The First Dragon (Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, The) (33 page)

A great breath escaped John’s lips, as if that was the only thing that had held him to life. “Then yes, please. Yes. I accept, gladly, happily, joyfully, yes.”

“Just look at your reflection in the water,” Rose repeated, leaning close, “speak the words . . .

“ . . . and ascend.”

♦  ♦  ♦

When the huge, violet-colored Dragon arrived at New Paralon, his mate was already waiting. She flexed her own great wings and lifted up to meet him as he plummeted faster and faster toward her, and to the reunion he had hoped for since her death. They had been apart for two years, but now they would never be apart again. Without speaking a word to any of those assembled on the newly built docks, the two Dragons soared up into the clouds and disappeared.

Occasionally someone would report a sighting—never of one, always of both—and the peoples of the Archipelago knew that they were close, and if they were needed, would be even closer. These were not tame Dragons, but they were Dragons nonetheless, and they knew their purpose—to protect those who needed protecting, and offer guidance when it was needed. Everything else was flying. Together.

No one was on Terminus, at the waterfall at the Edge of the World, to see it happen, but in the moment the Dragons returned to the Archipelago, a star appeared in the darkness beyond. Then another. And another. And another. And soon the sky was so full of
stars that no one would ever imagine that it had ever been a place of darkness at all, or a place where anyone in need might cry out and not be reassured with the response that was carried in a whisper across the sky. . . .

. . . Here, there be Dragons.

One of the drawbacks of blazing a new trail, which writing a book always is (especially if it’s part of a series), is that you can’t really tell how successful your choices are going to be looking forward. You have to blaze the trail first, so that you can look back and take an accounting of how well your choices worked.

A great many things changed between the time I wrote my original series outline and the publication of
Here, There Be Dragons
. When plans went forward to do
The Search for the Red Dragon
, the outlines changed even more; and when I jumped full-bore into writing the third, fourth, and fifth books, there were not only points where I veered a long way off from what the original plan was, but also points where I wondered if the whole thing hadn’t just gone completely off the rails. But that’s the nature of the beast: Fiction, especially in an extended form, is more than just a narrative. It’s the recording of the lives of the characters within it—and sooner or later, everyone’s lives become complex and complicated. That’s what makes things interesting.

I had always had the general endgame in mind—but the exact nature of the players involved changed over the course of
the series. Some bad guys became worse; characters who started out as rogues transformed into friends; and the character who changed the most revealed himself to be far, far greater than I ever imagined—and in the process, gave me a big part of the ending that pulled all the threads together into a tapestry. The idea that something can be destroyed only by the one who created it was set up with the first book, and the nearly indestructible
Imaginarium Geographica
. It was a perfect circle to close to realize that I had set things up for that to apply to the Keep of Time as well.

The original outlines are really interesting to look over (to me, anyway), and might be worth doing an essay about sometime. I had envisioned three main books under the series title Here, There Be Dragons, and a second set of smaller books, to be called the Chronicles of the
Imaginarium Geographica
, which would tell the history of the Cartographer—the notes for which were used almost in their entirety in
The Indigo King
. The three primary books were to involve the three main conflicts with the Winter King and were going to be very much more straightforward adventure stories than these books turned out to be. But once I realized that merging the Cartographer’s story into the main narrative made everything more fun to write, that meant that Madoc was going to play a more complex role in the stories as well. After that, the series took on a life of its own.

Someone said the best way to make a story interesting is to have a good character do something bad, or have a bad character do something good. I think that’s the sort of thing that makes the best stories resonate with readers long after the cover of the book is closed: because we all have those elements within us. We all have
the potential to make mistakes—and the potential to learn from them, and to try to choose better.

I am not ashamed to admit that in writing this book, I wept more than once. The characters I spent eight years writing were changing, so it was a very emotional book to finish. Most of the book had to be written to line up with everything that had gone before; but I wrote the epilogue, with only a few changed details, over five years ago.

There were times in writing these books where I felt like I was losing my way, but in the end, I think I pulled it all together and made it read as if I knew where I was going all along. And maybe, just maybe . . . I
did
.

James A. Owen

Silvertown, AZ

A
LSO BY
J
AMES
A. O
WEN

The Chronicles of the
Imaginarium Geographica

Book One:
Here, There Be Dragons

Book Two:
The Search for the Red Dragon

Book Three:
The Indigo King

Book Four:
The Shadow Dragons

Book Five:
The Dragon’s Apprentice

Book Six:
The Dragons of Winter

Lost Treasures of the Pirates of the Caribbean

(with Jeremy Owen)

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by James A. Owen

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Book design by Laurent Linn

Jacket design by Laurent Linn

Jacket illustrations copyright © 2013 by James A. Owen

Map design by Lon Saline

Map illustration by Jeremy Owen

The text for this book is set in Adobe Jensen Pro.

The illustrations for this book are rendered in pen and ink.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Owen, James A.

The first dragon / written and illustrated by James A. Owen. — 1st ed.

p. cm. — (The chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica ; [bk. 7])

Summary: “To save the world, the new generation of caretakers must find the First Dragon and restore the lost lands of the Archipelago before it’s too late.”— Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-1-4424-1226-2 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-1-4424-1228-6 (eBook) [1. Time travel—Fiction. 2. Characters in literature—Fiction. 3. Fantasy.] I. Title.

PZ7.O97124Fir 2013

[Fic]—dc23

2012037552