The brothers were in the forest with only the other loggers for company, now that Grace and Natalie had taken Pete to the hospital. The loggers were packing up their trucks.
“I was just trying to take some initiative!” Gavin continued. “Help us compete with the big boys! You know how much these trees are worth?”
Jack sat on a nearby stump tiredly, looking around. There were a lot of newly cut trees now—a lot more than there should have been. He shook his head. “I’m not worried about the competition,” he said. “I’m worried about my brother going behind my back. I’m worried about children getting hurt because we’re not where we belong!”
Gavin rolled his eyes. “Aw, come on. If we hadn’t been cutting out here, we wouldn’t have found the kid in the first place. We’re doing good work here, Jack!”
“And how about a few years from now, when we don’t have anything left to cut down because you kept jumping the gun?” Jack countered. “What then? Grace just wants us to be responsible.”
Gavin made a frustrated noise. “She wants to shut us down is what she wants!” Gavin said. “Don’t tell me you’re too whipped to see that!”
Jack frowned. “Help your men pack up. I want you and everyone else back on the eastern pad on Monday morning. I’ll be back later.”
“Where are you headed?” Gavin asked.
“Where do you think?” Jack snapped. “You’re not the only family I’ve got to look after.”
Gavin shuffled his feet. He didn’t like being put in his place. Especially in front of the other loggers. “Yeah. Fine. Let me know how Natalie is doing. That Pete kid, too.”
Jack nodded silently. He climbed into his truck and drove away.
One of the loggers, Woodrow, approached Gavin. “Jack giving you a hard time?”
Gavin waved away the question. “Jack’s just sore about his girlfriend stepping on his toes,” he said. “He’ll come around one of these days.”
With a grunt, Gavin picked up a heavy generator and dropped it carelessly into the back of a truck. It made a loud clang.
Just then, not far away in the trees, there was another loud sound. BOOM.
Gavin looked up sharply. At the edge of the clearing, a large pine was falling down into the brush. But the loggers hadn’t chopped that tree. Something big had knocked it over. Something huge.
Everyone stopped what they were doing.
“Huh,” said a logger named Bobby.
“Looks like something’s out there,” Woodrow added.
“Something big,” a third man named Abner said.
Gavin suddenly saw a chance to get rid of a little of the frustration he had been feeling. Picking up his rifle, he smiled as he glanced at the other loggers.
“Anyone feel like doing a little hunting?”
* * *
Normally, Elliot wouldn’t have gone anywhere near the humans. But Pete was missing, and Elliot didn’t know what else to do.
So he had edged up to the border of the forest—invisibly, of course—and listened.
It turned out that Elliot had wandered up in the middle of the argument between Gavin and Jack. He wasn’t comfortable at all with being this close to the humans. But this was his best chance at finding his friend.
“Let me know how Natalie is doing. That Pete kid, too.”
The dragon’s ears perked up at the sound of Pete’s name. So they did know where his friend was! Elliot thumped his tail in anticipation. He looked from human to human, wondering if one of them would lead him to Pete when they were done with whatever they were doing.
Just then, there was a loud clanging noise as Gavin threw the generator into the truck. The sound startled Elliot.
The dragon jumped backward…right into a tree. It fell with a thundering BOOM.
Elliot glanced back at the humans. They were pointing in his direction. They didn’t look like they were going off to find Pete anytime soon. In fact, they looked like they were going to try to find him.
Pete couldn’t see clearly. Everything was blurry. There was something floating above him…a tent? A tent billowing in the breeze? Pete couldn’t place it. He was inside, and the walls were shifting. Was it a dream? Pete looked down at himself. He was five years old again.
Sunlight spilled into the tent, startling Pete. A face appeared. It was his mother. And she was smiling at him.
“Time to wake up, Pete,” she said.
Suddenly, she was gone.
“Mama?”
