Ember and the Big Mess

High on Cinder Mountain lived a young dragon named Ember. He had green scales and a smile with too many teeth, but he was a nice dragon. He shared his snacks, he said good morning to the goats, and he once carried a lost duckling all the way home on his nose.

Ember had one big problem: he did not listen to his mom, the biggest and wisest dragon on the mountain. Every morning she told him the same three things: “Never sneeze near anything that can burn. Don’t fly near the village when it’s windy. And never flap your wings at a fire.”

“Okay, Mom,” Ember always said, but he was usually looking at a butterfly when he said it. By the time the butterfly flew away, he had forgotten every word. He never meant to be bad, but he thought rules were for other dragons, and he was sure nothing would ever go wrong.

One windy morning, Ember woke up feeling wonderful. “Stay close to home today,” said his mom. “The wind is too strong for your little wings.” Ember said, “Okay, Mom,” and then he looked down at the village. It was market day, and he could smell the warm cinnamon bread from all the way up the mountain.

“I’ll only go for a minute,” Ember told himself. He jumped off the ledge outside his cave, and the wind grabbed him right away. It spun him left, then right, then upside down, and it threw him all the way to the village. He crashed through the top of the clock tower, and the big clock fell out and rolled down the hill, bonging at every bump.

The clock smashed into the apple stand in the middle of the market. Hundreds of apples bounced down the street, and the villagers slipped and slid. Ember rushed down to help, but his tail flattened a whole row of bread tables. “Sorry! Sorry! I’m sorry!” he kept saying.

Then the wind blew a cloud of flour off the flattened tables and right up Ember’s nose. His nostrils tickled. “Oh no,” he said. “Ah… ah… AH-CHOO!” A huge burst of flame shot out of his mouth, and the baker’s roof caught fire.

Ember remembered the rule about sneezing, but too late. He forgot the rule about flapping altogether, and he flapped his wings as hard as he could to blow the flames out. That only made them bigger. They jumped to the barn and the fence. The wind from his wings tore the laundry off the lines and the shingles off the roofs. By noon, almost nothing in the village was left standing.

Everyone got out safely. They stared at Ember through the smoke. “That’s a bad dragon,” a little girl whispered, and Ember heard her. Nobody had ever called him that before. His chin shook, and big hot tears rolled down his face and sizzled on the ground. He walked home up the mountain as slowly as he could.

His mom was waiting on the ledge. She had seen the smoke, and Ember was sure she would roar at him. Instead she looked at him for a long time and said, “Tell me what happened.” So he told her all of it, even the part where he had heard her tell him to stay home and had gone anyway.

“Am I a bad dragon?” he asked in a tiny voice. His mom wrapped her big wing around him. “No,” she said. “You are a nice dragon who made a very bad choice. I make rules because I know what wind and fire can do, and you don’t know yet.”

“I can see you’re sorry,” she said. “But being sorry isn’t the end of it. You broke those things, so now you get to help fix them.” Ember wiped his nose and nodded, and this time he was listening. The next morning, when the wind had died down, the two of them flew to the village together.

Ember stood in front of everyone and said, “I didn’t listen to my mom, and I wrecked your village. I’m very sorry, and I’ll work until it’s all fixed.” The villagers weren’t sure about that. But then he picked up a whole tree trunk in his teeth and carried it to where the barn had stood, and the baker went to get a hammer.

Ember worked all summer. He carried stones, lifted beams, and hung the big clock back on its tower. When he felt a sneeze coming, he turned and aimed it at the pond. With his gentlest flame, he baked bricks for the baker’s new oven, and then he lit it. Soon there was cinnamon bread again, and the little girl started bringing him some. One day she said, “You’re not a bad dragon after all.”

Ember still chases butterflies, and he still forgets things sometimes, because he is still a little dragon. But now, when his mom tells him something in the morning, he stops and looks at her, and then he says, “Okay, Mom,” and means it. And on windy days, you can find him at home on the mountain, safe and sound, waiting for the wind to stop so he can go visit his friends.

Ember and Lantern Night

A Hot Cold

One morning at the end of autumn, Ember woke up with a tickle in his nose. He lay in his cave and held still, hoping it would go away. It did not. He sneezed, and a spark the size of a pea shot out of his nose, bounced across the floor, and fizzled on the cold stone.

“Oh no,” said Ember.

His mom came in and laid her wing across his forehead. “You have a cold,” she said. “A dragon’s cold is a hot one. You’ll sneeze all day, and the sneezes get bigger before they get smaller.”

“How many days?”

