Dragon Magic (20 page)

There were two brownies on the snack plate, and the rest of the kitchen had a good smell. Then he remembered about the bake sale at church.

Mother must have promised to make a lot of things for that. He could see two covered cake tins and a couple of big pans with foil pinched over their tops. Nobody could bake like Mother. Kim nibbled around the edge of the first brownie to make it last.

“Well”—Mother stood in the kitchen doorway—”how did it go today, Kim?”

“All right. Please, could I ask some of the boys over maybe after supper?

They live close—Sig, he’s down on Ashford, and Ras and Artie are close—”

“This is a school night and there’s homework, isn’t there?”

He nodded, his mouth was full of brownie, too full to let him answer politely as he should. Then he swallowed fast.

“This is special. And it wouldn’t take very long.” He hesitated, knowing that Mother would wonder what was so special and why he did not tell her all about it.

But she did not ask any questions, which was one of the best things about Mother.

“If their parents say they may come, why, yes, Kim. Maybe for a half-hour or so. But on school nights—”

“Yes,” he agreed. Rules were rules and he had never asked to change them before. But this
was
important. Suppose they came to clean out the old house tomorrow and the puzzle was gone! Could he leave for school earlier tomorrow without having to say why, get the puzzle safely out on the way to school? Or if he could not, might one of the others?

In one bite he ate the rest of the brownie and went to look up phone numbers, taking them alphabetically so that Ras—George Brown—was first. With luck Ras himself answered.

Kim had not thought out ahead of time what to say, and now he fumbled for the right words. After all, Ras did not know, could not know, that he had been working the puzzle, too.

Also, it was not very helpful when he said, This is Kim” to have Ras say,

“Kim who?”

“Kim Stevens. I wait at the bus stop with you.”

“Sure.” But there was such a note of bewilderment in Ras’s voice even now that Kim was discouraged. He could only hurry on and hope for the best, though he was a little afraid that the other boy would not listen to him.

“I know—about the dragons. I—I put together the yellow one this afternoon!”

For a long minute there was no answer at all. Kim felt almost as cold inside as he had on the wall of that long-ago city. Was Ras going to be angry with him, or even hang up? The silence stretched very long indeed before the other said, “Something happened to you, didn’t it?”

“Yes! And, Ras, what about it—the you-know-what—if they come to clear out the house? Could—could you come over after supper and talk about it? Maybe even if we wait until tomorrow it will be too late.”

“I’ll have to ask. What about Sig—Artie?”

“I’m going to call them.”

Ras went away from the phone to come back with a promise of “after supper for sure.” Kim had been looking up Sig’s number in the book, had his finger under it ready for the second call. And he had luck when he reached Sig, for Artie was still there, so he got them both and gathered two more promises.

When they arrived he was waiting impatiently. Father had the TV on to listen to the news, and Mother was back on the phone talking about the bake sale, so he took them straight up to his room. Sig and Artie sat on the bed, looking about them with open curiosity. Ras had the desk chair, but Kim stood, eager to begin.

“You’ve got a groovy place.” Sig studied the shelves up on the wall, holding the things Father had brought back from Hong Kong and Japan and Korea. “Hey—look—there’s a dragon!”

He pointed to a wood carving.

“That’s from Taiwan,” Kim said impatiently.

“Looks a lot like the yellow dragon on the box lid.” Sig got up and went to inspect it more closely.

Kim shook his head. ‘The yellow dragon is a Lung, one belonging to the Emperor.”

“How can you tell?” Artie wanted to know.

“First, because it is yellow, that’s the color that only the Emperor could wear or use. Then, it had five claws on its feet, that makes it a Lung. But the one in the puzzle is Shui Mien Lung—that means ‘Slumbering Dragon’, and it was not really a dragon but a man—a man who lived in China a long time ago. He was First Minister and General-in-Chief to the Emperor Liu Pei, and he had a sword the Emperor had given him with a closed-eyed dragon engraved on it. Then he did something big and brave and the people called
him
Slumbering Dragon—they even made up a song about him—” Kim talked faster and faster, glad to see he had their full attention now and that they seemed to believe all he said.

