White vapor, damp and cold as ice, surged from his jaws. Hissing, the chill escaped his body until he collapsed like a punctured balloon. The icy vapor drifted through the cavern, hanging like clouds above the stone dragons.
Firedrake and Maia stopped and hovered motionless in the white mist. It was getting cold in the cave, very cold. Shivering, Ben and Sorrel pressed close to each other, narrowing their eyes as they looked down. But the mists hid Nettlebrand from them, and there was little left of him to be seen now, only a hunched shadow.
Cautiously Firedrake and Maia flew down through the chilly mist. Snowflakes settled on Sorrel’s coat and stung Ben’s face with cold. There was no sound except for the buzzing of Lola’s plane somewhere in the fog.
“There!” whispered Burr-Burr-Chan as Maia and Firedrake landed on the ground, which was now covered with molten gold. “There he is.”
53. The Dwarf’s Request
Nettlebrand’s armor lay in a huge pool of gold, looking like a cast-off snake skin. Snowflakes hissed as they melted on its surface. Greenish fumes drifted out past the teeth in the monster’s half-open jaws. His eyes were dark now, like extinguished lamps.
Stepping carefully, the two dragons waded through the liquid gold to see what was left of their enemy. Lola whirred past them and landed on the molten armor. When the rat opened her cockpit with a sudden jerk, Twigleg put his head out from his shelter behind the backseat and gazed incredulously at what had once been his master.
“Well, take a look at that!” said Lola, hopping out onto one wing. “Nothing but tin, that creature. Like one of the human’s machines, right?” She tapped the gold, which was still warm. “Sounds hollow.”
Twigleg, wide-eyed, peered out of the cockpit. “It’ll show itself now!” he whispered.
“What will show itself?” Lola sat on the side of the wing, dangling her legs.
But the homunculus did not answer. Transfixed, he was staring at Nettlebrand’s open mouth, from which green vapors were still rising.
“What are you waiting for, Twigleg?” asked Firedrake, slowly coming closer. “Nettlebrand is dead.”
The homunculus looked at him.
“Were the ravens dead?” he asked. “No. They turned back into what they’d been all along. What kind of creature did the alchemist use to make Nettlebrand? He couldn’t give him life, because he couldn’t really create life. He could only borrow it from some other living creature.”
“Some other living creature?” Sorrel shifted uncomfortably on Firedrake’s back. “You mean something’s about to crawl out of there?” She pulled at the straps. “Come on, Firedrake, we can watch this from a safe distance, can’t we?”
But the dragon did not move. “What kind of creature, Twigleg?” he asked.
“Oh, there aren’t many creatures whose life you can borrow as you might a warm jacket,” said the homunculus, never taking his eyes off Nettlebrand’s muzzle.
The others looked at one another, puzzled.
“Well, don’t keep us in suspense, homplecuss,” said Lola, rising to her paws. “Is the fight over or not?”
“There!” whispered Twigleg, without looking at her. He leaned forward and pointed. “Look at that! Here comes Nettlebrand’s life.”
A toad hopped out of the half-open mouth.
It landed with a splash in the pool of gold, jumped out again in alarm, and hopped up on a snow-covered stone.
“A toad?” Sorrel leaned down from Firedrake’s back, an incredulous expression on her face. The toad looked at her with golden eyes and began croaking uneasily to itself.
“Nonsense, humplecuss,” said Lola. “You’re joking. The monster swallowed that toad at some point, that’s all it is.”
But Twigleg shook his head. “Believe me or not as you like, but the alchemist was good at making something terrible out of a tiny creature.”
“Should we catch it, Twigleg?” asked Firedrake.
“Oh, no.” The homunculus shook his head again. “The toad’s harmless. Nettlebrand’s wickedness came from our creator, not the toad itself.”
Sorrel wrinkled her forehead. “A toad! Fancy that!” Suddenly she grinned at Twigleg. “So that’s why you didn’t want the dragon-fire to touch you. You were made from a hoppity old toad like that, right?”
Twigleg looked at her with annoyance. “No,” he replied, sounding hurt. “I was probably made from something much smaller, if you must know. The alchemist preferred woodlice or spiders for beings of my size.” So saying, he turned his back on Sorrel.
