The Dragon in the Volcano (6 page)

“Isn’t that stealing?” Jesse asked uneasily.

“How could it be stealing? The beach is full of them. There are tons and tons of them. Look around you, Jesse! This whole place is made of precious and semiprecious gemstones and crystals. It’s
gorgeous
!”

Daisy was right. Now that he got a closer look at the Ruby City, he saw that while rubies were the principal building material, in and among the ruby spires and arches and domes were flashes of sapphire and topaz and amber and maybe even diamond. It was like gazing into a fire. At first, all you saw was red, but when you looked closer, you saw streaks of orange and blue and yellow and white and green.

“I wonder who lives here,” he said.

“Dragons!” Daisy crowed as she pointed down the beach. Two very large dragons were bounding toward them. They were tossing a ball that looked as if it were made of fire. As the dragons drew nearer, the smaller one looked very familiar.

“It’s Emmy!” he shouted.

“It is! It is!” said Daisy, flapping her hands in excitement.

They both began jumping up and down and calling out to their dragon.

Emmy pulled up short and waved both arms. Tossing the ball to the other dragon, she popped open her wings and skimmed along the beach toward them. “Jesse! Daisy! My favorite Keepers!” she cried, catching them up in her arms.

“We’re your
only
Keepers, I hope,” said Jesse as he nestled against bright scales that were, if anything,
more dazzling here than at home. “We thought we’d lost you.”

“But you followed my trail of socks and found me. Aren’t I a clever dragon?” Emmy said with a pleased chuckle.

“You’re the cleverest dragon in the world!” Daisy said.

“Oh, no!” Emmy said, setting them back down again and shaking her head. “Jasper is the cleverest dragon in the world. He’s my fiery mote.”

“Your
what
?” Jesse asked.

“The fiery mote of my heart,” Emmy said. “That’s what they call boyfriends and girlfriends here.”

They all watched as the other dragon—the fiery mote of Emmy’s heart—approached.

“I thought a mote was a tiny little thing,” Daisy whispered to Jesse. “This guy’s anything but.”

Emmy said shyly, “Jesse and Daisy, meet my fiery mote, Jasper.”

Jasper bowed to them. “The adorable child exaggerates,” he said in a rumbling voice. “Emerald and I are just boons.”

“Boons?” Daisy asked.

“He means friends,” Emmy said. “And we’re that, too.”

Jesse stared up at the hulking dragon. Much
larger than Emmy, he had bronze-gold scales that looked like medieval armor. Jesse felt more than a little intimidated, and it wasn’t just the dragon’s size. It was the two heavy bronze horns that sprang from his head. Emmy’s horns were just little nubs. These horns were long and sharp. What did Emmy see in this guy? He was about as far from Dewey Forbes as you could get!

“How do you do?” Daisy said. “Any boon of Emmy’s is a boon of ours.”

Daisy prodded Jesse with a sharp elbow.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Jesse said with a nod. “Nice, uh,
horns
you got there,” he added rather awkwardly.

“Aren’t they
magisterial
?” Emmy said adoringly.

Jesse thought they made him look like a monster Viking or a king-size devil, but he said, “So, how did you two kids meet?”

“Right here on the shores of the Lake of Fire!” Emmy said. “Isn’t it romantic? Like Chad and Amanda in Maui!”

“The Lake of Fire?” Jesse said. “I don’t see any fire.”

As if on cue, they heard a dull roar. A mound, like a mini-volcano, erupted from the surface of the lake, spewed a fountain of fire and magma, and then subsided.

“What
is
this place?” Daisy asked.

“The Fiery Realm!” Emmy said. “And that there is the Ruby City. Isn’t it nifty?”

Jasper bent and rumbled something into Emmy’s ear.

“Whispering must not be rude in the Fiery Realm,” Daisy commented to Jesse through tightly clenched teeth.

When Jasper was finished whispering, Emmy said to them, “I must take you to meet Lady Flamina and Lord Feldspar.”

“Who?” Jesse asked.

“The Grand Beacons of the Fiery Realm,” said Emmy. “I have met them many times. Jasper says it’s against the Beacons’ Code for you to be here without their sanction. Come on.”

Jesse and Daisy hurried along after the two dragons as they led the way through a set of soaring arched gates into the heart of the Ruby City.

Jesse said, “I don’t know about you, Daze, but I don’t trust anyone with horns like that.”

