Deadly Pink

by Vivian Vande Velde

To the nearest dragon-

  We've got gold.

  Lots and lots of gold.

  We bet you're not smart enough to get it from us.

  Sincerely,

  Grace and Emily Pizzelli

  I reread the letter, then changed the last line:

  The Pizzelli sisters: Grace and Emily

  I don't know why I liked the sound of that better. More dramatic, I guess.

  Emily was looking so peaceful, I decided not to bother her to get her opinion. The wording wasn't important. We needed to get a dragon ticked off enough that it would come to get our gold from us. Yeah, well, and if it wasn't completely ticked off before it came, it would be once it realized all we had were five gold pieces. But we'd have to deal with that later.

  I folded the letter and dropped it into the mail slot. I listened carefully but didn't hear a thing. Which I guess was a hopeful sign. If it had really dropped into the flower box, that probably wouldn't have been a good thing.

  When we'd had our tea party, our guests had rung the doorbell and servants had let them in. I very much doubted there was a doorbell, and there sure as heck weren't any servants in this house.

  How long would it take? Before, the clock had already started chiming when I'd invited the girls to come at four o'clock, giving them like three seconds from the moment my fingers had let go of the letter to their arriving on our doorstep, dressed and ready to snarf down petits-fours.

  Emily was snoring quietly, but I moved closer to the door so I could hear anyone approaching.

  It's not that I expected the dragon to knock.

  But neither was I expecting him to rip the roof off the house.

  There I was listening for footsteps or the sound of beating wings. Instead, the nails holding the roof frame to the house squealed in protest.

  There was a big difference between facing my sister transformed into a dragon and having this massive stranger-dragon perched on top of the open-to-the-sky wall of the house, holding the peeled-back roof in his claw, peeking at us like we were the last two wontons at the bottom of a box of Chinese takeout.

  Chapter 21

  Gold

  WHEN MY SISTER had been a dragon—and how many people can say that with a straight face?—when my sister had been a dragon, she had still spoken with her normal human voice. When this dragon spoke, there was nothing normal or human about it. His voice was fire and gravel, ancient and relentless, the sound of tectonic plates grinding together before an earthquake.

  “Give me the gold!” he demanded.

  Whether it had been the ripping off of the roof or the geological voice of the dragon, Emily had awakened.

  “Holy catastrophe, Batman,” she said, “what have you gone and gotten us into?”

  Maybe she was trying to be funny, but at that point if the dragon had told us “I require a human sacrifice,” I would gladly have shoved her into his path.

  The dragon's golden eyes didn't blink, but his forked tongue flicked, tasting the air. He repeated his demand, raising his already massive voice, as though we hadn't answered because we hadn't heard. “GIVE ME THE GOLD!”

  Emily and I both dug into our pockets with shaking hands. We offered up our accumulated wealth: me, three coins; Emily, two. I didn't bother showing him the wooden nickels.

  The dragon's tongue became more agitated, preparing us—okay, well, not really— for his roar: “WHERE IS THE GOLD?"

  “This is it,” I managed to squeak out.

  The dragon bellowed, “YOU SAID YOU HAD 'LOTS AND LOTS' OF GOLD.”

  I looked at the coins in my hand and tried to sound sincere. “I did?”

  Emily looked at me like THIS is your plan? Oh, boy!

  The dragon retracted his snakelike tongue. That was the only warning we got before a stream of fire shot out of his mouth. Luckily, it wasn't aimed at us. But the partition blocking off the toilet went up in flames.

  “You insulted me,” the dragon growled, “AND you have no gold?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Any way we can make it up to you?”

  This was a kids' game, I reminded myself. I needed reminding at that point. Regardless of what had happened, I was counting on there not being a human-flesh-eating dragon in a game that had been designed with glittery butterflies, unicorns, dolphins, and a flower-matching game. And that was about as far as the specifics of my plan went. So maybe Emily was right, and this catastrophe—this particular catastrophe—was my fault.

