Dragon Overnight

by Sarah Mlynowski

  Three of the other kittens immediately jumped the railing that surrounded the kittenball court and followed Fuchsia down the path. The other two kittens looked hesitant, as if they weren’t sure what to do. Then they sat down and washed their paws with their tongues, pretending not to notice any awkwardness.

  “You can tell us,” said Nory. “Are you upside down?”

  “I’m sorry,” Mitali said, blushing. “Fuchsia’s right. I’m very competitive and I flare when the going gets tough.” She looked straight at Nory. “You’re a good kittenballer.”

  “Thanks,” said Nory. “But how did you do that fire?”

  Mitali smiled. “I’m not upside down. I’m a double talent. Flare plus Fluxer.”

  “Oh,” Nory said, feeling her heart drop. “That’s cool.”

  “You do a really cute kitten,” Mitali said generously. “I liked how you did your whiskers.”

  “You should show her,” said Elliott.

  “Show me what?” asked Mitali.

  “Nory should show you her fire-breathing.”

  “Are you a double talent, too?” Mitali looked excited.

  “I have upside-down magic,” Nory said quickly. “We all do—all of us who are here from my school. I’m an Upside-Down Fluxer.”

  “Oh.” Mitali looked over at the two kittens, who were now chasing their tails and pretending not to listen. “I never met anyone with upside-down magic before. Is it hard?”

  “Sometimes,” said Nory.

  “Sometimes it’s just super awkward,” said Elliott. “And it’s harder for some people than for others. Depending on their magic and how it works, and their family’s attitudes, and whether other kids give them a hard time …” He trailed off.

  “Other times it’s awesome,” said Nory. “Or surprising. Or … magical, I guess.”

  Mitali nodded. Nory realized this was exactly what she’d been worried about—kids looking at her and asking about her upside-down magic. But Mitali’s face was so sweet that Nory relaxed.

  “Can I see?” said Mitali. “The upside-down fluxing? And the fire-breathing?”

  “Show her,” said Elliott.

  So Nory fluxed. First back into a kitten, and then pop-pop-pop! Her wings sprouted, her teeth felt large in her mouth, and her claws became scaly and long. She flapped her wings and swooped around, zipping across the clearing. She dive-bombed the two remaining kittens, who were staring up at her. Then she perched on a low branch and breathed out a puff of fire.

  “Whoa!” Mitali’s eyes were huge.

  Nory leapt off the branch, landing easily, the way kittens do. Then she popped back into her girl shape. “Yeah,” she said proudly. “Not a double talent, but I do breathe fire!”

  “I’ll say!” Mitali exclaimed. “What was that thing?”

  “A dritten. Half dragon, half kitten.”

  “Nory. Seriously. That is the most awesome fluxing I have ever seen in my entire life.” Mitali turned to the two kittens. “That was awesome, right?” The two kittens looked very, very nervous, but they nodded.

  Nory glowed. She enjoyed her upside-down magic much more now than she used to. She could manage it better, and some animal forms were quite fun. She also knew she wielded a big amount of power. But the different magic could still be really embarrassing. Koat-Nory had eaten Aunt Margo’s bedspread just last week.

  “You can still play two against two,” said Elliott, reaching down into the kittenball court to pick up the blue yarnball and roll it back together. “There’s half an hour left before dinner.”

  Mitali turned to the remaining kittens. “Anemone? Fred? You in?”

  The kittens ran to the center of the court. Mitali fluxed. Nory fluxed. Elliott refereed. The game was back on.

  The leash came loose. Nurse Riley hadn’t secured it well, and the pull of Andres’s involuntary flying had set it free. Andres found himself floating up, up, up—until he rested against the painted dragon on the room’s high dome.

  He looked down to realize nearly everyone was leaving. They were trotting merrily off, exiting the Great Hall in a noisy flurry of hunger and excitement. Even Nurse Riley and Bax.

  Andres called for Marigold and Willa, the last two in the room, but they were deep in conversation as they walked out of the Great Hall.

  “Well, hello,” Andres said to the dragon painted on the ceiling.

  The dragon was silent.

