The First Dragon (Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, The)

by Owen, James A.

  “. . . means those travelers will not be returning,” the Dragon said simply. “Ever.”

  “Yes,” John said, this time looking at Jack. “It’s too high a price to pay, when we don’t know how the story will end.”

  “We tell stories for a living, John,” Jack said testily, “and I believe we write the endings we choose.”

  “Not this time, Jack. I’m sorry.”

  Madoc and the other Caretakers simply watched as Jack struggled to contain what he really wanted to say to his longtime friend. This was not merely an argument, but evidence of a deeper division, one that had perhaps been growing longer than any of them realized.

  “We’ve made our lives here ones of risk taking,” Jack said, his fists clenched but his voice measured and even, “and I don’t see why this is any different.”

  “It’s different,” John replied, “because every other decision was made by a different Prime Caretaker.” His eyes flickered over to Verne, who was standing resolute, watching. “I’m not so willing to be reckless with the lives of our friends.”

  “And what about Rose and Edmund and Charles?” Jack replied, a bit less measured. “Who is looking out for them?”

  “We will,” John replied. “Somehow we’ll find a way. But for now, we simply need to make certain the option we choose is the best one. And this one,” he added, glancing apologetically at Will, “is not that option. Yet.”

  He started to say something to Jack, but his friend had already spun on his heel and was striding back to the ferryboat. A hand on John’s shoulder stopped him from following after.

  “No,” Madoc said. “Not now. I’ll talk with him later, but don’t buckle. If you are indeed the Prime Caretaker now, you did exactly as you were supposed to do.”

  “Betray my friends?” John said bitterly.

  “No,” Madoc said again, looking at Verne. “Make the hard decisions—and then stand by them.”

  John cast one more rueful glance at his departing friend, then turned to Shakespeare. “That’s my final word, then,” he said, his voice firm but laced with sadness.

  “No one will be using the Zanzibar Gate to go anywhere. We’ll simply have to find another way.”

  Chapter SIX

  The Hot Young Turks

  “We’re going to be using the Zanzibar Gate,” Laura Glue said in a whisper as she and Fred walked along the docks at Tamerlane House. “There simply is no other way.”

  The Caretakers and their companions had adjourned back to the main island to discuss what options they might have for creating an alternative to Shakespeare’s gate, but the young Valkyrie was having none of it.

  “We’ve been looking through every library in the house,” she muttered, as much to herself as to the badger, “including every nook and cranny of the Repository. We’ve considered every device that has ever been used to travel in time, including a few completely imaginary ones. I tell you, Fred, Will’s gate is the best chance we have—and time is running out.”

  “Not that I disagree with most of that,” Fred replied, “but isn’t time exactly what we have the most of?”

  She shook her head and pulled him to one side of the grand porch at the main entrance. “If they were simply lost in time, then yes,” she whispered, “but we are also trying to outmaneuver an enemy who is better at time travel than we are. They know more than we do. And I don’t think they’ve spent the last couple of months just waiting on us. I think they’ve been busy. And that means we have no time to waste.”

  Shakespeare . . . looked at the small company.

  “So what d’ you want t’ do?”

  She looked around to make sure no one else was in earshot, then leaned in close. “Tonight, meet me at that place where we hid that thing that one time,” she said as she pushed open the door. “We’re going to sort it out.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “So, how are we going to sort it out?” Houdini asked John as he diplomatically maneuvered the Prime Caretaker away from the front door and toward one of the side yards.

  John realized the magician was simply trying to make sure he didn’t stride right into another confrontation with Jack, and he felt more relieved by the gesture than manipulated. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly, “but I simply can’t risk trying something that leaves us worse off than we already are. Rose and Edmund together could travel into Deep Time, and now, with Madoc, we may be able to as well. But if we lose him, we’re two steps behind again.”

  “Two steps behind Dr. Dee, you mean,” said Houdini, “but I would dare to disagree. The boy prince could have chosen sides at the battle on Easter Island, and he didn’t. I think that’s why Dee hasn’t acted yet—his trump card is still an indecisive child.”

