by E. G. Foley
“Sounds good,” Tex said. “You boys holdin’ up all right?”
Before they could answer, a ferocious roar blasted out from a peak in the distance and echoed down the valley.
Jake gulped. Even Maddox flinched at the sound.
The Green Man froze with a terror-stricken stare and started to go into motionless tree mode—a natural defense—but Derek turned and continued down the trail, fearless as ever.
“Gentlemen,” he summoned them.
Maddox quickly followed. Striding after them, Jake glanced back to make sure the other two were coming. He saw Tex poke the Green Man in the arm, then point toward the path.
Dr. Plantagenet’s barky camouflage quickly softened back into his usual brownish skin. Tex clapped him on the shoulder, and the veterinarian nodded, gathering his nerve.
Then they all hiked on into ever-deepening wilderness.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Great Minds Think Alike
Meanwhile back at Merlin Hall, Archie hoped Jake remembered to take pictures.
The girls had gone off to watch the Morris dancers, but Archie, still bothered by the unprovoked attack from Ogden Trumbull, found himself brooding on Maddox St. Trinian’s advice.
Maddox was right. A bully like Ogden Trumbull would be back. And if he didn’t bother Archie, next time he’d simply go and bother someone else. The brute was dangerous.
Something had to be done.
Archie knew that, obviously, he didn’t have Maddox’s physical prowess with which to face the threat, but he did have an oversized brain, and that he resolved to put to work on the task for the rest of the afternoon.
There had to be some sort of useful invention to keep the half-troll in line…
Though it was scary, he forced himself to go back into the library where he had been attacked. He had to do some research there to develop the idea brewing in his head. Plus, he simply refused to cower and hide, refused to be chased off from a place that he thought of as his territory. After all, Derek’s glare had run Troll Boy back to the zoo where he belonged, at least for now.
Nevertheless, Archie felt nervous, jumping at any small sound in the library around him. He wasn’t used to having enemies. He did his best to get along with everyone and treat others the same way he wanted to be treated.
Ah, well. He collected a few useful reference books and then sat down to consult them at a table with a good view of the door. If the half-troll came back, he wanted fair warning.
Then he got to work, sketching his plans bit by bit on a notebook as he figured out the specs for his device.
Soon he was engrossed—until the library door banged as somebody came in. He jumped again, jolted out of his concentration. Then he looked up from his work and drew in his breath.
Nixie Valentine!
She padded past the snoozing librarian’s desk without noticing Archie, moving as silently as a little black cat.
Archie tucked his pencil behind his ear and watched her disappear into one of the aisles. A moment later, she reemerged, glancing left and right and looking every bit as suspicious as before. Without a sound, she climbed over the chain that was supposed to stop unauthorized persons from going up the spiral staircase to the gallery above.
It housed the restricted section of the library.
Well, well. Archie lifted an eyebrow. What wouldn’t that girl try? She was ever so amusing, but he still thought Jake was daft to think she was a spy.
Of course, she was sneaking now…
He watched her scale the clunky metal staircase without a sound. When she reached the top, she glanced over her shoulder to make sure the librarian was still comatose, then stole into the aisle marked “Grimoires.”
Archie was usually pretty content in life to follow the rules; breaking them was Jake’s territory. Still, curiosity about this puzzle of a girl made him get up from his chair and stroll casually after her.
There were dangerous books up there, and if she really was a spy for the wicked Dark Druids, someone probably ought to stop her before she did something rash. Besides, after all the unpleasantness with Ogden Trumbull today, the prospect of chatting with the intriguing witch prodigy again already had him feeling more cheerful.
Archie found he was not as good at sneaking as Nixie was. The spiral stairs creaked halfway up, and he paused, wincing. But the librarian merely snorted in his sleep.
Whew. He tiptoed on. A moment later, he arrived in the forbidden gallery, his heart pounding over this act of rebellion.
He stepped into the “Grimoires” aisle and saw Nixie, kneeling on the floor, poring over a couple of huge, ancient books she had lying open. One leaned against the shelf, another on her knee, another on the floor; she was leafing through the pages, obviously looking for something in particular.
“You’re not supposed to be up here,” Archie whispered with a grin.
She glanced up, then blinked when she saw him. “Oh. It’s you again.”
“Just me.” Hands in pockets, he sauntered over. “You’d better hurry before the librarian wakes up. What are you looking for?”
She hesitated, fear flickering in her night-dark eyes. “None of your business.”
“Maybe I can help,” he said, crouching down to her eye-level.
She eyed him warily. “No, thanks. You should go.”
“You’re trying to find a spell, right? What’s the name of it? Don’t worry, I know Latin.” Latin was the favored language of many of the old spells—and most of the antique works of early science. Many times both topics occurred in the same books! Wizards and the scientist-philosophers of old were frequently one and the same.
Nixie let out a sigh when she saw that he wasn’t going away. “Thanks, Mr. Bradford, but I don’t even know what I’m looking for.”
“Please call me Archie.”
She frowned at him uncertainly, and then continued flipping through the pages. “What are you doing here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be outside with everyone else?”
