All tagged The Red Dragon
We are back on the deck of Bonny’s Revenge.
Joy and Justin are both clearly shaken by their conversation with the First Prisoner or The Guardian Spirit, or whoever he really is.
Justin stares at the horizon from behind the wheel, as he takes the ship out. Joy stands by his side, staring forward as well.
After a couple of minutes, as we fly past the clouds and into outer space, Joy hugs Justin. Justin stops the ship in mid-space and hugs her back.
“Red is not dead,” Joy says.
“No, she’s not.” He hugs her and doesn’t let go.
“She’s not a creature of the Dream.”
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“Stop, stop, stop!” Justin raises his hands. “We can’t believe this Guardian that he knows where Red is or that he’s a dream creature from outside my dream like the Fairy Flies. He’s a villain. He’s lying.”
Amahle clicks her tongue to indicate ‘No’. “Justin, you do not understand. Tell them what you told me,” she tells the Guardian.
The Guardian looks at Amahle in anger, then looks away. Amahe can’t see his expression, but she notes the silence. “All right,” she says. “Justin. He has told me he is of the Adroazni, a guardian spirit, and a child of the god Adroa.”
“So?” Justin says.
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Justin shakes his head immediately after the initial surprise. “He’s lying to us, Joy. He’s a villain and he knows we care about Red.”
Joy nods vigorously. “Lying. Red’s not dead and he wouldn’t know it!”
Justin takes her hand. “Shame on you,” he tells the Guardian. “It’s a good thing we never talked all these years. You are evil.”
“My friend is dead!” the Guardian yells at them as Justin and Joy turn their backs to him. “And it is your fault!”
“Shut up!” Joy whirls around. She takes off her necklace and throws it into the Guardian’s cell, where it lands on the floor. “I don’t want it! I don’t want anything from you!”
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“You,” he says. “What did you say to my daughter!”
I stretch my neck and see a man approach the bars. I have seen him before, but I did not pay him much attention, since Joy and Justin both pointedly ignore him every time they walk into the Infinite Prison. Now that Amahle says he comes from legends in the Congo, that gives more context to his black skin and his black hair that’s cut very short. The right half of his face is almost entirely covered by a metal mask, with room for an eye to peek through. But there is no eye behind that hole, but a soft yellow glow. Anything that is not covered by the mask looks human, including the other eye. He is tall, thin, and wiry.
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Joy is crying into my chest and doesn’t stop. I hug her with one hand, but awkwardly. I don’t know how to comfort a child who feels responsible for two deaths. I don’t know how to comfort a child who survived a slave camp for a day while figuring out how to save the other children.
What did happen there? I wish she would stop. My shoulder still hurts.
“Little Pirate, if you keep crying, you will make me cry,” says Master Mind. “I do not wish to cry at this time.”
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“Dad, Red had a German accent.”
“What?”
“She means the Red Dragon,” Charlie says.
“What?”
“I asked Lukas to say ‘Dragon Father’.”
“What? Lukas?”
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Joy had just asked Lukas, the man into whose dream we have walked for the first time just a few moments ago, to say ‘Dragon Father’, and now that he has, she’s excited.
“You know the Red Dragon!”
Lukas looks at her, still thrown for a loop over everything that’s happened. “Dragon? What… is… What do you mean?”
I make sure I’m right behind Joy, protecting her. With Justin out of this dream, I want to get out of here as soon as possible. “Joy,” I put a hand on her shoulder. “How can he know the Red Dragon? She was in your father’s dream.”
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Joy and Charlie approach Justin and the weight-lifting Dreamer in the barbell area.
Justin points to a barbell, “Charlie, see that barbell over there? It’s really heavy. Right?” This last one is aimed at the Dreamer.
“Ja,” the Dreamer says, still shocked at what he had seen Justin do, adding in a German accent, “Heavy.”
“What I want you to do is imagine that it is super super light. But you can’t change what it looks like. It has to look like this. Do you understand?”
Charlie nods and approaches one of the heavier barbells. He concentrates while looking at it intensely. Then he reaches down and touches it to test it. He laughs then raises it with one finger.
The Dreamer gasps, shocked.
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“Joy,” Charlie says. “Are you sure you don’t dream?”
She shakes her head. “I go to sleep. I wake up. I don’t go anywhere like you do.”
“Must be strange not to dream.”
“I think it’s strange to dream,” Joy says. “You’re in two places at once. What’s that like?”
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Joy leads us from planet to planet, from a fairy world to the dragon world, from a robot world to abandoned mine worlds. And they are all empty of dragons and empty of the dust that would mean that the Red Dragon is dead.
Joy doesn’t stop.
