The Dragon in the Volcano (13 page)

Opal and Galena had brought someone they had met at the Beacons’ runching, a medium-size she-dragon named Mica, as well as a couple of Jasper’s boons, two blustering lugs named Citrine and Zircon. Fiero and Flicker had pulled together a ragtag assembly of their fellows. Bringing up the rear was Spark, leading the fire salamanders, Speedy and Clipper. Jesse was glad to see that Speedy’s tail had grown back.

“Hold up a sec!” he said. He ran into the cottage and got the backpack, adjusting the straps so that it fit over his suit of armor. When he came outside, he saw that the dragons now wore tunics or breastplates emblazoned with the Emerald crest.

Daisy, who stood on the porch, clearly felt obliged to make a speech to their small crowd of
supporters: “I want to thank you all for coming here this morning on behalf of Emerald and Jasper.”

This brought forth a lively round of applause from the crowd.

“I believe you all know now of the threat to the Fiery Realm,” Daisy continued, “by dark forces from the Earthly Realm, in the persons of Sadra the Witch and St. George.”

The dragons nodded and the fire fairies flared brightly in response. Jesse was thinking that Daisy didn’t sound like herself. She sounded like someone much older and more serious.

“St. George,” Daisy said somberly, “is known to us in our world as St. George
the Dragon Slayer
!”

This set off a howl of outrage from the dragons. Daisy could not have gotten them more worked up had she suggested that they use chains of iron to jump rope.

“I don’t need to tell you,” said Daisy, telling them anyway, “that St. George the Dragon Slayer is your mortal enemy and must be stopped at all costs.”

The dragons bellowed and stomped. The fire fairies, even rosy Fiero, went bright white with zeal. The fire salamanders, picking up on the general excitement, slapped their tails on the ground with a
hollow thumping noise that sounded a little like war drums.

“Malachite thinks that St. George will help her gain the Ruby Throne, but my cousin and I have gone up against this man and we know this: the only person he ever helps is himself!”

The dragons and the fire fairies muttered darkly and shook their heads.

“We must expel St. George and his consort from the Fiery Realm and throw Malachite in the hole in place of Jasper.”

“Yay, Jasper!”

“Booo, Malachite!”

When the noise had died away, Daisy said, “All right, who among you knows the way to the Great Grotto?”

The dragons and fire fairies looked uneasily at one another, as if each were waiting for one of the others to step forward and offer something useful.

Finally, the dragon named Citrine spoke up. “Only Malachite and her patrol have ventured that far into the Outer Reaches. And they disappeared last night.”

Daisy groaned in disappointment. But Jesse didn’t despair, because while Daisy had been making her speech, his eyes had been busy. He wondered
why he hadn’t seen it before, and he guessed that it was because he hadn’t been looking for it. The moment he started looking for it, he saw it as clearly as the lines on the palm of his own hand.

“Um, Daze?” he said, tapping her on the shoulder. “Look down.”

Daisy frowned in perplexity. “Why should I look down?”

“Just do it,” he said, smiling. “Trust me.”

Daisy looked down.

“What do you see?” he prompted her softly.

“I see a lava gym sock lying on the stairs,” Daisy said with growing excitement.

“Look over there and tell me what you see,” Jesse said, pointing to the lake path.

“I see more socks! Lots more socks! Once again, our dragon left us a trail of socks to follow!” Daisy said. “Let’s get going!”

“For the greater glory of Emerald of Leandra, forward, ho!” Jesse cried.

Fiero, Flicker, and Spark led the way, following the trail of socks along the shores of the Lake of Fire. They set the pace for the salamanders carrying Jesse and Daisy, followed by the dragons on whose tails the other fire fairies—whose names were Cinder, Ember, Tinder, and Kindle—hitched a ride. In among the socks, there was a jumble of tracks
that Zircon told them were the footprints of at least five dragons.

“Malachite and her rumble!” Daisy said. “Do you think Emmy was tracking them?”

“Either that or they were tracking her,” Jesse said.

The spires of the Ruby City soon dropped behind them as jagged garnet bluffs rose up on their right. The Lake of Fire widened into something that looked and felt like the sea, with a ruler-straight shoreline. When they lost track of the socks, the jumble of dragon footprints led them onward. And whenever they began to feel lightheaded and peckish, the fire fairies found crevasses with air fountains, where everyone took a turn runching on the oxygen bubbling in through the rocks from the Airy Realm. It was like the water fountain at school on a hot day after recess when you had to wait in line to get a drink.

