Let Sleeping Dragons Lie (The Modern Dragon Chronicles Book 1)

by Ty Burson

Granny smiled, “That’s an iron, sweetie.”

  “An iron? Where’s the cord?”

  Granny laughed, “Believe it or not, that iron is older than I am. Back then, they didn’t have electricity, so they heated it up on a metal stove and ran it over their clothes.”

  Dani cocked her head in disbelief, “That’s dumb. They should just plug it in.”

  Jeanie laughed, “See how easy we’ve got it? Give me a kiss, and next time ask before you go taking things out of the shed. Weren’t you supposed to get a cord, anyway?”

  Dani kissed her mother and replied, “Oh yeah, I found it. Want me to go back and get it?”

  “In a minute, you can get it after I leave.”

  In the meantime, Steve dragged the stepladder over and propped it up against a tree. “Mom, did you, you know?” Steve prompted in a whisper.

  “No, Steve. If you have something to ask your grandmother, you ask her. Now, give me a kiss, I’ve got to get to work.” As he approached her, she whispered, “If she doesn’t mind having your friends over, I’ll bring them this weekend.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “All right, come on you two, let your mother get to work,” Granny scolded. “Steve, open that ladder up and get up on it while I hand you the cord to wrap around the tree. Dani, go ahead and get that power cord.”

  Not long afterwards, the tent—with a large green canvas tarp draped over the top to ward off rain—was up. They even managed to get the electricity up and running, attached to a light and radio, which they left on as they relaxed on the porch. Now that the excitement of finishing the tent was over, Steve had time to contemplate what he was supposed to do for the next five days until his friends showed up, if they could come. Granny said it was okay with her, but reminded Steve that their parents might not let them. Slightly depressed about the idea of not seeing his friends, Steve slumped over a porch rail like a limp dishrag.

  “What’s your problem, boy? Are you bored already?” Granny asked.

  Steve sighed, “No, just thinking,” he lied.

  “Don’t think too hard. The weekend will get here before you know it, and then your friends will be here.”

  Steve jumped up. “What do you mean?”

  “Your mom and dad wanted to surprise you so they already checked with their parents. Now quit pouting. What about you Dani, you already bored?”

  From somewhere Dani had pilfered an ancient five-fingered baseball mitt and she was using it as a bed for her Barbie doll. “Uh huh,” was her only reply.

  Granny smiled and gently slid the mitt out from under the doll. “Where’d you dig this up? This was your uncle’s when he was a boy. Make sure you put back anything you find when you’re done with it, Dani,” she instructed.

  Dani reached back for the worn-leather baseball glove and nodded enthusiastically. But before Granny released it, she pointed to the iron disregarded in the front yard. Dani got the hint and ran over to retrieve it. She was about to return it to the shed when she stopped. She looked at Granny with a slightly quizzical expression, “Uh, Granny, I forgot where it goes.”

  “Go ahead put it up here on the porch. In fact, why don’t we do this? Dani, and you too Steve, anything you find and want to play with, you put it up here on the porch, and I’ll put it back later, all right?”

  Dani skipped back to where she had been playing and placed the rusty old iron next to the baseball glove. Steve watched as the iron became a high-backed chair for one Barbie while another lounged on the mitt. Steve slumped back over in despair.

  A little while later, Granny disappeared, only to return with a couple of paint cans and some brushes, “All right you two, follow me.” Steve obeyed, figuring it couldn’t get any worse; not only was he stuck here, but now he had extra chores to do.

  Granny led them all around to the back of the shed, which must have once been a huge garage or something. She brought out a couple of wire brushes and an old broom. She handed Steve and Dani brushes and told them to scrape off as much of the old, weathered white paint as they could. The kids shrugged and did what she asked, automatically dividing up the wall with Steve reaching up as high as he could and Dani getting the low stuff. Granny used the broom to get under the eaves and to sweep away any little white chips that didn’t fall to the ground. As much as his shoulder burned from scraping, Steve realized he was kind of enjoying it; right before his eyes the building was being transformed, kind of like it was shedding its skin. Even Dani maintained her interest, though her scraping swaths tended to make loop-the-loops.

