Between the Lines Read online

  page 40

  In a way, Oliver could argue that his whole life had led up to this moment: when he stood toe to toe with the beast that had killed his father.

  The dragon’s red scales shimmered in the heat of the day. His eyes were as black as the heart of the man who’d conjured him. His clawed feet scrabbled for purchase on the bald rock of the Cape of Passing Tides. As Oliver watched, Pyro tilted back his long throat, drew in a deep breath, and bellowed a plume of fire into the sky.

  Oliver’s pulse was racing. He was so close to the dragon that he could smell charred flesh and ash. This was danger, up close and personal, in a way he’d never experienced and had carefully avoided his whole life. He wondered, as he had many times during his childhood, what his father had been thinking at this moment. Had King Maurice stood, steadfast, with no fear as he brandished his sword and ran toward his death? Had his last thoughts been of his beloved wife? The son he would never meet?

  I cannot get out of this alive, Oliver thought.

  He reached around his neck for the compass his mother had given him. If there was ever a time to turn tail and run back home, this was it. But as his fingers closed around the small disk, he imagined his father clutching it even as he battled this same dragon. Oliver wanted to be the sort of son that his father would have been proud of. The one who faced his fears, instead of falling prey to them.

  He let the compass drop back beneath his shirt.

  Maybe he did not have his father’s skill with a sword, or the kind of courage that inspired epic poems and legends. But that was not the only way to win a battle.

  “Wait!” Oliver cried. “I didn’t come here to fight you. I’m here to help!”

  The dragon took a menacing step forward and roared. Flames singed the hair around Oliver’s brow.

  He remembered a childhood story that his mother used to read to him at night. “My,” Oliver said softly, “what big teeth you have.”

  The dragon proudly flashed his massive overbite, gnashing his teeth inches away from Oliver’s face.

  Instead of flinching, however, in the cloud of smoky breath, Oliver just frowned. “Well,” he said, “no wonder you’re in so much pain.”

  The dragon, about to swipe his tail at him, hesitated.

  “Look, dental issues are nothing to be embarrassed about.”

  Pyro snorted, the fiery ball igniting a tree just to Oliver’s left. “Denying it will not make it any better,” Oliver insisted. “Do you or do you not have a smoky aftertaste in your mouth?”

  The dragon blinked.

  “Classic symptomology. You, my friend, suffer from an impacted firecuspid. If left unattended, it can lead to scaly skin, flaring of the nostrils, charred tongue…”

  With each recognizable symptom, the dragon backed away, eyes wide.

  “…and untimely death.”

  The dragon sat back on his haunches and clamped his mouth firmly shut.

  “Lucky for you, I have some experience with orthodontia.” Oliver took a step forward. “Just close your eyes, and open your mouth wide.”

  The dragon slowly, warily, opened his massive jaws.

  This was the place his father had died. Holding his breath, Oliver cautiously climbed onto the dragon’s spongy tongue. He stared at the teeth, large as boulders, with bits of flesh and blood caught between them. His boot slipped, and as he fell to his knees, something winked at him. It looked like a silver filling.

  Oliver narrowed his eyes and realized that it wasn’t a filling at all. It was a knight’s helmet, a piece of the armor he’d created with Orville—made of the strongest, most fireproof material in the kingdom—reduced to a shredded ball of foil.

  This knight had died. Oliver’s father had died. This dragon could swallow Oliver whole. No amount of skill with words and lies and ruses could protect him from bodily harm.

  As if to underscore this fact, the dragon belched, and a gust of flame rushed toward Oliver like a wave. He reached into his rucksack and closed his fingers around the fire extinguisher that the mermaids had given him.

  He pulled out the metal key to activate it and carefully positioned the canister between two enormous molars. “Now,” he said, gingerly backing out of the dragon’s mouth and wiping his tunic clean of saliva, “I need you to bite down very gently.”

  Pyro clamped his mouth shut. Oliver counted to three under his breath, and suddenly white foam began oozing out from between the dragon’s gums. “Ah,” he said. “I can see it’s working….”

  The dragon began wheezing. His mouth opened, but instead of a burst of flames came a sad, weak cough. Like any cornered animal, Pyro began to lash out with his claws and his tail, slicing the air. Oliver leaped out of the way, hiding behind a rock as the dragon retreated down the hill to the ocean.

  When he heard the dragon’s cry growing fainter, Oliver edged forward. Pyro’s head was beneath the surface of the water, and he was drinking greedily to flush out the taste of the chemicals. While he was submerged, Scuttle and Walleye crept from their hiding places and threw their nets over Pyro, trapping the dragon, who let out a feeble snarl. Then Captain Crabbe emerged with a huge tank. “Now, now, my friend, you won’t feel a thing.” He placed a tube into the dragon’s mouth and released laughing gas into the beast’s lungs. Pyro’s overbite softened into a drunken smile. His huge eyelids drooped, and his roar dissolved into loud, smoky hiccups. Then he collapsed, creating a small earthquake around him.

  Oliver started walking away from the dragon’s lair, a victory route his father had never taken.

  OLIVER

  THE NEXT TIME DELILAH OPENS THE BOOK, I FIND myself in a place I’ve never been. Missing are the bureau and mirror and the pink bedspread I am used to seeing in Delilah’s bedroom. I climb to the edge of the page, trying to see more of this new location. “Where are we?”

  “Somewhere I used to come to a lot when I was little. My fort.” Delilah steps away so that I can see better. The walls are made of wooden slats, and there is a poorly sawed window. Shelves are filled with tin cans containing colored pencils, pennies, and stones. A stack of newspapers crowds a corner, their edges curled with age and humidity.

  I must say, I am not impressed. I have never seen a fortress in such disrepair. “It’s a wonder the enemy didn’t sack you ages ago,” I murmur.

  “No, but the neighbor’s dog came pretty close one time,” Delilah says. “It’s not a real fortress. It’s a pretend one.”

  “Why would you pretend to be at war?”

  “Because that’s what kids do,” Delilah explains. “You’ll see, when you’re here.”

  At those words, we both grow silent. It’s time to try to write me out of this fairy tale.

  “I brought you here on purpose,” Delilah says. “I thought it would be safer.”

  “How so?”

  “Well… for one thing, we don’t know how loud this is going to be…. Second, if my mother hears me talking to a book one more time, I’ll definitely be locked up.” She hesitates. “And third, if it does work, I don’t think she’ll be too thrilled to find a strange guy in my bedroom.”

  “Good thinking,” I say. I look down at the copy of the fairy tale I took from Rapscullio’s bookshelf. In spite of its brush with fire, it is in perfect condition, healed of whatever scars and burns it once bore.

  “So now what?” Delilah asks nervously.

  “I guess I need to rewrite the ending.” But now that the moment has arrived, my heart is pounding. What if this doesn’t work, and instead of appearing in Delilah’s world, I resurface in another book—one whose story I don’t even know? Or stuck within the barrier that exists between my world and Delilah’s? What if rewriting the story just creates a new book, and I find myself in the same situation, but one layer deeper and that much harder to escape?

  And even worse, what if it does work, and Delilah decides she doesn’t want to be saddled with a clueless former fairy-tale prince who doesn’t know the first thing about real life? What if the