My heart was going like a hammer. I wasn’t used to saving the day.
—
Izzy squatted next to the car, stroking Dad’s arm and looking at me. “Can we,” she asked, “I mean can we maybe take him—”
She stopped.
“Home?” I said. “Can we take him back? Is that what you mean?”
“I know it’s stupid. Even if we got him there, what would Mom think? What would everybody think? It’s just…” Her voice trickled away into a sigh, like the last of the water draining out of the sink.
I’d never thought to take Casey back. Why—because it wouldn’t be fair to Freddie? That was part of it. But it also seemed to be—I don’t know—unnatural. Against the rules. Cheating the universe. Somehow, it wasn’t cheating to come down here to see Casey. It wasn’t cheating to beat Lance Levy at basketball, even though I was so much better than him—because I wouldn’t be there forever. But it would be cheating to take Casey home. Even though I missed him like crazy, it was better to hang out with him here than to take him home.
Did Izzy see that? Maybe she didn’t care much about rules.
Shadow, moving quickly across the ground. Izzy looked up.
“Get inside!” she shouted, slamming Dad’s door on him.
“What?”
“The car, St. George. Get inside the car!”
We got in the backseat with the box of paper clothing samples between us. A couple of seconds later, something heavy landed on the roof of the car, making it rock on its springs.
“What was that?” I said. “What’s happening?”
But we both knew.
A corner of the car settled as one of the tires blew out. Metal groaned. A piece of roof at the back of the car caved in. There was a ripping noise, like you hear when you peel the top off a can of dog food. A claw poked through. The thing was inches from my head. It was shiny and black, curved and terrifying. I didn’t dare touch it. The fabric of the inside of the car roof began to blacken.
The unthinkable happened. The car moved forward with a screech from the broken rear bumper. We pulled free of the tanker truck, rose slightly, dipped and rose again.
This was a big dragon, all right, lifting a loaded car. Izzy’s eyes were like saucers. I guess mine were too. The car roof buckled and bent as the dragon’s claws shifted to grip tighter. We were ten feet in the air now, rising with jerky sideways swoops in between. I saw a line of flame. I couldn’t tell if it was dragon breath or if the gas fumes had caught on their own. Up, swoop, up. Twenty feet, forty, a hundred.
The explosion sounded like a long thunderclap. It went on and on. Through the cracked rear window, I watched the tanker below us disappear behind a ball of flame.
Izzy grabbed my hand. Both of us thinking the same thing. If we’d still been there….
—
We were headed toward some hills with the sun on our left. The window was automatic, so I couldn’t open it, but I could see parts of the dragon if I looked up. Her huge black wings pumped regularly, filling us with lift, pushing us higher, farther. Her head on the end of her long, scaly neck stretched out and pulled back with every beat of her wings, out and back, like a horse racing for the finish line.
Finding Casey alive in Freddie’s bedroom was an awesome moment. All I’d wanted to do was hug him. Same with Dad, only more so. Being with him was overwhelming—a dream come true. But it doesn’t take much to turn a dream into a nightmare. Just add poison—or prison—or dragons. This was not an awesome moment. My heart galloped. I felt like throwing up. What would happen next?
What now?
I heard Ralph Brody’s voice telling the assembly that no one wanted to read a story about things going well. There’s no story unless something goes wrong, the author had said. He should try living in one then. It’s terrifying and horrible when things go wrong. What kind of stupid story was this, anyway?
A bit later and a lot higher we reached a spine of rock with rounded hills that stuck up like individual what-do-you-call-thems—backbones. The sun was down, the western sky filled with orange and red and a kind of pinky-purple. Headlights and taillights lined along the highway in the distance far below.
Izzy noticed the other dragons first. She pointed off to the right. There were three of them, smaller than ours, silver-green in color. They flew in a line above us, two ahead and one behind. I didn’t know how long they’d been there. They all carried things in their claws—an old man, a grand piano and a bicycle.
