by Rebecca Rupp
“I’ll bet that’s why Aunt Mehitabel liked them,” said Sarah Emily.
She smiled at Hannah and Hannah smiled back.
Hannah turned back to the bookshelf.
“Look at these old storybooks,” she said. “I’ve read some of these. Here’s The Jungle Book and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Pollyanna. And The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.”
“Peppers?” said Sarah Emily. She giggled.
“They were kids,” said Hannah. “Their last name was Pepper.” She took out the book and opened it. “Look at this,” she said, and held the book out to Sarah Emily. There was writing on the first page.
“I can’t read that,” said Sarah Emily. “It’s too squiggly.”
Hannah took the book back. “‘To my dear niece, Mehitabel,’” she read. “‘All best wishes for a happy eleventh birthday. Love from Aunt Elvira.’”
Sarah Emily pulled out Pollyanna. She opened it to the first page. “This one has a little sticker in it,” she said. “It says, ‘This book belongs to Mehitabel Davis.’”
“It’s called a bookplate,” Hannah said.
She replaced the books on the shelf.
“I thought there would be something about Fafnyr here,” she said disappointedly. “A message or a clue. Something to tell us more about him.”
Across the room Zachary was pulling open the bottom drawer of the desk. He produced the wooden box.
“This is the box we were telling you about,” he said to Hannah. “We can’t open it. There’s no latch.”
Hannah picked up the box and turned it around in her hands, examining it. She stroked the polished top, with its inlaid squares and rectangles of colored woods.
“It’s the only thing up here that’s really strange,” Zachary said. “Everything else is interesting, but sort of ordinary, if you see what I mean. But this box is different.”
Hannah set the box on the floor and sat down next to it.
“Maybe this is what Aunt Mehitabel wanted us to find,” said Hannah. “Maybe this is why she sent us the key to the Tower Room.”
They sat in a circle around the box, turning and tapping it, studying it from every possible angle.
“We could just bash it open with a crowbar,” Zachary suggested, “or an ax. I know where Mr. Jones has an ax — out next to the woodpile.”
“I’m sure Aunt Mehitabel didn’t let us find the box so that we could hack it to pieces,” said Hannah.
Zachary ran a hand searchingly over the top of the box.
“There must be something here somewhere,” he said. “A little knob or a handle . . .”
“Do you know what the box top looks like?” Sarah Emily said suddenly. “It looks like one of those number puzzles — you know, the ones with all the numbered squares in a little frame? You have to slide the squares around until you get the numbers in the right order.”
“She’s right,” said Zachary. “That’s just what it looks like.”
“Maybe one of the top pieces slides,” said Hannah.
Zachary’s fingers flashed from square to square, pushing and pulling. “And if one does . . .” He stopped. His fingers had found what they were looking for. A single ebony rectangle in the very center of the box slid forward and locked into place with a sharp click.
“Maybe it’s like a combination lock,” Zachary said.
“Try opening it now,” said Hannah.
The children held their breath. Zachary held the box with both hands and tugged upward on the lid. Nothing happened. The box remained tightly shut.
“There must be more to the puzzle,” he said.
“Maybe it takes more than just one piece,” said Hannah. She touched the pale yellow square just above the ebony rectangle and moved it downward. It clicked into place.
“Now the next piece,” said Zachary excitedly. He moved a cocoa brown square. “And the next. I think we’ve got it.”
Slowly, piece by piece, they rearranged the inlaid pattern of the box top, clicking each wood block into its new position.
“I’m sure this is right,” said Hannah. “See how they’re beginning to line up? All the dark ones are forming a sort of zigzag.”
“So it really was a puzzle,” said Sarah Emily. “A puzzle box.”
“We’ll know in a minute,” said Zachary. “This is the last block, the one in the corner. You move it, S. E. This was your idea.”
Sarah Emily clicked the last block into position. Zachary reached again for the lid. And this time the box opened.
There were two objects inside. The first was a scroll of paper, tied with a faded blue ribbon. The second was carefully wrapped in an old white silk scarf.
