Dragonbreath: Revenge of the Horned Bunnies

by Ursula Vernon

  “Yes, it’s worth it for one more bunny,” snapped Lenny. He was definitely close now, not just echoing down the canyon. “Do you know what some people will pay for powdered jackalope horn?”

  “I still don’t get what they’re using it for,” said the other speaker.

  Feet came into view. One set was big and webbed, and the other was stumpy and scaled. Danny thought maybe they belonged to Earl, the counselor in charge of crafts. Apparently lanyards had not been his greatest interest in life after all.

  “It doesn’t matter what they’re using it for,” said Lenny, annoyed. “I don’t care if they’re sprinkling it on cupcakes! It’s selling for nearly eight hundred dollars an ounce!”

  “Those’d be really expensive cupcakes,” said Earl.

  “You’re an idiot,” said Lenny.

  “Aw, boss, that’s not nice …”

  They were right outside the cave.

  “Keep your eyes peeled,” ordered Lenny. “They’re getting a lot harder to catch these days. If this is the last shipment, I want it to be a big one.”

  They’re going to see us, Danny thought, they have to see us, what am I going to do, we can’t let them take Jack, but if I breathe fire on a counselor I am going to get into so much trouble—

  Lenny and Earl didn’t see them. The rock ledge might have been waist-high on Danny, but it was only a little over knee-high on a grown-up, and the shadows under it were very deep. Lenny glanced down, saw nothing of interest, and kept walking.

  They were nearly past the cave now. Danny listened to the crunch-crunch-crunch going away and dared to hope that he would not be spending his life in prison for attempted counselorcide.

  Danny made another desperate tug at his tail and poked Christiana in a tender spot. She jerked, clipping Wendell in the back of the head with her knee. He tried not to yelp, but his chin hit the sand with a muffled thump.

  The footsteps stopped.

  “Did you hear somethin’?” asked Earl.

  “Probably just a ground squirrel,” said Lenny. “Jackalopes go gronk! and run away, they don’t thump around.”

  The crunching started up again and faded into the night. Crickets began to chirp from the woods.

  “I think it’s clear,” whispered Wendell, when he absolutely could not stand the thought of having Christiana’s knee smooshing the back of his neck for a second longer.

  They crawled and rolled and staggered out of the cave. Danny had rock patterns imprinted on his cheek, and Spencer was whining about how somebody had been crushing his arm.

  “Now what?” asked Christiana.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” said Danny. “They might come back this way.”

  “. . . bruises hurt for days and they turn purple …”

  “If we go into the woods, we’ve got a lot more places to hide,” said Wendell.

  They hurried up the slope toward the woods.

  “. . . I bet I won’t be able to catch or write or do crafts or anything …”

  “Look,” said Danny, exasperated, “fine, you got a bruise, big deal! Would you rather let Lenny have Jack?”

  Spencer glared at the ground and mumbled something that might have been “No.”

  “We’ve got to figure something out,” said Danny. “We can’t let him catch Jack.”

  “And we’ve only got three more days,” said Spencer.

  “First we need to figure out what Lenny’s done with the other jackalopes,” said Christiana. “If they’re nearby, that’s good. If he’s got them somewhere else …”

  She stopped, because there really wasn’t much she could say. If they couldn’t find the missing jackalopes, they’d have to find a grown-up who could help them, and what grown-up would possibly believe a story about jackalope smuggling?

  “Jack could come home with me,” said Spencer. “He’d be safe there.”

  There was an awkward silence.

  “C’mon, Spencer,” said Danny, “you’ve seen all those dorky movies about people with wild animals. They always go back to the wild at the end of the movie.”

  “I could,” said Spencer. “Jack’s different. He’s nice.”

  Danny sighed. “Your mom won’t let you have a cat,” he said finally. “Or a dog. She has allergies, remember? When we tried to do Easter at Aunt Isabel’s house, she made that big scene with the nose drops and accused Isabel of trying to poison her because there was a cat hair in her mashed potatoes?”

