CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THE DRAGON AWAKES

The dragon emerged from the trees and landed at the edge of the fairy gardens. He was almost as tall as the Fairy Palace. Red scales covered his body and a forked tongue slipped in and out of his sharp teeth. He had two horns and sharp spikes covered his head and traveled down his spine. Two large wings grew out of the dragon’s back and a long tail whipped around behind him. Smoke continuously floated out of his enormous nostrils as if they were the exhaust pipes of a steam engine.

Alex and Conner could never have imagined a creature so big. There wasn’t a dinosaur or monster they had ever read about that could compare to the beast coming toward them.

The dragon arched his back and roared at the Happily Ever After Assembly. It was so loud many of the windows shattered. All the fairies in the gardens ran or flew to the trees beyond the gardens to avoid being trampled by the creature. General Marquis laughed hysterically at the frightened fairies fleeing their homes.

Conner grabbed his sword from the ground and joined his sister and the men and women at the front of the palace.

“Mother Goose, what do we do?” he asked.

Everyone turned to her.

“Why is everyone looking at me? I’ve never killed a dragon before!” she said.

“Weren’t you and Grandma some of the fairies who hunted them during the Dragon Age?” Alex asked, trying her best not to panic.

“I just wrestled the smaller ones,” Mother Goose admitted. “Your grandmother was the one who knew how to slay them.”

Conner rubbed his fingers through his hair. “Okay, everyone think! There’s got to be a way we can kill this thing!”

General Marquis could feel their anxiety all the way across the gardens. He enjoyed seeing how helpless his new pet made them feel and forced them to wallow in it for a little longer before ordering it to attack them.

The Masked Man appeared through the trees just below the dragon and had never looked so happy. He gazed up at the dragon as if he were looking at an embodiment of his life’s work. He had waited his whole life to possess an actual dragon, and it was bigger and better than he could ever have imagined.

Unfortunately for General Marquis, the Masked Man had more control over the dragon than he realized.

“That’s enough waiting,” the general shouted. “Send the dragon to attack the Fairy Palace! I want to watch it burn!”

The Masked Man turned his head sharply to the general. “No,” he said.

The general rotated his whole body to face him. No one had ever defied him so bluntly before.

“What did you say?” General Marquis asked him.

“I said no, Jacques,” the Masked Man said.

He walked toward the general but the dragon stayed right where he was. There was something very different about the Masked Man; he didn’t seem as frail or as odd as he usually did. Having possession of the dragon made him stand taller and much more confidently—he didn’t have to please anyone anymore.

“I’ve taken a lot of orders from you recently and I’ve had enough of it,” he barked at the general.

“You work for me!” General Marquis shouted.

The Masked Man burst into laughter. “Now comes the part when I tell you the truth, General,” he said. “From the minute I saw you and your men storm into the prison, you started working for me. I’ve waited a long time for someone like you to come my way—someone as power hungry as me but who was blinded by his determination and could be easily manipulated. This whole time you only thought I was working for you when actually you were giving me exactly what I wanted. Thank you for your services, General Marquis, but you are no longer valuable to my cause.”

The Masked Man was the only person who had ever deceived him. For the first time, the general of the Grande Armée looked afraid.

“Don’t just stand there! Seize this man!” the general demanded—but the soldiers stayed still. In this moment the man with the dragon was the one they didn’t want to cross.

“Wise choice,” the Masked Man said to the soldiers. “Good-bye, General.”

He opened his hands and the soldiers discovered he had kept the shells of the dragon egg. He clutched them very tightly. He raised his hands toward General Marquis and the dragon jerked his head in his direction. The dragon took two steps closer to him and the general tried running away.

“Nooooo!” General Marquis screamed.

The dragon took a deep breath and exhaled a long and powerful fiery geyser from his lungs. The geyser hit the general and he was consumed in its vicious flames. When the dragon stopped, the ground beneath the general had been scorched black and General Marquis was gone.

“What just happened?” Conner shrieked.

“The Masked Man—he has the dragon’s eggshell!” Mother Goose exclaimed. “When a dragon is born and develops its sight, it assumes that whoever it first sees with its eggshell is its mother—meaning whoever holds the pieces of the eggshell becomes the dragon’s master! The Masked Man is in control of the dragon!”

“Oh great,” Conner said. “More good news!”

The Masked Man raised the eggshell pieces toward the Fairy Palace. “Kill them,” he instructed the dragon, and the creature took a step forward. Suddenly, Little Bo Peep emerged from the gardens and put herself in between the dragon and the palace.

“Wait!” Little Bo screamed. “You don’t have to do this!”

The Masked Man dropped his hands and the dragon stopped.

After searching the Grande Armée soldiers for hours, Little Bo had finally found the Masked Man. She slowly walked toward him with tears running down her face.

“I know your life has been difficult and unfair and you’ve been tossed aside by your own blood, but I also know there is a loving and caring man under that mask somewhere,” she said. “That’s the man I fell in love with! This is your chance to show the rest of the world that you’re not the conniving and revenge-seeking lunatic they think you are—for my sake, show them the man I love so there is still hope we can be together! Don’t ruin the world just because it has ruined you!”