  About the time that his arm began to shake, Granny called a halt and they all took a break for lunch. They ate ham and mayonnaise sandwiches with gallons of sweet tea. When they were done, Granny provided them with ice cream sandwiches. Steve couldn’t remember being this full ever before.

  “You two free loaders ready to get back to work?” she asked jokingly.

  “Sure Granny,” Steve answered. “But aren’t we almost done?”

  “Pretty close, but we still need to paint.”

  Dani and Steve followed after their grandmother. Back at the storage shed, Granny popped the top off four cans of paint. There was baby blue, robin red, forest green, and some metallic silver stuff that probably wasn’t meant for wood. Even Dani was confused, “Uh, Granny, what do we do with all the colors?”

  “Yeah, they don’t go together,” Steve added.

  Granny went and retrieved four rusty paint trays. “This is what I had left in the garage, so this is what we’ll paint with. You two figure out what you want to do. I’m going to get my lawn chair and put it under that tree and supervise.”

  “But we don’t know what to do,” Steve whined.

  “Cover up all that old grey wood with the new paint,” Granny explained.

  “But, what if we mess it up?” Steve asked.

  “Hmm, well, I guess I’ll have to deduct it from your allowances,” she replied.

  “We don’t get allowances,” Steve replied.

  Dani jumped in, “I want an allowance, I want an allowance!”

  “Shut up Dani,” Steve ordered.

  “Don’t tell your sister to shut up, Steve. Listen kiddos, if you mess up, then I guess I’ll have to go to the store and buy more paint. It’s the back of the building and no one can see it from the road. Go ahead and have fun; it’ll be all right.” She then walked over to the porch and grabbed her lawn chair, along with a glass of tea.

  Steve shared a dumfounded look with his sister; no one had ever given them paint and said, “Go for it!” Maybe with finger paints on paper, but not on anything permanent. While Steve struggled to figure out if it was some sort of trick, Dani grabbed a brush, slopped it into the can of green paint, and started across the bottom.

  “What are you doing?” Steve asked with a hiss.

  “I’m making grass!” Dani announced.

  From under the shade of the tree, Granny yelled out, “Very nice, Dani. Use the paint trays so you don’t run out of paint and get it all over yourself. What are you waiting for, Steve?”

  Steve found a roller with a stick inserted into the bottom to give him a longer reach, fed it into the blue, and reached for the sky.

  “What are they doing now?” John asked. “It’s getting miserably hot sitting here.”

  Frank continued to look through the binoculars, ignoring his younger brother. “Come on, it’s my turn, especially if you’re not going to tell me what they’re doing,” John whined.

  “They’re painting, all right? Here,” Frank handed the binoculars to his brother, “go ahead, so you can quit complaining.”

  John put down his large grape Slurpee and peered through the high-powered spectacles. “What the heck are they painting? That old lady’s letting those kids slap up whatever color they want? Is that a silver flower?”

  Frank popped open the large trunk of the black Mercedes and retrieved a coke from the Styrofoam cooler before returning to his seat. “Pretty sure it’s supposed to be a daisy.”<
br />
  “Wow, lucky kids. Pop would’ve beaten us black and blue for making a mess like that. Looks kind of fun though. Hey, you remember the time I left some crayons in my pocket when I put them in the laundry and how, when Eloise took clothes out of the dryer, everything was ruined?”

  “No. Wake me up if they go anywhere,” Frank instructed.

  “So we’re supposed to sit here and watch them all day?”

  “And drink your Slurpee. That’s right.”

  “Why don’t we grab the kid? They made a tent; we could wait until after dark and do it then, right?” John inquired.

  “Pop said not to go near the old woman’s house. Mammon told the old man that she’s too dangerous,” Frank replied.

  John looked again at the old lady reclining under the tree. She had taken off her gardening hat and an explosion of wiry silver hair covered her head. Her skinny arms protruded from her overalls. “Seriously?”