Pete sat upright with a start. He was in a bed. In a hospital. He had been dreaming. The bright white light from his dream was an overhead fluorescent bulb. His eyes flitted around nervously. Everything in the room was white.
“Elliot…?”
Pete glanced at the corner of the bed. There was a balloon tied there. He reached out and gently poked at the strange floating red circle. He’d seen one of those before, a long time ago.
The balloon drifted toward Pete. He hadn’t been expecting that, and he jumped back abruptly.
Pete climbed off the bed, a little unsteady. He suddenly noticed a reflection in the hospital room window. Was that…him? Instead of the threadbare pants he had worn for the past several years, Pete was wearing clean pajamas. And his skin looked oddly pale and smooth with all the dirt washed away.
Pete didn’t like it. It didn’t look like him!
His thoughts were interrupted by voices. Carefully, he crept over to the other window in the room and peeked through the blinds. Unlike the window on the opposite wall, through which Pete could see outside, this window was strange. It opened up into a bright white hallway filled with activity and people Pete recognized from the forest.
People who were talking about him.
Pete didn’t like this. He didn’t want to be there anymore. He wanted to go home. He needed to find Elliot.
That’s when Pete noticed the latch on the window that led outside.
* * *
Grace stood in the hallway, shaking her head. She was holding her compass, turning it over in her fingers while Sheriff Dentler, Deputy Smalls, and Doctor Marquez spoke in low tones.
“How’s he doing?” the sheriff asked.
The doctor consulted a clipboard in his hands. “Pretty well, all things considered. No signs of malnourishment or serious exposure. He might have a bump on his head, but—”
“Lucky kid,” Sheriff Dentler interrupted.
“Super lucky,” Deputy Smalls added.
“I just don’t get it,” Grace said. “Where did he come from?”
The sheriff shrugged. “My guess? He was on a picnic or a camping trip. He wandered off from his family, got himself lost….”
“But when?” Grace asked. “He looks like he’s been out there for…who knows how long? And he had this….”
Grace held up the compass.
Sheriff Dentler squinted at it. “You sure that’s yours?”
Grace opened the compass to reveal the family photo hidden inside. “Pretty sure,” she said with a wry half-smile.
“Hmmm…” the sheriff mused. “We’ll add that to the list of questions then. He’s probably got a mom and dad out there somewhere, worried sick about him.”
Just then, a nurse arrived, leading Natalie into the hallway. Her knee was bandaged, but she looked fine otherwise.
Grace placed her hands on Natalie’s shoulders. “How are you feeling?”
“It was just a scrape,” Natalie said. “Where’s Pete?”
Grace gestured toward Pete’s room. Natalie wandered over to peek through the window. Meanwhile, Grace turned to the doctor.
“I’m going to take Natalie home and then head back to the forest. Maybe there’s something out there. A clue or something. Can you call me as soon as he wakes up?”
“Of course,” said the doctor.
“Um, actually,” Natalie interrupted them. She pointed into Pete’s room. The window to the outside was wide open, curtains billowing in the breeze.
“He’s gone
,” Natalie finished.
“I think we’re lost, Gavin,” the logger named Bobby announced.
Gavin shook his head. “Nah, I know where we’re going.”
The group of loggers-turned-hunters had been searching the woods for hours for the creature that had knocked over the tree. But they had nothing to show for it. No deer. No bears. No anything.
Up ahead, Woodrow and Abner suddenly stopped. “Hey! Come check this out!” Woodrow called.
The men hurried over to find Woodrow standing over a footprint. A massive footprint.
“What do you think?” Woodrow asked, kneeling down. “A bear?”
“You ever see a bear that big?” Gavin asked.
“I thought I did once,” Bobby said. “Turned out it was just Abner’s sister.”
Abner punched Bobby in the arm as the men laughed. But suddenly, Gavin held up his hand. Something had moved in his peripheral vision. Something large…
But no…there was nothing there….
Gavin squinted. “Do you all remember those stories Meacham used to tell us?”
