Dragons of Darkness

also by Antonia Michaelis Tiger Moon, translated by Anthea Bell

Antonia Michaelis

Translated from the German by

Anthea Bell

Amulet Books New York

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Michaelis, Antonia.

[Drachen der Finsternis. English] The dragons of darkness / by Antonia Michaelis ; translated by Anthea Bell. p. cm.

Summary: Two boys from very different backgrounds are throw n together by magic, mayhem, and a common foe as they battle deadly dragons in the w ilderness of Nepal.

ISBN 978-0-8109-4074-1 [1. Magic—Fiction. 2. Coming of age—Fiction. 3. Dragons—Fiction.

4. Nepal—Fiction.] I. Bell, Anthea, ill. II. Title.

PZ7.M5798274Dr 2010 [Fic]—dc22 2009003051 First published by Loewe Verlag GmbH Copyright © 2006 Loewe Verlag, Bindlach, Germany First published in English in hardcover by Amulet Books in 2008 English translation copyright © 2010 Anthea Bell Book design by Maria T. Middleton Published in 2010 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Amulet Books and Amulet Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Printed and bound in U.S.A. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification.

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For my father, who may perhaps be able to read the words between the lines, and who was almost lost in the snowstorm over Thorung La—but luckily was persuaded to wait another day to recover from his altitude sickness.

And for Carolin, who should look for the atomic chicken and the pretty five-lobed leaves that we never smoked but swapped for chocolate at Poon Hill.

The consonants are for my father and the vowels are for Carolin.

Contents Germany, October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Nepal

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11

EV ERGR EEN TROPICA L FOR EST Christopher Dreams

40

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Christopher Disappears

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Christopher Remembers (and Forgets)

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76 96

Christopher in Flight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

SUBA LPINE STEPPES Niya’s Words

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

169

Niya’s Revenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Niya’s Song

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Niya’s Hands

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234 272

Interlude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304

A BOV E THE SNOW LINE Jumar, Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 Jumar, Seeing

336

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Jumar, Visible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 Jumar, Gone Away . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402

CENTR A L HILL COUNTRY Arne in the River

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423

Arne in the Dust

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

456

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479

Arne in the Air

Arne in a Last Memory Nepal, December Germany Afterword

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505 531

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543

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547

G ER MANY, OC TOBER

T

h e day w h e n A r n e dis a ppe a r ed was made of gold.

It was one of those late October days when the colors

flare brightly once more before finally fading away, one of those days when you seem to catch a last breath of summer, although the streets are full of sweaters and corduroy pants.

Later, whenever he thought of Arne, Christopher would always remember the yellow chestnut leaves in the school yard and the blue sky that day.

Everyone at school had liked Arne.

All the girls, from grade 7 and up, had been in love with him, and at least two thirds of the boys admired him.

D r a g o n s o f Da r k n e s s

Christopher, on the other hand, was the kind of kid who went almost unnoticed.

Sometimes when people recognized his last name, he caught a look of surprise in their eyes. “Hagedorn? Are you related to Arne Hagedorn? Are you by any chance his little brother?”

And when Christopher nodded, they would shake their heads as if they thought there must be some mistake. “We didn’t imagine you at all like that,” they’d say. “You two don’t look at all like each other.”

That was a fact. They didn’t.

Arne was tall and broad-shouldered and strong, and he 2

had very fair hair and a face that no one could ever forget.

Christopher was small and slight and dark-haired, and he had inherited their grandmother’s features. Neither of them had known her, but ages ago she had come from Nepal to marry a tall, blond German—someone just like Arne.

So of course no one was surprised when Arne decided to spend a year in Nepal after finishing school.

“In search of his roots. Such a serious-minded boy,” they murmured, nodding approvingly. He was going to work at an orphanage there. That was so Arne Hagedorn.

Once everyone knew that he was going to Nepal, all the girls who hadn’t been in love with him already promptly did

G e r m a n y, O c t o b e r

fall in love with him, and he had to promise to take dozens of e-mail addresses away with him.