Daisy didn’t respond. She was too busy taking in the sights. Up close, the sleighlike vehicles were enormous, with tiers of seats rising up like bleachers. They were pulled by teams of hulking pink lizards. The passengers looked like rows of flickering flames. Down the sidewalk, more flames
rushed toward them. As the flames drew nearer, Daisy made out jagged humanoid shapes within them, with long legs and long arms, not unlike the shelf elves but with fierce-looking faces framed by flaming tresses.

“What
are
they?” Daisy asked.

“Fire fairies,” said Emmy. “They inhabit this realm, along with the dragons and other fire creatures, both wild and tame.”

“But I thought fairies had wings,” said Jesse.

“Not here,” said Emmy. “Fire fairies don’t fly. They flit … and skip and jump, but they don’t fly.”

There were dragons, too, sharing the wide promenade, some alone, some accompanied by other dragons, others walking with fire fairies. Like Jasper, all the dragons had prominent horns, quite a few having more than two. Some seemed in a hurry; others took their time, stopping to look in the shop windows that displayed an array of elegant goods: necklaces and bracelets and tiaras, vases and bowls and goblets, shoes and hats and beautiful sparkling gowns. Daisy wanted to linger and browse, but Emmy and Jasper hustled them along until they came to a giant gate hewn from rose quartz.

Two towering fire fairies holding gold lances stood guard on either side of a grand arched entryway
carved from ruby. Daisy looked up. Ruby arches soared and disappeared into the pink clouds. This was the palace with the spire she had seen from up on the ledge.

“The Great Hall of the Grand Beacons,” Emmy said in a hushed tone.

One of the guards came down the ruby steps to have a word with Jasper. The guard nodded and stood back. The next moment, the gates swung open and Jasper herded them in. They walked up the wide stairs and passed through an arched doorway into a long ruby-red gallery that reminded Daisy of how she imagined the inside of the throat of a long-necked monster might look. It was flanked by more armed guards with lances, who seemed to crackle and sputter as the procession passed.

The gallery opened up into a massive chamber housing what appeared to be a great stone fireplace at the far end. As they came nearer, Daisy realized it was a giant throne that looked like a nest of rubies. Seated upon the throne-nest were a fire fairy and a large dragon with pewter-gray scales and three horns splayed across his huge head.

“Jesse and Daisy, may I present to you the Grand Beacons of the Fiery Realm, Lady Flamina and Lord Feldspar,” Emmy said, her voice swelling
with pride. “Lord and Lady, these are my Keepers, Jesse Tiger and Daisy Flower. They followed me here from the Earthly Realm.”

“The Earthly Realm, is it? Nice to know where we come from,” Jesse muttered to Daisy.

“Shhhh!” Daisy said. “Listen.”

“Welcome to the Fiery Realm,” said Lady Flamina. When she spoke, her face and hair flickered vivid blue. Her voice sounded like fire spitting on damp wood.

The dragon at her side nodded his huge horned head and sighed, wisps of black smoke trailing from his nostrils.

“I was right, was I not?” Lady Flamina said to her dragon companion. “I said I heard them coming and here they are.”

“You are correct as usual, Your Ladyship,” Lord Feldspar growled.

“That was probably me,” Jesse said. “I screamed my head off when Daisy dragged me over the ledge into the Lake of Fire.”

The fire fairy flared up bright orange. “No one in the Ruby City missed that. But I heard you coming long before you passed through the membrane. I heard you as you rode across the earthly terrain toward us on your iron-shod steed. You see, we in
the Fiery Realm can see anything in the Earthly Realm that is in flames.”

Jesse nodded politely.

The fire fairy went on: “I realize this notion may be beyond your feeble Earthly Realm powers of perception, so I won’t pursue this any further for fear of making you feel less enlightened than you already do.”

“Oh, no!” Jesse said. “I understand. What you’re saying is that Old Bub’s shoes are rusty iron. Rust, as a corrosive substance brought about by oxidation, is a lesser form of combustion. So you ‘heard,’ rather than saw, the rust coming toward you, right, Flamina?”

Daisy cocked an eye at Jesse. Sometimes she was amazed at how much her cousin knew. Her father said it was because he was mostly home-schooled by his parents, two very smart doctors.

Her Ladyship, however, seemed more angry than impressed. She flared up into several small, blazing yellow peaks. “That’s
Lady
Flamina to you, earthly upstart!”

“
Lady
Flamina,” Jesse said, cringing.

The fire fairy sighed and went back to orange and then to pale blue. “The Grand Beacon of Dragons and I have conferred, and we have ruled that
you will be allowed to stay here for two Earthly Realm days, which are roughly equivalent to ours. Then you must leave. These are trying times in the Fiery Realm, and we can brook no interlopers.”

