Stefan’s eyes opened. He stared straight up at the biggest living thing he would ever see. Which was why, in shock and amazement, and obviously overcome with emotion, he said, “Huh.”
Then he hopped up, looked down at the scar, and said, “Cool. It’s like, better than a tatt.”
Jarrah rushed over and gave him a quick hug. A hug that embarrassed both her and Stefan. And Mack.
“So, what’s this about killing us?” Mack asked Xiao. “That was a joke, right?”
It was hard to read her expression. Dragons are inscrutable, to put it mildly. “We’ll talk,” she said cryptically. “First, to my home. I’ll take you, Mack. My father will carry Jarrah and Stefan.”
Daddy dragon closed a giant hand—or whatever it was—around Jarrah and another around Stefan, and without any sign of effort simply rose and slithered away into the sky.
It was a bit more awkward for Xiao. Her claws were nowhere near as big.
“Climb onto my back,” she instructed Mack.
Mack said, “Um . . . uh . . . ,” and other very intelligent things. He’d never even gone to a school-sponsored dance with a female. But in the end he did what he was told and managed to straddle Xiao’s back.
She didn’t feel slimy. Not that he had any strong opinions on what dragons should feel like. But he was still surprised that the scales were dry. They felt a little like thick leaves. Like maybe they were living tissue but they could be plastic, too.
Beneath the scales was all sinewy muscle.
“Hold on to my horns,” Xiao said.
Her horns were smaller than her father’s, and twisted like swirly soft-serve ice-cream cones.
Mack held on to Xiao’s horns. He squeezed his knees tight. He thought about closing his eyes and then realized, no, that would be stupid: better to know if she was crashing into something.
And then, without straining or even grunting, Xiao simply slithered up off the ramp. Up they went in a sinuous move that reminded Mack of when he’d seen sidewinders out in the Arizona desert.
In seconds they were halfway to the blue-painted ceiling, on a path to pass just beneath the light-filled cauldron.
Chapter Thirteen
The palace—it seemed to be the largest of the nine—was quite a place.
It looked a bit like some of the palaces in the Forbidden City, but as if they were the original size and the Forbidden City palaces were miniature versions.
It was big. Mack had been to see the Diamondbacks play at Chase Field in Phoenix. This palace was like that.
Unlike Chase Field, the palace was red. Red on the outside, red and gold on the inside. Not gold paint, Mack suspected, but actual gold. Chairs of gold, lamps of gold, decorative trim of gold.
They were deposited in a room so cavernous you could park an aircraft carrier on that polished floor. At the far end was a throne on a platform.
Xiao’s father slithered and walked to that throne and climbed up onto it. He sort of sat and sort of just draped across it, curling his tail in a coil below.
“That has got to be the biggest chair in the world,” Jarrah said.
“If it was me, I’d have an awesome flat-screen to go with that easy chair,” Stefan said.
“My father doesn’t watch a lot of TV,” Xiao said. She was once again a slim, pretty girl with thoughtful eyes and long black hair. “Follow me.”
They took a walk—about a five-minute walk—to get close to the throne. Mack was not exactly convinced he wanted to get too close. The huge yellow dragon had saved Stefan’s life. But who knew when he might get hostile?
Or hungry.
As they got closer, something that Mack had thought might be a small palace all on its own began to seem more like a very large desk. Very large pens—not ballpoints, not felt-tips, more like brushes really—stood in ornate holders.
Occupying a huge—okay, look, let’s just assume everything here was huge—wall shelf were books and rolled-up scrolls.