We Sled With Dragons (14 page)

“WE'RE FLOATING INTO
the Arctic Ocean,” Oliver declared.

In the distance, the dogs stood beside the sled on the edge of the mainland, barking as their masters floated away on an island of ice.

Celia's shoulders sagged.

She should have known.

For her and her brother, it was pretty certain that whenever something could go wrong, it would.

On shore, she saw the dogs looking around at the walruses and at each other and then, lastly, at a polar bear as it came charging through the snow.

Huskies are very loyal dogs and very intelligent too. At this point, their little dog brains must have been struggling between their loyalty and their intelligence. Loyalty told them to stay and look after their masters. Intelligence told them that six dogs were no match for a hungry polar bear. Intelligence, it seemed, won out. They took off together hauling the sled behind, barking and racing back in the direction from which they'd come.

The polar bear ignored the dogs, rushing instead into the middle of the herd of walruses. Most of the walruses dove into the water to escape, but some of the bigger ones turned to fight. Oliver and Celia had seen enough nature programs to know what gruesome scene would come next.

They turned away. Hearing the roars and growls of bear-on-walrus combat was enough for them, they didn't need to see it too.

Fleeing walruses raced beneath the surface to the ice field on the opposite shore. Some of the walruses came by the little chunk of ice on which the twins were floating, bumping it and making it tilt and shudder in the water. Some of them tore chunks off as they rushed by, knocking holes and watery cracks into it.

“Watch it!” Oliver yelled, as if the panicked walruses could understand.

Another bumped into the ice floe, and another. Oliver lost his footing and fell again. Celia grabbed him and pulled him to the center, where the ice was the most stable. They looked to the distant field of ice, the path to the North Pole, where the walruses were leaping back onto the ice with a great flurry of roars and honks. The twins were drifting away from it.

Instead of going toward the ice, they were being pushed out to sea. With just their tent and a few bags of cheese puffs that Oliver had brought in for a late-night snack, they didn't have enough supplies to last very long.

“If we don't get across to that ice,” said Oliver, “we'll never survive on the ocean.”

“Duh,” said Celia.

She tried to come up with an idea. Random thoughts raced through her head, about Djibouti and dragons, Janice and squirrels, the theme song from
The World's Best Rodeo Clown.
For those of us who have ever had to come up with an idea, we know how annoying it can be when other thoughts keep popping up to distract us.

“Think, Celia!” she told herself. They were getting farther and farther into the open water. “Stop thinking about rodeo clowns!”

“That's it!” said Oliver. “You did it!”

“What?” said Celia. “What did I do?”

“Rodeo clowns!” Oliver cheered and started taking apart their tent.

“Huh?” Celia wondered. It wasn't usual for her to be the puzzled one.

“Help me get the tent apart,” said Oliver. “Quickly.”

Celia hesitated.

“Come on!” Oliver yelled. “We don't want to miss our chance! We need to rope a walrus!”

“We need to
what
?”

“It was your idea!” said Oliver. “We're gonna snag a walrus with this tent. He'll drag us to shore.”

Celia looked at the water. Only a few walruses were racing below. If they didn't do it now, they'd miss their chance. She rushed over and helped Oliver with the tent.

“Okay,” he said. “When a walrus passes under, we'll drop it over the side and it'll swim right into the tent like a net. Then it'll drag us to shore.”

“What if the tent breaks?” Celia wondered.

“It won't,” said Oliver.

“How do you know?”

“Because you made me watch
Celebrity Fashion Crimes,
” said Oliver.

Celia remembered what Madam Mumu said about her tent dress. Warm, fireproof . . . and indestructible.

“On three,” said Oliver as two walruses raced toward them just below the surface of the water. “One . . . two . . . three!”

They tossed the tent into the water. The walruses hit it as they came out from underneath. Oliver and Celia leaned back and dug their heels into the ice. The large sea mammals were too big and moving too fast. They dragged the twins across the top of their floating island. The back side pulled up into the air as the walruses surged forward; the front edge plowed into the water and tipped them forward.

“Oops!” Oliver shouted, just before he and his sister slid off the end.

As the ice-cold water hit him like a punch in the face and the walruses pulled him below the surface, he realized that he probably should have thought the plan through a little harder.

Just before she went under, Celia remembered why she was the one who usually came up with the plans.

