Deadly Pink (24 page)

Something big.

Something that took up just about all the space of that narrow entry into the cave.

Then a voice like a continent settling into place told me,
“I'm sorry. I can't do it. I can't let you take my gold. I've changed my mind.”

No! That was the game going just too far!

“You promised!” I snarled—or maybe I whined—at the dragon, sounding, by my own estimation, about five years old.

“Sorry,”
the dragon repeated.

Hard to gauge the sincerity of a creature who's big enough to step on you, except by noting the fact that he's
not
choosing to step on you.

“But I helped you,” I reminded him. “I rescued you from ninety-nine years of junkyard dog duty.”

“And I didn't eat you,”
the dragon pointed out, logic it was hard to find fault with.
“Carpet,”
he commanded,
“put the gold down.”

The carpet didn't budge.

The dragon told it,
“Carpet, I take back my giving you to Grace Pizzelli.”

Still nothing. It seemed the carpet didn't do take-backs.

As though he thought I wasn't the kind of person to hold a grudge, the dragon told me,
“I didn't eat you, AND I gave you my magic carpet.”

“Liar! Cheater!”

Taking his cue from the gypsy king, he said,
“It's just good gamesmanship.”
Then, sounding considerably less friendly, he added,
“Now unload the gold before I change my mind about letting you and your sister go.”

Sullenly, I gave the carpet the order, “Carpet, dump the gold.”

The clever carpet, catching my mood, flipped, and sent the gold crashing to the cave floor.

“My gold better not be dinged or dented,”
the dragon grumbled.

While he stepped forward to examine the spilled treasure, I saw that Emily's eyes were open. Open and enormous. Apparently, this early in a new day, after having slept most of yesterday, she had the strength to be awakened, if not by an urgent sister, at least by a miffed dragon.

Quietly, I motioned for her to get onto the carpet. I figured quiet was good. We didn't need to draw the dragon's attention to us, now that his gold was off our carpet and safely where he wanted it on his cavern floor.

Emily crawled onto the carpet. I'm not the one who can judge whether she didn't have the strength to stand or if that was a stealth move.

I sat behind her so that I could hold on to her, and I did my best to ignore how I could feel the heat of Emily's skin through our clothes. She definitely had a fever. I whispered, “Carpet, up, and out of here.” I hurriedly added, “And don't lose your cargo.”

Emily's fingers dug into my arm, and she didn't loosen her grip, even after the carpet straightened from flying out of the dragon's cave and into the morning light. “You have a knack for complicated plans I don't understand,” she told me.

“That
wasn't
my plan,” I told her.

“You said you had a plan, a good one.”

She'd picked a fine time to be listening.

“Yeah,” I snapped, “but that wasn't it.”

“Off plan. Off plan,” Emily said. I'm guessing she was trying to mimic the slightly mechanical voice that our car's GPS uses to tell us we're off route, but her voice was a ragged whisper. “Take your first safe opportunity to make a U-turn.”

The fact that Emily—in her state—was trying to use humor to make me feel better
did
make me feel better. But it made me feel worse at the same time. And, wow, did I ever wish we could U-turn right out of this hateful game.

But speaking of directions, I realized that we weren't heading in one; we were just hovering about a carpet-length or so from the cave's entrance, because all I'd told the carpet was to get out of there. This was not a safe place to be, relative to a dragon with a track record of changing his mind.

I considered our options. Returning to Emily's home was pointless—there was nothing there for us, not even a roof. We could go back to the arcade, where I could try to convince the gypsy king to rethink his sentence on us. I could argue that of course it counted for me to have returned the sprites' gold on Emily's behalf ... Yeah, like that was going to get us anywhere.

I told the carpet, “Take us once more to the island of the sprites.”

“Sprites?” Emily asked as the carpet started moving. “But we don't have any gold to give them.”

“I'm working on that part of the plan,” I told her.

“Okay,” she said. She leaned back against me, which I worried was a sign that she was making herself comfortable for going back to sleep, which was bad news, two and a half minutes after waking up.