And knowing his brother as Christopher did, he was sure he really would try to write to them all at least once. Arne was like that. He did all the right things. If someone had to save the day in a basketball tournament, Arne was there to do it.

If someone had to win a chess championship for the school, Arne won it. Even if a protest against the teachers had to be led because of some injustice, he did that as well—which was why everyone liked Arne.

Christopher liked Arne, too.

Arne was nearly twenty. Christopher himself was only fourteen. He would never have dared to e-mail a girl. He never scored any points in basketball, he would have made a terrible mess of a chess championship, and he’d have chickened out of leading a protest against the teachers.

He admired Arne just as everyone else did.

When people talked to his parents, they said, “You must be very proud of your son!”

And when Christopher’s parents asked, “Which son?” the answer was, “Well, Arne, of course. Do you have another son as well?”

That was how things were.

Until Arne disappeared that golden October day.

3

D r a g o n s o f Da r k n e s s

••• Of course he didn’t really disappear that day. He had disappeared earlier, but no one knew it.

However, that was the day when Christopher and his parents heard the news.

The orphanage where Arne was working had given him a few days off, and Arne had gone walking in the Himalayas.

On his own. Now, four weeks later, the people who ran the orphanage finally plucked up enough courage to send a message to the Hagedorns saying that he hadn’t come back.

For three weeks, his parents had been blaming the Internet, the e-mail program, and Arne’s love of adventure for his failure 4

to get in touch. “He was only going to be away for a week,” said Christopher’s father about twenty-seven times. “He was only going to be away for a week, and now, four weeks later, they tell us he never came back!”

And the news was saying that the political situation in Nepal was critical. More and more tanks were assembling outside the palace in Durbar Square. On the German Foreign Ministry’s Web site they were advising against traveling to Nepal. They didn’t say what you were supposed to do if you were already there. Probably fly home. Probably stay in the capital city. Probably not go walking in the mountains on your own. Because the Maoists were in the mountains.

G e r m a n y, O c t o b e r

And they were Communists. Arne had joked about them when he wrote home, saying that they demanded a second payment from tourists who had already paid their fee to visit the Annapurna region, and handed out leaflets in bad English explaining that they were the real government of the country.

Apart from that, they were polite but not forthcoming.

For weeks, Christopher had been reading everything he could find about the Maoists. That didn’t add up to much, but there was a disturbing fascination about it. Christopher was small and not very strong, and maybe not too brave, but he wasn’t stupid. In those days of waiting to hear from Arne, he asked himself for the first time in his life whether maybe Arne was stupid. But not in the usual sense of the word. In another, broader sense; one that sent you off walking on your own in the Annapurna region when everyone advised you not to.

And then the news that Arne was missing came. It was a Thursday afternoon.

“Of course no one can be sure,” said Christopher’s father, turning his narrow-framed glasses around in his hands.

“Maybe he’s sprained an ankle and he’s sitting in a village in the middle of nowhere, teaching the local kids French while they bandage his ankle with jungle leaves. That would be just like Arne.”

5

D r a g o n s o f Da r k n e s s

“You’re out of your mind,” said Christopher’s mother.

“Right out of your mind. Bandaging him with jungle leaves!

You just sit there in your chair talking about bandaging ankles with jungle leaves! We have to do something! Call someone, the embassy or—” “I already did,” said Christopher’s father.

“Then call them again!” cried his mother, knocking over the glass of fruit juice that she’d put down on the table a moment before. Christopher saw how her hands were shaking as she collected the shards. Then she poured herself half a glass of gin, instead of more juice, and Christopher’s father stood up, took it away from her after her first sip, and 6

poured the rest down the sink.

“That won’t do any good, either,” he said.

“Don’t be so damn calm about it!” shouted his mother.

“I suppose you’re not bothered that our son’s been abducted by some band of armed Communists! It leaves you cold, am I right? That’s it, it leaves you cold, it—” Then she collapsed on the sofa and dissolved into a flood of tears.

