiny snail shells. Daisy had never thought of brown as being a pretty color for a garment, but this was the most beautiful hue of brown that Daisy had ever seen. It reminded her of fresh dirt with a hint of glittering mica in it.

“Hey there, Your Royal Highness,” Daisy said softly.

“That’s Royal
Lowness
to you,” the queen corrected snappishly.

Jesse poked his nose into the roots next to Daisy and asked, “What’s wrong with
Highness
?”

“
High-ness
,” said Her Majesty testily, “like
lightness
, is overrated by you Upper Realm types.”

“I see,” said Jesse, having never thought of himself as an Upper Realm
type
. “I guess that makes sense … to a hobgoblin brain.”

“How did St. George catch Your Lowness?” Daisy wanted to know.

“He tricked us,” the queen said with a heavy
sigh. “Not that we didn’t, unfortunately, make it easy for him. He spun us that same old tired tale. ‘A treasure of untold vastness lies just beneath your hive.’ And to think that we fell for it! If we helped him find it, he promised to go halvsies. He led us here on a wild treasure chase and before you could say ‘Hob’s your uncle!’ we were stuck in here. Now the hive has no leader. Most of our subjects have fallen in line behind St. George … except for this small faithful band of rebels you see here.”

The rebel hobgoblins grunted earthily and raised their mitts and torches in a show of unity.

“St. George has the rest of them digging for the treasure,” the queen said. “Our hobbies, our rough little gems of the earth, are nothing but free labor to that villainous swine.”

Jesse nodded. “We’ve seen your hobbies at work. Digging in the clearing … in the Deep Woods.”

“Greedy rapscallion that he is, St. George wants the treasure all to himself. But we know, now that our hob head’s screwed back on tightly, that the treasure he seeks isn’t meant for the likes of him, or even for us. It belongs … to the
draggy-wagons.
”

“The dragons, you mean?” said Jesse.

Her Lowness nodded.

“Well, it happens that the two of us are Dragon Keepers,” said Daisy.

“Are you, now?” The hobgoblin queen gave them a shrewd look. “Then where are you keeping your draggy-wagon?”

“We got split up from our draggy-wagon,” Daisy said carefully. She was feeling a tad defensive, so she changed the subject quickly. “Can we help Your Lowness escape? Maybe use your hobgoblins’ picks to break up this root-ball?”

Her Lowness shook her head. “That won’t work. The tree holds us fast. St. George has spelled it. He’s enslaved all of the trees. The trees were the first to fall under his power … weak, spindly suckers of the light and the water that they are. Then, owing to our own foolishness, the hobgoblins were the next. Not that it took much. Except for Yours Truly, hobgoblins are followers, not leaders. But who’s next? That’s what we ask ourselves as we sit here fretting in our royal dungeon. St. George is a blight upon the very earth, we tell you. A blight.”

“Where did he come from?” Jesse asked.

“Who knows?” said the queen with a shrug of her plump shoulders. “Where does anything come from? He’s been on this earth for ages. He lives off
the draggy-wagons, that one, and he always has. He’s a parasite. You know the old nursery rhyme: ‘Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie, killed the draggy-wagons and made them cry.’”

Jesse and Daisy stared at each other blankly. That certainly wasn’t the version of the nursery rhyme
they
had grown up with!

The queen went on. “He goes in cycles. After he’s slain the dragons into near-extinction, he sleeps. He just woke up a short while ago from a long sleep in the collapsed mine shaft.”

“How did he get out?” Daisy asked.

“We couldn’t rightly say,” said the queen. “We’ve been asleep ourselves. When there are no dragons alive in the world, there is no magic. When there is no magic, we ethereal beings either sleep or fade away. You might not know it to look at us,” she said haughtily, “but we are Beings of the Ethereal Plain.”

“I’m sure we—I mean, Your Lowness—is,” Daisy said.

Jesse, who had been listening closely, said, “Maybe somebody dug him up by accident.”

