Icefire Read Online Free PDF Page A

hands were shaking. Did the word Lorel mean something to her?
    It was Lucy who kept the intrigue going. “Is Lorel the name of someone?” she asked, plopping the silverware into the sink.
    “I thought it might be the name of a dragon,” muttered David.
    Lucy soon quashed that. “Dragon names begin with a
guh,
not a
luh.
That’s right, isn’t it, Mom?”
    “Yes,” said Liz, offering no explanation. She picked up a carton of cream and poured some over her portion of pie.
    “Dr. Bergstrom talked about dragons,” said David, casually lobbing the remark at Lucy but all the while keeping an eye on Liz. “He assigned me an essay about them. I have to write two thousand words on whether dragons existed or not.”
    “That’s
easy,”
mocked Lucy. “Course they existed.”
    “Yes, it’s all very well you telling me that, but in an essay I have to have some sort of proof. It would help if I knew where dragons lived.”
    “They liked mountains and snowy places,” said Lucy. “Where they could cool off when they’d been flying.”
    “OK, then, answer me this: Why has no one ever found evidence of them? There isn’t a single museum in the world that has a dragon’s skull or a scale on show. If dragons had truly existed, someone, somewhere, would have dug up a bone.”
    Suddenly, out of the blue, Liz spoke: “Why has Dr. Bergstrom assigned you this essay?”
    David lifted his shoulders. “For the challenge, I suppose. If I do well with it, I might win a chance to visit the Arctic.” He told them about the field trip to Chamberlain.
    “Will you see polar bears?” Lucy asked brightly.
    “Tons of them — if I manage to get there. Come on, you’re the experts, give me a clue: Why has no one ever found the remains of a dragon?”
    “Because they don’t understand what they’re looking for,” said Liz. A sudden hush fell over the kitchen. Not a single
hrrr
echoed around the walls. Liz rose to her feet and turned toward the sink. “Dragons are spiritual creatures, David, far removed from the image most people have of them. They were born from the earth, they lived for the earth, and when they died they returned to the earth. Their bones and scales became one with it.”
    “What, they just
dissolved,
you mean?”
    “No, they changed. As all things must. Legend has it they formed a layer of soil — a layer we know today as clay.”
    David felt his heart hit a sudden bump. He looked at the listening dragon on the fridge and thought about Gruffen, G’reth, Gadzooks — all of them lovingly molded from clay. “So your dragons
are
real — in a funny sort of way?”
    Liz and Lucy exchanged a glance. “All things have their auma, David. You simply have to learn to sense it.”
    “Auma? What’s that?”
    “An ancient word for fire.”
    “Not crackly burny fire,” said Lucy, keeping her voice to a reverential whisper.
    “The fire that comes from within,” said Liz.
    David nodded as he thought this through. “What about a dragon’s fire, then? That comes from within. That’s crackly, isn’t it?”
    “It’s specially crackly,” Lucy said.
    David laughed and threw up a hand. “Now you’re making it sound like a breakfast cereal. Come on, stop talking in riddles. Dragons are spiritual, fair enough. But they’re obviously flesh and blood as well. If theirbodies eventually turn to clay, what happens to their fire, crackly or otherwise?”
    “Can I tell him?” Lucy turned to her mom.
    “Yes. Then go and bring Bonnington in.”
    David glanced through the window again. The Pennykettles’ cat was still by the snowman. What
was
the matter with him?
    “When dragons die, they cry their fire tear,” said Lucy, “and each tear trickles into the ground, where the
real
auma is.”
    David thought a moment before replying. “At the earth’s core, you mean?”
    Lucy gave a vigorous nod. “Dragon fire helps the world to breathe.”
    “Don’t be silly; the earth doesn’t
breathe.”
    “It does,” she