“A man, not a dragon.” Artie nodded. “Mine was, too—Artos Pendragon—he was a king and
he
had an important sword. But his dragon wasn’t on the sword, it was a big red banner. When the wind filled it, it looked like a dragon flying.”

“Mine was a real dragon—or once it had been a man and then it became a dragon—but it was bad. It had to be killed. They called it Fafnir.

Sigurd King’s-son killed it with the sword Balmung. Odin helped him—”

Sig contributed.

“Sirrush-Lau was real, too,” Ras cut in. “It was horrible—like a big snake mixed up with an alligator, or one of those prehistoric monsters.

The priests of Marduk-Bel kept it in a pool in the temple and they were going to have it kill Daniel, only he figured out a way to kill it first.”

Kim’s head turned from one to the other as he listened eagerly. So he had been right in his guess that each had had a dragon, as different as the four pictures on the cover of the box. And he wanted to know more, all of what had happened to each of them. Pendragon, Fafnir, Sirrush-Lau—strange names. But probably to Sig, Artie, and Ras “Shui Mien Lung” sounded just as queer.

“The puzzle”—he brought them back to the immediate problem.

“What’s going to happen to it if they come and take everything out of the house, maybe tomorrow?”

“You put the yellow dragon together, finished it this afternoon?” Ras wanted to know.

Kim nodded.

“Then you left it there on the table?”

“Yes. I thought it was late, that Mother would worry. Then—then I guess I just never thought of taking it apart. You know, it was so tight I couldn’t even see the cracks marking the pieces, or feel them.”

“We can’t go after it tonight.” Sig was walking from the bed to door and back again, as if he could think better when he was on the move. “Not tonight. At least I couldn’t get away to try that. I can’t even stay long here, the folks were talking homework when I left.”

Ras and Artie were nodding in complete agreement.

“So we’ll just have to leave it until after school tomorrow and hope that they don’t come to clear things out before then. But we’ll go after it together—after school—agree on that, you guys?”

They answered “yes,” almost together. Then Sig turned to Kim. “We want to hear your story, all of it. Maybe we haven’t much time tonight, but tell us what you can.”

So Kim began to talk, trying to make vivid to them the mistake of Ma Su, the cleverness and courage of Chuko Liang. However, there was a lot he feared he could not make them understand. When he had done Ras was leaning forward, staring at Kim, as if he saw not the other boy at all but rather what he had been describing. And Sig, back on the bed beside Artie, and Artie himself were spellbound.

“That Ma Su”—Ras spoke first—”was he ever stupid! Bet his head on being right and then went out and proved how wrong he was!”

“I don’t understand—really—why Chuko Liang thought
he
had been wrong and why he wanted to give up everything,” Artie said slowly.

“He—he really beat this Ssuma, didn’t he? And did it without fighting, too.

Why did he say he had failed? Oh, I know what you say he said, that he made a mistake in picking the wrong guy for the job, so he was responsible. But that’s being pretty hard on himself—at least I think so.”

“It was the way they believed, the old Chinese.” Kim tried to make it clear. “They had a code they had to live up to. A lot of men didn’t, but the heroes tried the hardest and sometimes they did.”

“Yes,” Sig broke in. “Like Sigurd refusing to touch the treasure even when he had a right to it, after he killed Fafnir! He knew the treasure changed the man who took it, as it did Mimir, so he wouldn’t touch it.”

“What happened to Sigurd?” Kim demanded.

“A lot, but I won’t have time to tell you tonight,” Sig answered.

“Tomorrow—listen, we went to the library today and we got some books.

Me, I got a second one about Sigurd, not exactly the same story—Sig Clawhand wasn’t in it at all. That was me—Sig Clawhand—I was with Sigurd when he went to kill Fafnir, before that, too. And Ras, he got a book about Egypt, but there’s nothing about Meroë in it, so he has to get another one and keep on looking. Artie—he got a good one—about the real Arthur, not the King with the Knights and the Round Table and all that stuff. Now—maybe you can find out something about this Chuko Liang. If our heroes are real, then yours must be also!”

“And when we come home tomorrow we’ll all go together and get the puzzle.” Ras stood up.

