by Laurence Yep
Like her, I thought he was unconscious and helpless. But, like a possum, the mongoose had only been pretending to be unconscious. Waiting until her hands were only inches away, he bounced onto her arm and then ran up it.
“I will do the kicking and you can do the squealing,” he taunted, and hit her with his hind paw several times.
He was game for a fight all right, but nursing an injured forepaw against his chest robbed him of his usual speed and grace. Her slap swept him from her arm and arching through the air to fall onto my chest.
He raised his head groggily and struggled up on three paws. “Protect Nanu Nakula’s master.”
His good paw reached for the paper, but as soon as his claws touched it, tentacles of blue light began to twist around the mongoose and me. I stifled a cry, but my pain must have been nothing compared to the torture his little body was feeling. Yet he only gritted his teeth and kept tugging at the charm even when the tips of his bristling fur began to smoke and a ball of blue light surrounded him.
“Ssstop that,” the lamia commanded, her body bobbing up and down and round and round, but not daring to touch the mongoose while the painful glow surrounded him.
When I heard the tearing sound, I saw the mongoose stagger backward. His fur was burnt, but he triumphantly held up the little patch of paper he had ripped from the charm. The next moment, the lamia’s hand threw him against the wall again. Was he faking a second time? Or was he really unconscious?
Though the torn piece was no bigger than a stamp, perhaps it would weaken the charm enough.
I tried to sit up. My body felt like it weighed tons, but I strained every muscle and slowly I began to rise. And the further I stretched, the more bits of the charm began to flake off me and the easier it became to move.
With a screech, the lamia lunged at me, but I swung my paw, clubbing her to the side.
Then I showed my fangs. “In India, I liked to snack on poisonous cobras, and I haven’t had snake for ever so long.”
On her belly, the frightened lamia wriggled sideways, but I crept on all fours after her, feeling stronger by the second.
She would learn what happened to someone who kidnapped a dragon and her pet.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Greedy wishes make no one happy…least of all the wisher.
Winnie
With a lunge, Miss Drake grabbed the lamia’s throat in her right paw and the tail in the other. Then she yanked the snake woman into the air, holding her like a piece of taffy. The kobolds kept drumming their feet against the floor and waving their little pickaxes angrily, trying to work up enough nerve to charge. The dragon’s armored scales were tough, but could they stand up to the kobold’s tools that smashed through boulders?
As if I’d let that happen!
When I had grabbed the first charm in the binder, Rowan tried to stop me. “Don’t fool around with magic. We’ve been lucky so far but—”
“I’m not going to stand around while they thump Miss Drake,” I stated, and threw it.
When it slapped against a kobold’s back, he twisted and turned trying to tear it off. He stopped as he began to grow taller and bigger until his head brushed the ceiling, till plaster dust fell.
“Uh-oh,” I said. To give Rowan credit, he didn’t waste time saying, “I told you so.” Instead, he stepped in front of me.
“Find a shrinking spell,” he said, and then ran at the kobold waving his arms and making faces. “Hey, ugly!”
The kobold ground his teeth together and swung his arm. It made a loud swishing noise like the wind roaring through a tree.
When Rowan bent his knees, I thought he was starting to duck, but instead, his long, odd toes bent like springs. He shot into the air like he had rockets strapped to his ankles. His long twisty fingers reached and clasped like iron bracelets around the kobold’s wrist, and then he swung his body up and wound his legs around the kobold’s arm too.
The kobold stood still, puzzled, and began trying to shake Rowan off him.
“H-h-hurry!” Rowan yelled to me as he whipped through the air.
I started searching through the binder’s pages, but the labels were hard to read in the candlelight and they just seemed to have been stuck into the binder at random. Nothing made sense and to make things worse, I saw my ring pulsing even faster…a brilliant crimson. Then it turned a steady dazzling red…which would have been awesome if I didn’t suspect it was the gravest warning ever.