  “Guess it’s just you and me, then, huh?”

  The dragon remained silent.

  “Just me?”

  Andres had his back pressed to the ceiling, just like he naturally did when he was off his leash. At home, when he wanted to move around, he often pressed the soles of his feet to the ceiling so he could jump down and grab a piece of furniture. All the furniture in his house had been bolted to the floor so that he could use it this way. Holding on to the bolted furniture, his feet would fly up, but he could reach an apple from a bowl, get a book he needed for his homework, things like that.

  Andres tried it now, jumping off the ceiling of the Great Hall. He hoped to grasp the top shelf of a large and heavy bookcase. But the ceiling was so high, he couldn’t get anywhere near it. The only thing he could reach—just barely—were the exposed beams that extended along the length of the Great Hall’s ceiling.

  He had to jump four times, but finally he was able to grab one of the beams with his hands. It was round and thick, and his body whipped around it, as if he were a trapeze artist. The world flew by so fast that it was a blur. Andres let go, rocketing faceup to the opposite side of the room. This time the front of his body came to rest against the ceiling the way his back usually did.

  He flipped himself over and jumped again. This time he was ready. He swung around the beam on purpose, letting go just in time to send his body hurtling toward the eastern wall of the room feet first. He bent his knees to cushion his impact as he hit the wall. Then, with a powerful shove, back he zoomed. He flung his hands above his head and grabbed the beam once more. He swung around one-handed this time, extending his legs in a straight line. Bouncing off the wall, he held himself on the beam with his feet floating over his head.

  It felt great, this kind of magical gymnastics. He swung so he could push off the wall again and jumped with his knees and chest together, forming a tight ball. He bounced off the wall with his bottom, as he’d planned. The impact made him laugh.

  “Ha!” he heard, and panicked. Someone else had laughed as well. Someone standing on the floor below.

  Then came more laughter. From several someones.

  Andres floated to the ceiling and looked down. There were four kids he had never seen before: two boys and two girls. The kids from the other school had arrived. They were wearing white shirts and blue school-uniform jackets.

  Drat.

  “Don’t stop now!” the taller of the girls said.

  Andres cringed. He hated the way the students with typical magic at Dunwiddle School made fun of him. Some of them, anyway. Would these kids be the same?

  “Did we, like, mess up your flow?” the tall girl asked. A quick glance told Andres that she wasn’t joking. Her brow was furrowed, and she was chewing on her lower lip. “What you were doing—so cool,” she said. The others nodded. “Are you … ? Oh, gosh, this is going to sound rude.”

  “What?” Andres asked suspiciously.

  “How old are you? Are you, like, a high schooler who’s just, um, short? Not that there’s anything wrong with that! We can’t help what size we are!” The girl flung out her arms. “Look at me. I’m extremely tall!”

  “I’m ten,” Andres said.

  “I’m ten, too!” said the girl. She wore wire-rim glasses, and rows of tight brown braids framed her face, which was almost exactly the same color as her hair. She did indeed tower over her classmates.

  “My name is Phoebe,” she said.

  “I’m Andres.”

  “We can only go three feet in the air,” said Phoebe, gesturing at the kids around her. �
�And we’re just learning to change directions quickly and to play fly-ball. How did you learn to do all that? Where do you go to school?”

  “Dunwiddle.”

  “I’m majorly impressed,” one of the guys said. He was white and shrimpy, the opposite of tall Phoebe. “In fact I might say my brain exploded just now, watching you.”

  Andres couldn’t believe it. These kids thought he was a good Flyer.

  An amazing Flyer.

  And maybe he was, in his way. He easily went way higher than three feet. He knew most fifth-grade Flyers couldn’t do that. Flyers also got tired easily, and Andres flew with no effort at all. He even flew while sleeping. Now he had found ways to swing and flip, in this wonderful high-ceilinged room. It did seem like some amazing possibilities might be opening up.

  But what these new kids didn’t know was that Andres couldn’t get down.

  The small boy waved. “I’m Tip, by the way.” He held out his hand, as if to shake.

  Andres sighed.

