We Sled With Dragons (12 page)

CELIA LEANED BACK
on the sled as they slid quietly across the ice. If she didn't think too much about the danger their parents faced or the terrible ordeal that lay ahead, she could almost enjoy herself.

Oliver was thinking the same thing as he held the handlebars and practiced leaning from side to side to steer the dogs.

“Mush! Mush!” he repeated and the dogs picked up speed. The freezing wind bit into the tiny part of his face that was exposed. He pulled up his scarf all the way to his goggles and felt pretty cozy.

On the horizon, jagged black mountains jutted into the sky. In front of them, the ice was smooth and hard and the dogs avoided any obstacles with ease.

Mushing wasn't so bad, he thought. It was even fun to say.

“Mush!” he said again, and the dogs barked cheerfully in reply.

Celia quickly grew bored riding on the sled, staring at the unchanging landscape. She pulled out the beat-up leather journal again and flipped through it. She flipped past the drawings of El Dorado and the Amazon, past the explorer's early notes, toward the end of his search where he'd drawn the pictures of the tree and the monsters and the man who looked like Santa Claus.

All lost places are the same lost places,
the explorer had written.
As all lost souls are the same lost souls. The desire to be found burns in all of us.

“What's that supposed to mean?” said Celia, flipping more pages. She read below a picture of Santa Claus:
Odin, god of battle, wisdom, and prophecy, ruler of the godly city of Asgard, crossed the rainbow bridge to Yggdrasil and hung himself upon it. Nine days he hung on the World Tree, as Ratatosk the squirrel hurled insults and Nidhogg the dragon gnawed at the roots. Odin looked to all the world below in all directions and saw all things to come for men and gods. He would be swallowed in the battle at the end of time but he would come back again and again. Time is a circle.

“I think we aren't really looking for Santa Claus,” said Celia.

“Just because you don't believe in him doesn't mean I have to stop,” said Oliver.

“No,” said Celia. “What I mean is, we're looking for Odin. Who is the same as Santa Claus. It's like reincarnation in Tibet. All things come back again and again. Time is a circle.”

“Are you okay?” said Oliver. “You sound like an explorer.”

Celia didn't answer her brother. She just studied the picture of the bearded man, ruler of a city called Asgard. Her mother had said that was the same as Atlantis. She studied the pictures of a buck-toothed squirrel and a dragon. She really didn't want to run into any of them. They were all just stories, right?

“Hey look,” said Oliver.

“I'm thinking,” said Celia. Her parents had never told her that explorers had to do so much reading.

“Just look up,” he urged her.

“I'm trying to figure out where we're going,” she said. “This book could help us.”

“Just look up for a second.”

“Fine, what is it?” Celia looked up from the journal and gasped at the sky.

Green ribbons of the aurora borealis, the northern lights, waved at them from the twilight. Ancient Vikings thought the northern lights were flashes of light shining off the armor of the Valkyries, Odin's maidens who ruled over the field of battle.

Oliver and Celia knew that the northern lights were caused by charged particles hitting the atmosphere. They'd seen
Wally Worm's Science Sensation.
Educational programming was dull, but they sure did learn a lot from it.

Not on purpose, of course.

“It's like a nature show,” Oliver marveled.

“Madam Mumu was right,” said Celia. “Wow.”

Oliver craned his head back to stare at the light show above and watched as it twinkled and waved in the sky, pink and green reflecting off the white and blue ice.

“Watch out!” Celia shouted.

“What?” Oliver looked down. “Aack!” he screamed.

The dogs were running straight toward a crack in the ice, too wide to jump, a deep crevasse with glistening white sides and sharp edges.

“Tell them to turn!” Celia yelled.

“I'm trying!” said Oliver, pulling on the ropes. “Mush! Mush!”

The dogs sped up.

“That's not it!”

“I don't speak dog!”

He heaved the sled to the side and leaned with his whole body. The dogs yipped and barked as they turned along the edge of the crack at the last moment. Their legs didn't slip at all, but the sled swung with the momentum and the back runners slipped into the open air. Oliver, standing on the runners, lost his footing and dropped off the back, hanging from the sled by his hands. The compass clattered away into the cold water. His legs kicked helplessly above the frozen abyss.

“Don't let me fall!” Oliver yelled. “Mush! Mush!”