I didn’t like any part of this.
“Where are all these dragons going?” Izzy asked Dad.
“The same place we are. You know that, honey.”
“No,” she said. “No I don’t.”
“And why are they carrying those things?” I asked. “That bicycle? That man?”
Dad turned around in the seat. His face was so calm. There weren’t as many lines as I remember him having. It was like he was younger.
“What’s with you two?” he asked. “Are you joking with me? You know that this is what happens when it’s time.”
Something Freddie said at the restaurant in High Park came back to me.
“Dragon Mountain,” I said.
“What?” said Izzy.
“That’s where we’re going. Right, Dad?”
“See. You do know.”
We swooped to the top of the highest hill on the ridge and began to fly in slow circles, following the dragon with the old man, who followed the one carrying the grand piano. All of us circling the top of this hill, like planes over an airport waiting to land.
This had to be Dragon Mountain.
Izzy leaned forward to put her arm around Dad’s neck. He patted her hand.
“Dad, could you start the car?” I asked.
“What?”
“I want to put down the window, to see better. Please, Dad.”
“Sure, Buddy.”
He smiled, leaned forward and pushed the button. The car started. I put down my window and stared out. Izzy did the same thing on her side.
Leaning way out of the car, I could see that the top of this hill was open. A hole. Like a volcano, only shorter than most volcanoes. And the hole was smaller. I couldn’t tell how small it was until I saw what happened to the old man—the one the dragon ahead of us was carrying. She circled lower and lower, until she was right over the open top of the hill. And then—
Izzy opened her mouth and screamed. No wait, she didn’t. She gasped. The scream came from me. I knew it was one of us.
What the dragon did was, she opened her claw and dropped the old man into the hole. I saw his gray-buttoned sweater and white shirt, his dark pants and his calm expression, for a second, and then he disappeared into the mountain.
The dragon landed on a flat rocky bit near the hole and flapped her wings lazily, the way a butterfly will.
Now the dragon carrying the piano was circling lower.
Izzy grabbed Dad.
“Did you see?” she shouted. “Did you see what happened there?”
Dad nodded. He didn’t seem to be aware that she was shouting in his ear.
“Well—well—it’s awful! That poor old geezer.”
“But it was his time,” said Dad. “There’s nothing you can do when it’s your time. Right, Freddie?”
He was talking to me. He thought I was Freddie. I remembered what the real Freddie had said when he saw the dragon: I guess it’s my time.
The dragon ahead of us circled lower and lower, almost to ground level, before dropping her burden.
I didn’t scream this time. It was a musical instrument, not a person. Also, I was thinking too hard.
The hill really was a volcano. I looked down when my side of the car was over top of the hole. It went down a long way, and at the bottom I saw bright red. Fire red, like from lava, from the center of the earth.
That was one thing. Another thing was that the hole was small. Barely big enough to fit the grand piano.
No noise. Dragon w
ings are nearly silent. I heard the piano legs scrape against the side of the hole. The piano stuck for a second before the legs snapped and the piano disappeared.
I thought about those things. Our car swayed gently, the way a plastic bag sways when you hang it on your bike handlebars.
“Fred!” said Izzy. “I don’t—I’m not—I don’t want to be here!”
I wasn’t happy either. Not because of the volcano. Okay, partly because of the volcano—I didn’t want to get dropped in. But I really didn’t like how easily Dad gave up. Freddie too. Everyone in this upside-down world was so calm, so ready to, to, to leave it.
I wasn’t. I wasn’t ready to say good-bye.
Izzy moaned, throwing herself back against her seat, and then forward, and then back again. The car moved with her.
I thought about a plastic bag on my handlebars. About how small the hole in the mountain was.
I copied my sister, throwing myself back and forward when she did.
It was our turn now. We were getting lower, closer to the top of the hill.
“Izzy, that’s great,” I said. “Keep doing what you are doing. Dad, you too.”
“What?”