Daisy opened her mouth to speak, but Jesse beat her to it. “Your Esteemed Royal Lady Beaconship—and Your Lordship, too, of course—we beg you to brook us a full three Earthly Realm days’ visit instead of two,” he said. “You see, Monday is Teachers’ Conference Day. That’s when all the teachers get together to talk about teaching methods and stuff and we don’t have to go to school, and besides, Daisy’s parents are away in Boston with Daisy’s big brother, my cousin Aaron, whose wife Sherie just had twins—which would make Daisy an aunt and me a second cousin for the second and third time—and Miss Alodie, the neighbor down the street who is taking care of us, understands that we are Keepers, and she pretty much said that she’d see us when she sees us, so—”

“Desist with the dithering details!” Her Ladyship flared up as if someone had poured oil on her flame. She faced Lord Feldspar. The two exchanged hissing whispers. The fire fairy looked at the cousins at length and said, “Very well, the Beacons have revised their ruling. You may stay for three days or until you have exhausted your supply
of Fiery Elixir, whichever comes sooner. After that, you will leave or else die a horrible death.”

“We’ll leave
and
take our dragon with us,” Daisy said, just to be sure everyone knew where they stood.

The top of Her Ladyship’s head sharpened to a high, white-hot peak as she whispered: “Never!”

“I beg your pardon?” Daisy said boldly.

Lord Feldspar’s voice hit her like the blast from a furnace. “Emerald of Leandra is to remain here! She will stay and take her place in the Fiery Realm. This is the realm she has chosen and this is the realm she will inhabit until it is time for her to merge with the Great Flame!”

Beside him, Jesse sensed Daisy pulling herself up tall. “We are her Keepers, and it is not your place, or hers, to make such life-changing decisions,” she said.

Lady Flamina’s flame leaped up to twice the size of the massive dragon beside her. The room exploded in white light, out of which Lady Flamina’s voice came at them quick and cold and sharp as an ice pick: “Remove your upstart selves from our midst!”

One moment, Emmy and Jasper, Jesse and Daisy were facing the throne. The next minute, they were all standing outside the closed door of
the throne room. Their bodies gave off wisps of gray smoke. None of them could say how they had gotten there, but all of them felt as if they had been struck by lightning.

“Let’s get out of here,” Jesse said in a stunned voice.

Daisy wanted to march back into the throne room and give the Grand Beacons what for, but the others talked her out of it and, reluctantly, she followed them down the hall.

Daisy fumed. “The nerve of those—”

“Easy, Daisy,” Jesse said, his eyes on the lines of snarling guards flanking them. “It is their realm, and it won’t help Emmy if you get us kicked out for being upstarts.”

Jasper and Emmy, engaged in furious whispers, beat a hasty retreat down the long ruby-red gallery toward the exit.

Daisy caught up and elbowed her way between the two dragons. “It’s not nice to tell secrets, you two.”

“Jasper is saying that you got the Beacons’ blood boiling,” Emmy said.

Daisy felt pretty hot-blooded herself. “Is Feldspar right, Em? Have you chosen to stay here forever and ever until you merge with the Great Flame … whatever the Sam Hill that is?”

Emmy looked down at Daisy and blinked, her emerald eyes clouded with doubt. “I want to be near my fiery mote.”

“But, Emmy,” Jesse said, “you heard what Lady Flamina said. If you stay here, you’ll merge one day with the Great Flame. That means you won’t get to join your mother in the Scriptorium.”

Emmy looked troubled, as if this idea had not occurred to her until this moment.

“Now, Emerald,” Jasper chided her gently, “your rightful place
is
with your Keepers.”

Daisy nearly hugged Jasper in gratitude and surprise.

“Listen to the big bronze guy,” Jesse said.

“Ah, but our boon has a mind of her own,” Jasper said. “I would like to stay with you longer, but I must leave you now.” They were standing outside the gates of the palace. “I will see you all here at the Great Hall tomorrow first thing for the royal runching. Good day, Emerald. Good day, Keepers.” Jasper bowed his horned head and headed off down the street.

“Do we
have
to come back here?” Jesse asked. “This Great Hall isn’t so great, if you ask me. And what’s with ‘runching’?”

“Oh, but it’s a huge honor to be invited to a royal runching,” Emmy said, distracted. “I didn’t get
my good-bye clinch. Excuse me, Keepers.” She ran after Jasper.