“Could it have wandered in here?” Tanu asked.
“There is a doorway on the far side,” Kendra said. “Let’s just keep going. On the way back we can send it to dreamland if needed.”
Tanu shrugged. “We’ll have the Harp.”
“Sure,” Warren said. “Live and let live.”
The little dragon hopped from one foot to the other, head bobbling. As Kendra and the others neared the doorway at the far side of the room, the huge stone door crashed shut. A door slammed closed to block where they had entered as well.
“Guys,” Raxtus said from across the room, his form too perfectly blended with the environment for them to see him. “We’re in trouble.”
“Because of the doors?” Warren asked.
“I think that’s Pioleen,” Raxtus said.
“Is he a baby?” Warren asked. “What does he do?”
“If I’m right, she’s full grown and ancient,” Raxtus said. “No dragon was ever more powerful in magic. And no dragon was less predictable.”
The little dragon buried its face in the puddle, then tipped its head back and gargled. It flapped one wing rhythmically, then the other.
“She fell out of the stories long ago,” Raxtus said. “I should have guessed she became a guardian.”
“She doesn’t seem to notice us,” Kendra said.
“The doors,” Warren pointed out.
Pioleen jumped in the puddle with both feet, then swished her tail in the water. Croaking caws followed.
“Raxtus, are you pranking us?” Warren asked.
Kendra stood in a cabin. An extremely old man, thin and wrinkled, with a few stringy hairs on his bald, veiny scalp, sat in a wooden rocking chair, bundled in blankets. A fire burned in the fireplace, popping and sending sparks up the chimney.
The scene looked perfectly real. The details were right—the smells of the woodsmoke and the old man, his soft snoring, the scuffed floorboards, the way the flames made the shadows jitter.
But Kendra knew it couldn’t be real. She was in the Dragon Temple with Warren, Tanu, and Raxtus. And the eerie magical dragon.
“Pioleen?” Kendra asked. “Are you doing this?”
She approached the old man, reaching out a hand to shake him awake.
“Don’t bother,” said a female voice that made Kendra jump. The speaker was a face made of knotholes in the wall of the cabin. “You have bigger problems at hand.”
Something crashed against the cabin door, and Kendra whirled. The next impact shook the entire cabin and left cracks in the door. Was it a battering ram? Kendra ran to the window at the rear of the cabin as a huge brown bear exploded through the front door with a furious roar. The bear overturned a table with a swipe, then picked up the old man in vicious jaws and shook him.
Kendra yanked the rear window open and dove out into moonlit snow, an icy crunch breaking her fall. She lurched to her feet and started wading away from the cabin. The snow was almost two feet deep, powdery beneath an icy skin.
The bear roared from inside the cabin and burst through the window, destroying part of the wall in the process. Kendra fumbled with her bow. The bear loped toward her, thick fur sloshing over fat and muscles, then reared up, giving a mighty bellow as its paws raked the air.
Kendra pulled back the bowstring and was about to say “fifty,” to launch fifty simultaneous arrows at the beast, when she wondered what exactly she was really aiming at. None of this could be real, despite how authentic it looked and felt and sounded and smelled.
Kendra lowered her bow, and the bear surged forward, slavering jaws agape, but stopped just short of biting her. She flinched away, falling onto her backside in the snow. The bear loomed over her. She felt its hot breath on her face, smelled its shaggy fur.
But the beast did not make contact.
The bear huffed slobber onto Kendra and shook its thick coat, spraying icy pinpricks of snow. Kendra detected no cues to suggest the scene was imaginary. She only had the knowledge that she had just been in the Dragon Temple with Warren, Tanu, and Raxtus. She felt tempted to wonder if the Dragon Temple had been a dream and this might be reality.
Except why would she be in a cabin in a snowy wilderness?
Raxtus had warned that Pioleen was magical.
Was that goofy little dragon splashing in the puddle somehow generating all of this?
The bear turned and started plodding away. Kendra arose. Where the skin of ice had broken, she scooped up a fluffy handful of snow, fingers stinging with impending numbness as she packed it into a snowball. She threw it and watched it burst against a tree trunk.
A wild, angry cry startled Kendra, and she saw an ugly goblin racing toward her through the snow, coming from a stand of trees. Clad in furs and an oversized helm, the goblin raised a notched scimitar as he closed in.
Kendra resisted the temptation to reach for her bow. This had to be part of the show. As the goblin drew near, Kendra resisted the urge to run away or defend herself. What if she accidentally hurt one of her friends?
The goblin swung his sword as he came within reach. Kendra flinched, but the blade stopped short of her neck. Placing a hand on one hip, the goblin planted his slightly rusted scimitar in the snow. “None of you are any fun,” he complained in a female voice.
“This isn’t real,” Kendra said.
The goblin kicked up some snow. “It’s real enough.”
“We’re on a mission,” Kendra said.
“You seek something best left alone,” the goblin said. “I’ll tell you what. When this ends, you will have until the count of thirty to leave. If you don’t, I’ll squash you like bugs.”
“Why not just let us pass?”
The goblin shook his head. “One . . . two . . . three . . .”
The snowy scene disappeared, and Kendra was back in the cavern, though she had moved to a different part of the room from where the illusion had