“It’s like this car is a swing,” I said. “Swing higher. Come on.”
Izzy and I did it together. We swung wider, wider. The dragon felt it—she clamped tighter with her talons. The car roof cracked and buckled.
I could see the red glow from the whatever, the lava, inside the hill.
“Get ready to drive, Dad,” I said.
“What?”
“Put the car in drive.”
“Don’t be silly, Buddy. What’s the point?”
Izzy got the point. She could see the hole at the top of the hill through the windshield. It was going to be a tight fit.
“The dragon could miss,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Dad! Dad! Move over to the passenger side.”
He turned toward her with a smile.
“Puddin’?”
She pulled him sideways. He protested and then gave in. “Okay, okay,” he said, as she scrambled over the back of the front seat and ended up behind the wheel.
“Want to be beside your old man at the end, eh?”
How could he be so calm about it? This whole upside-down world was full of calm, happy people. Freddie, Mom, Dad, the kids at school. All of them, except maybe Lance after the basketball game, seemed happier here. And yet dragons could drop out of the sky and take you away.
When it’s your time, there’s nothing you can do.
“This reminds me of last weekend in the parking lot,” said Dad. “Eh, Puddin’? Wasn’t that fun? Steering around the lampposts. Backing up. Remember you almost hit the shopping cart?”
He laughed. He really did. I guess if you believe there’s nothing to be done about the future, then you’re going to be calm.
But I didn’t believe that and I wasn’t calm.
“Come on, Izzy,” I said under my breath, the way I talk to the Raptors on TV. Come on, come on.
She moved the seat forward and put the car in drive.
“Good for you—you remembered how,” said Dad.
The car swayed forward…and back…and forward.
She raced the engine.
Come on, Izzy. Come on, car.
We were close to the top of the hill now—a few feet, no more. To the left and right was the evening, the hillside. Directly below us was the hole with a long drop through the inside of the hill into fire.
The dragon let go of us. The roof moved, made buckling noises, and the black pointed talon end disappeared. We were in the middle of the swing cycle, our momentum forward.
“Izzy!”
She didn’t need to be told. She had her foot on the gas as we fell—mostly down, but with enough forward carry to get our front end over the lip of the hole. We bounced. Now the front wheels were catching on the ground. They caught and slipped and caught again. Izzy never took her foot off the gas. The engine roared.
I gave in to the moment, to the flow of the story, the way you float downstream in a strong current, the way you fall from the top of a skyscraper in a dream.
Being at the top of the hill helped. The car was angled down naturally. The front wheels gripped the rock long enough to jerk us out of the hole. Izzy steered downhill. The bottom of the car bumped and crashed and scraped over the uneven ground. It was twilight, gray but clear. We headed for a boulder. Izzy put on the brakes. Too late. We crashed—not going very fast, but still a crash. We were all flung forward. The hood of the car crumpled against the big rock. Izzy put the car in reverse, and when it didn’t move, she shut off the engine.
I couldn’t hear anything louder than the ticking metal of the car.
This whole phase—being dropped, pulling out of the hole, driving down the hill and crashing—had taken maybe six or seven seconds.
I was alive and well, Izzy too, and Dad. We were safe.
Safe.
Safe!
Relief was a huge wave that knocked me down and carried me up the beach.
“Izzy!”
I leaned over the seat back. I hugged her. My sister.
“We made it! You’re amazing!” I shouted into her ear.
Her smile was wobbly, like she could cry as easy as laugh. But there was no hiding her happiness. You can’t hide it, can you? If you’re scared or mad, you can pretend—sometimes. But if you’re happy, everyone knows.
“I did it,” she said. “I saved us.”
“For now,” I said. Yes, relief was a wave. But I knew I couldn’t just lie there on the beach. I had to get up. There was another wave coming.
I opened my door and stumbled out of the car. For a second, I felt the world rolling beneath me—as if I was a sailor who hadn’t got his shore legs yet. Getting used to a new reality.
