The Dragon of Lonely Island (6 page)

The children stirred. The dragon stared sadly into the darkness over their heads, as though seeing through the gray stone walls into another place and another time. Suddenly it shook its head, as though waking from a deep dream.

“Did Mei-lan get her cricket back?” Sarah Emily asked.

“Indeed she did,” said the dragon. “Indeed she did. That very night Plum Boy brought Moon Singer to her bedside. He put the cricket in its tiny cage into Mei-lan’s hands and said, ‘I am sorry, Honorable Sister.’ And then he burst into tears. So Mei-lan hugged him and told him that if he would like, he could put his sleeping quilt right next to hers so that they could both have Moon Singer chirp them to sleep. . . .”

“She was nicer than I would have been,” said Zachary.

“Ah,” said the dragon softly. And then, almost as if it were talking to itself, it said, “And from that day on, in that part of China, people continued to value their sons, but their daughters — oh, their daughters —they were treasured.”

“What happened to Mei-lan?” asked Hannah. “When she grew up?”

“She became a master weaver,” the dragon said. “She was the first woman ever to do so. It was a job traditionally held only by men. But she was very talented. She was particularly known for her silkscreens, which had a pattern of bamboo and golden dragons. One of her screens was even sent to the palace of the emperor, as a wedding gift for his eldest daughter. Some of the older people in the village never approved of Mei-lan, of course. Being the first is always difficult.”

The dragon reached out a golden claw and gently touched Hannah’s hair.

“It’s never easy to lead the way, my dear,” the dragon said.

The golden lids began to droop over the jade green eyes and the dragon’s head began to sag. The children rose quietly to their feet.

“Dragon,” said Hannah softly, “may we see you again?”

The dragon roused itself. “I do need my rest,” it said. It yawned sleepily. Its eyes closed, then opened again, glowing green slits in the darkness. “But the others will be eager to meet you,” it murmured. The green eyes opened a fraction wider.

“If you could just manage to keep our little meetings private?” it asked, in a slightly stronger voice. “There have been some unpleasant experiences. . . . The unpredictability of the adult world . . .”

“Do you mean hunters?” asked Sarah Emily.

“Hunters,” the dragon repeated reflectively. “Hunters. In a way, my dear. Hunters, et cetera.”

“That means ‘and so on,’” Hannah whispered hastily, before Sarah Emily could ask.

“We won’t tell anybody,” said Zachary. “We promise.”

“Thank you, my dear boy,” the dragon said.

The golden head dropped, as the dragon settled itself more comfortably on the cave floor.

“Do come again soon,” the dragon murmured. “It was nice to have visitors. To tell the truth, I have been lonely.”

There was a smell of smoke and a dragonish snore. The children began to tiptoe softly backward, toward the cave door.

Hannah, for a moment, lingered behind. “Good night, Honorable Dragon,” Hannah whispered.

The dragon stirred in its sleep.

“Good night, Small Daughter,” said the dragon.

The children emerged from the cave entrance, blinking their eyes in the sudden dazzle of sunshine. Zachary sat down abruptly on the rock ledge.

“Incredible,” he said. “Fantastic. Amazing.”

He turned to his sisters. “Did it really happen?”

“It really happened,” said Hannah. “To us.” Her face was glowing.

Only Sarah Emily was subdued.

“I guess it was stupid of me,” she said. “To be so scared, I mean.”

Hannah shook her head. “It wasn’t stupid at all,” she said. “We were all scared at first.” And she reached over and gave Sarah Emily a little hug.

Zachary said, “Let’s come back tomorrow.”

But the next day it rained. And the next day. And the day after that. The sky was heavy and gray, the color of charcoal or pencil lead. Water thundered on the roof and poured through the gutters. Mother, who was happily involved in
The Secret of Silver House
— the governess had just been discovered, strangled, in the conservatory — was oblivious to the weather, but Hannah, Zachary, and Sarah Emily, who had no such homicidal occupations, were beside themselves. Each morning, as they woke to the roar of rain and more rain, their spirits fell lower and lower.

“We’ll
never
get back to Drake’s Hill,” Hannah moaned in despair.

“I wish we could just sleep through this weather, like Fafnyr,” fumed Zachary.

They quickly exhausted all their usual rainy-day activities. They played checkers, Parcheesi, and Monopoly, but they couldn’t quite keep their attention on the games; and they read — or tried to read —all their favorite books. They spent one afternoon in the kitchen, helping Mrs. Jones make apple pie. But they spent most of their time in the strange little Tower Room.

“Just wait until you see it, Hannah,” Sarah Emily said excitedly as the three children, Zachary clutching the iron key, climbed the dusty back stairs. “It’s the most wonderful room. Zachary thinks it was Aunt Mehitabel’s when she was a little girl.”

“She must have had some reason for sending us the key,” Hannah said. “Something she wanted us to find. Something special.”

“I think we’ve already found something special,” said Zachary. “A box. A treasure box.”

“But we can’t open it,” said Sarah Emily.

“What does it look like?” asked Hannah eagerly. “Do you think it has something to do with Fafnyr?”

“Come on,” said Zachary. “We’ll show you.”

Carefully he unlocked the door to the Tower Room. He climbed the iron ladder, with the two girls close on his heels, and thrust open the trap door. The children scrambled out onto the wooden floor.

“What a marvelous room,” said Hannah, getting to her feet. “If this were my house, I’d live up here.”

