FOR KIDS WHO LIKE DRAGONS, WITCHES AND MAGIC
Experience the
World of FALCON’S DRAGON
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If you’re not quite old enough to read Harry Potter, it’s the perfect time to experience FALCON'S DRAGON - A Magical Fantasy by Luli Gray because she wrote it just for you - that is if you like dragons, witches and magic.
FALCON’S DRAGON is the story of a girl named Falcon who finds a hot, scarlet Egg in New York City's Central Park and carefully brings it home to care for it. And, one day, a baby dragon cracks through the eggshell and changes her life forever.
In Book 1, Falcon’s Egg, Falcon begins her lifelong journey into the world of magic, that mysterious, enchanting place that glimmers just beyond the edge of vision. It is a country known only to believers, whose unique qualities will always set them apart, and Falcon is not at all sure whether this is a gift…or a curse.
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Falcon persuades her neighbor, Ardene, to keep the egg safe in her own apartment. Falcon’s Great-Great-Aunt Emily joins them and brings in an ornithologist (a bird expert) from the museum to wait for the egg to hatch. When it does, the tiny dragon that emerges, that Falcon names “Egg,” becomes both a joy and a difficult problem, as Egg grows bigger and bigger, and hotter and hotter. When Egg learns to fly, Falcon finds herself in real trouble.
What do you do with a secret dragon in New York City? The search for a solution forces Falcon to face her greatest fear.
In Book 2, Falcon and the Charles Street Witch, Falcon embarks upon a quest to find her lost brother and rescue her beloved Egg from people who would lock Egg up or maybe even kill her. In the course of Falcon’s adventures, she learns more about her surprising Great-Great-Aunt Emily and meets a colorful, ancient dragon. Through it all, the magic world both delights and terrifies Falcon, but it also leads her to discover a spark of unexpected courage within her own heart.
FALCON'S DRAGON is a story of mystery and magic, of dragonsbreath and enchanted gardens as Falcon and Egg learn about life, family and the magical world of dragons.
For believers who want to read more about Falcon and her dragon, here are Chapters One and Two from FALCON’S DRAGON for you to preview.
FALCON’S DRAGON
A MAGICAL FANTASY
By
Luli Gray
Copyright © Luli Gray 2011
All Rights Reserved
CHAPTER ONE
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The scarlet Egg lay half hidden in the long grass, and though the day was misty and full of rain, the air around it shimmered with heat. Falcon crouched before the Egg, wondering, and reached out to touch it, then jerked back. It was almost too hot to hold. She looked around the park to see if anyone was watching, but there weren't many people around, just a few couples walking under umbrellas on the distant path. She took off her shoes and socks, put one sock into the other, and slipped the Egg quickly inside. She knew that you must never take an egg from a nest, but she wasn't sure about eggs without nests; grownups had so many rules that you didn't know about until you broke them. No one saw her put the sock into her red plastic rain hat. She began to walk toward the path, then stopped. She was supposed to meet her mother at Belvedere Castle at two, and it was nearly that now by her birthday watch. The second hand on the watch face moved around as she stared at it, and the heat from the Egg warmed her hand through the hat. Missy had made her put back the beautiful blue robin's egg she had found two years before. What would she say about a big red Egg almost too hot to touch?
Falcon chewed thoughtfully on a fingernail. Then she pulled $3.17 in quarters, dimes, and pennies from her jeans pocket, and walked quickly toward the castle praying that Missy would be late, as usual.
In the castle gift shop, Falcon went to the counter and bought two postcards of a cardinal and a woodchuck (“Our Park Friends”), an envelope of “Cobra Eggs,” and a blue rubber alligator.
“Two seventy-five, please,” said the lady behind the counter. Falcon counted out nine quarters and five dimes.
“May I have a shopping bag, please?” she said.
“Oh sure,” said the lady, and put everything into the bottom of a big bag that had the Central Park logo and “Made from Recycled Materials” printed on its side.
Falcon thanked the lady and climbed the stairs to the top of the tower. At the top she had a clear view of anyone approaching the castle. She took everything out of the bag, put the sock in the bottom, and spread the things she had bought over it. Then she put the rain hat over her wet hair, and rolled her jeans down all the way, so the cuffs covered her sockless ankles. Her mother's face, pink with the climb and the rain, appeared at the entrance to the tower.
“Hallo, baby. Sorry I'm late,” she said, emerging onto the roof. She gave Falcon a hug scented with breath mints and what Falcon thought of as “the smell of the week.” Missy liked to blend her own perfumes from essences she bought at Caswell-Massey, and sometimes the combinations were very strange. This week, though, it was mostly orange and vanilla.