“Three. Maybe four.”

It had been months since the Big Mess, when Ember wrecked the village and spent the summer fixing it. The clock was back on its tower, and Ember had gotten good at listening. When his mom told him something in the morning, he stopped and looked at her, and he said, “Okay, Mom,” and he meant it. He had forgotten something only once since then. It was about a butterfly, and nothing burned.

“Tonight is Lantern Night,” his mom said. “The last night of autumn.”

Ember sat up. He had been waiting for Lantern Night for a month. Every year the villagers hung a hundred lanterns along the road from the baker’s shop to the clock tower, and at dusk they lit them one at a time, so that nobody would walk home in the dark. From the ledge outside Ember’s cave you could watch the whole road glow, lantern after lantern, like beads on a string.

“I have to fly over to the north slope,” his mom said. “It snowed up there last night, and the snow has covered the path the goats use to come down. I’ll be back as soon as they’re safe. Until then, I need three things from you. Stay on the ledge. Keep your nose pointed at the pond on the ledge. And if anyone comes up the path, be polite. Somebody usually does.”

“Okay, Mom,” said Ember.

She was quiet for a moment. “I know you mean it,” she said. “I’m telling you anyway, because a sneeze doesn’t care what you mean.”

Then she spread her wings and was gone, and Ember was alone on the ledge.

The pond sat in a hollow on the ledge, round and gray and still. At home, it was where Ember went whenever he felt a sneeze coming. He thought it was the best sneezing place on the whole mountain. He went and sat beside it with his nose pointed at the water. He did not have to wait long.

“Ah… ah… AH-CHOO!”

A little flame shot out across the pond, and the water hissed and sent up a cloud of steam. Ember waited. Nothing had burned. He sneezed again, a bigger one, and the steam rolled up higher. By the middle of the afternoon he had sneezed forty-one times, and each one was bigger than the one before. He was proud of every one.

Then the snow began. It fell slowly and quietly, with no wind at all. His mom had said to stay on the ledge, so he stayed where he was and watched it come.

Visitors on the Mountain Path

The light was going blue when Ember heard a sound below the ledge. It was a crunching, one slow step after another, and a puff of breath after each one.

Two people came up over the edge of the path. One was the baker, a big man in a floury coat, with a long wooden bread paddle over one shoulder and a basket on his arm. The other was the little girl from the market, in a red scarf that came up to her nose. Her name was Wren. She had been bringing Ember bread since the summer, and she was holding a round loaf now, wrapped in a cloth.

The baker stopped at the very edge of the ledge, as far from Ember as he could get and still be there at all.

Be polite, Ember thought. He stood up straight, and he made sure his nose was pointed at the pond. “Good evening,” he said. “My mom is out, so I’m in charge of the ledge. Welcome to it.”

“Good evening, Ember,” said the baker. His voice came out squeaky. Ember remembered that this man’s roof had been the first thing to catch fire, and he looked down at his feet. He didn’t say anything about it. He thought it was better to let the baker talk first.

Wren set the loaf down by Ember’s foot. “That’s for you,” she said. “It’s from this morning.”

“It’s the lanterns,” said the baker. “It rained in the village all day, and late this afternoon the rain turned to wet snow. Everything we have for making fire is soaked. The matches, the tapers, the flint. We have a hundred lanterns on the road and not one dry flame in the village. Even my oven has gone out.”

“We were going to cancel Lantern Night,” said Wren.

“We were,” the baker said. “Then Wren said, ‘I know somebody with a dry flame.’” He wiped his hands on his coat. “I almost said no. I’m still afraid of fire in the dark.”

Ember’s chin wobbled, but he held it still. “That’s okay,” he said. “I’d be a little afraid of me, too.”

“I only need one lantern lit,” said the baker. “One. We’ll carry it down and light all the others from it.” He opened his basket and took out a tin lantern with glass sides. Then he looked at Ember’s nose, which was running, and at the pond, which was steaming. “I see you have a cold.”

“I have a hot cold,” Ember said. “My mom said to stay on the ledge. I can stay on the ledge and light a lantern, I think. But I can’t promise it will go right.”

“You don’t have to promise,” said Wren. “Just try.”

So the baker walked over to the pond. He hung the lantern from the end of the long paddle and held it out over the water, as far from himself as the paddle would reach. Ember pointed his nose at it, so that the pond would be right there if anything went wrong.

The Smallest Flame

Ember took a big breath.

“Wait!” cried the baker, but it was too late. A great orange flame went WHOOSH across the water. When it was gone, the lantern was black with smoke, the wick was a little curl of ash, and the end of the bread paddle was smoking.

