From the Dragon Keepers' Vault (3 page)

While they were talking, the wind had kicked up and the leaves threw up their pale backs as if to fend off the bad weather.

“Looks like a storm’s brewing,” said Peg.

“Perhaps it will be a distraction,” said Obsidian.

The horses, noses pointing into the oncoming wind, bore on gamely through the deep woods until they came to the outskirts of the mining camp. There, Peg and Obsidian dismounted and tethered the horses to the branches of a Douglas fir. Obsidian knelt at the foot of the tree and sent a quiet thank-you to the dryads as he plucked a fern for himself, one for Peg, and a third for Leandra.

“What use are these?” Peg asked.

“The spirits within these trees have charmed the ferns,” Luke explained. “When you hold it before your face, you will become invisible.”

He demonstrated and watched Peg’s jaw drop as he vanished from sight. He lowered the fern and smiled to give her courage. “We must hold hands, for we will be invisible to each other as well.”

Ferns held before their faces and hands clasped, Obsidian and Peg set out toward the camp. The wind whipped at Peg’s skirt and grabbed at the ferns. They both had to hold tight to the ferns to keep the wind from snatching them clean away. Invisible, they walked through the center of the camp, where the men were sitting around a fire. The wind drove sparks high into the sky, but the glassy-eyed men sat and stared numbly. If they were alarmed by the approaching storm, they gave no sign of it. These men were under the spell of the man in the nearby tent. Obsidian saw the familiar silhouette of St. George bent over his plans. Leandra’s cage stood off
in the shadows. Obsidian led Peg over to the side of the cage facing away from the camp and lifted the canvas. They lowered their ferns so Leandra could see that her rescuers had arrived.

“Hello, my dear,” Obsidian whispered. “This young lady is Peg. She has come to free you.”

Leandra’s eyes lit up. “Thank you from my heart’s bottom!” she said. Cradled in her arms were what looked to Peg like three rough, round gray stones. Her eyes asked a silent question of Obsidian.

“These are Thunder Eggs,” he explained, “containing our three precious unborn children.”

Leandra and Obsidian watched breathlessly as, with shaking fingers, Peg unfastened the latch on the cage. Such a simple act, and yet it meant everything in the world to the dragon couple and their future children. Obsidian crept around the side of the wagon, his eye on St. George’s tent.

When the cage was open, Leandra stepped out. She handed one of the eggs to Obsidian and another to Peg, keeping one for herself. “Just to be safe, we should go separate ways,” Leandra said. “Whatever we do, we must not let St. George get his hands on these dragon babies!”

Bending over Peg, Leandra whispered in her ear. Peg nodded, then gathered the egg in her skirt, picked up the fern, and vanished.

“Here is a fern for you!” Obsidian said to Leandra.

“Thank you,” she said. “But I’m not sure how much good they’ll do if this weather keeps getting worse. Let’s just hope Peg gets away in time.”

Suddenly, the sky opened up and hailstones began to fall, beating down the ferns clutched
in their talons. In moments, the ferns were pounded to pulp. Leandra and Obsidian would no longer have the protection of invisibility.

“Never mind,” said Leandra. “I still have a dragon’s wings and a dragon’s fire to protect me. And your human form will make you less suspicious. Hide the egg in your pocket and pretend you are just another of St. George’s minions. Leave now.”

Before Obsidian left, Leandra gave him one last message, her voice the barest whisper beneath the growing roar of the hailstones.

Obsidian nodded. “I will do as you ask, my dearest one. But where will
you
go?”

“I will take the third egg and hide it where St. George will never find it: in the crater of High Peak. Meet me on the upper slopes after you have completed your task. Then either you must change me to a human or we must find a way to reverse your spell and transform you back to a dragon. Whatever happens, we must find a way to be together.”

