Bad Luck Page 5

  “All that to smuggle one animal?” said Clay, dubious.

  “Are you kidding? There’s a huge black market,” said Brett. “Haven’t you heard about the rhinos? They’re practically extinct now because of their horns.”

  Leira nodded knowingly. “It’s like shark fins. People are crazy. They think eating them will cure all their illnesses.”*

  Clay looked at her skeptically.

  “What, it’s called the Internet,” she said, brushing him off.

  “She’s right,” said Brett. “And don’t forget elephants. My dad went on this secret elephant hunt once. It’s disgusting.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Leira, who considered herself a dedicated animal rights activist. “The ivory trade. Circuses. Elephants are abused everywhere.”

  Brett nodded. “Anyway, it was obvious my dad was doing something horrible, and probably illegal. Operation St. George, they called it—”

  “St. George? Why?” asked Clay.

  Brett shrugged. “I don’t know. It was like a code name or something.”

  “Don’t interrupt, Clay.” Leira turned to Brett. “So—?”

  “So when he caught me in that cage, at first I didn’t say anything, but when he started yelling at me for spying, something just snapped, and I told him that he was disgusting and evil and I hated him and I hoped whatever animal he was hunting ate him for dinner. I know, really mature…” Brett rolled his eyes. “Then I ran out, and he chased me all the way onto the deck, yelling that he’ll teach me not to talk to him like that and whatever.… And when he caught me, he grabbed me so hard I screamed that I was going to report him to Child Services. And that I was going to call Greenpeace or PETA about his animal-hunting operation. I didn’t even know what I was saying. It was crazy, but I guess my dad believed me, because he went totally ballistic. He started shaking me harder and harder, saying, ‘You’ll never be a real man, you’re no son of mine, I never want to see you again’—et cetera, et cetera. He sounded like a dad in some old movie.…” Brett tried to roll his eyes again, but it was apparent that he was forcing back tears.

  ”Anyway, I told him to let go of me, and maybe I hit him—I can’t really even remember—and the captain of the ship, she tried to stop him, but she couldn’t, and—well, I don’t know if he really meant to, or if he just pushed too hard, but…” Brett trailed off.

  “He pushed you off the boat? His own son? He could have killed you!” Leira exclaimed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound so excited.…”

  “Now you see why I don’t want my dad to find me?” A tear trickled down Brett’s face.

  He hastily wiped it away, and Clay and Leira pretended not to notice. They had had their own troubles with their parents, but nothing like this. It was unimaginable.

  “So what’s your plan?” asked Leira finally. “Just hide here until the ship leaves?”

  Brett wiped his eyes. “I guess.”

  “Okay,” said Leira. “Then what?”

  “The seaplane comes tomorrow to deliver supplies,” said Clay, glancing at her. “I was thinking we could try to stow him away on it.”

  “I don’t know. That plane lands all the way on the other side of the island,” said Leira, skeptical. “And it’s pretty small.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Brett eagerly. “You can pack me in a box and tie it up with string. Anything’s better than seeing my dad again.”

  “All right, if that’s what you want, we’ll figure it out,” said Leira, despite her misgivings. “It’ll be good practice. You never know when you’re going to have to plan a quick getaway, right?”

  Brett smiled. “Great. I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

  They nodded

  “I’ll come back tonight,” said Clay. “And maybe bring you something better than birdseed if I can scrounge it up.”

  “That would be fantastic,” said Brett. “But only if it’s, you know, not too much trouble.”

  Clay laughed. “Oh, it’s trouble, all right, but whatever.…” He shrugged.

  “Seriously,” said Brett, looking him in the eye. “Thanks. Nobody’s ever helped me out like this. It’s really… cool of you. Both of you. Not that I’ve ever been stranded on a desert island before, but—you know what I mean.”

  “Shut up,” said Clay, reddening. “Now you’re embarrassing me.”

  “Don’t say ‘shut up,’” admonished Leira. “It’s rude.”