  But maybe it wasn't a catastrophe after all.

  The dragon puffed out his chest. (Yeah, like a dragon sitting on the corner of our house where he'd ripped off our roof had to make himself look bigger to be intimidating.) “You will be my slaves,” he announced.

  “Okay,” I said, and I was aware that Emily's eyebrows shot up.

  Her expression said, I don’t know where you're going with this, Grace, so you’re on your own.

  Actually, slaves sounded good. Slaves sounded like we would be serving him, and that was better than being served to him. “For how long?” I asked.

  “Ninety-nine years.”

  Sure. Why not? That was as doable as King Rasmussem's eighty-seven-thousand-whatever gold pieces.

  “When do we begin?” I asked.

  “Now.”

  The dragon reached into the house and grabbed me in a taloned claw, his grip not tight enough to hurt, but tight enough that I couldn't fill my lungs for a good scream. Then he snatched Emily with his other claw. And then he threw himself into the night air.

  His leathery wings beat noisily, something like when you're standing directly beneath the huge school flag on a windy day. Something like that ... times five.

  Far below, even as we were still angling up, I glimpsed the lights of the Rasmussem arcade—the carousel, the midway, a Ferris wheel that was at the end of a path we'd never followed—and then there was the forest, miles and miles of forest. Occasionally, there were lights there, too, festively strung between trees, possibly marking a settlement. Once, our way briefly followed the course of a river, and between the snaps of the dragon's wings I could hear a few notes of ragtime music and I saw a brightly lit paddle-wheel boat, a bejeweled miniature about as big as the palm of my hand.

  By the light of the moon, I could see Emily hanging limply in the dragon's grasp. Fainted? Or fallen asleep? “Emily!” I shouted as loudly as my squeezed lungs would allow. But the wind caught my voice and flung it away.

  If Emily ... Damn! It was hard to bring myself to even think it. If Emily had died—not that she had, but if she had—would the dragon continue to carry her, or would he drop her?

  I forced myself to believe that as insignificant as our weight was to him, he had no reason to carry her if she was dead and therefore useless to him. So she was still alive—she had to be, and that was not just wishful thinking on my part.

  No.

  Definitely not.

  As eager as I was to believe, I still hadn't quite convinced myself by the time we came to the mountains.

  The moon was behind us, so I could make out little detail. The dragon appeared to be flying full speed toward the face of a cliff.

  I was too terrified to even close my eyes.

  The dragon tilted sideways till he was almost entirely vertical, then he ducked his head and pulled his talons in closer to his body, which brought me in so that my face scraped against his scales. I hoped these were all good signs that he hadn't suddenly decided to commit suicide by mountain. Finally I saw the crack in the rock, and I just had time to think It's too narrow! when we were through it.

  The dragon righted himself and landed with a soft sound like coins jangling in the bottom of a pocket.

  No time for me to wonder Where? before he set me on my feet and breathed flame into the darkness. The clever dragon had torches in brackets lining the cave we'd entered, and all of those on the back wall ignited, throwing flickering light over us.

  Some part of my brain registered that the cavern was at least as big as our
school cafeteria, and that in the corner there were gold coins and artifacts piled high enough to make a decent sledding hill. But that wasn't the important thing. The important thing was that the dragon had set Emily on the floor, too, and I saw her move, curling herself into a more comfortable position. Another case of good news/bad news: bad that she could sleep through the terror of abduction by dragon, good that she was only sleeping.

  I knelt beside her and shook her, but she didn't wake up. I took her hand in mine and squeezed. She may have squeezed back. Maybe. Or not. I brushed a couple strands of hair off her forehead, away from her eyes, but there definitely wasn't any reaction to that.

  “I shall allow you to sleep now,” the dragon informed us. His huge voice bounced around the cavern, threatening to cause a cave-in, or at the very least to give me a headache, but his words vindicated my belief that since this was a game for little kids, the dragon would not be as fierce as the kind my usual gaming brought me into contact with. “There is an enchanted never-ending bucket of food to satisfy your hunger, and a toilet behind that big treasure chest.”

