Free Flight of the Phoenix by R. L. Lafevers

asked. "What's next?"
    "Well, not only do we need to put out some inquiries about this would-be thief of yours, but I want to locate your Miss Lumpton. I have a few questions I'd like to ask her."
    That would be interesting, Nate thought. He could hardly imagine the two of them in the same room.
    "And as if that weren't enough," she continued, "we need to make a quick trip to visit the wyverns. It's time for the wyvern hatchlings to begin flying soon, and I don't want the chickens and goats to begin disappearing at an alarming rate. Here." She reached into her pocket and tossed something at Nate.
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    [I mage: A compass.]
    Startled, Nate managed to catch it. He turned it round and round in his hands. It was a compass, just like hers. The engraved dodo on the cover looked so real, Nate half expected him to talk.
    "The Fludd family compass," Aunt Phil explained. "It's high time your formal training began. We've loads of catching up to do."
    Nate slipped the compass into his pocket. He couldn't wait to get back to Aunt Phil's house and show that stuffy old dodo just how wrong he'd been.
    The End
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    NATHANIEL FLUDD'S GUIDE TO
    PEOPLE, PLACES, AND THINGS
    airship Italia: a semirigid airship, or dirigible, designed by Umberto Nobile that crashed in the Arctic Circle on May 23, 1928
    Bedouin : nomadic tribes that live in the deserts of the Middle East
    Budapest : the capital of Hungary, one of the early stops on the airmail routes from England
    cardinal points : the four primary directions on a compass (north, south, east, and west)
    cartographer : a mapmaker
    compass : a navigational instrument that indicates direction with its magnetic needle always pointing north
    compass rose : a small drawing on a map that shows the orientation of the map
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    dodo bird : a large, flightless bird thought extinct since the mid-seventeenth century the Great War : the global war (now often called World War I) that took place from 1914 to 1918. It was one of the largest wars in history and involved many of the world's major powers.
    gremlin : a small, greasy creature first discovered by Great War pilots when it fouled their engines and mechanical workings
    Mungo Fludd : the first Fludd of record. In 1422, he set out to retrace the steps of Marco Polo so that he could map the world. He ended up traveling the globe for seventeen years (often called the Great Wandering). He was the first European to see the birth of a phoenix in 1428.
    oasis : a spring or water source found in a desert
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    oil : a thick, heavy substance for motor engines and other industrial uses
    ordinal points : the four compound directions on a compass (northeast, southeast, northwest, and southwest)
    phoenix : a mythical bird that is able to regenerate itself every five hundred years and is said to possess many magical properties
    Sopwith Platypus : a lesser-known biplane created during the Great War by the Sopwith Aviation Company as part of the Sopwith Zoo that is able to land on both water and land
    Spitsbergen : an island in the Arctic Circle and the last known location of Horatio and Adele Fludd
    Tidy Sum : a large amount of money
    Turks : members of the Turkish state also known as the Ottoman Empire prior to the Great War
    ***