“What is this?” said Hannah, fumbling with the silk. Beneath the cloth lay something smooth and slippery and cool, like metal, and sharply curved. As Hannah finally pulled it free of its wrappings, it flashed and glimmered, almost with an inner light of its own, brilliantly gold.
Sarah Emily gasped.
The children stared at each other in astonishment.
Then Zachary said, “It’s a dragon’s scale.”
“Fafnyr’s,” said Sarah Emily, in a startled whisper.
“So Aunt Mehitabel does know Fafnyr,” Hannah said. “But when did she meet him? And why is he here?” She reached for the paper scroll and pulled off the blue ribbon. “Let’s see what this is.”
The children carefully unrolled the scroll, weighting the corners with Aunt Mehitabel’s books to keep it from snapping shut again. It was a map. There was a title printed at the top. “‘Lonely Island,’” Hannah read, “‘by Mehitabel Davis.’”
“Wow,” said Zachary.
And Sarah Emily said, “Aunt Mehitabel drew this?”
The map was beautiful. It was exquisitely drawn in colored inks. It showed an ocean filled with blue wavy lines. Traveling across it was a three-masted ship with billowing sails and flapping flags. Behind the ship swam a pod of pale blue whales, each spouting a frothy plume of water and air. A compass shaped like a rose was drawn in one corner, and each petal of the rose showed the direction of one of the sixteen winds.
“Sixteen winds,” breathed Zachary in awe, leaning over until his nose nearly touched the paper.
Right in the center of the map, drawn large, was a crescent-shaped island, the upper and lower arms of which enclosed a cove. At the mouth of the cove stood —“Our house,” said Zachary, staring. “I mean, this house.” A perfect little Victorian house was drawn there, in such detail that the children could hardly make out the finest lines. The tower was there, in miniature, with an infinitesimal weathervane at its peak, and the garden was surrounded by a tiny inked fence.
At the upper end of the island, in the middle of the top arm of the crescent, was the picture of a rocky hill. In the center of the hill was drawn a tiny golden dragon, perfect, from the individual scales of its back to the webbed wings and the arrow-pointed tail. It had three heads. Two of the heads appeared to be asleep — the eyes were closed — but the third showed bright narrow slits of —“What color is that?” asked Sarah Emily. “Gray?”
“Not green?” asked Hannah.
The mouth was spouting minuscule red flames.
Next to the hill was a printed legend. “‘Drake’s Hill,’” read Zachary. “And underneath it, in smaller letters, it says, ‘Fafnyr’s Resting Place.’”
Hannah said, “I think we should write a letter to Aunt Mehitabel.”
Hannah sat at the desk. They had found paper, envelopes, and to write with, an old-fashioned pen with a metal nib, the kind you dip in an inkwell. Hannah had been elected to write the letter because she had the neatest handwriting. Now she surveyed the row of ink bottles, reading the labels one by one, and finally selected Emerald Green. She uncapped the bottle, dipped the pen, and carefully wrote:
Dear Aunt Mehitabel,
“Now what?” she asked.
“Ask how she met Fafnyr,” suggested Sarah Emily.
“Why didn’t she just
tell us about him?” asked Zachary. “Why does he live on this island?”
“Does she visit him? Are they friends?”
“Did she mean for us to find the puzzle box?”
“When did she draw the map?”
“Why does she have one of Fafnyr’s scales?”
“Wait a minute,” said Hannah. “I can’t write this fast.”
Dear Aunt Mehitabel, the letter finally read,
We are having a wonderful time on the island. We did what your note said and went to Drake’s Hill. We met Fafnyr. He asked us to come visit him again. When did you meet Fafnyr? Have you known him a long time? Why is he living on the island?
We also found the puzzle box in the Tower Room, with the dragon’s scale and the map.
Please write soon.
Love,
Hannah
Zachary
Sarah Emily
“Let’s send it right away,” said Zachary impatiently.
Hannah folded the letter, tucked it into the envelope, licked the flap, and smoothed the envelope closed.
“We’ll get a stamp from Mother,” she said.
“Aunt Mehitabel’s sealing wax,” said Sarah Emily suddenly. “The seal on the envelope she sent to us back home — I just realized what it was. It was a dragon.”
