第1章 MOLLIE, ME, AND YE

To my angel mom, in memory of Dad And to the girl with the pearl

CALL ME CALAMITY CAT.

That's what the news media called me. My name's actually spelled with a K, and Kat is for Katlin.

Calamity is for calamity. An event causing great damage or distress. If you look it up in the dictionary, which is something I often do—look up words—you'll notice it's a noun.

I've made it a verb.

Kat's calamiting again.

I suppose I was calamitous before I ever showed up in a little sky-high town in the Colorado Rockies—but that's when my calamiting reached world status.

? ? ?

Friday night in Cripple Creek is a two-step back in time, with honky-tonk and colored lights and mobscenities—as my brother, Dillon, puts it—spilling into the streets. It's the Wild West all lit up.

That's when we checked in. The Empire Hotel had vacancies, though you wouldn't know it by the human logjam in the lobby. We'd been on the road since glory knows what inglorious hour, after slouching in the car (as opposed to sleeping) at a restless stop (as opposed to rest), right in the middle of truckers' night out.

While Dillon and Dad were waiting in line, I was crouched behind a couch in the lounge, shaking a pair of dice. They were my own dice and came in handy at times like these.

Handy, as in small cash gain.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!" I said. I said it seriously enough for it to sound real, as if the roll would be strictly chance. "Seven! Seven… c'mon…" I tossed the dice across the red-and-gold carpet… they hit the base trim of the wall…

One was a six. I expected that. The other—

Yes! A one.

I grinned at the kid next to me, who was down on his knees by my side. And down on his luck. So far, I'd collected three dollars from him—two ones, two quarters, four dimes, and six pennies—OK, he was four cents short, but I had let it slide.

I stuck out my hand, palm up.

"I only have a five," he said. "I'm not giving you that."

"You will."

It was his turn to roll. But first, he popped up to peer over the couch he'd been sitting on, moments before, fidgety and bored. Not one to miss an opportunity, I had approached him and grinned, flashing my gold-capped tooth. "Got any money?"

"What's it to you?" he'd said, his eyes round as nickels.

I showed him my dice and explained the rules. "I call and roll—if I call it right, you pay me a dollar. You call and roll—if you call it wrong, you pay me a dollar."

"So, whatever it is," he said, protruding his lower lip, "I pay you a dollar."

"Let me finish. If I call it wrong, you keep your dollar. If you call it right—"

"You give me a dollar!"

I shrugged. "Fair enough."

The game was going well.

"All clear," he said, dropping back behind the couch. He cupped the dice. "C'mon! Twelve… twelve…" He rolled… there was the six—

There was another six.

"Twelve!" he said

Was he catching on? I reluctantly pulled out the coins he'd given me and let them fall through my fingers.

"Hey," he whined, scrambling to pick them up.

"This is what you gave me for a dollar," I said. "Ninety-six cents."

He blinked at me.

"I'm being generous," I went on. "You still owe me a dollar. A whole dollar."

He surrendered with a grunt.

My turn. So far, it was working better than I'd thought. I could always, or nearly always, count on one die coming up six. All I had to do was guess on the other one. More often than not, I got it right. How long it took my opponent to suspect was the only risk involved.

That and Dad catching me.

"Nine," I said, and rolled.

Eight. A six and a two.

"Ha!" said the kid, and stuck out his hand.

"Nope. You keep your dollar, remember?"

He frowned, tilting his head.

"Hurry," I said. "We don't have all night."

He snatched up the dice, pretended to spit on them, and said, "Four!"

I smiled to myself: So he wasn't catching on after all.

He rolled. Four it was: two twos. Leaning over, I adjusted my glasses and inspected the dice.

"It was a four!" he challenged. "Like I said!"

"I know." I spun one die around—the black spot was still intact. I fingered the other one…

"Hand it over," he said, his nostrils flaring.

"Now we're even," I explained. "You owed me one."

His frown returned. Doubt was ticking away in his head. Maybe I'd underestimated him. Maybe it was time to quit. I picked up the dice and plunged them into my pocket. I felt the money there. I'd never make godzillions at this game, but two dollars were better than nothing.

And I knew what nothing was.

The kid finally said, "How do the rules go?"

As luck would have it, Dad called out my name.

"Katlin!"

I jumped up. He and Dillon were standing beyond a spittoon and some potted ferns. Dad hadn't seen me yet, but Dillon, good brother, had. He doesn't miss a thing.

"Kat," he said. "Let's go."

The kid said to me, "Wait!"

"Here, Dad!" I said, crawling over the couch.

"Wait! It's not fair!" The kid started pulling my shoe, the one with the floppy sole.

Dad looked in our direction. Hotel guests looked in our direction. A walrus of a woman draped in fur and holding a little dog looked in our direction.

"Lucas!" she bellowed.

Lucas—no wonder he hadn't told me his name—let go of my shoe. I tumbled off the couch, got to my feet, and, with Lucas trotting behind, went to Dillon and Dad.

Lucas went to the woman, who apparently was his mom, and said, "I gave her some money to fix her old shoe."

"What!" I blurted.

The woman patted his head. "Good boy!" To us she said proudly, "He'll make a great philanthropist."

"He'll make a great liar," I muttered, tugging Dad's arm for us to go.

The woman blinked at me from behind her tortoiseshell glasses, while her silky little dog, who wore a gold-and-jeweled collar that read duchess, yip-yipped.

"Katlin," said Dad, as he headed us toward the stairs, "what were you doing behind that couch?"

"I know what she was doing," said Dillon.

I glared arrows and other projectiles at him.

"Did he give you money?" asked Dad.

"Um… not exactly."

"Kat, we're not beggars. We're not subject to charity—"

"Somebody's got to make money in this family, haven't they?" I said it loud enough to put Dad on the spot, which wasn't difficult, considering he'd been developing this guilt fret for a long time, and considering several ears were aimed our direction.

"Hush!" he said.

Up the stairs we went.

I'M REALLY NOT THAT KIND OF PERSON, TO embarrass my dad in public. But I didn't want to give the money back, or part with my dice, and I could see it was coming to that.

We hadn't always been poor.

We used to have two cars that were nice and new.

We used to live in a nice big house. I called it my castle.

I used to go to a private school, where I had the best teachers, best books, computers, programs, even the best schoolmates. Anyway, they acted as if they were the best.

I used to have a horse. He wasn't a purebred, but that didn't matter to me, as long as he had a pure heart. He did, and I named him Angel. All my friends liked to ride him.

I used to have friends.

I used to invite one along when we went on vacations.

Now it was Dillon and Dad and me. But this wasn't a vacation—I was just trying to make it one.

We were outside Colorado Springs when Dillon fanned his fingers in front of my face, saying, "Don't look, Kat."

But I'd already seen the sign.

No apologies, I had this craze for gold.

As a kid, once I figured that gold wasn't just the color of my hair, I wanted everything gold. Gold bed, gold walls, gold shoes. Gold-rimmed glasses, gold jewelry. I got a golden-haired pony on my golden birthday—I had turned four on the fourth of April—and named her Goldie.

In the fifth grade, I saw the Tutankhamen exhibit, and it sent me soaring. All that molten wealth, formed into bugs and beasts and figures and faces. While we studied economics, I tracked the price of gold, and if you don't think reading tiny numbers is exciting to a twelve-year-old, you haven't done it yourself. When those numbers inch up, inch up, almost double, then sink like a stone, it does something to your pulse.

There was only one exception to my total gold thing: Mom's pearl ring. I'd worn it night and day from the moment she pressed it into my hands. Some things mean the world to you, no matter what.

? ? ?

So there we were rolling west—south actually, because Dad had got sleepy and taken the wrong interstate—and here was a real gold mine. I wouldn't miss it for a year's worth of fine-free weeks at the library.

I begged Dad to go.

He said his new employer wouldn't pay for frivolities. That had become a pet word with him, "frivolities," ever since we'd turned poor. It kept us from asking for too much.

"I'll pay with my lawn-mowing cash," I said. The very last of my savings, but—

"We don't have the time," he said. "We just lost half an hour."

"Don't we have one extra day?" I said. We had to be in San Francisco by Wednesday, but—

"That's pushing it," he said.

"Can't we do one fun thing?"

"No!"

Dillon groaned. He knew as well as I that when Dad yelled "No," "Yes" soon followed. That was a habit of his, which had only got worse after Mom's accident. He'd become uncertain of everything, and guilty as a thief he didn't do more for us.

Slumping in the front seat, Dillon said, "One fun thing. Cripple says it all."

"Gold says it all," I declared.

"The tour will be a detour," squawked Dad, and he took the next exit.

THE EMPIRE HOTEL WAS BUILT AROUND THE time of the first gold rush, and whoever owned it now was doing a good job keeping it shiny and warm, like gold itself. As we scurried up the stairs, I looked back down at Lucas, who was looking back up at me, tongue fully extended.

When we came to our rooms—mine at the dead end of a hall, Dillon and Dad's to the right—Dad said, "Trade." He held up my room key. It wasn't a plastic card you slide into a slot, but an honest-to-badness brass one that went into a keyhole, a keyhole you can peek through.

"For what?" I said. "The kid's money?"

"The dice. You were throwing your dice, weren't you?"

"Dad—"

"Gambling." He said it as if I had robbed a bank.

"But it's legal in Colorado."

"Legal isn't always ethical, Kat, or moral."

"Dad, we're straight down-the-hole broke."

He looked at me wearily. "Let me deal with that."

"I have to deal with it, too."

He looked at the carpet.

It was too true. The calamities that had fallen on us, one after another like dominoes—boulders, rather—troubled us all. But it's also true that after you've shuffled around for a time in your dire straits, as you do in an old pair of shoes, you almost get used to it.

The cracks don't pinch until you try to run.

"I can have a little fun," I reasoned, "and make a little money."

He was looking at me again. "We didn't come here to gamble."

"You ought to try it. You might get us out of the hole." Playing on his guilt—I was doing it again. "Since I'll be the one paying for the gold mine tour—"

"Gambling's illegal for children, Katlin, even in Colorado."

He had me there.

He was still holding up the key.

I was tired. We all were. The night before the rest stop, we'd parked along the road. The night before that, it was a Mega Mart lot. This was the first time we'd got a hotel, the first night we'd get to have beds. Dad figured his new boss wouldn't mind if one hotel charge showed up on the bill. I was ready to cozy between covers and jot in my journal and get more than a few winks' sleep, and be fresh for the tour tomorrow.