I staggered round to Dad’s door and opened it. He was fine. Totally fine.
But he wasn’t happy. He kept shaking his head. He turned his body to stare all around. He was a puzzled guy.
“What is going on?” he said. “Why am I here? Why, Buddy?”
Because we aren’t ready to let you go. Because we don’t want to die.
“Because Izzy is an amazing driver,” I said. “Come on, get out.”
Izzy was out on her side of the car, bent over with her hands on her knees, getting her breath and balance.
“Car’s shot,” Dad said.
“Well, it’s a company car, right? You can get another one when you go back to work. Come on, get out of there.”
“Buddy? What are you talking about?”
Izzy screamed. This time it really was her, not me. Mind you, when I saw where she was looking, I was ready to scream too.
—
We were on the west side of the hill. The edge of a sunset shone below the horizon. There was plenty of twilight left. Enough to see around—the highway far below us and the dragons all too near. Our dragon. The big black one. She was the reason I wanted to scream. Job done, she’d been flying away, but now she’d seen us. And was turning back.
The wave of relief had carried me up the beach. Now came the wave of fear that could suck me back into the ocean.
Our dragon was black—a shadow in the twilight. You couldn’t see her clearly until she opened her mouth and breathed out. She made a wide turn, got her speed up and flew toward us.
I grabbed one of Dad’s arms, Izzy the other. We hurried down the hill. The ground was steeply sloping, rocky, mossy, with a couple of small bushes. I checked over my shoulder as we skithered and hopped down the slope. The dragon was closing in. The only plan I had was to keep moving. There was no place to hide until we got to the trees farther down. Dad couldn’t move nearly as well as we could. We carried him between us.
I stepped on rounded rock and fell, bringing Dad with me. I was up in a flash, but the dragon was right there.
I pushed Dad toward Izzy. She grabbed him and they tumbled downhill together. The
dragon reached for me. I dodged her claws. She pulled up and landed near me, heavily enough to start a small rockslide. She lifted her snout, for all the world like a wolf baying at the moon. No sound, though. I never heard any of the dragons make a noise. Flames shot skyward.
I bent to grab a—something. A weapon. Whatever was lying on the ground nearby. It would have been great to put my hand on a flaming sword or a gun or a rocket-propelled grenade. But this was not a video game. I grabbed a rock. Baseball sized with some sharp edges. When the dragon brought her head down to face me, I leaped out of the way of her dragonfire.
“Fred!”
Izzy was shouting. I looked around, couldn’t see her.
“Fred, this way!”
The voice came from downhill.
The dragon moved slowly around me, claws crunching on the hard ground, breaking the stones. She was enormous, big enough to block out half the sky. Her furled wings were the size of a bungalow roof. She lowered her head.
I waited.
This time when the dragonfire came, I jumped forward as well as up. The flames shot under me. For a moment I hung in the air, only a few yards away from her head. It was like I was under the backboard at school, waiting for an alley-oop pass.
Her eyes were the size of dinner plates, with yellow diamond-shaped pupils surrounded by blackness. I drew back my arm and fired before I fell.
I landed on a mini rockslide and bumped downhill on my backside. When I could stand up, the dragon was a hundred feet over my head. I must have hit her—startled her at least.
“Izzy!” I shouted. “Izzy, where are you?”
“Keep going down,” she called back.
A half-dozen strides below me was a sideways slit you couldn’t see until you were right there. Izzy reached out from inside it to grab me.
“Dad and I practically fell into this,” she said. “It’s a cave that goes back into the hill. Come on, Dad’s waiting.”
“Hang on.”
From the opening, I could see the dragon overhead—well, I could see her fiery breath. I wanted to see what she’d do about us.
Izzy put her hand on my shoulder. “Hey,” she said. “Hey, Fred. You okay?”
“I think so. How about you?”
“I guess so. I’m so full inside. It’s Dad, you know. It’s amazing being here with him, but it’s work too. I’m tired. And—”
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