It was the hardest thing Obsidian had ever done, leaving Leandra behind to fend for herself. He walked slowly across the camp, past the workers, who were oblivious to the hailstones clobbering their heads. Obsidian kept his eyes forward, not daring to look at St. George’s tent. He only hoped the foul weather would keep the villain inside. When he got to where Old Bub stood tethered, he was relieved to see that Peg’s milky white mare was gone. She had gotten away undetected. With the Thunder Egg in his pocket, Obsidian mounted Old Bub and started toward the Old Mother. The hail had thinned out to sleet now.

Halfway to the mountain, he heard a rumbling sound that he mistook for thunder. Then he got a powerful whiff of brimstone. He turned to see Leandra hovering above the treetops, magnificent red wings unfurled, smoke curling from her mouth. The woods below her had erupted in flame, smoky in the dampness. Bells clanged and St. George screamed, calling his
minions to arms. Leandra sent another scorching steam of breath down upon the camp.

Obsidian turned away. Leandra had her job, and Obsidian had his. Egg in one hand, reins in the other, he rode the trusty farm horse along the winding path that ran up the slope of the Old Mother. The hail had turned to rain now. When the path grew too steep, he dismounted and climbed the rest of the way to the summit.

There, he placed the Thunder Egg in an eagle’s nest. This was Leandra’s instruction and he did it without hesitation or question. The spirits of the air would stand guard over this egg. He would not know until later, but Peg had hidden her egg in the stream running down from the Old Mother, where the water spirits would protect it.

Obsidian turned away from the nest just in time to see Leandra flying toward the snow-topped volcano known as High Peak, where the fire spirits of the crater would protect the third egg. Then Obsidian caught his breath as he saw St. George, goggled, with a white scarf flying behind him, pursuing Leandra in an elaborate flying machine that looked like a giant metal mosquito. Obsidian looked on helplessly as the machine and Leandra collided in midair above the slopes of High Peak. He saw the egg drop from Leandra’s grip. With an anguished cry, he watched as the sharp wing of St. George’s flying machine pierced Leandra’s shoulder. She fell, tumbling head over tail.

Obsidian stumbled back down the mountainside and jumped on Old Bub’s back, driving the poor creature at a gallop through the deep woods and up the sleet-slickened path that led to High Peak. But by the time he arrived, St. George had already slain Leandra and partaken of her blood.

Obsidian returned many times to search the slopes of High Peak for the egg Leandra had carried, as did St. George, but neither was ever able to find it. Nor could Obsidian find the egg
that Peg had deposited in the stream or the one he had left in the eagle’s aerie. All three eggs seemed to have vanished.

He never recovered from the loss of his family, but he did resign himself to life as a human being, awaiting the time when the magic stronger than any other would return him to his dragon form. In the meantime, he made the best of his life as a man. He took on the surname Andersson. When Peg grew up, he married her and settled down on the homestead. In the years to come, he would continue to battle with St. George over the treasures that lay hidden in the earth. Eventually, he succeeded in dynamiting one of the mine tunnels and burying the villain alive beneath tons of gold-laced rubble.

The law came after Lukas Burton Andersson, and he fled Goldmine City. He left Peg with a tiny six-week-old baby named Jesse Leander Andersson. Jesse grew up without a father but surrounded by loving uncles, and he would be the first of many generations of Jesses. Andersson kept track of Jesse from whatever part of the world he found himself in. Graced—or possibly cursed—with a dragon’s centuries-long life span, he watched the many descendants of Jesse, and he waited until the time was right to summon his half-blood children into service, in the role they were destined to play, of Dragon Keepers.

Jesse and Daisy found it. And when it hatched, they became Emmy’s Keepers. Read Dragon Keepers Book 5:
The Dragon in the Sea
to discover what happens to Leandra’s second egg!

Excerpt copyright © 2012 by Kate Klimo. Published by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Jesse waited until Daisy was finished, then asked, “You want to take a walk on the beach? Polly said we should meet the new neighbors, the Driftwoods, Bill and Mitzi and their kids, Coral and Reef.”

Daisy’s blue eyes lit up. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll get the backpack.”

