Dragon Rider

“Is that your wish?” Firedrake stretched and looked down at the dwarf, frowning. “Come on, out with it. We’re all tired.”

But Gravelbeard shook his head so hard that his hat almost fell off.

“No, no, I’m not interested in the gold anymore,” he cried. “Not a bit. I couldn’t care less about it. What I want,” he said, spreading his stumpy arms wide, “what I want is to stay in this cave. That’s my wish.” He looked hopefully at the two dragons.

“What for?” asked Burr-Burr-Chan suspiciously.

“I’d like to make it even more beautiful,” whispered Gravelbeard. He looked around him reverently. “I’d like to bring the stones hidden here to light, very carefully, very slowly. I can see them, you know. I can hear them whispering. On the walls, inside the columns. A tiny tap here, a thin shaving taken off the rock there — and they’d be shining and sparkling in all the colors of the rainbow.” He sighed and closed his eyes. “It would be wonderful.”

“Hmm,” murmured Burr-Burr-Chan. “Doesn’t sound like a bad idea. But the dragons must decide.”

Firedrake yawned and looked at Maia. The she-dragon was so tired that she could scarcely keep on her feet. She had breathed out so much fire that for the first time in her life she felt cold.

“I don’t know,” she said, glancing at the stone dragons. “I don’t need this cave anymore, now that I don’t have to hide from the Golden One. But what about them? Won’t his hammering disturb them?”

Gravelbeard looked around.

“Who do you mean?” he asked uneasily.

“Come with me,” said Firedrake, offering the dwarf his tail. Hesitantly Gravelbeard settled between the spines, and Firedrake carried him around the huge pool of gold and over to the dragons who had turned to stone. Maia and the others followed them.

“These are the other twenty dragons Nettlebrand was after,” explained Firedrake, when Gravelbeard jumped down from his tail to land on the paw of a stone dragon. “Twigleg lied to you to keep Nettlebrand eager for the hunt. We wanted to lure him here.”

The dwarf inspected the petrified bodies with interest.

“They stopped drinking moonlight,” said Maia.

She settled on the floor. The snow was melting in the warmth of the cave, and bright pools of water were forming on the ground, but it was too late now for Nettlebrand to disappear into them.

“Yes, such things can happen quickly,” murmured Gravelbeard, tapping an expert finger against one stone paw. “Stone grows fast. People don’t realize that.”

No one was really listening to him. Firedrake settled drowsily on the floor beside Maia. Burr-Burr-Chan and Sorrel were preparing a mushroom picnic. Lola was wiping splashes of gold off her plane. They were all weary after the battle that was now behind them. Only Ben really listened to Gravelbeard’s remark.

“What do you mean?” he asked, crouching down beside the dwarf. Twigleg clambered up on Ben’s knee. “Have you ever seen anything like this before? Something live that turned to stone?”

“Certainly.” Gravelbeard laid his hand on the dragon’s stony scales. “It happens to fabulous creatures very easily. Your castles are full of them. Dragons, winged lions, unicorns, demons, all turned to stone. Human beings find them and put them on display thinking they’re stone all through, which of course they aren’t. Usually there’s a breath of life left in them somewhere. But humans don’t know that. They display them as if they’d actually made them. Huh!” The dwarf wrinkled his nose scornfully. “Conceited folk, human beings. Now with these,” added Gravelbeard, pushing back his hat and looking up at the stone dragons, “the shell isn’t very thick yet. It could easily be cracked open.”

“Cracked open?” Ben looked at the dwarf incredulously.

“That’s right.” Gravelbeard straightened his hat. “But, personally, I like them better turned to stone.”

“Firedrake!” cried Ben, jumping up so suddenly that Twigleg slipped off his knee. “Firedrake, listen to this.”

The dragon sleepily raised his head, and Maia woke with a start.

Gravelbeard grasped Twigleg’s arm in fright. “What does the little human want?” he whispered. “I haven’t done a thing! You’re my witness! I didn’t even take out my hammer.”

“The dwarf says he can bring them back to life!” cried Ben excitedly.

“Bring who back to life?” muttered Firedrake, yawning.

“The dragons!” said Ben. “The stone dragons. He says the stone is only a thin layer and can be cracked open like a shell, understand?”

Sorrel and Burr-Burr-Chan looked up from their picnic.

“If you ask me, the dwarf just wants our permission to hammer at the rocks around here,” said Sorrel, biting the stalk off a mushroom. “Cracked open like a shell? Nonsense!”

“It’s not nonsense!” Gravelbeard, looking insulted, planted himself in front of the claws of one of the stone dragons. “I can prove it.” Taking the hammer from his backpack, the dwarf climbed up a spiny tail until he was standing on the petrified dragon’s back. “It will take a bit of time,” he called down, “but you just wait and see!”

The dragons looked at him doubtfully.

“Can we help?” asked Maia.

The mountain dwarf merely shook his head scornfully. “You? With your great big paws? No chance! Even that little human doesn’t have enough feeling in his fingers to do that.” Looking important, Gravelbeard straightened his hat. “We mountain dwarves are the only people who can do this sort of thing.”

“Good night, then,” muttered Sorrel, turning back to her mushrooms. “By the time one of them hatches out of his stone shell, I’ll probably be toothless.”

“A day!” called Gravelbeard, waving his hammer excitedly in their direction. “I’ll need a day, perhaps less. You wait and see.”

Twigleg sighed and made himself comfortable on Ben’s lap. “Terribly conceited, these mountain dwarves,” he whispered to the boy. “They always have to know best. But he just might do it. They really do have a lot of experience with stone.”

“A day?” Firedrake yawned and looked down at the little dwarf, still doubtful. “You certainly talk big, don’t you? Well, wake us if you really do find any sign of life, all right?”

“Yes, yes,” replied Gravelbeard. He kneeled down, passed a hand experimentally over the stone scales, and began tapping very carefully, wielding his hammer with tiny strokes that made scarcely any more noise than the ticking of a clock.

For a while Ben watched the dwarf at work, although his eyelids kept closing. But at some point, when the dragons and the brownies had been asleep for a long time and faint snoring was coming from Lola’s plane, he, too, fell asleep, and so did Twigleg.

All was still in the great cavern. Only Gravelbeard went on tapping away tirelessly with his hammer. Every now and then, he cast a glance at the remains of Nettlebrand’s armor, lying in the slowly solidifying pool of gold. Then he chuckled gleefully and returned to his work.

54. A Dragon Wakes

The first dragon woke when they were all still asleep.