  “An indecisive child with the power over time and space,” John replied, “who may yet take John Dee’s side.”

  “Maybe,” a voice said from just ahead of them on one of the paths from the west end of the house, “but we have Will Shakespeare on our side. And,” Kipling added as he reached to shake John’s hand, “they don’t.”

  Twain, Dickens, Verne, and Byron were just behind Hawthorne and nodded in agreement. “That’s one security we have,” said Verne. “They can’t duplicate what Will is able to do with his constructs. As far as I know, their watches have no greater range than ours do.”

  “You’re forgetting two things,” said John. “One, they have the Chronographer of Lost Times. Dee. His Imaginarium Chronographica marks far more zero points than anything we know of, so they can move about in time more freely. And,” he added with a grimace, “Telemachus, and the Ruby Armor, is still a wild card here. If he doesn’t cooperate, couldn’t Dee just kill him and take the armor to use himself?”

  “No,” Verne answered as they rounded the west wing and walked toward Shakespeare’s shop, “or else he’d have already done so. The armor can only be used by an adept, and there are only two we know of for certain—Telemachus and Rose. And anything else Dee could try would require cavorite, and that’s not so easy to come by.”

  “I thought the Nameless Isles were made up almost entirely of cavorite,” John said, shading his eyes to look at the surrounding islands. “Couldn’t someone else just sneak over the bridge, mine some of the ore, and start making their own gate from scratch?”

  In answer Hawthorne grabbed a large sledgehammer from Shakespeare’s tools and strode over to where a boulder of cavorite was protruding from the scrubby lawn. Grasping the handle with both hands, he swung the hammer in a high arc and smashed it down on the stone. It impacted with a loud thunderclap of metal on rock, and the hammer shattered as if it were porcelain. The stone looked as if it had never been touched.

  “Been suggested, been tried,” he said, slightly breathless from the effort. “Cavorite is harder to mine than adamantium, harder to mine than unobtainium. It takes almost infinite geologic patience. More than exists in a man’s lifetime. So it is, in point of fact, a far easier prospect to recover cavorite that has already been used in some capacity.

  “If it had not been that the Watchmaker already had shaped cavorite, in quantity,” Hawthorne went on, “then Will could not have lived long enough to mine it himself.”

  John frowned. “That’s not the best of news,” he said. “What you’re saying is that the pieces we have can be reassembled into new configurations, but nothing new can be shaped. Not entirely new, anyway.”

  “Yes,” said Verne. “The gate really is the best option we have, John. Perhaps the only one.”

  “We’ll resort to last options when I’m convinced there’s nothing else to try, and that the risk is worth it,” John said flatly. “Until then, I expect every man at Tamerlane to abide by my decision.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  When night fell on the Nameless Isles, Fred and Laura Glue met up at the place where they hid that thing that one time, and, making certain they weren’t being followed, she then led him someplace else.

  There were very few areas in Tamerlan
e House that were not well lit at all times—but children have a way of finding all the hidden corners. “It’s very simple,” Laura Glue explained to Fred as he followed her through the hallways to the secret room. “All you have to do is imagine that the longbeards—the grown-ups—have hidden some presents that they bought you, then imagine where they’d hide them, and just go there.”

  She pointed down the dark corridor at the northeast corner of Tamerlane House. “That’s how I found this place.”

  “By imagining someone bought you a gift and hid it?”

  “Not imagining,” she said, pointing at her aviator goggles. “These were supposed to be a surprise gift from Mr. Twain.”

  The badger was about to respond, but the Valkyrie shushed him. A light was approaching the corner from the other end of the corridor. They both held their breath until Quixote and Uncas rounded the corner.

  “And that’s how I found this place,” Uncas was saying, gesturing with one of his prized possessions—a copper spyglass. “It was s’pposed t’ be a present from Scowler Irving.”

