The Return of the Dragon (2 page)

She was clutching Oberon, the stuffed yellow elephant who had slept with her since she was two years old. Oberon had one ear and button eyes that bulged nervously when Sarah Emily squeezed him too hard. Just now Oberon looked very nervous.

“I don’t like it,” Zachary said. “It could be dangerous, strangers poking around. They could be
spies.
They could have some kind of laser-powered eye that can see right through rock.”

“Oh, stop it, Zachary,” Hannah said. “I wish you’d never read that stupid book. You’re scaring S.E.” She patted Oberon on the head, then put her arm around Sarah Emily and gave her a little squeeze. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Everything is probably fine.”

“Sure,” Zachary said. But he didn’t sound convinced.

“You’ll see,” Hannah said. “We’ll go first thing in the morning and investigate.”

“I wish we could go tonight,” Sarah Emily said.

Sarah Emily opened her eyes to sun pouring across her pillow. Zachary was shaking her foot.

She sat up, rubbing her eyes. Zachary was already dressed, though he hadn’t brushed his sandy-colored hair, which was standing on end all over his head. It made him look like a hedgehog with freckles.

“Hurry up and get dressed,” he said. “It’s too great a day to waste. We can get going right after breakfast.”

They found Mrs. Jones scrambling eggs in the kitchen, her pink apron covering a pair of faded overalls. A plate of blueberry muffins steamed on the table. Buster was asleep in the kitchen rocking chair, lying on his back with his paws in the air.

Sarah Emily was too excited to eat, and she glared at Zachary as he reached for his fourth muffin.

“I thought you were in a hurry,” she said impatiently.

“I am,” Zachary said. “But I’m growing. I need fuel.”

He ate his muffin in two enormous gulps. Hannah shook her head at him.

As soon as the table was cleared, they shouted goodbye and thanks to Mrs. Jones, and flew out the back door, racing for the garden gate. Zachary, who liked to be well supplied, wore a bulging backpack containing a bag of snacks, a flashlight, a pair of binoculars, his Swiss army knife, a notebook, and a mechanical pencil. Alert to the possibility of spies, he had also added a magnifying glass and the hand-held tape recorder that he had been given for his last birthday.

“You look like a camel,” Sarah Emily said.

“A camel stuffed with muffins,” said Hannah.

It was a beautiful day. They found the familiar path, a narrow worn track leading toward the rising hill at the far end of the island. The hill looked silent and empty, dark against the bright blue sky. The children hastened toward it.

They stopped for a snack at the halfway point, then hurried on, following the little path through thickets, around boulders, and across open fields. Finally Drake’s Hill loomed above them. It was dotted with clumps of dark green fir trees, some twisted into strange shapes by the sea wind, and at the very top was a vast blocky pile of gray rock, looking like a tumbled tower built by a careless giant. They paused, gazing upward, breathing hard.

Suddenly Zachary put his hand on Hannah’s arm. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Someone’s been here.”

“Oh, Zachary, not
spies
again,” Hannah said.

“Well, look,” Zachary said.

The girls followed his pointing finger. The flat field at the foot of the hill was brown with withered weeds and grass — it was still too early for the green of spring — and through it a faint track led to the right, winding around the base of the hill toward the beach.

“Rabbits?” asked Sarah Emily hopefully.

Zachary shook his head. “Too big,” he said. “Somebody’s been making a path. See that? That’s a heel mark.”

“Let’s follow it,” Hannah said.

The track skirted the base of the hill and ended in a little cluster of trees. Beyond the trees, the children could hear the steady crash of ocean waves on the distant beach.

“I told you it was rabbits,” Sarah Emily said.

Suddenly Hannah, in the lead, stopped dead.

“Look at that!” she said in a horrified voice.

Zachary and Sarah Emily crowded behind her, staring.

Someone had made a campsite on the beach. A cluster of white tents was set up behind the sheltering rise of a dune. There were five tents, one much larger than the others. “That must be the leader’s,” Zachary whispered.

The large tent had plastic windows in it — they could be sealed shut at night with white canvas covers — and a zippered double door. A folding wooden chair was set just outside the door with a table next to it. On the other side of the chair was a tripod to which was attached an enormous pair of black binoculars.

As the children watched, crouching behind the tree trunks, the zippered door rolled open and an elderly Chinese man came out. He was tall and thin, dressed in a black suit, with an embroidered cap on his head. He stood silently, his expression grim, eyes narrowed to slits, arms folded across his chest. Then he stalked slowly across the campsite and vanished between the tents, heading in the direction of the sea.

“Who’s
that
?” Sarah Emily said. She sounded frightened.

Hannah and Zachary exchanged anxious glances.

“A trespasser,” Zachary said.

They watched the camp for several more minutes, but nothing happened. The tents sat silent and deserted, their canvas doors firmly shut.

“We might as well go,” Hannah whispered finally.

The children turned and crept quietly back through the trees, the way that they had come.

“Let’s go see . . . F,” Zachary said. “We should warn him about this.”

The children hurriedly retraced their steps, putting as much space as possible between themselves and the white tents on the beach.

“So who lives in those tents?” Zachary fretted. “And
where
are they? They could be anywhere.
Spying.
”

“Oh, do be quiet, Zachary,” Hannah said. “Let’s climb.”