  Brett laughed. “Hey, I almost forgot. Look what I found—”

  He held up a disk-shaped rock imprinted with what looked like three reptilian toes. “I know I was the one knocking the dinosaur theory, but doesn’t it look like one of those fossilized dinosaur footprints—you know, like you see at a natural history museum?”

  “Nah. If you listened to Clay here, you’d know it’s obviously a dragon print,” Leira joked. “You can tell by the shape of the toenails. Like little daggers.”

  “Heh.” Clay forced a laugh.

  He was starting to feel that strange sleepiness again, and for some reason he didn’t think her joke was very funny.

  They found Como sitting where Clay had left him, his ears still pointed forward. If anything, the llama looked more frightened of the cave than he had before.

  “Hey, you don’t think, in that cave, there couldn’t be—there couldn’t ever have really been—” Clay stammered to Leira. “I mean, those are just paintings, right? Never mind. I’m being dumb.”

  “You said it, not me.” Leira smirked.

  “Thanks for the encouragement.”

  “Seriously,” said Leira, lowering her voice, “the only thing in there you need to worry about is Brett. What if he finds out about camp?”

  “You mean about the magic?” said Clay, lowering his voice as well, even though they were well out of Brett’s hearing range.

  “Yes, I mean the magic, duh. If he tells any outsiders, it’ll be all over the news in seconds, and this place will be swarming. Everybody at camp will want to kill us. I will want to kill us.”

  “Don’t worry, he’s not going to find out,” said Clay, with more confidence than he felt.

  Leira looked sideways at him. “Are you sure we shouldn’t tell Mr. B about him? Just in case.”

  “Yes, I’m sure.… C’mon, Como, let’s go home.”

  He gave the llama a pat on the head, uncertain whether he was trying to reassure Como or himself.

  FROM Secrets of the Occulta Draco; or, The Memoirs of a Dragon Tamer

  Lesson the first:

  Always remember, dear apprentice Dragon Tamer, that you are not and never will be a tamer of dragons. A dragon is not a lion in a circus. A dragon cannot be tamed any more than it can be caged. It is foolish to think so—and almost certain death if you try.

  As a man knowledgeable in the ways of dragons once said, “Wiser it is to kill a dragon than to chain it. For a dragon is the very essence of wildness and will not stay chained for long.”

  Nonetheless, it is as Dragon Tamers that our kind has always been known; and it is as Dragon Tamers that history shall remember us, if it remembers us at all.

  What does a Dragon Tamer do with a dragon if not tame it? The short answer is, nothing.

  This is much more difficult than it sounds. There are very few people who have the strength to do nothing in the presence of a dragon.

  Dragons, through no fault of their own, arouse great passions in our excitable little species. When meeting a dragon, most humans are overcome by terror; and if not terror, they are overwhelmed by greed or anger or pride or jealousy. If they are not convinced that their world is about to end, then they are convinced that great power and wealth are within their grasp; and they are willing to take great risks to attain those things.

  Dragon-frenzy, we call it.

  A Dragon Tamer, on the other hand, does not react to a dragon except as one being to another. Yes, after he (or she! Some of the best Tamers I have known are women) has been with a dragon a great while, he may stroke its n
eck, or clean its scales, or sharpen its claws. He may roast a leg of mutton with the dragon’s breath. (Only, of course, after the dragon has eaten first!) A Dragon Tamer may even, in certain unusual circumstances, fly on the dragon’s back. But first and foremost, the Tamer shows that he desires nothing for himself other than to share the air the dragon breathes and the earth the dragon treads.

  There are only three rules when it comes to dragons. We call them the Three Precepts.

  I. Ask naught from a dragon but to share the air around you.

  II. Deny naught that a dragon asks for but the soul within you.

  III. Refuse naught that a dragon offers but to breathe upon you.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  SOS

  Despite what you may have heard, SOS does not stand for Save Our Ship. The famous three-letter distress signal came into being only because it is so simple to reproduce in Morse code.* It might just as easily stand for Sink Our Sailboat or Seize Our Submarine. Or, for that matter, Spill Our Soup or Steal Our Sandwich.

