by Finley Aaron
“It’s three blocks,” I remind him. “Besides, I need to get my strength back. The exercise will do me good.”
“I’ll come with you,” Judy announces.
For a second, I’m surprised. But then I realize that my sister has changed. It’s more than just the fact that her eyes are bright purple (though Master Sparks brought us colored contacts and showed us how to put them in, so now it just looks like she’s got muddy brown eyes, a little darker than her previous brown-streaked hazel, but not so much most people would notice. Mine look a dull gray blue).
She’s not afraid of who she is anymore.
Maybe because she’s learned who she is, and who she is, is pretty fearsome.
We’re both way more formidable than I’d ever imagined.
We spend longer than I’d intended at the library. I hadn’t expected to miss the place so much. By the time we head home, school’s been out for half an hour.
The north wind is strong today, blasting against our faces, trying to push us back.
I pause at the alley shortcut.
Judy meets my eyes. Even with color-dulling contacts, I can read what her face is telling me.
Those seniors will be there. They always give you trouble. Best to avoid them.
“I’m a dragon,” I remind her.
“You can’t blow fire at them, or fly away, or teleport.”
“I’m not going to do any of that, but I’m not going to let them control who walks down the alley, either. You don’t have to come this way if you don’t want to.” It occurs to me maybe her brooding phase was sort of because of the seniors in the alley, and not just all about wondering who our mother is, why we were abandoned, and why we’re not normal.
“Of course I’m going with you.” Judy heads resolutely down the alley.
Right. Her brooding phase was not about the guys, then. I’m the one who was most afraid of them. I hurry to catch up with my sister.
We make it down the first block in silence, but by the time we reach the second block, I can see that the shadows shifting near the dumpsters aren’t alley cats or tricks of the light. Their cigarettes glow like red eyes.
Their chattering snickers reach us indistinctly at first, and they take their positions, lining up to block our route home.
I don’t care if they give me a black eye. They’re not going to hurt my sister, though. Maybe I should have sent her around the other way. But no, I can handle this. I can protect her and myself.
I’m a dragon.
Even when I don’t look like one.
“It’s Rude Boy.”
“Hey, Rude Boy, where ya been?”
“I heard you were sick.” The biggest senior blows smoke at my face. “What you sick of?”
“I’m sick of being called Rude Boy.” Sure I still have my speech impediment, but I don’t care. They can tell what I said. “My name is Rudyard.”
“Oh? Rudyard.” For the first time, one of them actually says it correctly.
But the big guy isn’t letting me get away so easily. “Rudyard,” He pronounces it in a mocking tone, the same way they used to say Rude Boy. “Who’s your girlfriend?”
“This is my sister.”
“My name is Judith. If you’ll excuse us, we’re on our way home.” Judy takes a step forward.
Right. We’re not going to stand around arguing forever. I was just hoping to put off the part where we get punched.
And I need to protect my sister. I take a couple of steps so I’m at least almost in front of her, if a bit to the side. Anyway, I’m between her and the biggest senior, so that’s something.
“Oh, excuse you,” he says in that mocking tone of his, blowing smoke our way.
Judy’s still walking, so I keep walking to stay ahead of her.
The other guys guffaw like their leader has said something particularly funny. Their chuckles continue behind us along with chattering snickers, something about Rudyard’s new attitude, and where I disappeared to so suddenly the last time (which is a question I’m not going to answer) and whether Judy really is my sister, but none of that matters, because we made it down the alleyway.
We made it home.
The End
Dear Reader,
I hope you enjoyed this first book in The Lost Dragons series. Though Rudy and Judy braved their adventures and made it safely home again, there are still more adventures to be had, and more dragons to be found.
The second book in The Lost Dragons series is called Nemesis, and it is tentatively scheduled for release in 2016. I’ve included a sample chapter of Nemesis at the end of this volume.
While I imagine many of you readers came to this book after reading the stories in the Dragon Eye series. But if you haven’t experienced those books yet, I encourage you to look for them, as they deal with dragons on a similar mission. The first book in the Dragon Eye series, Dragon, can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Eye-Book-1-ebook/dp/B00POASYBS
Thank you so much for joining me on these adventures!
Finley Aaron
A sample, the first chapter of Nemesis:
Chapter One
May 29, 2002, somewhere over Guatemala
Something’s wrong.
I’ll grant you, I don’t know a whole lot about airplanes, but I’m nearly certain that round thing billowing smoke on the wing outside my window, is one of the airplane’s engines.
Or was.
I don’t think it’s supposed to be billowing smoke any more than it was supposed to erupt in a sudden ball of fire a couple of seconds ago.
But that’s what happened. I saw the whole thing. My sister was sleeping in the seat beside me, and the cabin was quiet. I was gazing out the window, my thoughts on all the uncertainties of our trip and the questions I hope to have answered in the days ahead…and then, without any warning, a ball of fire exploded from the engine outside my window.
Followed by smoke billowing from the blackened cylinder that was moments ago keeping the plane aloft.
Did anybody else see this? Shouldn’t we do something?