  Spencer clearly did remember, because his shoulders sagged. (In fairness, no one in Danny’s family would ever forget that Easter, which had been extremely dramatic, and Danny’s mom had spent most of dinner trying to mediate between her sisters Shirley and Isabel, who were Not Speaking to Each Other, Thank You. On the drive home, Danny’s father had threatened to really poison the mashed potatoes next time, and Danny’s mom had said, “Oh honey, don’t tempt me!” and had giggled hysterically for the next forty miles.)

  “Besides, we want to save Jack’s family too,” said Wendell. “He’d be sad without his family. And that means we have to stop Lenny.”

  “That’s great in theory,” said Christiana, “but how do we actually stop a grown-up? Remember, we’ve only got three more days.”

  “You should just breathe fire on him,” said Spencer.

  “First of all,” said Danny, rubbing his snout, “you can’t just go breathing fire on people. You get in serious trouble. And secondly … I’m not very good at breathing fire.”

  Christiana did not say anything, but she was so obviously Not Saying Anything that Danny kind of wished she’d just make fun of him and get it over with.

  Spencer stared at him. “You can’t breathe fire?”

  “Not very well,” Danny admitted. “I mean, I’ve done it, but it has to be really cold or I have to be really scared. I’m not good at it.” He avoided Spencer’s eyes.

  “He’s done it when it mattered,” said Wendell loyally.

  “But cousin Oscar can breathe fire, and he’s younger than you!”

  “Let’s assume that setting fire to Lenny is off the table,” said Wendell. “Or stringing him up or keelhauling him or anything else like that. You can’t do that to grown-ups. They put you in a Home for Troubled Youth or military school or something.”

  Danny had been threatened with military school often enough in his life that he thought Wendell was probably right, although he had only a hazy impression of what they did to you there—made you polish potatoes or peel shoes or something.

  “Anyway, the important thing is to save Jack’s family,” said Christiana. “Once we’ve rescued them, we can work something out. We can send letters to the authorities. They don’t need to know we’re kids.” (Danny suspected that if Christiana and Wendell were writing the letters, nobody would even suspect they were kids. Wendell actually had his own letterhead.)

  “Fiiiiine,” said Spencer, drawing out the word with a long sigh. “So how do we do that?”

  “We’ll have to get more information,” said Christiana. “And that means somebody has to follow Lenny.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Danny. “I’m totally sneaky!”

  Wendell looked dubious, but since the iguana sounded like a bull moose wearing clogs when he tried to sneak anywhere, he didn’t say anything.

  “Right now we have to get back,” said Christiana. “The scavenger hunt’s got to be over soon, and people are going to wonder where we are.”

  “Jack? Can you stay out of Lenny’s way?” asked Spencer worriedly.

  “Gronk!” said Jack, and saluted.

  And with that, the jackalope disappeared into the night, and the four kids trudged back to camp.

  TRAILING THE FROG

  Danny was in his element.

  If you wanted long division solved or if you had to know the average yearly rainfall in Death Valley, you asked a nerd. But if you wanted bad guys shadowed, the best possible person to ask was Danny Dragonbreath.

  Hadn’t he helped foil the
horribly sneaky ninja frogs of mythical Japan? Had he not slain the alpha were-wiener with a silver toasting fork?

  Yes. He was definitely the person for the job.

  The fact that Lenny the frog was not cooperating by doing anything notably suspicious didn’t matter at all.

  Unfortunately Lenny did nothing more diabolical than organize a game of dodge ball, which was indeed pretty diabolical, particularly for Wendell, but probably not related to the jackalopes.

  By late afternoon, Danny was starting to get discouraged. He hadn’t seen Lenny do anything bad, and they only had two days left. He could feel the clock ticking over his shoulder, and if time ran out, there would be no one to help Jack’s family.