  For the campers and counselors of Earth Ranch, SOS was not a distress signal at all; instead, the letters stood for the name of a certain society to which they all belonged: a secret society, the Society of the Other Side.

  Nonetheless, when the bees stopped Leira and Clay on their way back to camp and flew into SOS formation, the two young society members knew the message must be urgent. Sure enough, a moment later, the bees regrouped to form the initials PPL followed by the number 12. Clay and Leira understood immediately: There would be an emergency society meeting at the Price Public Library at noon—the first such meeting that had been held that summer.

  A round stone tower that looked like it could have been built in the Middle Ages, the Price Public Library was in reality fewer than a hundred years old. Still, it was one of the oldest structures on Price Island (not that there were many to choose from), and by far the biggest to have survived the volcanic explosion that left Randolph Price’s mansion, Price Palace, in ruins.

  When Clay and Leira (and the llama) arrived a few minutes early for the SOS meeting, a tattered canvas teepee was incongruously tethered to a post in front of the library. Although there was no wind, the teepee appeared to be straining to get free and fly away like a kite. They watched it with curiosity, the llama especially. (What sort of animal is this, he must have wondered.) It was unusual to see Mr. Bailey’s summer residence up close; most often, the skittish teepee hid in the vog, away from the prying eyes of young campers.

  Leira’s sister, Mira, was standing by the library door. As always when he saw them together, Clay marveled that two people could resemble each other so much and so little at the same time. Leira, the vegan thief, in her newsboy hat and suspenders; Mira, the bookish actress, with her long hair and summer dress (an unusual choice at Earth Ranch, where everyone else wore jeans)—their styles couldn’t have been more different. And yet their faces and their coloring were so similar that anybody who looked at all closely could see they were sisters.

  Mira watched Clay tie Como to the post, next to the teepee.

  “You guys are the first ones here. Except for Mr. B—” She tilted her head, indicating his teepee. “I’m supposed to guard the door.”

  Leira wrinkled her face. “Since when does anybody guard anything on this island?”

  “Since some strange speedboat landed on the beach, I guess,” said Mira. “Did you see it?”

  “Landed? Did it come from the cruise ship?” asked Clay, feeling a creeping sense of dread.

  “Think so. Buzz went down to check it out. Did you find your wallet?”

  “Yep. Right where I left it.” Clay avoided Mira’s eyes. He wasn’t nearly as talented an actor as she was.

  “Oh, good.” Mira smiled at Leira in a way that was more like a frown. “I made a bet that my sister had taken it again.”

  Leira smiled back—in the same unsmiling way. “Not this time.”

  “So why’d you go after him, then?” said Mira, clearly disbelieving. “You just thought you’d give him a helping hand?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  A look passed between Leira and Mira. Actually, several looks. They were not always the best of friends, but they regularly held long conversations without saying a word.

  Clay had no idea what the tension between them was about; he only knew he wanted to stay out of it. He focused instead on the crumbling building in front of them.

  Weeks earlier, when Clay had first discovered the old library tower, he’d imagined that it was haunted by ghosts of the dead. As it turned out, he wasn’t far off. At least, there were hardly any living souls inside. A public library in name only, the Price Public Library had never officially opened while Randolph Price was alive. Nowadays, it was open to Earth Ranch campers, but only on special occasions. The secretive billionaire’s copious collections of rare books and objets had to be handled very carefully; indeed, many things in the library were never to be handled at all.*

  Today, entering the library with Leira, Clay felt again as though he were stepping not backward in time so much as into a place where time had stopped. Or where all times occurred at once. Partly it was the way sunlight filtered down through the dusty air from the large round skylight. Partly it was the way the long, sloping balcony spiraled down from the top of the tower all the way to the bottom floor, several stories underground. Whichever way you looked, the library seemed to spin slowly in one direction or the other.

  It was disorienting and compelling at the same time.

  “I swear, someday I’m coming back here with my skateboard,” he said.

  Leira scoffed. “Yeah, you wish.”