Christopher just stood there watching his parents hugging and trying to comfort each other, and he felt as rigid as a statue. He told himself he ought to be feeling something else. Fear. Horror. Grief. Rage. Even secret guilt for not

G e r m a n y, O c t o b e r

feeling fear, horror, or grief. But there was nothing there. All Christopher’s feelings had turned to stone. It was as if Arne had taken these emotions away with him—taken them away to nowhere.

Nothing happened for three days. Then they heard that a Maoist splinter group claimed to be holding three Europeans hostage, but there were no pictures or names, and there was no basis for negotiations, either, because the Maoists couldn’t agree with each other on their demands.

Christopher’s mother swallowed tranquilizers like candy, and his father spent hours every day phoning people in their offices and embassies who couldn’t help him. In school, Christopher felt the other kids’ eyes on him. They didn’t dare to ask questions, and he avoided them. At home, he did the dishes that were stacking up. He hung out the wash that he found in a musty-smelling washing machine. At one point, he went to the library, borrowed a book full of pictures of Nepal, and took it home and into his room with him. Under the outer shell of the statue he’d become, something slowly began to seethe. Maybe the statue would melt from the inside. If it exploded, there’d be no one left to do the dishes and hang up the wash.

The fact that everyone liked Arne didn’t help him much

7

D r a g o n s o f Da r k n e s s

now, Christopher thought, because obviously nobody was actually ready to do anything practical for him! They were all cracking up, spinning around in circles, while Arne was held prisoner somewhere in the Himalayas.

Christopher sat down on his bed and leafed through the pages of the library book: mountains, ravines, snow-covered peaks, a dry river valley, mules crossing a narrow suspension bridge. Broad-leaved trees and climbing plants, waterfalls, Buddhist monasteries with bright wall paintings and colorful prayer flags above small brown buildings. There was nothing he could do, so he dreamed his way into its pages, over the mountains and through the valleys, past meandering blue 8

rivers, up dazzlingly bright glaciers. At least that way he felt a little closer to Arne. When evening came and no one felt like eating, when the street lights flickered on in the darkness like a string of beads, and October brought fine rain falling on the streets, Christopher’s eyes stopped to dwell on one particular picture. It showed the surging green of the tropical jungle, where the mountains were still low and there was hot, humid, motionless air among the trees. You could see a path in the foreground leading into that green world, turning, winding, and finally disappearing into the undergrowth in a mysterious way.

Christopher looked at the picture for a long time, so long

G e r m a n y, O c t o b e r

that his eyes were streaming. Everything blurred in front of them, and he saw nothing but the color green.

Green.

GREEN. The green twilight of an afternoon in the tropical jungle.

Something rustled in the thickets to his left. He spun around, and at that moment, he noticed that his feet were on a springy carpet of leaves. Ahead of him, the path wound on into the undergrowth. Dozens of exotic birds, invisible in the high branches, were making a lot of noise, and cicadas were chirping so loudly that you might have thought you were right next to a power station.

This was impossible. This couldn’t be true.

This was—no, no. Stay sensible, Christopher, he told himself. Cracking up was something other people did. There was a perfectly plausible explanation.

He was dreaming.

Something was moving on his left again, and Christopher saw a trail leading away into the jungle—a trail of trodden grass and broken twigs leading away from the path. He wasn’t Arne. Arne would have followed the trail right away, without a trace of fear. Christopher did feel fear. Even if he was only dreaming his fear. He didn’t understand what was going on, and he was so strung up that his palms felt moist.

9

D r a g o n s o f Da r k n e s s

All the same, he decided to follow the trail, step by step, very cautiously, and the rustling came closer.

Then a voice he didn’t know, a tired, desperate voice, said, “Don’t run away. Please don’t run away. Help me. Please! ” Christopher shook his head and took one more step forward to see if he’d miscalculated the distance. Maybe whoever the voice belonged to was hiding somewhere behind a bush . . .

As he stepped forward, he stumbled over someone.

Someone about his own size, who let out a scream when Christopher fell on top of him.

Christopher rolled off and looked around, gasping for air.

10

But there wasn’t anyone there.