Chapter Three Awful Noisy Growing Things

Little Olivia was on all fours with her head stuck in a clump of very long grass. She looked like an ostrich. Her reasoning was - If you can’t see IT, IT can’t see you, whatever IT was. Mary was furiously writing in a small notebook with a purple color pen with purple ink. She sat on the back steps of the Plantation House. Kay sat next to her with yet another powder compact. She continued to apply the powder to repair the damage that her earlier outburst had made. Carol was staring up into the sky with her hands held over her head in a pointless gesture of defense.

“I’ve got it,” said Mary.

“Got what?” asked Carol.

“A list of all the essentials that we’ll need for a quest of this magnitude,” she replied.

“I really don’t like the sound of that word - Quest. It implies danger and ugly things,” spouted Kay.

“What quest?” inquired Olivia.

“The quest to capture the dragon, silly,” she answered.

They all glared at Mary and joined voices, “Dragon… Capture… Quest!”

Olivia returned to her clump of grass now joined by Carol who got down on all fours and stuck her head in next to Olivia‘s.

Mary matter-of-factly continued, “Dragons are usually considered a myth. Some say that they are a throw back to the days of the dinosaurs and to the majestic Pterodactyl. Others say that they were created in the minds of grandmothers to scare poor defenseless children. Still others say that they are the creation of the Japanese to keep foreigners out of their country along with the ever popular Godzilla.”

“Godzilla!“ With that, Kay got down on all fours and joined the others as she stuck her head in the clump of very long grass.

“Come on… we can’t let an opportunity like this pass us by. A dragon would be a historic find… would be written about in every scientific journal… would be displayed in the Smithsonian Institute… would bring us a whole lot of money…” pleaded Mary.

With her last comment, the girls pulled their heads out of the grass and joined Mary with greedy smiles plastered on their faces. There are a lot of things that can be said about children, whether you agree with them or not and Miss Ida had said a lot of things, the most polite of which were: they’re a noisy, messy, smelly, ungrateful monstrous lot who run amok and destroy everything in their path. Missy Hyde simply described them as ’awful noisy growing things.‘ But there is one thing that everyone in the entire universe agrees upon, they are without a doubt the greediest things on the face of this earth.

“Well,” questioned Olivia, “how do we capture this dragon?”

“We, huh?” said Mary.

Not about to let her take all the credit and all the money, “Yes, WE…” replied Kay.

Mary continued to write in her notebook.

“Capture…Dragon…you know…Quest,” urged Kay.

“Simple,” Mary responded, “We build a trap.”

“Oh, Mary, I don’t know. We don’t have much luck with traps,” said Carol. That wasn’t just an unfounded comment. That was a statement of actual fact. A very painful, memorable fact.

They sat there for a good long time with a perplexed look on their faces. “What to do, What to do,” went through Mary‘s mind. “Trap, huh…Trap… Trap… Trap… Trap…,” went through Olivia‘s mind. “I’ve got to get me a tube of lipstick,” went through Kay‘s mind. A gust of wind went through Carol’s mind.

“Why don’t we just rope the thing and put it in a cage,” said Olivia.

“Great Idea, but where do we get a cage?” asked Mary.

“Why don’t we lock it up with Miss Ida,” snickered Kay.

“What if Miss Ida is the dragon!” Carol retorted with a look of horror on her face.

“Matron by day, dragon by night,” said Mary. They had been through this before, the outcome of which was not a pretty sight.

“Yeah, I bet she hides her horns under her enormous wig,” said Carol.

“And her wings only come out at night,” said Olivia.

Kay joined in, “And she rolls up her pointy tail under the back of her dress. She does have an awfully big…”

Mary clamped her hand over Kay’s mouth not a moment too soon.

Mary cautioned, “We’ve been through this before. Miss Ida is not a dragon, monster, orc, fiend, beast, creature, ogre, tyrant…”

“I don’t agree with that last one. In the dictionary under the word tyrant, there’s only one entry: Miss Ida. She is definitely a tyrant. On the list of all time tyrants in the big book of tyrants published by Tyrant Publishing, she’s at the very top followed closely by Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and my second grade math teacher, Mrs. Persimmon, “ Kay spouted.

Mary flipped through her notebook, landed on a page and quickly scratched through an entry.

“What else do you have in that notebook of yours?” asked Olivia.

“Notes,” she replied. “Just notes,” as she held the notebook close to her chest.

“Is there anything in there about roping dragons?” Olivia continued to inquire.

“No,” said Mary, “but I have a plan.”

When Mary said she had a plan, it never turned out well. A mixed look of anxiety and fear crossed their faces with a ‘here we go again look‘ which followed close behind.

Mary handed each girl a piece of notebook paper that she had carefully ripped from her book. They began discussing the preparations, when a long dark shadow fell on the lawn.

It was Peter who was standing on the very top of the roof holding his binoculars as he peered across the countryside. It was such a sunny day that his frame cast a long shadow and his bent arms look like wings on the shadow.

“Dragon,” Kay screamed.

They all jumped up and ran into the safety of the house.

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