by E. G. Foley
“Please don’t tell me you have to give that thing a shot?” Jake said.
“Fortunately, no,” the Green Man said with a slight shudder. The thought alone made him look like he might go into tree mode again, but he shook it off with a will. “It’s a topical ointment. A five-percent carbolic acid solution, mixed with a little powdered calendula—an excellent antiseptic herb. I’ll have to spray the medicine on all her effected scales with this.”
He reached into the rope-sack and pulled out a strange contraption that looked like an oversized plant mister. It had a copper nozzle and pump fixed atop a thick glass jar. The medicine was inside. The sprayer sat in a leather holder with a sturdy strap, which Dr. Plantagenet put over his shoulder.
“What can I do to help?” Maddox asked.
“You boys will be in charge of setting up the barrier behind the dragon once we’ve moved her into the quarantine spot. Find two good strong trees to tie the rope netting to. That’s what I brought this for.”
Dr. Plantagenet removed the last few items from the sack, then he untied a couple of key knots in the rope netting. Once they were freed, he showed them how it could be unrolled like a very large, sturdy swath of fisherman’s net, perfectly suitable for using as a barrier.
“That’s clever,” Jake said.
“Are you sure this rope is strong enough to hold back a dragon?” Maddox asked.
“Can’t you smell it? I soaked it overnight in stinkberry juice, same as our bracelets. An old trick from medieval days. Besides, I don’t think the others will really want to go near her with her acting so hostile. They can usually tell when something’s wrong with one of their own.”
“Now, listen up, you young’uns.” Tex tipped his hat back and stared sternly at Jake and Maddox. “When you boys go down there, you keep your shields in hand in case one of Miss Grumpy’s cousins takes an interest.”
“Yes, sir,” said Maddox, but Jake was only just absorbing the fact that the adults actually wanted him to go down there.
Near the dragons.
“Um, I’d like to live to see my fourteenth birthday,” he said gingerly.
“Ah, they won’t bother you. You can see how inactive they are in the daytime,” Derek said. “They feed at night.”
“But you said they’re very territorial.”
“We’re not dragons,” Derek said. “Besides, these fellows are pretty well used to people from the Order coming through.”
The Green Man nodded thoughtfully. “I daresay they can probably sense we’re here to help their ailing pack member. Even I will admit that dragons do seem to have an ancient wisdom all their own.”
“When they’re not biting your legs off,” Jake said under his breath.
“I can put up the barrier myself if you’re afraid,” Maddox offered.
Jake scowled at him, cheeks flushing. “I’m not scared. I was only…joking.”
Derek smiled and looked away.
“If anyone’s gonna get eaten, it’s gonna be me,” Tex declared as he stood up. “In which case, she better like spicy foods ’cause I take Tabasco sauce in my coffee.”
“Yee-haw,” Jake encouraged him, ignoring Maddox.
Tex rumpled his hair in reply.
“Be careful, Munroe,” Derek advised. “Don’t do anything crazy. Like the boy said, you’re our ride home.”
“Don’t do anything crazy, he says!” The cowboy scoffed. “I’m about to lasso a danged dragon here! Shoot. You just back me up quick with that weird lizard trick o’ your’n.”
“Absolutely.”
Tex took a deep breath, pulled his hat down lower over his narrowed eyes. He eased the loop of rope off his belt and sneaked down off the ledge.
“He’s insane,” Jake whispered.
“That’s a Lightrider for you,” Dr. Plantagenet remarked as they all looked on.
Derek took off his coat while he waited, and the boys picked up their shields. Maddox took the bundle of rope netting with a nod to Jake; their task would require them to work together. Dr. Plantagenet pumped the nozzle of his medicine sprayer to make sure that it, too, was ready to go when the moment came.
Below, Tex crept down the slope as silent as a sidewinder snake. Alligator boots planted firmly in the dust, step by step, he cleared the area where the other dragons were relaxing and started closing in on the underbrush.
He shifted the rope in his hands, then started twirling the knotted loop in his right.