“Oh, yeah!” Bobby said. “How’s that song go?”
“They come from the earth,” Abner started to sing off-key. “They come from the stone…”
“Way up north, that’s where they call home,” Bobby chimed in.
All the men joined the impromptu sing-along as they started to head deeper into the woods. “Go where the mountains meet the sea. Look, look all around you…”
Gavin muttered the last line under his breath. “…there dragons will be.”
Pete’s bare feet flew across the concrete. All of Millhaven stretched out before him: the quaint little main street, buildings, and people coming and going.
Pete sprinted down the sidewalk, overwhelmed and dizzy. Everything was strange. From each direction something new assaulted Pete’s senses.
He staggered and took a deep breath, then bellowed with all his might.
“ELLIOT!”
Pete turned a corner, almost running smack into a man and woman walking their small dog. It let out a high-pitched yip.
“Oh, my goodness!” the woman cried.
“Daphne, cut that out!” the man chastised the barking dog.
Pete knew what to do; his experience in the forest had taught him that much at least. Crouching down, he bared his teeth and barked back. The little dog stopped yipping in surprise.
Without missing a beat, Pete darted into the street.
SCREECH. A large car almost ran him over!
“Are you all right, son?” The driver started to get out of the car. “I almost—”
But Pete didn’t want another adult to grab hold of him. He jumped onto the hood of the car and clambered right up and over it!
Meanwhile, a bright yellow school bus cruised down the other lane. Pete wasted no time. He leaped onto it, clinging to the back door. The wind cut through Pete’s hair and made his strange new clothes billow. The bus was moving faster than he’d anticipated, but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle.
Pete started to climb to the top, suddenly noticing the kids shouting and pointing at him from inside the bus. One freckled kid stuck out his tongue. Pete stuck out his tongue right back at him. The kid clapped in delight.
Finally, Pete made it to the top of the moving school bus. He crouched down, finding his balance. The wind whipped his hair back. It was a strange sensation, not quite the same as flying with Elliot but not entirely different, either.
Pete stared as the buildings sped by. Over the rooftops he could see the smokestacks of the mill, and beyond that, the great green hills of the forest.
That was where he needed to be. That was where he would find Elliot.
Suddenly, a loud, high-pitched sound broke Pete’s concentration. He looked around to see multiple police cars, sirens blaring, surrounding the bus.
The bus began to pull over. That was not good. As the vehicle slowed, Pete saw his only chance. In one smooth motion he leaped from the top of the bus to the roof of a car, and from there he hopped down to the ground. The children on the bus cheered, but Pete was already too far away to hear them.
As quickly as he could, Pete sprinted down the sidewalk and turned into an alley.
Dead end.
He whirled around, only to see two men—the sheriff and the deputy—blocking his exit.
Pete backed up and tried to climb the wall. But his hands slipped on the hard cement.
The men approached him. He was trapped.
And then, suddenly, he heard a voice.
“Pete.”
He whirled around to see the redheaded lady with the silver disk. She was moving slowly toward him. He tried to make a break for it, but she stopped him, gently holding his shoulders and kneeling down to his eye level.
“We’re not going to hurt you. Everything is okay….”
Pete felt his throat tighten and tears started to well up in his eyes. Grace drew him in close. He felt overwhelmed and scared and out of his element, but something familiar about her touch and the way she spoke…it helped him relax.
“Just breathe deep,” Grace said, stroking his hair. “Breathe….” She demonstrated for him, taking a deep audible breath and letting it out.
Pete followed suit, exhaling rapidly.
“That’s it. Just let it out,” Grace encouraged.
And then Pete raised his head and let out a long and mournful howl.
Pete sat in the back of Grace’s jeep, huddled in a corner on the floor behind the seat. He looked altogether miserable.
“It’s okay, Pete,” Grace said sympathetically. “You don’t have to go back to the hospital. We’re going somewhere much nicer….”
