The Frozen Menace

by Ursula Vernon

  For my father, who would recite “The Ballad of the Ice-Worm Cocktail”

  on long car rides

  DIAL BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE, LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  Copyright © 2016 by Ursula Vernon

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  eBook ISBN 978-0-698-40792-3

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Vernon, Ursula.

  The frozen menace / by Ursula Vernon.

  pages cm. — (Dragonbreath ; 11)

  Summary: “Danny Dragonbreath travels to the Farthest North to find a way to relight his fire

  before it’s too late”— Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-8037-3986-4 (hardcover)

  [1. Dragons—Fiction. 2. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 3. Humorous stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.V5985Fr 2016 [Fic]—dc23 2015007669

  Version_1

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Cold As Ice

  A Rare Disease

  To The Bus!

  Extinguished

  The Magical Refrigerator

  The Expedition Begins

  Over The Edge

  Iceworms And Fiery Birds

  When Iceworms Get Mad . . .

  Run!

  Worm Food

  Hatched

  Sparks and Eggshells

  Herbert

  Mama Wendell

  Baby Phoenix Lizard

  Fiery Puke

  Glow Worms

  Worm Teamwork

  Fire And Burps

  Love And Glasses

  The Fire-Breathing Dragon Goes Home

  About the Author

  Danny woke up and immediately wished he hadn’t.

  He’d been dreaming about snow and ice, and when he woke up, it seemed like part of the dream had come with him. There was a frozen knot in his chest that radiated cold.

  He pulled the blankets back and poked himself in the chest. His skin felt clammy. The coldness in his chest didn’t budge.

  “That’s weird . . .” said Danny out loud.

  He tried to breathe fire. Not a lot of fire—large parts of his room were flammable!—but just a little to get his blood moving.

  Nothing happened.

  Normally when he was cold, it was easier to breathe fire. He’d had great luck with holding a bag of frozen peas under his chin, although his mom had made him stop because he kept thawing out the peas.

  He took a deep breath and thought about things that made him mad—video games that ate your saved game so you had to replay for hours. Big Eddy the school bully. People being mean to animals.

  When he exhaled, he breathed frost into the room.

  “Whoa,” he said.

  He slid out of bed and went downstairs.

  His father was sitting in the kitchen, reading a book and drinking coffee. He looked up, surprised.

  “You’re up early, sport. What’s wrong?”

  His father frowned. “Are you sick?”

  “I might be?” said Danny. This didn’t feel like having a fever. It was more like he’d eaten ice cream too fast and chilled his stomach, except instead of warming up, his stomach had gone on to chill his heart and his lungs and his liver and all the other wibbly bits that go into a small dragon’s anatomy.

  (Danny’s father was a “sympathy vomiter,” which meant that if someone threw up anywhere near him, Danny’s dad would immediately run for the bathroom. Whenever Danny came home sick from school, his father hid in the bedroom until they established that it was a fever and not food poisoning. Danny found the whole thing sort of funny, if tragic.)

  “Nah,” said Danny. “I’m not queasy. I’m just cold.”

  Danny’s father felt his forehead. “You feel cold. I don’t know. I wish your mom were here . . . She’ll be back Thursday.”

  Danny nodded.

  “You want to stay home from school?”

  “Okay,” said Danny, who was not going to turn down a chance to stay home from school. “I’ll go back to bed.”

  “You do that,” said his father. As Danny climbed up the stairs to his bedroom, his father called, “You’re not allowed to die until Thursday! Your mom will yell at me!”

  Danny grinned, despite the cold, and went back to bed.

  He slept for most of the day, and when he woke up, the cold feeling was worse.

  His throat felt a bit like when he’d eaten a cough drop and then inhaled deeply, except that it didn’t taste like mint. The air hitting the back of his throat was like frost.

  It was sort of neat, except for being half-frozen.

  He piled blankets on top of himself, and then more blankets, and then a few more. It didn’t seem to help. The cold was coming from inside him, not from the air.

  He was just thinking of going in search of more blankets when the door opened.

  “Wendell!” said Danny happily, sitting up. His best friend, Wendell the iguana, came in, followed by Christiana the crested lizard. “Christiana! What are you guys doing here?”

  “We brought you your homework,” said Wendell. “Your dad says you’re sick.”

  “Whoa,” said Christiana. “That sounds serious.” She frowned at Danny. “I don’t really understand the mechanism that lets you breathe fire—I’d probably have to dissect you to figure that out—”

  “I’m not that sick!”

  “—but that sounds like some kind of weird dragon problem to me.” She leaned against the door frame. “Have you asked any dragons?”

  “I asked my dad,” said Danny. “But he’s not really good with medical stuff. I mean, he’ll get a headache and Mom will be all ‘Did you take some aspirin?’ and he’s all ‘No, I didn’t,’ and she’ll be all ‘Why not?’ and he’ll be like ‘I dunno . . .’ and—”

  “I don’t think there are any,” Danny admitted. “We’re sort of endangered, and also the total secrecy thing.”

