Free We Sled With Dragons by C. Alexander London Page B

do. Without a key, the whole map is just a pretty drawing. And anyway, like I said, I don’t know anything about Plato’s map!”
    â€œYou’re lying,” said Sir Edmund.
    â€œI am not,” said the scholar.
    â€œYou are,” said Sir Edmund.
    â€œI am not,” said the scholar.

    They went on like that for several minutes as the rest of the Council snapped their heads back and forth between one end of the table and the other.
    â€œEnough.” Sir Edmund threw his hands in the air in disgust and dropped down onto his chair. All the men of the Council turned to look at him. Because he was a very small man, only the top of his head down to his large red mustache could be seen.
    â€œMay I go back to my research station?” the explorer asked. “If I don’t return soon, I will be missed. Someone will come looking for me.”
    â€œNo.” Sir Edmund didn’t even look at the scholar. “You live alone at a research station in the Arctic Circle. No one will even notice you’re gone.”
    He reached underneath the table and pulled out a small stone tablet with squiggles and lines carved into it. When the scholar saw it, his eyes went wide.
    â€œThat’s . . . that’s the rune stone of Nidhogg!” the scholar cried. “How did you get that?”
    â€œI purchased it from a collector,” said Sir Edmund. “You’d be amazed what you can get when you have millions of dollars to spend.” He nodded to one of his men guarding the door, who came over to the table with a sledgehammer and lifted it high. “Tell me what I want to know, or the stone will be destroyed.”
    â€œYou wouldn’t!” cried the scholar. “That is a priceless artifact. One of a kind. It tells the myth of Nidhogg the dragon, trapped at the root of the world tree, dreaming of release and revenge.”
    â€œYes,” said Sir Edmund. “I believe it is also the greatest discovery you have ever made?”
    The scholar nodded.
    â€œIt’d be shame to see it destroyed,” said Sir Edmund.
    The scholar gulped but didn’t answer.
    Sir Edmund signaled the man with the sledgehammer, who tightened his grip and prepared to pulverize the ancient artifact.
    â€œWait! Stop!” cried the scholar. “Lord, forgive me. I will tell you what you want to know.”
    The scholar took his fingers and turned the map slowly so that the top and bottom became the sides.
    Sir Edmund smiled widely. What had looked like a rough coastline became a canyon at the top of the world, a dragon perched neatly inside it, looking down at the world below; what had seemed to be a mysterious landmass took on the rough shape of a very recognizable continent, land and sea and mountain looked strikingly familiar.
    â€œOh Plato, you clever devil.” Sir Edmund smiled, studying the map. “It’s always in the last place you look.” He laughed to himself.
    The rest of the Council leaned forward, expectant.
    â€œGentlemen,” he exhaled. “In his ancient manuscript, Plato described Atlantis as lying ‘beyond the Pillars of Hercules.’ In his time, that was the end of the known world. Everyone believed he meant the passage from the Mediterranean Sea into the Atlantic Ocean, but if there were more than one set of these pillars, a set in the far north, for example, then he could have been describing a great city in the north, which would now covered by the frozen ice of the Arctic Ocean.”
    â€œJust to be perfectly clear,” one of the men said. “You are saying that Atlantis is somewhere in the Arctic Ocean?”
    â€œI am saying,” Sir Edmund stood and raised his arm like he was posing for a portrait, “that it is at the very top, that frozen land where the Viking warriors had placed their gods, where children dream of Santa Claus, and where I—”
    â€œAhem,” another Council member interrupted Sir