Dragonbreath Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright Page

  HOT THOUGHTS

  SNORKELBATS

  FOOD FIGHT

  THE PLAN

  AHOY!

  MINTY FRESH

  ARRRR . . . TREASURE

  IT’S VERY, VERY DARK IN HERE

  LAND HO!

  BULLY UP

  For Deb,

  for telling the right anecdote at the right time

  DIAL BOOKS

  A member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Published by The Penguin Group • Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A. • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa •Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2009 by Ursula Vernon

  All rights reserved

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Text set in Stempel Schneidler

  S.A.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Vernon, Ursula.

  Dragonbreath / by Ursula Vernon. p. cm.

  Summary: Danny Dragonbreath and his friend Wendell get an up-close underwater tour of the Sargasso Sea from Danny’s sea-serpent cousin, encountering giant squid and mako sharks—and learn about standing up to bullies in the process.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-53706-0

  [1. Sargasso Sea—Fiction. 2. Marine animals—Fiction. 3. Deep-sea

  ecology—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Dragons—Fiction.

  6. Bullies—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.V5985Dr 2009

  [Fic]—dc22

  2008046258

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  HOT THOUGHTS

  Danny Dragonbreath came awake with a yelp and took a swing at his alarm clock. He missed—missed again—succeeded in knocking it onto the floor, where it beeped at him sideways—and finally had to accept that he was awake.

  “Unnngggghh . . .”* he said, and groped around for the relentlessly beeping alarm clock.

  Eventually he found it and turned it off, then staggered around his bedroom until he found a T-shirt. He put the shirt on backward, wondered why the tag kept poking him in the neck, and took it off again.

  Mornings were not Danny’s strong suit.

  Finally he got the T-shirt the right way around, if inside-out, and clomped down the stairs for breakfast. He could smell bacon cooking. It smelled wonderful.

  His mother was sitting at the kitchen table staring grimly into her cup of coffee. His father was cooking.

  “Good morning, Danny!” said Mr. Dragonbreath, who was a morning person.

  “Mrrgghhh,” said Mrs. Dragonbreath, who was not.

  “Morning, Dad. Err . . . morning, Mom . . . ” Danny dropped into his seat at the kitchen table. The smells were making his mouth water.

  Mr. Dragonbreath pulled a strip of bacon out of the skillet, eyed it, and breathed a tiny puff of flame on it. It sizzled.

  Danny watched enviously. Despite his best efforts, he still couldn’t breathe fire.

  As if his father could read Danny’s thoughts, Mr. Dragonbreath turned around, sliding eggs and bacon onto a plate. “So, Danny! Any luck with the fire-breathing? Want to try cooking your own? ”

  “No, Dad,” mumbled Danny. He slid down a little in his chair.

  “Oh, come on . . .” His dad held out a strip of bacon. “Think hot thoughts.”

  Danny stood, took a deep breath, and tried to think hot thoughts, whatever that meant—deserts, firecrackers, jalapeño peppers. He exhaled vigorously, but all he got was a vague ashy taste in his mouth.

  Mr. Dragonbreath frowned. “Have you been practicing?”

  “Yes!”

  His father sighed. “Eggs, dear?” he asked Mrs. Dragonbreath.

  Mrs. Dragonbreath growled something, which may have included the word no.

  “Now dear, you know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. . . .”

  Mrs. Dragonbreath looked up from her coffee, focused her eyes with some difficulty, and hissed like a cobra. (Cobras are also traditionally not morning people.)

  Mr. Dragonbreath, who had been happily married to Danny’s mother for a number of years, carefully poured her another cup of coffee. He did not say anything more about the most important meal of the day.

  Instead he turned his attention back to Danny. Along with breakfast, Danny got a full twentyminute pep talk on applying himself, interspersed with what were probably meant to be inspiring stories of reptiles pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and Making Something of Themselves. Mr. Dragonbreath’s boss had brought in three motivational speakers in the last month to talk to all the employees at the antacid bottling plant, and Danny was suffering the fallout.

  The really unfair bit was that Danny was applying himself, at least to breathing fire. He practiced diligently every evening. He used to practice during math class, but stopped after his math teacher called an ambulance last month. (She thought he was hyperventilating.) It was a shame, because as far as Danny was concerned, fire-breathing practice was the only thing math class was good for.

  But no matter how often or where Danny practiced, he just couldn’t get the knack of breathing fire. Thinking hot thoughts, visualizing his mouth as a flamethrower, gargling with kerosene twice a week—none of it did any good.

  It was impossible to explain this to his father, however, who believed the key to success was more inspirational stories.

  Finally he cut in—“Sorry, Dad, gotta catch the bus!”

  “Oh. Right. Have a good day at school!”

  His mother aimed a kiss in his general direction, then went back to her coffee.

  Thank goodness for the bus, Danny thought, grabbing his backpack and running for the door. Otherwise he would probably still have been trapped at the table, listening to another story of a dragon who had started out with nothing but two poker chips and a bent spoon and had gone on to build a hoard the size of Los Angeles.