Reluctantly, I pulled out the dice. I tossed them back and forth in my palms. One came up a six. That was the trick die, the one I had drilled a hole into, in the single black dot, and filled with one of Dillon's small fishing leads, and plugged with putty and painted black again.

I gave him the normal one.

"Both," he said.

I stared innocently at him, while he stared knowingly back. I shrugged, and handed it over. What good was the trick die all by itself?

IN THE CARE HOME WHERE MOM LIES IS AN elevator the size of a small closet. Really small, as in five feet by five. Make that a cage and you have the flimsy contraption they use in the Mollie Kathleen. It's called a skip. Add nine passengers, one of whom is the guide, and you have instant phobia, if not hysteria.

For me, anyway.

Above ground, the cage dangles in kind of an oil rig structure—the hoist house. You stand in line and wait your turn; they pack you in and down you go—clink, rattle, whoosh!—like that.

There we were, Saturday morning, right where I'd begged for us to be, waiting to take the plunge. I fingered the dice in my pocket, which I'd talked Dad into returning with a promise to keep strictly as lucky charms.

I was tempted to turn my mom's ring, a habit of mine when I'm in deep thought.

Watching group after group squeeze into that cage—innocent, trusting humans, grandmothers, even—I was having my doubts. Why was it called a skip? Was that a subtle hint? Did smart people skip the whole thing, stay in the sunshine, breathe the sweet mountain air, keep their feet on solid ground? Maybe Dillon was right: There'd be nothing fun about this. I could let him and Dad tell me about it later.…

If they made it back up alive.

Then it was our turn.

? ? ?

"I feel like we're in a shark basket they let down in the deep," I told Dillon, who stood with his back against me. "You stick out your arm and you lose it."

"I wouldn't stick out a finger," said the man to my left—on my left, literally, his bulk boring into me like a bull against a post.

I didn't look at him; you don't look at strangers who are so close you can inhale their exhale. On my right, the metal mesh pressed into my side, and beyond that…

I couldn't stick out my arm—the mesh prevented that—so I poked out a finger. I pulled it back sharp, my fingertip tingling from the force in the shaft we dropped through.

Five hundred feet. Straight down.

"It's insane," I whispered.

"Kat?"

I gripped Dillon's waist.

"You OK?" He actually didn't say, You asked for this, you got it. He must have been getting interested.

"I'm OK," I said.

The skip slowed, rattled through turbulence, and I breathed the gust into my lungs.

"The first level," announced the guide.

We plunged again, another five hundred.

I hiccupped. It was insane. How many people get to plummet a thousand feet inside a cage crammed with strangers? The guy on my left could be some serial psycho who was sweating from the possibilities. The woman behind me, huffing down my neck whenever the skip shuddered, could be claustrophobic and break out in wild panic, screaming and clawing us to shreds. Or some mechanism could go wrong, and we'd hang like a spider in limbo.

The gold sample had better be good.

At last we slowed. Here was the lower level, and here came another gust—cold, damp, archaeological.

"Watch your step," said the guide. "No hurry. Wait your turn getting out." He had a bushy mustache, the type you'd expect in a place called Cripple Creek, and his eyes were clear as diamonds, shining beneath his hard hat. We all wore hard hats—plus jackets for those who wanted them—given to us at ground entrance. My hat was at least a size too big, and I had to look down my nose to see anything above sea level.

"Stay together," the guide cautioned. "Stay on the path. The ropes are for your safety. Do not wander off."

Good advice—do not wander off.

I LIKE TO GET TO THE (PUN ALERT) BOTTOM of things. The truth of a matter, or of a place. Things that people think but don't ever say. Things that lie buried.

It's not always easy. You have to watch. You have to ask questions. Sometimes you get answers, sometimes you don't.

The important thing is that you get it right. It helps to jot it down, to put it in black and white. Things that you see and hear, besides what you feel and thoughts you have. That's why I keep journals.

Do journalists keep journals? Do they really check things out, or just dip their pens into some muddy rumor pool? I'd really like to know. Because most of the reports on this thing have been far from the truth.

deliriums of disoriented girl

girl's desperate dad breaks into mine

children scheme to claim ownership of gold

dragon, a chinese kite

dragon, a stuffed galápagos iguana

Then there's the fanciful approach. Like US Online calling it a New American Tall Tale. It is not a tall tale, such as Pecos Bill or Paul Bunyan. They grew out of yarn spinning that passed from jaw to jaw in barrooms or around campfires.

My story's all true—I swear it on Ye's golden snout.

The BBC News dubbed it a Western Fairy Tale. Western it is, but it's part Eastern, too, and has no fairies. There's no happily ever after.

Only a few reports have come close.

bizarre falsehood rocks wall street

What happened wasn't a "falsehood," but Wall Street did go haywire.

One headline got it right.

calamity cat meets reluctant dragon

But I'm galloping ahead of myself.

? ? ?

We filed into a murky cavern that glistened under strings of lights. Rough-sawn timbers supported the ceiling and, along the floor, iron rails ran from a dump cart and disappeared down a dark, descending tunnel.

"The Mollie Kathleen was one of the world's greatest gold-producing mines in the eighteen nineties," began our guide, and I wiped an unexpected yawn from my mouth.

The thing about tour guides—you have to prod them a little. I think they know more than the parts they tell, the parts that are hits with the crowds. So between tour stops, as we walked farther in, I pelted him with questions. He paid me no mind. I kept it up until he acknowledged this babbling girl tagalong.

I learned a few things about Mollie Kathleen, how she'd loaded the family wagon to visit Cripple Creek, and how she discovered gold where men had been searching for years. In fact, they had named it Poverty Gulch because no gold had ever turned up.

So this was her mine, not just a mine named after her.

I think the guide thought his answers would hush me, but they only spurred more questions.

"How deep is the mine?"

"How many tunnels?"

"Have they all been explored?"

It was probably more prodding than he cared to hear.

"Where does this one go?" I asked, before he gave me the slip. I had stopped to peer into a closed-off place, lit by one dim bulb.

From the side of his mustache he said, "There are several closed chutes on this level. They're closed off for a reason. This way!" It's what Dillon calls a nonswer—an answer that tells you nothing.

It was the last one he would give me.

"Why'd they close it off? What could be the reason? Do you mean a single reason for all of them, or does each one have its own reason?"

"Are they dangerous?"

"Are they dead ends?"

"Are they drop-offs?"

Then I mumbled to emptiness—for the guide was gone and so was the group—"Do they have more gold?"

GOLD IS MONEY.

After Mom's accident, we kept hoping she'd recover. We visited her every day. We took turns. Dad rambled to her about the past, the present, and their future together. I read to her and sang sometimes. I read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, one of her childhood favorites. When I read to her, I pictured her in her very own Wonderland, wondering and dreaming. I refused to picture her in some kind of hell.

Hours turned to days, days to weeks, weeks to months. Our hopes fell. She was diagnosed with PVS—persistent vegetative state. She stared and stared, but those glossy eyes were not my mom's; they were some strange dreamer's.

When the insurance company rejected the case, things went from terrible to unbearable. We were sued. So on top of medical costs, there were attorney fees. They cashed out our savings. Dad took a second mortgage. He took a loan. Several loans. He accepted personal loans from the few friends we had left. He cleaned the retirement funds, completely. We had nothing left but hope, and not much of that.

Dad wouldn't talk about it, but I figured he functioned at work as he had at home, which was more sleepwalking than living, and they dropped him.

When he lost his job, we lost all hope.

Money was everything.

I'd never thought like that before, but there it was, under the surface, running like a crosscut tunnel to what I believed. What I believed came mostly from Mom.

"The things that really count in life, Kat," she'd say, her arms open wide for a hug, "are the things that can't be counted. They have so much value no one can afford them—so they're free."

I still believe those things.

But your head gets bent when you eat Ramen noodles all week. You shop with your friends and say, "No thanks, not hungry," while they gobble up frozen yogurt. You say, "What's wrong with these shoes I'm wearing?" and one of the heels pops off.

The grass is high and the mower won't start. You need a decent pair of glasses and develop a silly squint. The goodbye gift you give your best teacher is a book from off your shelf. You're pulled from private school and put into public, where you hardly know up from down.

Your beautiful horse is sold.

Your beautiful house is sold. To people who don't know its secrets, its good times and its bad, who don't love it like you do. Like the place on the stairs that always felt warm, or the hoofprint Angel put on the porch.

Or the smell of Mom's soap in the bath.

Now she lies unconscious, needing better care, in a place that is hardly equipped. And hardly affordable.

And I'd just spent the last of my savings.

A FLIRTY WINK—THAT'S ALL IT TOOK. A sparkle in the gloom. Was that gold, just a pebble's toss away? Real gold?

You could duck right through the barrier. Or squeeze, anyway.

Which is what I did.

In the Luray Caverns in Virginia, they turn out the lights to show you how dark is the dark. "Put your hand in front of your face," they say. "Watch—"

The lights go out.

You can feel the dark and taste the dark and hear the dark. And I'll tell you, it feels thick, tastes oily, and sounds like a morgue. Not that I've ever been in one.

Then the lights come on and everything's cool.

I figured that's what happened. The tour group had gathered in the next cramped space, the guide probably said to put their hands in front of their faces, and…

The moment I stepped beyond the barrier, two things went wrong:

I saw too late the planks beneath my feet.

The lights went out.

My foot broke through the planks, then my leg, then all of me. Fortunately, the chute was not straight down like the elevator shaft, but it sloped enough that I tumbled without stopping.

Rocks, gravel, debris, and me.

Rolling, sliding, clutching, flailing in the dark.

Down, down, down.

Like Alice.

"Umph!"

Only there were no marmalade jars, bookshelves, or maps.

"Umph!"

There was no light.

"Umph!"

Were there bats?

Do bats eat Kats?

Thump! The fall was over.

At least for now.

DILLON SAYS, "CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT." I should have known that someday curiosity would kill me, or make an attempt on my life.

"Well, Katlin Graham," I said out loud. "You can forget your free gold sample."

I said it to be sure I could speak and hear and know I was alive. My eyes were wide open, trying to stare a hole in the dark. A dark that beat on my eardrums.

Or was that my heart?

I thought of the dawn, clear and clean, that I had woke to a few hours before. I'd raised the tall window in my room at the Empire Hotel to breathe in the day, and the mountains had lit up like gems as morning washed over the town.

If I had just a sliver of that light! I'd see how banged up I was, and if I could return the way I'd come, or how deep was the drop. I'd see the seriousness of this nightmare, how mis this adventure would be.

I dared not move. When I moved—

More rocks tumbled into the blackness below.