But she didn't fall asleep right away. She said, “I'm sure you'll come up with something. You're so good at this. You always have great ideas.”

It was hard to believe my ears. “I'm terrible at this,” I argued. “My ideas stink.”

“No,” she said. Her voice was trembling.
She
was trembling. All she had was nine miserable points, and that was falling fast.

I told her, “You shouldn't be talking. Save your strength.”

“No,” she repeated more forcefully, “I need to say this.”

I figured it was best not to put her in a position where she felt she had to argue, so I didn't interrupt again.

She said, “You're smart, and you're brave, and you're resourceful, and I am so proud to be your sister.” She tightened her arms around my arms, the best she could do to hug me, given my position behind her.

In my smart, brave, resourceful way—I burst into tears.

“It's okay, Grace,” she assured me, her voice little more than a sigh in my ear. “Whatever happens, it's okay. I love you, and I know I can never repay all you've done for me.” This was pretty heady stuff for someone who'd always thought of herself as the “un-” sister, the one who wasn't pretty, or smart, or popular, the one whose own father couldn't come up with anything more exciting to praise her for than being levelheaded—which had always struck me as a scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel compliment. But it suddenly occurred to me that it wasn't. Okay, so, levelheaded, steady. Yeah, just like the tortoise who won the race. So what if that's not the most glamorous comparison in the world?

It's not the worst thing to be, either.

Emily said, “I wish I could be as quick-witted as you, as able to think on my feet.
You
don't need to cheat, because you never give up.”

Well, once she said that, I had to come up with a new plan.

And Emily even stayed awake long enough for me to coach her on what to say, while I basked in the glow of me and my sister, together.

The morning had not progressed much beyond
early
when we arrived at the city of the sprites.

Emily was slumped against me, once more asleep, her breathing loud and labored, reminiscent of my grandfather's when he was in hospice. I had the carpet swing down to a new building that was going up, where four sprite construction workers with tiny little lunch pails and orange hardhats were too busy sitting on a beam and whistling at passersby to notice us hovering beside them at their fifth-floor level. I got to deliver the classic line from those cheesy sci-fi movies that are sometimes rerun between infomercials: “Take me to your leader.”

It's a good thing they were sprites, because one was so startled he fell off the beam. But he fluttered right back up to the others, one of whom responded—very cleverly, I might point out—“What?” Then, unable to leave it at that, he added, “Grubby human girl.”

I ignored the jibe, which was, after all, 100 percent accurate. “Your leader,” I repeated. To their smirky little faces I suggested, “King? Queen? President? Prime minister? Governor? Mayor?” I was running out of steam. “General? Chief ? CEO? Supervisor? Principal? Spokesperson?”

Finally, one of them took pity on me. “Brains-in-your-butt girl, we don't have any of those.”

I asked, “Who makes the laws?”

“Annoying twit of a human,” he called me, “we pretty much do what we want to do.”

Why didn't that come as a surprise?

“Okay, well...” I gave Emily a shake. “Wake up,” I told her.

“I'm up,” she mumbled.

“Sprites are here,” I said, hoping she'd remember her lines. “Tell them what you wanted to tell them.”

She patted my leg and told the sprites, “This is the best sister, ever,” which was
not
what I'd instructed her to say.

“Thank you,” I said, ignoring the sprites' finger-down-the-throat gagging gestures. “But I meant what you came here to say.”

She was wobbly, like her head was too heavy.

“About the gold...” I prompted.

That one word made the sprites knock off their foolishness.

“Gold,” Emily repeated. “We've got gold for you.”

Close enough.

And a good thing, because her chin dropped to her chest and she began snoring.

I finished for her, “King Rasmussem—the gypsy king?—he told us we owed you money, and we've gathered it in a cave to the north. You guys willing to act as representatives and accept it on behalf of all spritekind?”

They were all bobbing their heads and saying things like “Well, sure, pretty girl,” and “Of course, lovely lass,” and
“We
can distribute the gold for you, clever youngster.”