“You smell like a Creamsicle,” said Falcon.
Her mother grinned. “Let's go to Rumpelmayer's and eat banana splits till we explode,” she said.
“Can't,” said Falcon, pulling away. “It's my day for tea with Ardene.”
“Oh,” said Missy. “I forgot. Well, can't you do that tomorrow?”
“No, we always have tea on Saturday. She's making Jelly Tots and I bought her cobra eggs and a blue gator.”
Missy's mouth went a bit crooked, and then, without looking at Falcon, she said, “We'd better hurry then. God forbid you should miss out on Jelly Tots.” She turned and started down the castle steps. Falcon followed, carrying the shopping bag, and knowing she had said the wrong thing.
CHAPTER TWO
“You going to stop off at home or go straight up to Ardene's?” asked Missy.
“Straight up,” said Falcon. Missy pushed the buttons for the fourth and fifth floors. They stood staring straight ahead, in an uncomfortable silence, waiting for the doors to close.
Just as Falcon thought they would stand there forever, the doors closed and Missy poked her in the ribs. She turned and saw that her mother's eyes were crossed and her tongue was stuck out so far it touched her nose. Falcon giggled, and crossed her eyes as the elevator stopped at the fourth floor.
Missy stepped out, speaking in a high, silly voice, “Do please bring me back a Jelly Flop, dahling.”
“Tot,” said Falcon. “Tot, tot, tot.”
“Oh, tot tot to you too, old thing.” Missy walked toward 4B with one hand on her hip, waggling her behind. She never stayed mad for long.
Ardene Taylor opened the door of 5A with a big smile. “Well, look what the rain blew in! Where have you been?”
“In the park. I brought you a present and can I ask you something, a favor, a big favor, a secret?” Falcon set the bag down in the foyer and struggled out of her damp windbreaker.
“A present, a favor, a secret,” said Ardene. “That's some tea! Let's get your hair dried off first.” She handed Falcon a big towel. “We'll eat, and then have secrets, hmm?”
Ardene's kitchen was big and airy with black-and-white tiles on the floor. Herbs grew on the windowsill, and there was a clean spicy smell from all the good things Ardene cooked. Falcon's nose twitched like a rabbit's and her mouth began to water.
“Let's see,” said Ardene. “Jelly Tots, empanaditas, and Darjeeling with milk, two sugars, right?”
“Right,” said Falcon, putting the bag on the counter where she could keep an eye on it while they had tea. She helped Ardene set homemade jam cookies on one plate, tiny meat turnovers on another, and milk and sugar onto a big silver tray. The empanaditas, smelling savory, were out of the microwave in a minute, and tea stood ready in the fat blue pot. The two friends settled on the sofa in the living room, whose windows looked out on the red towers of the Museum of Natural History.
Falcon was hungry. She ate in silence, enjoying the taste of the food. The hot sweet tea warmed her from the inside out. Ardene was the best cook she knew. She had over 400 cookbooks, and she had even written one called Beside a Namibian Hearth. Namibia was in West Africa, where Ardene's ancestors had come from more than 300 years ago.
“I do love to see you eat,” she said, passing Falcon the empanaditas. Falcon held her mug in both hands to warm them, and smiled up at Ardene's smooth brown face.
“I'll bet your feet are wet,” said Ardene. She left the room and came back with a pair of socks. “Take off your shoes, baby, and put these on.”
The woolly socks were miles too big. Falcon flexed her toes to make them flop, and felt the warmth creep back into her feet. Ardene poured herself another cup of tea and sat back, curling one leg under the skirt of her green silk dress.
“I brought you some things from the park,” said Falcon, and took the cobra eggs and the blue alligator out of the shopping bag.
“Now isn't he cute!” said Ardene, setting the gator on the coffee table. “Uh-oh. What's this? Cobra eggs! I'd better be careful!” She opened the envelope, and dropped it with a shriek as it buzzed and jumped in her hand.
“Got me again!” she said, fanning herself with a napkin. “Scared me half to death.” Falcon giggled happily.
“Well now, I've had cobras and alligators, what's the rest?”
Falcon poked at the last cookie on the plate and licked the jam off her finger. Then she lifted the bulging sock from the bag, and set it on the table. Feeling the heat on her hands, she slipped the Egg gently out of the sock onto a crumpled linen napkin. It sat there in the linen nest, twice the size of any hen's egg, glowing like the heart of a burning log.
“Well I'll be,” breathed Ardene, and reached out to touch it.
“Wait! It's hot!” said Falcon.
“It is hot!” said Ardene. “What on earth is it? Where did you get it?”
