The Dark Shadow of Spring Read online

  Alex’s daydreaming was interrupted by another curse from Daphne.

  “Great Gorgon Goobers!”

  Alex followed Daphne’s gaze and blinked in surprise. A kangaroo hopped at a furious pace across the open field of wild grass to the right of the road. The kangaroo was on a direct course to intersect with Alex and the others at the base of the mountains where the North Road came to an end. As Alex looked at the kangaroo, it raised a furry paw and waved at him. Then it ducked its head down and doubled its speed, its great legs stretching longer with each hop.

  “A race!” Alex heard Daphne shout as she spurted ahead of the group. Alex and the others pumped harder to catch up, but Daphne was already too far in the lead. In seconds, the kangaroo’s path had converged with theirs and it hopped through the field parallel to the road. The strange animal raced neck and neck with Daphne as the road came closer and closer to where it dead-ended in a wall of mountain rock. Alex winced as Daphne brought her bike to a sliding halt inches before crashing into both the rocks at the base of the mountain and the kangaroo, which came to a sliding stop right beside her.

  “Beat ‘cha,” Daphne said to the kangaroo between gulps of air as Alex and the others came to a stop around them.

  The kangaroo cocked its head at Daphne and then did what Alex knew it would. It spoke.

  “Nearly killed me, you mean,” the kangaroo said.

  “Not my fault you can’t figure out how to stop with those giant feet,” Daphne said, grinning at the animal.

  “I can fix my giant feet, but you’ll still be crazy no matter what you do,” the kangaroo said with what might have been a smirk.

  “You say that like it’s a problem,” Daphne said, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

  “That’s the best one yet, Rafa,” Nina said, smiling up at the large marsupial.

  “Thanks,” the kangaroo that wasn’t really a kangaroo said.

  “Why a kangaroo?” Alex asked his friend.

  “Hopping,” Ben said, laughing. “He loves hopping.”

  “Loves showing off, you mean,” Daphne said, climbing off her bicycle.

  “You are the definition of irony,” Rafael the kangaroo said, hopping sideways toward a small stand of bushes. “And to answer your question, Lex, kangaroos have pouches.” The kangaroo pulled a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt from its pouch and leapt behind the bushes.

  After a momentary burst of red light, a young Hispanic boy with hazel brown eyes and high cheek bones popped his head over the edge of the bushes. The boy was Rafael Santiago, best friend to Daphne and Alex, the final member of the Young Sorcerers Guild to join the day’s mission, and a changeling, able magically to transform into any living creature. He was also an orphan of sorts, his non-magical parents having abandoned him in Runewood with his Aunt when he was five years old after they had discovered his magical ability. A changeling's magic was part of their nature, allowing them to transform even outside the Rune Valley. Rafael's parents had found they couldn't raise a child who could turn himself into a giant frog at will.

  “Hmmm, a pouch,” Clark said nodding his head. “I wonder how many sandwiches he can fit in there?”

  “Hungry?” Ben said. “How can you possibly be hungry again? You just ate twenty minutes ago.”

  “Well, my mom says I’m a growing boy,” Clark said, pulling an apple from a nearby Macintosh tree.

  “Growing mountain is more like it,” Rafael offered as he stepped from behind the bushes, now fully dressed and brushing leaves from his shirt. Alex smiled at his friend as he dismounted his bike and stashed it behind the bushes. Alex, Daphne, and Rafael had been the first members of the Guild. They had started calling themselves The Young Sorcerers Guild to contrast themselves with the Mad Mages Club, a group of troublemaking mages a year older. The Mad Mages Club wouldn’t accept members who weren’t full-fledged humans. That left Daphne and Rafael out of consideration. Ben and Clark had joined the Guild a few weeks after its creation and were an excellent fit.

  “Ready for an adventure?” Alex asked Rafael as he stepped up to the other boy.

  “Is that what we’re calling our suicide mission today?” Rafael asked.

  “It’ll be fun,” Alex said.

  “That’s what you always say,” Rafael countered.