Upon that they agreed and the three left. Kim went back to sit down at his desk and open his book. There was homework waiting. But it was very hard to concentrate on anything between the covers of a book now. He wanted to know all Sig could tell him about Fafnir, all Artie could about Pendragon, all Ras could report of the monster Sirrush-Lau—and to wait was hard. In fact, he was not sure as he closed his last book that he had really accomplished very much studying that evening.

“Those seemed very pleasant boys,” Mother commented at breakfast. “I am so glad you have found some new friends, Kim. Starting in at a new school as large as Anthony Wayne is hard enough, but to have to do it alone makes it worse. I know Mrs. Dortmund, and I have seen Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Brown at P.T.A. meetings. They all live so close”—she did not finish her sentence, but Kim guessed that she meant she was not worried so much any more about Kim liking the new house and neighborhood.

But he was impatient to get to the bus stop, so he hurried faster than he had in days to get out of the house and down the street.

“Hey! Wait up, man!” Artie’s voice was loud and Kim slowed as the other came down his walk still zipping up his jacket. They picked up Ras at the next corner and Sig halfway down the block, arriving at the stop all together.

There were no signs of life around the old house. But it was early, only seven thirty, and if the Good Will came to clean the place out it would probably be later.

“I sure wish this was Saturday!” Artie said.

“Well, it isn’t!” Ras answered him. “And we’ll just have to hope they won’t get here today.”

“We got about ten minutes maybe,” Artie urged. “Why can’t we sneak in and get it now?”

“With all of these hanging around to see us?” Sig pointed to the little kids, as well as two mothers who had escorted their own children and were waiting to see them safely on the bus.

They agreed gloomily that he was right. So they used the time to fill Kim in on their own adventures, until he got the accounts rather mixed, with all the interruptions of one or another who suddenly remembered something he just had to add, cutting into the middle of somebody else’s story to do it.

That Tuesday was the second longest school day Kim could remember—almost as long as the day before had been, when he had wanted to find out what the other boys were doing in the house. It dragged so that each period seemed to last about four weary hours. And when he finally climbed into the homeward-bound bus it was with the feeling that he had spent about a week cooped up in classrooms and halls.

He had had three classes with Artie, Sig, and Ras. And Ras and he had had the same lunch period and so managed to get seats together. But they dared not say too much about what was uppermost in their minds for fear someone would overhear. It was a relief to be homeward bound and know they could get to the puzzle soon.

But the closer they came to their corner, the more they worried about what had happened in their day-long absence. Had the Good Will come and cleaned out the house? Kim really felt quite desperate as the bus swung around to let them off.

As one they turned to face the overgrown garden.

“No trucks here now, anyway.” Artie gave a sight of relief.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Ras pointed out. “They could have come and gone. We won’t know until we get inside.”

‘Take it easy,” Sig warned. “We have to go under cover, behind these bushes, and keep out of sight. Don’t want anyone to see us and ask questions. But snap to it once we’re in!”

They ran, obeying his instructions, putting a screen of bushes between them and the open gate. Then they reached the back porch, Sig in the lead. He pushed up the window to slip inside, Artie nudging him along so he could follow faster.

“I don’t think they’ve come yet,” Sig heartened them as they entered.

“All the kitchen stuff is still here.”

The same was true in the dining and living rooms. It did not take long to reach the puzzle room. But Sig stopped short inside the door, and Artie, Ras, and Kim pushed against him to get in themselves. A moment later they saw what had halted him.

There was the table and the chair. But the top of the table was bare.

There was no completed puzzle of shining pieces, no glitter of color. Not even the box remained. There was nothing but the chair and the table, and a lot of dust, and a great many spider webs.

“I—I left it right here.” He tapped the tabletop with his finger. Then he stared down in complete amazement, just as Sig had shown at the door.

“It’s not here now,” Sig was saying. But Ras had moved over to Kim and stood watching him.

“What is it, man? What’s got you bugged?”

“Dust!” Kim pointed. “Look at all the dust! See, that’s where I just touched—I made a mark. But all the rest—it’s thick with dust! How—how could the puzzle have been here? How could we have shoved all those pieces around and not brushed the dust away?”