  “I don’t make the rules. That’s what Mammon told Pop. So we watch and wait until the kid leaves the house. Now let me take a nap,” Frank replied grumpily.

  Chapter 19

  Days of exploring and minor home improvement projects meant the weekend came much faster than Steve thought it would. In fact, after Steve’s mom dropped off his two best friends, he and Dani spent most of the morning showing off everything they had found or mended throughout the week.

  The next few hours were spent playing war—storming bridges and raiding castles—but eventually even Joy’s tomboyishness had reached its limit, so she and Dani decided to break off on their own. Dani took her by the hand and led her behind the shed, to show Joy all the great things she had painted: the grass, some silver flowers, and a red sky. That was her side of the building; Steve’s was a bit more conventional with a blue sky, red flowers, and some kind of robot thing that looked like a bunch of silver ice cubes stuck together.

  “Your grandmother let you guys paint this all by yourselves?” Joy asked.

  Dani beamed proudly, “Yup.”

  “That is so cool,” Joy said. “My folks freak out when I pull out markers.”

  “Maybe she’ll let us all paint something else tomorrow!” Dani said, breathlessly excited. “Maybe like the other side.”

  Joy grinned, “That would be awesome, yeah!”

  “C’mon! You have to see this!” Dani grabbed Joy’s hand and tugged her into the side door of the shed. While the garage door was open at the front of the building, the light outside only penetrated a little way in, so Dani flicked on the light switch, which connected a thick wire covered in rotting cloth insulation to a single light bulb in the center of the room.

  Under the dim glow, Joy could see that the whole shed was big enough to comfortably park two cars. But because Granny didn’t have one, the shed was packed with all kinds of treasures. It might be junk to some, but not to Dani, or any other child with an inquisitive nature. Hanging from the rafters were dozens of elk horns, and thick-linked chains for lifting engines, and several rusty tools that neither Dani nor Joy recognized. They were too high even for Joy to pull down.

  “Look at this, Joy,” Dani dragged Joy over to a real saddle. It was mounted on a sawhorse and Dani climbed up, grabbed a set of invisible reins, and pretended to ride. Joy ran her hand over the smooth leather, the earthy smell of horses still present. While Dani yelled “giddy up,” Joy went over to the workbench where she found more tools, some known, but most not, and all were covered in dark orange rust. She lifted a golf ball that had been smashed to reveal its guts: a ball of tightly-wrapped rubber. She was busy unraveling it when Steve called, “Hey, where’d you guys go?”

  “We’re in here,” she yelled back.

  The boys entered through the front. “Hey, what are you guys doing?” Justin asked.

  Joy motioned for them to come over. “Look at all this old stuff. Steve, did you know all this was here?”

  “Not until this week. I don’t usually stay, and the adults all keep us out of here when we come to visit,” he replied. “What’d you find?”

  “This golf ball, tools…look at the ceiling!”

  “Hey,” said Steve, “are those real reindeer antlers?”

  “Those are probably elk antlers,” announced Justin. “They’re too big for deer. And we really don’t have reindeer around here. We have whitetail and maybe some mule deer, but those look like elk.”

  Joy looked at Steve and then at Justin, “How would you know that? I know you don’t hunt.”

  “Come on, my parents are biologists,” he replied.

  “They’re marine biologists,” Joy insisted.

  “Doesn’t matter, we have books and stuff about all kinds of animals, and insects, and—”

  “Never mind, I get it,” Joy huffed back.

  Steve was just about to check out the saddle, when Dani decided she wasn’t finished whooping it up on the make-believe stallion. “Come on Dani, you’ve had a turn!”

  Dani hollered, “Get back or I’ll run you over!”

  “Steve, check this out,” Justin called from the other side of the room as he retrieved a large metal contraption from a box. “It’s a miniature metal grader. You know, like they use to level out dirt.”

  The metal grader Justin held was almost three feet long and made all of metal. It had real rubber tires and a steering wheel that actually turned the wheels. It looked as if it had actually been orange at one time, but the paint had peeled off a long time ago. Justin played with the grader blade, moving it up and down with a little effort.