  Typical. Rasmussem didn't want any little girl who ended up here to be deprived of necessities, and be traumatized, and not return to play another day. But I'd already used the facilities at Emily's house, and I'd had my fill of Spam. Still, my curiosity made me look at the enchanted bucket. KFC. Rasmussem must have gotten some serious product-placement considerations for that.

  The dragon said, “Tomorrow, you will start polishing my gold. I want to be able to see my reflection in every single piece. The day after, you will polish my scales so that they shine as fully as the gold. The day after that, you will once again polish the gold. The day after that...”

  This would be a boring ninety-nine years of service.

  Not, of course, that either Emily or I had ninety-nine years.

  Except, it suddenly occurred to me that nobody had ninety-nine years to spend keeping this dragon shiny. Most games play out over three to seven days in a half-hour of total immersion. Even one year waiting on this dragon would require at least fifty return trips to the Rasmussem arcade. No player would keep coming back that often just to buff and polish.

  So there must be a way to escape.

  All I had to do was figure out how.

  And worry about the amount of time Emily had left.

  Emily ... I squeezed her hand again, and this time I knew there was no response. I wasn't sure if a good night's sleep would refresh my sister or if she would never awaken. What, exactly, did that score of twenty-two out of one hundred mean? That she had already spent more than three-fourths of the total time she had? She'd been here hours—which translated to days of game time—before I'd arrived. Surely almost 25 percent meant more than a few hours left. But that was assuming we were talking as though she were a car engine with a quarter of a tank of fuel left: one instant going, the next stopped. Or a time bomb ticking down from a hundred to zero: nothing ... nothing... kaboom! As opposed to, for example, a person whose heart was working at 25 percent capacity. I'd seen that with both of my grandfathers. A wonky heart would cause all sorts of medical problems on top of diminished blood flow. Not being able to breathe, or having fluid accumulate, or getting a blood clot would kill such a patient before that last 1 percent closed off.

  Thank you, King Rasmussem, for being as clear as mud.

  Still, I remembered he had not considered lying and stealing to be cheating.

  “Okay,” I interrupted the dragon, who was still going on about the joys of shiny surfaces, “but what about the sprites?”

  The dragon blinked, finally surprised by something I'd said. He told me, “The sprites can polish their own gold.”

  “That's not what I meant,” I said. “I was wondering what protection you have against them.”

  The dragon's laughter bubbled out like magma.

  “Protection? Against sprites? Itty-bitty smaller-than-YOU sprites?” His laughter caused a minor avalanche in the pile of gold.

  “Who have magic,” I reminded him.

  “Who stole our gold,” I lied to him.

  The thought of stolen gold drained the humor out of him fast. While the dragon considered that, my mind continued to whirl with possibilities. If I could turn the dragon and the sprites against one another...

  I added, “My sister and I had lots of gold.”

  “So you wrote,” he grumbled at me.

  “What?” I asked, as innocently as I could. “When? I never wrote to you. I don't even know your address.”

  “I came,” the dragon said, annoyance beginning to seep through in his voice, “because you said you had lots and lots of gold.”

  “Oh,” I said, as though understanding were dawning. “That's what you were talking about, back at Emily's house. No, I didn't write to you about our gold. Why would I? And you said something about insulting you?” I shook my head. “I didn't understand that part, either.”

  “YOU WROTE,” the dragon bellowed, steam beginning to come out his ears, “THAT YOU AND YOUR SISTER HAD LOTS AND LOTS OF GOLD, AND THAT I WASN'T SMART ENOUGH TO GET IT FROM YOU.”

  “Ouch!” I said. “That wouldn't have been a very smart thing to say to you. Bragging about having gold? To a dragon? A big, powerful dragon like you?” Surely sucking up a bit couldn't hurt. “And then saying something mean to you on top of that? Why in the world would we ever do that?”

