The First Dragon (Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, The) (3 page)

“The problem,” Jack said, now in full professor mode, “is that no one else who heard you speak that way would know how intelligent you really are.”

She shrugged and smiled at the Caretaker. “Why should I care what anyone else thinks? I know, and that’s enough.”

“She has you there, Jack,” John said, clapping him on the back. “Best just shut up now and help her move the boxes.”

“Nah,” Laura Glue said, waving one hand at them as she hefted another stack of boxes with her other arm. “Like I said—I got this.”

“An’ I gots some munchies,” the badger Caretaker Fred announced as he strolled into the room, carrying a large basket filled with fruit. “It’s midafternoon, and you missed lunch, so I thought I’d better bring something up.”

“Thank you, Fred,” Jack said as he selected a bunch of grapes and sat down. “Anticipating a need is the mark of an excellent Caretaker.”

“Don’t go quoting Jules, now,” said John. “Especially regarding anticipating our needs.”

“That’s not entirely fair, is it?” Houdini asked as he examined some pears a moment before selecting a peach. “He hardly could have anticipated a crisis like this one.”

“He seems to have anticipated every other kind of crisis,” John grumbled, “including an entire alternate timeline set into motion by Hugo Dyson closing a door at the wrong time, which, as I recall, was partially
your
fault. So why didn’t he anticipate this? Where’s the backup plan for the backup plan?”

Jack stood and sidled around one of the tables to move another stack of scrolls and parchments, which he dropped onto the floor next to John’s chair. “Perhaps we have gotten too accustomed to his
being our deus ex machina,” he said, sitting heavily in the wingback chair next to Laura Glue. “We count on his always having the answers, because before we knew how many strings he was pulling, he always seemed to have all the answers. And then, even after we found out just how many events he was manipulating, we still allowed it because it always seemed to work out. It was only after something finally went terribly wrong that you took matters into your own hands and stepped into the role yourself.”

John scowled. “You are referring to the role of Prime Caretaker, I hope,” he said with a hint of irritation, “and not Jules’s predilection for meddling with time.”

“What’s the difference?” Laura Glue asked as she selected an apple from Fred’s basket and bit into it. “Isn’t that precisely what the job be, neh?”

“That’s the problem in a nutshell,” John said with a sigh. “It really is, but it
shouldn’t
be.”

At that moment, Nathaniel Hawthorne stuck his head around the corner. Before he could speak a word, he exploded with a violent sneeze, then another, and another.

“You would think,” he said as Fred handed him a handkerchief to blow his nose, “that Basil Hallward could have painted some version of my portrait that left out my allergy to dust.”

Jack chuckled. “That’s not how it works,” he said blithely, referring to their resident artist’s technique for preserving life by painting portraits of Caretakers who were about to end their natural life spans. “As you were in life, so you remain in Tamerlane House.”

“That’s slender consolation sometimes, Jack,” Hawthorne grumbled as he wiped his nose. “You’ll understand when you eventually join us.”

Jack hesitated. “I . . . haven’t yet decided,” he finally said. “I know I don’t want to become a tulpa like Charles did when he passed, but I’m not certain that I want to be a portrait, either.”

“It’s not so bad—as long as you don’t go on vacation for longer than seven days,” Hawthorne said, referring to the one limitation of portrait-extended life: They could only live as long as they were never away from Tamerlane House for more than a week—a lesson the Caretakers learned all too well when both their mentor, Professor Sigurdsson, and their once-ally-turned-enemy Daniel Defoe perished after being gone for too long.

“Time enough to decide that later,” said Jack. “Hopefully decades. Was there something you needed, Nate?”

Hawthorne hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “There’s some kind of commotion down at one of the beaches. I’ve dispatched Jason’s sons to go down there just in case it’s trouble, and I’m going to go have a look myself. I just thought the, ah, Prime Caretaker . . .” He paused, looking at John. “I thought you ought to know.”

John waved his hand. “You’re head of security,” he said. “I trust in that. Let me know what you find, though.”

Hawthorne winked and disappeared.

“Mebbe I should go too,” said Fred, “seein’ as I’m one of th’ actual Caretakers now.”

“Actually, we could use your help here,” said Jack. “There are some cubbyholes in and around the bookshelves that are too small for us to reach, and, not to put too fine a point on it . . .”

“I know, I know,” Fred said with mock annoyance. “You need a badger to bail out your backsides—
again
.”

“I’ll never begrudge the help of a badger,” John said with honest
appreciation, “especially considering that you’re the closest thing to a Dragon we have left.”

“That may not be entirely correct,” said a breathless Hawthorne, who reentered the room in such a rush that he nearly skidded into a bookcase. “Come quickly, everyone! You must see what we’ve found on the South Beach.”

♦  ♦  ♦

Hawthorne’s alert roused everyone at Tamerlane House, and so almost every Caretaker, Messenger, Mystorian, and creature arrived on the beach at the same time and saw the same impossible sight:

There, half out of the water and leaning slightly where it rested on the sand, was the
Black Dragon
.

The initial surprise
that was felt by all the residents of Tamerlane House at finding the long-missing
Black Dragon
on the South Beach was quickly eclipsed by their arguing about what it meant, and more, what was to be done next.

Shakespeare, for his part, was thrilled by the arrival of the
Black Dragon
. But several of the Caretakers Emeriti, led by da Vinci, were convinced it was some sort of Echthroi trick—a Dragonship version of the Trojan Horse—and advocated burning it on the spot.

