The Dragon of Lonely Island (12 page)

Father slowly opened his eyes. “Will?” he said weakly. “Hitty? What happened? Are you all right?”

“We’re fine,” Will said, “but the plane isn’t.”

“We crashed into some trees,” said Hitty. “The plane’s over there.”

Father tried to lift his head to look, but dropped quickly back to the sand. His eyes closed again. The children gazed at each other worriedly.

“We have to find help somewhere,” Hitty said. “He could
die
without medicine. Do you think there are any other people on this island?”

“We’d better find out,” said Will.

Leaving Father carefully covered with the second blanket, the children walked along the sand, peering back into the leafy tangle of trees and vines that bordered the beach.

“We can’t get in there,” said Hitty. “It’s too thick. We’d need a machete.”

“Wait a minute,” said Will. “Look. Isn’t that a trail?”

There was a wide tramped-down swath through the wilderness, as though many stamping feet —“Or some very large animal?” Hitty said nervously
—
had often passed through.

“It could be people,” said Will. “Perhaps it even leads to a village. Let’s follow it.”

The trail meandered lazily, twisting and turning through trees and underbrush. Hanging vines with dangling watermelon pink flowers swooped down and brushed the children’s faces. Bright blue butterflies fluttered past. High above their heads in the trees they saw small green-and-yellow birds
—
“Parakeets?” asked Will
—
and tiny iridescent flashes of scarlet and blue, which Hitty thought were hummingbirds. The only sounds were bird songs. There was no sign of human beings.

“We’ve been gone a long time,” Hitty said finally. “Maybe we should turn back. I don’t want to leave Father alone for too long.”

“The path seems to be getting wider up ahead,” said Will. “Maybe there’s a village there, or a house. Let’s go just a little farther.”

They walked on, rounded a gentle curve, and came abruptly to the end of the trail. It stopped at a wide clearing in the underbrush, in the middle of which sat an immense hut, roofed with branches and woven vines. The children stared at it in astonishment. There was no door. The huge hut stood open to the sun and wind. Will and Hitty cautiously tiptoed closer. A sign next to the front step read T
RESPASSERS
W
ILL
B
E
P
ROSECUTED
in elaborate Gothic lettering.

“Not very friendly, whoever lives here,” said Will. “Anyway, no one’s home now.”

“Who could live here?” wondered Hitty. “It’s so strange. Like a Robinson Crusoe house for a giant.”

“It’s full of wonderful things,” said Will, peering curiously inside. “Look, Hitty! There’s a giant clamshell!”

A mammoth clamshell, as big as the copper laundry kettle back home, leaned against one wall. Next to it was a grass basket, almost as tall as Hitty herself, which seemed to be full of glistening pearls. A crude wooden table held a collection of beetles carefully labeled and pinned to boards, a terrarium containing an energetic pair of shiny red frogs, a pile of strangely shaped seedpods, a fish skeleton, and a magnifying glass. Against the back wall stood an upright piano with a row of wax candles stuck in colored bottles on top of it. There was a bookcase stuffed with leather-bound books. “
The Voyage of the Beagle,
” Will read, “by Charles Darwin.
Chesterton’s Practical Shipbuilding. Astronomy for Amateurs. The Handbook of Wildflowers. Fossils and How to Find Them.
” There was an easel holding a half-finished painting
—
a seascape with a lot of splashy blue waves
—
and a bench on which sat a row of large clay pots. Hitty touched one experimentally with her finger. It was still wet.

“Whoever lives here hasn’t been gone for very long,” she said.

“Whoever lives here is coming back,” said Will. “Listen!”

There was a rustling, shuffling sound, growing louder as it approached the hut. There was a weighty feel to the sound. It seemed to quiver and vibrate through the ground beneath their feet. It was a sound of something threateningly large.

“That doesn’t sound like a person,” quavered Hitty.

“It isn’t!” hissed Will. “Let’s get out of here! Let’s hide!”

But it was too late. As the children emerged from the hut, its owner rounded the curve of the path and came into view. For one heart-stopping moment, no one moved or breathed. Then Will and Hitty clutched each other, and Hitty burst into tears.

There before them, with an unmistakable expression of annoyance on its face, stood a dragon. Its scales flashed dappled gold in the sunlight filtering through the branches of the trees, and on its back was folded a pair of polished golden wings. Its eyes were a cool silver gray. In its front claws it carried a basket filled with abalone shells. It set the basket down, wiped its claws on the grass in a fussy manner, and gave an impatient snort.

“For heaven’s sake, young lady,” the dragon said in a snappish tone of voice, “please stop that unsightly snuffling.”

Will put a brotherly arm around Hitty’s shoulders. “She’s scared,” he said stoutly. “In all the fairy tales and legends, dragons eat maidens. Are you going to eat us?”

The dragon glared at them scornfully. “Certainly not,” it said. It gestured at the sign at the hut entrance. “Trespassers,” it announced pointedly, “will be
prosecuted.
Not eaten. Dragons are not savages.” It tossed its head and muttered angrily to itself. “Really . . .” Hitty and Will heard it saying indistinctly, “no privacy these days. . . . The unbelievable ignorance . . .”

“Please, sir,” Will said apologetically, “we didn’t mean to intrude. We were just trying to find help. Our father . . .”