So much for my lucky-charm dice.

I turned Mom's ring, realizing my luck not to have lost it. Mom, I said, here I am, precariously perched between the roots of the Rockies and the Great Wall of China. What should I do?

My glasses were gone, but they'd be no use now. Something poked my right knee, which I reached out to touch. Rough-hewn timber: a brace, most likely. That's what had halted my hair-raising, tumbleweed roll. My left knee was torn and bleeding; I pulled the denim back where it stuck to the blood. My right arm from shoulder to elbow was buzzing with pain. I found two lumps on my head—one above my right ear, the other on my left cheekbone—and a dozen squishy spots up and down my limbs. Gravel was embedded in my palms.

Fortunately, no broken bones. At least I didn't feel any.

Well, Kat, it could have been worse. Much worse. You could have—

MY MOTHER HAD FALLEN.

Only it wasn't from curiosity, and it didn't happen in the dark. It happened in broad daylight on an autumn afternoon.

When everything was normal. Uncalamitous.

Dad had got a promotion, a raise, a big bonus; we were moving up in the world. I think it went straight to our heads. Except Mom's. While we each wanted things extravagant, Mom remained her simple self. She hung wind chimes along the front porch, put lattice between the windows to grow her roses on, bought birdhouses.

I wanted to upgrade the stable, add heat and AC, put paving stones down.

That's why it happened.

It happened five miles from home, at a rock quarry that had gone out of business. Mom said, "Why get what they have at Whole House when we can get real paving stones there?" She just drove around the barrier. It took three trips using our Volvo station wagon, which Dillon calls the workhorse—we'd used it for everything from hauling straw bales to storing books while we painted the living room.

We never completed the paving stone project.

While Mom was lifting the heaviest one of all, which was big as a gravestone, I ran to give her a hand. My foot caught on a half-buried pry bar, and I stumbled against her. She pulled back to keep the rock from crushing me, fell sideways, and rammed her head hard into a jutting boulder.

I'll never forget that sight. How I wish I could just hit delete.

While we waited for the ambulance—Dillon had dialed 911—I sang to her. I sat in the dirt with her head in my lap and sang "You Are My Sunshine." It was the song she sang to me every night when I was little. I sat real still and sang it over and over.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.

You make me happy, when skies are gray.

You'll never know, dear, how much I love you.

Please don't take my sunshine away.

It was silly, I guess, but I thought it might wake her up.

It did. Her eyelids fluttered, opened, and that's when she gave me her ring. Her hands had been fumbling with it, and I didn't realize what she'd done until I felt it in my palm. During that brief window of consciousness, she must have sensed her trouble. She tried to speak—her lips trembled—but she said nothing.

Her eyes said everything. To remember me by. I'm going.

Gripping the ring in one hand and stroking her hair with the other, I nodded, blinking in total shock. Then she spoke the ghost of a word, and I leaned in close.

"Promise—"

"Promise what, Mom? Don't go! Promise what?"

She was gone again, cocoonlike with invisible wraps, before the ambulance came.

"MOVE," I SAID. "I'VE GOT TO MOVE. I CAN'T stay here forever."

Well, I could, but I'd rot.

Facing the slope, with my feet on the brace that had stopped me, I slowly stood. I reached up high, stretched to the limit, and put my hand on a ledgelike rock. I tested it, tugged it.

It broke off and went flying past my face. It struck the tunnel walls—wham, bang, farther, fainter…

Silence.

I shivered. Had it fallen down a wider, deeper hole? A bottomless pit?

I tried again, feeling for a handhold, something solid, stable, or a crack to wedge my fingers into. The layers were loose, their surfaces pitched downward. More rocks rolled past, adding another lump to my head and a greater sense of doom.

I tried again and again, reaching this way and that, high into the blackness, and found nothing to depend on.

So. Returning the way I had come was out of the question. Even if I did make progress, one wrong move, one loose stone, and the outcome could be worse, far worse.

Deadly.

My fingers went back to Mom's ring. I turned it around.

Her ring is like a portrait—a double portrait, even triple. The design is simple: a silver band with a mounted pearl. The pearl is big, bigger than most pearls I've seen. Sometimes when the child inside me has wanted to curl in Mom's lap, I've gazed into the pearl and seen the smallness of myself, outlined in the haze. When I've gazed long enough, sometimes I've seen Mom's face, gazing back, saying, I love you, Kat. Be still.

Sometimes, after staring myself into a mist, I've seen Grandma Chance, Mom's mom, staring back at me through layers of years.

Grandma Chance traded a mule for the pearl when she was a teen, and though the deal was not in her favor—since the mule was useful and the pearl was not—she had no regrets. She kept the pearl as a prized possession, a seal of her independence, her take on life. She kept it through courtship and marriage, three miscarriages and a multitude of trials, including a fire, a flood, and a chain of complications resulting from a copperhead bite.

Then when Mom was born right out of the blue, Grandpa Chance had the pearl set in silver, put the ring on Grandma's hand, and said, "There she is. The pearl we've been waiting for."

That's how Mom got her name.

When Grandma Chance died, Mom inherited the ring.

Now it's mine.

Promise.

Ever since that dreadful day, I've asked myself, Promise what?

Whatever the answer, the ring connects me to Mom. I wear it with a hope that someday I'll put it back on her hand, look into her eyes, and know she really sees me, with no darkness in between.

? ? ?

I stroked the silky pearl, wondering what to do.

"Down?" I asked.

Darkness plays tricks with your sight. You can't see a thing, yet patterns appear, black on black. Shapes move like jellyfish or shadows. Stars float by on the edge of nothing. In my mind, I saw Grandma Chance nodding. Just a nod on a faraway face, but a nod it was. I saw my mother's eyes. They seemed to be hiding a smile.

"All right," I breathed. "Down I go."

I inched over the brace and extended my right leg, testing the darkness beyond. More rubble, more rock. Reluctantly, I eased myself down as you would on a slide.

Slide it was and slide I did. Postrear, as Dillon would say. But it was better than tumbling heels over head, limbs like lunatics. I controlled my slide by braking now and then with my feet. But getting used to the motion, I went a little too casual, a little too fast.

I tried to stop a little too late…

And flew into space.

Determined to land feetfirst, even if I were about to die, I arched my back, tried to right myself, and—

"Umph!"

—grunted for the umph-teenth time.

I had landed in muck.

I STOOD UP, STUNNED TO BE ON LEVEL, though slippery, ground.

Mom, which way now?

Straight ahead, I felt an earthen wall, so it was right or left. Again I thought of Alice. That way lives the Hatter, said the cat with a grin, that way lives the Hare. Visit either you like—they're both mad.

I thought of Dillon and Dad. I thought of the mess I'd made. Tomorrow we had to move on. Had to, as in do or die.

San Francisco, eight a.m. this coming Wednesday.

It had nothing to do with wanderlust. It was a matter of life or impending doom.

For months, Dad had plodded the résumé trail with no luck. He was overqualified or too old, the wrong gender, or they just weren't hiring. When nothing panned out, he finally heard from a firm in San Francisco. Invisible, Inc., having to do with communications development. The job was his. All he had to do was get there.

Wednesday.

We hated to leave Mom behind. But what else could we do? The plan was to make the move, find a place to live, and come back to get her. How that would be done I didn't have a clue. Dad was hoping to get his new employer to fund it, or at least advance him the money.

When the bank had foreclosed on our house, Dad begged the new owners to let us stay in the stable until we could relocate, and we sold all we had but a few essentials and keepsakes. I made sure Mom's wind chimes were among them, and Grandma Chance's quilt. When they finally said, get out, the only good thing was the timing, because that was the day Dad got the call. We packed what was left in a U-Haul trailer and headed west. Clear across country from Richmond, Virginia, to San Francisco, California.

At least we had some place to go.

Not exactly a place to stay, but a place to go.

? ? ?

Eight a.m. sharp, this Wednesday. Four days away. Our stake in the future depended on it.

Had I put all that in jeopardy? Most definitely, absolutely, no-brainer. I ached with the thought, and sat back down. Then I saw the mess I'd made for the Mollie Kathleen. The police would be called, a search party organized, all tours canceled. Thanks to my nosy, get-to-the-bottom, kill-the-cat curiosity!

My calamiting.

Kat! Kat!

Keep cool. Snap to. Listen for sounds of rescue.

Why hadn't I heard any?

How much time had passed?

I bolted upright. When your body's been battered and your mind's reacting to one thing alone—survival—you have little sense of time. I figured it had not been ten minutes. Not enough time for anyone to miss me. Or if they did, to take it seriously or send for help. Dillon—he would have noticed. But he'd also be expecting me to show up with a tidbit to tell. Dad—he'd be shuffling along with his mind somewhere else.

Yeah, the tour could still be in progress, going from one stop to the next, the guide droning on.

Farther and farther from where I stood.

"Hey!" I yelled. Why hadn't I yelled before? "Hey! Help! HELP!"

I listened.

Nothing.

I filled my lungs to capacity, tipped up my head in the direction of the chute, and screamed with every ounce of my being, "Diiil-luuuuuun!"

Some screamer I was. There was hardly an echo, and my scream ended in a pathetic squeak and a burning throat, which was dry from the dust I'd stirred up. Despite my doubts, I pictured Dillon scrambling back to the place, leaning over the opening. Any second he would be shouting my name, any second. I held my breath and counted: One-thousand-one… one-thousand-two… one-thousand-three…

Nothing.

"Dillon!" I gasped. "Dillon! Down HERE!"

Silence.

"You were right—it isn't fun!"

I started to moan, whimper, shake.

Kat! Stop! Get hold of yourself. You'll be OK. Things will turn out in the end. If you have nine lives, which you've always claimed you have, you've only used up two.

Make that three.

I pulled on a finger. One. You survived suffocation when you were an infant. You choked on a pretty penny and Mommy whacked you on the back. You went from blue to gray to white to red; when you went red, you cried. You cried again the next day when the penny came out in your diaper.

I pulled the next finger. Two. You survived a deadly bee sting. The bee was a common mountain bee, the hike was not strenuous, but you had an allergic response. Your arm swelled like a balloon, your temperature hit fireball hot, you tossed and turned so violently in the grass you struck your mouth on a tent stake and broke your front tooth. Second one from the middle, on your left. You slumped into delirium. It was the Apis that saved you. Apis Mel, a homeopathic remedy made from a minute amount of crushed bees. An old hippie hiker who camped nearby carried some in her backpack.