  SNORKELBATS

  Danny stood at the bus stop and waited, which is what one generally does at bus stops.

  Under normal circumstances he would have been restless. Danny hated standing still for anything. It was just dragonish nature. Dragons slept on their hoards, they fought knights, they occasionally flew around terrorizing peasants, but they didn’t usually stand still. (It’s worth noting that Danny’s parents had never terrorized a peasant in their lives, and Danny’s mother always volunteered to bring goodies to the school bake sale, but really, it was the principle of the thing.)

  While he waited, Danny thought about the dream he’d had last night. (It certainly beat thinking about the lecture he’d gotten this morning.) It had been the most wonderful dream . . . something about a pirate ship and Captain Dragonbreath. Wendell had been in it, he definitely remembered that . . .

  As if the thought had summoned him, Danny’s best friend, Wendell, trudged up the sidewalk to the bus stop. Wendell was a green iguana, although he was a much
more grayish green than Danny. He wore thick glasses and an expression that said he expected the worst to happen at any moment.

  “Hey,” said Danny.

  “Hey,” said Wendell.

  Pleasantries concluded, they stood and waited for the bus.

  “I had a dream last night that we were pirates,” said Danny.

  “Pirates?” Wendell shoved his glasses up his snout. “What kind of pirates?”

  “I dunno,” said Danny, “the usual kind, I guess . . .”

  Wendell rolled his eyes. “Privateers? Rumrunners? Smugglers?”

  Danny sighed. Wendell sometimes had a tendency to overthink things. “Pirate pirates. You know. Yo ho, avast me hearties, all that . . .”

  “What does avast mean, anyway? I’ve always wondered.”

  “Hey, look, the bus,” said Danny.

  The bus pulled up with a roar and a hiss as the brakes released, a sound rather like the one Danny’s uncle Mortimer made after Thanksgiving dinner. Danny and Wendell climbed on and sat in their usual seat.

  “So . . .” said Wendell, with the air of one who already knows the answer, “did you get your science paper done?”

  “Nope!” said Danny cheerfully, pulling a notebook out of his backpack. “I’m gonna do it right now.”

  Wendell draped himself over the back of the seat. “You’ve got fifteen minutes. Isn’t that cutting it a little close?”

  “I do my best work under pressure,” said Danny. “Anyway, I’ve got a secret weapon.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You.”

  Wendell sighed. “You haven’t done anything on it at all?”

  Danny shrugged. “I was going to work on it this morning,” he said, “but Dad wanted to give me fire-breathing lessons before he went to work.”

  Wendell raised an eyebrow. “And?”

  “And?”

  “And how did it go?”

  Danny rubbed at the back of his neck. “Same as it ever does.”

  He considered telling Wendell about the morning’s lecture, but decided against it. For one thing, Wendell always applied himself. Even in gym class, where he was completely hopeless, you couldn’t say he wasn’t trying. In fact, it was usually rather embarrassing just how hard he was trying.

  For another thing, if he didn’t hurry, he wasn’t going to get his paper done.

  “Never mind about the fire-breathing. Now quick, tell me everything you know about the ocean.”

  Wendell sighed again. For a fairly small iguana, he had an astonishing lung capacity. “It’s big. It’s wet. It’s salty.”

  “That’s all you’ve got?” Danny stared at him.

  “It’s got fish in it.”

  Danny groaned. “You don’t know anything else about the ocean? What kind of a nerd are you?”

  “I’m not a marine iguana. Anyway, my paper was about bats.”

  Danny tapped the pencil against the end of his snout. “Are there any bats that live in the ocean?”

  “Not unless they wear little snorkels, no.”

  “Ooh, snorkels! That’s perfect, Wendell.” Danny began to write furiously.

  Fifteen minutes later, the bus let them out in front of the Herpitax-Phibbias School for Reptiles and Amphibians. It was a low brick building with a playground to one side, and a number of large rocks for sitting and sunning oneself.

  “I still can’t believe you’re handing in a paper on snorkelbats,” muttered Wendell.

  “Worrywart,” said Danny. “I bet Mr. Snaug doesn’t even read these. He just grades on length.”

  Wendell shrugged. He’d known Danny for over a year, ever since the dragon’s family had moved into the neighborhood, and he knew better than to argue.

  FOOD FIGHT

  The F was large and red and nearly blotted out Danny’s name and the words

  The Ocean. Danny’s eyes traveled down the page to his illustration of the snorkelbat. Mr. Snaug had written “See me after school” above it in red ink.

  He looked up. Mr. Snaug, a long, whippy-tailed gecko, hung upside down from the ceiling and gave him a solemn look through glasses even thicker than Wendell’s.

  “Yikes,” said Danny, and slid a little farther down in his chair.

