by Matthew Gallagher

Part 2

           Now, I know what you are about to say.  Dodo Birds are supposed to be extinct.  Like the Dimetrodon and the Guagga and the Sabre-tooth Tiger.  I know.  And they were supposed to be extinct back when this story took place, but there was, in fact, one left.  It lived far off in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on an island ruled by a Dragon.  What?  Now Dragons don't exist?  I wouldn't say that if I were you, because Dragons are very sensitive on this subject, and become quite unpredictable when anyone tries to tell them that they do not exist.

    Dragons come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and colours.  People nowadays usually think of dragons as being green, but to tell the truth, it is very rare to find a green dragon.  The fire-breathing varieties often come in shades of red, brown and orange.  Dragons that live in the sea can be gold, or transparent like the water around them.

    People are often afraid of dragons, but some dragons can be very nice.  They can also be very smart, because they live a long, long time and study many, many things.  Many dragons are what you might call professional students, which means that they never actually go out and get a job, but stay in school forever.  So, they become very smart, but don't contribute much to society.

    Our dragon -- well, certainly he's not our dragon, but he's the dragon in our story, so we'll call him our dragon just for convenience -- our dragon slept in the volcano on the island, and lived off the heat and the fumes and magma inside the volcano.  This gave him tremendously bad breath, which would burn trees to a crisp where they stood when he breathed hard enough.  FWOOOOOSH!

    Here is a hint for you that may help you when you are dealing with a gigantic, rust-coloured, fire-breathing dragon that lives in a volcano on a remote island in the middle of the ocean:  Learn his name.  Names can be very important tools, and if you remember I said that dragons are very sensitive creatures, and the feel slighted that no one ever tries to remember their names.  Our Dragon was called Anopurodon.  Cool, isn't it?  But it's rather long name, so he went by the shortened version, Don.

    Now, Don the Dragon had a curious hobby.  He collected rare birds, and birds that were thought to be extinct.  He was especially proud of his collection of flightless birds and short-range flying birds.  To this end he had turned his island into a large aviary.  There were Fairy Penguins on the southeastern tip of the island that dove from the craggy outcroppings of rocks there, competing with one another on form and degree of difficulty.  Puffins inhabited the crags on the opposite end of the island.  The two sea-diving fowl never spoke.  Emus and ostriches nodded to each other when they passed each other traveling on the plains to the southwest.  Cassowaries performed kickboxing demonstrations in the tropical northeast part of the island.  And of course there was the Dodo.

    The last of its kind, the Dodo was content to live on the island with the fierce Dragon, far from the sailorhunters who had hunted its brothers and sisters for food a hundred years before.  The Dodo had taken it upon itself to become sort of the Dragon's secretary.  This made the secretary-birds on the island a little put out, but secretary birds have the tendency to feel put out much of the time.  The Dodo would tell the Hummingbirds that their buzzing was "Too loud!  Too loud!  Buzz softer!  Buzz softer!" when the Dragon was taking his daily nap.  Of course the Dodo thought it had to shout over the sound of the buzzing in order to be heard, and its voice was so loud that it would echo and boom louder through the caverns of the volcano right into the Dragon's ear canal.  When the Dragon was awake, the Dodo would sometimes chase after it, urgently trying to tell Don all the important goings-on on the island.  As you may guess, this annoyed the Dragon exceedingly, but he put up with it for some reason, and I doubt we will ever know why.

    The Dragon was really only interested in one thing on the island.  Of all his rare birds, the one he cherished the most -- which means he kept it locked up rarely let it walk around the island to get fresh air -- was a feathered creature so rare that it was the only one of its kind.  Not the last of its kind, like the Dodo, but the only one.  Just like the Phoenix, only one of these birds existed at any given time.  And like the Dodo, it, too, was a flightless bird. It resembled an Emu in the shape of its body, a Swan in the shape of its neck, and its head had something of the Ibis about it.  It's tail feathers were long enough to hang over the ground when it walked, but it curled these under its belly.  According to legend, the Wish-Bird was supposed to be the colour of pimpernel, though it had the unique ability to change the colours of its feathers depending on its mood.  This particular Wish-Bird, however, was brown.  Dirt brown.  And no wonder, for the Dragon kept it locked in a cage he had dug out of the side of the mountain.  You see -- and I'm sure you've guessed this by now -- the Wish-Bird had a very special talent.  It could, on certain occasions, lay wish-eggs. Most of the time, its eggs were boring emeralds, or rubies, sapphires, and even diamonds.  Under special circumstances it is said, the Wish-Bird would lay an egg that could make any wish come true. And that's what the Dragon was counting on.  So he kept the Wish-Bird prisoner on his island aviary, waiting for the day that it would grant him the favour of a wish-egg.

    Now let's get back to our pirates!

     "I teenk I see someteeng off the starboard side of the sheep, Capteen."  Diego Alejandro Luis Rodriguez de Viejas -- or Doody, to his compatriots on the Triumph -- squinted as he peered into the ocean from the crow's nest.  "Eet eez a raft, Capteen.  And on eet, dos mujeres."

    Cap'n. Curly peered over the starboard rail of the ship himself.  Should he stop and pick up these two women who were Lost At Sea?  The Code of the Sea demanded that any ship, pirate or not, pick up any LASses.  (LASses are people who are Lost At Sea, so if you are a boy and you are floating in a lifeboat after your ship goes down, then you are still a LASs even though you are not a girl living on a Scottish farm.)  They weren't moving on the raft.  Perhaps they were dead.  If they were moving, then of course Curly would be bound by the Code of the Sea to rescue them from their plight.  But he was on a mission.  The treasure.  Big treasure!  Perhaps the biggest treasure ever heard of.  Well, a really big one, anyway.  Gems of unimaginable value, said to be the size of a man's head. Certainly worth looking at.  Curly hoped beyond hope that this wasn't a wild goose chase.  The crew wouldn't like that.  Not one bit.  They already seemed antsy about this new mission, to find a legendary treasure on a volcanic island in the middle of the ocean.  If either the island or the treasure kept there turned out not to exist, they'd be sooooo angry with him.  They might even mutiny.  And not one of those nice clean mutinies like you hear about where the captain and officers are given some food and fresh water and put in a lifeboat near an island.  But a big messy pirate mutiny.  Walking the plank and all that.  And these waters were famous for their barracuda...

    "We are going to save the Lasses, si, Capteen?"  Doody called down from the crow's nest, snapping Curly out of his musings.  "The Code of the Sea demands it!"

    "They look dead to me," Curly responded slowly.

    "The mujer with hair the color of oro...she moves!"

    Well, that settled that.  "Lay anchor and prepare for passengers!" Curly yelled at the top of his lungs.  Passengers.  Unknown.  Curly didn't like it when life threw Unknown Things at him.  And to a pirate like Curly, women were almost always Unknown Things.