Free The Dragon at the North Pole by Kate Klimo

a heartrending wail. “Oh, my Keepers!” she cried. “What have I done?” Giant tears slid out of her eyes and rolled down her snout.
    Daisy reached into the backpack for her bandana. “What you’ve done is good,” she said soothingly, reaching up to catch the tears. It was a vain effort. There were too many of them, and dragon tears are hot. Where the drops hit the floor, they sizzled and left golf ball-sized dents.
    Daisy continued, “You’ve eaten the cracker and broken the spell.”
    Behind them, the fire was quickly going out as it consumed the last of Emmy’s stationery. The heat of the fire had melted the fireplace into a sludgy mound of ice.
    “I feel
terrible
!” Emmy wept. “I’ve done a no-good, awful, terrible, very bad thing.”
    “But everything’s fine now,” Jesse said. “You’re back to your old self.”
    “The spell might be broken,” said Emmy, taking the bandana from Daisy and blowing her nose with a loud honk. “But the damage is done!”
    “What damage is that?” Daisy asked, stuffing the sodden bandana into the side pouch of the backpack.
    “Santa Claus asked me to give him a special present this Christmas,” Emmy said.
    “We know, Em,” Jesse said. “But the thing is, he’s not Santa.”
    “I see that now,” said Emmy. “I see now that he is the notorious dragon slayer Beowulf. But when I thought he was Santa Claus, he asked me for a Christmas present, something only I could give him. And who could deny Santa a Christmas present?”
    “Absolutely no one,” Daisy said gently. “In yourshoes, I’d have done the same thing.”
    “I don’t have shoes,” Emmy said. “But
anyway
, Santa asked me for a brace of Thunder Eggs.”
    “Oh, no,” Jesse said. Thunder Eggs were geodes containing baby dragons. For a dragon slayer to get his hands on a supply of baby dragons would be good for the dragon slayer but very bad for the babies.
    “You see, that’s what the Toyland Vortex machine does,” Emmy said. “It isn’t really for making toys—although he spelled me into thinking it was. It’s really a Vortex Interceptor.”
    Jesse and Daisy gave her a wary look. “What’s that?” they asked.
    Emmy heaved a sigh. “It’s a machine that’s designed to intercept dragon eggs as they enter the earth’s atmosphere from the Time Before.”
    “How exactly does that work?” Jesse asked.
    “Well,” Emmy began, “you know that dragon eggs, otherwise known as Thunder Eggs, rain down from the heavens.”
    Daisy nodded. “Just like it says in Native American lore,” she said.
    Emmy went on. “They come from the Time Before, hurtling through space and time. What no one but dragons—and it seems Beowulf, and now you—know is that the eggs penetrate the earth’satmosphere at the North Pole. From there a swirling vortex sucks them down through the earth’s crust to the core. From the molten center of the earth, the Thunder Eggs are then distributed to all the Realms for which their natures destine them: Airy, Watery, Fiery, Earthly.”
    “Nifty,” said Jesse.
    “I, daughter of Leandra, who was, in turn, daughter of Tourmaline, am a second-generation earthborn dragon.
Autochthonous
is another word for what I am. Autochthonous dragons are very rare, my mother tells me. Most dragons are Ethereal, which means they are hatched from Thunder Eggs that arrive from the Time Before. What I did under Beowulf’s spell was intercept a bunch of Ethereals on their way to earth.”
    “Not so nifty,” said Daisy.
    “I told him I couldn’t do it while he was breathing down my neck. I waited until he was out, searching for his lost reindeer. When he came back, he knew I had succeeded. He asked me for the eggs. But something in me wouldn’t give up those eggs. Even though I was still under his power, it was like this little voice deep inside me said, ‘Emmy, do not give the eggs to this man!’ So I didn’t. I hid them and pretended I was saving them for a surprise.”
    “So