  Steve realized that—while he’d been ecstatic when his friends had showed up this morning—as he looked at the bizarrely cool treasure in Justin’s hands, he almost wished he had a couple of hours with it all his own. Justin interrupted his thoughts by holding it out for Steve to touch, “You ever see a toy truck like this?”

  “No way; it’s all metal. They never make anything like this anymore. Joy, you see this?” Steve asked.

  Before she could answer, Steve’s grandmother called for them all to come out of the garage. Reluctantly, they all quit their exploring, but the boys brought the would-be truck along. Granny was waiting for them on the porch. “What have you got there, boys?”

  Steve called up, “It’s a really, really, old toy truck. Look, it’s made of all metal and has real tires. It even works.”

  “Hmm, I guess it does. Listen children, it’s getting late and I don’t want you to get hurt banging around in that old garage. Go ahead and pull down the door for today and come in to wash up,” Granny instructed.

  Granny built a campfire in the yard, its edges ringed with stones the size of footballs, and the five of them gathered around in lawn chairs. They dangled hotdogs from sticks, slowly twisting them among the smoke. The radio in the tent played some old-timey music that none of the kids recognized, but none of them minded. They drank iced tea from the house, but still, the kids felt as though they were truly roughing it.

  Steve was the first to interrupt the serenity by asking something that had been on his mind for a little while now, “So when will you guys have to go back?”

  “My folks said I could stay for a week. They think I spend too much time on the computer,” Justin stated, “But it has to be okay with your grandma.”

  Granny smiled, “Sure, hon, you stay as long as you like. What about your folks, Joy? Jeanie didn’t say when she dropped you off.”

  Joy finished a big bite of her hotdog before answering, “Dad has to go recruit a kid from Cave Junction on Tuesday. He said he would pick me up then.” She didn’t mention her mother.

  “That should be fine, then. Dani, that’s your third marshmallow. Go up on the porch a get yourself a bun if you’re not going to eat a hotdog. You’ve had way too many sweets.”

  Dani smiled, a marshmallow mustache encircling her mouth, “Okay.”

  “What are we going to do tonight, Granny?” asked Steve.

  “Why, you bored already?”

  “No way, this is great,
” answered Steve. Everyone else nodded in agreement.

  “I know!” Joy offered, “Can we play flashlight tag? I mean, if there are enough flashlights?”

  All four kids immediately started begging, even Dani, who had no idea what flashlight tag was. “Come on Granny, we won’t get lost,” Steve insisted.

  A worried expression darkened Granny’s face. “Children, it’s too dangerous, you all running around out here in the dark. You might trip and fall or run into something.”

  “But we’d have flashlights, Granny, please?” Steve begged. “We could stay inside your gnome circle. That’d give us a big enough area to hide and not get lost.”

  “We could play in teams, Granny,” Joy offered. “I’ll take Dani and the boys could be another team. I’d watch her real close.”

  Granny sighed—the tide was against her, “All right, but finish your dinner first. And only for a little while, and no hiding in the garage. And no straying beyond my figurines around the house. I’ll sit up on the porch and keep a watch on you. You all better come get some bug spray on first, though, you’ll get eaten up out there.”

  Steve and Justin were ‘it’ first. The porch post by Granny was declared Home Base, and they were supposed to count to 100 before setting off for Joy and Dani, not that they were worried about it—between Dani and the fact that they were using flashlights, they had a pretty good chance of catching Joy. If it were straight tag they might as well forget it; she was too fast for either of them. Plus, while Granny had a huge yard, over an acre, she’d still arranged her porcelain figurines fairly close to the house. Of course, that didn’t mean there weren’t plenty of places to hide.

  Dani and Joy watched the boys count, hidden behind a row of neatly stacked firewood. Joy had to keep shushing Dani, who had a bad case of the giggles, while they kept track of the boys from a distance. When the two lights got near, they ran hand in hand for the porch.

  Even encumbered as she was with Dani, Joy still almost made it to home base before Justin heard them and illuminated them with his flashlight. “Ha, I got you, I got you!” he yelled triumphantly.