Firedrake and Maia carried their riders out over the pool of liquid gold. The toad watched them go. It didn’t move, not even when Ben and the brownies climbed down from the dragons and went to the edge of the golden pond for one last look at what remained of Nettlebrand’s armor. The toad hopped away only when Lola revved the engine of her plane.
Sorrel was going to follow it, but Firedrake gently held her back with his muzzle.
“Let it go,” he said, and turned around.
Something small was scurrying through the snow toward him, something stout with a large hat and a shaggy beard. It threw itself flat on the floor in front of Firedrake and Maia, wailing pitifully. “Have mercy, silver dragons, have mercy on me. Grant me one wish. The greatest wish of my life. Grant me my wish, or my heart will be eaten away by longing for the rest of my wretched days.”
“Isn’t this Nettlebrand’s little spy?” asked Maia in surprise.
“Yes, yes, I admit it!” Gravelbeard struggled to his knees and looked timidly up at her. “I didn’t spy of my own free will. He made me do it, honest!”
“Huh! Liar!” said Twigleg, clambering out of the rat’s plane. “You sneaked off to him of your own free will in the first place. Out of pure greed for gold. If it weren’t for you, he’d never have heard of Firedrake!”
“Well, okay,” muttered Gravelbeard, tugging at his beard. “Maybe. But —”
“Look around you!” Twigleg interrupted him. “You can bathe in his gold now. How about that?”
“Is that your wish?” Firedrake stretched and looked down at the dwarf, frowning. “Come on, out with it. We’re all tired.”
But Gravelbeard shook his head so hard that his hat almost fell off.
“No, no, I’m not interested in the gold anymore,” he cried. “Not a bit. I couldn’t care less about it. What I want,” he said, spreading his stumpy arms wide, “what I want is to stay in this cave. That’s my wish.” He looked hopefully at the two dragons.
“What for?” asked Burr-Burr-Chan suspiciously.
“I’d like to make it even more beautiful,” whispered Gravelbeard. He looked around him reverently. “I’d like to bring the stones hidden here to light, very carefully, very slowly. I can see them, you know. I can hear them whispering. On the walls, inside the columns. A tiny tap here, a thin shaving taken off the rock there — and they’d be shining and sparkling in all the colors of the rainbow.” He sighed and closed his eyes. “It would be wonderful.”
“Hmm,” murmured Burr-Burr-Chan. “Doesn’t sound like a bad idea. But the dragons must decide.”
Firedrake yawned and looked at Maia. The she-dragon was so tired that she could scarcely keep on her feet. She had breathed out so much fire that for the first time in her life she felt cold.
“I don’t know,” she said, glancing at the stone dragons. “I don’t need this cave anymore, now that I don’t have to hide from the Golden One. But what about them? Won’t his hammering disturb them?”
Gravelbeard looked around.
“Who do you mean?” he asked uneasily.
“Come with me,” said Firedrake, offering the dwarf his tail. Hesitantly Gravelbeard settled between the spines, and Firedrake carried him around the huge pool of gold and over to the dragons who had turned to stone. Maia and the others followed them.
“These are the other twenty dragons Nettlebrand was after,” explained Firedrake, when Gravelbeard jumped down from his tail to land on the paw of a st
one dragon. “Twigleg lied to you to keep Nettlebrand eager for the hunt. We wanted to lure him here.”
The dwarf inspected the petrified bodies with interest.
“They stopped drinking moonlight,” said Maia.
She settled on the floor. The snow was melting in the warmth of the cave, and bright pools of water were forming on the ground, but it was too late now for Nettlebrand to disappear into them.
“Yes, such things can happen quickly,” murmured Gravelbeard, tapping an expert finger against one stone paw. “Stone grows fast. People don’t realize that.”
No one was really listening to him. Firedrake settled drowsily on the floor beside Maia. Burr-Burr-Chan and Sorrel were preparing a mushroom picnic. Lola was wiping splashes of gold off her plane. They were all weary after the battle that was now behind them. Only Ben really listened to Gravelbeard’s remark.
“What do you mean?” he asked, crouching down beside the dwarf. Twigleg clambered up on Ben’s knee. “Have you ever seen anything like this before? Something live that turned to stone?”