They heard him let out a low whistle. “Come on outta thar, lil lady.” He kicked the edge of the underbrush, startling the grumpy dragon.
It rose upright on its hind legs out of the thorns and shrubberies and promptly roared at him.
Jake stared, riveted, in disbelief as Tex threw the rope.
It landed across the dragon’s snout.
One blast of fiery breath would have burnt the rope to cinders, but Tex tugged and whipped it somehow, snapping the dragon’s mouth shut.
The tall, scaly beast blinked, looking more astonished than even Jake was.
Then three things happened all at once: The dragon turned tail and fled toward the basking area; Tex held onto the rope with a wild “Yee-haw!”; and Derek leaped off the ledge and chased after them.
As he ran past, all the other dragons looked on with lazy curiosity.
Jake’s heart thumped in his chest.
“Let’s go,” Dr. Plantagenet whispered. He and the boys hurried down the slope, praying none of the other dragons decided they were in the mood for lunch.
Thankfully, they cleared the main area without incident. As they rushed past, the dracosaurs glanced over, but only the baby had the energy to come bounding after them to find out what they were up to.
“What about these two trees here?” Maddox asked quickly, pointing. “Do they look strong enough?”
The Green Man nodded. “Put up the netting and then come round on this side of it, please!”
“Gladly,” said Jake.
He took one end of the rope and Maddox took the other. They ran toward opposite trees, rolling out the netting between them to block the wide, well-worn path the dracosaurs had made traipsing back and forth between their basking areas. Though the rope netting easily spanned the width, the boys had to climb up the trees to tie the fifteen-foot-high barrier in place.
The rope smelled awful, but if that was what it took to keep the colony clear of their infected sister, Jake was glad to hold his breath.
“Make sure you tie the knots tight enough!” Maddox ordered.
Jake sent him a sharp glance. Don’t tell me what to do.
Meanwhile, in the quarantine area, Tex had his hands full keeping the large, scaly patient from slashing him to bits with her claws. The sick dracosaur was clearly in no humor for this nonsense.
When Jake had tied the last knot securely into place, he started climbing down, but stopped and gaped when he saw the positively mad thing that Derek Stone did.
While Tex fought with the lassoed dragon from the front, Derek vaulted up onto the creature’s back. Only the battle prowess of a master Guardian allowed him to keep his balance on the bucking dragon.
“Now!” Derek yelled.
Standing back at a cautious distance, the Green Man tossed Derek’s coat up to him. The Guardian caught it in one hand, then ran up the dragon’s back and threw his coat over the animal’s head, covering her eyes.
She didn’t like that.
At once, she started thrashing back and forth, but instead of flying off, Derek launched himself at her head, holding on in a sort of bear hug. He wrapped his legs around the dragon’s neck to hold on better and placed his hands over her bulging lizard eyeballs beneath the coat. He started rubbing her eyes gently.
What the—?
As the boys scrambled down and hurried around to the safer side of the barrier, they could hear Derek speaking soothingly to the creature.
“Calm down, girl. Easy now, you’re all right. You’ll be fine. Atta girl…”
Jake’s mouth was hanging open as he stared.
To both boys’ shock, the dragon started settling down as Derek pressed on her eyeballs.
“That’s right, nice and easy now…”
A moment later, the dragon sank downward, then flopped onto her belly with a groan, out cold.
Tex started laughing, sweat pouring down his face. “Nice work, Stone. You’re up, Doc. You boys get that barrier tied up good?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then come on over here! Y’all stay close.”
They went running over to the cowboy.
“That was brilliant,” Jake said.
Tex grinned. Derek smiled but held his position straddling the dragon, still massaging the comatose creature’s eyeballs.
“That’s the response you mentioned? She’s in a trance now?”
“As long as I keep applying pressure to her eyes.” Derek nodded toward the Green Man. “See if Doc needs a hand.”
The boys hurried over to Dr. Plantagenet, who had begun squirting the medicine on all the different places on the dragon’s body where her scales had turned rust-orange. In the worst spots, a few scales had fallen off, with blisters on the skin underneath.
