The First Dragon(22)
“Hush,” said Laura Glue. “What are they, Rudy?”
“Magic seed corn,” he replied. “If you plant them, they grow into a crop of corn that, when eaten, ensures that you have only good dreams when you sleep, and never bad ones. I have often been plagued by night terrors, and considered planting a little garden out back. But I’m glad I saved them, because they have one other use.
“If you feed the seed corn to any creature with cloven hooves, it will be able to fly. The Christmas Saint used them on reindeer, but they’ll also work . . .”
“On goats,” Laura Glue finished for him. “That’s brilliant!”
“Meh,” said Elly Mae.
♦ ♦ ♦
“I’ve already aligned the mechanisms from the Zanzibar Gate,” Shakespeare explained as the other conspirators got settled aboard the Indigo Dragon. “I’ve set it to go to the same place Bert said that the others were going to, and I have faith it will work. But after that,” he added, choking back a sob, “you’ll be on your own.”
“How can you set the device to the right time and place?” asked Laura Glue. “I thought only Rose or Edmund could do that without a trump.”
“Actually, it’s because of Edmund that I can,” said Shakespeare. He showed them the bronze plate he planned to insert into the mechanism of the gate. “We know from what Bert told us that they are no longer in the future, but in the past,” he told them, “and Edmund found a way to tell us where.
“When Jules asked me to examine the time travel possibilities of the Sphinx that Poe had in the basement,” he explained, “I opened it and found this plate. I didn’t know what it meant then, but I know now. And it will take you to them. This I believe.”
“There’s one more thing,” Jack said. He handed Fred a box wrapped in oilcloth. “It’s the Serendipity Box. Laura Glue has never used it, nor has Quixote, or Kipling. It’s your fallback, for when you are in real trouble. But,” he added, “I hope you won’t need it.”
It took only a few minutes for them to sail the Indigo Dragon to the outer island where the Zanzibar Gate stood, and only a few minutes more to prepare for the crossing through time. Shakespeare installed the bronze plate on the control device, then stood back with Jack and Argus and looked at the small company. A Valkyrie, a badger Caretaker, his father the squire, the legendary knight, and Kipling. “That’s everyone, I think,” Jack said.
“Not quite,” said Laura Glue, looking around in the darkness. “Where’s—”
“I’m already here,” Madoc said as he stepped out of the trees and climbed onboard the ship. As he approached, the gate began to glow.
“I wasn’t sure you’d do it,” said Quixote. “You seemed very supportive of the Prime Caretaker’s decision.”
“I learned the art of diplomacy in Alexandria,” said Madoc, “and I know when to use it. But there is a time to talk, and a time to act. And we are going,” he finished, winking at Laura Glue, “to get my daughter.”
“You’re the best of us all,” Jack said to the small company as his eyes welled with tears, “and you are the last children of the Archipelago. Be strong. Be brave. And never forget . . .”
“Believing is seeing,” Fred said as the small craft lifted up into the air. “Don’t worry, Scowler Jack,” he added as the ship disappeared through the gate. “We got this.”
The speaker was sitting on a dais at the center . . .
Chapter SEVEN
The City of Jade
It was the first city that was, and as such, it had no need of a name—but things that are made must also be named, for that is the way of the world. And so, as travelers came from the distant parts of the earth, to seek knowledge, and trade, and in some cases, redemption, they named the city, and carried those names back with them when they returned home.
To the younger races, it was called Atlantis. To the Children of the Earth, who had assisted in its construction, it was called the Dragon Isle. Some named it for the builder who first deigned to create something great in the world, and they called it the City of Enoch, but it was not his city they saw, not truly—and those who had created and named everything else the city is, was, and would yet become simply called it the City of Jade.
When the Cartographer Edmund McGee drew the city on parchment, to use as a chronal trump for himself, Rose Dyson, and the Caretaker Charles, and later, when he duplicated the drawing as a bronze engraving to leave in the Sphinx for the Caretakers to find in the future, both renderings were based on descriptions and memories provided to him by the legendary Gilgamesh. The great king had seen the city in his youth, and his recollections of it were strong enough that Edmund could duplicate it in line with great fidelity. But as fine as the renderings were, there was simply no comparison between viewing a simple drawing and being in the presence of a city that had been designed and built by angels.