“Idiots! I said to keep them quiet until I returned,” a woman said in disgust from the doorway. But it wasn’t Lady Luminita or Silana…
It was Lorelei! Except she wasn’t Lorelei either. She was dressed simply but more stylish than before. Her shoulders weren’t hunched, and she was holding her head up high with pride. Instead of the timid, mousy woman I’d met at the party, she was a confident warrior.
Lifting her leg, she placed her foot on the side of the nearest kobold and shoved. He stumbled right into me, and I dropped the binder. As we fell to the floor together, he wrapped his arms around my body. He smelled of rotten eggs like that experiment Sir Isaac had done with sulfur last week. Then he rolled onto his back, so I had to face Lorelei.
She picked up her binder. “Now, Miss Drake, put down that idiot.”
Instead, Miss Drake held the lamia in front of her. “I’ll trade you. Your right-hand monster for the two hatchlings.”
The lamia’s forked tongue lashed the air frantically. “Pleassse, massster.”
Lorelei began to leaf through her binder, frowning when she saw how many pockets Rowan and I had emptied. “Do what you want with her, Miss Drake. You’ll spare me the chore of getting rid of her.”
Miss Drake tapped the lamia’s head against the wall, and then she set the unconscious snake woman down on the floor. “I thought the kobolds looked familiar—only the last time I saw them, there was a drought demon in charge. So you got rid of him?”
Lorelei sniffed contemptuously. “Permanently. Clipper had a gem I wanted, and he was supposed to get it cheap. Instead, thanks to you, he returned with nothing.” She slipped two charms from the binder.
Miss Drake’s hind paw shoved the sleeping lamia to the side and started to advance. “Let Winnie go.”
Lorelei tossed one of the charms against the floor, where it burst into flames, and she then held its twin over me. “Stop where you are, Miss Drake, or I’ll reduce this pest to ash.”
Miss Drake froze in place. “You’re a regular Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde, aren’t you? Meek to some people and mean to others.”
I remembered watching a movie once where a scientist had come up with a potion that changed him into a monster. I don’t know what happened after that because Dad had come into the room and turned off the television. But I don’t think the movie monster could have been scarier than Lorelei.
Lorelei curtsied. “Why, thank you. Good reviews are always appreciated.” Then she bent her head and hunched her shoulders like the party wallflower she’d pretended to be. “I’ve picked up a few tricks acting and singing in dinner theater and touring companies.” She slipped into Lady Luminita’s accent. “And for an act in Vegas, I learned to imitate almost anybody’s voice.”
“But why try to strand Winnie in the past?” Miss Drake demanded. “That was beyond cruel.”
Straightening up, she glared at me. “Because she was cruel to me.”
“What did I do?” I said. I don’t think I’d even talked to her.
She thrust her head forward. “You yawned! That’s the worst thing you can do to a performer. I’ve put up with humiliations like that for years, but once I found the box with my grandfather’s charms, I knew I didn’t have to put up with insults any longer.”
“No, the worst that can happen to a performer is when Ivan the Terrible doesn’t understand your joke and orders your head cut off because a shorter jester might be funnier,” Miss Drake said. “Anyway, when did you have time to plot your revenge on Winnie?”
“I was originall
y going to pick my victim at random.” Lorelei shrugged. “I knew the date and time and place when my grandfather lost the whistle, so I took off my badge and slipped away from the ball and made myself invisible. I planned to pick the nearest fairgoer and make it look like that person had stolen the purse. Then while everyone was distracted, I would have grabbed the whistle from the brat who had it. But when I saw Winnie, I decided a little payback was in order. Two birds with one stone, you see.”
“I didn’t mean to be rude,” I said. “I was tired.”
Miss Drake shrugged. “But even if she had intended to be rude, the punishment hardly fit the crime.”