“I’m working on something,” he said.
“I heard you got beat up by the troll kid,” she said glancing at him.
Archie winced. “Does everybody know?”
She sent him a regretful look.
He scowled to hear that his humiliation by Ogden Trumbull was now the talk of the Gathering. She must think he was a weakling. “Well, he’ll be sorry.”
“You’re not hiding from him in here, are you?”
“Certainly not! I’m working on an invention to put him in his place.”
“Really?” This got her attention. “How?”
“Mind your own business,” he replied, giving her back her own prickly words. “Besides, it’s technical. I wouldn’t want to bore you.”
“You just assume it’s too hard for me to understand?”
“Do you think I’d understand your advanced spells?”
She looked at him. “Ah.”
“Let’s just hope it works before that monster attacks somebody else,” Archie said.
“Are you all right? I hope he didn’t hurt you.”
Archie sighed. “I’m fine. Just a little embarrassed to have to be rescued yet again by my cousin, Jake.”
“Oh, this might work!” she whispered all of a sudden as she turned a page.
Archie looked down and read the name of the spell in Latin: Vindico. “What’s it for?”
“Pest removal,” she muttered. Nixie took a piece of paper and a pencil stub out of her pocket and quickly started copying it down. “Would you put those other two books back on the shelf for me?” she whispered, writing at top speed.
“Sure. Nixie?”
“Hold on…I have to get this spell down exactly right.”
His frown deepened, for he had read the Latin title of the spell. “Nixie, I know perfectly well that vindico means to liberate, avenge, punish, or deliver—which would make that some sort of protection spell,” he persisted. “What do you need protection from?”
He
could see that his question startled her. She turned to him with an unguarded stare, a sudden rush of tears flooding into her eyes.
“It’s all right,” he offered. “You can tell me.”
“No. I can’t,” she said in a taut voice, turning away. “I really can’t.”
“Nixie, if somebody’s bothering you—”
“It’s nothing I can’t handle! Leave me alone!” she said fiercely. Finished copying the spell, she jumped to her feet and dashed off, leaving him to put away the book she had been using.
He glanced at the page with the Vindico spell again, but there was no time to lose. Nixie was already pattering down the spiral stairs.
Archie closed the heavy grimoire and slid it back up onto the shelf before hurrying after her. “Nixie, come back!” he insisted in a loud whisper. “Tell me what’s wrong. Maybe I can help you.”
“Just leave me alone, Archie! It’s for your own good.” She braced her hand on the banister and jumped over the chain at the bottom of the steps to escape him.
“Nixie! Protection from what? Or whom?”
“Goodbye!” she said angrily. Then she ran to the heavy front door of the library and used all her strength to haul it open.
He jogged after her. “Nixie, please—wait!”
“Shh!” the librarian scolded him, finally waking from his nap.
Archie stopped and looked at the glaring old man, then lowered his head.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, both worried and confused.
He hated being confused, and girls were possibly the most confusing thing on earth.
Pushing his spectacles back up onto the bridge of his nose, he lifted his head and looked at the door again, his gaze troubled.
With every fiber of his chivalrous nature, he wanted to help this mysterious damsel in distress; Jake wasn’t the only one, after all, who dreamed, deep down, of being a hero.
But the girl herself had said flat-out that it was none of his business, so what was he to do?
He blew out a long sigh. Well, she was pretty dashed good at magic. Maybe the Vindico spell would free her from whatever pests in her life needed removing.
He hoped she’d be all right.
Wish Jake was here, he thought. No doubt his cousin would’ve had some idea about how to help her. Well, provided Jake was not still convinced she was a spy.
Of course, even Archie could admit that her behavior just now had seemed slightly suspicious. But try as he might, he could not think ill of her. Nixie was obviously in some sort of trouble. He just wished he could help.
He resolved to speak to Jake about the matter when he returned from dragon country. For now, his chief worry was taming Ogden Trumbull.
With that, Archie went back to his table and continued working on his new invention.
He was soon engrossed in his figuring once more, calculating and recalculating the amperage, checking his work against Ohm’s Law, looking up different types of conductive materials in his reference books to make sure he wasn’t missing anything. The gadget was coming along well.
He resolved to call it the Bully Buzzer, and it might well change the world for weaklings everywhere.
With a draft of his design plans complete, at least on paper, it was time to focus on step two: building his crafty little device.
A short while later, Archie left the library with ink smudges on his fingers and a mischievous gleam in his eyes. He couldn’t wait to get down to the fine work of wiring up the circuitry.
Long ago, King David had beaten Goliath with five stones and a slingshot. Their mismatched sizes were roughly equal to his and Ogden’s, but Archie’s weapon of choice for slaying his giant would be a few thousand volts of electrical current delivered through a couple of brass nodes.
Indeed, once his Bully Buzzer was ready, Ogden Trumbull had such a surprise in store. Make that, a shock.
Literally.
Archie smiled.
Brains beat brawn every time.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Dracosaurus Silvanus
“Ooo-weee! Look at ’em down there. Sunnin’ like a bunch o’ gators,” Tex whispered as they all peered down from the rocky lookout point.