I ran my tongue across the gold cap. Nobody liked it but me. I was into pirates at the time and insisted on a gold one, against my parents' wishes. And Dillon's. And the dentist's. Dad had declared I'd taken this gold thing too far. He'd blurted, "No!"

Of course, he gave in after that.

The next finger I pulled wore Mom's ring.

Would I survive?

I TURNED HER RING AROUND.

Mom, what should I do? Curl up and wait? Keep yelling? Whistle? You know, as in whistle in the dark, like you taught me to do so I wouldn't be afraid? Should I wander a ways and return in a while?

If I did, I might eventually see light, find a way out.

OK, I'll wander, just a little. One toe at a time—I was not going to take another plunge down another chute.

But first, I must make a mark of some kind, to tell myself where I had begun. Groping along the floor for a sizable rock, I found something smooth. Lightweight. Plastic. My hard hat! It must have flown off when I fell. No doubt it had given me some protection. I placed it in the middle of the path. If I returned, as long as I kept to the middle, I'd hit it and know I was back.

Right then, or left?

I slowly turned around, which, being in the dark, was not a smart thing to do. I turned around until I got dizzy, until I saw stars. Funny, seeing stars underground. I stopped, steadied myself, and yelled one more time at the top of my lungs—or from the bottom of them—just in case. It only brought more stars.

I headed down the tunnel. Which direction I went—right or left—I didn't even know. What did it matter? I stretched my arms wide to touch the walls on each side. Not only did this help steady me, I'd be able to sense any opening I might pass.

Then, reminding myself I could fall into another chute if I wasn't careful, I slowed way down, taking one step at a time.

OK, I said, I'll walk fifty steps, return to my hat, and walk fifty steps the other way.

Of course, had I known what wonder lay in the great deep beyond, glorious and golden, and how it would change my life forever, I would have hurried ahead.

I COUNTED EACH STEP.

Once, the walls veered away from my reach, and I had to feel for them. Once, a sharp rock lay in the path, which I nearly stumbled over. Once, I tramped through water and realized how thirsty I was. I stopped to test it on my tongue—bleck!—and spat it out. I prefer water without mud, baking soda, and all the essential and nonessential minerals, thank you very much.

Fifty steps. If something along the way changed dramatically, I'd decide what to do next.

? ? ?

What to do next hit me abruptly.

I had counted forty-nine steps and was about to turn back when I thought I heard a sound far ahead. Ever so slight. A muffled sound, but a sound.

Something.

What would have made it? It wasn't a falling rock. It wasn't a splash. It wasn't a voice. I don't think it was a voice. It was like… like…

It was like a snuffle a creature might make.

Like a horse, for instance.

I was kidding myself. A horse wouldn't be way down here.

So, what kind of creatures live in caves? All I could think of were bears. But in a cave this deep underground?

I listened, not moving from my forty-ninth step, not moving a nerve.

The snuffle did not snuffle again.

Were my ears playing tricks? Just as my eyes were? Because of the sound I heard, or thought I'd heard, I pictured a bear approaching. A big black bear. I shivered. I felt its presence, coming closer, closer, grinning at such luck, such supper. Grinning and licking its chops. I cringed.

Wait—it wasn't a bear.

It was a bloodthirsty ghoul, all mangy and dripping foam…

I scre-e-e-e-eamed. A good, tunnel-length, tension-burning, uvula-waggling, rock-penetrating scream, with no squeak at the end.

I sighed, exhausted. OK, that should scare it off! I knew full well, of course, the ghoul-bear had been in my fears. Not real.

I hoped.

But hey, with a scream like that, it's possible somebody heard me. Somebody human, I mean. I turned to go back, and—

Heard the sound again. Definitely. Identical to the first. My impression of it did not change: a snuffly sort of creature. What could it possibly be?

Should I continue?

True to my nature, curiosity said, Yes. Find what made the sound, Kat.

After feeling around for more rocks to pile up as a marker, and finding none, I groped my way forward.

AT FIRST, IT DIDN'T REGISTER.

I'd been wandering in blindness so spongy, the pictures in my mind leaked into it from time to time. The tunnel had taken a sharp turn that narrowed into a passage the width of my shoulders. I felt ripples along the walls and an occasional formation at my feet, stubby enough to step over. But the curious thing was, I had begun to see textures, ever so faint, and didn't realize it. I was so used to the dark, I thought I saw it in my mind, subconsciously.

But the farther I went, I noticed I was seeing something. A softening in the black. Midnight turning to slate, slate to pewter, pewter to dreamy gray.

And the walls were closing in. If it had not been for the growing light, I would have backed out, afraid of becoming wedged till I could move no more. Horrors! I did become wedged, one arm reaching for the light, one reaching behind me in the dark: a frozen pose of despair. Determined to follow the passage to the end, even as it determined to clamp me in its jaws, I pushed and squirmed and weaseled my way through.

The walls widened and the light increased.

Something glinted near my feet, reminding me of the sparkle that had lured me at first. I bent down to see a small metal box, and picked it up. I shook it; something rattled inside. I tried the lid; it wouldn't budge. Squinting with my spectacle-less sight, I saw a circular design, like a bull's-eye, and made out these words:

lucky strike

genuine roll cut tobacco

Never had I thought a tobacco tin would excite me!

Then I did a double take. The tin was as old as the hills, yet here was a scratch in it, bright enough to catch my eye. The scratch looked new.

Had I scraped the tin with my foot before picking it up? No, I was sure I had not.

Either someone had been here recently…

Or some thing. Some thing with claws or teeth. Or both.

I was back to my bear-ghoul beast.

But now, I could see.

And that might be worse.

With tin in hand, hoping its here-ness meant I was closer to civilization, I quickened my pace toward the growing light. My heart raced.

Deliverance!

But even as I thought so I knew it couldn't be. The glow did not seem right. It shone like tarnished gold, not daylight. It wavered. And the air wasn't clear mountain air; it had a sulfurous, smoky smell.

I rounded a curve, stumbled through a hazy opening, and instantly forgot the tin for a treasure worth grabbing.

GRAB IT I DID. JUST LIKE MOLLIE KATHLEEN.

When she struck gold in Poverty Gulch in 1891, Mollie Kathleen Gortner did something no woman in Cripple Creek had ever done. She staked a claim in her own name.

Well, pardon me—ahem! That was a man's business. It was fine to name a dog or donkey or saloon after a woman—like Mattie May or Stubborn Sue or Lucky Lola's. But a gold claim? Never!

Too late: Mollie signed on the bottom line before the claims manager could stop her. She knew that Bob Wolmack had been searching the gulch for a dozen years and had come up empty-handed. She sure-as-shootin' wasn't going to let this one get away from her, for him to take. In fact, she slipped some of the gold she'd found into her clothes right under Bob's gold-sniffing nose.

? ? ?

Here I stood, just like her, holding a chunk of gold. Glittering, buttery-as-breakfast, beautiful-as-sunset, buy-the-world gold. Big as my fist!

I weighed it in my hand, pondering its worth. It must weigh a few pounds, which, for gold, is twelve ounces, not sixteen. How much is gold going for an ounce? Once I got out, I'd check the current prices.

Slipping the gold into my jacket pocket, I took a step forward. I was in a cavern of sorts—it was hard to tell, for steam or smoke drifted around me, filtering the light beyond. A trickle of turquoise snaked by my feet.

And here again—Lucky Strike was right!—bigger and brighter than the first, lay another chunk of gold.

I snatched it up. Oh, Mollie—you and me! I wanted to dance. I'd call it the Mollie Kathleen. It would be all the rage. Kids would do it all over the country.

I flung out my arm and stuck out a foot. Dance step number one…

"Drop it," said a voice.

It was not a human voice.

Neither was it a bloodthirsty bear-ghoul voice.

It was the voice of a dragon with a smoker's cough.

SOME THINGS IN LIFE ARE HARD TO BELIEVE, like monster hurricanes and tidal waves and terrorism and winning the lottery and cameras on Mars. Unless you're one of the few who lives in a backwoods shack and denies we ever set foot on the moon, you stare in disbelief, or shock, dread, or astonishment, trying to accept the unacceptable. After taking it all in, you finally say, OK, this kind of thing happens after all.

When I first saw the dragon, I stood in stone-cold fear, expecting him to lunge at me, tail lashing, to tear me to bits. Then I thought I must be dreaming. I'd fallen into my own version of Wonderland and met my personal Jabberwocky. The "drop it" was just somebody outside the dream. I'd wake up, rise out of my darkness, and all would be plain.

But the dream never burst. It kept going.

The haze had cleared.

In a glance, I saw a scene as unbelievable as the gold. And there was lots more gold—nuggets lay everywhere, ranging in size from bracelet beads to rocks as big as my head.

The cave was large, but not vast—cozy for a dragon. The ceiling drifted in and out of an auburn mist, which I later learned was called dragonlight. Studded stones winked like constellations. Rows of stalactites jutting like giant teeth met stalagmites from below in a staggered bite. Flowstones as rich as crystallized syrup ran along the floor among various man-made items: a miner's pick, an Orange Crush bottle, a metal flask, a theater bill, an old black boot, a jam jar, a wooden crate with explosives stamped on its side and a chessboard set on its top. On the board were a pawn and two kings, one of which had fallen.

And beyond that, smoldering like a thundercloud at dusk, lay the dragon. He was as tarnished and mythological as ancient history itself. Two gold-leafed wings with silver veins were folded along his back; a scarlet ruffle ran ridgelike between them, into the shadows, where his tail was curled; two silver strands hung from his chin; two filaments of smoke rose from his nostrils; two glowing eyes glared into mine.

Fire-and-cinnamon eyes.

They say that dragons can cast a spell with one look—and I believe it. I was stuck in that stare. If I stepped up and peered into it, I'd see myself trapped like an insect in amber.

I couldn't run—I was paralyzed.

I couldn't faint, for fear of him gobbling me down while I dozed.

I did the one thing there was to do, under the circumstances. He had told me to drop the gold, so I dropped it.

It landed on my toe.

"Ow," I said.

Not exactly the best way to start a conversation with a dragon.

Or with anyone.

FROM THAT DAY UNTIL NOW, I HAVE PLAYED back our talk in my head, convinced it came out all wrong. It was the most ordinary, run-of-the-mill talk you've ever heard. If not muddled.

Seems to me your usual conversation has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning is for welcomes and greetings, light and cheery. Glad to see you, been a long time—that sort of thing. The middle heads toward serious stuff, more meaningful: How's the after-school job, your class assignment, your mom. If the conversation is going to get sticky—say, disagreeable or philosophical or painful—it usually occurs toward the end of the middle. Then the end lightens up again, so everyone can be sure they still like one another. No problem, good to see you, we're cool.