Finally, they reached a point on the shore where both socks and tracks dwindled out. The fire fairies flitted up and down the shoreline, but their search was in vain because the trail clearly ended here. The last marks were two deep dragon footprints dug into the sand, with long gouges on either side.

Daisy frowned down at them. “This is where
Emmy popped her wings and took off,” she concluded.

“Right,” said Jesse. “But where to? And how are we supposed to follow?”

“In that, I think,” said Daisy, pointing. It was difficult to see at first because it was made out of pinkish crystal and blended in. But by staring very hard at it, you could make out a vessel, like an oversize rowboat made from crystal, bobbing invitingly on the waves about thirty or forty yards from the shore.

“I wonder who it belongs to,” Jesse said.

“Who knows?” said Daisy. “But finders keepers.”

Everyone worked together to conjure up a couple of rafts sturdy enough to hold the weight of several dragons and a couple of fire salamanders. When the rafts were finished, Daisy and Jesse tried to coax the fire salamanders on board, but they hung back. They dug their feet into the sand. They brayed and wallowed. They spat wads of petulant fire that set off small explosions.

“I don’t think they like the sea,” Fiero said.

“What are we supposed to do now?” Jesse said. “We can’t just abandon them here on the beach.”

“Yes, we can,” said Spark. “They’ll find their way back to the stable.”

So everyone piled onto the rafts, Citrine and Zircon pushing them with long poles out beyond the foamy pink breakers toward the ship. Daisy was happy to see Clipper and Speedy vamoosing down the beach toward the Ruby City like a pair of red-and-white barber poles on legs.

With help from the two biggest dragons, they all boarded the boat, distributing their weight evenly so that the vessel wouldn’t list. Opal and Zircon stayed on the port side with Jesse and Daisy; Mica and Galena went over to the starboard side. Citrine remained amidships. The fire fairies crewed, flitting about the deck and the rigging, carrying out Citrine’s orders.

“Weigh the anchor!” Citrine bellowed.

Spark and Fiero pulled up the anchor by its crystal chain.

“Hoist the mainsail!” Citrine shouted.

The fire fairies hauled up a sail of shimmering copper-colored silk, which immediately filled with the warm winds gusting from the shore and sent them whooshing out to sea.

The cousins stood at the rail and watched the foaming pink wake. Jesse pointed. “More socks,” he said.

“She must have dropped them as she flew,” Daisy said. “It’s good to know we’re headed in the right direction.”

“This is kind of fun,” Jesse said.

Just then, a head the size of their entire boat emerged from the sea. Covered in purple scales, it had yellow fangs, fiery red eyes, and a long plum-colored tongue. On a long, thick neck, the creature lifted its whole head out of the water, dripping and hissing and weaving. All hands shrank to the far side, and the deck tipped toward the sea, away from the long, slithering tongue.

Jesse drew his sword and scrambled up the pitched deck, prepared to do battle with the monster.

Opal caught him by the tunic and drew him back to her side. “Resheathe your weapon, Keeper,” she said. “That creature’s all spit and no flame.”

As if it had heard, the monster reared back and spat, covering the ship from stem to stern in a great dripping glob of spit the color of grape bubble gum.

“Did I say this was fun?” Jesse said through a faceful of purple goo.

But the spit smelled familiar to Daisy, like the stuff in the canteen: hot and peppery one minute, cool and minty the next. It was sort of
refreshing. “It’s a fire serpent!” Daisy said.

“Right you are,” said Opal. “This sea is its home.”

As if hocking that humungous wad of spit had satisfied it, the fire serpent sank beneath the magma waves and disappeared from sight.

Everyone returned to their places. The fire fairies swabbed the decks and distributed silken cloths for the passengers to clean off the purple slime.

“I liked that stuff better from a canteen,” said Jesse. He was just handing the soiled cloth to Flicker when Fiero, up in the rigging, called out: “Land ahead!”

They lined up along the port rail and looked. The shore they were nearing had a winding beach of glistening black stone. Just beyond the narrow beach, a jungle rose up like a long red wall of fire. Emmy had left a series of purple socks that led up the shingle and disappeared into the thick of the jungle.