Jake’s heart pounded as he, too, stared, motionless and sweating from his hike. Halfway down the mountain, a rocky outcrop overlooked a secluded bend in the peaceful river that wound through the valley.
On the flat rocks beside the water, he beheld the magnificent but terrifying sight of a dozen dinosaur-like dragons lounging in the sunshine, relics of primordial history.
The visitors crouched down behind the boulders, staring at them.
“Whatever we gotta do, let’s try not to wake ’em up from their siesta.”
“Agreed,” Dr. Plantagenet murmured.
“Incredible, aren’t they?” Derek glanced at Jake, grinning. He had always been an ardent dragon enthusiast.
Jake nodded in reply, hoping that his dread of the giant reptiles didn’t show on his face. Then he looked again at the clan of beasts below.
The dracosaurs were a dark olive-greenish color for the most part. Some had a dappling of brown or gray spots along their backs—camouflage, no doubt, to help them blend into the forest better.
All sported nubby horns on their heads and twitchy, stand-up ears. They had yellow eyes and sinister large fangs. The stumpy, vestigial wings on their backs, however, lent them a comical air at odds with their wicked crocodile smiles. The dracosaurs were a non-flying species of proto-dragon. The wings, Dr. Plantagenet had explained, were only used to help them with balance, for they were swift runners and long leapers.
Jake was glad to see they were nowhere near as large or terrifying as Old Smokey, the gigantic, solitary, treasure-hording black dragon Jake had seen in Giant Land. The largest dracosaur, by contrast, was about the size of a draft horse, a bit taller at the withers than the top of Jake’s head.
Aye, he told himself in relief, these beasties aren’t very scary at all.
Of course, it wasn’t nighttime yet, when the dracosaurs hunted in packs…
But for now, they were placid.
Jake pulled Archie’s subcompact camera out of his waistcoat and started taking pictures for his friends, as promised.
By the light of the afternoon sun, the dragons were clearly off-duty from terrorizing the forest animals. A few of the dragons slept contentedly, flopped down on their bellies on the flat, sun-warmed stone, twitching away an insect now and then with a flick of a too-small wing.
Some lay on their backs like huge, dozing dogs, legs sprawled, stubby forearms in the air, their stumpy wings spread out beneath them. One let its tail trail lazily in the water while it gnawed its front claws, sharpening them. Another had curled up like a sleeping cat, puffs of smoke rising from its nostrils with every snore.
Jake smiled to see a baby one the size of a Great Dane splash into the water and catch a fish, swallowing it whole in one gulp.
But one dracosaur had separated itself from this idyllic group, taking shelter in a large clump of underbrush. From inside the bushes came a miserable groan.
“I think that’s your patient,” Derek whispered to the Green Man.
The baby dragon in the river, concerned about its relative’s sorrowful moan, bounded over to the one hiding in the bushes.
It made a funny little sound and nosed the edge of the underbrush, as if to say, Are you all right in there?
But the dracosaur in the bushes was in no mood for curious youngsters or for sympathy. It thrust its head out of the bushes and roared, snapping its fangs to scare the little one away.
The baby screeched and ran to the smoke-snoring dragon—apparently its mother—and curled down beside her, still cowering.
“I see what you mean about the pox making them grumpy,” Maddox remarked.
“She’s a feisty one, all right,” Tex drawled.
Dr. Plantagenet nodded. “Definitely our patient. Did you notice the patch of orange scales on her cheek?”
“How can you tell it’s a she?” Jake asked.
“The females have the spots. Males have a row of blunt dorsal spikes from the top of the head to the tip of the tail, like that one over there. I didn’t see any spikes on our unhappy friend. It’s just as well she’s telling the others to leave her alone,” he added. “That way, they might not catch it. Still, we’ll quarantine her for a few days just to make sure the others stay healthy.”
“And how are we going to do that, exactly?” Maddox inquired with a skeptical look.
Dr. Plantagenet studied the dragons’ immediate territory. “They’ll panic if we put her too far away from them. They are group animals, after all. If we can just herd her over into that second basking area… You see those flat rocks farther down the river?”
“Herd her? Sounds like an excellent way to get eaten,” Jake muttered.
The Green Man ignored him. “That should keep her away from the others and still give her access to the river for drinking water and fish to eat. The trick is convincing her to go there so we can set up a barrier between her and the others.”
“Well,” Tex said slowly, scratching his chin, “I can lasso the ol’ gal. Git her movin’ in the right direction.”
Derek nodded. “I’ll help you. Once we get her into the quarantine area, Munroe can keep her distracted. I’ll calm her down with an old trick I know that works on all sorts of reptiles, then Dr. Plantagenet can give her the medicine.”
“What sort of trick?” Jake asked, furrowing his brow.
“There’s a simple way to activate a natural response in lizards that puts them into a trance. You’ll see. I could explain it, but you won’t believe it until you see it with your eyes, anyway.”
He tilted his head curiously. How bizarre.
“Once she’s out, you’ll have about half an hour to administer the medicine,” Derek told the doctor.