The younger Caretakers, led by John and Jack, suggested it was merely synchronicity that a Dragonship had turned up at just that point in time that a Dragon was needed, and protested that burning it would destroy their only chance of powering Shakespeare’s Zanzibar Gate.

The rest were basically skirting one side or the other without taking a definitive stance, all of which meant that there was nothing but chaotic bickering right up to the point that Harry Houdini fired the cannon and silenced them all.

“Hell’s bells,” he said as he moved around the still-smoking cannon, which sat along one of the battlements. “I thought we kept this
loaded in case of an attack from the Echthroi, but it seems it’s just as useful in shutting up Caretakers.”

 . . . Houdini and John piloted the
Black Dragon . . .

“Now, see here,” Hawthorne started.

“You’re all forgetting,” Houdini went on, ignoring Hawthorne, “that the Archipelago isn’t on Chronos time anymore. So this ship didn’t just leave a year ago to make its way here. It’s been sailing for . . .” He looked at Twain. “I can’t do math.”

“Oh, uh,” said Dumas, who was good with numbers. “About a . . . um, a thousand years, give or take.”

“A thousand years,” Houdini repeated, glaring at da Vinci. “So we know there’s still a living Dragon at its heart. And as far as using it,” he added, looking at John, “that isn’t our choice. It’s his. And we all know who the Black Dragon once was—so what he’ll choose to do is anybody’s guess.”

“He’ll do it,” said John.

“You sound pretty confident of that,” said Dumas.

“I am,” said John, “because he’s already sacrificed himself once for his daughter, and I have no doubt he’ll do it again.”

“Why?” asked Houdini.

“Because,” said John, “I’m a father too, and it’s what I would do.”

“There’s just one problem,” said Shakespeare. “It’s a Dragon
ship
, not a Dragon. I don’t know if that will work to activate the portal. It may be that the only use for it is
as
a ship.”

“It’s all well and good,” Dumas said, giving the
Black Dragon
a cursory glance, “but of what use is a Dragonship with no Archipelago to cross over to?”

“More to the point,” said John, “if we can’t separate the Dragon from the ship, how can we power the gate?”

“Do you really need to, though?” asked Jack. “The bridge
didn’t need anything but a Dragon’s eyes to work.”

“I was hoping to engineer the gate to operate on the same principle as the bridge,” said Shakespeare, “but that’s, it would seem, apples and oranges.”

“I think I understand,” said John. “The Dragon eyes were sufficient enough talismans to permit us to cross between worlds . . .”

“But to traverse time, to activate the mechanism, requires a
living
Dragon,” Shakespeare finished. “It’s a conundrum, to be sure. That’s why this new development is so thrilling—the
Black Dragon
still has within it a living, breathing Dragon . . . and that may be sufficient to activate the Zanzibar Gate.”

“In other words,” Jack said, grinning from ear to ear, “the Caretakers are back in the game.”

“Bangarang!” said Fred.

♦  ♦  ♦

Under Shakespeare’s direction, Houdini and John piloted the
Black Dragon
off the beach and around to the small island where the Zanzibar Gate had been constructed. But proximity was not enough.

“It has to go through the gate,” Shakespeare said glumly. “The Dragon has to go through first, or else it can’t be activated properly.” He turned to Jules Verne, who had typically taken charge of situations like the discovery of the ship—but who had instead chosen to stand back in deference to John. “Is there any way to . . . separate the Dragon from the ship? To perhaps remove the masthead?”

Verne glanced at John and Twain, then shook his head. “No method that I know of,” he answered. “As far as I know, no one’s ever tried. No one except Ordo Maas knew the process for making a Dragonship—and when the Archipelago was lost, we lost him as well.”

“That’s not entirely true,” offered John. “He admitted that the
Black Dragon
wasn’t one of his, remember? Someone else must know the secret, because someone had to
create
the
Black Dragon
.”

Verne looked at John, eyes narrowed. “Yes,” he said. “You might have something at that.” He turned and tilted his head at Bert. “Someone one of us may have already met.”

Bert moved quickly to Verne’s side, eyes glittering. “Surely he can’t still be alive?” he said, his voice trembling with excitement. “I mean, it could only be . . . He’d be the only one . . . But to still be alive, after all these centuries . . .”

“Maybe,” Verne said, pulling at his beard. “It
is
possible, Bert.”

“Who are we talking about?” asked Jack.

“A possibility,” Verne said enigmatically. “Ordo Maas was not the only shipbuilder to construct living vessels—and the only other one we know of in history made an ancient promise that may have been fulfilled with the creation of the
Black Dragon
. And if that is so, then he may be the one who can reverse the process too.”

John looked at the others, and a bit of the starch seemed to have gone out of him. “I’d forgotten,” he said, slightly crestfallen. “That fellow they saved in the past. The one who owed Edmund a boon.”

“And may have fulfilled it,” said Verne.

Bert frowned. “We’re wasting time, Jules,” he said testily. “If he has actually survived since Jason’s time . . .”

Verne held a finger to his lips and turned to the rest of the gathering. “I agree, time is of the essence now,” he said, almost contritely. “But it is no longer my call. John? What do you say?”

The Prime Caretaker drew a sharp breath. It was the first time in the two months since their friends had been lost that
Verne had actually deferred to him in front of the others, all of whom were now watching expectantly.