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

  They’d expected to find Mr. Bailey busy preparing for the SOS meeting. Instead, they found their camp’s director crawling on all fours underneath the big old banyan tree that grew out of the library’s stone floor.

  “Where are you, my little friend?” Mr. Bailey called, his voice ringing throughout the library. (He had spent many years in the theater and always sounded like he was addressing the back row.) “I know you’re here somewhere!”

  Long, dangling roots slapped him on his butt as he crawled around the tree. Clay stifled a laugh.

  “Uh, hi, Mr. B,” said Leira bravely. “What are you looking for? Can we help?”

  “Oh, hello! I didn’t see you—”

  Mr. Bailey stood up and stepped out from under the tree, seemingly unembarrassed to have been caught in such an undignified pose.

  “Did Harry sneak in again?” asked Leira.

  Harry was the camp cat. The last time he got into the library, he’d been locked inside for weeks.

  “Ah, if only.” Mr. Bailey sighed. “I’m afraid it’s a little more serious than that. A book is missing.”

  “You were talking to a book?” asked Clay, unable to hide his surprise.

  “Well, not just any book—one of our underground residents.”

  Mr. Bailey nodded to an open hatch door at the base of the banyan tree.

  As Clay well remembered, though he had only been through it once, the door led to a secret chamber known simply as the Tree Room. The Tree Room was a library-within-the-library, a magic library, where Randolph Price had installed his prize collection of grimoires—those magical books in which you might find the recipe for a potion that turns your brother green or instructions for bewitching your math teacher. Alas, campers were seldom allowed to look at the grimoires, let alone remove one.

  “You think somebody stole it?” asked Leira, whose mind always went to theft even when she wasn’t contemplating stealing anything herself.

  “Oh no,” said Mr. Bailey, appalled. “I trust everyone at this camp implicitly.”

  “What then?” said Leira. She was not nearly so trusting herself.

  “It must have escaped. Sometimes they do when the door isn’t shut properly. In fact—” Mr. Bailey lunged for the open hatch door, where a few old leather
books could be seen fluttering around. (The magic in the grimoires was such that sometimes the Tree Room resembled an aviary more than a library.) “Oh no, you don’t!” He slammed the door shut before another literary inmate could escape.

  “I only hope it hasn’t flown too far,” he said. “Today is not a good day to have a grimoire on the loose! What with strange boats landing on the island… Which reminds me…”

  Mr. Bailey checked his ornate and oversized pocket watch, the only one Clay had ever seen with minute and second hands that looked and moved like actual hands. At the moment, the minute hand was making a number one while the second hand was making circles with its pointer finger, indicating that it was time to get a move on.

  “Patience!” Mr. Bailey scolded his watch. “I know we have another two minutes at least.”

  “So what book was it?” asked Clay, dreading the answer.

  Secrets of the Occulta Draco was still sitting at the bottom of his backpack. Maybe it was Flint who had stolen it from the library, but Clay knew if he didn’t return it soon, he was no better than a thief himself.

  “A book about dragons,” said Mr. Bailey. “One of a kind, absolutely irreplaceable.”

  “Dragons?” Clay repeated, his mouth dry.

  “That’s funny,” said Leira, eyeing Clay. “We were just talking about dragons.”

  Clay’s leg started to jiggle with anxiety. Was it his imagination, or was the book standing up inside his backpack, as if it were listening to their conversation?

  “So this book—it has some kind of dragon magic?” Clay asked, trying to sound as casual as possible. “Like, how to put spells on dragons or something?”

  “I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read it,” said Mr. Bailey. “But, yes, that’s my understanding. Supposedly it was written by a famous Dragon Master.”

  You mean Tamer, Clay almost corrected but stopped himself just in time.

  The night before, he had stayed up late reading, imagining himself a Dragon Tamer from centuries past, but he hadn’t paid much attention to any references to magic or spells. He just assumed that the book was fiction, a make-believe memoir. If it was an actual grimoire, there was no telling what kind of powers the book might have.