Deadly Pink (23 page)

I opened my eyes and saw that my nose was inches away from a broken laundry basket full of old, crunched-down-heel sneakers. Both the laundry basket and the shoes were sprite-sized. Eww! Who would have thought such pretty little creatures had such stinky feet?

During the three or four minutes I'd spent at Rasmussem, time here had continued, and the sun had come up, casting an early-morning golden glow on my surroundings. One thing was certain: although I was outside, I was no longer in the city in front of the pair of water fountains.

But where
was
I?

I sat up. Beyond the split laundry basket was a rusted doll-sized shopping cart that was minus one wheel and had one smashed-in corner. The cart held a shadeless table lamp, a tarnished wall mirror, and a wall clock with a cracked face and only one hand. And beyond that were bundled-up-and-tied-with-a-string newspapers and magazines and books piled on an ugly couch that had no cushions. And beyond that, a chipped and dented washing machine had been placed on the roof of a sprite limo that had no doors, no seat, and no engine. And beyond that...

What a bunch of junk!
I thought.

And with that, I finally put together where I was: a junkyard.

Acres and acres of junkyard.

Wonderful. How would I ever find the magic carpet in all this garbage?

I stood up and found the carpet. That was the cold, wet, lumpy thing I'd been lying on. Apparently, someone had fished it out of the fountain and not realized it was worth drying and saving.

Although now I was chilled and stiff, not to mention wearing soggy clothing, this, finally, was a little bit of luck. I was overdue for luck.

“Carpet,” I ordered, “up.”

Nothing. Could dampness have caused it to experience the magical equivalent of shorting out?

I was trying to wring it like a bulky, cold, nasty washcloth, when a voice like a landslide bellowed,
“I knew I shouldn't have trusted you!”

Dropping the rug, I whirled around.

It was the dragon. Of course it was the dragon.

I took a step back. Not that a step back was going to save me from a blast of his fiery breath. Nor would it keep him from grabbing hold of me and squeezing the life out of me with his powerful claw. Or finishing that shake-my-brain-loose action my return to Rasmussem had interrupted. Or how about popping me into his mouth like a salted peanut?

But the fact that I had the time to think up these dire alternatives proved ... well, I'm not sure what it proved, but it proved something.

I took a closer look at the dragon.

He wasn't shiny as he'd appeared the night before, as though being in this junkyard had dulled and bedraggled him. He was as big as ever, but he was ... I don't know ... Can a dragon droop? He was slouching, as if he was tired. Or—I suddenly realized—depressed. That could well have been because he had a chain around his neck. Like a dog's choke collar. A longer chain hung from the collar: a leash that wound around the piles of ruined cars and discarded furniture and leaky bags of garbage, and must have had its other end fastened to something to keep him from wandering.

Instead of running, instead of saying, “End game...,” instead of any other reasonable response, I asked, “What happened?”

“Captured by the sprites,”
the dragon said, his voice as diminished as his stature, no more than distant thunder. “Forced to...” He sighed, and the hem of my dress started to smoke from the spark that escaped his lips, but I could tell it was unintentional. I beat at my skirt to keep it from igniting while the dragon finished,
“...guard this place.”
Another sigh, this one flameless.
“I am reduced to being a junkyard dog.”

“I am so sorry,” I said. And I leally was. I mean, for someone who loved gold and shiny things, this had to be especially hard.

“Ah, well,”
he said,
“the only good thing is that the
terms of my imprisonment aren't long.”
Before I could say,
Well, at least there's that,
he finished,
“Only ninety-nine years.”

Which just goes to show the difference between dragons and humans.

“Still,” I said, “I
am
sorry. But I was desperate to rescue my sister.”

“I understand,”
the sagging dragon assured me. He explained,
“I, too, had a sister, once.”

The past tense didn't escape me. “What happened to her?” I asked, feeling we were connected, two of a kind after all, sharing similar personal tragedies.