  “Well met,” Quixote said as Laura Glue opened up an almost invisible door into a small room. The walls were covered with drapes, and there was no furniture. Fred and Uncas set their lamps down in opposite corners, so that the shadows would cancel each other out.

  “Can’t be too sure,” Fred said. “At least we know no one can find us here.”

  As one, all four of them jumped as someone rapped “Shave and a Haircut” on the door.

  Laura opened it and was crestfallen to see Jack enter the room.

  “Hello, Laura my Glue,” Jack said gently. “You be up to something, neh?”

  “Neh,” she said, answering him in the slang she’d learned among the Lost Boys, so long ago. “How did you know?”

  “It wasn’t me,” Jack said. “Somehow Poe knew you were planning something, and he asked me to check in on you. Oh, don’t worry,” he rushed to reassure them. “He didn’t tell anyone else.” Jack looked around at the four of them. “Is this your whole band of conspirators, then?”

  “Not quite,” another voice said from the corridor. “For good or ill, I must be included amongst their number.”

  Jack moved aside so Shakespeare could enter the room. “They needed someone to program the gate, and I’m afraid at present, I’m the best qualified, like it or not. Also,” he added, “I’m as anxious to help our lost friends as anyone. It was in part because of following my counsel that they’ve become lost.”

  “That wasn’t your fault, Will,” said Jack. “If not for you, we’d have no chance at all to restore the Archipelago.”

  “Are you going to go with us, Scowler Jack?” asked Fred. “It’d be a mighty comfort to have you with us.”

  “I wish I could, more than anything,” Jack said, his eyes heavy with honest regret. “But I cannot. With John having taken the role of Prime Caretaker, I am essentially the new Caveo Principia, and there are too many responsibilities here than I can leave at present—not the least of which is trying to talk some sense into my erstwhile colleague. I want nothing more than to be of help to you, and go along—but fortunately, I’m not the only one who knows about your plan.”

  On cue, another face peered around the door. “What’s all the racket?” Kipling asked. “I thought this was supposed to be a secret mission.”

  His face still bore the burns and scars from the evacuation of the Hotel d’Ailleurs two months earlier, and he moved slowly, his limbs still stiff from his injuries. He was a tulpa, and he would recover, but it would take time.

  “How did you know?” Laura Glue exclaimed.

  “I’m head of Caretaker espionage, remember?” said Kipling. “Plus, the secret missions are always the most fun.”

  “Fun?” said Fred.

  “Yes.” Kipling nodded. “I’m going with you. I’m a tulpa, and so I can actually be away from Tamerlane as long as is necessary. Plus, you’ll need some kind of adult supervision.”

  “I beg your pardon!” said Quixote.

  “Ah, that’s right,” Kipling said. “Sorry, Uncas.”

  He turned to Shakespeare. “You realize your helping us is going to really, really tick off the Prime Caretaker, right?”

  “It can’t be helped,” Shakespeare admitted. “Not trying the gate is the wrong decision. This is our Hail Mary, to borrow one of the old Cartographer’s favorite expressions. Our last play. You are going to be our emissaries into the eternities, to find a needle in an endless ocean of hay, and I cannot in good conscience send you out without having equipped you with every advantage I can.”

  “When you put it that way,” said Kipling, “I don’t know if I want to go anymore myself.”

  “He’s kidding,” Jack assured them. “I think.”

  “Well, that’s everyone,” Laura Glue began before she was interrupted by a clattering of hooves in the hallway.

  “Not quite,” Jack said. He opened the door and Argus filed in, followed by two goats.

  “These are Verne’s two best goats, Coraline and Elly Mae,” Jack said, scratching the goats’ heads. “They’re also going with you.”

  “His war leader!” Laura Glue exclaimed. “And the one who bites. We be in some deep trouble, we takes them with, Jack.”

  “I’ll explain it to Jules later,” Jack said soothingly. “He might be irritated, but he’ll be happy that you have some extra protection for your journey.”

  “If it helps you feel better,” Argus said, raising his hand, “I’m not going with you. I just helped with your transportation.”

