Edgar #4
I think about this for a moment. “Maybe it’s not height that we need.” I cup my hands around my mouth, calling into the distance. “Ember! Sparks! Glint!”
Fairies have extraordinary hearing, a little-known fact. It’s why they’re so good at eavesdropping. But it also works in my favor, as they appear almost immediately, three little fireflies that come whizzing closer, so that I can see each of their tiny glowing bodies.
“What’s all this?” Ember asks, any anger over missing her beauty sleep dissipating when she sees the teetering ladder.
That’s another little-known fact about fairies: like all gossips, they hate being left out of anything.
“See that star?” I ask, pointing. “The one that looks like a button instead of a jewel?”
Glint and Sparks zip higher into the air to get a better view. “What about it?” Sparks asks.
“I need you guys to bring it down here.”
“No problem,” Ember says. “Girls?”
The three fairies shoot up like firecrackers. As they zoom into the night, I watch their lights grow smaller and smaller, blue and green and red, as tiny as the points of lasers.
For a moment, there’s only silence. Then, suddenly, we hear a crash.
A hail of jagged black letters rains down around us, slicing the rungs of the ladder and ripping the mainsail of Captain Crabbe’s ship.
Jules narrowly misses being impaled by a K, which pins the hem of her dress to the wooden deck.
“Watch out!” I cry, grabbing her and pushing her beneath the doorway of the hatch that leads belowdecks.
A moment later, a fireball rips out of the sky, smacking hard against the wood.
Ember lies there, her arms and legs splayed, the light in her body flickering.
One of her wings is torn, and black splinters jut from her shoulder, her leg, and her belly.
Captain Crabbe immediately scoops her into his hand as Glint and Sparks zip close.
“It was the letters,” Glint gasps. “We couldn’t see them in the dark, and with the book closed, they form a barricade.”
The captain takes a bandana from around his neck and fashions a tiny hammock. He gently places Ember on it and gives the corners to her sisters. “Get ’er to Orville straightaway,” he instructs. “He’ll ken what to do.”
I turn to Jules, who is staring at the spot on the deck where Ember fell. “We almost killed a fairy,” she says woodenly. “I’m pretty sure you go straight to hell for that.”
“I think,” Captain Crabbe says, “ye may be out of luck, laddie.”
I glance up at the night sky, at the letters I can’t see that are scrawled on the paper of this book. “What beats paper?” I ask Jules.
“Scissors?” she replies.
“No,” I say, grim. “Fire.”
As we sprint through the pages to Pyro’s cave, I explain my plan to Jules.
Fairies may be the strongest creatures in this story, but they couldn’t break through the letters with brute force.
That means there’s no way we can break through with strength either.
But letters are printed on paper, and paper burns.
So all we need is a little bit of portable fire.
Jules looks impressed. “Wow. I guess you’re more than just a pretty face.”
“What can I say: I’m the whole package.” We edge around the cliff toward Pyro’s cave, Jules’s hand firmly clasped in mine.
“Is that fairy going to be all right?” Jules asks.
I stop walking and look at her. “Don’t worry. Ember can’t die in here. At the very worst, the minute Oliver opens the book again, she’ll pop right back to her old self.”
“She just seemed so…hurt.” Jules shudders. “What if that happens to us? Will we pop right back too?”
I remember what Orville said: you play by the rules of the world you’re in. “Yes,” I tell her. “In here, you and I are invincible.”
A smile spreads across Jules’s face. “Okay. Then after we do this thing, we’re totally starting a fight club.”
A few minutes later, we reach the entrance to Pyro’s cave. The part that fell down—the book making its displeasure known—has been restored, probably with the same stubborn magic that’s got me decked out in tights. The dragon is snoring on his back, puffing smoke rings.
Jules digs her feet into the dusty ground. “Are you sure this is safe?”
“You’ve met him. He’s like a giant golden retriever.”
“It just seems like an unspoken rule: never wake a sleeping dragon.”
I glance at her. “You’re thinking of babies.
” I walk up to Pyro’s colossal head to whisper in his ear.
“Pyro,” I call. “Rise and shine!” My voice is drowned out by his vibrating snores.
“PYRO!” I yell, louder, and he startles awake, his massive wings flying open like an umbrella.
