Read Dragon of the Red Dawn: A Merlin Mission Online

Authors: Mary Pope Osborne

Tags: #Ages 6 and up

Dragon of the Red Dawn: A Merlin Mission (7 page)

BOOK: Dragon of the Red Dawn: A Merlin Mission
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“I’ll get it,” said Jack. He hurried into the hut and grabbed the wooden bucket by the hearth. It was heavy, even without water in it. Jack hugged the bucket to his chest and rushed back outside.
Jack and Annie followed Basho through the pine forest. They passed a farmhouse where two small children stood outside, looking at the fiery sky.
“Our father says the lumberyard near the river is burning!” the boy shouted to Basho.
“He has gone to help fight the fire!” said the girl. “Great piles of wood are burning!”
The fire bells kept clanging as Basho, Jack, and Annie rushed past the temple and across the narrow footbridge.
They hurried up the winding dirt path until they came to the shopping market. In the smoky red dawn, people were pushing carts piled high with goods. They were running away from the fire.
But Basho, Jack, and Annie ran
toward
the fire. The air grew hotter and smokier near the teahouses and the performance stages. Sparks flew through the sky. Tiles on rooftops were catching fire and crashing to the ground.
Basho led Jack and Annie farther through the smoke until they came to the lumberyard. The fire roared as it burned piles of logs. Flames rose high into the sky.
Firefighters were passing buckets of water up a line from the river to the fire. Others waved huge fans to beat back the windblown flames,
while the most daring worked with hooks and axes, trying to separate the burning timber.
“Help the bucket brigade!” Basho said to Jack and Annie. “Get water from the river!”
Basho rushed to help the men beating back the fire with fans while Jack and Annie hurried down to the river. Jack filled their wooden
bucket. With water inside, it was so heavy he couldn’t lift it.
“Do it together!” said Annie.
“Right!” said Jack.
Using all their strength, Jack and Annie carried their bucket up the bank of the river. As they stumbled along, they tried not to spill the water. Jack could hardly breathe in the smoke-filled air. His throat and eyes burned. His face felt red-hot. Finally, when he thought he couldn’t take another step, they got to the bucket brigade. They gave their bucket to the person at the end, who gave them an empty bucket. “Get more!” he said.
Jack and Annie hurried back to the river with the empty bucket. They filled it with water and then struggled back up the bank.
Over and over, Jack and Annie hauled buckets of water back and forth from the river to the line of firefighters. Everyone worked hard to battle the great blaze. But the flames kept shooting into
the sky. Eventually the fire leapt over the river, and timber on the far bank began to burn.
“Oh, no!” cried a woman. “All of Edo will catch fire now!”
“The rice-storage houses will burn down!” said a man. “The harvest will be destroyed!”
Several people began weeping. Jack felt like crying, too. Right in front of his eyes, the beautiful floating world of Edo was about to go up in flames. “This is hopeless!” he said to Annie.
“No, it’s not!” Annie said. “The wand! We can use the wand!”
“Of course!” cried Jack. “But it’s in my bag! Back at Basho’s house!”
“We have to get it!” said Annie. She shouted to Basho, “Basho, we’re going back to your castle!”
“Yes, run for safety!” called Basho. “Jump into the river!”
“Right!” cried Jack.
“Be careful!” Annie shouted to Basho. Then
she and Jack started running as fast as they could. They raced past the market. They ran across the footbridge, past the temple and the farmhouse, and through the grove of pines to Basho’s house.
Jack and Annie ran inside the tiny hut. Jack grabbed his bag and pulled out the wand. He waved it through the air. “Do something to make the fire stop!” he shouted.
Jack held his breath and waited.
“Let me try!” said Annie. She took the wand and waved it. “Stop the fire over Edo
now
!” she shouted.
Jack and Annie waited again.
“It’s not working!” cried Jack. “We must be doing something wrong.”
“But this is for the good of everyone!” said Annie.
“I know, I know!” said Jack.
“And we’ve tried our hardest!” said Annie. “Everybody has!”
“Five words!” said Jack. “We have to use five words!”
“Oh, right!” said Annie. She waved the wand through the air again. “Put. Out. The. Fire!” she yelled.
“One more word!” cried Jack.
“Please
!” shouted Annie.
Jack and Annie were blasted by a blinding light. Jack felt himself shooting through brightness, then darkness, then back into light. An icy wind blew. The air was crystal-clear. Early sunlight flashed on rock.
Jack and Annie were standing on the ledge of a mountain.