“I doubt it,” said the queen. “Our theory is that he sensed the arrival of a new draggy-wagon—namely, yours—and he just worked his way up out
of the earth, like a sliver of glass out of a finger. You have but to set us free and we will turn the tide of this battle. We won’t lay a mitt on your treasure, either; you have our royal word on that.”

“Yes, but how do we get you out of there?” Daisy said.

“We thought you’d never ask!” said Her Royal Lowness. “You must fetch us the Golden Pickax.”

“Right,” said Jesse. “Just tell us where it is and we’ll get it for you.”

“Oh, we can’t help you there,” said Her Lowness.

“But it could be
anywhere
,” said Jesse.

“Not
anywhere.
” The queen shook her head and croaked, “If it was somewhere down here, we would have found it already.”

“Is Your Lowness a hundred percent sure?” Daisy asked. “Sometimes I think I’ve lost something and it winds up being right under my nose. What about these pickaxes here?” she said, pointing to the ones resting across the hobgoblins’ laps. “Could any of these be the Golden Pickax … I mean, in disguise?” she added doubtfully, because they certainly didn’t look like they were made of gold.

“No,” said the queen. “It’s in the Upper Realm, somewhere nearby, I’m sure. The Upper Realm is your turf. We’re sure you know where everything is
and can locate it easily. Now hop to it, lambies, for Queen Hap, will you?”

Feeling nowhere near as confident in their ability to find the Golden Pickax as Her Royal Lowness was, Jesse and Daisy bid the queen farewell, promising only to do their best. The hobgoblin band hopped to its feet and led the cousins down one of the tunnels radiating out from the queen’s root-ball prison.

“Do you think the professor will have some ideas?” Daisy asked as they jogged to keep up with the hobgoblins.

“Probably not,” said Jesse. “Pickaxes are mining tools. Remember, he is a dragon man, not a mine man.”

“What about Miss Alodie?” Daisy said.

“I have a feeling that the next time she wants to see us is with the book,” said Jesse.

“The book! I forgot all about that,” said Daisy worriedly. “We haven’t used the earthworms yet.”

“Why would we even need to?” Jesse asked. “There must be millions of them down here.”

“I sure hope these guys are taking us to the exit and not straight to St. George,” Daisy said.

“The queen said they are her loyal band of rebels,” said Jesse in a queenly croak.

“Yeah, but didn’t she also say that hobgoblins
are followers? Maybe once they get away from the queen, they fall back under Georgie Porgie’s power,” said Daisy.

“Don’t ask me why, but I trust them,” said Jesse.

“Me too,” said Daisy. “In fact, I think the hobbies are adorable.”

Jesse smiled. “We used to think they were hideous. Now we think they’re adorable,” he said. “I think that’s kind of cool.”

Just then, the hobgoblins halted and spit on their palms, extinguishing their torches with their bare hands. Jesse and Daisy winced. But after the torches were snuffed out, the tunnel was still light.

“We must be near an exit,” said Daisy, lowering her voice to a whisper.

In a few moments, the tunnel opened out into an underground cavern. It looked natural, rather than man-made, and it was enormous, as big as a cathedral. Natural light shone down through a hole in the ceiling. A wide wooden ramp led up to it. More tunnels, at least a dozen of them, pocked the cavern walls. Except for Jesse and Daisy and the band of rebels, the cavern seemed to be deserted. But from somewhere, perhaps down one of the other tunnels, came the distinctive ring of metal on stone. The hobgoblins were hard at work doing their new master’s bidding.

One of the hobgoblins ran into the middle of the cavern and came to a stop beside a throne made of stone and studded with snail shells and black pearls.

“That must be the throne of Her Royal Lowness,” Daisy said.

Another hobgoblin plucked Jesse’s sleeve and pointed to the ramp, making a shooing motion. Then he hurried over to the base of the ramp and beckoned them forward with both mitts.