Of course, conversation with a treasure-hoarding dragon would be an exception. You'd think it would go something like this:

dragon (spitting flames): How dare you finger my gold!

I'll burn you at the stake for this! I'll roast your gizzard

and gnaw your bones! I'll—

you: I'm sorry, dear dragon. I didn't see you. I—

dragon: Didn't see me? What, are you blind? Behold!

(rising, spreading his wings) I'm bigger than a boxcar!

Big as a mountain! See my shining scales! Feel my fire!

Hear me roar! (Spits more flames, singeing your hair.)

you: Nice dragon. Nice boy. (Running like fire and brimstone outta there.)

Anyway. That's not how it went. Not the usual way, not the dragon way. It was more like taking the bottom end of a down escalator when you're thinking it's the up.

But truth is stranger than fiction.

? ? ?

Maybe it was the "ow" that did it.

"Did you say 'how'?" he asked in a rusty, crack-of-dawn voice, a voice that sounded like he'd just pulled it out and dusted it off.

"No, I said—" I faltered, trying to figure this out. Logic was kicking in, part of the process of going from shock to acceptance. Was it the fall? The lack of air? The mineral water? Here be a dragon. Here be a talking dragon. It wasn't a crocodile. It wasn't a horned toad on steroids. He was staring at me at the bottom of a mine.

That part was undeniable—the bottom of a mine—but the rest?

I began again. "Did you say: Did you say 'how'?"

"That is what I thought you said. 'How' as in 'howdy,' short for 'how d'ye do.'"

Still numb, my mind shifted to auto-answer. I said, "Thanks for the English lesson. But the 'ye' is outdated. The 'ye' should be you."

He frowned—a scrunch-eyed, droopy-eared (or were they horns?), smoky-snouted frown. Less mythological. "Who should be me?"

I shook my head. "Ye. For you."

With a note of suspicion, he said, "I knew you were eavesdropping."

I was emerging from my dullness. "What do you mean?"

"You heard me addressing myself. I heard your scream, feeble as it was. I knew you were close. You were eavesdropping. You had to have been: You know my name."

See what I mean? Muddled.

"I know your name?" I asked. "I heard you cough—"

"You heard my name. Ye. That is me. Or I, Miss English-Lesson."

"You are Ye?"

The dragon nodded, which sent his chin pendants swaying and smoke signals ceiling ward. "I am."

"I'm Kat," I said, strangely relieved this was getting somewhere. "Short for Katlin."

"Come here, Kat," he said. There was no doubt his voice was warming up. "Here, Kitty."

I came here, and I didn't do the Mollie Kathleen. I did the snuffle 'n' shake. If I'd been a dog, my tail would have been whimpering between my legs.

But I wasn't a dog. I was Kat.

And I hate being called Kitty.

I stopped. I had come here far enough.

Ye leaned forward, which brought his head into better focus. Not that it helped my sanity. I was afraid he was going to shake my hand, the one I had buried in my pocket. I saw that his pointed ears were ears, not horns, which he could pivot, like a horse's, his eyes were honey-deep, and his snout had a smudge of soot under it, like a Charlie Chaplin mustache. I tried not to look at his teeth. I glanced at them once, and though they weren't as sharp as they could have been, still, they were big.

"How is stereotypical," he snorted. "I never heard an Indian say how."

"It was ow," I corrected. "And I'm not an Indian."

"I did not say you were. But in the—what do you call them?—the talkies, those moving pictures, the movies, Indians say how."

I shook my head at the absurdity. "How do you know that?" I asked. "And how do you know words like stereotypical?"

"So Long."

"What?" I asked, surprised at his bluntness. Did he want me to go?

"So Long told me," he said matter-of-factly. He nodded again, sending up more puffs. "I have an abundance of words in my vocabulary, an exorbitant amount. In different tongues, too. Vel caeco appareat. 'It is obvious.'"

"Really."

"Exorbitant means—"

"I know," I said. "I've looked it up."

"Ah," he said.

"I like big words. I collect them."

"You collect them?"

"You know, like some people collect spoons or sea-shells or—"

"Or gold?" he suggested, making it sound both innocent and condemning.

"S-sure," I said, responding to the innocent part and ignoring the other. "I collect big words and store them in my mind."

"Hmm," he said. "Sesquipedality. That's a big word."

"Ses… what?"

"—quipedality." He looked pleased with himself. "Know what that means?"

I shook my head.

"It means to use big words, long words."

"Ses-quipe-dal-ity," I said slowly, filing it away. "Thank you. I'll remember that."

"If you live long—xué wú zhi jìng, which is Mandarin for 'learning is eternal'—you can collect a copious, prodigious, an incalculable, inter"—he coughed midword, swallowed, and continued—"minable amount of words! And I have lived longer than you can imagine."

"How long?"

"How Long is a Chinaman." He gave me a sideways glance.

"That's a joke," I said, raising my eyebrows along with my voice. "Dragons tell jokes?"

"Truly, it is not a joke." He became solemn. "How, or Hou, actually—spelled with a u—Hou Long was So Long's grandfather. Hou was the local tobacconist a… ah, a few blinks ago, after Cripple Creek's boom-town days. We would sit and smoke together. He was one of the small handful of humans who would speak with me. The others either ran, fainted, or died." Ye motioned toward a trench along the floor in which a complete skeleton lay.

I was glad I had overlooked it, or I think I would have run, fainted, or died.

"It had to do with Hou's culture," he continued. "Dragons, you see, bring good fortune to the Chinese." A glaze came over his eyes and I thought his lower lip quivered, but it might have been the light. "I miss Hou Long. So Long, too."

Gosh, I didn't know what to say.

"Back to your question," Ye said, snapping out of his mood. "How long have I been here. I do not count time by minutes or hours or days; I hardly count time at all. There was a fire recently. By your reckoning, about a hundred years ago. In the pool—that direction"—he blew an arrow of smoke that slowly wandered off, took a right turn, and dissolved—"nine stalagmites joined their descendants"—he chuckled to himself—"and many others have sprung up." He chuckled again and coughed. "I have seen Halley's Comet numerous times, before Halley attached his name to it. That"—he raised a clawed digit—"is how I count time." He coughed again.

I was quiet. Due to a wavering state of unbelief, panic, pain, weariness, and exhilaration, my mind was sitting this one out.

"How long have I been here…" he mused. "It was after Huang Ti's reign… before Babylon was in full bloom… no, before that. Thutmose. Yes, before Thutmose died, I frequented this continent. I flew in on the northeast tradewinds, rode the westerlies up the eastern coast—"

"Virginia?" I couldn't help but ask.

He pulled on a silver chin-wattle. "Is that where you are from?"

I nodded eagerly.

"By then," he continued, "there was hardly any gold that man had not snatched." He stopped to scrutinize the nugget I had dropped as if to be sure not a speck of it was missing, while I tried not to fidget with my pocket-bound hand. Apparently satisfied, he went on. "I roamed the Far North and holed up around the Great Lakes for a half century. Eventually, I settled in these warmer climes." He coughed yet again.

Was coughing, I wondered, part of his act, like a pet phrase or mannerism? Or did he really have to cough? Did the smoke have something to do with it?

"This talk about indigenous people," he said, "who was here first, is pointless."

"Indigenous people?"

"Native Americans. We were here long before any biped walked this land."

"You mean dragons?"

"Dragons. We were the first, the o-r-r-r-iginal" (he rolled the r) "Native Americans." He began to inhale, expanding his belly like a bellows.

I stepped back.

His chest began to brighten from burnished bronze to molten chrome, as if embers inside it were waking, fanned to life. He huffed until it glowed stove-hot, his face turning brick red, his eyes flickering in their sockets.

I stepped back again, expecting him to burst from the effort, before he could blow it all out.

Blow it all out he did.

I sat down hard, not from being overwhelmed, but to avoid extreme smoke inhalation.

Smoke flew from his nostrils and billowed out his gullet, forming a cloud that swallowed the stalactites. He blew and blew, and as I gazed in growing wonder, the cloud took the shape of America, unfurling like a flag. He added details, including patches of blue for the Great Lakes, a streak of olive green for the Mississippi, and a chain of cragged puffs for the Rocky Mountains, chugging from north to south like the Glory Train Express. He ended by puckering his mouth and shooting out a jet of tan for the down-turned horn of Texas.

I was overwhelmed. "Wow," I whispered, and started to clap.

But then the cloud broke apart and fell in ashes, and it gave me a chill.

"How do you like—" the dragon began, then had a fit of coughing. "How—" he began again, and coughed again. Whenever he tried to speak, he coughed.

I waited.

At last, he said, "Well." His eyes brimmed with golden tears. He held up a hand, hacked, sighed, and said, "I could have saved"—cough, cough—"the cartographers"—cough—"a lot of time. Advantage of"—gulp—"aerial views"—pause, blink, wipe an eye—"Lewis and Clark and so on… you see."

"I see."

His nostrils flared, his chest swelled, and I was afraid he was going to do the up-in-smoke thing all over again.

Instead he said, "I know this land—how does it go?" And in a trembling childlike voice, with a touch of Chinese, he sang, "From sea to shi-ning sea."

I was charmed, picturing Hou, the Chinese man, sitting before him, teaching him the song.

"Do you know who wrote that?" he asked. "'America—"

"—the Beautiful'?" I said. "Um… Elvis?"

"Elvis? Is that anything like elves?"

"I don't think so. But he had sparkly pants."

"Hmm. You know elves are not real."

"I know. But not so long ago I thought dragons weren't, either."

He settled back down, whether to get comfy or from sheer exhaustion, I couldn't tell. His head was back to its normal burnished bronze, and his body looked considerably cooler.

I was about to ask who did write "America the Beautiful" when he said, "Absurd, how a vast geographical paradise can slumber in the sun and rain and snow for millennia on millennia, until someone comes and plants a name on it and declares ownership and writes songs about it"—his voice was past warming up now and into well done, with a spicy edge—"and cuts it up like a cow and says this is yours and this is yours and this and this—"

He glared at whatever scene he saw in his mind, and I began to understand him. This was one lonely dragon, a dragon who'd had no one to talk to for a long, long time.

"They have stacked cities and bureaucracies and mediocrities across this land like it is a game board, and linked them all with wires and rails and roads, like a child's dot-to-dot. But the land will take it back. It always does." He sighed and murmured, "We were the first."

