Read The Dragon in the Volcano for Free Online Page A

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doing
?” Daisy asked, worried. “Are you choking? Can you speak?”
    “What Miss Alodie said to do,” he said between gasps. “This stuff is for when we run into hot water, which is exactly what we just did.” He gestured at the steaming lake.
    “I get it!” Daisy grabbed the canteen. She closed her eyes and gulped. She shuddered from head to toe. It tasted minty cold. At first, it gave her such bad brain freeze she thought her eyes would pop out of her head, but then it rapidly turned piping hot. She opened her mouth to let the steam out. “What is in that stuff?” she said, wiping her mouth on her coat sleeve and handing the canteen back to Jesse.
    Jesse shrugged. “With Miss Alodie, you never know,” he said. Screwing the cap back on, he returned the canteen to the backpack. “I only know that we have to keep following the path or we’ll never find our dragon.”
    “You mean into the hot water?” Daisy said slowly, her blue eyes wide.
    Jesse nodded. “If that’s what it takes.”
    Jesse was always the last in the water when itwas cold, so it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise to Daisy that he would be the first into hot water. Still, she was astonished to see him step so casually into the lake and walk toward the submerged sock. The water came quickly up to his waist.
    “Jesse Tiger …,” Daisy said in a warning voice.
    “I see another sock after this one,” Jesse said. “I’m just going to try and get to it.”
    She watched as the water came up to his neck and then as his shaggy head disappeared beneath the surface.
    “Jesse!” she screamed.
    The water felt as warm and soothing as bathwater. “Wait till you try this, Daze!” he said, but a trail of bubbles glugged lazily out of his mouth instead of his voice. This was like no water he had ever been in. For one thing, he could breathe in it! For another thing, his body didn’t bob up to the surface. His body felt heavy and comfortable. This was so much more enjoyable than getting jounced around in the freezing cold on the back of an old farm horse.
    Moving slowly underwater, Jesse turned around and looked at Daisy. She was running back and forth on the shore and hollering. Her voice sounded far away. He raised his hand and beckoned to her.She flung up her arms and waded in after him. Then he heard the first exclamation of wonder as her body met the water. By the time she was under the water with him, she wore a silly grin on her face.
    Jesse turned and made his way toward the next sock … and the next. They were all white gym socks, lying on the ever steeper gradient of the lake bottom. He slid down, Daisy tumbling after him. Soon they were slipping and sliding down a soft muddy slope, one sock after another passing them, faster and faster, like a painted dotted line on a highway at night, until all Jesse saw as he fell was one long, continuous white line trailing past him as the lake got deeper and darker and steeper. He wondered how long it would take them to reach the pool of molten lava beneath the earth’s crust.
    Jesse figured that he must have fallen asleep, because he woke up with a start, his body smooshed up against a warm stone wall. Daisy gently collided into his back. He pushed himself away from the wall. Tapping his shoulder, Daisy pointed to a long jagged crack running down the face of the rock wall. A rich red light shone through a wide spot in it. Into this crack Jesse fitted the fingers of both hands and pulled, as if he were opening a stubborn set of elevator doors.
    The crack gradually widened, letting in more of the rich red light. Jesse squinted into it. Eventually, the crack was wide enough to fit his body. He squeezed through, blinking, scarcely able to believe his eyes. He let out a whoop of astonishment, which was when he realized that he could hear his own voice again and was no longer immersed in the warm water.
    “What is it?” Daisy poked her head around him to see for herself. “Holy