Choke: 2 (Pillage Trilogy (Pillogy)) (15 page)

“It means it’s distracted you enough to help me win—check.”

I wanted to tell Wane about the cave and the new stone I had planted. I wanted to truly confide in her. But not only would she probably just say something like, “Been there, done that,” but it just didn’t feel right to inform her yet. I figured I would wait until I had done something really nice before I sprang it on her.

I took out one of her horses with my queen. “You haven’t won yet.”

Thunder shook the windows and rattled the chandelier above us.

“Have you ever seen it rain like this?” I asked.

“Never.”

“Do you think something’s askew?”

“Askew?” Wane asked.

“Cool word, huh? It means wrong.”

She laughed. “I don’t think anything’s askew. But I think they’d better repair the washed-out road so you can go back to school.”

“You don’t enjoy my company?” I smiled.

“You know I do,” she smiled back. “But how can you really appreciate someone if they’re always around?”

I moved one of my castles, and she took it out with one of her short pieces.

“Why are you asking about the manor, Beck?” she questioned. “You’re not planning anything we’ll need to take out extra insurance for, are you?”

“Of course not,” I said. “Check.”

Wane looked at the board closely. “What do you mean check,” she asked. “You can’t get my king.”

“You’ve been saying it,” I complained. “I just wanted to say it too.”

Wane shook her head.

“Who invented this game anyway?”

Wane started into some long, drawn-out story about the history of chess and how it was such a wonderful, brilliant game. She listed famous people and countries who revered it. I wanted to take my question back, but I thought that might be rude.

“Your turn,” I said, hoping that would distract her from talking.

Wane moved her queen as the rain grew audibly louder.

“Don’t you think we should build a boat or something?” I said nervously.

“Checkmate,” was her only reply.

My sentiment exactly.

Illustration from page 31 of
The Grim Knot

CHAPTER 15

It’s hard to keep track of time when you have no school to go to and you’re being held captive by Mother Nature in your own house. It also doesn’t help when you can’t see the sun. I wasn’t completely sure what day it was anymore.

And still the rain kept coming.

Moments before I thought I was going to rip my ears off because of the constantly falling water, it stopped. Two days after it stopped, the clouds moved out, and a marvelous sun began to dry up the mess its nemesis had made.

Knowing Kate’s parents still didn’t want me talking to her, I called her up using star sixty-seven to hide my number on their caller ID. I pretended I was a girl from school named Jessica.

It was sort of embarrassing that her parents believed me so easily.

Having no school to attend and nothing but time on our hands, we made plans to meet behind the garage and check on our stone. I put on a sweatshirt and went to wait for her. It wasn’t long before she showed up.

“Hi,” I said coolly, as she came around the garage house corner.

I know it’s not really great for my street credibility to admit this, but every time I saw Kate, things inside my stomach sort of jumped around, and my hands got sweaty. I mean, she was attractive, and I was heavily in
like
with her.

Kate hugged me and then asked where I had gotten such an ugly sweatshirt. I would have felt bad, but she was right. Thomas had bought the sweatshirt for me a couple of weeks before. It was yellow with light blue streaks across the top and a violin on it.

“Thomas bought it for me,” I explained. “Every day he asks me when I’m going to wear it.”

“I feel really lucky that today’s the day,” Kate smiled.

“He thinks I play the violin,” I told her.

“Why does he think that?” she asked.

“Because I told him once that I needed to go practice the violin,” I said. “I wanted to avoid cleaning a bunch of jars Millie needed for canning.”

“Serves you right then,” Kate said, staring at the sweatshirt.

We walked through the still-damp forest filling each other in on the boring things we had done since we last saw one another. When we reached the base of the mountain where the tracks and stairs went up, we had pretty much caught up on each other’s life.

“I didn’t miss these stairs,” I said as we climbed.

“Me neither.”

After we had hiked up and were inside the cave, I flipped the lights on. I wasn’t surprised to find that everything was just as it was when I last left it. The large steel door leading into the massive cavern where the stone had been planted was still closed. I had shut it to make sure that nothing got in or out.

I ran to the big door and lifted the latch up. The larger cavern was lit, and I could see the four posts in the center of it. The huge, leafy cocoon was lying on the ground, split open.

“Kate!” I yelled.

“I’m right behind you,” she whispered back.

“The dragon’s gone.”

“I can see that,” she replied.

“Where is she?” I looked behind a tall pile of crates but she wasn’t there. “How big do you think she is?”

“The others weren’t too small,” Kate answered while heading to the back tunnel door to make sure it was still locked.

I jumped onto one of the many barrels and glanced down. I couldn’t see anything other than crates, barrels, and poorly lit dirt. The large cage that was carved into the wall was empty as usual. I looked down into the small spring, but there was nothing in the water.

“The back door’s still locked!” Kate shouted.

“Is she in a box?” I asked. “Did she dig down into the dirt? Wait, what about those crates?”

I ran to the far side and searched behind a wall of boxes that were too high to see behind. It was the last place she could possibly be, and I was fully expecting to see her crouched down hiding behind them.

There was nothing but shadows.

Both Kate and I walked back to the center of the massive cavern, figuratively scratching our heads. I looked down at the split cocoon. There was an imprint in the large cocoon, and thick yellow goo ran out of it.

“How could she get out of here?” I asked.

“What about your father?”

“I told him about the cave, but he wouldn’t take . . . I mean why would he . . . I guess he could have,” I moaned.

“Does your book say anything about what a queen dragon does once she’s born?”

“I can’t remember.”

