Free The Dragon in the Driveway by Kate Klimo, John Shroades Page B

hobgoblin queen gave them a shrewd look. “Then where are you keeping your draggy-wagon?”
    “We got split up from our draggy-wagon,” Daisy said carefully. She was feeling a tad defensive, so she changed the subject quickly. “Can we help Your Lowness escape? Maybe use your hobgoblins’ picks to break up this root-ball?”
    Her Lowness shook her head. “That won’t work. The tree holds us fast. St. George has spelled it. He’s enslaved all of the trees. The trees were the first to fall under his power … weak, spindly suckers of the light and the water that they are. Then, owing to our own foolishness, the hobgoblins were the next. Not that it took much. Except for Yours Truly, hobgoblins are followers, not leaders. But who’s next? That’s what we ask ourselves as we sit here fretting in our royal dungeon. St. George is a blight upon the very earth, we tell you. A blight.”
    “Where did he come from?” Jesse asked.
    “Who knows?” said the queen with a shrug of her plump shoulders. “Where does anything come from? He’s been on this earth for ages. He lives offthe draggy-wagons, that one, and he always has. He’s a parasite. You know the old nursery rhyme: ‘Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie, killed the draggy-wagons and made them cry.’”
    Jesse and Daisy stared at each other blankly. That certainly wasn’t the version of the nursery rhyme
they
had grown up with!
    The queen went on. “He goes in cycles. After he’s slain the dragons into near-extinction, he sleeps. He just woke up a short while ago from a long sleep in the collapsed mine shaft.”
    “How did he get out?” Daisy asked.
    “We couldn’t rightly say,” said the queen. “We’ve been asleep ourselves. When there are no dragons alive in the world, there is no magic. When there is no magic, we ethereal beings either sleep or fade away. You might not know it to look at us,” she said haughtily, “but we are Beings of the Ethereal Plain.”
    “I’m sure we—I mean, Your Lowness—is,” Daisy said.
    Jesse, who had been listening closely, said, “Maybe somebody dug him up by accident.”
    “I doubt it,” said the queen. “Our theory is that he sensed the arrival of a new draggy-wagon—namely, yours—and he just worked his way up outof the earth, like a sliver of glass out of a finger. You have but to set us free and we will turn the tide of this battle. We won’t lay a mitt on your treasure, either; you have our royal word on that.”
    “Yes, but how do we get you out of there?” Daisy said.
    “We thought you’d never ask!” said Her Royal Lowness. “You must fetch us the Golden Pickax.”
    “Right,” said Jesse. “Just tell us where it is and we’ll get it for you.”
    “Oh, we can’t help you there,” said Her Lowness.
    “But it could be
anywhere
,” said Jesse.
    “Not
anywhere.
” The queen shook her head and croaked, “If it was somewhere down here, we would have found it already.”
    “Is Your Lowness a hundred percent sure?” Daisy asked. “Sometimes I think I’ve lost something and it winds up being right under my nose. What about these pickaxes here?” she said, pointing to the ones resting across the hobgoblins’ laps. “Could any of these be the Golden Pickax … I mean, in disguise?” she added doubtfully, because they certainly didn’t look like they were made of gold.
    “No,” said the queen. “It’s in the Upper Realm, somewhere nearby, I’m sure. The Upper Realm is your turf. We’re sure you know where everything isand can locate it easily. Now hop to it, lambies, for Queen Hap, will you?”
    Feeling nowhere near as confident in their ability to find the Golden Pickax as Her Royal Lowness was, Jesse and Daisy bid the queen farewell, promising only to do their best. The hobgoblin band hopped to its feet and led the cousins down one of the tunnels radiating out from the queen’s root-ball prison.
    “Do you think the professor will have some ideas?” Daisy asked as they jogged