  “And I’m right most of the time,” Alex protested.

  “Most of the time we nearly get killed,” Rafael said.

  “That’s the fun part,” Alex said with a laugh that wasn’t as loud as he’d hoped it would be.

  “When you two stop chatting like two old ladies at Sunday brunch, we’ve got a gorping mountain to climb,” Daphne said.

  “And a dragon to find,” Nina added, stepping a little closer Alex.

  “Easy,” Alex said. “Only one mountain. Only one dragon. How hard can it be?”

  “Has anyone ever pointed out that your optimism has no bearing on reality?” Rafael asked Alex.

  “Yes,” Alex said, “but I ignored them. Besides, we have Clark.”

  “Right,” Ben said. “Find the dragon, Clark.”

  “Ahh, okay,” Clark said, sniffing the air once and then heading toward a well-worn mountain path near where the North Road came to a dead end. Alex looked around at the others momentarily as he adjusted the knapsack on his shoulder and then gave them all a big grin. This is what the Young Sorcerers Guild had been created for: having adventures and practicing magic. And waking the dragon would be their biggest adventure yet. With that thought firmly in his mind, Alex followed Clark up the mountain path.

  Chapter 2: The Dragon’s Lair

  Climbing the mountain took much longer than Alex had anticipated. After an hour of hiking, Clark led them off the path and into the dense forest trees. They climbed for another hour before Alex called a halt to rest. Alex leaned against a pine tree, a cool April breeze pushing a low-hanging branch into his hair. He reached up a hand to knock it away. The wind kicked up again, swaying the branches of the trees overhead. Alex breathed deeply. It smelled like spring. But while he could smell spring on the verge of awakening the forest and bringing the valley back to life from its winter slumber, he couldn’t smell the magic. Clark could.

  Clark stood in the sunshine seeping between the trees, his eyes closed, drinking in the warmth of the light. “How much farther?” Alex asked, walking over to Clark and looking up at his friend’s wide face.

  Clark opened his eyes and took a long, deep breath through his broad nose. “Hmm, not far,” he said.

  “That’s what you said two gorping miles ago,” Daphne said from behind Alex.

  “Well, we’re almost there,” Clark said. “It smells really strong. Like raspberry pie.”

  “Why does magic always smell like food to you, Clark?” Nina asked as she stepped up behind Daphne. “Why doesn’t it ever smell like smoke or sawdust or grass or something?”

  “Stomach,” Ben said. “Because Clark is ninety-percent stomach.”

  Clark looked down at his best friend. “Hmm, maybe ninety-five percent.”

  “I don’t care how many raspberry pies you ate, I’m tired of walking through this awful smelling forest,” Rafael said. “It bothers my allergies.”

  “You don’t have any gorping allergies,” Daphne said.

  “Yeah, and I didn’t eat ninety-five pies,” Clark added, seeming mildly intrigued by the prospect of doing just that.

  “He’s just trying to be funny,” Nina said.

  “Everyone knows I’m never funny,” Rafael said. It was hard to tell from his tone of voice whether he believed that thought or not.

  “Rafa’s right,” Alex said, wanting to change the subject back to the mission at hand. “We should keep moving. If we’re going to wake the dragon, we should do it before the sun goes down.”

  “This way,” Clark said in his deep baritone, sniffing the air twice and lumbering off along an old deer trail that wound its way up the side of the mountain. The Guild fell in behind him single
file, Alex following close behind, thinking about the dragon and his plan to wake him.

  As if sensing Alex’s thoughts, which his sister seemed uncannily able to do, Nina asked, “So how much fire is there going to be when we wake the dragon?”

  “A lot,” Ben said, his hands twitching with excitement. “More than a lot, I hope.” As a dwarf, he had a hereditary inclination toward magics of earth and fire and, although he couldn’t control magical energy very well, he could gather far more from the land than anyone else in the Guild.

  “Who said anything about fire?” Alex replied.

  “He is a dragon,” Rafael said. “People tend to think of fire when they hear the word dragon.”

