Read The First Dragon (Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, The) for Free Online Page B

do something you cannot.”
    Argus looked at John. “This is a Caretaker? They’re more skeptical than they used to be.”
    “Not really,” said John. “He’s just very results-oriented, and skeptical by nature.”
    “Building the ship itself was the hard part,” Argus said as he gestured for the others to give him room to work. “Binding something living to it was much easier.”
    “Even with Dragons?” asked Fred.
    Argus chuckled. “Especially with them, little Child of the Earth. Because binding with a ship is about choosing one’s arête—which means to achieve excellence, to reach one’s highest potential. I simply help guide them in the process.”
    “Then how is it reversed?” asked John.
    “It’s just as easy,” Argus said, turning to face the masthead. “I simply have to persuade the Dragon that its arête as a ship is done, and now its arête is to once more be a Dragon.”
    The shipbuilder bowed his head and placed his hands on the Dragon’s chest, where it merged with the wood and iron of the ship. Murmuring ancient words of power, or perhaps, simply a prayer, he flexed his arms, and suddenly a glow began to emanate from the Dragon.
    The hull began to crack and splinter apart. For the first time, the Caretakers could see some of the manner in which the livingDragon had been merged with the structure of the ship. It was almost more of a spiritual blending than a physical one. The head, neck, and arms were only semi-attached, as if they were part of a sculpted masthead; but the wings were attached to part of the structure of the hull, and seemed to separate from it with more force.
    Argus’s murmuring became more fervent, and his arms and neck were dripping with sweat. The process was generating a great deal of heat, and so much light that the others had to shield their eyes.
    Suddenly the light flared, and a thunderclap echoed deafeningly through the boathouse as Argus flew backward, hitting one of the pilings. Several of the Caretakers rushed to his side, concerned that he had been injured.
    “Are you all right?” Jack asked as he and John reached under the shipbuilder’s arms to help him to his feet. “Did you—”
    “Look,” Argus said, pointing. “It is done.”
    The two Caretakers turned to see what had already rendered the rest of their companions utterly speechless. There, where the shipbuilder had been working, standing amid the splintered remains that had been the fore of the Dragonship, was Madoc.
    His beard and hair were overgrown and tangled, but there was no question it was he. Instead of emerging from the binding with the ship as the Black Dragon, as everyone had fully expected, he had emerged as the man he had been before he had accepted the calling, and risen from apprentice to full Dragon, and thence to Dragonship.
    However, he was not entirely unchanged from the experience: his right hand, once severed and replaced with a hook, was nowwhole again. And while he was once again in the form of a man, not all the aspects of the Dragon had been shed with the ship—two great, black wings rose from his shoulder blades and stretched out behind him like sails.
    No one spoke, or moved, until Madoc’s eyes fluttered closed, and he started to fall. Then John, Jack, Houdini, and Hawthorne all rushed forward to catch him—but it was the Valkyrie Laura Glue and the badger Caretaker Fred who moved the fastest, and caught their friend’s father before he fell.
    “It’s all right,” Laura Glue whispered through the tears streaming down her face. “Rose wouldn’t let you fall, and neither will we.”
    ♦  ♦  ♦
    As the rest of the group at the boathouse gathered around the newly reborn Madoc, Verne, Bert, and Twain simply watched—because they were also watching the reactions of two others: Argus and Aristophanes.
    The shipbuilder’s response was easier to parse—it was that of near-total surprise. Short of just being told beforehand—something he might not have