The others watched her with bated breath. They felt their hearts pounding out of their chests. Had her words meant something to him? Did the Masked Man love her enough to call off the monster? If the Masked Man’s face hadn’t been covered, they would have seen a very conflicted expression surface as he thought about what Little Bo had said.

But he raised the eggshells toward the palace again. “Kill them ALL!” the Masked Man shouted.

Little Bo’s pale skin went even whiter. Tears stopped rolling down her cheeks and she stopped breathing altogether. She stared at the Masked Man in a daze and clutched the left side of her chest. Despite her heartfelt appeal, the man she loved more than anything else in world didn’t care if she lived or died. With no one else to live for, Little Bo collapsed on the ground and became very still.

Sir Lampton and Xanthous ran to her and carried her back to the others. They laid her down on the steps and Alex and Conner leaned beside her. Conner checked her pulse.

“She’s dead,” he gasped. The women covered their mouths and the men removed their hats at the news. Even Red was upset to hear it and buried her face in Froggy’s shoulder.

Alex pulled Little Bo’s necklace out from the top of her dress. She inspected the tiny heart-shaped stone at the end of the chain and saw that a crack had formed across it. Little Bo Peep had died of a broken heart.

The dragon slowly crept toward the Fairy Palace. He scorched the gardens beside him with his fiery breath as he went.

Alex couldn’t stand waiting around like a sitting duck for another second. Her grandmother was the only living person who knew how to defeat a dragon—and as long as she was still alive there was a chance she could give them the answer. Alex ran up the front steps and into the Fairy Palace, praying her grandmother could give them a solution before all was lost.

“Alex, where are you—” Conner said, but was distracted before he could finish.

“Look!” Goldilocks yelled.

A herd of unicorns emerged from the forest behind the dragon and circled the enormous creature, preventing the beast from reaching the palace. The herd was led by Rook, who rode Cornelius at the front of the charge. He had returned just in time.

The dragon was agitated by the unexpected obstacle. “Destroy them and get to the palace!” the Masked Man ordered.

The unicorns stabbed their horns into the dragon’s feet and he roared in pain. The dragon picked the unicorns up with his front claws and threw them into the forest in the distance. He kicked Cornelius and he was sent soaring into the gardens with Rook on his back. The dragon grew impatient and scorched the remaining unicorns with his breath. They had only slowed him down—but thankfully they had bought Alex some time.

Inside the palace, Alex raced into the chambers of the Fairy Godmother and fell to her knees at her grandmother’s bedside. Even though the fairy-tale world was in the middle of the greatest crisis it had ever faced, the Fairy Godmother slept peacefully as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

“Grandma, I need you to wake up!” Alex begged. “There’s a dragon outside and I don’t know how to stop it!”

The dragon’s roars shook the chamber and Alex buried her face into her grandmother’s mattress until the sound passed.

“Grandma, I know you think I’m ready to be the Fairy Godmother, but I’m not,” she cried. “How to defeat a dragon is only one of the many things I still need you to teach me! If there is a little magic left in you, I need you to wake up! We need you more than ever!”

Alex listened for a sound different from that of the chaos outside but didn’t hear one. She waited for a whole minute but nothing came. She wiped her tears on the mattress and looked up at her sleeping grandmother—but her grandmother was gone!

“Grandma?” Alex asked in astonishment, and looked around the chambers. “Grandma?”

She glanced at the nightstand and saw her grandmother’s wand was missing, too. The Fairy Godmother had left the room without making a sound.

Once the dragon had dealt with the unicorns, he sped toward the palace. His wings spread out on either side as he went in for the attack.

“What do we do now?” Jack asked the men and women around him.

Conner was the only one to respond. “Pray,” he said.

Mother Goose took a giant swig from her flask and walked toward the oncoming dragon. “I’m going to distract it—the rest of you run for the forests!”

“You can’t! You’ll get crushed!” Conner pleaded.

Mother Goose looked back at him. “It’s all right, C-Dog,” she said with sad eyes. “It’s my fault this even happened in the first place—it’s time I took a little responsibility.”

Before she could take another step forward, the dragon roared violently and the sound knocked everyone to their knees. As they helped one another to their feet they heard a familiar voice behind them.

“Step aside, Goose. Slaying dragons was never your cup of tea,” said a woman’s soft and sweet voice. Everyone turned to look at the top of the Fairy Palace’s front steps and couldn’t believe their eyes.

“Grandma?” Conner panted.

The Fairy Godmother had appeared, wearing nothing but her nightgown. “Forgive my appearance; I only just woke a few moments ago and didn’t have time to dress for the occasion,” she apologized.

The dragon stopped in his tracks when he saw the Fairy Godmother. She was the only thing that intimidated him in the slightest—as if it was in his DNA to fear her. He roared at her, knocking everyone back to the ground except for the Fairy Godmother.