They stopped off in the Fishbowl to get the backpack, then ran through the garden and down the worn wooden stairs that zigzagged along the cliff to the beach. The farther down the cliff they went, the louder the
arf-arf-arf
ing of the seals grew.

On the beach, they paused to watch the waves hurl themselves wrathfully over the rocks. Even in August, this was a challenging swimming beach, but in late November, it was downright inhospitable. Slimy tendrils of kelp lay everywhere, like the tentacles of a sea monster. An enormous rock nearly as big as a beached aircraft carrier slanted toward the sea, alive with seals sunning themselves. The seals lay packed in cheek to jowl, barking nonstop for no apparent reason.

“Why doesn’t somebody throw them a fish and shut them up?” Jesse asked.

Daisy grinned. It was one of the jokes Daisy’s father, Uncle Joe, never got tired of
cracking. In the shadow of the seal rock, they found a large tide pool. Never able to resist a good tide pool, they knelt and dipped their hands in the clear water.

Jesse yanked his hand out. It was freezing!

Daisy was already shucking off her sneakers and socks, rolling up her jeans, and wading in. Jesse watched as she picked through the tide pool and found a few seashells. There were also some choice pieces of sea glass.

“For the Museum of Magic?” she said, holding up a pale green piece of sea glass for Jesse to see.

“It reminds me of the gems on the beach in the Fiery Realm,” said Jesse, thinking wistfully that Emmy would be toasty warm in the Fiery Realm right now.

Daisy gasped as she dropped the treasures she had just collected. At first, Jesse thought it was because of the cold, but she was wading toward something in the center of the tide pool. It looked like the softball Jesse had lost last summer. He walked along the edge of the tide pool to get a closer look. It was definitely
not
a softball.

“Is that what I think it is?” Jesse asked Daisy, his heart starting to flutter.

Jesse charged, sneakers and socks and all, into the freezing water just as Daisy bent to pick up the object.

“It is!” she said, cradling it in her hands. It was a perfectly round rock with a rough surface the texture of congealed oatmeal. “It’s a geode.”

“Wow,” said Jesse in a hushed voice. “A Thunder Egg. Do you think …?”

Daisy looked up at him. Neither one of them wanted to say it aloud, but they were both thinking the same thing:
Maybe there’s a baby dragon inside
.

They waded out of the tide pool. Jesse held the geode while Daisy sat on a rock and put
her socks and sneakers back on. Emmy had hatched from a geode that had looked just like this one, except that Emmy’s geode had had purple specks in it. This one was shot through with specks of glittering gold.

“We should tell the professor what we found,” Daisy said. The professor was Lukas B. Anderssen, their online dragon consultant.

“We should probably go say ahoy there to the Driftwoods first, like Polly said,” Jesse murmured, his eyes never leaving the geode.

Daisy stood up. “Okay, we’ll say ahoy, then go back and hop online,” she said. She held out her hand for the geode. Reluctantly, Jesse gave it back to her. After all, she was the one who had spotted it first, just like he had been the one who had found Emmy’s egg.

They headed down the beach, Jesse’s wet sneakers making a squelching sound as he walked.

“We shouldn’t get our hopes up,” Daisy said.

“I know,” said Jesse with a sigh. “Sometimes a rock is just a rock.”

Daisy lifted the rock to her lips and whispered, “Hi there.” Her eyes went wide. “Jess, I think I felt it hum!”

K
ATE
K
LIMO
has been writing fantasy stories since she was in the fourth grade, when she and her best friend Justine used to collaborate, writing in multicolored inks. She still has one of the black-and-white composition notebooks containing story fragments about a girl named Emily and a boy named Peter who are shipwrecked and wash up on a magical desert island. She also has the maps they drew of that island and the ones surrounding it. Kate thinks that maps are a great way to navigate worlds of fantasy. When you visit her website
thedragonkeepers.com
, you’ll find a map of Goldmine City and its many magical hotspots.