We Sled With Dragons by C. Alexander London Read Free Book Online Page B

his sister hadn’t heard him. Maybe he really was Captain Obvious. When he looked back at the hole, a beam of light shot out toward the screen. He turned around. The picture was washed out in the sunlight, so it was hard to make out exactly what he was seeing. He figured that the movie theater must only get used at night. He squinted to study the picture.
    He saw a bearded old man on a ship, battling a giant squid with a large spear. The man’s hair hung down over one of his eyes and he was shouting to the sky, but the movie had no sound. Oliver didn’t recognize the actor. It couldn’t have been an American movie. He would have seen the ads for it before.
    â€œThat looks just like the kraken we fought in the Pacific Ocean,” Oliver said, but Celia’s head was poking out into the alleyway and she couldn’t hear him.
    The scene changed suddenly to a picture of the same man with the white beard fighting pirates.
    â€œMust be a ‘coming soon’ kind of thing,” Oliver said.
    The scene changed again, now showing the man crossing mountains as shadowy snow creatures watched from caves, their eyes aglow.
    â€œThose are just like the yetis we met in Tibet . . .” Oliver stepped closer to the screen, trying to make out what sort of movie this might be an ad for. His heart was pounding against his rib cage.
    He saw the bearded man in a jungle somewhere, walking with a tribe of painted warriors toward a golden city, and the warriors looked a lot like they were from Qui’s tribe.
    â€œBizarro,” Oliver whispered, looking around once more for a hidden camera crew playing a practical joke.
    Then the scene froze. It showed a snowy plain with a glowing city in the distance. The city had a large temple in the center surrounded by rings of walls stretching out across the snow. It looked just like the drawing of Atlantis in Percy Fawcett’s journal. Suddenly, the bearded man appeared on the screen, leaning against a large tree and looking down at the city. A rainbow came down from the sky and the man walked right onto it, strolling toward the city. The scene didn’t show his face, but he had a sack over his shoulder, and the sack was embroidered with the symbol of a key.
    Oliver felt his stomach drop into his toes. The key was the symbol of the Mnemones, the guardians of the Lost Library of Alexandria. His mother’s secret society.
    â€œNo way!” said Oliver.
    â€œCome on!” Celia turned back around. “The coast is clear. Let’s go find Mom and Da— What are you doing?”
    Oliver stood in the center of the aisle, his head titled all the way back, looking up at the screen with his jaw hanging open. Celia worried that her brother had gone crazy. Maybe the strain of the day had been too much for him. Maybe he’d gotten toxic parasites. Celia shook her head. She hated how fragile little brothers’ brains could be.
    â€œIt. Is. Time. To. Go,” she said very slowly, so he could understand even if he had a toxic parasite in his brain.
    Oliver pointed up.
    â€œWhat?” said Celia. “It’s just an ad for some foreign movie. It probably has subtitles. That’s how movies trick you into reading.”
    Oliver grabbed the backpack and pulled out the old explorer’s journal.
    â€œJust look closely,” he said as he flipped pages in the journal.
    â€œIt looks like some Christmas movie,” said Celia. “Like Santa Claus has to save Christmas or somethi—oh.” Celia’s jaw dropped. She saw her mother’s symbol and then the film looped back to the beginning again. She saw the scenes of the bearded man battling the kraken and meeting the tribe in the jungle and being watched by the yetis. “Oh no.” Celia gulped.
    Oliver held up the page in the journal he was looking for. It was what he’d seen back in the hotel room, the drawings of the bearded man. They looked just like the man in