A
re you—are you okay?” Annie asked Jack. She was still holding the wand. Her pigtails blew in the bright wind.
“Yeah, yeah, but what happened?” said Jack in a daze. He was freezing and out of breath. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know,” whispered Annie.
Jack shielded his eyes from the brilliant light of the red dawn and looked around. Pink clouds floated through the air like piles of cotton candy. Through a gap in the clouds, he saw hills
shrouded in black smoke below. Beneath the smoke, flames rose from the city of Edo.
“I think we’re on Mount Fuji,” said Annie.
“Mount Fuji?” said Jack. “That’s crazy! Why are we
here
?” He stopped to catch his breath. He felt dizzy and light-headed. “Edo’s burning! We should be
there
!”
“Maybe the wand didn’t understand,” said Annie. “Maybe it was trying to save us by taking us far away from the fire.”
Suddenly a great mass of thick clouds piled up, ringing the mountaintop like a wall. The clouds swirled and whirled and tumbled. They changed color, from rose to gold to gray to white.
“What’s going on?” cried Jack.
The head of a gigantic monster rose from the bubbling clouds!
“AHHH!” Jack and Annie screamed. They grabbed each other and crouched down on the rocky ledge.
The monster had spiky eyebrows and long, curled whiskers. It had the horns of a deer, the forked tongue of a snake, and the fiery breath of a dragon. Through the swirling clouds, Jack and Annie could see the dragon’s snake-like body curling through the clouds and down the mountainside. Its back was covered with shiny scales. Its spine had a row of shark-like fins.
The dragon reached out its claws. They were like the claws of an eagle—only a thousand times bigger! The claws gripped the side of the mountain.
Jack made himself as small as he could. He covered his head. But Annie jumped to her feet. “I get it!” she cried. “I know what’s happening! Thank you for coming!”
“Annie, get down!” Jack shouted.
“Jack, it’s the Cloud Dragon!” said Annie. “The puppet show—remember? The wand sent her here!”
“What? Why?” cried Jack.
“She makes rain! Don’t you remember? Rain!” cried Annie.
“She commands the rain clouds
!”
The dragon lowered her giant head, stretching it over the mountain ledge. Her scales glittered honey-gold in the dawn light. She was still, very still, as if she were waiting for something.
“Come on! We have to climb on her back!” shouted Annie.
“Why?” cried Jack.
“We have to go with her!” said Annie. “The wand brought us to the dragon! Now it’s up to us to show her what to do!”
“Okay! Okay!” said Jack.
Annie climbed onto the back of the Cloud Dragon. She sat between two of the dragon’s shark-like fins. Jack climbed on behind her. He gripped the fin in front of him as if he were holding on to the horn of a saddle.
“Fly over the fire!” yelled Annie. “Make rain!”
“Lots of it!” shouted Jack.
The Cloud Dragon slid off the mountain ledge.
Jack trembled with cold as the monster slithered through the freezing sea of clouds, like a snake through the grass.
Above Edo, Jack looked down. Billowing black smoke and red flames shot into the dawn sky.
“Now! Rain now!” Jack said. The Cloud Dragon reared back her head. Great black clouds flowed from her mouth. The clouds spread across the sky. There was a crack of thunder and a flash of lightning. Then rain began to pour down on the city.
The dragon twisted her head this way and that. More clouds blew from her mouth, and more rain fell on the burning city of Edo.
As the dragon slithered through the sky, breathing out mountains of storm clouds, rain fell
    on the flat lands of the rice fields,
        on the Imperial Garden,
            the samurai castles,
                the fish market,
                        and the Great Bridge.
Rain fell on the floating world of inns and stages, teahouses, temples, and farms.
Rain fell on the lumberyard and the pine forest and the canals.
Slowly the rain washed away all the smoke and flames. Even after the fires of Edo no longer flickered, the Cloud Dragon breathed more black clouds, and the rain kept falling, falling steadily, soaking the gardens and fields, filling the shallow rivers and dried-up ponds.
BOOK: Dragon of the Red Dawn: A Merlin Mission
11.98Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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