She stood at one of the little round windows for a moment, gazing longingly out at Drake’s Hill, now rain drenched and wreathed in clouds. Then she rapidly circled the little room, running a finger over the head of the painted wooden doll, tapping the brass gong, lifting one of the pink conch shells and holding it curiously to her ear. “You can hear the ocean,” she said.

Sarah Emily picked up a shell, held it to her ear, and listened. Her eyes grew round. “Is it really the ocean?” she asked.

Zachary snickered and Sarah Emily’s face fell.

“I guess it was a stupid question, wasn’t it?” she said.

“No,” said Hannah. “It wasn’t. Here, try two shells.” She held the second conch shell to Sarah Emily’s other ear.

“Now it sounds like
two
oceans,” Sarah Emily said.

“It’s not really,” said Hannah. “I learned in school that all you hear when you listen to a shell is the sound of the blood rushing through the blood vessels in your ear. But it’s nicer to pretend that it’s the sound of the real ocean. As though the shells were remembering where they came from.”

“I’ll bet that’s why Aunt Mehitabel liked them,” said Sarah Emily.

She smiled at Hannah and Hannah smiled back.

Hannah turned back to the bookshelf.

“Look at these old storybooks,” she said. “I’ve read some of these. Here’s
The Jungle Book
and
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
and
Pollyanna.
And
The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.
”

“
Peppers?
” said Sarah Emily. She giggled.

“They were kids,” said Hannah. “Their last name was Pepper.” She took out the book and opened it. “Look at this,” she said, and held the book out to Sarah Emily. There was writing on the first page.

“I can’t read that,” said Sarah Emily. “It’s too squiggly.”

Hannah took the book back. “‘To my dear niece, Mehitabel,’” she read. “‘All best wishes for a happy eleventh birthday. Love from Aunt Elvira.’”

Sarah Emily pulled out
Pollyanna.
She opened it to the first page. “This one has a little sticker in it,” she said. “It says, ‘This book belongs to Mehitabel Davis.’”

“It’s called a bookplate,” Hannah said.

She replaced the books on the shelf.

“I thought there would be something about Fafnyr here,” she said disappointedly. “A message or a clue. Something to tell us more about him.”

Across the room Zachary was pulling open the bottom drawer of the desk. He produced the wooden box.

“This is the box we were telling you about,” he said to Hannah. “We can’t open it. There’s no latch.”

Hannah picked up the box and turned it around in her hands, examining it. She stroked the polished top, with its inlaid squares and rectangles of colored woods.

“It’s the only thing up here that’s really strange,” Zachary said. “Everything else is interesting, but sort of ordinary, if you see what I mean. But this box is different.”

Hannah set the box on the floor and sat down next to it.

“Maybe this is what Aunt Mehitabel wanted us to find,” said Hannah. “Maybe this is why she sent us the key to the Tower Room.”

They sat in a circle around the box, turning and tapping it, studying it from every possible angle.

“We could just bash it open with a crowbar,” Zachary suggested, “or an ax. I know where Mr. Jones has an ax — out next to the woodpile.”

“I’m sure Aunt Mehitabel didn’t let us find the box so that we could hack it to pieces,” said Hannah.

Zachary ran a hand searchingly over the top of the box.

“There
must
be something here somewhere,” he said. “A little knob or a handle . . .”

“Do you know what the box top looks like?” Sarah Emily said suddenly. “It looks like one of those number puzzles — you know, the ones with all the numbered squares in a little frame? You have to slide the squares around until you get the numbers in the right order.”

“She’s right,” said Zachary. “That’s just what it looks like.”

“Maybe one of the top pieces slides,” said Hannah.

Zachary’s fingers flashed from square to square, pushing and pulling. “And if one does . . .” He stopped. His fingers had found what they were looking for. A single ebony rectangle in the very center of the box slid forward and locked into place with a sharp click.

“Maybe it’s like a combination lock,” Zachary said.

“Try opening it now,” said Hannah.

The children held their breath. Zachary held the box with both hands and tugged upward on the lid. Nothing happened. The box remained tightly shut.

“There must be more to the puzzle,” he said.

“Maybe it takes more than just one piece,” said Hannah. She touched the pale yellow square just above the ebony rectangle and moved it downward. It clicked into place.

“Now the next piece,” said Zachary excitedly. He moved a cocoa brown square. “And the next. I think we’ve got it.”

Slowly, piece by piece, they rearranged the inlaid pattern of the box top, clicking each wood block into its new position.

“I’m sure this is right,” said Hannah. “See how they’re beginning to line up? All the dark ones are forming a sort of zigzag.”

“So it really
was
a puzzle,” said Sarah Emily. “A puzzle box.”

“We’ll know in a minute,” said Zachary. “This is the last block, the one in the corner. You move it, S. E. This was your idea.”

Sarah Emily clicked the last block into position. Zachary reached again for the lid. And this time the box opened.

There were two objects inside. The first was a scroll of paper, tied with a faded blue ribbon. The second was carefully wrapped in an old white silk scarf.

“What
is
this?” said Hannah, fumbling with the silk. Beneath the cloth lay something smooth and slippery and cool, like metal, and sharply curved. As Hannah finally pulled it free of its wrappings, it flashed and glimmered, almost with an inner light of its own, brilliantly gold.

Sarah Emily gasped.

The children stared at each other in astonishment.

Then Zachary said, “
It’s a dragon’s scale.
”

“Fafnyr’s,” said Sarah Emily, in a startled whisper.

“So Aunt Mehitabel
does
know Fafnyr,” Hannah said. “But when did she meet him? And why is he here?” She reached for the paper scroll and pulled off the blue ribbon. “Let’s see what this is.”