“That was too much,” said Ember. His face felt hot all the way to the tips of his ears. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” said the baker, quietly. He took a second lantern out of his basket and hung it on the paddle. His hands were not quite steady.

Ember filled his chest again. But as he did, the tickle came back, and it was a big one. “Ah… ah…”

“Turn!” said Wren.

Ember swung his head away just in time. “AH-CHOO!” A flame as long as a goat shot over the far end of the pond. The water roared, and a cloud of steam blew back across the ledge and covered all of them in a warm, wet fog.

When it cleared, the baker was still holding the lantern out on the paddle. Wren was standing next to him with her hands over her mouth. Both of them were looking at Ember, and he felt small.

“I can’t do it,” he said. “Every time I try, it comes out too big. I baked the bricks for your oven with a gentle flame, and now I can’t make one that’s gentle enough to light a lantern.”

Wren thought about it with her head tipped to one side. “How did you do it for the bricks?” she asked.

“I breathed out slowly,” said Ember. “But the bricks weren’t sitting in front of a sneeze. Every time I start slowly now, it gets away from me and turns into a whoosh.”

“Like blowing on soup?” said Wren.

“Soup?” said Ember.

“When it’s too hot, you don’t go HUFF. You blow a little, and you stop, and you blow a little more.” She pursed her lips and let out a short, thin breath, and then another. “Try that. Only warm.”

It was such a plain idea that Ember almost didn’t want to try it. But he decided to try. He squeezed his nose with one claw until the tickle went away. That trick never lasts long, but it lasted long enough. He shut his eyes, and he thought about soup.

Then he let out a short, warm breath, as thin as thread. Then another.

The wick glowed red. It curled, and caught, and a tiny gold flame stood up on top of it, no bigger than the end of a thumb. The baker shut the little glass door with a click.

For a moment nobody said anything. The lantern hung on the end of the paddle and glowed, and the snow fell through its light.

“Well,” said the baker. His voice squeaked again. “Look at that.”

A Hundred and One Lanterns

Wren tied her red scarf around the lantern’s tin handle so the baker’s fingers wouldn’t get cold, and the baker carried it away down the path as carefully as if it were an egg, with Wren holding on to his sleeve. Ember stayed on the ledge, with his nose pointed at the pond. He ate Wren’s loaf while he watched the small gold light go down the mountain, until he could hardly tell it from the snow.

At the edge of the village it stopped. Then there were two lights, then four. A light began to move along the road, and another went after it, and Ember saw that the villagers were lighting the lanterns one from the next, all the way down to the clock tower. One, ten, thirty. By the time the snow stopped and the first stars came out, he had lost count. The whole road was glowing in the dark, curving down the hill and across the snow, and every light on it had come from his.

Ember sat still. His nose was running and his eyes were wet, and he didn’t mind either one. The tickle was getting smaller, too.

A shadow went over the mountain, and his mom landed beside him with snow on her back.

“The goats are down,” she said. “They’re cross, but they’re down.”

Ember turned around to face her. “Mom,” he said, “I have to tell you what happened.”

She folded her wings. “I’m listening.”

So he told her everything, from the first lantern he burned black to the soup. He even told her about the bread paddle, though he didn’t want to.

His mom watched the village for a while. “I saw the road from the air,” she said. “A hundred lights, in all that wet. I wondered who had managed it. Then I saw you sitting here with your nose running, and I knew.”

“Are you cross?” asked Ember.

“No,” said his mom. “I told you to stay on the ledge, and you stayed. And when it went wrong, you tried again, and you listened to Wren.” She leaned her big head against his.

“It was soup,” said Ember, and he sneezed.

It was a small one, and he had pointed it at the pond.

On the fourth day of his cold, Ember woke up with his nose clear, and the baker came up the mountain path again with a loaf of cinnamon bread. Wren came with him. The baker was carrying a small tin lantern with glass sides. A red scarf was tied around its handle, and a tiny gold flame stood up inside it.

“It’s been burning on my porch ever since,” said the baker. “Wren has fed it oil every night. It’s the same flame. A hundred lanterns on the road, and the one that lit them. That makes a hundred and one.” He hung it on a hook beside the mouth of the cave. This time he stood close to Ember while he did it.

Ember kept that lantern burning on the ledge all winter. On the last night of every autumn after that, Wren climbed the mountain path with a loaf of bread, a little taller each year, and the two of them sat by the pond and watched the road light up, one lantern at a time, down the hill.