“We’re going to my house!” yelled Natalie from the front seat. Pete slowly lifted his head.
“Can I ask you a question, Pete?” Grace caught his eye in the rearview mirror and held up the silver disk. “Can you tell me how you came by this?”
With a hoarse whisper, Pete answered, “Where the trees ran away.”
Natalie fiddled with a dial on the dashboard of the vehicle. As she turned it, there were crackling and hissing noises. Then, suddenly…music.
Music! Pete had forgotten music. The melody swept over him like a long-ago memory he didn’t even know he’d lost. For the first time since he’d left the forest, he started to relax.
Grace stopped the car outside a large country home and opened the driver’s side door.
“Come inside, Pete,” Grace said, waving the boy toward the house. “Let’s get you something to eat.”
Pete shook his head. “I want to go home.”
Grace crouched down next to him. “Where is your home?”
Pete just stared out toward the direction of the forest.
“Well,” Grace said, “it’s going to be dark soon. How about this: if you come with me now, I’ll take you back there tomorrow and you can show me exactly where you live.”
Pete paused. He didn’t know what to say, but he was feeling odd. For some reason, his mind went back to the rabbit he had found the other day. The one that didn’t bite him or scratch him as he held it. The rabbit knew he didn’t mean any harm…and somehow he knew Grace didn’t mean any harm, either.
“You know,” Grace continued, “when I was a little girl, I wanted to live in the forest more than anything. I loved being out there with the trees and the animals. So when I grew up, I made it my job to protect the woods and everything in them, which I suppose…includes you.”
Pete looked at Grace. “And Elliot?” he asked.
“Elliot?” Grace replied. “Who’s Elliot?”
Meanwhile, deep in the woods, Gavin and the other three hunters stood awestruck.
“This is nuts. You think the kid did all this?” Woodrow asked.
The sun was setting and the hunters were staring at the massive tree house in front of them—Pete’s tree house.
Gavin shook his head. Suddenly, something shiny caught his eye.
>
The missing keys from one of the backhoes.
“Well…” he muttered. “Someone’s been living here. Or something.”
Gavin made his way to the cave at the bottom of the tree house and peered inside. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he spotted something on the cave floor just beyond the entrance. He stepped closer. It was…a storybook?
Gavin picked it up by the cover. Dirt and debris fell off the pages. And there, written clear as day on the inside cover of the book, was a name.
THIS BOOK BELONGS TO PETE.
Gavin hurried back to the other loggers. “Hey, guys, look at this.”
ROOOAAAR!
The booming sound was enough to knock the loggers off their feet. Some enormous wild creature was roaring at them from inside the cave!
“Run!” Abner yelled.
Within moments, all four men were scrambling through the dense brush to reach their truck.
Three of them jumped in the front, and Gavin leaped into the bed of the truck, rifle in hand. Abner turned the key in the ignition.
But the truck wouldn’t move.
The engine was running, but it seemed like a large force was holding it in place. The wheels spun wildly, dirt spraying from the tires as they turned uselessly against the ground. Then, without warning, the truck jerked upward. Gavin flew forward, his face smooshing against the glass of the rear window.
“It’s gonna eat us!” Abner yelled.
Gavin peeled himself off the back window and looked over the side of the truck. The back wheels weren’t touching the ground. How was that possible?
Suddenly, the bumper fell off the truck!
Gavin raised his rifle. Something was there. He just couldn’t see it.
Before he could fire a shot, he was lifted high into the air, then dropped to the forest floor with a thud. The rifle landed beside him, its solid metal barrel bent like a candy cane, useless.
Gavin could hear a loud sniffing sound. He sat frozen in fear. Something was smelling him! Then…
“AHH-CHOO!” The thing let out a giant sneeze, blowing Gavin backward and covering him in sticky goo. And for just the briefest moment, Gavin caught a glimpse of Elliot’s outline before the dragon vanished again.
Pete's Dragon Junior Novel Page 4