On the fourth day, the rain began to taper off. The downpour became a shower, then a patter, and finally a thin drizzle.
“It’s almost over,” said Hannah with relief. “I can’t stand it if we have to wait much longer.”
“We could go out in this,” said Zachary. “It’s not raining very hard anymore. Let’s see if there are any old raincoats around or something. Maybe an umbrella.”
“Why, of course there are,” said Mr. Jones, when the children asked. “We islanders are always prepared for a little rain. Go check those hooks on the back of the kitchen door. Looked to me like there was some rain gear there just about your size.”
The rain gear wasn’t quite their size. Sarah Emily’s poncho trailed on the ground behind her; Hannah’s boots were two sizes too big; and the sleeves of Zachary’s mackintosh dangled down past his hands, and its stiff shiny collar rode up uncomfortably over his ears. Nobody cared. It was so glorious, at last, to be out-of-doors and on the way back to Drake’s Hill. The children splashed along the little path. Clouds rolled away to the east, and the rain, softer now, made a cheerful plunking sound on their rain hoods and hats. Sarah Emily tilted her head back and caught raindrops on her tongue.
When they reached the vast pile of rocks that crowned the peak of the hill, Hannah kicked off the flopping boots that she wore over her sneakers and tucked them under a low-lying outcrop of rock. “I can’t climb in these things,” she said.
The children, panting, scrambled upward, rocky step by rocky step, until they reached the topmost stone shelf. Single file, they cautiously circled the shelf, its surface slick and shiny with rainwater, and stepped out onto the wide ledge stretching out over the rain-swept ocean. Before them, dark and dripping, was the entrance to the dragon’s cave. They paused before it, suddenly nervous, reluctant to go inside.
“I wish it weren’t so dark in there,” Sarah Emily said, hanging back. “I’m afraid of the dark.”
“Why don’t you let her hold your flashlight, Zachary?” Hannah suggested. “That might make her feel better.”
Zachary, reaching into his raincoat pocket for the flashlight, firmly shook his head.
“No. It’s mine,” he said. “She might drop it or break it or something.”
“No, she won’t,” said Hannah. “Come on, Zachary. Don’t be so selfish. It won’t hurt you to share every once and a while.”
But Zachary stubbornly shook his head again.
“I just don’t like people fooling with my things,” he said. “It’ll be all right, S. E. Look, I’ll go first. Just follow me.”
He switched on the flashlight and the children stepped through the door of the cave. The wavering yellow light threw ghostly shadows on the glistening walls and illuminated the strange shapes of stalactites, gleaming and silvered with water. Bunched closely together, the children moved onward, farther in and farther down. The distinctive scent that they now knew was dragon wafted past their noses: incense, cinnamon, and a crisp smoky smell of burning leaves.
“Fafnyr?” said Hannah tentatively, peering into the dark.
The wandering flashlight beam picked up a sudden flash of gold. There was the sound of a great body shifting on the stone floor, and then, far above them, appeared two glowing slits of bright electric blue. The blue widened into a pair of eyes, the pupils straight black lines like a cat’s. Then there was a low hissing sound — a furnace noise — as the dragon softly flamed, and the cave blossomed into light. The second head was awake.
This head’s voice was deeper, huskier, than the first.
There was a rumble as the dragon harrumphed, coughed, and cleared its throat. “The friends of my brother, I presume?” the dragon said. It lowered its golden head and peered into each of their faces, the blue eyes glowing even more brightly. “Hannah? Zachary? Sarah Emily?”
The children suddenly found themselves at a loss. Addressing a tridrake was confusing.
“Is your name Fafnyr, too?” asked Sarah Emily. “I mean, you’re the same but you’re different, too. Do you —”
But the dragon interrupted with a majestic nod. “We are Fafnyr Goldenwings,” it said. “It is our name.”
Hannah began to apologize. “We don’t mean to drip all over your floor,” she said, “but it’s raining outside. We’ve been stuck in the house for ages.”
The dragon’s nostrils flared as it sniffed the air. “Rain from the northwest,” it murmured. “Sky water.” It coiled and uncoiled its golden tail. “This is my kind of weather.”
“I didn’t know dragons liked water,” said Zachary.