“Poor thing.” The Green Man winced sympathetically as he doused the sore spots with the antiseptic solution. “Keep a hold on those eyeballs, Stone. This medicine may sting for a minute. The pain could wake her up.”
“Oh, I think she’ll be out for a while,” he replied, but he did as the doctor asked.
Thankfully, the dracosaur remained inert.
“Anything we can do to help?” Maddox offered.
“If you could lift the tail up for me here, she’s got a bad patch that looks like it wraps all the way around it.”
Maddox looked a little startled by this request, but hurried to assist the veterinarian. Jake watched, bemused, as the serious young Guardian bent down and gingerly lifted the unconscious dragon’s limp, heavy tail up off the ground. The tip still sagged a few yards away, but Dr. Plantagenet got right to work squirting the sore patch with the medicine.
Jake decided to go make sure that the barrier was holding and the other dragons were keeping their distance.
All seemed well, but blimey, the dracosaurs looked so much bigger from the ground level than they had from the lookout point up on the ledge. Jake glanced around uneasily, wondering if there was another path they could take back to the waypoint. Nocturnal or not, waltzing past all those lounging monsters really seemed like tempting fate.
Satisfied that the net was in good order, he turned around and was heading back toward the others when he suddenly felt a tingle of awareness at his nape and had the strangest sensation of being watched.
He whipped around—and startled the creature studying him.
It dove off its perch atop a nearby boulder with a small “eek!” and disappeared, but not before Jake had glimpsed it.
What?! It can’t be…
That was certainly no dragon.
He dashed over to the boulder for a closer look. But the spider—hairy, white-spotted, and the size of a dinner plate—had vanished.
I know that spider…
“Malwort?” Jake was quite sure he had heard the thing say “Eek.” Generally spiders were not supposed to talk, but there was one species he knew of that did: the arachno-sapiens.
Very rare.
Indeed, his Uncle Waldrick was the only person Jake had ever met who had owned one as a pet.
“Malwort?” he repeated slowly. “Is that you?”
“Uh-oh,” said a clinkety, arachnid voice from somewhere in the weeds behind the boulder. “N-no Malwort here. The Jake is scary. He will squish me.”
Jake’s mouth tilted. He folded his arms across his chest. “I’m not going to hurt you. Come out now. What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”
Silently, Malwort crept out of the weeds. At first, his ten beady eyes peered over the edge of the boulder fearfully.
Jake just stood there, waiting.
Moving with caution, Malwort scuttled atop the rock, but looked around nervously, ready to leap to safety at any moment.
“Well? What are you doing here?” Jake repeated.
“Malwort follow Master to the dungeon. Most bravest adventurings. Very, very far.”
“Well, you’d better be getting back to him,” Jake said stiffly. “Give him my regards.”
“Malwort doesn’t wants to go back!” the spider burst out, sounding slightly hysterical. “Malwort doesn’t loves Master anymore! Master baaaad.”
“Oh, you finally figured that out, did you?”
Blimey, Uncle, Jake thought. Even your weird little pet can’t stand you anymore.
“Bad Master is mean. He called Malwort bad for not bringing him the shiny key hanging on the nail when the guard-man go sleepy-sleepy. But Malwort doesn’t wants Master to escape from his cage!”
“Why not?”
“Because! If Master stays in his cell, then Malwort can have Master all to himself. Be together forever, happy-happy. But Master is baaad,” Malwort said, shaking his odd head.
“Why? What did he do now?”
“Yell. Scream, ‘Give me the key!’ Even tried to squish me! So Malwort ran away very, very fast, right through the bars and out of the dungeon, into the woods. Malwort never go back to bad Master. Malwort good spider! Not deserve to get squished!”
A smile of satisfaction spread across Jake’s face at the thought of Uncle Waldrick tormented by the prospect of escape—and then the obstinate spider refusing to assist. No wonder he’d wanted to squish him.
“Malwort, you made the right decision,” Jake declared. “It would have been very wrong to steal the warden’s key for him. You’re right, he is bad, and he should stay in his cage for the rest of his miserable life.”