  Wendell and Christiana were covering for him with the counselors, claiming he was in the bathroom or had just gone over there behind that rock, or that they’d just seen him in the big lodge. But they couldn’t keep it up forever. He’d already had to stop watching for two hours of horseback riding, and his enjoyment of riding Bandit was largely eclipsed by worrying what Lenny might be up to behind his back.

  What was he going to do?

  Then, late in the day, Danny got his break.

  “Great,” said Lenny to a little knot of grown-ups, while Danny lurked in the bushes. “Time to get ready for campfire, while the campers are eating dinner. You three go get the marshmallows, and Bob, you start the bonfire now so we’ve got some good coals when it’s time to roast.”

  The group split, but Lenny himself stayed in the middle of the path, rocking back and forth on his big webbed feet. Behind the bush, Danny’s eyes narrowed. Then the big frog turned and made his way up the path, toward the off-limits cabins.

  Danny kept pace, slinking from tree to tree, trying to stay out of sight. Lenny vanished into his cabin, but came out again almost immediately, carrying something.

  Lenny turned down the path to the cabin with the big Keep Out sign. As Danny watched from behind a pine tree, Lenny put down what he was holding—it looked like a toolkit—and pulled out a length of chain and a very big padlock.

  I knew they wouldn’t put up a Keep Out sign for toilet paper! Danny thought.

  The big frog finished pad-locking the door and stepped back to admire his handiwork. “There!” he said, sounding satisfied. “That should keep anybody from tripping over the merchandise.”

  The head counselor turned—Danny quickly pulled his head back behind the tree—and strolled down the pathway, whistling the camp song. Danny waited until he was gone, then hurried off to tell his partners in crime.

  “We’ve got to get into that cabin!” said Spencer.

  “Maybe we could go tomorrow—” Wendell began.

  “Tonight,” said Danny firmly. “We don’t have that much time.”

  Christiana was staring off into the distance, the way she did when she was thinking very hard. Finally she said, “Lenny’s always at campfire. He likes to make sure they sing all fifty million verses of the camp song. They’re doing s’mores tonight, and that always takes forever, and somebody always burns themselves on the chocolate or pokes themselves in the eye with a marshmallow. Tonight would be the best time.”

  “It would have to be s’more night,” muttered Spencer. “I wanted a s’more.”

  Wendell’s mother had made a health-food s’more once with carob and gluten-free graham crackers. The iguana still had nightmares.

  “You can still back out,” said Danny.

  “No, I can’t. It’s for Jack.” Spencer pulled himself up as tall as he could, which wasn’t very. “What do we do?”

  Danny had already made a plan, and one he thought was worthy of a nerd.

  “We’ll go as soon as they hand out the marshmallows. Christiana, you be the guard. Lenny should be tied up at campfire, but Earl isn’t. Spencer, can you stop him?”

  Spencer grinned. “Leave him to me.”

  A few minutes later, after they had gulped their marshmallows cold, they slunk through the trees toward their goal. As they passed the crafts cabin, Danny heard Spencer’s voice in the distance.

  “So then the three alien detectives get this case, right …”

  “Uh-huh?” Counselor Earl did not sound at all interested. “That’s fascinating, but—”

  “No, you have to hear this bit, this is where it really gets good—”

  Danny grinned. Spencer had finally found a way to use his one talent for good.

  The trio reached the forbidden cabins. Christiana took up a post behind a large bush. “Okay. If anybody’s coming, I’ll call like a great horned owl.”

  “You can do that?” asked Danny.

  “Well, of course,” said Christiana, looking vaguely offended. “What? You can’t?”

  Of all the things Danny could do with his time, sitting around practicing owl calls had somehow never occurred to him.

  “I can do owl calls,” said Wendell.

  “Of course you can,” muttered Danny.

  They eventually settled on a mockingbird imitating a barred owl, which sounded no different from any of the other calls to Danny but seemed to make them both happy.