  “No fire?” Ben grumbled. “What kind of dragon is this?”

  “Well, it smells like fire,” Clark said from up ahead, sniffing the air. “Like toasted chocolate.”

  “You can’t eat the dragon,” Rafael chided.

  “Mmm, roast dragon,” Clark said, licking his lips loudly. “I bet it’d be good with garlic and potatoes.”

  “He’ll probably think the same thing about you,” Daphne said. Clark grunted at the thought.

  “So if there’s no fire, why are we waking the dragon?” Nina asked. “Just to make him mad? Remember the stories Dad always tells about Gall’Adon? He’s not a nice dragon.”

  “Is there such a thing as a nice dragon?” Rafael asked to no one in particular.

  “We’re waking the dragon to ask him a question,” Alex said.

  “Boring,” Ben groused. “What kind of advice can you ask from a dragon?”

  “How best to eat people?” Rafael suggested.

  “Why in the name of Hecate’s hamster didn’t you tell us there wasn’t going to be any dragon fire?” Daphne asked with a frown. It was ironic that, as part tree nymph, Daphne had a very strong affinity with fire magic. And while she could gather less magical energy from the land than the others, she could control it with the most skill and dexterity.

  “Because no one asked,” Alex said, beginning to wonder if keeping the real thrust of the adventure a secret had been such a good idea. His friends might not be as willing to follow his plans if this mission turned out to be a dud. He probably should have mentioned his real reasons for seeking out the dragon Gall’Adon’s lair, but he was, in all honesty, a little afraid to speak those reasons aloud. When he had brought up the idea of waking the dragon, it had sparked such a positive response and such a heated discussion of possible plans and potential glories that Alex hadn’t wanted to risk losing the Guild’s interest by revealing the actual motive for the mission.

  “I was afraid you’d think I was silly,” Alex admitted.

  “How often does that ever happen?” Daphne asked with a dainty snort.

  “Well, there was that time…” Rafael began and paused. “Oh. That was a rhetorical question.”

  “So what’s the real plan?” Nina asked.

  “No fire,” Ben grumbled again. “There is a dragon, isn’t there?”

  “Well, I definitely smell dragon,” Clark said, leaning with his nose forward as he gingerly stepped around a large outcropping of rocks.

  “About two weeks ago, I was looking through some books in the restricted room of the town library,” Alex began.

  “You got into the gorping restricted room of the library and you didn’t take me?” Daphne asked, indignantly poking her finger into the back of Alex’s head.

  “It happened on the spur of the moment,” Alex said, rubbing the back of his head, his tone as apologetic as possible. “I was returning a book and Mrs. Yaaba had dozed off. The door to the restricted room was ajar, so I just slipped in while she snored.”

  “What was it like?” Daphne asked, more breathless at the idea of seeing restricted books than from the climb up the mountain. Alex loved books and learning about lost and forgotten bits of magic, but Daphne was fanatical about them. For her, the restricted room at the library was what a trip to her mother’s bakeshop would be for Clark.

  “Small,” Alex said, bringing to mind the tidy, windowless little room behind the librarian’s desk. “It was dark and I was afraid to conjure any light for fear of waking Mrs. Yaaba, so I couldn’t see that much. There are only a few hundred books on a couple of shelves.”

  “A few hundred,” Daphne moaned.

  “One book caught my eye,” Alex continued. “It was called Dragons: Lore and Legend. I couldn’t spend much time reading it, but one of the chapters said that, while dragons could sleep for a hundred years or more, if you wake one just a little, just enough to become part of its dreams, then you can ask it a question and it will give you an answer.”

  “What kind of question?” Daphne asked.

  “Gold,” Ben said, his eyes bright with renewed interest. “Will he tell us where his gold is?”

  “That’s an old wives’ tale,” Rafael sniffed.

  “So are dragons to Outsiders,” Ben retorted.

  “Good point,” Rafael conceded. “So we’re asking where his gold is?”

  “No, no,” Alex said, a little exasperated. “You’re supposed to ask him questions about the future.”

