Save the Dragons!. Martin Berman-Gorvine

      Copyright Information

      Copyright © 2013 by Martin Berman-Gorvine.

      All rights reserved.

      Published by Wildside Press LLC.

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      Dedication

      For Jackie, now and always.

      And with thanks to Laurie Christianson and Dave Argentar, who helped Ashley fly and breathe fire.

      Part I

      When Worlds Collide

      Chapter 1

      This must be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done—writing this letter on the blank pages of your diary and leaving it here for you to find. After all, I’ve never met you! All I have is your forgotten diary. Please forgive me for reading it…but now I know we must meet.

      I paused with my pen over the page. Dope, what’s the point boring a stranger with my babbling? My hand cramped; I was too used to tapping away at my cell phone or computer to write with a pen for very long.

      I sat in the new treasure chest I’d discovered, hidden away on a back street of South Philadelphia. I’ve never been in this street before, even though I grew up here. Finding “Gloria’s Gateway Books and Records” was like winning the lottery, especially after the extra-yucky day I had at school.

      * * * *

      I shivered and pulled my coat tighter around me as I walked through the blue-gray dusk. I was lost. It usually takes me fifteen minutes to walk home, and I take the same route along Snyder Avenue every day, turning right on 9th Street and then left on Wolf Street, where I live with my mom.

      But here I was hurrying nervously along an unfamiliar cracked sidewalk, past low anonymous buildings. Must not have been paying attention. A lone orange streetlight flickered feebly to life overhead, and a cat yowled somewhere. No one was around, so I couldn’t even ask for directions. All the houses had peeling paint, the potholes were even bigger than usual for Philly, street signs were missing. Even the cars parked in the street looked more beaten-up than you usually see in my neighborhood, and it’s not like folks where I come from drive the latest model of anything. But these…they looked like cars out of some old movie, or in those pictures you see from Cuba where they’re still driving Studebakers from the 1950’s. The moon was only a foggy bright patch behind gray clouds, but I had a feeling that if it did come out, it too would look like a crumpled up scrap of paper.

      Just where was I, anyway? I should come out on Moyamensing Avenue, but everything looked totally unfamiliar. I couldn’t read the shop signs in the darkness, and anyhow, they looked dark and deserted. Locked door followed locked door. There weren’t even cars driving on the street. Nothing moved but my twin shadows, the one in front of me looming longer and longer as I walked away from the streetlight behind me, the one behind me shrinking as I approached the next streetlight.

      So the warm yellow light spilling from the building on my left came as a shock. A rainbow-shaped arch of chipped gilt lettering on a dusty plate-glass window said GLORIA’S GATEWAY BOOKS, with AND RECORDS written in a smaller arch inside it. On the blue paint-peeling door a little red sign said “HOURS” in white letters but was otherwise blank. What drew me in, besides the hope of warming up, were the heaps of books stacked right up against the window, books of all shapes, sizes, and colors. It was just like a bigger, better version of my bedroom, which was crammed full of books—some older, some newer, but fewer and fewer from recent years as everything migrates online. As if books were birds, flying to a warmer climate than dusty old shelves could offer them. Don’t get me wrong! I love my cell phone as much as anyone else, but I don’t want to read books on that tiny gray screen, with every author’s words looking exactly like every other author’s.

      Speaking of cell phones, I had a special one—an especially annoying one, since my mom got some kind of advanced model from a friend of hers who works for one of the big carriers. It seemed to have a rudimentary intelligence, sort of like Mom herself. Now it wanted to talk to me—its screen flashed red to blue and back again—like a police car’s light. I shoved it in my pocket, not wanting to listen to it—of course Mom had programmed it with her voice. “Teresa, you’re an hour late for dinner! Teresa, Mom called three times in the past ten minutes, and she sent you five texts, why don’t you answer? Teresa D’Angelo, are you listening to me? All you have to do to get home is—”

      Anyway I was so cold and tired I barged through that hourless door. On top of the heap of books in the window, just visible in the space between the two rows of lettering, an orange tabby cat dozed. A cowbell clanked overhead as the door swung shut behind me. Now awake, the cat leaped off the book heap and landed purring at my feet. I stroked her, scratching behind her ears like I used to do with my old calico Fuzz when I was growing up. My parents didn’t even tell me that Fuzz died when I was away at camp that awful summer before I turned thirteen, because they knew I’d be a wreck. They were right, too; they told me when I got back home, and I couldn’t go back to school until the middle of September, I was such a mess.

      This cat had a little heart-shaped tag attached to her collar that looked as if it had been inscribed by hand. Tiferet. What a strange name. She rubbed against my legs, purring, and I immediately felt warmer. Then she looked up at me with her amber eyes, and, to my astonishment, she slowly shut her right eye, then opened it again.

      “Did you just wink at me?” Well, of course she didn’t answer; with a sniff she darted around a row of shelves and disappeared. I followed.

      Was that the rustle of a dress? Where’s it coming from? As I searched, I bumped into an old wooden countertop. On top of it sat an antique gilt cash register, and next to it sat a large, steaming mug of.… I sniffed. Hot cocoa! The marshmallows floating in it were starting to melt, just the way I liked it. I picked up the mug and underneath sat a note written in scarlet ink on plain lined paper. “For you,” it said in a curvy, feminine handwriting. “Please be careful not to drip on the books. When you find what you need, you will know what it is worth and what you must leave in exchange. Your humble servant, Gloria.”

      I scratched my head. None of the books I’d peeked into so far had prices on them—no stickers, no penciled-in scrawl on the endpaper, and the publishers’ prices stamped on the dust covers had been blotted out with heavy, black ink. I walked around the counter and examined the cash register. A miniature silver-framed mirror sat where the keys should have been. I frowned at my reflection. Pudgy, pale, with acne scars on my cheeks. Mousy brown hair falling over my ears. And glasses. Nobody wears glasses these days, especially not old wire-rims, but I like them, so there.

      A loud bang made me jump so high I almost dropped the mug. A hiss followed—an old steam radiator, like the one in Nana’s old house on Juniper Street, near the Methodist Hospital? But I couldn’t see one here. Another mystery.

      I shook my head and finished the cocoa, putting the mug down carefully on Gloria’s note so it wouldn’t leave a ring on the counter. Then I started peering around in the gloom, until I spotted a passageway between the bookshelves and book-heaps. An irregular wedge of light danced with bright dust motes, like a tiny spotlight. The light shone through a gap between the top of a row of books that stood at about eye level (well, level with my eyes anyway, barely five feet above the floor) and the shelf above them. There must be a room back behind there. Was that where Gloria was? But nobody answered when I called. Still, there was something back there.

      I removed the books blocking the light, stacking them carefully on the floor beside me, and glanced at a series of oversize volumes with marbled covers, which were stamped in strangely shaped gilt letters: New Almanack Of Khazaria, Tartary, Turkestan And The Lands Of The Caucasus. Where was Khazaria? I’d never heard of it, and I get A’s in geography.

      A cool breeze wafted through the gap the atlas had left behind, smelling of ozone and salt water. But the space behind had no windows or doors and was lit by a bare light bulb with a chain. How could that wind come from the city outside? To find out, I had to empty three more shelves full of books, then lift out the shelves