BOOM! “There's another
one! Look!”
“Where?” ZAP! “No it
isn't.”
“Yes, watch.” ZIP! “Ah!
See? It's fast, but you can tell.”
“YOU can tell. It's....”
BANG! “Oh!”
“Boys! Get back in the
tent!” their mother called. BAM!
“Mom, come out here! Look
at this! It's dragons!”
“The lightning looks like
dragons flying, Mom.”
“Enough with the dragons.
Bending Chalice, you get in here. BlazeDragon97, you hear me! Bring
your little brother!”
“Aw Mom.” Bending
Chalice turned away as his brother grabbed him by the arm and hauled
him in. “It really is, Mom,” he said as she took a towel to his
hair. “Hey!”
“It's a good thing your
dad had a clear night last night, because tonight isn't it!” She
said as she took their flashlights and shoved their pj's at them.
They were getting in a last camping trip before school started. The
first two days at Grayson Highlands had been great. They had gone
bouldering and canoeing and wading and no one had cared if they got
wet. The first night they had gone to Whitetop Mountain with the
telescope, and tonight their dad and oldest brother had gone back.
The storm had come up unexpectedly from the south.
“Are we gonna go hiking
tomorrow in the rain?”
“We'll see. I bet it
stops. There. There ya go. Better?”
“I wanna see the
waterfall.”
“I said we'll see. Now go
to sleep. It sounds like it's letting up anyway. Maybe that's your
father coming back.” After a lot of noise and confusion caused by
two more people crowding into the tent, everyone settled down and
there was quiet for a few hours.
“I gotta pee.”
Groans. “What?” “You
take him.” “Mumph.” “We shouldn't have let him eat that
watermelon.”
“Somebody come with me.”
BlazingDragon got delegated.
It is always cool in the mountains at night so they took their
jackets, but scorned the umbrella. It was only a drizzle. On the way
back, being boys and having flashlights, they took the little side
trail they had discovered during the day. “Could we see bears? Do
they have bears at night?”
“Naw. They only have wild
ponies here.” The quiet night and soft sound of the drizzle was
inviting. “You wanna go over to the pond?”
As they started across the
meadow, a bright flash suddenly streaked across the sky, thunder
crashed, and the rain came pelting down again. BOOM “Dragons!”
Bending Chalice's yell was drowned out by the storm.
They ran for the trees and
nearly collided with a tall man they hadn't seen at the campground
before. He had a long coat and a lumpy hiking stick. “You boys need
help? What a night!”
“Did you see that
lightning?” Bending Chalice gasped. “It's not really lightning.”
“I know,” the man
agreed.
The next lightning strike
came so close that they felt their hair stand on end. It hit the pond
ZAP ZAP ZAP and a huge cloud boiled up. It obscured the valley and
then in slow motion it rose up and floated away. They looked back at
the pond. The water was gone. Almost in a daze they walked over and
stared in. It was dry. There was something out in the middle. Moving.
Bending Chalice started climbing down the bank between the rushes,
but his mom's arms held him back. BlazingDragon shook off his dad's
hands, jumped down, and started running across the dry pond floor.
He heard them coming after
him. The thing bounced and squawked. It lifted its head and
looked at him. It was a baby dragon. It was obviously a baby. It's
head was large, it's wings were small, and it was only the size of a
labrador retriever. A fat one. The huge eyes blinked and without
thinking, he rubbed around its eye ridges and down its neck. “There,
there. I've got you.”
The tall man opened a
satchel and handed Bending Chalice something like a dark fat carrot.
“Here, son, why don't you see if he's hungry.” The mother made
a convulsive move but let him take it.
“Here, baby,” he
whispered, wiggling it with one hand. Everything was quiet. The storm
had blown itself out. The baby munched messily.
“Well,” the stranger
said, “well. Here I have been following this pod up from Florida
watching for babies, and now I don't know what I've got.”
“Following?” “What do
you mean? It's a dragon!” “Didn't I see you up on Whitetop
tonight?”
“Yes, I was there. Yes.
But what kind of dragon? Some kinds of dragons lay eggs and leave
them, like sea turtles. Some watch their eggs, and some – some seem
to bypass eggs at times. Lightning dragons are supposed to be able
to. That's what I was hoping to see. I looked for a large, active pod
and followed it.”
“He's mine! I found him!”
“No, you can't keep a dragon.” “But look at him.”
“To begin with, he's a wild animal. And no, you can't keep him. But I'm collecting dragons for a
sanctuary and you can come visit him.”
That was how it began.
Nobody slept much the rest of the night. The next morning Franklin
came back for them and took them up to the floating island. Lightning
Dragon Master Olivine had been studying the baby. She determined that he was a Plasma dragon, a Lightning-Water hybrid. The boys named him ShockWave. They liked the
eggs at the nursery, and helped them hatch: Lightning, Sonic, Storm,
Current, and Magnetic. They liked Norbert and Nippy. They enjoyed learning to play magic flutes with PonytailGirl and Spiderdog to help calm the hatchlings. But nothing
can ever take the place of a baby dragon that you discovered yourself
in the middle of a thunderstorm.
One visit when both parents
were present, Master Rudna sat them down and told them about the Fire
statue and the prophecy. “The places in the poem,” she said,
“Thessaly and the rest, are in Greece and Turkey. All of them have tall mountains named Mount
Olympus. The names in the last verse are dragons from old folk tales.
A desert hermit once had an Earth dragon called Zector. The hermit died, and
the dragon was famous for waiting for him to return. A Metal dragon named Slameg the Singer helped Morison the miner find the veins of
purest ore. He beat time with his tail. Kessi was a Water dragon who was known for saving people from drowning."
"One of the places is Cyprus," added Master Dalfgan. "We are interested in it because they still have sightings of a sea monster near Ayia Napa in the southeast. It's similar to the Loch Ness stories."
"One of the places is Cyprus," added Master Dalfgan. "We are interested in it because they still have sightings of a sea monster near Ayia Napa in the southeast. It's similar to the Loch Ness stories."
Their parents would not let
them go alone on a mysterious quest. Bending Chalice was after all
only five, and BlazeDragon was ten. “Oh, you're absolutely right,”
agreed Dalfgan. “Parents should come."
The first expedition was
scheduled in two weeks. They were going to the Mount Olympus in
Thessaly, the famous one, because the wizards knew the area very
well. Erudine power crystals had been mined
there for centuries.
The thing that worried the
wizards was Euboea. According to the inscription, one of the shrines
was there. Unfortunately, that was also the location of the Scar of
the World, an ancient Greek name for a large crack that had opened up
and split off a 90-mile long piece of Greece from the mainland,
creating the island of Euboea. Only the wizards remembered that the
cataclysm had been caused by an attempt to meddle with a magical ruby
monument that had stood there. There was no way to know if the shrines were
equally dangerous.