Celia dove across the back of the sled to grab her brother's arms. Ice and snow kicked up around them.

The dogs charged forward, struggling to pull the sled back onto solid ground. They strained, Celia pulled, and the sled rose and straightened away from the crack.

Oliver slumped over the handlebars, out of breath. They were moving smoothly again. The dogs panted and slowed to a trot. Oliver was panting too. On the plus side, he didn't really feel cold anymore. He was sweating inside his snowsuit.

“Let's not do that again,” said Celia.

Oliver did not disagree. He swallowed hard. On the plus side, he was still alive. On the minus side, he'd lost the compass, just like Celia said he would. If they didn't get lost and freeze to death, she'd probably kill him as soon as she found out. Or she'd give him one of those “told you so” looks. Those were almost worse than dying.

“Mush.” He sighed. The dogs gave him a long look, but didn't speed up. “Lazy dogs,” he muttered.

“That's what people say about us,” said Celia.

Oliver frowned at her. He looked back at the dogs. He felt bad for making them work so hard. But he felt bad about making himself work so hard too.

“Sorry, guys,” he muttered. “I don't want to be here either, but we've got to keep going.”

“Are you talking to the dogs?” said Celia.

“I'm building trust,” said Oliver. “Like on
Dog University.
”

“They can't understand you,” said Celia.

“Dogs understand people,” said Oliver. “Professor Pup says so.”

“Professor Pup is made up for TV.”

“So now you don't believe in Santa Claus or Professor Pup?”

“I
believe
my hands are numb and my toes are numb. I
believe
this whole thing is really dumb, but I'm doing it anyway because this journal says we have to find the city of Asgard, which will be Atlantis, in which will be hidden the Lost Library of Alexandria, and we need it to save Mom and Dad.”

She held up the leather journal and waved it in the air.

“You're just making it more confusing by reading that book,” said Oliver.

“It's not confusing,” she told him. She took a deep breath and let out a river of words. “The Lost Library was hidden in Atlantis by the explorer who wrote this journal. Atlantis is really in the North Pole, the North Pole is the home of Santa Claus, Santa Claus is Saint Nicholas but also the Norse god Odin, Odin lived in a secret city called Asgard, but Asgard was destroyed sometime long, long ago (just like Atlantis because they're the same place), and we're here to find the ruins of that city buried in the ice so we can trade for Mom and Dad and Sir Edmund can use the Lost Library to raise Atlantis and rule the world. See?”

“Duh,” said Oliver.

“You understand now?” Celia asked.

“I said duh, didn't I?”

“I just don't want to have to explain it again.”

“I've got a brain,” said Oliver. “I watch as much educational programming as you.”

“Do not.”

“Do too.”

“Do not.”

“Do too.”

“What's the definition of
absquatulate
?”

“Uh . . .”

“See? If you
actually
paid attention when we watched educational programming, you would know that ab-squat-choo-late means to leave in a hurry.
Talking to you is not so great, it's time you must absquatulate,
” she sang, imitating Wally the Word Worm's puppet voice.

“Whatever,” said Oliver, looking back to the dogs. “Mush! Mush! Mush!”

With a loud sigh, the lead dog started to pull. The others resisted a moment and then joined in, and once again the sled started moving. Oliver tried to guess which way they had been heading before. He still didn't want to tell his sister that he'd lost the compass, although the longer he waited, the worse it would be when she found out. Maybe he wouldn't need to tell her at all. Maybe the dogs would just know which way was north and they'd get there before Celia figured out that Oliver had screwed everything up, just like she said he would.

He was glad she couldn't see his face. She'd know right away that something was wrong. The trouble with having a twin sister was that you couldn't hide anything from her.

“Mush!” he said again, his voice cracking slightly with nerves. Celia didn't seem to notice.

It was a good thing that the twins decided to absquatulate when they did, because at that moment, across a thousand yards of ice, a polar bear stirred, smelling the scent of dogs and humans on the wind. It sniffed the air and began to follow the scent, with just one polar bear thought thrumming through its polar bear brain: dinner.

THE SLED STOPPED
in front of a giant wall of ice, five times as tall as Oliver and Celia. The dogs rested. The twins got off the sled and studied the barrier that stretched as far as they could see in both directions.

“It's like giants built a wall to keep people out,” said Oliver.