CELIA TURNED HER
head to the side, still holding the tent in both her fists, and holding her breath with just as much effort. She opened her eyes and saw the blurry shape of her brother stilling clinging to his strip of the tent. She was glad he hadn't let go either. If they made it out of the water, she wanted the chance to yell at him.

Of course, she figured, they'd probably freeze to death seconds later.

She could tell by the pull against her heavy clothes that they were moving very fast. The walruses were in a panic now and plunging forward blindly, making loud bell-like noises. You would probably panic too if you were fleeing from a polar bear and suddenly some kids dropped a tent over your head. You probably would not make loud bell-like noises, as you do not have a walrus's air-filled throat sac to make them with, which is also why you couldn't hold your breath very long. Oliver and Celia were just realizing that now.

The cold water began to feel like a thousand tiny needles poking into their skin. Celia couldn't feel her toes or her fingers. Oliver wasn't certain he still had a nose.

Suddenly, they broke the surface, bursting into the light and the air. The walruses crashed up onto the ice sheet, sliding forward and dragging the twins behind. They let go of the tent and rolled onto their sides as the two creatures bucked and bellowed underneath the fabric.

“They looked like they're playing ghosts . . .” Oliver panted. “Except . . . they don't have . . . eye holes.”

“You . . .” Celia panted. Her whole body started to shiver. ”. . . almost drowned us.”

“We . . . made it . . . didn't we?”

Celia looked around. “No,” she said.

They hadn't made it across the water to the other side. They were back on the ice sheet where they had started. They were no closer to the North Pole than before, except now they were wet and had no dogs and no supplies. They saw the tracks of the dogsled leading away through the snow.

“The walruses must have turned around while we were underwater,” said Oliver. “They couldn't see through the sheet.”

“Wait,” said Celia. “That means the bear is here too!” She turned and saw the polar bear battling the scar-faced walrus closer to her than she liked to be to the front of the classroom in school. She jumped backward, pulling her brother with her.

The two walruses the twins had ridden shook off the tent and rushed forward to help their fellow walrus. When three walruses fight a polar bear, the sound is something like an angry mob in Djibouti, except with more bone-crunching noises.

“I think we'd better get out of here,” Celia suggested.

“We still need to get across the ice somehow,” said Oliver.

“We'll freeze to death if we don't get somewhere warm and dry. Have you ever heard of hypothermia?”

“Duh,” said Oliver. “It's when your body temperature gets below 95 degrees and you can't get warm and your organs stop working and you freeze to death. I told you I watch as much educational programming as you do and I'm tired of you thinking I'm dumb.”

“I don't think you're dumb!” said Celia.

“You always act like you do.”

“You're my brother; that's how I have to act.”

“Who says?”

“Everyone!” said Celia. “That's how sisters treat their little brothers!”

“I'm not your little brother! You're only older by three minutes!”

“And forty-two seconds,” said Celia. “
You
always leave that out.”

“Because it doesn't matter! We're the same age!”

“You're my little brother!”

“I am not!”

“You are!”

As they argued, the battle between bear and walrus raged behind them. Flesh was torn, teeth gnashed, and the ice was stained with blood, yet the fight continued. Every time the bear swung his claws at one walrus, another would swing his entire body into the bear from his exposed side. Thousands of pounds of fat and muscle crashed into each other. Oliver and Celia hardly noticed.

“Well, I'm not dumb!” Oliver yelled.

“I never said you were!”

“You always say I am and you never say you're sorry!”

“I'm sorry that
you
think that
I
think that
you're
dumb!” said Celia.

“That's not an apology!” said Oliver.

“Well, I have nothing to be sorry about! I didn't come up with the plan that gave us hypothermia!”

“At least I had a plan!”

“I have a plan too!”

“Oh yeah? What's that?”

“To keep yelling at you! Because yelling at you is keeping me warm!”

“Me too!” yelled Oliver.

“So we need to keep fighting or we'll freeze to death!”

“But now I'm not angry at you anymore!”

“What if I called you dumb again?” she yelled.

“It's not the same if you don't mean it.” Oliver stopped yelling. He shivered.

“What if I do mean it?” Celia yelled, getting right in his face.

“You're my sister,” said Oliver. “I know that you don't really mean it.”

He didn't feel angry anymore. Actually, he didn't feel anything anymore. Just tired. Had he been thinking more clearly, he would have known that being suddenly sleepy and not caring about things like freezing to death or bear-and-walrus battles going on behind you were symptoms of hypothermia.

