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"Jesse! Daisy! Is that you?" Emmy's
golden voice rang out to them from above.
"How did she get out?" Daisy whispered
frantically.
"We're down here, Em!" Jesse called up, then
gave Daisy a look of panic. "What'll we do? She's walking right into a
trap!"
"Don't come down!" Daisy called up to Emmy
"We'll come up to you." She whispered furiously to Jesse, "Remember what
the professor said? We need to keep her out of the way. You bring the
pickax to the queen. I'll take Emmy back to the lair. I mean, the
garage. I'll meet you back at the barn. Good luck, Jess."
"But I have to come," said Emmy, who was
already halfway down the ramp.
Jesse and Daisy ran to meet her. Emmy's
great green eyes were pooled with tears.
"How did you get out of the garage?" Jesse
asked her gently.
"My friends let me out," Emmy said in a
small voice.
"Like they did before?" Daisy asked,
caressing the smooth scales on Emmy's back.
Emmy nodded, sniffling. "They said I had to
go to St. George and lay my life at his feet. So here I am." She lifted
her face to the patch of blue sky visible through the hole overhead and
let out a long, plaintive wail. Then she took in a deep sucking breath
and fell to weeping as if her heart would break.
Daisy wished she hadn't given away her
bandanna. This was turning out to be a very teary day! She dabbed at
Emmy's tears with the bottom of her extra-long T-shirt.
After a final burbling honk of dragon tears
and snot into Daisy's shirt, Emmy said with a stamp of her hind leg, "I
like my life. I don't want to lay at St. George's stinky
feet. Douglas Fir and Lady Aspen are mean friends! I don't like
them anymore."
Daisy and Jesse exchanged worried looks.
"Why would the dryads say a thing like that
to Emmy?" Jesse wondered.
"Why would they want to sacrifice her like
that?" Daisy said.
"Because I commanded them to," St. George
said, sauntering down the ramp. Dangling from his bony fingers were two
long tattered strips of gaily colored fabric.
The last two trees had fallen.
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