  “Makes it hard to go to medical school,” said Wendell. “What about your granddad? He knows all kinds of stuff. He got that awful wasp out of my dreams that time.”

  “That’s a great idea!” said Danny. He draped himself in blankets and led the procession downstairs to the phone.

  The phone rang eighteen times, which was pretty normal for Danny’s grandfather. Then it was picked up and Danny heard: “Eh? What? Is this thing on?”

  “IT’S ME, GREAT-GRANDDAD!” yelled Danny into the receiver.

  “Eh? You’re not my granddad! My granddad was swallowed by the Great Toad of Prosperity and became immortal, for all the good it does him inside a toad. Unless you mean my granddad on my mother’s side—”

  “NO!” yelled Danny. “You’re MY great-granddad! It’s Danny!”

  “Oh, right, right. How are you, boy?”

  He explained—loudly—the strange cold sensation he’d been feeling.

  “Now that’s interesting . . .”

  “He says it’s interesting,” said Danny to Wendell and Christiana.

 
“Good interesting?” asked Wendell. “Or ‘Wow, you’ve got a disease so rare that they’re going to name it after you’ interesting?”

  “That’d be kind of neat,” said Danny. “Danny’s Reverse Fever! I’ll be famous!”

  “I always figured you’d end up in a medical textbook one way or another . . .” muttered Christiana.

  “I think so,” said Danny. “I mean, it doesn’t hurt, it’s just weird.”

  “Come out and see me,” said Great-Grandfather Dragonbreath. “It could be serious, and if it is, there’s no time to lose.” He considered. “And bring that little friend of yours out too. Wanda, was it?”

  “Wendell . . .” said Danny, but his great-grandfather had already hung up the phone.

  “Are you sure you want to come with me?” asked Danny as they left the house. He’d written a note to his dad saying that he was going to Great-Granddad’s house and that Wendell and Christiana were with him.

  “I don’t really mind being called Wanda,” said Wendell. “I’m kind of used to it. And I like your great-granddad.”

  “It’s not that,” said Danny. “It’s . . . well . . . I’m sick. Sort of. Aren’t you afraid you’ll catch it?”

  “Honestly, I was surprised you agreed to come along and give him his homework,” said Christiana. “I know how you are about germs.”

  Wendell squirmed. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay, I’m a little worried.”

  He opened his backpack, revealing a large jug.

  “That may be overkill,” said Christiana. “Or at least a fire hazard.”

  “If worse comes to worst, you can always bathe in it,” said Danny. “Anyway, this is probably a dragon-specific sort of problem. It probably won’t do anything to iguanas.”

  “Right,” said Wendell, sounding not very convinced.

  Danny noticed that the iguana was careful to keep Christiana between them, but he didn’t say anything. It was already pretty brave of Wendell to come along at all.

  They got on the bus. The bus driver raised an eyebrow at Danny’s blanket-covered attire, but said nothing.

  “So where does your great-granddad live?” asked Christiana.

  “Mythical Japan,” said Danny.

  There was a long pause.

  “Yup,” said Danny.

  They waited.

  Christiana nodded once. “All right, then.”

  “Anyway,” said Christiana, “skepticism isn’t about disbelieving everything, it’s about disbelieving stuff that doesn’t have proof. And I’ve got plenty of proof that very weird things happen around you. One of these days, I’ll figure out how it works.”

  Danny had to admit that it was easier to live with Christiana when she wasn’t denying that he was really a dragon, but he did kind of miss being able to tease her about it.

  He rubbed his chest. The cold felt sharper. He pulled the blankets more tightly around his shoulders.

  It took a transfer, but the bus driver finally called: “Next stop, mythical Japan!” Wendell reached up and pulled the cord to request a stop.

  “What I’d like to know,” said Christiana as they all piled off the bus, “is whether or not the bus drivers remember these stops, or whether it’s some kind of weird dragon magic.”

  “It’s just a good bus system,” said Danny.

  Mythical Japan looked like it usually did—snow and bamboo and ancient, gnarled trees. Danny’s grandfather lived on the outskirts in a small, tastefully appointed house surrounded by trees, hot springs, and his greenhouse.

  “Wow,” said Christiana, looking around. “This looks like a Hokusai painting.”

  “Who?” asked Danny.

  “Hokusai. Great Japanese painter in the Edo period.”

  “. . . okay,” said Danny.

  “If your great-granddad lives here, I think Hokusai’s technically part of your cultural heritage,” said Christiana.

  “Neat!” said Danny.

  “. . . Philistine,” muttered Christiana.

  “Was he a painter too?”

  Wendell snickered. “It means somebody who doesn’t know about culture,” he told Danny. Danny rolled his eyes.