“There is no such thing as giants,” said Celia. She flipped through the book. She found the part she was looking for and read it out loud.
“There is a place in the far north where the land ends and the frozen ocean begins. A great wall of ice, at least twenty feet high, marks the border. It is a frozen wave, crashing ashore in slow motion. The ice floes beyond grind and crash into one another, pressing upward, forming great ridges, ever shifting, mountains of ice raised and torn down—moment to moment, day to day—so the landscape is never the same twice. Every explorer in the Arctic sees a new place, one that has never been seen before, one that will never be seen again.”

“Huh?” said Oliver.

“This is the ocean,” said Celia, putting her hand on the ice. “It's just frozen. But it's moving.”

“Great,” said Oliver. “But how do we get over it? I don't think it's just going to move out of the way.”

From within the ice came a groaning, the pressure of the entire frozen ocean pushing against the land. A boulder of snow tumbled down the side. The dogs whimpered, eager to run but frightened of the grinding and crashing in front of them.

“We'll have to climb,” said Oliver. “And then we'll haul the dogs up one by one. And then we'll all pull up the sled.”

Celia didn't answer. She knew they weren't strong enough to lift even one of the dogs, let alone all of them and the sled loaded with supplies. “I want to look in the journal one more time,” she said.

“You and that book!” Oliver complained. “That book is just making this adventure more and more like school! Put it away! Let's climb!”

“We can't climb,” said Celia.

“Just because you hate climbing doesn't mean we don't have to do it!”

“You hate climbing too.”

“Not all the time.”

“Name one time you've liked climbing.” Celia crossed her arms and waited. She tapped her foot in the snow. The wind howled.

Oliver couldn't think of a time. He really did hate climbing. “Fine,” he said. “You have a better idea?”

“Listen.” Celia read aloud from the journal again.
“To the edge of the land now, the great wall of ice is before me, and I hesitate. The pressure ridge rises higher than I or my sled can go, and alone I will not be able get the dogs over. I must find a way up soon, before the polar bear stalking me makes its attack.”

“Polar bear?” Oliver glanced over his shoulder. He didn't believe in dragons, but he knew polar bears were real. He also knew they were some of the meanest, fiercest, most powerful predators in the world. He did not want to sit around waiting to become dinner for one. All he saw behind them, however, was an endless field of white.

“That's not the point,” said Celia. “He couldn't lift his sled either, so he went to find a way up. If he found one, so can we. Come on!”

She jumped onto the sled. “Mush! Mush!” she called and the dogs started off along the wall.

“Hey, wait up! That's my job!” Oliver jumped on the runners again, nudging Celia out of the way. She climbed back to the front to sit down and ride.

“What's that?” Celia pointed. Up ahead, they could see big lumps in the ice, with bits of petrified wood sticking out. As they approached, they could make out frozen tins and broken crates. It was the remains of an old camp. They stopped and hopped off the sled. Celia dug around and pulled one of the tins out of the ice. It was open and empty, but stamped on the bottom was the name “S. A. Andrée” and the date “1897.”

“It's like an old campsite,” said Oliver. “Who was S. A. Andrée?”

“Some old explorer, I guess,” said Celia. “But look!” She pointed to a narrow cut in the ice that ran up the cliff sideways like a ramp.

“See?” said Celia. “We don't have to climb after all!”

The dogs raced forward with the sled, bouncing over the uneven ground and running up the narrow cut in the ice.

“Wait up!” Oliver and Celia ran behind the sled, listening nervously to the sounds of thumping, hammering, and crashing from beneath the ice. They used the cobalt-blue walls of ice beside them to help themselves along, moving side by side. A narrow slit of blue sky was visible at the end of the ramp.

“Is it just me,” Oliver panted. “Or is this ramp getting steeper?”

“You're just in bad shape,” said Celia. “Maybe if you didn't eat so many cheese puffs this wouldn't be so hard. Come on. The dogs are already up at the top.”

They kept climbing, one slippery step in front of the other.

“Is it just me,” Oliver said, panting, a few minutes later. “Or is that slit of sky getting narrower?”

“You're just seeing things,” said Celia.

“Then why are we closer together than we were before?”

Celia looked over at her brother to where their shoulders were touching. They had been an arm's length apart when they started up the ramp after the dogs.