I felt I had to say something, to keep the conversation alive. I said, "But you weren't born here." It came out rude and bold, though it wasn't meant to, so I added, "If you came from the East, across the ocean."

That stirred him again. "Neither were the so-called early Americans, who also migrated from the East and arctic regions. When the Adena people saw me—my first personal encounter with immigrants—they built me a monument. Though I am no snake"—he spat the word—"as it suggested. Curvy and curled it was. Insulting." His voice dropped to a murmur, and smoke strayed from his lips. "I have wondered whether it is still there."

I made a quick connection in my mind. A snake monument… early Americans… It sounded like something I'd learned in history. "Do you mean the Serpent Mound in Ohio? It's still there!"

"I suppose they never saw all of me, it being dusk. But they got the legend right." He halted and blinked at me quizzically.

"Legend?" I asked.

He looked away and mumbled something. Something like, No… no… not a chance.

"Legend?" I persisted.

"It is of no significance," he said with a wave of his hand. Then he picked at one of his claws the way you'd inspect a broken nail. He seemed distracted, so I gave him a little space and distracted myself.

It was easy, with all of this gold. I could hardly comprehend it. It was as hard to comprehend as Ye himself. It was hard to ignore. The more I stared at it, the more golden it became.

What would I do with all this gold? Or even a wheelbarrow full?

My eyes started dreamily wandering. I could see us back in our house… wait—in a bigger house, big as a castle… it was a castle, with a turret for my bedroom… I'd peer down and see Angel, my beautiful white horse, galloping freely over the hills… a servant would bring iced tea on a platter, and french fries, and cranberry sauce… my hair would blow in a breeze… I'd invite one good friend, maybe two… we'd swim in our indoor pool, surrounded by glass walls and a glass roof and palm trees… afterward, we'd watch a movie, or play a game…

A game. That was an interesting thought, if not a little berserk. Should I try it?

Would Ye play toss the dice?

I had the two dollars I'd won last night. That may be enough for starters—if I lost a round or two.

Yes, it could put gold in my pocket. More gold in my pocket. Because I realized one nugget would not make us rich. It might get us out of debt, but not rich.

Surely, Ye would part with some of this gold. For the thrill of the game, won fair and square. I'd have to play fair—I mean fair rules, since he'd be too clever to fool—but still I'd have a good chance with my trick die.

Would he catch on? He knew lots of things, and lots of big words, but was that the same as being smart?

I cut my eyes over to him—he was doing the same to me. His eye showed a glint I hadn't noticed before. Hmm. I fingered the dice in one pocket, turned the ring with my thumb in the other.

Well—gulp—here was to luck…

"Ye?" I said, trying to keep my voice steady. "Before I go, how about a little game?"

"You are going?"

"I think I should. My family—"

"A little game," he said.

"OK," I said agreeably, pulling out the dice. I gave him my best grin. "See—"

He frowned. A dire dragon frown, the kind I had dreaded might come. His eyes narrowed to golden slits, and the golden turned dark as his pupils filled them; his ears lay back, and an exclamation point shot out from his tongue.

Uh-oh. Was gambling a sin to him, too? Was he as much dad as he was dragon? Now would come the threats, roars, flames.

But his voice remained calm. An insurance-salesman calm. And that was worse. "Do that again," he said.

"Do… do what?" I stammered. "The… the dice?"

"Your teeth. Show them. Smile."

Though the corners of my mouth quivered, I was too afraid not to show my—

"Ah, now," he said. "A gold tooth."

THE DICE WERE BACK IN MY POCKET, MY mouth was sealed shut, my golden dream had burst.

Ye was giving me the look again—the honey-deep, insect-in-amber look. Back to being a dragon.

"You like words," he said slyly. "You like games. Here is a word game for you."

"Um… all right."

"Tell me this. What is wrong with the world?"

Some questions are like lariats circling your head, waiting to catch you. I had heard some; I had asked some.

"One word," he said.

The lariat was spinning and so was my mind. I was dragon-weary, cavern-weary. I ached. I was thirsty. I really did want to go home.

I wanted to climb onto my mother's lap.

I put my hands behind my back and fingered her ring. I pictured her face. She was saying something.

Think, Kat, think!

Think. What is wrong with the world? One word.

Hate? Race? Politics? Injustice?

Simple. One word. Right. There were lots of one words.

Hunger? Famine? Disease?

Would it be a small word or a big word? A word I might not even know? A word like… sesquipedality.

"Is it a long word?" I asked.

"It is ever so short," he said briskly. "But the problem is ever so long."

Gosh, now it was a riddle. I put my hands in my pockets and fingered the not-so-lucky dice.

Think, Kat!

I fingered the gold nugget.

Think!

Wait. Gold nugget. Gold tooth. He asked me the question after seeing my gold tooth.

Poverty… economics… money…

Money. That was a short word. Was it a long problem? You bet it was. What was that saying about money? Money is the root of all evil.

That was it, surely.

I licked my lips with a dry tongue, ready to say money, when I saw Mom shaking her head. "It's not money that's evil, Kat," she told me one day after some self-righteous classmate called me a snobby rich girl. "There's nothing wrong with money. It's the love of money…"

That was it! I opened my gold-toothed mouth and said the one word.

"Greed!"

I could tell by his eyes I had passed the test. The lariat was tucked away.

"Now," he said, as if my answer had taken no effort at all. "Do you know why they call it a mine?"

There he went again. Yet I felt it was not a game this time, but a lesson.

"Uh," I said. "Not really."

"They call it a mine, child, because the first people who found gold, or gems, or whatever they thought was precious enough to grab, shouted 'Mine!'" He blew out a stream of steam.

The gold in my pocket suddenly grew heavier. I swallowed, not that I had anything to swallow. Then I made my defense. Just as the lawyer did at our trial.

"Well," I said, throwing caution to the smoke, "look at you. Look at all this gold you hoard."

He slinked toward me.

I stepped back.

The gravel had left his voice some time ago. Now it was brandy-smooth.

He said, "I am a dragon. This is dragon gold. I am entitled to it. All of it."

It made me want to run, but it also made me bold. Entitled, really. I would have laughed, like the trial lawyer had done, but I didn't want to show him my tooth again. I didn't want him ripping it from my mouth.

I said, "And no one else is?"

"Why should they be?" he snapped. "They have everything else, thanks to Greed. All their bright, noisy inventions they scoot down their roads or their rails. They have the world in their hands."

I swept my arm across the golden heaps. "But they have all that because of this!"

He studied me for a while. "This is not your gold," he said. A flatness crept into his voice. "No more than bones in cemeteries are mine."

I scrunched up my face. "What's that supposed to mean? Why would you want peoples' bones?"

"Are they not valuable?"

"That's a different kind of value."

"Ah!" He nodded his head in mockery. Only I didn't know what he was mocking. "Are there not laws against grave robbing, body snatching?"

"Of course, there are," I said, perplexed. Where in the world, or under it, was this going?

"There should be laws against gold snatching."

"And why is that?" I demanded, folding my arms.

"Smile again."

"No." I tightened my lips, thinking, Burn me up. Go ahead, charbroil me. All that's left will be my gold-capped tooth, if that's what you want.

Then I thought, And the gold in my pocket.

I wished I'd put my hands in my pockets instead. It'd be a dead giveaway now. I swallowed, trying to get my heart back down.

Ye was as calm as an October moonrise. He said slowly, knowingly, "Tell me the truth."

"T-truth?" I stuttered. "About… what?"

"That gold."

Had he waited this whole time to torture me? To watch me squirm? Had he seen through the smoke, seen me pocketing the gold? But I noticed he didn't say, "The gold in your pocket"; rather, "that gold."

If this was a bluff, I could bluff right back.

"Oh…" I shrugged. I gave him the grin he wanted, minus any mirth. "They put that in when I was a kid. Fell down and broke my tooth. No biggie." Now my hands went into my pockets, though the sweat on my face itched to be wiped.

"Ah," he said again, nodding. And it wasn't the kind of "ah" you say at the dentist's. "Here you are, a mere catty of a girl, sliding from the twenty-first century into what is left of my crumpled little world, and you have gold in your mouth."

"My dad paid for it!"

"With what? More gold? They have beat gold into dogs, frogs, birds, cows, bugs, masks, cups, frames, coins, coins, more coins, more coins, MORE coins, MORE coins—" He took a breath, gave a harsh cough, and went on. "Earrings, finger rings, toe rings, necklaces, bracelets, bangles, medallions, trophies, icons…"

"But thith ithn't gleed," I said, pressing my tongue to my tooth.

That stopped him. "What?"

"Gleed!" I removed my tongue. "This. Isn't. Greed. I needed a tooth."

"You chose gold."

"Gold is pretty. I like gold. You like gold. Obviously. Lots of people—"

"Gold—girl, kitty cat, thief, whoever you are—"

His head was closer to mine than it had been before, eyes all cinnamon and sparks now, nostrils flared and glowing, like a fevered horse. His breath smelled feverish, too.

"—gold is what dragons become when they die."

I WAS SPEECHLESS. MY MOUTH SPRANG OPEN, gold tooth and all.

Dragon gold.

"You'll turn to dust," Ye said quietly. "Bones, then dust. When dragons die, they turn to gold. That is what I am waiting for."

Dragon gold.

Just like that, it all made sense. Everything. His talk about cemeteries and laws and grave robbing and Babylon and Thutmose and greed and value and entitlement. All the gold in the world, from ancient Egypt to Fort Knox, was the remains of dragons.

Dragon gold!

It removed my stand-your-ground attitude. It removed my pride. It removed a lot of things. Not only was I speechless, I was breathless.

It wasn't greed at all. Gold was rightfully his.

Then Ye said something I found even harder to comprehend. I had just got used to the fact that dragons were truly real, and then, that dragons turned to gold, and now—

He said, "I am the last. The last of all the dragons."

He said it as if he stood on a cliff, staring the unknown in the face, waiting to be pushed. I stared into his golden eye for a long, long time. His eye was so mysterious, so deep, yet so gentle. I wanted to sing to him, soothe him, ask him a thousand questions. But I could hardly think of one.

"You're…" I fumbled. "You're the… There aren't any more? Not anywhere?"

The lid closed across his golden eye but did not close out the light, which glowed seashell pink.

"You've looked?" I asked.

"The whole world over."

AFTER MOM'S ACCIDENT, WE EACH DEALT with it differently.

Dad dug into medical research, looking for any clue that might lead to freeing Mom from her darkness. When he wasn't at work or sitting with her, he sat chained to his laptop, searching and searching. He was up all night, often till dawn. I don't know when he slept, unless it was at the table after he'd eaten something I'd fixed, or in the driver's seat as I pumped gas or got groceries. He wandered in his own subterranean places. You could see it in his face, in the vertical line that deepened between his eyebrows.