  He couldn’t hide it. Others could pretend to be typical at least for a little while, but he never could. Plus, Andres had been brought up with manners. He couldn’t leave Tip there, with an outstretched hand.

  He jumped from the ceiling to catch a beam. Then he scooched himself around on the beam so he could jump off it toward the floor. He leapt and got just low enough to shake Tip’s hand.

  Oh, no.

  Tip didn’t weigh nearly enough to hold him down. They rose together, Andres’s feet over his head, his magic pulling Tip up, up, up to the ceiling.

  “Superlative.” Tip grinned, looking down at the floor over his shoulder. “I have never been this high except one time when I took a flying taxi service!”

  Andres’s mind was racing. He couldn’t keep holding Tip’s hand forever. But Tip couldn’t fly above three feet.

  “I’m scared I’ll drop you,” said Andres. “Your hand is getting sweaty.”

  “Just cruise back down and release me,” said Tip happily. “It’s cool. Sorry about the sweat.”

  “I can’t,” Andres confessed.

  “What?”

  “I don’t go down. I can’t go down.”

  An expression of understanding crossed Phoebe’s face below. “Ohhh. You have wonky magic.”

  Andres nodded. “Only we don’t say wonky. It’s more polite to say different or unusual instead. Or upside down.”

  Phoebe flushed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “Don’t drop me,” said Tip. He sounded anxious now. “What are we going to do?”

  Phoebe floated up three feet. So did the two other Flyers. “I think you should push off the ceiling to one of the beams, and from the beam toward the floor,” Phoebe told Andres. “We’ll grab Tip. If that works, we’ll try to grab you, and maybe all three of us can keep you down.”

  And that was what they did. Andres pushed off the ceiling, then off the beam. He passed off Tip to Phoebe and her friends. As soon as Andres let go of Tip’s hand, gravity worked on Tip just like it did on the others. He wobbled unsteadily for a moment, but Phoebe helped him regain his balance. After that, he floated three feet up, very nicely.

  “Can you catch me now?” Andres called down from the beam.

  “We can,” said the boy who hadn’t spoken yet. “I’m Tomás, by the way. But I was hoping we could watch you fly a little more, like with the flips and stuff.”

  “Me, too,” added the other girl. “I’m Lark.”

  “You really want me to keep going?” said Andres. “I’m just getting the hang of this, so you know. I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

  “If you don’t mind, I think we’d all like to see what you can do,” said Phoebe. “Then we can help you get down. How will you get to the cafeteria?”

  “We have to use this leash,” said Andres. “It should be okay as long as someone heavier than Tip holds it.”

  “Cool,” said Phoebe. “I can do that.”

  The other four Flyers sat cross-legged, three feet off the floor, leaning back on their hands and looking up at Andres as he practiced. He jumped off walls and swung around the beams of the Great Hall, playing with his reverse gravitational pull.

  “Man, you’re going to be famous one day!” cried Phoebe. “The whole world is going to know who you are.”

  “I’m going to tell everyone I knew you when,” said Tip. “I’m going to say, ‘He shook my sweaty hand. That guy flew me up to the ceiling when I was only ten!’ ”

  Andres wasn’t sure. But for the first time since his magic had come in, he did wonder if his magic might be more than simply inconvenient. The exhilaration tingling through his body?

  It made him feel powerful.

  Nory and Elliott walked with Mitali, Anemone, and Fred back to the cabins. Once they were back in human form, Anemone and Fred turned out to be twins, with large brown eyes, teeth in braces, and similar upturned noses. Like Mitali, they wore sweatpants and T-shirts.

  “We have to go change for dinner,” said Mitali. She and Anemone turned toward the girls’ cabins across the meadow.

  “How come?” Nory asked, waving as Elliott and Fred headed to the boys’ buildings.

  “Uniforms,” said Mitali. “Our headmaster’s really strict. For athletics, we wear track clothes, but for all meals we have to wear jackets and white shirts.”

  “Everything neat and clean,” said Anemone. “It’s a private boarding school.”

  Nory shrugged. Her brother and sister went to a place like that—Sage Academy, where her father worked. They wore uniforms, too. “I can wait while you change.”