She walked barefoot down the steps and into the gardens toward the gigantic beast with her wand ready. Alex ran out of the palace and joined Conner at the front steps. She gasped and dropped to a seated position when she saw what the others were witnessing.

The sight was unbelievable—their tiny grandmother gingerly walked toward a massive fire-breathing dragon as if she were taking a trip to the grocery store.

“Grandma! Wait! You can’t do this!” Conner yelled.

“Grandma, you’re sick! Please come back!” Alex cried after her.

Their grandmother looked at them with a twinkle in her eye. “Don’t worry, children, I still have a little magic left inside me and I couldn’t think of a better way to use it,” she said. “This is going to be fun.”

The men and women, soldiers and fairies, kings and queens, and trolls and goblins watched in disbelief as the old woman walked closer to the dragon. The giant creature screeched at the Fairy Godmother and blew a fiery geyser in her direction. She blocked it with her wand and the fire was sent in all directions except to the palace behind her.

“You’ve picked the wrong yard to make a mess in,” the Fairy Godmother said to the dragon.

“Don’t just sit there—destroy her!” the Masked Man demanded from the other side of the gardens.

The dragon blew his strongest gusts of fiery breath at the old woman, but she blocked every one of them with her wand. The twins clutched each other, terrified they were about to see their grandmother get hurt, but on the contrary, their grandmother laughed as the dragon attempted to harm her.

“The key to slaying a dragon is to always remember you’re much smarter and more powerful than he is,” the Fairy Godmother called to the men and women behind her. “He may seem scary, but he’s really nothing but a large winged reptile with horrid breath.”

A long silvery trail erupted from the tip of the Fairy Godmother’s wand. She happily waved her wand in the air as if she were conducting an orchestra and the trail slashed through the air like a giant whip. The trail grew longer and longer by the second. The dragon jumped back and forth, trying to avoid it. Eventually the trail was so long the dragon tangled himself in it when he tried flying away.

The Fairy Godmother had the dragon exactly where she wanted him. She cracked her wand like a whip again, and the trail that was wrapped around the dragon grew brighter and brighter. The others covered their eyes at the blinding sight and the dragon burst into clumps of ash.

“NOOOOO!” the Masked Man screamed, and the sound echoed throughout the entire kingdom. He turned back to the Grande Armée soldiers with infuriated eyes—it was a face much more frightening than any the general had ever made. “Don’t just stand their gawking at me, you idiots! We need to get out of this kingdom immediately!”

None of the soldiers questioned the Masked Man’s leadership, and they hurried behind him and escaped into the forest before the fairies came after them.

The Fairy Godmother took a deep, satisfied breath and closed her eyes. Her knees gave way and she slowly fell to the ground, landing softly on her back.

“GRANDMA!” the twins shouted in unison. They ran to her side and propped her head up in their laps.

“Grandma, are you all right?” Conner asked.

“Are you hurt?” Alex asked.

Their grandmother smiled warmly up at them. “I thought I would go out with a bang,” she said weakly. “I knew there was a reason I hadn’t passed on yet, and I’m so glad you got to see your old granny in action before I did.”

“Grandma, that was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life!” Conner said.

“You’re amazing, Grandma,” Alex said. “Please don’t leave us.”

“Leave?” their grandmother said, and she made a funny face at them. “Who said anything about leaving?”

“Aren’t you dying?” Conner asked her softly. “Isn’t that why you wouldn’t get out of bed?”

The Fairy Godmother put her hands on her grandchildren’s faces. “Yes, children, I am dying,” she said. “But what the other fairies didn’t explain is that a fairy never really dies. When a fairy’s time is up, his or her soul simply returns to magic. They become the very substance that helps the fairies make the world a better place. Even when I’m gone I’ll still be with you both. Every time you wave a wand, or cast a spell, or use an enchantment, I’ll be watching from afar with enough pride to light the sky.”

Tears spilled out of the twins’ eyes and rolled down their faces. Their grandmother’s voice gradually became softer and softer as she spoke. They weren’t sure if this was true or if she was just trying to make them feel better, but they knew it would only be a few moments before she was gone.

“We love you so much, Grandma,” Alex said. “I don’t know what our lives would have been like without you.”

“Boring, that’s for sure,” Conner joked. “You were the most magical grandmother a couple kids could ask for—literally! I think you pretty much have that title in the bag.”

The twins saw their grandmother’s trademark smile that wrinkled her eyes appear one last time on her face. It was the same smile as their dad’s, and it was their favorite smile in the whole world.

“I love you, children,” she said. “Take care of each other—and remember, I’ll never be further than a thought away.”

The Fairy Godmother’s eyes closed for the final time. Her body became weightless in their hands and transformed into hundreds of bright sparkling lights. The lights floated through the air and joined the starry night sky above them.

Alex and Conner had never seen anything like it. Even as she passed away, their grandmother found a way to leave the twins fascinated—perhaps she had indeed returned to magic after all. The twins hugged each other and cried in each other’s arms as the sun rose above them. The Fairy Godmother was gone, but the Fairy Kingdom had lived to see another day.