  There was still a big padlock on the door, in addition to the Keep Out sign. But once again, Danny thought, Lenny was thinking like a grown-up, not like a kid.

  Wendell saw it too.

  Somebody Lenny’s size would never have been able to fit through, but for Danny it was easy. The only hard part was actually reaching the window.

  Once Danny was inside, it was an easy matter to get his feet on a table that had been shoved under the window. It was very dark in the cabin and it smelled like the zoo.

  “I think this is the right place!” he said.

  “Great!” said Wendell. “Pull me up!”

  This was somewhat harder—Wendell had never in his life managed to do a pull-up in PE, and generally just hung off the bar looking miserable until the coach took pity on him and let him get down. But Danny finally hauled him up through the window and into the cabin.

  It was very dark. Something banged on something else with a wiry metal sound. Danny could hear breathing and in the gloom there was a suggestion of eyes.

  “Please let it be jackalopes,” whispered Wendell, “please let it be jackalopes.”

  “What else could it be?” Danny whispered back.

  Danny felt his way along the wall until he came to a light switch and turned it on.

  “There,” said Danny, “now we can see what we’re—”

  He turned.

  Wendell said, “. . . Oh.”

  BUNNY STAMPEDE

  Danny had been hoping to find Jack’s family. He hadn’t really thought about how many there would be—his mom and dad, maybe a couple of brothers and sisters or a spare aunt or two.

  There were dozens. Maybe hundreds. There were cages stacked on the tables and under the tables and in corners, and every single one was full of jackalopes staring at him with big dark eyes.

  “Crapmonkeys,” said Danny, which his mother sometimes said while driving.

  “Jack must have a really big family,” said Wendell weakly.

  The jackalopes watched them. They seemed to be all ages, from big males with antlers twice as big as Jack’s to tiny little jackalope kits with little bumps where their horns would grow in. But all of them looked terribly sad.

  “It’ll be okay,” said Danny, hooking his fingers around the bars of the nearest cage. “We’re here to help.”

  The jackalopes in the cage huddled at the far end, looking frightened. Danny was starting to think that breathing fire on Lenny might be worth it after all.

  “We’ll get you out,” said Wendell. “We’re friends of Jack’s.”

  They waited. The jackalopes rustled and thumped in their cages. One made a pathetic gronking sound, and was quickly hushed by the others.

  “I don’t think they understand,” said Wendell sadly.

  And then Danny said something he never, ever expected to say in his life.

  The
latches on the cages were easy. Wendell started on one side and Danny started on the other.

  “You know …” called Wendell, “I have a bad thought.”

  Danny sighed.

  “There’s still the padlock on the door. We can’t get through it from this side either.”

  “Maybe we can boost them out of the window,” said Danny. He looked at the animals in the cages and frowned. It didn’t seem likely that the jackalopes would want to be picked up, but he wasn’t sure how else to do it.

  “They seem so depressed,” said Wendell gloomily.

  “My cousin Steve says that captivity is really hard on some animals,” said Danny, flipping more cage latches. “You can’t keep them as pets or in zoos or anything. They just pine away.”

  As the doors of the cages opened, one jackalope, bolder than the rest, poked its head out.

  “That’s it!” said Danny excitedly. “Freedom! C’mon, you can do it!”

  He started down the next row of cages.

  His hand had just closed over the first latch when he heard a sound that he’d been dreading.

  Somewhere nearby, an owl was hooting.

  “Wendell! Wendell, we have a problem!”

  “Tell me about it!” The iguana had caught his fingers on the drop bar of the last cage and stuck one in his mouth. “That stings!”

  “No, doofus, there was hooting! It’s Christiana! Somebody’s coming!”

  “Are you sure? That sounded like more of a boreal owl than a mockingbird imitating a barred—”

  Danny grabbed Wendell by the collar and stuffed him under the table.

  “I’m just sayin’,” muttered Wendell.

  He dove under the table after his friend.

  “The light!” said Wendell. “They’ll see the light!”