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“The dragons!” said Ben. “The stone dragons. He says the stone is only a thin layer and can be cracked open like a shell, understand?”
Sorrel and Burr-Burr-Chan looked up from their picnic.
“If you ask me, the dwarf just wants our permission to hammer at the rocks around here,” said Sorrel, biting the stalk off a mushroom. “Cracked open like a shell? Nonsense!”
“It’s not nonsense!” Gravelbeard, looking insulted, planted himself in front of the claws of one of the stone dragons. “I can prove it.” Taking the hammer from his backpack, the dwarf climbed up a spiny tail until he was standing on the petrified dragon’s back. “It will take a bit of time,” he called down, “but you just wait and see!”
The dragons looked at him doubtfully.
“Can we help?” asked Maia.
The mountain dwarf merely shook his head scornfully. “You? With your great big paws? No chance! Even that little human doesn’t have enough feeling in his fingers to do that.” Looking important, Gravelbeard straightened his hat. “We mountain dwarves are the only people who can do this sort of thing.”
“Good night, then,” muttered Sorrel, turning back to her mushrooms. “By the time one of them hatches out of his stone shell, I’ll probably be toothless.”
“A day!” called Gravelbeard, waving his hammer excitedly in their direction. “I’ll need a day, perhaps less. You wait and see.”
Twigleg sighed and made himself comfortable on Ben’s lap. “Terribly conceited, these mountain dwarves,” he whispered to the boy. “They always have to know best. But he just might do it. They really do have a lot of experience with stone.”
“A day?” Firedrake yawned and looked down at the little dwarf, still doubtful. “You certainly talk big, don’t you? Well, wake us if you really do find any sign of life, all right?”
“Yes, yes,” replied Gravelbeard. He kneeled down, passed a hand experimentally over the stone scales, and began tapping very carefully, wielding his hammer with tiny strokes that made scarcely any more noise than the ticking of a clock.
For a while Ben watched the dwarf at work, although his eyelids kept closing. But at some point, when the dragons and the brownies had been asleep for a long time and faint snoring was coming from Lola’s plane, he, too, fell asleep, and so did Twigleg.
All was still in the great cavern. Only Gravelbeard went on tapping away tirelessly with his hammer. Every now and then, he cast a glance at the remains of Nettlebrand’s armor, lying in the slowly solidifying pool of gold. Then he chuckled gleefully and returned to his work.
54. A Dragon Wakes
The first dragon woke when they were all still asleep.
Gravelbeard had opened up a long crack, thin as a thread, in the dragon’s stony shell. When he raised his hammer again to widen it by just a fraction, the stone quivered beneath his feet, very faintly, barely perceptibly. Gravelbeard put his ear to the crack and listened. A rustling noise came from it, the sound of scales scraping against rough stone. More fine lines cracked open beneath the dwarf’s feet. He leaped clear and landed on the sleeping boy’s soft stomach.
“Ouch!” Ben sat up in alarm. “What’s up?”
Twigleg rubbed his eyes, dazed.
“Done it!” cried Gravelbeard, dancing around on Ben’s stomach in his stout boots.
Twigleg turned to the stone dragons.
“Listen, young master!” he whispered.
But Ben had already heard it for himself. Sounds of snorting and groaning were coming from the stone.
“Firedrake!” Ben grabbed Twigleg and Gravelbeard and leaped back. “Firedrake, wake up! He’s moving!”
The others all woke with a start.
“What’s up?” cried Lola, jumping out of her plane.
“He’s hatching out!” cried Ben. With two bounds, the rat was on his shoulder.
The gray stone into which Gravelbeard had driven his hammer cracked, crumbled, crunched open—and burst into a thousand pieces.
They all retreated in alarm.
Dusty and coughing, limbs stiff, a dragon crept out of the ruins. His eyes were still half-closed. He struggled out with faltering steps, shaking a few stones off his scales, and opened his eyes. Confused, he looked around him, like someone waking from a dream.
