The lower half of my body has already melted in the flames, pooling on the ground.
Somewhere off in the distance, I hear Fribby start screaming.
I wish she didn’t have to see this.
ATHENOS’s words pop up inside my skull: “Your weakness is your strength.”
Now I’ve melted all the way up to my long green neck.
Dr. Terrible is pointing at me and laughing.
Then his red tongue shoots out of his beak.
Now the tip of his forked tongue is angling to take a lick of the vile green liquid that is me.
Only my scaly green head remains whole, floating in the soup.
I watch in horror as the ghastly forked tongue dips into the green liquid.
And that is when I start to sing.
[ 88 ]
SING
My voice is high-pitched and soft.
I am singing.
My head is floating in the green liquid, and I have my beak open and I am singing:
“Red Rose, Red Rose, oh you immortal Red Rose,
I sing to you from the bottom of the claws on my toes!
Now please help me defeat this most hideous of foes!”
And as I am singing, I feel something stir in the green liquid. My long neck is reconstituting itself and growing back, lifting my scaly green head up out of the soup. There is something very spooky about this poem coming up out of me, but I can’t put my claw on exactly what it is. I continue singing:
“My name is Gork The Terrible and I’m a teenaged dragon fiend, I have spent this entire day questing for my glorious Queen!
But my heart is too big and my horns are too small, and when I see something scary I tend to faint and fall!”
My voice is still high-pitched but louder now. I am rising up out of the green liquid and it’s as if the power of the poem itself is blowing me up like a balloon, inflating me. There is something glorious about this poem. By now the top half of my body is solid and I can feel my hind legs forming as I continue to sing:
“I’m a bit of a fool and a weirdo too,
which is why I am asking for this miracle from you.
I thought luscious Runcita was to be my Queen but I was wrong, because my best friend Fribby was my heart’s destiny all along!”
Dr. Terrible is studying me with this horrified look on his black beak. By now all of my scaly green body down to my knees has inflated itself back to normal. I see my red cape lying there on the ground. I already know I won’t pick the red cape up when I’m done singing, I will never wear it again.
“So my Queen is this boss robot named Fribby who lies over there, she’s the only chick with whom I want to share the nest in my lair!
But as you can see I was melted into a pool of green goop, which my deranged grandfather Dr. Terrible named Gork Soup!”
Dr. Terrible is clacking his fangs together now, spraying sparks. And a powerful dark wind is howling through the clearing all around us. The trees are bending this way and that in the wind, almost as if they’re going to be yanked out of the ground.
Strangely, two black ravens come flying down from the sky and alight on a nearby tree limb to watch the proceedings.
Now only my webbed feet still need to reconstitute themselves out of the green liquid, and so in order to raise myself all the way up, I sing the last bit:
“This dragon Dr. Terrible intended to lap me up with his forked tongue, So I’m hoping you’ll crush him now that this poem has been sung.
Red Rose, Red Rose, oh you immortal Red Rose,
please help me defeat this most hideous of foes!”
And with that, two giant trees instantly lean over with their limbs and snatch Dr. Terrible up by each of his wings and lift him into the gusting dark wind.
And that’s when it hits me.
Now I realize what’s so spooky and glorious about the poem.
It’s mine.
I made it.
This is my very first poem.
[ 89 ]
THE POWER OF THE RED ROSE
The trees fiendishly hold Dr. Terrible suspended up thirty feet off the ground.
The black wind has formed into a vicious-looking funnel right under him, blasting him with hideous gale force winds.
The power of the Red Rose is dark and angry.
I have unleashed something terrible and beautiful into the world.
His green scaly body up there is still discombobulated, so that his monsterish head is waving off of his backside. He is staring up at the sky and screaming.
His red cape is blowing straight up into the air. And then the cape rips free and violently shoots up into the sky and disappears.
Now you can see the flesh around his reptilian body is being forced upward like the cape by the insanely powerful blasts of wind from below. And then in a flash all his scaly flesh rips up off of him in one piece and shoots high into the sky. The scales are already just a speck up there.
Now he is a hideous pink flayed winged beast with horns suspended up there in the air by the trees.
Dr. Terrible is screaming.
At that moment the two black ravens leap off the tree branch and swoop in at his pink face and I see them snapping their beaks and tugging his yellow eyeballs out of his head. Then the ravens are down on the forest floor fighting each other over who will get the honor of eating his eyes for dinner.
Now he is a hideous eyeless pink screaming winged creature thing with horns.
The dark funnel of wind blasts him and then he too shoots up into the sky. He is just a speck up there. And then he is gone.
Professor Nog?
“Yes, Gork.”
Is he coming back? Should I be afraid?
One of the ravens standing in the snow drops an eyeball on the ground.
Then the raven looks at me and says, “Nevermore.”
[ 90 ]
THE POET
I gently carry Fribby in my forelimbs as I climb the rest of the way up the mountain.
She’s wearing my crown. It has stopped snowing. She keeps beaming at me and saying, “My poet.”
I snort blacksmoke out my nostrils.
She’s got her metal forelimbs wrapped tight around my long neck, holding on.
I whisk my tail around behind me.
“You know I could walk if I wanted to,” she says. “But I like it right where I am. Yes sir. I surely do.”
I don’t dare look at her because the joy I am feeling right now is more than I have ever felt in my entire life and is almost more than I can contain. My heart has swollen to its maximum capacity. So I keep my eyes forward as I walk.
Now she smiles a beakful of fangs and says, “My poet who isn’t dead and who doesn’t care that I’m a machine.”
The moonlit snow is crunching under my green webbed feet.
Up ahead I see the dark mouth of the cave.
The sensation of holding her is the most wonderful thing I have ever felt.
To me, she is a miracle.
If I weren’t so exhausted, I would be weeping with gratitude.
Then she puts her silver beak up close to my scaly earhole.
I feel her hot breath.
We’re bouncing just slightly.
And she whispers, “My King.”
[ 91 ]
THE CAVE
We stagger to the back of the cave.
True to her word, ATHENOS has left something special for us.
It’s a letter. And three items. The letter explains what each item is and how we should use it.