  “What took you so long?” asked Wendell as Danny trudged into the cafeteria, holding his tray. The iguana had draped his tail across the bench to save his friend a seat. “And what are you eating?”

  “Mr. Snaug wants to talk to me after school,” said Danny gloomily. “He didn’t like my report.”

  “Well, you did make most of it up . . .” said Wendell, foolishly attempting to apply logic to the situation.

  “Creativity should count!” Danny stabbed a fork into the stuff on his plate. The stuff took the fork and didn’t seem to want to give it back.

  “No, really . . .” said Wendell, watching Danny wrestle his fork away from the glop. “What is that?”

  “I have no idea.” Danny poked it again. “I think it may have been potato salad . . . at some point . . .”

  The former potato salad took the fork away from him and made threatening gestures with it.

  “Are you gonna eat that?”

  “I’m trying to decide.”

  They stared at the potato salad some more. Wendell had brought his lunch from home, and took a bite of sandwich. The potato salad transferred its attention to what it perceived as a new threat, and shook the fork menacingly.

  “I’m pretty hungry,” said Danny sadly, “but I’d sort of feel bad about eating it. I mean, what if it has a family?”

  “What if it has botulism?”

  “What’s that?”

  “A kind of food poisoning. Your tongue turns all black and swells up and you die.”

  “Ooo! Like this?” Danny stuck his tongue out one side of his mouth and clutched at his throat, making theatrical acking sounds.

  “I guess.” Wendell was unimpressed.

  The potato salad, however, applauded squishily.

  Suddenly a shadow fell over the lunch table, accompanied by a wave of body odor that would have choked a goat.

  “What’s wrong, dorkbreath?” asked a nasty voice.

  Danny stuffed his tongue back in his mouth and hunched his shoulders defensively. “Nothing.”

  There were three creatures standing over Danny and Wendell. Two of them—Jason the salamander and Harry the chameleon—were smaller than Danny, and Danny knew for a fact that Harry would turn the color of the wall, the lockers, or the floor in order to avoid a scuffle.

  The owner of the voice, however, was Big Eddy. Big Eddy was a Komodo dragon, a species of giant monitor lizard. He had muscles on top of muscles, snaggled serrated teeth like a mouth full of bent steak knives, and shoulders that appeared to taper directly into his head without bothering with that whole “neck” business. He looked as if he should be slower than a turtle and dumber than a box of rocks.

  The bit about the box of rocks was true, but the scary thing, the thing that made Big Eddy a really unpleasant bully, was that he was fast. Komodo dragons could run down deer when they wanted to.

  Big Eddy generally didn’t bother with deer, though. It was so much easier just to take Danny’s lunch.

  “You’re no relative of mine,” said Big Eddy. His two cronies snickered.

  Danny was not particularly broken up about this, but did not think it would be diplomatic to say so.

  “He’s not a Komodo dragon,” said Wendell unwisely. “He’s a real dragon.”

  “Real dragon. Sure. If you’re a real dragon, dorkbreath, why can’t you breathe fire?”

  Danny hunched his shoulders again. “It doesn’t work like that,” he muttered.

  It was true, though. Dragons breathed fire. It was what they did. His mother told him not to worry, that he was just a late bloomer, but that didn’t do Danny much good when he really wanted to toast Big Eddy’s toes. It was bad enough being the only dragon in a school filled with reptiles and amphibians—but to be a non-f
ire-breathing dragon? That was downright embarrassing.

  “Go away, Eddy, you festering pustule,” muttered Wendell. He had a vocabulary and wasn’t afraid to use it. But he said it under his breath, just in case.

  “What did you say?”

  “He called you a feathery pus-tool,” volunteered Jason the salamander. Jason was slimy in more ways than one. He also had excellent hearing.

  “You’re lucky I’ve got no idea what that means, nerd,” growled Big Eddy. He smacked the little iguana on the back of his head. Wendell adjusted his glasses grimly.

  The Komodo dragon turned his attention back to Danny and pulled back his fist. “Are you gonna give me your lunch, dorkbreath, or am I gonna have to take it?”

  “Take it!” said Harry the chameleon, turning an excited shade of mottled purple.

  Danny stared down at his plate. The potato salad stared fearlessly back up at him. A smile spread slowly across Danny’s face. “Oh no,” he said, turning back to Big Eddy. “No, you can have my lunch.”

  The potato salad flattened itself stealthily against the plate, fork at the ready.

  “I think you’ll be very happy together,” said Danny.

  Wendell snickered.

  Big Eddy looked briefly confused, but did what he usually did when something confused him—he ignored it. He grabbed the tray from Danny’s hands and stalked away, across the lunchroom.

  “Want part of my sandwich?” asked Wendell.

  “Sure.”

  They ate Wendell’s sandwich in silence, waiting. After a few minutes, there was a scream from across the lunchroom. It was the exact sound that a young Komodo dragon might make when he has just been stabbed in the hand with a plastic fork by a plate of recalcitrant potato salad.