“I’ve got the power now. I decide what’s fitting and what’s not,” Lorelei screeched, and jerked her head at the giant kobold who was standing ten feet away with Rowan still holding on to him. “You, tall and gruesome, lower your arm.” She shut her eyes in exasperation when he put down his free hand. “Not that arm! The one with the brat attached to it.” When he did, she jerked her head at a pair of the regular-size kobolds. “You two paperweights. Douse the fire and then pull the pest off and hold on to him.”
While the pair obeyed Lorelei, I heard the click-click-click of little claws on cement as the mongoose limped toward me. I almost cried when I saw how much of his fur was singed.
He’d gotten hurt trying to fulfill my wish, but he didn’t seem to hold a grudge. Instead, he tried to free me by pulling at the arm of the kobold that was imprisoning me. “Unh. Uh,” he grunted. But he might as well have been tugging at a mountain.
Lorelei swung around. “Is this the Heart of Kubera?” she asked in a hushed voice.
“You know about his two forms?” Miss Drake asked.
“My grandfather spent years piecing the story together, and just when he had bought the whistle, that boy cheated him of his destiny.”
I didn’t think it was smart right then to mention that the “boy” had been my great-granddad Caleb.
“But when I heard about the Fellowship of the Jewel City,” Lorelei went on, “I realized it was my chance to recover my grandfather’s whistle. I talked that fool Willamar into organizing the trip for a certain date in the past. And the purse snatching worked perfectly but the boy disappeared before I could get to him.”
“So you caused all that trouble for nothing,” Miss Drake said.
“I thought I’d lost the whistle just like my grandfather had,” Lorelei said smugly, “but then Willamar called the special meeting and said you had solved it.”
“Let go of my master!” The mongoose bared his teeth, and I felt his hind paws tense for a leap at Lorelei.
“Don’t attack her!” I said to the mongoose. “You might make her drop the charm on me by accident.”
Lorelei glared at me contemptuously. “I don’t know what kind of trick you’re trying to pull by pretending to be the master. Miss Drake would never let a twit like you keep the whistle and all that power.”
The mongoose growled, “She is the best and only master.”
Lorelei didn’t want to believe anything good about me. Dangling the fire charm over me, she sneered, “I dare you to prove it.”
I had to turn the tables on her. I needed one wish: the right wish, a perfectly clear wish the mongoose would grant. But what?
I dipped my head, trying to think, and I caught sight of my ring. The gem was still glowing red, but now there was a bright golden spark in the center, twirling until it took the shape of something. A dagger…a ship…no, a bird with wings outstretched. A golden eagle!
I had my answer. I knew my wish. But I couldn’t spring my trap while a twitch of Lorelei’s fingers could turn me into a fireball.
I tilted my head to look at the mongoose. The little black beads of his eyes looked alive and sharp and eager to please. But was he intelligent enough to understand what I wanted? I had to wait for her to move the charm away from me before I could find out.
So I acted like she’d scared me into cooperating. It wasn’t too hard to look frightened. She was holding the fire charm between just her index finger and thumb, and her grip didn’t look all that tight. “Please don’t hurt me. What do you want? A purse full of gold?”
“A small mind thinks small.” Lorelei laughed scornfully. “Bring me gold. Lots and lots of gold.”
“Do you have anything to heal my servant?” I asked. “It will go a lot faster if he can use all four paws.”
“Can’t he heal himself?” Lorelei asked.
I guess her grandfather’s research hadn’t been that complete after all. “He can only bring you things that he can pick up in his paws,” I said.
I was hoping she’d need both hands to handle the binder—in which case, I’d make the perfect wish that would fix her wagon. But to my disappointment, she set the binder on the floor and used her left hand to select a charm. And during all that, her right hand continued to hold the fire charm over me.
She dropped the healing charm over the mongoose and it clung to him so I could see his shape under the paper. Then the charm just seemed to melt into his fur. It was still singed, but he wriggled each of his four paws one by one.
“I can run again; I can dance.” And to celebrate, Nanu swung in a circle, becoming a tan blur for a moment before stopping again.
Lorelei tapped her foot impatiently. “I’m waiting.”