“She’s not just obsessed with finding the Red Dragon,” Suzy whispers in my ear. “She has to keep herself busy from thinking about what happens when Justin and Charlie return.”
As soon as she says it, it becomes obvious to me. Joy’s entire future hangs in the balance as Charlie will try to call Justin in the waking world, the ‘real’ world, and get him to remember the daughter he has in the dream.
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“Oh, my my my,” Suzy rocks Joy as Joy cries into her grandmother’s hug. “Joy, how long have you thought the Red Dragon is dead?”
Joy cries. “On my birthday,” she says.
Ah, when we couldn’t summon the Red Dragon, and when she talked about how ‘Red’ was one of the things that made her sixth birthday fun.
“She has to be dead!”
“Well, you know,” Suzy says. “She could be dead, that’s true. But can I tell you something?”
Joy nods, her head buried in Suzy’s chest.
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Joy helms Bonny’s Revenge.
We sail past the moon, which Joy and Charlie visited only a couple of months ago. We sail past Mars, zoom past the asteroid belt and the solar system.
Joy doesn’t even look aside, checking for a facility that can hold a dragon.
“Joy, you just skipped over a lot of planets,” Suzy tells her.
“She’s not there,” Joy says confidently without looking at Suzy.
Bonny’s Revenge flies faster, until we reach a planet made of metal.
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Justin disappears first.
Joy looks at Suzy, then at Charlie.
“I guess it’s morning,” Charlie says calmly, sitting on the sofa. “I’ll wake up early, Joy. I’ll ask my Mom to use the phone when I come back from school. I’ll call him, I promise.”
Joy nods. I have never seen her as speechless as this. She is overwhelmed by whatever may happen once Charlie reaches her father in the waking world and reminds him that he is raising a girl in his dreams.
“See you tomorrow, Joy,” Charlie says.
He looks down, and suddenly he’s gone.
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At Charley’s question, Joy’s expression becomes serious.
“Where is Red, Dad?”
I’ve been here long enough to hear about Joy’s legendary friend, the Red Dragon. She hadn’t been heard of or seen since Suzy and I were summoned, since Joy first left Justin’s dream.
“I don’t know,” he shrugs. Then his expression turns more serious as well. “Why would you think I know?”
“I just realized,” Joy says. “That in all the adventures I had with her, in all the times I rode her, there is no way I wouldn’t have made her real. Red didn’t just disappear because you woke up, Dad. Red is permanent. No one killed her. So she’s still alive. Where did she go?”
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“She saw us!” Joy yells. “She looked right at us and saw us!”
Justin nods. “I think she saw us, too.”
“Was that a dragon?” Charlie whispers. “An actual dragon?!”
“Why’d you do that? What’s the danger?” Joy is upset with her father. “We could have talked to her! We could have played with her! We could have asked about Red’s sister dragons!”
Justin shakes his head. “We can’t be seen, Joy.”
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Charlie had just tried to summon his father, and even with Joy’s help - I don’t know if that actually helps or not - but in any case, he failed. And then Joy said it was her fault.
“When I met Eddie,” Joy begins to explain, clearly feeling horrible, “we played, and I… I touched him. I wanted to play with him so much! So he became real! And then he died…”
Charlie shakes his head. He doesn’t understand.
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“What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to bring back General Hawk.”
“Hmmm…”
I step back and give him space. He has his eyes closed and he looks like he’s trying to summon up a mystical force.
He opens his eyes and looks around.
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“Son, what’s the matter?”
His face is worried and his voice is full of concern, when he says, “I want to do something for Joy. But I’m afraid of something Red said.”
“Who’s Red?”
“Red - I mean, the Red Dragon. She warned us about this a few years ago and we didn’t understand. I’m afraid that… Yeah. She warned us back when I couldn’t bring Mary back. That’s why she warned us.”
“Son, what are you talking about?”
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“Ha ha!” Joy yells out. “Adventure with my grandparents! Let’s go!”
My granddaughter, the one I just found out about yesterday, is taking us out in Bonny’s Revenge, hers and Justin’s flying pirate warship. She is showing us Justin’s world, Justin’s dream, the world she lives in, the dangerous, crazy, adventure-filled place she lives in. But a few seconds ago she pointed to Mars and spotted the Martian Space Pirates (I guess that’s what they’re called) heading towards us.
Oh, boy. I’ve been with Justin in other people’s dreams. I was with him fighting the most frightening dark monster in the streets of London. I was with him stuck in a dream where he couldn’t find the way out. I knew by this time their life was not easy.
“Let’s get them!” Joy runs to the wheel. “You’ll watch me in action!”
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