They scrambled up the steep slope of Drake’s Hill until they reached the enormous pile of rock, layered like gigantic steps, that crowned the hilltop. Carefully they began to climb, feeling for remembered hand- and foot-holds. At last they edged around a final rocky ledge to stand on a wide platform overlooking the ocean. At the back of the platform gaped a dark opening that led, the children knew, to a hidden cave. The very sight of it made their hearts beat faster. Before them was an endless stretch of deep blue water, lashed by the wind into white-capped waves.

And just off the shore of the island —

“Look at
that
!” gasped Zachary, pointing downward.

Below them, a great white boat lay at anchor.

“A yacht,” said Hannah in an awed voice.

“I’ll bet that’s who’s camping on the beach,” Zachary said.

He fumbled in his backpack and pulled out his own small pair of binoculars. He put them to his eyes, focused, and slowly swept the length of the boat, from bow to stern.

“Funny,” he said. “It doesn’t have a name. Most boats have names. Even Mr. Jones’s little boat has a name painted on it. But this one doesn’t say anything. It’s just plain white.”

“Let me see,” said Hannah, reaching for the binoculars.

She put them to her eyes and studied the silent floating yacht.

Then, as the children watched, a doorway opened and a man appeared on the yacht’s polished deck. He was broad-shouldered and deeply tanned, with closely clipped iron-gray hair. He wore dark trousers and a heavy white sweater. He stood for a moment gazing out to sea, then slowly turned toward the island. A seagull glided past, sun glinting off its white wings. The man lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes. Hastily the children dropped down behind a pile of concealing boulders.

“He’s watching F’s cave,”
Zachary said. “He suspects something.”

“How could he?” Hannah said in disgusted tones. “You’re nuts, Zachary. He was watching that gull.”

“It gives me the creeps,” said Zachary. “That boat. Those tents. People snooping around.”

Cautiously he poked his head above the rocks and peered toward the white yacht. The gray-haired man had lowered his binoculars and was scribbling something in a small notebook.

“You see?” Hannah said. “He’s a bird watcher. They take notes all the time. About the kinds of birds they’ve sighted.”

“I think he’s going below,” Zachary said. “There — he’s walking across the deck — he’s gone.”

“Let’s go see Fafnyr,” Hannah said. And then, as Zachary frowned and opened his mouth: “I
know,
Zachary, but all this
F
stuff is getting silly. We’ll ask him if he knows anything about the boat. And the camp.”

Zachary dropped the binoculars back in his pack and pulled out his flashlight.

“Let’s go,” he said. “I’ll lead the way.”

One by one, the three children ducked into the cave. As they entered, they smelled the special scent remembered from last summer — a spicy mix of wood smoke, incense, and cinnamon. The cave was much larger than it looked from the outside. Zachary’s flashlight threw eerie shadows on the stone walls. As they edged farther into the cave, the sounds of the outside world were suddenly silenced. The whistle of the wind and the rhythmic crash of the waves ceased abruptly. All was utterly quiet. The cave led farther and farther downward, deep into the center of the hill.

“The cave seems bigger than it used to,” Sarah Emily said. Her voice quavered a little. Sarah Emily was afraid of the dark.

“It’s all right,” Zachary said reassuringly in front of her. “We’re almost there.”

Just as he finished speaking, there was a brilliant glitter in the darkness as the flashlight beam reflected off a broad expanse of shining golden scales.

Sarah Emily caught her breath.

It was a dragon.

The dragon’s name, the children knew, was Fafnyr Goldenwings. Fafnyr was a tridrake — a three-headed dragon — who had been alive for thousands of years. The cave was a Resting Place, a safe haven for dragons, given to Fafnyr long ago by Aunt Mehitabel when she was a little girl. Aunt Mehitabel, who was in her eighties, seldom visited the island now. She lived in an apartment in Philadelphia. Just last summer, she had given the children clues that helped them discover the dragon. “The time has come,” Aunt Mehitabel had written them in a letter, “for me to pass on the trust. I am not getting any younger and Fafnyr needs friends and protectors.” The children had promised to keep Fafnyr and his Resting Place secret and safe. In return, they had all become Dragon Friends, marked by the dragon’s claw in the center of their palms with a spark of shining gold.

There was the sound of a heavy body shifting on the cave floor. Then there came a soft hiss in the darkness as the dragon, awakened, softly flamed. The cave blossomed into light. A pair of neon-green eyes opened, at first narrowed into gleaming slits, then growing wider.

“Fafnyr,” breathed Zachary.

The dragon made a rumbling sound deep in its chest and brushed a golden claw across its eyes. It arched its neck, unfolded its smooth golden wings, and stretched them out one at a time, first to the right and then to the left.

“Dear me. I must have dozed off,” it said in a scratchy voice. It cleared its throat.

“How nice to see you all again,” it said. It nodded majestically to each child. “Hannah. Zachary. Sarah Emily. Delightful.”

“It’s wonderful to see you, Fafnyr,” Hannah said. “We’ve missed you terribly. It has been months and months since we’ve been here.”

The dragon gave a jaw-cracking yawn.

“I have missed you too, my dears,” it said. It cleared its throat again in an embarrassed manner. “Or,” it added, “I would have, if I had been awake. I do need my rest, you understand.”

The dragon yawned enormously for a second time.

“Months, you say,” it said. “How time flies. And what have you been doing since we saw you last?”

“Oh, we’ve been at school,” said Hannah. “We haven’t been doing anything important. I’m taking art classes. And I’m on the field hockey team.”

“And you, dear boy?” The golden head turned toward Zachary.

“I’ve been building model rockets,” Zachary said. “I named the best one after you, Fafnyr. I painted it a sort of gold color, so I named it Goldenwings. You should see it fly.”