“That was a problem last time as well,” Kate complained. “You’ve got to read.”

“How about I give it to you and you read it?”

“That’s not how it works,” Kate reminded me.

“I can’t believe she’s gone.”

I put my hands over my face and sighed heavenward. When I took my hands off my eyes, my head was tilted back, and something flashed briefly from the high ceiling of the cavern. I stepped back.

“Um, Kate,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Look up.”

Kate craned her head back and looked toward the ceiling. There was nothing but darkness there.

“Why am I doing this?” she asked.

“I thought I . . .”

Two eyes suddenly looked down at us. Kate actually screamed, and I gasped in air the wrong way and began to hiccup.

The eyes disappeared.

I know we had been trying to find her, but for some reason both of us turned and ran away. We actually had a pretty good reason. There was a dragon hanging over us on the ceiling. We crouched behind two empty barrels and whispered rapidly.

“Did you see that?” I hiccupped.

“No,” Kate sassed back. “I just screamed for the fun of it.”

“What do we do?”

“I have no idea.”

We both stared up at the ceiling, looking for another sign of the dragon. There was some movement in the darkness, and a bit of white dropped from the black and then disappeared back up.

A huge hiccup sprang from my mouth. “Sorry,” I said embarrassed. “I think that was part of her tail.”

“All I saw was something white.”

“We should get her some food,” I suggested. “Maybe she’ll come down for that.”

“We’re going to carry food up those stairs?” Kate whined. “That’ll be awful.”

“We could get the train working,” I suggested again. Sure it was a hundred years old, and, yes, there was a forest growing over its tracks. But I remember some adult once saying something like, ‘trying is good.’ And even though it was an adult who said it, it still seemed like half-decent advice—at least in the case of trying to get a cool, old train running.

“That train’s never going to run,” Kate insisted.

“I’m just suggesting we try,” I argued. “If we can’t . . .”

I stopped talking because a loud screech shot through the cavern and echoed off the walls like a zillion fiery Ping-Pong balls. Both Kate and I jumped.

“She doesn’t sound friendly,” Kate whispered as we hid behind the barrels.

“What does friendly sound like?” I asked. “Did you expect her to giggle?”

Kate elbowed me hard.

“You know there’s that cereal stuff in those barrels,” I reminded her, pointing to the other side of the cavern. “That dog-food-looking junk. Maybe she’ll eat that.”

“That’s not edible,” Kate said.

“Wyatt tried some.”

“I’ve got to start hanging out with other people,” Kate griped.

“That’s probably good advice,” I agreed, followed by a big hiccup. “I hope you don’t follow it.”

Kate actually smiled.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said, pumped up by how pretty she was when she smiled. “I’ll run across the cave and get some.”

“Great,” Kate said, no longer smiling. “But are you sure we actually want her to come down?”

“I’m not that terribly sure of anything,” I reminded her.

I jumped up and ran closer to the wall. Then I moved along the edge of the cavern and worked my way over to the far side. When I got to the barrels, I unlatched one of the large wooden lids and took out a handful of the stuff. I looked across the cavern at Kate. She was staring at the ceiling with her mouth agape. I glanced up to see what she was looking at.

“Watch out, Beck!” she screamed.

As I looked up, a huge white flash bowled me over backward. I fell on the dirt. The cereal stuff I had been holding flew all over, covering me with a torrent of grain.

I looked up, and the dragon was perched on the edge of the barrel, eating straight from the barrel and taking bites bigger than anyone with good manners should.

I crab-walked backward, staring at her. She was already about the size of a large dog—stark white with cobalt blue talons and eyes. Her scales wrapped around her body in a circular pattern and her folded wings looked wet and rubbery. She had two small horns on her head that angled back and in. When she turned to gaze at me her horns looked sort of like a half halo. Her tail was long and the end was so thin she could coil it, which she did repeatedly as she ate. Her teeth were already impressive, and she had round bumps on her back. All four of her legs were muscular, and there were feathers around her wrists and ankles. There was something about her that made her different from the other dragons I had raised. She looked confident and majestic, and she was probably the coolest thing I had ever laid eyes on.

I hiccupped loudly.

The dragon looked at me. Her nostrils flared, and I could see food sliding down her throat. She belched, and bits of dusty grain drifted down on me.

“Kate!” I whispered loudly.

“I’m right behind you,” she replied. She had moved across the room and was now standing next to me.

The queen continued to stare at me. She then opened her wings as wide as she could and stood up on the rim of the barrel.

“Should we run?” I asked.

Kate was speechless.

The dragon folded her wings back in and then jumped softly down to the dirt. She sniffed and blinked her blue eyes twice. The only thing I could think of was to talk to her.

“Hello.”

The dragon sniffed and shifted and then pawed at the ground gently.

“I’m Beck and this is Kate,” I explained.

“She doesn’t speak English,” Kate said.

“Well, it’s not like I speak dragon,” I replied, turning my head to see Kate. “What else can I do? It’s not like I know . . .”

I heard a snort and felt hot breath on the side of my face. I turned. The dragon was just inches away from me, standing on her two back legs. She sniffed the air directly beneath my chin and then dropped back down onto all fours.

Her eyes were intoxicatingly blue, and the scales on her face sparkled like diamonds. I reached out and touched the top of her nose. She tipped her head up as if encouraging me to continue. I patted her head and ran my hand over her left ear. She sniffed again and moved closer. So I put my right arm around her neck and bent down.

“Are you hugging her?” Kate asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said awkwardly.

Kate stepped over to the barrel and got a big handful of the cereal. She came back and held the food out for the queen.