  • • •

  It was a short walk through the bamboo thickets to Danny’s great-grandfather’s house. Snow lay more thickly than usual on everything. It crunched underfoot as they walked.

  “Wonder if Suki will be here . . .” said Wendell.

  “Aw, man,” said Christiana. “I haven’t seen her in ages! How is she?” (Suki the exchange student lived in the real-world Japan, but visited mythical Japan occasionally, which was where Danny and Wendell usually ran into her.)

  “She’s fine,” said Wendell. “We saw her just the other—Danny!?”

  Danny, much to his own surprise, had collapsed in a heap in the snow.

  Christiana and Wendell both took an arm and pulled him to his feet.

  “Are you okay?” asked Wendell. “Do you feel weak?”

  “No,” said Danny. “Just cold.”

  The snow underfoot had been chilling his toes, sure—not badly, just enough to be felt through the thick scales on his feet. But then his chest had given a strange pulse of coldness in response, and suddenly the world had tilted sideways and he had pitched over into a snowdrift.

  Christiana slung an arm over his shoulders. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll help you. Jeez! You’re like a block of ice!” She shifted her weight. “How close is this place?”

  “It’s close,” said Wendell, slathering hand sanitizer on his fingers.

  “I’m fine,” said Danny. “I don’t know what happened. It was actually kind of neat, things went all swooooosh sideways and then I fell over!”

  “Yeah,” said Christiana. “Neat. And the bit where you die of hypothermia will be totally awesome too, I’m sure.”

  “I’d rather die of hypothermia than sarcasm,” muttered Danny, but allowed Christiana to help him through the snow.

  When they reached Danny’s great-granddad’s house, Wendell ran ahead to the door and hammered on it.

  Normally it took a few minutes for the elderly dragon to make his way to the door, but this time it opened immediately.

  “Wanda!” said Great-Grandfather Dragonbreath. “You made it! Where’s Danny?”

  “Right behind me, sir,” said Wendell. “He fell over in the snow. I think there’s something really wrong.”

  The old dragon scowled, and his long catfish whiskers twitched. “That’s bad,” he said. “I was hoping it would just be a minor ailment, but it sounds like a full extinguishing.”

  “A what?”

  Grandfather Dragonbreath pushed past him and hurried down the path. He scooped Danny up in his arms.

  “That’s probably why you’re still alive,” said his great-grandfather. “I can tell just by touching you that you’re chilled to the bone.”

  “I’m cold,” Danny admitted as he was carried into the house, “but it’s more like I’ve got cold in me, not like I feel cold, if that makes any sense . . .”

  “It makes a great deal of sense,” said his great-grandfather grimly. He plopped Danny down on the couch inside the house and turned to Danny’s friends.

  Danny was a little surprised that Christiana did not explode at being called “young lady.” Normally she would have delivered a lengthy tirade about how she wasn’t a lady and then followed it up with something about oppressive gender roles.

  “Are you sure you’re not sick?” Danny asked.

  Christiana rolled her eyes. “I’ll make allowances for the older generation,” she muttered. “Particularly since you’re, I dunno, currently dying.”

  “Can you fix him, sir?” asked Wendell worriedly.

  “Temporarily,” said Grandfather Dragonbreath. “You, Danny—stay there and don’t move a muscle. Wanda, young lad
y—come with me.”

  “It’s Christiana,” said Christiana, following the elderly dragon toward the kitchen.

  “Eh? Don’t mumble, now. Speak up!”

  They went into the kitchen. Danny lay on the couch, feeling a little left out.

  He thought about getting up, but then he noticed his toes.

  They were turning pale green—not a healthy lizard green, but the cold color at the heart of a glacier. There were hints of blue around the edges.

  He tried to wiggle them. Nothing happened.

  He poked one with his fingers. It felt cold and numb.

  Danny started to think that maybe this was serious after all.

  His grandfather came out of the kitchen, carrying a tray with tea steaming on it.

  “What’s happening?” asked Danny. Frost came out of his mouth when he talked.

  “Simple,” said his grandfather. “I’m afraid your fire’s gone out.”

  “My fire? Really? That can happen?”

  “Occasionally,” said Great-Grandfather. “Only to fire-breathing dragons, of course.” He thumped his own chest. “You get that from your grandmother’s side of the family. My side of the family are mostly water-dragons. Water doesn’t go out, but it can dry up—well, anyway. Neither here nor there! You get a cold and it gets into your lungs and instead of pneumonia, your fire goes out. Saw it happen to your great-uncle once, and made up a treatment.”

  He poured out some tea and handed Danny a cup.

  “I had a cold two weeks ago . . .” said Danny. “I thought I was over it.”

  “There you are, then.”

  The tea smelled very strange. Danny drank it anyway.

  It tasted . . . hot.

  “What is it?”

  “Ginger and peppermint, cayenne and chamomile.” The elderly dragon held up a finger. “And a very large dollop of fireweed honey.”