  “YOU TELL ME!” the dragon insisted. “You're the ones who sent the letter. 'The Pizzelli sisters: Grace and Emily.' That's how you signed it. Do you deny that's who you are?”

  “No,” I said. “I just deny sending the letter.” I was still holding Emily's hand, and I was concerned that all this roaring wasn't rousing her. Please be all right, Emily.

  “IF NOT YOU,” the dragon demanded, “WHO?"

  “The sprites,” I said. “I mean, they stole our gold, and we didn't have nearly as much as you.”

  The dragon looked thoughtful, as though he might believe me. It was time to escalate.

  “The sprites have magical powers,” I said. “And objects of magic. But that isn't enough for them. They put a spell on us, then came right in and took our gold. I couldn't move to stop them. I overheard them saying they want all the gold in the Land of the Golden Butterflies. Somehow or other, the spell wore off of me, but not my sister. That's why she won't wake up.”

  “Well, they won't be able to work their sprite magic on me,” the dragon said.

  “Maybe not,” I said. “But what about your gold? They have the magic ability to change common things into gold—like the butterflies. But they also can change gold into common things. What if they do that to what you have here?”

  “What do you mean?” the dragon asked.

  Which was my cue for the next part of my plan.

  “Oh, no!” I cried. I ran forward and pretended to pick up one of the gold coins from his horde. But what I held out to show him was one of the wooden nickels King Rasmussem had given me. “It's already started.”

  Chapter 22

  Spriteville

  THE DRAGON'S WINGS shot out and he was instantly airborne and flapping his way toward the exit.

  “No!” I cried. “Wait!”

  I was calling the dragon back.

  What a brilliant tactician! Obviously, I needed a remedial course in fantasy gaming if the best plan I could come up with had me unwilling to part company with a dragon who had already declared his intention to have me spend my next ninety-nine years polishing every surface in the cave.

  But while having him fly away to wage war on the sprites led to delightful mental images, it wouldn't help Emily and me. I doubted that King Rasmussem would cancel our so-called debt to the sprites if sprites ceased to exist on account of the dragon's incinerating every last one of them. Also, I had to admit there was an equal possibility that the sprites might incinerate the dragon. They were just mean enough that I couldn't put dragon-conquering beyond them. Then here I'd be, stuck in this mile-high
cave, waiting for our time to run out, with Emily sound asleep through it all.

  And the only thing that could make that possibility even worse was if the sprites learned who had set the dragon on them.

  The dragon hovered, not quite like a hummingbird, because his wings weren't beating nearly fast enough to keep him aloft in a world without magic. “What?” he demanded.

  “You'd better take us with you,” I told him. “You're too...” Years of experience in the real world, especially as a girl, had ingrained in me that big was a negative word. “...grand...” That wasn't quite right. “...imposing...” What was the word I was looking for?

  “Big?” the dragon supplied.

  “Noticeable,” I countered.

  “Big comes in useful for stepping on a bunch of sprites all at once,” the dragon said.

  “Well, yes,” I said. “But not so much for finding their magic...” Magic what? “...um, magic well—the one that changes stuff like this”—I held up the wooden nickel—“to gold. And that changes gold—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he interrupted, “to stuff like that. I got it.”

  I shook my head. “No, de-golding”—Is there such a word? Never mind, he knew what I meant—“is a slow-acting spell, because the sprites like to gloat while the gold owners get frenzied as they see what's happening but are unable to do anything to stop it. What the sprites' magic well does”—okay, I'd said well, so I needed to stick with it—“is change gold into more gold.”

  “More gold?” That was an idea clearly close to his heart. “What are you saying?” The dragon stopped hovering, which was good because it was disconcerting, being so against the laws of physics and all. Not that it wasn't disconcerting to have him settle to the ground right in front of—and towering over—me.

  I said, “Toss in one coin, get two back.”

  He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “How does that work?”

  “I don't understand magic,” I protested, playing dumb—not that big a stretch. “How does your never-ending bucket of fried chicken work?”