“I had to eat her,”
the dragon said,
“to keep her from stealing my gold.”

Which, I guess, points to an even bigger difference between dragons and humans.

“Listen,” I said,
“my
sister still needs rescuing. If you help me, I'll help you.”

A little bit of the glint came back into the dragon's eyes, and I was glad he was at the farthest extent of his leash. I still took a couple of steps back, even as the dragon told me,
“Been there, done that.”

“I need to return to your cave to fetch my sister,” I explained. “Plus, I need eighty-eight thousand gold coins.”

“At least you're being up-front about it this time,”
the dragon said.

“I'd planned to use the magic carpet, but it doesn't seem to be working.”

The dragon gave me a long, level look.
“The carpet is mine. That is why it does not obey your command.”

“Well, then,” I said, “will you give me the carpet, too, if I release you?”

“Eighty-eight thousand
pieces of gold?”
the dragon asked, in a tone that indicated the very thought was painful—in a tone that, in fact, indicated I might be following in the footsteps of his sister.

“It's not doing you any good while you're here,” I pointed out. And because I knew
more
was always
better
with this dragon and his gold, I added, “And if I let you go, maybe you can get some of it back from the sprites.”

The dragon thought this over, then said,
“You'll understand, of course, when I say release me first, and THEN I'll give you the carpet and the gold.”

“Promise?”

The dragon sighed, this time remembering to turn his head away from me.
“Promise.”

“All right, what do we have here?” I said as the dragon settled himself down to bring the choke collar within my reach.

“Combination lock,”
he said, though by then I could see.
“Three numbers: Left, right, then left again.”

“And the numbers?”

The dragon shook his head.

Of course he didn't know the numbers.

Which was a shame, because this lock went from I all the way to 100. Emily, being the math genius sister, probably knew a formula to figure out how many possible variations of a 3-number combination you could make with 100 numbers, but I was just as well satisfied to think,
Too many.
The good thing was that in games, they don't count on you just randomly trying every possible combination.

“Okay,” I said, “the numbers have to be significant somehow. Are there any numbers around here?”

The dragon shrugged.
“Not that I've seen.”

“Does this place have a street address? Or an established-on date? A poster with an in-case-of-emergency phone number?”

“Don't know.”

Maybe I needed to count the number of links on his chain leash ... but I could easily see that there were more than one hundred links, and besides, it was dragging through some pretty yucky stuff, so I convinced myself,
Probably not.

The dial was set at 1, so I spun it over 100 to 99, since 99 was the length of the dragon's sentence. I put my ear to the lock, like safecrackers do in the movies, and heard a very faint
click.
Great! I turned the dial to the right.
Click!
That was a surprise. What were the chances that I had figured out the first number and accidentally found the second: 99 and 100? I turned to the left. Once more it clicked at 99. But the lock didn't release. I turned to 100 again.
Click.
I spun the dial. 1:
Click.
2:
Click.
3:
Click.
Okay, it clicked with every single number. Still I listened carefully as I turned the dial from 1 to 100, hoping to hear something a little different, to feel something. But no. Evidently, I'd have to get all three numbers right before anything happened.

“I hate this,” I muttered.

The dragon shrugged.

I used the numbers from my birthday. From Emily's birthday. From the dragon's birthday. Nothing.

What numbers were significant in this game?

There weren't any, I told myself. The only numbers ... the only numbers...

I turned the dial quickly to hear the tiny
click click click click.

The only numbers of real significance had been the ones on the gypsy king's wheel.

I reset the lock. Then turned left to 100, which was the optimum score, the one the game characters or someone just entering the game had. Turned right to the number the wheel had landed on for me: 87. Turned left to go to Emily's score of 22.

But luckily, I was turning very slowly.

And listening.

I heard a distinct
click!
before I got to 22, when I hit 9.

The lock released.

100-87-9.

Yay!

Except...

I sucked in a breath as I realized that 9 must be what Emily's level had fallen to.

