37: I LOVE IT WHEN A PLAN COMES TOGETHER
The plan had gone flawlessly.
Louise and Jillian had talked the tengu into ferrying all their tech toys from Haven to Sacred Heart. It required a handful of handwritten spells to float the bigger pieces like the luggage mules, but with twenty thousand tengu on call, the items arrived within an hour of their request.
The rule “people believe the stupidest things if you deliver the story while bleeding” seemed to apply. Crow Boy was the one who was covered in blood and still asleep, but the fact that a yamabushi nearly died while retrieving ten baby dragons made anything that the twins did credible. The tengu stacked the thrifted furniture without asking many annoying questions. They arranged the beds, nightstands, desks, chairs, love seat, bookcases, and other random pieces of furniture into a Jenga puzzlelike fortress with a secret inner hollow core.
Then—just like the twins planned—they set up the most chaotic mess that they could imagine without the adults losing patience, untethered the floating ice chest, and guided it upstairs.
Stealing the chest behind Forge’s back had been a little scary as he was one of the original gangster wood sprites, creator of the Spell Stones, and wicked smart. He didn’t know technology, though, so he’d been easy to distract, especially when he went off into teacher-mode.
The plan became terrifying when Tinker arrived. She was wood sprite smart but she might also have the ability to see the future like Louise. Luckily, they had created a big enough chaos field that their older sister hadn’t figured out what they were doing.
It was, however, only a matter of time before the adults realized what they had done.
Ten of the delicately etched monster-sized eggs sat inside the ice chest. Relief washed through Louise. They had lost only one of the eleven baby dragons trapped inside the magical devices. She had been afraid that there would only be one or two nactka inside the chest. She loaded them onto the luggage mule and directed it into their fortress of furniture. There was so little space that she needed to stack the nactka carefully into every nook and corner. Once the nactka were hidden deep within the pile of furniture, she had the luggage mule back up and close the tunnel so only a child could crawl into the pile. She threw a blanket over the luggage mule so it was less obvious how to undo their work.
Jillian dashed into the room, carrying the four babies. “It worked! It worked! I can’t believe it!”
“Not for long.” Louise crawled into the secret hollow within the furniture. “We need to hurry!”
Jillian put the babies on the floor to crawl in after Louise.
It was dim within the space but light filtered in from dozens of breaks between the furniture. Joy bounced around the tight space excitedly, pausing often to rear back onto her haunches and clap her hands. The babies were talking all at once, each wanting a turn to open a device.
“I hope they’re friendly,” Jillian whispered, reminding Louise that Joy had been angry and scared when she was released.
“Joy is here to explain things,” Louise said with more confidence than she felt. Joy was not the most dependable collaborator. Still, the baby dragon had managed to keep the sekasha hyper focused on her as Chuck had the luggage mule undo the restraints on the floating ice chest and towed it away.
Jillian spoke the keyword to unseal the first nactka. The dome of the device cracked at the lines and unfolded like a flower, as if the cream-colored shell was on hinges. The baby dragon inside had been curled up as if asleep. It uncurled and yawned deeply. It was a very pale cream color—so pale with just the barest blush of yellow to suggest that it wasn’t a pure white.
“Finally,” the baby dragon said in Elvish as if it was bored waiting.
The now-empty nactka took up unneeded space. Louise pushed it down the tunnel and out of the fortress without bothering to close the device up.
Chuck Norris opened the second nactka, revealing a beautiful little dragon that was a rich purple shade.
“Oh, I didn’t expect them to be all different,” Louise whispered as she cleared the second nactka away. For some reason, she thought that the baby dragons would all be twins to Joy.
The purple dragon eyed the girls suspiciously but Joy launched into a speech in the dragon language. (At least Louise assumed that it was the dragon language as it sounded the same as when Joy had spoken with Impatience and Providence.) The purple dragon relaxed, grunting as if just annoyed with the situation.
Louise opened the next nactka to reveal a nut-brown dragon with a diamondback pattern. It eyed her with curiosity and was told firmly “Mine!” by Joy.
This got a raspberry blown at Joy by the nut-brown one and a long discussion started by the pale cream dragonet. Louise shoved its empty prison out of the fort.
Jillian opened a fourth nactka, revealing a stunning iridescent turquoise-colored dragon. There was a sound of running footsteps coming up the stairs.
“Oh, crud! They figured it out!” Louise grabbed another nactka. “Open faster!”