  “We’re going to wake Gall’Adon,” Nina said incredulously, “a dragon that’s been asleep for eighty years, a dragon that burnt down three farms the last time he was awake, and ask him about the future?”

  “Great Zeus’s nose hairs!” Daphne added in agreement. “We could go to Old Batami the Soothsayer for that.”

  “No,” Alex said, losing his balance momentarily as he feared he was losing control of the mission. At least they were still climbing. Still heading toward the dragon’s lair. Or, he thought so, until he stumbled into Clark’s backside. It was like walking into a boulder and had the same effect on Alex — knocking the wind out of him and landing him on his rump.

  “Um, sorry, Alex,” Clark said, turning around and extending an arm to help Alex back up. Alex put his hand out and felt himself lifted as though by magic to his feet. Clark was always so careful about how he moved because of his size that it was easy to forget how strong he was.

  “We have to keep going,” Alex said. “Waking the dragon is about more than asking him a question.”

  “Ah, we can’t keep going,” Clark said, crinkling his nose.

  “I agree with Alex,” Daphne said. “Now that he’s got us on this gorping adventure, we might as well see it through.”

  “Maybe,” Ben added, a light returning to his face, “maybe there is gold after all.”

  “I don’t think Clark is suggesting we abandon the mission,” Rafael said.

  “Umm, why would I do that?” Clark asked in surprise.

  “Then why did you stop?” Alex asked, craning his neck back to look up into Clark’s broad face and deep eyes.

  “Well, because we’re here,” Clark said. “This is the entrance to the dragon’s lair.”

  Startled, Alex looked around at their surroundings. He had been so engrossed in convincing his friends of the importance of his plan that he hadn’t been paying attention to where Clark was leading them. The forest mountain slope looked just the same as all the terrain they had covered in the past hour. Pine trees thrust up from the rocky ground, slanting upward toward the mountain top. Patches of late-melting ice clung to the base of trees here and there. But there was nothing that looked like the entrance to a dragon’s lair.

  “Where?” Alex asked, looking back at Clark, feeling confused.

  “Hmm, down there,” Clark said, pointing at the massive outcropping of gently rolling rock they all stood upon. “The dragon is down there.”

  “Are you sure?” Alex asked, his voice cracking a bit as he considered the possible failure of his plan.

  “Yep, smells stronger than ever,” Clark said with a sniff and lick of his lips.

  “How in the name of Hades’ head lice do we get under the rock?” Daphne asked.

  “We could try a shovel,” Rafael offered.

  “Earth magic,” Ben said
. “I could try to break it with Earth magic.”

  “There’s a better question,” Alex said.

  “How does the dragon get out?” Nina said, poking the slab of rock beneath her feet with a stick she had picked up.

  “Exactly,” Alex said, knowing he was right. “This isn’t a real rock. It’s a door. Isn’t that right, Clark?”

  “Mmm, smells like a magic door,” Clark said.

  “How do we open the gorping thing?” Daphne asked.

  “Well, I have no idea,” Clark said.

  “I do,” Alex said.

  “I should hope so,” Rafael said. “After dragging us all the way out here to ask the dragon to tell our futures.”

  “The dragon can’t tell your future,” Alex said. “It tells your destiny.”

  “What’s the difference?” Nina asked.

  “Your destiny is fixed,” Daphne said, her voice suddenly thoughtful, “but your future can change on its way to your destiny.”

  “Exactly,” Alex said, taking time to catch everyone’s eye. “We can make our own future, but we have a chance to find out what our destiny is.”

  “Cool,” Nina said, her eyes lighting up at the thought of hearing her destiny.

  “Super cool,” Ben said. “Why didn’t you tell us? Waking the dragon to hear our destiny is a great adventure.”

  “I thought you might think I was stupid,” Alex confessed.

  “Well, you are stupid,” Daphne said. “For not telling us. But waking the dragon to hear our destiny is a gorping great idea.”

  “Unless,” Rafael said in a ponderous tone, “our destiny is to live a terrible life filled with unrequited love cut short in a tragic death.”