While I was working on not panicking, the dragon wriggled out of the collar. He instantly stood taller, and his scales regained some of their luster.
“Thank you,”
he rumbled at me.
“Be quick, before I change my mind.”
To the waterlogged wad of pink shag rug, the dragon said,
“I give you to Grace Pizzelli. Obey her as you would me.”

The little rug just lay there.

I looked at the dragon and held my hands out, as in,
Well?

He mimicked my gesture.

Which must mean, I figured, that the answer was obvious.

So I said the obvious: “Carpet, up.”

The carpet rose, a bit unsteadily, I thought, and hung in the air at about my chest level, dripping water. I was about to say, “Carpet, wring yourself,” when it shook itself off like a wet dog.

“Aw, geez!” I said, wiping the splatters off myself. At least—at the
very
least—it wouldn't feel as though I were sitting in a puddle. “Carpet, down.”

The carpet went down so that I could sit on it. “Thank you,” I said to the dragon.

“Hmph!”
he said.

“Carpet,” I commanded, “to the dragon's cave.”

Chapter 24

Going Back to
Where?

R
IDING BY MAGIC CARPET
is smoother than being carried by dragon. In case that question ever comes up.

The little area rug, now that it was dry, now that it was in the air, was thick and soft and comfortable. It didn't flap, just soared, steady and noiseless.

Over the water we went, and over the forest. I guess I'd become blasé as a magical frequent-flyer, and after a short while I lay down rather than sit, remembering to repeat the dragon's order: “Do not lose your cargo.”

I put my head on my arms and didn't exactly nap but rested. The carpet hadn't picked up any bad smells from having been soaked and spending the night in a garbage heap. Instead, there was a scent somewhere between vanilla and incense.

The sun was pleasantly warm on my back, drying the fabric of my once-white dress, and the front edge of the carpet curved inward, acting to deflect the air up and over me, so all I felt was a gentle breeze, no tearing wind.

Peaceful and relaxing, it reminded me of drifting on the float in Aunt Kathy's pool. Without the possibility of obnoxious cousin Brandon making rude comments.

Occasionally, I would open my eyes a crack to watch the world pass beneath me...

...until one time I opened my eyes and saw the world tipped over on its side.

“Do not lose your cargo! Do not lose your cargo!” I screamed at the carpet, digging my fingers into the nap of the rug, though I did not have the sensation of sliding off.

But the carpet clearly remembered it wasn't supposed to lose its cargo. It wasn't tilting on its side to dump me, it was hurtling through the vertical crevice that led into the dragon's cave.

The carpet slid to a gentle stop right beside Emily, who opened one eye, mumbled, “I'm up, I'm up,” then went back to sleep. The look of her skin (gray and waxy) and the sound of her breathing (loud and wheezy) had me worried.

“Emily, I have a plan!” I told her, forcing enthusiasm into my voice. “And this one's a good one!”

Okay, well, I'd tell her again once she was awake. And I'd let her sleep, conserve her strength, until it was time to go.

Meanwhile, I threw handful after handful of gold onto the carpet.

“Almost there,” I told Emily—well, actually, told myself. “You can kiss this world goodbye.”

Except, now that I had the carpet loaded, where would Emily and I fit?

On top, I guess. Though lying on top of a heap of gold would be more stylish but less comfortable than lying on a plush bathroom carpet.

Still...“Emily.” I shook my sister hard. “Emily.”

She managed to get her eyes open. “'Lo, Grace,” she said.

“Stand up,” I ordered.

She groaned and shook her head.

“Stand up,” I repeated. “You need to walk about five steps, then take one big step up, then you can lie down again, and we'll be home in no time.”

“'kay,” she said, but didn't move.

I took hold of her shoulders and dragged her to the carpet. She neither helped nor hindered me. “There,” I said. “Forget the five steps; all you need to do is the one big step up.”

From behind me came a familiar flapping noise I couldn't for the moment place; then the cave dimmed as something blocked the sunlight from outside.