“But what about Malwort? Can Malwort come with the Jake away from dragon land? Then the Jake will be Malwort’s new master!”
“Uh, no. That would never work,” Jake said.
“But Malwort lonely!” The spider burst into tears. “Malwort good spider, but nobody love Malwort!”
“Oh, there, there, don’t cry. Sheesh, I didn’t realize you were such an emotional bug.”
“Bug?!” He looked utterly offended and continued weeping even more piteously. “Spiders are an arachnid. Malwort been through a lot! The Jake don’t understand. Malwort needs a new home!”
“Hey, you tried to eat my friend Gladwin, remember?”
“Oooh, fairy blood is fizzy-sweet! Like root-beer,” he crooned, soothed only briefly by the reminder of this delicacy before he started crying again. “Malwort hate dragon land. Malwort is lost here! Big dragon feet everywhere to squish me. It’s terrible!”
“All right, all right!” Jake exclaimed. He wouldn’t want to get stuck out here, either.
Poor Malwort had got used to living in a mansion with the previous Earl of Griffon. He’d never survive out here in the wild. “Maybe you can go back to the magical menagerie with Dr. Plantagenet, the Green Man over there. He’s very nice. He runs a zoo at Merlin Hall full of, er, unusual creatures like yourself. There’s lots of new friends for you there.”
The tearful spider perked up. “Friendses?”
“Aye, I think you’d have a lot in common with the Fairy Stinger, actually. He’s a sort of scorpion.”
“Ooh! Scorpions is my cousinses!”
“Well, hang on a minute. I’ll go ask him for you. Don’t disappear again,” Jake advised. “We’ll be leaving in a moment.”
He hurried over to ask the Green Man if there was room in his zoo for one more.
“Arachno-sapiens? Why, I would be honored,” the veterinarian said when Jake explained the situation and pointed at Malwort waiting nervously atop the boulder.
Once the veterinarian finished treating the dragon, he gathered up his things and then went and greeted the spider. Malwort seemed pleased to meet someone who
understood how very rare he was. Dr. Plantagenet opened his black doctor bag and offered it to Malwort.
Hesitantly, Malwort glanced at Jake, all ten eyes full of uncertainty.
“Go on, you can trust him,” Jake said, and Malwort crawled into the doctor bag and snuggled himself down.
Jake and the Green Man headed back to the unconscious dragon’s side, where Derek was still putting pressure on her eyeballs through the coat. Likewise, Tex was still holding onto the rope in case she woke up. Maddox stood by waiting to help wherever he was needed.
“Right, then,” Dr. Plantagenet said. “If everyone’s ready, we can take the restraints off our patient and head back to the waypoint. I certainly want to be out of these woods before it starts getting dark.”
Tex nodded toward the trees on their left. “Noticed another trail over yonder. Should loop back up to the main path. Might as well avoid goin’ past the rest of the colony if we have a choice.”
Everyone agreed.
“You all go on ahead in case the drac wakes up faster than expected,” Derek said. “She should be groggy for another fifteen minutes, but I want everybody clear before I take this coat off her eyes. I’ll catch up.”
“You sure you don’t want me to stay and hold the rope in case she gets feisty?” Tex offered. “Greenie can lead the boys back up to the main trail.”
“No, I’ll be fine,” Derek answered. “You can untie your lasso now.”
Tex shrugged. “You’re the dragon expert.” He untied the knot and tugged his rope clear of the dragon’s snout.
“Be careful, Derek,” Jake urged.
“No worries. I’ll be right behind you.”
Taking leave of him, they marched into the woods single file, moving quickly to put a safe distance between themselves and the soon-to-be-woken dracosaur.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jealousy
The path the Green Man found through the forest, guided here and there by his brother trees, quickly proved to be a shortcut. They had to scale a steep hill, but once they reached the top, it put them right back onto the main trail, heading for the waypoint.
Behind them, things were quiet. Derek, with his keen Guardian senses, should have no trouble tracking them.