“Prepare to drop anchor!” Citrine called out to the fire fairies.

They anchored just beyond the breakers, where they conjured up two more rafts to carry them to the shore. Stepping out on the beach, they gathered at the head of the trail. The jungle was dark and
deep. Everyone stood around, peering uneasily into the tangle of trees. No one seemed particularly enthusiastic about entering it, even though the line of socks beckoned. The trail that led into the jungle was crude and narrow, the sort made by wild animals.

Jesse stepped away from the group, drew his sword, and held it high. In a voice slightly less robust than the one he had started the trip with, he cried out, “For the greater glory of Emerald of Leandra, forward, ho!”

“All hail Emerald!” everyone cried.

They fell silent as they entered the jungle. The trees were much taller than they had appeared from the beach, towering overhead as in a rainforest. The strange cries of birds and insects echoed in the warm pink fog, a fog that penetrated their clothing and worked its way into their lungs, sending them into fits of sneezing and coughing. It was like being in a vast steam room with a bunch of people with very bad colds. The footing grew soft and squishy, and the path narrowed.

Through the fog, Daisy saw trees and plants growing up out of pools of murky water. There were sections back home in the Deep Woods taken over by beavers that this place reminded her of, except that none of the growing things here were green.
Most were red. Many were black. It was creepy and unnatural.

Galena’s voice came from somewhere behind them in the pink fog. “Whatever you do, Keepers, do not step off the path into the water.”

“That’s okay,” Daisy assured her. “Jesse and I are good swimmers.”

“Not here you aren’t,” Fiero said. “This whole area overlaps with the Watery Realm. That is the cause of the steam. Water is deadly to you now—as it is to us—and will remain so for as long as you reside in the Fiery Realm.”

“Oh,” said Daisy, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. It was weird to think of the element that she had always considered a second home as being fatal.

Fiero lit on Daisy’s shoulder. “I hate this place,” she said with a flickering, sniffling shudder. Her jolly rosiness gone, she had shrunk down to a small blue knot of worry.

As Daisy walked along, the top of a scaly head poked out of one of the shallow pools just off to her right. It was greenish gray and let out a deep growl that set the water to bubbling and frothing. “Another fire serpent?” Daisy asked.

Fiero cowered behind Daisy’s shoulder. “No!” she said timorously. “That is a water serpent. It is
licking in from the Watery Realm the same way we lick in to the Earthly Realm. Usually, they don’t let much more than their heads poke through. They’re just curious. But I’ve heard of fire fairies getting extinguished by an accidental splash from a wet licker.”

“Maybe
that’s
what happened to the missing fire fairies,” Jesse said. “They weren’t kidnapped. They were just … accidentally extinguished by wet lickers.”

“Never! Fire fairies would never come here on their own,” Spark said.

After a while, the pools dried up and they were back on firm ground again. Everyone stopped sneezing and sniffling. Fiero gradually recovered her rosy glow and began bouncing about, pointing out the wildflowers and orchids to Daisy. Daisy took her wildflower notebook out of the backpack and sketched pictures of them as she walked along, writing down the names Fiero told her.

The jungle began to thin out, and eventually they emerged onto a rocky promontory. The view that stretched out before them took their breath away. For the longest time, they stood in silence, taking it in.

Finally, Fiero spoke up. “This is the Great Grotto. I have never been here myself, but my
great-grandflame, Fiero the First, visited this place once and described it to me. I will never forget the stories she told.”

“It’s like the Grand Canyon,” Jesse said, “only about twenty times bigger.”

Dragons, Keepers, and fire fairies lined up along the rim of the canyon and continued to drink in the sight. The vast geological formation, extending off into the purple-pink mists, looked like an enormous multicolored geode, cracked open and lying before them. This place seemed to contain every precious and semiprecious gem in existence, mixed together like the colored sands of that other natural wonder, the Painted Desert.

“Got that spyglass handy?” Jesse asked.

Daisy conjured up another one and handed it to Jesse. He peered through it. “What do you make of that?” he asked as he handed the spyglass to her.

Daisy peered through it. A castle with stout turrets and soaring spires made of gleaming onyx clung to the side of the grotto, almost blending in with the natural onyx from which it had been hewn. Daisy didn’t know what to make of it, but she did not like the look of it one bit.