The Key (The Magnificent 12 3)

“Does anyone remember the names?” Mack asked.

Dietmar raised his hand.

“Anyone besides Dietmar?” Mack asked.

The rest all looked down at the ground.

“Okay, Dietmar,” Mack said. He handed the megaphone to the blond boy and let him take his place in the bow.

“Eimhur Ceana Una Mordag!” Dietmar cried.

Nothing.

“And All-Mother to clan Begonia,” Dietmar added.

Still nothing. Just faint ripples from the chill breeze that blew across the surface of the water.

“Beloved of the Gods and Ultimate Warrioress?” Dietmar tried, obviously beginning to doubt his plan now.

Still nothing.

“But that was all,” Dietmar said, shrugging his shoulders and looking perplexed.

“No, there was one more thing,” Xiao said. “I remember! Holder of the record for longest sustained note on the bagpipes!”

“But that is silly,” Dietmar protested.

“Try it,” Mack said.

So Dietmar pressed the button on the megaphone and said, “Eimhur Ceana Una Mordag, All-Mother to clan Begonia, Beloved of the Gods, Ultimate Warrioress, and a past holder of the record for longest sustained note on the bagpipes, please speak with us!”

“Thar she blows!” the captain cried. Not exactly in those words, because that’s from Moby-Dick. What the captain actually said does not bear repeating and should never have been said in front of a bunch of twelve-year-olds. But you have to understand: the man was excited. He had navigated these waters for thirty-two years and never even caught a glimpse of Nessie.

The captain was the first to see—but then Mack did as well—the bulge of water, a moving wave. It was as though a submarine were powering by just beneath the surface.

Then an eruption! A geyser of water, and up and up and up rose something like a snake. A very big snake, but not with a snake’s head. No, the head was more distinct, more elongated, more like something that ought to be attached to a dinosaur.

The head was the size of the car they’d been driving. The mouth had a bit of a quirky dolphin smile about it, and the eyes were intelligent and alert.

Nessie’s body surfaced only partially, like a whale. There were fins, four of them, that lay on the surface of the water acting as stabilizers. A long tail, almost as long as the elevated neck, swished back and forth like the tail of an agitated cat.

Nessie could train only one eye at a time on them. She chose to aim her left eye at them.

“You have summoned me,” a voice said, but the voice did not seem to come from that massive dinosaur head. Nor was it the sort of voice you would associate with a giant sea serpent. It sounded like the voice of a woman, perhaps a bit haughty, maybe a little proud, a little sure of herself, with maybe just a bit of Queen Elizabeth II falsetto in there.

“Well, yes,” Mack admitted. “We summoned you.”

The head lowered and the eye peered hard at Xiao. “What is your kind doing here, dragon?”

“I am here as a girl,” Xiao said, and made an open-arms gesture of “I’m harmless” and “so please don’t kill me.”

Nessie—the All-Mother of clan Begonia—did not seem happy about the presence of a Chinese dragon, however much she disguised herself as a girl. In fact Nessie looked very much as if she might be really annoyed. So Mack moved quickly in front of Xiao and said, “We were sent by Frank. We have the Key.”

Nessie stopped caring about Xiao in a heartbeat. “You have the Key of William Blisterthöng MacGuffin?”

“That’s right,” Mack said. “Totally.”

He drew out the smaller center piece from his pocket.