Dillon became animated, a clever comic. He was headed that way before the accident, careening from craziness to seriousness and back again. Mom said that at fourteen he was testing the borders between boy and man.

"His J. M. Barrie stage," she said.

"What's that?" I asked.

"J. M. Barrie—the man who wrote Peter Pan, who never grew up."

"Peter Pan never grew up, or J. M. Barrie?"

"Both."

Dillon chattered in the wittiest ways, making up words or phrases that deserve dictionary status. Like mobscenities—mob plus obscenities, which means a bunch of cussing coming from a crowd—or godzillion—Godzilla plus zillion, which means lots and lots, or bigger than big. He calls it Dillingo, which is Dillon plus lingo.

He'd dance across the kitchen with bundles of carrots, or make embarrassing noises at just the right moments, like the time the lady in the bank bent over. He was really funny, but since I knew what lay behind it all, while my face was laughing, I cried inside. He would not discuss Mom's condition. If the subject was raised, he would shut right down.

I started journaling.

In the first few weeks of writing, I discovered something. I discovered that pain is like a pencil tip: The more you write, the blunter it becomes. The pain is still there, but you can divert it onto a page, break it into little stabs and penpricks that help carry the pain for you, like lines of ants sharing the load.

I'm on my third journal now. My second one's packed in the trailer. My first one's inside my pillowcase on the backseat of the car. I don't want anyone to see it.

On the first page, there is only one word.

"YE," I SAID. "DEAR DRAGON—"

Ye could have dealt with his loss like a storybook beast. He could have rampaged, shooting flames of vengeance and wrath. Instead, he had burrowed down deep to sleep with his ancestors, the golden relics of his past. He had accepted his fate.

The last dragon on Earth. He would lie here, too, someday, as dragon gold.

Suddenly, I pitied him. I respected him, liked him, adored him.

But there was nothing I could do. I was sorry I'd disturbed his sad sleep.

"Ye," I said. "I need to go. I need to go now."

I think he was lost in a dream.

I had nothing more to say. I started to walk away. Out, back into the blackness. Where I'd end up, only heaven and Ye would know. Probably down some blind tunnel, nothing left of me but bones, like the skeleton in the trench. I was overcome by sorrow, guilt, compassion—an avalanche of feelings. I was an intruder, hardly a footnote in his long history. I wanted to leave him to his memories and his gold.

I still had his gold in my pocket.

His gold, not mine.

It could be his mother. It could be her heart.

I was too ashamed to return it. Too ashamed for him to know I'd picked it up. I knew what I would do. I would drop it as I went, somewhere in the shadows.

Stepping over the turquoise stream, I thought I heard him snuff. I turned, and he started to cough. A hard, harsh, hacking cough.

My mother had a practice of ending her talks—whether with a stranger or friend or foe, whether there'd been an argument or agreement—with a kind word. She would offer a smile and say something like, "Stay well," "Be blessed," "Peace." I wasn't going to smile—I was too sorry about the gold in my mouth, the gold I'd once been so proud of.

So I waved, but I don't think he saw me. So I called. "Take care of yourself, Ye! You've got a nasty cough." It wasn't the greatest farewell, but I hadn't practiced like Mom had.

He looked up. "I am a dragon," he said. "It is good to kindle the embers… hrm-hrmm-hrmmm!"

Then he had a convulsion of coughing, hacking, and choking that was far worse than before. It went on and on and on. I stood helpless, watching spasm after spasm jolt his rugged body.

"Hrm-hrmm-hrmmmmm-hrmmmmmm!"

If Ye was the last of the dragons—the last of the last of the dragons—I couldn't leave him like this.

Suddenly, his coughing stopped.

So did my heart.

He was still as stone, his head fallen, his eyes closed. The silence was deathly.

"Ye?" I squeaked.

No response.

"Ye?" I said louder.

Nothing.

Stumbling across the cave, I shouted, "Ye!"

He heaved a hollow sigh and opened an eye.

My heart beat again. All I could think to do was what my mother had done, whenever I had a bad cough.

"Let me listen," I said, and moved around to place my ear against his bulging, leathery, industrial-size furnace side. He did not protest. I listened, and heard a rumbling wheeze within—like a strong wind with debris in it, or a rockslide down a canyon.

"Is it serious?" he whispered.

"Shush," I said.

"What is it?"

"Shush!"

If I listened long enough, I hoped, I could pick up a pattern, see if his breathing was regular.

Right. About as regular as a cyclone. Not that I could do anything about it.

I pulled away with a roughened cheek and blistered ear. "I'm not a doctor," I said, "but it doesn't sound good." I came around to his head. His eye was at half-mast and had lost its fire. I laid my hand on his muzzle. I wiped some soot off his nose.

As I did, a change came over him. He lifted his head, his eye got big, and the light within it grew, like the light of the rising sun. His dragonlight became bright.

"Where did you get that?" he sang.

"Get what?"

"That pearl."

THIS PART I CALL THE SHOWDOWN. HIGH noon on Main Street at the bottom of the Mollie Kathleen.

Ye was facing Me.

Neither of us was a gunslinger, but the lines were drawn.

Ye wanted the pearl. He didn't say so—but I could tell. Girl, was it obvious. He was transformed. It was as though centuries of his life had sloughed off like a snake shedding its skin. The light in his eye was now sweet as day.

So was his voice. "May I have it?" he asked.

"Have what?" I said dumbly.

"The ring. That pearl."

"Whatever for?" I had the feeling a weight was about to drape across my back.

"Is it yours to give?" he suggested.

"Why should I give it to you?"

"Do you like me?" He cast his words carelessly, as if this wasn't critical.

I narrowed one eye at him. All right—he may have a real bad cough, but he was using his aw-c'mon-insurance-salesman approach again. Was it another lariat? It was definitely unwinding, hovering above my head. I looked straight into his golden eyes to test his blinkmanship.

I said. "Why do you want it?"

He didn't flinch. "It is a wonderful pearl," he said. Deadpan, no emotion.

I stepped back, hand on my hip. That brought a wince to his face—the pearl leaving his sight. "Shame on you," I said. "I know why you want it."

"You do not."

"Do too."

"Why?"

"One word, Mister Ye. One short word."

"Kat," he scolded, "it is not greed. Greed has nothing to do with it." He coughed, and I questioned that it was real; perhaps it was forced to draw my sympathy.

"What is it then?"

Except for his wheeze, he was silent awhile, his eyes darting now around the cave, now to the hand on my hip.

It had to be greed. After all, everyone's greedy for something. Since it wasn't gold or vengeance or who knows what for this dragon, I figured his weakness was pretty pearls. Possessing mine would fill a yearning for conquest. Isn't that what dragons were known for?

While I was having these disenchanted thoughts, he broke his silence.

"The legend—" Ye began.

Ah-ha—the one question he hadn't answered. "The Serpent Mound?" I said.

"It represents the legend. Do you know what is in his mouth?"

"The serpent's mouth?"

"It is not a serpent," he reminded me.

"Sorry," I said. "In its mouth…" Not a gold tooth, surely. I couldn't recall it having anything in its mouth. I shook my head. "What?"

"A pearl. He is swallowing a pearl."

That set me back. Now I could picture the ancient earthwork, winding its way through the woods, its mouth open wide, a circular object inside it.

"A pearl?" I said, and slowly raised my hand, the one with my mother's pearl.

Together we gazed. And as we did, Ye told me of the legend, how its origin had grown out of great misfortune, far back in the dawn of time.

"When dragons first inhabited the earth, they were so numerous and strong, mortality was hardly a concern. They thought they would live forever. There were sea dragons and sky dragons, land dragons and subterranean. Each dragon shared the characteristics of each habitat—sea, sky, land, grotto—but each one had its own special strength. Then, quick as lightning, a cataclysmic event occurred. Something fell from heaven—Lucifer, for all I know, cast out. The impact shook the foundations of the earth, causing a flood and geological upheavals. In that single blow, nearly all the dragons were destroyed. Crushed, ground to bits, smothered, imbedded."

I pictured the poor dragons falling in crevices. "That explains gold veins!" I said.

"It does," Ye said sadly. "A few dragon eggs, called hlams, or silent dreams, survived. But ever after, dragons were weaker and far less potent. Whereas the first dragons lived indefinitely—though they eventually would die natural deaths—the remaining ones were shorter-lived. A few eons instead of millennia on millennia. Out of that extant brood, I came. Early on I was told of this legend, the way a human child is raised on nursery rhymes. Perhaps it was generated to give us hope, a recoil, you could say, against the unknown, the uncontrollable."

He took his eye off the pearl to look at me. "Do you understand all of this?"

"Most of it. Yes."

"I am using big words," Ye said. "Potent, extant, generated…"

"I'm getting it," I said, telling myself I'd look them up later. I was anxious to hear the tale, though anxious about where it might end.

"To make it short," he said, becoming somber, "the legend promises eternal life to any dragon who swallows a pearl."

I lowered my arm, and he followed it as if it were a falling star.

"I see," I said.

"Do you?" he asked.

"A long, long, long, long life."

"Forever."

"And ever."

His eye was back on mine. We were eye to eye.

"There is one condition," he said.

I wanted to blink, but couldn't. I was spellbound, waiting.

"The pearl must be given willingly, or it will not take effect."

THE SHOWDOWN, SCENE TWO.

It was my turn to deliberate. (My turn for big words.) Deliberate: what the jury does when they're trying to make a decision. The opposite of being trigger-happy, which is what I was tempted to do, without further ado. Cut and run. Fire off an absolute "No!" and get outta there.

I deliberated.

If Ye hadn't been the last of all dragons…

If it hadn't been for his gold burning a hole in my conscience…

If it hadn't been for my need to get out…

The commonsense thing would be to exchange the ring for directions. I would help Ye in his hour—or whatever that would be in dragon time—of need, he would help me in mine.

If it hadn't been for my mother.

Promise.

But if I never got out alive, there'd be no way to keep the promise, or anything else for that matter.

It was what Dillon calls an oxydox: oxymoron and paradox combined. (More big words.) An oxymoron being two opposing things in one phrase, and paradox being something contradicting itself. Anyway, between a rock and a hard place.