  Laura Glue groaned. “This was supposed to be a secret mission,” she complained, “but it seems like everyone at Tamerlane House already knows about it!”

  Uncas patted her consolingly on the arm. “That’s how these sooper-sekrit things tend t’ go, in my experience.”

  “Don’t worry, young Valkyrie,” Shakespeare said. “Argus knows how to keep a confidence. And more than that, telling him was necessary,” he added, pulling back the curtain at the end of the room, “so we could do this.”

  Through the window they could see the flickering lights scattered across the decks of a ship—the Indigo Dragon. But this was not the Indigo Dragon that the Caretakers had used—it had been altered by Shakespeare and Argus to be used for this specific mission.

  It was shortened, bore a smaller sail that could be converted into the balloon used for flight, and now had wheels. And it had been outfitted with a harness that was just the right size for two goats.

  “It’s essentially an all-terrain vehicle,” said Argus, “even if there’s no terrain at all.”

  “Are the goats supposed to just sit in the crow’s nest when we fly?” asked Fred. “It is primarily an airship now, after all.”

  “No,” Kipling replied. “They’re here to work.

  “I once had the opportunity to visit the Saint of the Northern Isles, back when I first became a Caretaker,” he said as he reached into his coat pocket, “and he gave me these. I’ve been saving them all these years for just the right occasion to use them.”

  The others looked at his outstretched hand. There in the palm were a dozen kernels of corn.

  “How long was he in th’ fire?” Uncas whispered to Quixote.

  “Hush,” said Laura Glue. “What are they, Rudy?”

  “Magic seed corn,” he replied. “If you plant them, they grow into a crop of corn that, when eaten, ensures that you have only good dreams when you sleep, and never bad ones. I have often been plagued by night terrors, and considered planting a little garden out back. But I’m glad I saved them, because they have one other use.

  “If you feed the seed corn to any creature with cloven hooves, it will be able to fly. The Christmas Saint used them on reindeer, but they’ll also work . . .”

  “On goats,” Laura Glue finished for him. “That’s brilliant!”

  “Meh,” said Elly Mae.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “I’ve already aligned the mechan
isms from the Zanzibar Gate,” Shakespeare explained as the other conspirators got settled aboard the Indigo Dragon. “I’ve set it to go to the same place Bert said that the others were going to, and I have faith it will work. But after that,” he added, choking back a sob, “you’ll be on your own.”

  “How can you set the device to the right time and place?” asked Laura Glue. “I thought only Rose or Edmund could do that without a trump.”

  “Actually, it’s because of Edmund that I can,” said Shakespeare. He showed them the bronze plate he planned to insert into the mechanism of the gate. “We know from what Bert told us that they are no longer in the future, but in the past,” he told them, “and Edmund found a way to tell us where.

  “When Jules asked me to examine the time travel possibilities of the Sphinx that Poe had in the basement,” he explained, “I opened it and found this plate. I didn’t know what it meant then, but I know now. And it will take you to them. This I believe.”

  “There’s one more thing,” Jack said. He handed Fred a box wrapped in oilcloth. “It’s the Serendipity Box. Laura Glue has never used it, nor has Quixote, or Kipling. It’s your fallback, for when you are in real trouble. But,” he added, “I hope you won’t need it.”

  It took only a few minutes for them to sail the Indigo Dragon to the outer island where the Zanzibar Gate stood, and only a few minutes more to prepare for the crossing through time. Shakespeare installed the bronze plate on the control device, then stood back with Jack and Argus and looked at the small company. A Valkyrie, a badger Caretaker, his father the squire, the legendary knight, and Kipling. “That’s everyone, I think,” Jack said.

  “Not quite,” said Laura Glue, looking around in the darkness. “Where’s—”

  “I’m already here,” Madoc said as he stepped out of the trees and climbed onboard the ship. As he approached, the gate began to glow.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d do it,” said Quixote. “You seemed very supportive of the Prime Caretaker’s decision.”