Seriously, shouldn’t an alarm sound or at least maybe a light start blinking? The smoke alarm in my parents’ kitchen goes off pretty much any time I try to cook or even just make toast, so, yeah, a big giant fireball on the plane’s wing ought to elicit some response.
I look around the cabin, but most people are absorbed in whatever they’re doing—reading or talking to their seatmates, or looking out windows on the other side of the plane where there is no fireball or trail of dark smoke.
A flight attendant hurries down the aisle. I wave her over and point outside my window to the guttering smoke that’s blackening the clear sky.
“Um, is that…okay?”
She leans in extra close and whispers. “It’s fine. We’re fine. We’ve just lost an engine.”
This does not seem fine to me. Shouldn’t we be concerned? “How many engines do we have?”
“We had two. Now we have one. It’s fine. We’ll probably make an emergency landing. The most important thing is for everyone to stay calm, so please, don’t alert anyone to the situation. When the captain feels it’s the right time, he’ll make an announcement.” As she talks, she reaches past me, pulls my window closed, and then pats me on the head like she wants me to be a good little girl and keep my mouth shut.
Which is more than a bit demeaning, and also super irritating, not to mention not particularly reassuring.
She darts to the back of the plane, and I lift my window shade up just high enough so I can see the engine again.
Yup, still trailing smoke.
My side of the plane seems to be tipped downward more than the other side. I can see the ground clearly. At least there is ground. We were flying over the Gulf of Mexico for the longest time, having left Chicago this morning for El Salvador, where my sister and I are supposed to board a short flight to Guatemala City.
But the land below looks mountainous and tree-covered.
W
here are we going to make an emergency landing in the middle of this? I don’t even see a river.
Maybe it’s just my imagination, but I feel like we’re losing altitude. Not so much like we’re swooping down to land, as just…falling out of the sky.
I glance at my sister. Should I wake her up and tell her what’s going on?
The flight attendant said not to panic.
Gabby is sleeping peacefully. She was too excited to sleep last night, so she was super tired earlier, and could probably use her rest. Besides that, she’s always been a hard sleeper, so she doesn’t wake up easily and once she is awake, she’s usually mega groggy, so if I wake her up, she’ll just be confused and grumpy.
No one else on the plane seems at all alarmed—but then, most of the windows on my side of the plane are closed, probably because the sun has dipped low enough on the horizon to do that glaring thing (though it’s not setting yet—it’s only late afternoon) and people closed them to keep the rays from shining in their eyes.
Anyway, by now the trail of smoke from the engine is thinning. I don’t think the engine’s working—it probably can’t come back after an explosion like the one I saw—but unless passengers start noticing the roar of the engine’s isn’t as loud anymore, they’re probably not going to start freaking out.
I should just stay calm. No doubt the pilot knows exactly what to do. The flight attendant acted like it was no big deal. Probably these sorts of things happen all the time, right?
Much as I try to tell myself everything will be fine, I can’t help the tiny hairs that are creeping up on my neck, or the way my heartbeat is shivering a rapid, staccato beat.
The weird thing, the really weird thing, is that this may not even be my first airplane incident.
The whole reason Gabby and I are traveling to Guatemala is because we were adopted from there when I was a toddler and Gabby was a baby. The story my parents were told—which they thought was strange and either a misunderstanding because of the language barrier or culture or something—was that Gabby and I walked away from an airplane accident, in which everyone else, and presumably our parents, were killed.
Or at least, I walked away. Gabby was a baby, so apparently I was carrying her.
Although I don’t know how well a toddler can carry a baby, even for just a few feet, let alone from a fiery plane crash in which everyone else died.
But that’s the story the nun from the Guatemalan orphanage told my adoptive parents. She heard it from the farmers who worked on the land where the plane went down.
Obviously there are some serious problems with the story, like the fact that neither Gabby nor I have any scars or memories of the incident, if there was an incident, which I sometimes doubt. Also, though I’ve searched newspaper records and even combed the Internet for any mention of a plane crash around the time we were brought to the orphanage (October 2, 1988), I’ve never discovered anything remotely close to where we were found.
So while it’s possible we might have been in a plane crash, there’s no proof of it.
That’s one of the mysteries Gabby and I hope to solve on our visit.
Ding.
A tone rings through the cabin—that sound that says the captain is going to make an announcement.
Sure enough, our pilot, some guy from Chicago, starts talking in a voice that sounds completely not freaking out to the point of almost sounding bored. “This is your captain speaking. Due to a technical malfunction, we’re going to be making an emergency landing in Guatemala. I’ve contacted the airport in Cobán, and they are preparing for our arrival. Please fasten your seatbelts and prepare for landing.”
No sooner has the captain finished speaking than one of the flight attendants comes on with the usual speech about putting seats in an upright position and all that.
I’ve flown enough times, I’m only half listening.
Instead, I grab my Guatemala travel guide out of the seat pocket where I stashed it when I got bored of reading earlier, and I flip to the index to find Cobán, the place where we’re going to be landing—an emergency landing, though the captain tried to downplay that part and didn’t give us many details.