“Certainly.” Gravelbeard laid his hand on the dragon’s stony scales. “It happens to fabulous creatures very easily. Your castles are full of them. Dragons, winged lions, unicorns, demons, all turned to stone. Human beings find them and put them on display thinking they’re stone all through, which of course they aren’t. Usually there’s a breath of life left in them somewhere. But humans don’t know that. They display them as if they’d actually made them. Huh!” The dwarf wrinkled his nose scornfully. “Conceited folk, human beings. Now with these,” added Gravelbeard, pushing back his hat and looking up at the stone dragons, “the shell isn’t very thick yet. It could easily be cracked open.”
“Cracked open?” Ben looked at the dwarf incredulously.
“That’s right.” Gravelbeard straightened his hat. “But, personally, I like them better turned to stone.”
“Firedrake!” cried Ben, jumping up so suddenly that Twigleg slipped off his knee. “Firedrake, listen to this.”
The dragon sleepily raised his head, and Maia woke with a start.
Gravelbeard grasped Twigleg’s arm in fright. “What does the little human want?” he whispered. “I haven’t done a thing! You’re my witness! I didn’t even take out my hammer.”
“The dwarf says he can bring them back to life!” cried Ben excitedly.
“Bring who back to life?” muttered Firedrake, yawning.
“The dragons!” said Ben. “The stone dragons. He says the stone is only a thin layer and can be cracked open like a shell, understand?”
Sorrel and Burr-Burr-Chan looked up from their picnic.
“If you ask me, the dwarf just wants our permission to hammer at the rocks around here,” said Sorrel, biting the stalk off a mushroom. “Cracked open like a shell? Nonsense!”
“It’s not nonsense!” Gravelbeard, looking insulted, planted himself in front of the claws of one of the stone dragons. “I can prove it.” Taking the hammer from his backpack, the dwarf climbed up a spiny tail until he was standing on the petrified dragon’s back. “It will take a bit of time,” he called down, “but you just wait and see!”
The dragons looked at him doubtfully.
“Can we help?” asked Maia.
The mountain dwarf merely shook his head scornfully. “You? With your great big paws? No chance! Even that little human doesn’t have enough feeling in his fingers to do that.” Looking important, Gravelbeard straightened his hat. “We mountain dwarves are the only people who can do this sort of thing.”
“Good night, then,” muttered Sorrel, turning back to her mushrooms. “By the time one of them hatches out of his stone shell, I’ll probably be toothless.”
“A day!” called Gravelbeard, waving his hammer excitedly in their direction. “I’ll need a day, perhaps less. You wait and see.”
Twigleg sighed and made himself comfortable on Ben’s lap. “Terribly conceited, these mountain dwarves,” he whispered to the boy. “They always have to know best. But he just might do it. They really do have a lot of experience with stone.”
“A day?” Firedrake yawned and looked down at the little dwarf, still doubtful. “You certainly talk big, don’t you? Well, wake us if you really do find any sign of life, all right?”
“Yes, yes,” replied Gravelbeard. He kneeled down, passed a hand experimentally over the stone scales, and began tapping very carefully, wielding his hammer with tiny strokes that made scarcely any more noise than the ticking of a clock.
For a while Ben watched the dwarf at work, although his eyelids kept closing. But at some point, when the dragons and the brownies had been asleep for a long time and faint snoring was coming from Lola’s plane, he, too, fell asleep, and so did Twigleg.
All was still in the great cavern. Only Gravelbeard went on tapping away tirelessly with his hammer. Every now and then, he cast a glance at the remains of Nettlebrand’s armor, lying in the slowly solidifying pool of gold. Then he chuckled gleefully and returned to his work.
54. A Dragon Wakes
The first dragon woke when they were all still asleep.
Gravelbeard had opened up a long crack, thin as a thread, in the dragon’s stony shell. When he raised his hammer again to widen it by just a fraction, the stone quivered beneath his feet, very faintly, barely perceptibly. Gravelbeard put his ear to the crack and listened. A rustling noise came from it, the sound of scales scraping against rough stone. More fine lines cracked open beneath the dwarf’s feet. He leaped clear and landed on the sleeping boy’s soft stomach.