  The yard near the cabins was empty. Nory did a couple of cartwheels on the grass as she was waiting. She was relieved these new kids were so accepting, even though that was no guarantee that their classmates would be.

  When Mitali and Anemone came out of the cabin, they wore crisp gray skirts, black Mary Janes, white blouses, and blue blazers embroidered with a logo.

  Nory looked a little closer.

  It was the logo of Sage Academy.

  Father’s school.

  What? No!

  Nory’s stomach dropped. “Your headmaster—he’s not here with you, is he?”

  “Sure he is,” said Mitali. “He always goes on the first-year student overnight.”

  Oh, yeah, Nory thought, remembering the tradition.

  “In fact, we better run,” said Anemone. “Snorace is really mean when people are late.”

  Snorace?

  The two Sage Academy girls took off running in the direction of the cafeteria. “Come on, Nory!” shouted Mitali. “Let’s zoom!”

  Nory followed slowly.

  Father was here. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see him.

  When Nory reached the cafeteria, Anemone had already gone in. Mitali was waiting at the door.

  “Come with me,” she said, grabbling Nory’s hand. “I want to introduce you to our headmaster.”

  “Actually, I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” said Nory. The last time she’d seen Father, it had not gone well. At all.

  “Huh? Sure it is,” Mitali said.

  They bypassed the line for food and crossed the cafeteria to the table where Stone Horace sat. He wore a corduroy blazer and tan trousers. A napkin covered his lap. Nory could see his close-cropped, graying hair and his strong, familiar jaw. He looked the same as ever. Next to him was a line of nervous-looking fifth graders in blue jackets. Nory knew they were waiting to shake his hand before they sat down with their trays of food.

  Mitali walked fearlessly to the front of the line.

  “Mitali!” boomed Dr. Horace, rising from his seat and clapping Mitali’s shoulder. “How’s my double-talent threat? Did kittenball practice go well?”

  “Very well, sir,” Mitali said. “I want you to meet my new friend Nory. She’s even fiercer at kittenball than I am.” She elbowed Nory in the ribs and grinned. “Well, maybe.”

  Father turned to Nory. His expression changed. Nory had been t
here all along, and yet it seemed as if he was only now noticing his own daughter standing next to him.

  “Nory. Hello, my dear.” He leaned down as if to hug her, then seemed to think better of it and reached out his big palm for her to shake. “It’s, ah, good to see you. I had no idea Dunwiddle would be sharing our time at Dragon Haven.”

  “I didn’t know, either,” said Nory in a small voice.

  “Mitali, Nory is my daughter,” Father said.

  Mitali’s mouth fell open. “You’re Elinor Horace? Dalia’s sister?”

  “Hard to believe, I know,” Nory said under her breath.

  “And in need of a cleanup, I would say,” Dr. Horace pronounced. “You know to wash up before dinner, Nory. There’s a spot on your shirt.”

  “Yessir,” Nory said. “Excuse me, sir.”

  She turned around and hurried to the bathroom. There she scrubbed her hands with the rough paper towels until her skin stung. She tried to clean the spot out of her shirt and used the elastic on her wrist to pull her hair back into a ponytail.

  When Nory returned to the dining hall, Mitali was next to Father with her tray of food. His face was alight with pride. Mitali was smiling.

  Nory had planned to go back to Father’s table. He was her father, after all, and she’d cleaned up just to please him.

  But now she didn’t want to.

  She turned her back on them and went to sit with her UDM friends.

  After dinner, Mo clapped sharply and announced the campers should bus their plates. They had thirty minutes of free time. Then everyone should meet at the fire pit for their first official dragon experience.

  The students all headed for the doors.

  Ms. Starr stopped Andres. She took his leash from Bax. “I have bricks for your pack,” she announced. “Mo sent someone into town for them. Come with me and we’ll get it sorted.”

  She reeled Andres down. Nurse Riley’s backpack was loaded with bricks now. Andres put it on, and sank to the floor—but it hurt. It didn’t fit him well, the way his pack from home did.