“Ah, yes,” the dragon said, almost dreamily. “Ah, yes. Some of us are seafarers.”
“Mr. Jones — he lives on the other end of the island,” said Zachary. “He’s going to teach us how to use a boat.”
The dragon nodded approvingly.
“A useful skill,” it said. “A fine life. Salt air. Exercise. Good companions. Strange ports and foreign harbors.”
“It’s just a little boat,” said Zachary.
The dragon waved a golden claw. “No matter, lad,” it said. “We all begin at the beginning.” It blinked and stretched its golden wings. Behind it on the cave wall its shadow suddenly stretched and swelled, looming blackly toward the invisibly distant stone ceiling.
Sarah Emily gave a little gasp.
Hastily the dragon folded its wings again, flattening them neatly along its back.
“I beg your pardon,” it said apologetically. “Did I startle you? There is no need to be nervous, I assure you. None at all. None whatsoever.”
It squirmed slightly and wiggled its shoulder. “My wing tickled,” it said.
“It wasn’t you,” said Sarah Emily miserably. “It was your shadow. It looked so huge and black. And it’s dark in here, back in the corners. I’m scared of the dark.”
“She’d be all right,” said Hannah, frowning at Zachary, “if she could hold Zachary’s flashlight. Then she could shine the light into the corners when she got nervous and she’d see that there’s nothing to be frightened of.”
Zachary looked embarrassed.
“I’ll shine the light anywhere she wants it,” he said crossly. “But I don’t like handing out my stuff. I take good care of this flashlight. It’s special. It has three colored filters on it and two beams. I got it for Christmas.”
The dragon made a soft hissing sound deep inside its chest and its flame flared brighter. The light grew stronger and spread to the farthest edges of the cave.
“Nothing,” said the dragon, “is easier for a dragon than dark corners. Is this better?”
Sarah Emily nodded shyly.
The dragon turned its golden head toward Zac
hary and studied him for a long moment.
Then it finally said, “Perhaps you would like to hear a story?”
“Yes,” said Zachary. “Please. I’d love to.”
“So would I,” said Sarah Emily.
“Please tell it,” said Hannah.
The children seated themselves on the cave floor, leaning warmly against the dragon’s curled golden tail. As Fafnyr began to speak, they felt again as though the walls of the cave faded away before them, revealing another place and time. First there was a cold touch of salt air and a sound of calling sea gulls, then a sudden chatter of voices, the crackling sound of a wood fire, a homey smell of fresh bread baking. They were seeing the world through someone else’s eyes.
“Jamie Pritchett,” the dragon began, “was an orphan. He would have liked, of course, to have had a mother and father, and perhaps some brothers and sisters, too, and a home of his own, like ordinary boys, but he didn’t find being an orphan all that bad. He had been one as long as he could remember. . . .
Ever since Jamie was a baby — found wrapped in a scrap of blue blanket in a laundry basket, Mrs. Bingle said — he had lived in an orphanage in an old house (painted a brave shade of sunshine yellow) on the outskirts of London.
The orphanage was run by Mr. and Mrs. Bingle, who, since they had no children of their own, took in the homeless and unwanted and loved them all dearly. But sometimes it was hard. The house was big and drafty and bits of it were falling down. Mr. Bingle had holes in his boots and patches on his winter coat, and sometimes — no matter how hard Mrs. Bingle tried and how clever she was with the household money — there simply wasn’t quite enough porridge to go around. Then Mr. Bingle would make a joke about it and everybody would tighten his or her belt a notch and they would all huddle around the fire in the big front room and pretend to be survivors of a shipwreck on the shores of darkest Africa or valiant explorers heading for the North Pole.
Mr. Bingle told stories, which always began, “This is a tale my granddad told me once, so you can be sure that it is true . . .” (but you never could be sure, what with all the dragons and wizards and unlucky princes turned into salamanders and hedgehogs). And Mrs. Bingle would sing songs, and everybody, from the oldest orphan down to the very youngest baby left just last week on the kitchen doorstep, got a hug and a kiss good night. No matter how many children the old house held, there always seemed to be room for one more. But no two ways about it, sometimes it was hard.