Yeah, like that’s going to happen,
I thought, but I hid my skepticism. The king had said we needed to give the money to the sprites. He hadn't actually specified to
all
the sprites, so I hoped four construction workers would count. “Great,” I said. “Climb aboard, or follow me. Your choice.”

The construction workers put their little heads together; then one of them said, “Faster if we magically transport there. A bright young thing like you can readily see that.”

This had to be one for the record books: sprites offering to
donate
a magic spell.

“I don't know how to describe where it is,” I told them. Not to mention that I didn't trust them one pixie inch. Since I was already fudging with the number of sprites, I didn't want to risk that
sending
them to the gold was as good as
giving
them the gold.

We compromised by having them transport us to the northern mountains, saving us
some
time. As the sprites fluttered in a cluster alongside us, I whispered, just loudly enough for the carpet to hear, “Take us to—but not into—the dragon's cave. And when we're about thirty seconds out, give a little bob to let me know.”

I hoped thirty seconds would be long enough to get Emily coherent again.

We had flown for less than a minute when the carpet either bobbed or hit a speed bump. I couldn't see the distinctive crack that was the entryway, but I had a tendency to miss it till the last couple of seconds anyway. What if I was wrong, and we'd simply been jostled by an aberration of a wind current?

Sometimes you just need to trust your magic carpet. I pinched Emily.

“Ow!” she said crankily. I think she said. It was hard to tell with all the rasping and wheezing.

“Behold the gold...” I prompted.

She was trying to find a comfortable position, and groggily and grumpily asked, “What gold?”

“Behold the gold...” I repeated.

Wasn't that the crack that marked the cave up ahead?

It was, I determined, just as Emily caught on and managed to squeak out, “Behold the gold.”

But I interrupted, commanding between clenched teeth, “Louder.”

“Behold the gold,” Emily declared, even managing a theatrical wave in the general vicinity ahead of us.

Whether it was her words or that the sprites spied the crack, they sped ahead of us.

“Yours,” Emily finished grandly, “for the taking.”

She was supposed to finish “in reparation for the debt I owe you,” but she'd started coughing, and by then the sprites were already in the cavern anyway.

Once again, Emily hugged my arms while I hugged her as hard as I could.

Let it work, let it work, let it work,
I thought, alarmed by the way I could feel the erratic thumping of her heart.

There was a delighted squeal from the sprites—obviously, they'd spotted the gold. This was followed by an outraged roar from the dragon, who likewise had spotted the sprites. Next came by an angry shriek from the sprites, who'd become aware of the dragon. In a moment, dragon smoke aglitter with sprite sparkle billowed out of the crack.

Emily couldn't catch her breath and was coughing so hard she sounded on the verge of gagging, and now she was bent over with her hands pressed against her chest. “Ow,” she moaned between those body-wrenching coughs.

I became aware that there were more sparkles in the air than could be attributed to the dragon-fighting sprites. The Land of the Golden Butterflies was dissolving.

But the question was: around both of us—or just around me?

Because in this world, I couldn't count on anything.

Chapter 25

End Game

M
OM WAS LYING
across Emily's couch sobbing, and I thought,
All that for nothing.

So what that I had succeeded? I'd been about five seconds too late for Emily.

My sister was gone.

Not fair, not fair, not fair.

But I remembered someone—Mom, come to think of it—reproving me on my tenth birthday when I'd complained
no fair
that it was raining when we were supposed to be going to Darien Lake. Mom had snorted and said,
Since when is life fair, cupcake?

Now, Mom pulled herself away from Emily's couch and flung herself on mine, and it was only then that I realized, yes, Mom was sobbing, but she was also laughing. And over her shoulder, I could see Emily, not ready to sit up yet, but awake, and smiling, and waving at me.

The first few minutes back at Rasmussem were wild.

Mom was doing her best to hug both of us, which was a stretch, seeing as how Emily and I were on different couches.

Ms. Bennett was at the console, her fingers a blur of movement—I'm guessing shutting the Land of the Golden Butterflies program down quick, just in case Emily changed her mind and tried to go back in.