“The ice is closing up,” said Celia. “Run!”

The twins sprinted, scrambling side by side as the ice squeezed them closer and closer together. The frozen ocean was heaving their ramp upward as the walls closed in. They ran for the sky, pushing at each other so neither fell behind, and, legs burning with the strain, they dove to the surface, sliding into the snow as the path of ice sealed itself behind them and a new ridge of ice boulders rose where the two pieces smashed together with the entire force of the Arctic Ocean.

The twins lay on their backs, looking up at the panting team of dogs. After a moment, Celia sat up.

“Wow,” she said.

Oliver sat up too.

In front of them, the Arctic Ocean stretched out like the surface of the moon. It was covered in ice boulders and ridges where ice floes slammed against one another, like the one they'd just escaped.

They watched one ridge growing taller in front of them as another collapsed with a thunderous roar and a black gap of water appeared a few feet wide. They heard a cracking sound all around them.

“We'd better keep moving before the landscape changes again,” said Celia.

“Okay,” said Oliver, brushing himself off and shaking his hands around to get the feeling back into them. “Can I, like, keep driving?” he asked.

“Go for it,” she said, happy that she got to keep riding. And, if she had to admit it, happy she could keep reading too. It turned out that you could learn a lot from a book.

Oliver smiled, feeling happier than he had any right to feel under the circumstances. “Mush! Mush!” he called, and the dogs launched themselves forward once more. He leaned and pulled on the handlebars to steer them around the uneven landscape.

The sled bumped along, jostling Celia right and left, almost knocking her off every few minutes. She struggled to read the journal some more, but she was bouncing too much to focus on the words. She looked at the pictures.

She saw another drawing of the bearded man, this time doing battle with a giant dragon. The shape was a lot like the creature whose bones they'd seen back in the cave. The pliosaur.

There is no such thing as dragons, she told herself. She couldn't let Oliver see that she was worried. He hated even the smallest lizards. A dragon would really freak him out.

She flipped the page quickly. She glanced at the image of the giant tree sticking out from the ice. Could this be yggdrasil, the World Tree? What the heck was a World Tree, anyway? Looking up at the snowy landscape in all directions, she was pretty sure there couldn't be any trees here at all. It was the middle of the ocean. The solid ground beneath them was only a few feet thick, maybe less, and it was always moving. She shut the book and put it away

“Hup-hup!” Oliver called, and the dogs ran faster. He hoped they were still going the right direction.

After a few hours, the ground flattened out. The older ice was smoother. They could slide over it more easily, with fewer turns and twists, so the dogs sped up. The graceful charge of the dogsled, the ribbons of light in the twilight sky, and the strange crackling from beneath the ice made the Navel twins very sleepy.

Looking back toward the horizon, Oliver thought he saw the silhouette of a polar bear stalking them, but when he turned to look again, it was gone. Maybe he'd made it up. The cold made thinking harder, like it was freezing up their brains, which, in fact, it was.

Oliver struggled to stay awake as he steered, leaning forward on the sled to rest his legs. Celia found her eyelids getting heavier and heavier too. With every cheerful bark of the dogs or crash of a distant ice floe, she snapped them open again, but it didn't last. Her eyelids pressed down on the world.

“Mush, mush,” she heard her brother call, not as loudly as before, almost a whisper, but the dogs kept moving, pressed forward by their own love of running on the open ice.

They hardly need me at all, thought Oliver, watching through heavy eyelids as the dogs found their own way around a crack in the ice, pulling the sled safely to the other side of the narrow channel of water. “Good dogs,” he murmured. He leaned on the handlebars and closed his eyes. “Just for a second,” he told himself. “Just to rest for second.”

On the sled, Celia was already sound asleep, and Oliver soon followed. Let it never be said of the Navel twins that there is a danger too great, or a condition too perilous, that they could not sleep through it.

It was their good fortune to have a team of skillful sled dogs pulling them along who needed no more encouragement than the joy of running.

It was their bad fortune, however, to still have a polar bear on their trail.

The great beast moved slowly among the floes, stopping between boulders to sniff the air, swimming across narrow channels of water where the ice had broken, tracking them. With the scarcity of food this far north, it has been said that a hungry polar bear will sometimes track its prey for hundreds of miles across the ice.

And this bear, we should note, was very hungry.