Jesse and Daisy ran halfway up the ramp. Then, Jesse caught a glimpse of something dark red underneath the ramp. He grabbed Daisy’s arm and pointed. “Look,” he said. “The book.”

They hurried back down the ramp and ducked under it. The big book lay crosswise on top of a stout wooden wagon. It looked bigger than ever, bigger than a grand front door in some palace, with the indecipherable gold markings on the cover making it ever so mysterious.

Daisy said, “Why would he bring it down here? This can’t be a very good place for a valuable old book like this.”

“Nope, but I bet he has a good reason,” Jesse said, walking toward the book with his hand outstretched. He just wanted to touch it again, and then they could go. About two feet from the book,
his knuckles struck something. He flexed his hand and stared before him. Nothing was there, no obstructions that he could see.

Daisy came up beside him with both hands outstretched. Her hands met and then flattened against a surface that was completely unseen and yet obviously solid. She leaned her full weight against the invisible wall, but she could neither budge it nor get any closer to the book.

The hobgoblins gathered round and snuffled curiously.

Jesse followed the invisible wall with his hands, looking for a gap or a chink, but it continued clear around the book, and he eventually wound up back where he had started. When Jesse rubbed his hand against the wall, it made the squeaking sound a balloon makes when you’ve blown it up too big.

“Try to pop it,” Daisy suggested.

Jesse hauled off and punched the wall, but his fist came back and punched him equally hard in the face. “Ouch!” Jesse said, cupping his nose in both hands.

The hobgoblins thought this was very funny. They snorted and snickered and pointed their mitts at him.

Jesse and Daisy turned around and leaned their backs against the wall.

“Don’t you feel like one of those obnoxious mimes?” Daisy said.

“Reminds me of the invisible fence Aunt Maggie put up to keep Emmy in,” Jesse said.

“Except this one squeaks instead of zaps,” said Daisy.

“And punches,” Jesse added, rubbing his nose. Then he turned around thoughtfully and leaned his forehead and palms against the invisible wall, as if he were staring at a tantalizing display in a store window. He had another thought. “Daze, open the backpack. Get the worms.”

“No, Jess. Now isn’t the time,” Daisy said. “It’s time to get out of here.”

The hobgoblins seemed to agree with Daisy. They gestured toward the ramp. One of them was jabbing his mitt in the direction of the tunnel, where the hammering was going on, shaking his head in a worried fashion.

“Just a second, fellas,” Jesse said to the hobgoblins, and then to Daisy, “Miss Alodie said we’re supposed to let the worms out when we are in the presence of the big book.”

“Yeah, but she also said we’d know when the moment was right. She said it would hit us. I’m not feeling hit. All I’m feeling is we need to get the Sam Hill out of here.”

The hobgoblins snorted sharply and bobbed their heads in agreement.

Jesse sighed and pushed himself away from the wall. “It’s not the right time, I guess. Let’s get out of here.”

As Jesse and Daisy walked up the ramp, the rebel hobgoblins stood below and waved good-bye to them with their mitts. Daisy heard a gurgling sound behind her and looked back. One of the hobgoblins was crying fat muddy tears. He blew his snout hard on the sleeve of his jumpsuit and blubbered softly.

Daisy went back down the ramp. She took the bandanna off her head and mimed blowing her nose into it. “Here,” she said, tucking it into the hobgoblin’s jumpsuit sleeve. “Use it in good health.” Then, running up the ramp, she joined Jesse in the Upper Realm.

At the top of the ramp, the cousins stepped into the middle of the clearing in the Deep Woods, just as Jesse had suspected they would. Daisy let herself stand there for a few seconds, head thrown back, taking in big deep breaths of sweet, fresh air.

Jesse did the same, then raised his wrist and looked at his watch. He tapped the face to make sure it was working. “Holy moly, Daze, it’s almost seven-thirty!” he said, looking around.