Onward to the Dragon's Lair!

Spring arrived in Kraków as a miracle of light and color. The sun rose early–while children still slept!–and it set later than they could stay awake. In the city park called The Planty, chestnut trees erupted with white and pink blossoms that fell like snow when wind gusts blew. The lilacs fuzzed purple with their lilac-y scents. Each day brought new blossoms: yellow forsythia, red tulips, dandelions with their fluff. Every day, Sheri and Michael invented some reason to take their bicycles from the apartment, down the elevator, and out for a spin. Twelve miles one afternoon, fifteen another. To this castle; along this river; up that hill. They even climbed to the top of the Krak Mound, the highest point in the whole city, where legend says a medieval king is buried. From there, they saw all the cathedrals and spires of the city.

 

And this, too, came with Spring: suddenly everyone in Kraków was eating ice cream.

 

Even the heroes of our tale found themselves outside Wawel Castle one afternoon eating from cones and cups. Charley Bear, who had once been named Wojtek and who had fought in World War II, gobbled six cones–all stuffed with chocolate. The Rabbit Prince daintily lapped at a cup with a double scoop of śmietanka, which was creamy and smooth and white. And Szerykl ate the very best flavor: Słony Karmel (Salty Caramel).

 

“What flavor do you think Beamish would eat if Beamish were here?” asked Charley Bear. He’d never met Beamish, the teleporting rabbit who’d vanished into ... somewhere.

 

“Truskawka, I think,” said Szerykl, frowning because she missed her Beamish-buddy. “He’s a strawberry kind of rabbit. Wherever he is.”

 

“He’ll show up,” said the Rabbit Prince. “Good friends are that way. Sometimes you lose touch and then – surprise! – there they are, as if they’ve always been with you.”

 

“Like Spring,” said Charley Bear. “One minute, you’re hibernating in some dark, quiet cave,  and you wake up and yawn and there’s Spring again, as if it’s always been here.”

 

“Speaking of caves,” said the Rabbit Prince. “We’ve got a dragon to visit.”

 

Snap! They all fell quiet. Each of them knew that the quest for amber beads, which had begun so joyfully in autumn with a Stone Knight in the mountains, had reached its most risky and dangerous moment. A last bit of amber awaited, here, beneath the castle, in a cave where a long-clawed, mighty-jawed, fire-breathing dragon lived.

 

“I’m not done with my ice cream yet,” said Szerykl.

 

“I’ll help you finish,” said Charley Bear.

 

Szerykl gave him the You-Dumb-Bear stare.

 

“I mean,” said Charley Bear, “take all the time you want.”

 

The Rabbit Prince explained his plan. He knew a secret way into the dragon’s lair, chiseled through some cracks in the rock, through which only small magic rabbits could pass. “We can sneak in to find the bead, then sneak out. If we get in trouble, we’ll call Charley Bear, who can run in and save us.”

 

Charley Bear gave him the You-Dumb-Bunny stare.

 

“I mean, I’m tough,” he said. “But a dragon in its own cave?”

 

The Rabbit Prince thought about that. “Maybe you could just stand outside the cave mouth and call the dragon mean names? ‘Hey, you Stinky Sock Face! You Toad Jam! Moldy Garlic Mouth! Or you could roar. Just distract the dragon.”

 

So that became the plan. The Rabbit Prince led Szerykl through a crack in the rock and soon they’d reached the inside of the cave. Szerykl found herself daydreaming back to the cozy, dry rabbit warrens she’d slept in at home, in E’s backyard, where she snuggled with friendly earthworms and slugs that she loved. A dragon’s den wasn’t like that it. In this cavern, Szerykl couldn’t smell dirt, because here was all hard edges, echoes of dripping water, and damp and slippery rock. Inexplicably, strange glowing orbs flashed to life, then faded, flashed to life, then faded, and the strange light only made the darkness more haunted.

 

“Oh, E!” Szerykl said to herself, “I know you wanted me to make sure Sheri and Michael returned home ... but who will make sure I come back?”

 

At that very moment, a puff of fog appeared between Szerykl and the Rabbit Prince. And there, suddenly, was Beamish!

 

“Bandersnatch!” said Beamish. “Why am I in a cave? I wanted strawberry ice cream.”

 

Szerykl was so happy she squeaked. The Rabbit Prince laid a paw on Beamish’s shoulder. “Witamy, Panie Beamish” he said. “We welcome you.”

 

“Where have you been?” asked Szerykl.

 

“Where have YOU been?” asked Beamish.

 

“Right here in the world. Where we eat ice cream.”

 

“Oh,” said Beamish, his golden ears twitching, “I missed ice cream. After I escaped the amber prison, I found myself arrived in a strange place. A spiral staircase. But not just any old spiral staircase. This one screwed down and up through a cylinder made of brick and stone. And it had no windows. Maybe it was a shaft into the ground, or a tube into the clouds. I couldn’t say! No day or night. Did it even matter?”

 

Szerykl shuddered.

 

“I hopped up and up,” said Beamish, “and I never reached the top. I hopped down and down and never reached the bottom.”

 

“But here you are,” said the Rabbit Prince. “Somehow you escaped.”

 

“Something pulled at me,” said Beamish. “Some magic lifted me right from a stair into the inbetween where I go when teleporting, and then it dropped me here.”

 

That might have been me, Szerykl thought, because she’d right at that moment been wishing for someone to help her get back to E and E’s backyard. Maybe she summoned Beamish from his spiral staircase. But she couldn’t be sure, and she didn’t want to brag, so she kept quiet.

 

Someone else spoke, though. It was not the Rabbit Prince. It wasn’t Beamish.

 

“Oh, springtime,” said the voice, hard-edged as the cavern walls. “My favorite time of year, when dragons scoop rabbits into waffle cones and swallow them up!”