Celia glanced over his shoulder at the bear-and-walrus fight. It looked like they had reached a standoff. The bear was circling the walruses, and the walruses were huddled together, growling and snorting at the bear. Neither side had the strength for another attack, but neither side wanted to retreat.

Celia felt the same way. She was tired, but she knew that fighting was the only way to keep both of them warm, so she was not going to retreat. If they stopped arguing, their body temperature would go down even more. Oliver might already have hypothermia, so she had to yell at him again, she had to get him mad. She thought of the one thing that would insult him more than anything else.

“I bet you're not mad because you like exploring!” Celia accused him. “You're just like Mom and Dad!”

Oliver shrugged. He wasn't mad. In fact, it was kind of true. The walrus-and-bear battle was pretty cool. He'd never seen anything like it on TV. And he liked driving the dogsled too.

“Maybe you're right,” he said.

“No!” Celia yelled. “I'm not right! You need to be mad! You're Oliver Navel, my brother, and you hate exploring and you hate when I'm right and you want to argue with me because I always make you go first and act like you're dumb!”

“But I don't want to argue anymore,” said Oliver. He thought if he could just sleep for a minute, maybe he'd be ready to argue when he woke up. He closed his eyes.

“Hey!” Celia snapped in his face. “You need to stay awake! Focus! Get angry!”

“Can'tgetangryatmysister,” mumbled Oliver. He started to sway on his feet. He felt silly. He felt confused. He couldn't talk straight. “Sister,” he repeated. “You're my best friend.”

“You're mine too, Oliver,” said Celia. If Oliver was in his right mind he never would have said that to her face and she would never have said it back to him, but times were desperate. She had to do something drastic. She slapped him across the face and yelled, “Wake up!” She slapped him again.

He smiled dumbly, half opening his eyes. He wasn't even shivering anymore.

“Don't close your eyes!” Celia yelled.

Hearing the noise of Celia's yelling, the polar bear turned its head and looked toward her. It sniffed the air. The walruses bellowed and puffed their chests. That was all the encouragement the polar bear needed to go after easier prey. The two human children wouldn't give him as much meat as a walrus, not by a long shot, but they'd be as easy to eat as cheese puffs.

He turned and began to stalk toward them.

Celia saw the bear coming over her shoulder. It was moving slowly, tired from its fight. Its mouth was ringed red with walrus blood; chunks of torn blubber clung to its claws. Its dark eyes showed no emotion, like the twins' eyes after five hours of Saturday morning cartoons.

The walruses, all three of them exhausted and perhaps still angry for the tent trick that Oliver had tried to pull on them, immediately dove into the water and swam for the far shore of the ice field. They weren't about to risk their lives to save two human children. They had their own walrus families to worry about. Before he dove, the scar-faced one may have even waved a mocking flipper at Celia.

“Jerk walrus,” Celia grumbled. “Oliver,” she turned back to her brother. “You have to wake up . . . we have to run. The bear's coming . . .”

“I'm just gonna take a quick nap.” Oliver sighed, flopping down in the snow. “You can wake me when the show's over.”

“You're not making sense,” said Celia. “We're not watching TV. A polar bear is really coming to eat us.”

“Offer it some cheese puffs.” Oliver laid down in the snow. It made perfect sense to him. Why would a polar bear want to eat him when cheese puffs have that extra-cheesy crunch?

“No!” Celia begged. “Come on! Please!” She grabbed Oliver's arm and pulled, trying to lift him. She couldn't, so she started to drag him through the snow, struggling backward while facing the bear. It lowered its head and kept creeping forward, its cruel eyes fixed on her. “Shoo, bear!” Celia shouted. “Shoo!”

The bear did not shoo. It rushed toward her. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the canister of bear repellent, pointing it at the bear, turning her ahead away, and squinting back as she sprayed. The bear ran right into the mist and stopped. It shook its head. It blinked.

“Yeah!” said Celia, sniffing the air. It smelled peppery. “Stay back!”

As she dragged Oliver away, the bear stepped forward with every step she took backward. Celia stepped and the bear stepped. Celia stopped and the bear stopped. Every time it got too close she raised the bear spray and gave him a spritz. The bear backed off and growled, low and threatening. Celia knew then that if she turned her back or if she fell or if—no, when—she ran out of bear repellent, both she and her brother would meet a most gruesome end.

She had to keep moving.

The fate of the Navels was in her very cold, shaking hands.