There was no competition against my mother, even for a dragon. She would win every time, hands down. But I knew her well enough to know what she would do. I could hear her say, "It's simple, Kat. Which would you rather be—alive and free, minus the ring, or dead at the bottom of blackness, with the ring around your phalanx?" ("Phalanx" is the finger bone—Mom could be specific like that, and anyway, I learned it in science class.) Under the circumstances, she would release me from whatever promise I was sworn to keep.

There was something else, and I knew all along where my reasoning would take me. If I gave Ye the ring—

Wait. It had to be given willingly. A gift of the heart. How could I wrench it from my finger and give it to him willingly?

But if I gave Ye the ring—

All right, I'll admit it, because I've sworn to tell the truth—no gaps, no embellishments, no attempts at making myself look good.

If I gave Ye the ring, that would justify keeping his gold.

There you have it. I was a thief. Not a noble thing.

Ye was patient.

I was sure of this: He wasn't going to devour the ring then and there with me inserted in it, though he could have—in one gulp. No, that would not be willingly, that would be by force. And he wasn't that kind of beast. He was Ye the Dragon, with his own sense of honor. A noble thing.

He finally said, "Does it mean that much to you? Is it that valuable?"

I sighed. "You have no idea."

"I can judge that."

"It was my mother's."

"Ah," he said with an approving nod. "Given willingly."

"Passionately," I assured him.

"Hmm," he said. "How did she get the ring?"

"It was her mother's."

"Ancestral," Ye murmured.

"Yes." I turned her ring around. Around and around.

Ye was silent.

I still had my dilemma: Die or give up the ring.

Finally, I said, "Ye?"

"Yes?"

"What chance do I have of finding my own way out?"

He glanced around the cavern. "One in a hundred or so, perhaps."

"Hmm," I said. "It'd take a long time."

"By your reckoning."

After circling back over my anguished, inner arguments and arriving at the same place, I said, "Ye, our wants are not that different—yours and mine. I'd like to live, so would you."

He studied me without a word.

"If you—" I hesitated under his gaze. "If you show me the way out—" I averted my eyes to the pearl, and imagined Mom smiling with relief. Yes, this would have been her solution. I took a deep breath and exhaled. "I'll let you have it."

He gave a smoky sigh. "That would not work."

I frowned. "Why not?"

"It would not be a gift."

"Well… it would be a barter, an exchange. An exchange is not exactly paying for your help."

"Neither is it a gift. A gift is given unconditionally, no strings attached."

Ye was making this hard—as if it wasn't already—but it hardly required thought: Of course, he was right.

I was back to square one. I'd have to find my way out. A near impossibility.

I hung my head and limped away. It was not an act—I was bone-weary spent, and my knee was starting to swell.

I was stepping over the turquoise stream for the third time when I heard him call. I stopped without turning and said, "What?"

He didn't answer, so I turned to look back.

He stirred himself, slowly swung his bulk, and lumbered into the dark. Then I heard his echo.

"Follow me… me… me…"

I tottered after him.

CROSSING THE FAR REACHES OF THE CAVERN, Ye strode over stalagmites I had to clamber around. If not for my need to keep up, and my increasing numbness, I would have lingered over the splashes of beauty that appeared in the dancing dragonlight: translucent mineral curtains, thin hollow reeds of pale rock, gnarled formations creeping gnomelike along the walls, rhinestone rubble spilling across the floor, a fluorescent lime-green pool.

I halted at the pool, stunned by its vapory silence. What mysteries lay here? Did Ye navigate its depths, dive from cave dweller to sea swimmer and back again? Were there fish in it that he ate?

His muffled cough roused me. I turned in time to see him circle a huge stalagmite that towered like a Grecian column and enter a black mouth in the wall.

I hobbled as fast as I could, my thoughts bumping around in my head. We might have gone half an hour, but it seemed like half a year. How was he to know that an injured girl of twelve could hardly keep pace with a dragon of, what—three thousand?

Egypt… Babylon… Halley's Comet… What had he done all those centuries?

Where were we going?

Where would this stop?

? ? ?

We gradually ascended. I followed his tail, which wavered like foam on a moonlit shore and shone violet and green. With nothing else to see but his massive shape beyond, I kept my eyes on that slithery, shimmering wake into the dark unknown.

As we went, I realized the dragonlight Ye cast was for my sake: to prevent me from stumbling. But stumble I did, several times, and lost sight of him. I had to hurry to catch up, listening for his rambling rumble and occasional coughs, watching for his celestial scales, smelling his scent—for he had a scent. When I smelled it, I thought of fortune and ashes and spices and earth. It hurt me to smell him and soothed me, too.

At times, I wanted to crawl up his back to be carried and rocked.

When my feet had exhausted every excuse to plod on, I felt a whirl of air that was not dragon scent, and finally we stopped.

We had come to the end.

Ye listed to one side, backed into a nook that looked like another passage, curled his tail up around his chest, and declared, "Haven't done that in a dragon's age! A fanciful stroll!"

I nodded and gasped at him, unable to speak.

"Here we are," he said. "From here, you must crawl." He motioned to a hole in the wall behind me.

I stooped and peered in. A stone-gray spot of light beckoned to me from beyond.

This was it.

We would part.

I would go my way, back into the electric world of humanity.

Ye would languish in the dark until death.

I would see him no more.

I had a growing sensation this was all just a dream. But what a dream! Would I look back on it in disbelief? I glanced over my shoulder to be sure he was there. He was: gazing at me, expressionless, waiting.

"Proceed," he said.

I detected a wheeze. A golden string of smoke flitted from off his tongue. I looked closely at him, as if seeing him for the first time, believing it was the last. I tried looking into his soul, tried to take in his mystery, his reality.

I saw a scaly thing with four legs and a tail, wings folded, claws for digging and foraging.

I saw a fabulous mythical beast, who roamed the Wonder World, whose colors would sing in sunlight—whose wings would, too—whose blood beat with enchantment, whose powers could bind your heart.

Like a sleepwalker, I went to him.

I went pulling the ring from my hand.

"Here," I heard myself say. "I want you to have it. I want you to live forever."

He studied my face as if from far, far away, as if it was his first time to see me, too, and his last.

"Willingly?" he asked.

I could say no more. Gripped by a sadness I could not explain, I began to tremble.

I gave him the ring.

Then I got down on all fours and found the hole and crept in.

AS I CRAWLED, I BEGAN TO CRY.

In this stuffy tunnel of time, I felt the weight of the world on my back. A messy, jabbering, greedy-fingered, snickering world that joggled your head and your heart and left you stranded.

Why should a world like that care for a daydreaming dragon, lying deep beneath human thought, out of sight and out of reach? Why should it care if the last dragon lived or died or blew pictures in the air and sang lines from "America the Beautiful"?

I had dragged that world through Ye's Dark Fantastic, leaving my own little snail trail.

Or did I have it backward? Was I crawling away from something so real, my own world was a myth? Was Ye the real, and the rest of us, clutching some handhold each in our own way, the unreal?

Were we the ones in the dream? And a bad dream at that.

Like my mother.

I saw her lying under a veil of gray, her face a blank.

Her hands empty.

I suddenly gasped. Mom! Oh, I'm sorry! So sorry! I gave it away! Your pearl! Away! Gone! Gone…

It had slid off too easily, had slipped away too fast. What was it I gave it to? A golden flight of fancy?

My finger felt so bare.

My soul so much more.

As I crawled molelike through the dirt, I sobbed, "Back! I want it back! It was everything! All I had left! The only real thing!"

BY THE TIME I REACHED THE END, MY SADness had lifted.

I wanted to be free of my underground dream, shake it off like a shell. I yearned to be with my family again, feel the sunlight on my face, breathe fresh air.

The end was not spectacular: There was no flower-scented breeze, no glorious light, no wide opening with the blue sky and the Rockies beyond. There was scarcely any light at all. The air smelled moldy, with a tinge of stink.

My mole hole emptied into an earthen compartment with a mound of crusty waste on the floor. Propped against the wall was something like a hen roost, posing as a ladder. I peered up. About eight feet up was a wooden boxlike cover with two watermelon-shaped holes that emitted gray light.

That was it.

OK. I was supposed to climb the roost and squeeze through one of those holes.

Which is what I did.

Not until I was halfway out, trying to avoid adding splinters to my assorted injuries, did I realize where I was. Vertical planks, a tin roof, a lazy, hinged door with a crescent moon…

An old two-seater outhouse! And I was climbing out the—

Grossville! I was free of the hole before you could say Johnny-Boy.

Later, when I told Dillon about it, he said, "That was a speedy evacuation. But hey, you should've been relieved it wasn't in regular use." Punny, punny, punny.

By the looks of the planks in the walls, full of cracks and bullet holes through which daylight leaked, I wondered how it could still be standing. What confounded me most was the double seater. Why would two levelheaded persons want to sit side by side in a privy doing their dirty work?

Suddenly, I had the urge to go, and this was the place to do it.

I would have, if it hadn't been for Joe. Fixed to the back of the door, just below the crescent, was a poster, brown with age. It must have been meant as a joke.

And there was Joe in a mug shot, glaring at me with one dark eye and one white. Among his listed crimes—some of which were really horrendous—was one that hit me in the gut.

THEFT.

I sat down (right where you're supposed to) and stared at the word. Now I was on the other side of the feelings I'd left behind. Guilt rose in me again.

"Kat," I said grimly, "you're no better than an outlaw. You could be the poster girl for theft."

Yep—Cotton-Eyed Joe and Jesse James and Billy the Kid and Li'l Kat Graham. My face burned with shame at the thought.

I took the gold rock from my jacket.

It was not too late to cast it off. Like casting off baggage, it would lighten my load. I could drop it down the hole. It wouldn't be in Ye's possession, but neither would it be in mine. Back to the earth it would go, where it belonged.

I gazed at it awhile, blazing its image into my brain. How luscious and warm it felt! Like holding a chunk of the sun.

Wait… yes…

Things aren't always wrong and right, black and white. They can be gray, confusing, unclear. It depends on your motive. It depends on a lot of things. There was my mom, and we needed money.

I'd be out of my mind not to keep it. Anyone would. Besides, Ye wouldn't miss it. It'd be like, say, having the complete skeleton of your great-great-grandmother with one of her fingertips gone. Right?

When I put it in those terms, it didn't seem so bad.

It didn't seem so good.

Deep down, I felt it. Guilty, guilty, guilty. I had given Ye the ring voluntarily. But he had not given me the gold.

I had stolen that.

I sighed a deep sigh. "Well, Kat," I said, "you may as well get used to the feeling, because you know you're determined to keep it."

I dropped the gold back into my jacket, shook my head in self-contempt, got up, and shoved Joe aside.