Okay. Stall for more time until she gets careless.
Even though I thought I could trust him now, I didn’t want to take a chance he would misunderstand me—not with the fire charm hanging over me. “Bring me oodles of twenty-dollar gold American coins, the kind with eagles on them,” I said to the mongoose. A former boss of Mom’s had one he kept for luck.
“Then gold coins you shall have,” the mongoose said, and streaked from the room.
A few minutes later, there were heaps and heaps of gold coins around me—it was anyone’s guess where the mongoose had stolen them. For his own amusement, he had added other solid gold treasures he had swiped as well.
“There.” He spread his forepaws as he looked up at Lorelei. “This proves she is my one, true and only master.”
Rowan gasped, and the kobolds edged toward the gold with greedy smiles, fingers twitching eagerly to snatch it up.
“Thank you,” I said as he scampered over to me and leaned his head against my trapped arm.
“In all the centuries, I have only had one master who thanked me,” he said.
Despite all the gold shining around us, Lorelei was still reluctant to say anything positive about me. “You may be the master, but you still think too small.”
Here it comes. Time to spring the trap. “Would you like more gold?” I coaxed.
“Fool!” Lorelei jabbed the fire charm down at me like a knife. “Do you really think I’d settle for another wish when I can have the whistle and all the wishes I want?”
The mongoose began bobbing up and down in alarm. “No, no, do not give her the power over me,” he begged.
I should have figured this would happen: of course Lorelei would want to become the master. But then I saw how I could still make this work.
“Bring me the whistle,” I said, trying to hint to him that I wanted him to find the flaws in her wishes. “And when I give it to Lorelei, I want you to treat her wishes with as much respect as you did mine when we first met.”
The mongoose’s head jerked up like he suspected what I was up to. He really was a smart little guy.
“Ah!” The mongoose dipped his head humbly. “Then one whistle you shall have, master.”
He zipped off and returned with the whistle clenched in his mouth. His back was to Lorelei so she couldn’t see him wink before he set it down on top of me. Then he stroked my cheek with his muzzle, stopping long enough by my ear to whisper so faintly only I could hear him, “Trust me, O cleverest of masters.”
Lorelei snatched up the ancient ivory whistle and turned it over and over in her left hand. “Yes, that’s just how grandfather described it.” She raised i
t over her head in triumph. “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” She danced away from the binder and around the basement, waving the whistle in one hand and the fire charm in the other. “Oh, Grandfather, if you could only see me now!”
“You’ve got what you want,” Miss Drake said. “Now let us go.”
Lorelei signed to the kobolds to free Rowan and me. Immediately, Miss Drake gathered us together, folding her wings around us like shields. “And now we’ll take our leave.”
“You’re not going anywhere.” Lorelei pointed the fire charm at us like a pistol. “You still haven’t paid for all the trouble and grief that you’ve caused me.”
Flames didn’t scare a dragon. Bending her long neck, Miss Drake whispered into our ears, “Get ready to run. I’ll hold them off.”
The mongoose had said to trust him so I would. “No, wait.”
Lorelei held the whistle in the crook of her arm like it was a scepter as she gazed down at the mongoose. “Who is your master?” she demanded.
The mongoose bent his head humbly. “You are.”
“Then bring me more gold coins like these,” she commanded.
The mongoose spread his paws to indicate the heaps of gold eagles carpeting the floor. “But, master, coins are so boring when there is so much lovely other gold in the world.”
I tried to nudge Lorelei into making an apparently perfect but imperfect wish. “Lorelei, don’t you mean all kinds of gold?”
Lorelei’s eyes got dreamy for a moment. I bet she was picturing herself wearing gold jewelry from head to toe—crowns, necklaces, bracelets, and rings studded with gems on every finger. “Yes, yes.” She waved the whistle above her head like a conductor’s baton. “Cover me in anything gold.”
With a bow, the mongoose announced, “If gold is what you want, then gold you shall have!”
And the next moment he was gone.