But the dragon had drawn itself up and was looking, if possible, even more peevish than before. “You may address me,” it said haughtily, “as
ma’am. Sir
is, of course, appropriate for my brothers, but I prefer my proper title.”

“Brothers?” said Will, looking sharply over his shoulders, but Hitty nudged him and pointed. The dragon had three heads. There, almost hidden beneath the folded golden wings, were two more heads, necks coiled low, eyes closed, sound asleep. “I think those must be her brothers,” Hitty whispered.

“Precisely, young lady.” The dragon nodded. “We are a tridrake. Our name is Fafnyr. Fafnyr Goldenwings.”

“I’m Will,” said Will, “and this is my sister, Hitty.”

“I’m sure I would be very pleased to meet you,” said the dragon, “if I had any interest in company. However, I deliberately chose this island for its lack of human beings. I need solitude for my scientific and artistic pursuits.” The dragon glared resentfully at the children, down the full length of its golden nose. “It seems,” it said crossly, “that there are no safe places left. You creatures take up an indecent amount of space. You spread across the globe like . . . ,” it paused for a moment, searching for a word, “like ants.”

“Well, we’re not here on purpose,” Will said. “We never intended to come here at all. We were on our way around the world by airplane. Our plane crashed on the beach and our father, who was flying it, was injured.”

The dragon looked unsympathetic. “And that,” it said snootily, “should teach you to stay on the ground, where your kind belongs.”

“You don’t understand,” Hitty cried, her eyes filling again with tears. “Our father is
hurt.
And we don’t have anywhere to sleep or anything to eat or
anything
!”

Without a word, the dragon stalked past the children and entered the hut. Will and Hitty could hear it thumping crossly about inside, opening and closing cupboard doors. Presently it reappeared, holding a small glass bottle. “Give him two of these tablets every four hours,” the dragon said, “for fever and pain. As for food and shelter,” the dragon looked Hitty and Will coldly up and down, “you look to be strong and competent children. Use your heads.”

The dragon vanished indoors. “Good-bye!” it snapped, its back turned. It was clear that the meeting was over.

“Good-bye!” Hitty and Will echoed dismally. Then, holding the little bottle of pills, they retreated back down the trail toward the beach. They continued to peek back curiously as long as the hut was in sight, but the dragon remained invisible. Then, faintly, there came the sound of a piano.

The dragon was playing “A Bicycle Built for Two.”

Father was awake when the children returned to the beach, but he was burning with fever and barely able to speak above a whisper. Hitty and Will gave him a drink from the water bottle and two of the dragon’s little white pills. “I’ll be better in the morning,” Father whispered weakly. “We’ll make some plans. . . .”

“It’s all right, Father,” Will said. “Everything’s fine.”

“Just rest,” said Hitty. “Go to sleep.”

As Father slept, the children sipped some of the bottled water, ate crackers, and discussed what to do.

“We need a hut, like the dragon’s,” Hitty said suddenly and decisively. “And I think I know how to build one. We can prop up some fallen branches like a tepee and hold them together with vines. Did you see the dragon’s roof? It was vines, woven in and out. Over and under, just like making potholders on the loom at school.”

Will looked at her with new respect. “All right,” he said. “Let’s collect some branches and vines. I’ll help you.”

By the time they finished their hut, it was dark and a full moon had risen. The hut was small, but snug, and it felt safe and cozy to be together under a roof
—
even if they were lost somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, with no way of getting home. Hitty and Will curled up next to Father on the warm sand, using rolled-up jackets as pillows.

“Crackers again for breakfast,” Will murmured sleepily.

“We’ll think of something,” Hitty whispered back. “Remember what the dragon said. We have to use our heads.”

When Will woke the next morning, Hitty was gone. Following her tracks in the soft sand, he found her down at the water’s edge, lying on her stomach on some rocks overlooking a deep tidal pool.

“Hitty! I was worried. I didn’t know where you were. What are you doing?” asked Will.

“Shh,” said Hitty. “I’m fishing.” She held a long forked stick in her hand, at the end of which was fastened a small net.

“Where did you get that?” asked Will. He squatted down on the rock next to Hitty and peered hopefully into the water.

“I found the stick on the beach,” said Hitty, “and the net is the string bag I had my bathing things in. It makes a wonderful fishing net.” Slowly she dipped the net into the pool. Suddenly she made a quick scoop and hoisted the net out of the water. There, thrashing in the string bag, was a fat fish.

“Breakfast!” said Hitty proudly.

They cleaned the fish with Will’s pocketknife and cooked it on pointed sticks over a fire of driftwood. Father woke up briefly and had a few bites of fish, half a cracker, a drink of water, and two more of the dragon’s white pills. Weakly he tried to smile. “Thanks, kids,” he said. Then he slept again.

Over the next several days, Will and Hitty learned to live on the island. They found coconuts and cracked them open with pointed rocks, drinking the sweet milk and eating the white meat inside. Hitty went fishing every morning and Will dug clams on the beach, which the children roasted over the coals of their fire. Hitty collected wide flat shells to use as plates and Will used his pocketknife to whittle forks and spoons out of driftwood. They made three sleeping mats for the hut, from layers of soft broad leaves, and each night before bed, they sat outside on the sand, listening to the slow roll of the waves and watching for falling stars. Hitty made them each a hat out of woven palm fronds, to protect them from the sun. They stopped wearing shoes.