What he did say was that they were preparing for our arrival, which I’m going to guess means more than just adjusting their schedule to give us a time slot. They’re probably getting fire trucks ready, and who knows what else.
How do you land a plane with only one engine, anyway? I mean, there’s one on each wing for balance, right? So, doesn’t having one go out make things tricky? Thrust is only coming from one side?
As if to confirm my suspicions, the plane sinks lower in the air. Maybe this is because we’re coming in for a landing, or maybe it’s because the lone engine can’t keep us in the air all by itself.
Cobán. I flip to page 234 and read about the place where we’re going to land. It’s got over 200,000 people. It’s in the mountains, in the center of a large coffee-growing area.
Mountains. Yup. I can confirm those by looking out my window.
What I can’t confirm is the presence of the actual city of Cobán. I mean, 200,000 people can’t just be hiding under the trees. There’s got to be buildings and roads…something. I would just assume it’s up ahead a bit, except we are getting really low in the sky.
And some of these mountains are kind of high.
The flight attendants are now going down the aisles, answering questions, dictating calmness, and making sure everyone has their seat belt on.
Seat belt. Right.
Where’s my seat belt?
I got up to use the restroom earlier, and, uh, it’s somewhere under me. My jacket’s kind of in the way, but here’s one half, a nylon strap with the metal clicker thingy. Okay, where’s the other half?
A flight attendant is moving down our aisle, confirming that everyone has their seatbelt properly buckled. She stops at our row. “I’m getting it,” I murmur, waving the one end at her.
Fortunately there’s a guy in the next row who has a question about how he’s supposed to get to El Salvador from Cobán, so the flight attendant stops paying attention to me and instead tells the guy the airport will work with us once we’re on the ground to make sure everyone gets to their destination, and not to worry because we’ll be landing any minute.
I’m only half listening to this because I just got my seatbelt buckled, and it’s occurred to me I should make sure Gabby’s buckled. I mean, I’m pretty sure she is, or was, but then again I don’t know for certain, so I should check.
I reach past her to her left side and I’m digging around next to her hip, searching for the seat belt, and I find one end, but it’s most certainly not buckled.
So then I start rooting around next to her other hip, looking for the other half, and Gabby is totally snoring away (I told you she’s a heavy sleeper), and I can feel the plane losing altitude with a sort of stuttering motion like scooting down the stairs on your butt, except the plane has no butt and there are no stairs. There are only mountains, which are way too big and way too close, and I’m pretty sure the plane pretty much just swerved to miss one.
About that time, I find the strap of the other half Gabby’s seat belt, except it’s buckled to the other half of my seatbelt.
I buckled my belt to half of hers. Don’t ask me how. Anyway, I’ve got to undo it and buckle them properly, or neither of us will be safe. I unbuckle it and start digging for the proper half of mine. It’s got to be around here somewhere.
My fingers brush something cold and metal.
There it is.
Now, I’ve got to buckle Gabby in safely. She’s my little sister and I promised my parents she’d be safe on this trip with me—that I would keep her safe and make sure nothing bad happened to her.
My right hand’s holding one half of the buckle and my left is trying to get a decent hold on the other half (I just had it a second ago, but the plane is lurching in a bad way now, and it’s tough to hold on to anything). I’ve got my arms more or l
ess around my sister, and she’s sleeping peacefully in spite of the fact that I think we both left our seats on that last pitch.
Then I hear a sound like a tree branch breaking, and it feels like something’s grabbed the plane. That’s followed almost instantaneously by giant cracking boom, almost like thunder, and I look up in time to see an enormous fireball traveling toward us from the front of the plane.
For what feels like a few seconds, even though it’s probably way less than that, everything seems to happen in slow motion. Instantly I realize we must have crashed into the trees and a mountain, and probably everybody is going to die.
But I can’t let my sister die! I promised I’d protect her. My arms are mostly around her anyway, and I wrap them tight around her body and pinch my eyes shut and wish more than anything I could protect her from the fireball and the crash.
So then, this is weird. I feel a rush of something really hot moving past me, but it’s more like I’m moving past it? That’s really hard to explain. I’m holding tight to my sister and then we’re kind of ricocheting against stuff—I can feel hard things thudding against my shoulders, against my back—and then we’re bouncing and the even more weird thing is I don’t feel like I’m in pain.
Now I’m no longer moving and I’m on my back and whatever I’m lying on feels slightly cool and not like it’s burning, so I open my eyes.
I’m in the jungle. There are lots of green leafy plants all around me, and the air smells mostly like moist earth and growing things, accompanied by a strong odor of burning.
Sure enough, a huge cloud of black smoke is churning toward the sky from a couple hundred feet behind me. I can’t see much because of the trees, but I’m going to assume that’s the plane back there.
How did I escape that? Why am I not in pain?
I look down. My sister is still curled against me. She’s starting to wake up (assuming we’re not actually dead, I’m going to have to give her a hard time about being able to sleep through a plane crash) and she looks completely unharmed. Her hair’s not even singed.