“Ouch!” Ben sat up in alarm. “What’s up?”
Twigleg rubbed his eyes, dazed.
“Done it!” cried Gravelbeard, dancing around on Ben’s stomach in his stout boots.
Twigleg turned to the stone dragons.
“Listen, young master!” he whispered.
But Ben had already heard it for himself. Sounds of snorting and groaning were coming from the stone.
“Firedrake!” Ben grabbed Twigleg and Gravelbeard and leaped back. “Firedrake, wake up! He’s moving!”
The others all woke with a start.
“What’s up?” cried Lola, jumping out of her plane.
“He’s hatching out!” cried Ben. With two bounds, the rat was on his shoulder.
The gray stone into which Gravelbeard had driven his hammer cracked, crumbled, crunched open—and burst into a thousand pieces.
They all retreated in alarm.
Dusty and coughing, limbs stiff, a dragon crept out of the ruins. His eyes were still half-closed. He struggled out with faltering steps, shaking a few stones off his scales, and opened his eyes. Confused, he looked around him, like someone waking from a dream.
Maia took a step toward him. “Shimmertail,” she said. “Do you recognize me?”
For a few moments, the dragon just looked at her. Then, slowly, he stretched out his neck and sniffed.
“Maia,” he said. “What’s happened?”
He turned his head to Firedrake, who was standing behind Maia. “Who are you, and” — he added, staring at the brownies and Ben, who had Gravelbeard, Twigleg, and Lola all on his shoulders — “who are these?”
“One of them’s a Dubidai!” replied Burr-Burr-Chan, crossing his four arms. “Remember them, Shimmertail?”
Shimmertail nodded, still confused. Then his gaze fell on the molten remains of Nettlebrand’s armor, and he flinched back in alarm.
“He’s here!” he whispered. “The Golden One is here, too!”
“No, he was here!” said Sorrel, scratching her stomach. “But we melted him down.”
“Well, not us exactly,” added Burr-Burr-Chan. “Firedrake and Maia did it.”
Shimmertail took another cautious step toward Maia. “You defeated the Golden One? Just the two of you?” He shook his head and closed his eyes in disbelief. “This is a dream,” he murmured. “A beautiful dream. It must be.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Maia, nudging him until he o
pened his eyes again. “The golden dragon is dead.”
“Or sort of dead, anyway,” added Ben.
Shimmertail turned to the boy in amazement. “The dragon rider!” he whispered.
Maia nodded and blew the stone dust off Shimmertail’s forehead. “The dragon rider has come back, and the Golden One is defeated.”
“Just like the old stories,” murmured Shimmertail, gazing at Nettlebrand’s molten armor. “Like the stories you always used to tell, Maia.”
“But it wasn’t the stories that defeated him,” said Ben, putting Lola and the dwarf down on the ground.
“No, it wasn’t, it was us!” cried Sorrel, spreading her arms wide. “All of us together. Brownies, dragons, the little human, the homunculus, the rat, the mountain dwarf. A story to melt anyone’s heart!” She chuckled. “Sad to say, you slept through the whole thing. Like them.”
She pointed to the other dragons, still crouching motionless inside their stony skins. Shimmertail went over to them. He stood among the ruins of his own stone shell, unable to take it all in.
“What happened?” he asked softly. “Tell me, Maia. What’s all this if it isn’t a dream?”
The she-dragon went over to him and gently nuzzled his dusty flank. “Does that feel like a dream? No, you’re awake. The mountain dwarf there woke you.”
Gravelbeard proudly thrust out his chest.
“Will he wake the others, too?” asked Shimmertail.
The dwarf crossed his arms and grinned. “Of course. If we can make a little deal.”
“Just like you!” called Twigleg from Ben’s shoulder. “Exactly what I expected you to say, slate-brain. A dwarf never does anything for free. What do you want? Gold? Jewels?”
“No!” cried Gravelbeard indignantly. “Nothing like that, you spidery-legged homunculus. Like I said before, I want to stay in this cave and tap at its walls just a little. Clean and polish up its beauty. And maybe pick out a tiny little stone now and then. That’s all.”
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