His red eye focuses on me slowly, and he bares his teeth in a terrifying grin.
“I need your help,” I explain. “Can you fly us to the top of the last page in the story?”
The giant beast nods and lowers a wing so that I can climb on. To my surprise, Jules scrambles into place behind me. “Really?” I ask.
“Oh please. How many times in my life am I gonna get to ride a dragon?”
I feel her arms tighten around my waist. Through my thin hose, I feel Pyro’s scales scratch and shift as he gets to his feet and crawls like a lizard from his cave onto the ledge.
“Hang on,” I say over my shoulder as Pyro shoots a blast of fire from his jaws, illuminating the valley below for a moment before it falls into darkness again. He leans back on his haunches and springs forward, his wings catching the wind and luffing like a sail as we lurch into the sky.
Here I am—a guy who basically lived in his room and whose friends were avatars, who was afraid of everything from gym class to social interaction—riding a dragon with a hot girl holding on to me for dear life. Finally I’m the hero. If only my mother could see me, I think.
If only I could see her.
Jules screams with delight as Pyro weaves over the mountains, rising and falling like a roller coaster that’s run off its track. She’s clinging to me so hard her knuckles are white, and I can feel her face buried in my shoulder. I think, in this moment, I could soar around on Pyro forever.
When Pyro leaps across a page, there’s an extra blast of wind, and he flies a little higher, until finally we reach the end of the story. “Slow down, boy,” I say. Even though I can’t see it, according to Ember, this is where she ran into the wall of letters.
I pull back on Pyro’s leathery mane, a rein. He comes to a halting stop, his wings pumping in midair, his powerful muscles flexing under my thighs. “Pyro,” I command, “light up the sky!”
Pyro opens his jaws and paints a wash of fire across the sky. The world, for a moment, is bright orange. Silhouetted against the flames is what looks like a junkyard of letters, a tangle of words smashed and tumbled together, pasted back to back, sealing the facing pages together.
“Get closer,” I instruct, and the dragon inches forward. “On the count of three, I want you to torch it. One…,” I say, and Pyro sucks in a giant breath. “Two…” His cheeks puff out, illuminated by the fire inside. “THREE!” I scream, and Pyro blasts the letters with a burning blaze.
The letters begin to drip, turning into a black rain that falls from the sky, staining the ocean below.
When there’s a hole large enough for us to fit through, I pull at Pyro’s mane again.
“That’s enough,” I tell him, patting his neck, and he rumbles in response.
I gently tap his side with my boot, the way you might spur on a horse.
Pyro lurches forward, swimming in a sea of stars.
Behind me, Jules gasps. It’s like someone has flung a handful of diamonds at us, and as we brush up against the stars, they tinkle like broken glass. Finally we reach the one that isn’t glowing, isn’t sparkling. “I’m going to hold him steady,” I tell her. “Can you grab it?”
I hold tight to Pyro’s mane, keeping his strength in check long enough for Jules to lean to the right, stretch her fingers out, and grasp the star. “Got it!” she says.
As she plucks the star loose, the others shimmy and realign in small clusters, leaving an empty space in the night sky.
The ride back to Pyro’s cave is beautiful.
By now the sun’s come up, licking the sea with a pink tongue.
Birds swoop and dive around us as we break through clouds.
Pyro swings over the castle, braying the way he does every morning, except this time, I’m not there to be awakened.
I haven’t slept, but I can’t remember ever feeling so alive.
When we land on the ledge of Pyro’s cave, he yawns widely, belching smoke. “You’re a champ,” I tell him, and hop off his back, reaching to help Jules down.
The dragon slithers into the recesses of his cave and is already snoring by the time Jules and I sit on the ledge, dangling our feet over the edge. Jules pulls the night’s treasure from the bodice of her dress. “For real?” I say.
“What?” she replies. “There are no pockets!” She presses the star into the palm of my hand.
I expect it to burn a little. To be warm to the touch, or prickly, and heavy as a meteorite. The star is none of these things. In fact, at close range, it looks exactly like a sugar cookie, five-pointed, edged in yellow frosting.
I turn it over in my hand and notice that the piping continues on the other side. WISH UPON A STAR, it reads.
“Jules,” I breathe, “I think we found it.”