“I found it in the park. It was on the grass. I was afraid it would get broken. Please don't tell.” Falcon knelt on the rug with her hands wrapped around the egg.
“Calm down, sweetheart, it's all right. Don't burn yourself, now,” said Ardene. She pulled Falcon gently back onto the sofa, cupping her face in one hand. “I guess this is the secret, hmm? And I bet the favor is that I don't tell.”
“Well, yes, well sort of but really the favor is, will you keep it here for me so Missy ... so nobody finds it, keep it safe? Please?”
“Look, sweetheart, as far as I'm concerned this is your egg. If that's what this is. I'm not telling anyone, and I'll keep it here for you if you want, but don't you think we ought to look in the encyclopedia and find out what it is?”
They looked under “eggs,” and under “birds” and “reptiles” too, and skimmed through the big illustrated Birds of the World for half an hour without success. Falcon sat cross-legged on the rug with Birds of the World open to a picture of a wild pheasant. It reminded her of the magical bird in The Phoenix and the Carpet. “Maybe this is a phoenix's egg, Ardene!”
“Falcon honey, that's just a story. This thing is real, and it's here now, today.” She went to the window and stared out, leaning on the wide sill. Falcon watched her and thought she could almost hear her brain working. She knew that when Ardene Taylor got to thinking hard, something was bound to happen. Suddenly she shouted, “HA!”
Falcon jumped. “What?” she asked.
“The Museum of Natural History, of course, right there across the street. We'll ask them. Who would know better about peculiar eggs?”
Falcon stared out at the huge stone building across 77th Street. Her great-great-aunt Emily always said you could learn about almost anything at the museum. Aunt Emily was friends with several of the people who worked there. “Ardene,” Falcon said, “my aunt Emily, she knows someone there, a man who writes about birds, a ... an ... orthenologist, I think it is.”
“Ornithologist,” said Ardene. “What's his name?”
“Freddy,” said Falcon. “That's all I know, she calls him Freddy. We'll have to ask her.”
“That means telling her about the Egg,” said Ardene.
Falcon thought about Aunt Emily's face, how terribly old it looked, the skin so thin you could see blue veins through it, and the eyes pale gray and very clear. She remembered what her aunt had said to her soon after her father had left, when she was six, and her brother, Toody, was about to be born. “Falcon, I am very old and you are very young, but I should like us to be friends.” And they were, thought Falcon, even though her great-great-aunt was more than a hundred years old, and Falcon was only eleven. She could say things to Aunt Emily she couldn't say to anyone else: mean, angry things about Toody, or even about Missy. Aunt Emily would sit by the fire that burned even in summer. (“Old bones are full of winter,” she said.) And she listened. Somehow, once Falcon said the mean things, they didn't seem so terrible. She could remember the way Missy had special jokes just for her, and the way her mouth looked when she grinned, instead of the shouting before Peter left, and the silence after. She knew Aunt Emily would keep her secret safe.
“Can you tell her on the phone?” asked Ardene.
Falcon shook her head. “She doesn't hear very well on the phone. You have to shout. She needs to see you to hear.” Falcon pressed her chin against her knees to help her think.
They usually visited Aunt Emily on Sundays, all three of them. Missy didn't like going there. She always got fussy before they went. She yanked at their clothes, and brushed Toody's hair so hard that he screamed and got red in the face. By the time they left, Toody was cranky, and Missy was walking with hard, angry strides. Falcon asked her mother once why they had to go, and she seemed surprised by the question.
“Why, baby, I thought you adored Emily. You're always begging to go; I thought you liked her.”
“I do,” said Falcon, “but you don't.” It was a Saturday morning, and she was sitting on her mother's bed beside the tray of black coffee and toast she'd arranged so carefully. The window blinds were drawn so the room was dim and quiet. Falcon's mother had a migraine, and she lay back on the piled-up pillows with a blue plastic headache mask over her eyes. She always kept two in the freezer. The coldness helped, she said, and so did strong coffee, and darkness. Missy took off the mask. Her face looked sad with yesterday's makeup still on it, the mascara smudged and the lipstick worn off.
“I do like her,” she said. “We used to be good friends. But lately, I don't know.” Missy sighed. “She's the only relative I have, and she was so kind to me when I was married and alone in New York.”
Falcon didn't see how you could be alone if you were married, but she knew better than to ask about that, or to remind her mother of her father when she had a headache. So she said, “I'm your relative and so is Toody.” Her mother put the mask on, and lay back against the pillows.
“Yes you are, baby. Coffee's lovely. Thanks.”
Falcon was almost sure her mother would let her go to Aunt Emily's with Ardene. “Would you go with me tomorrow if Toody and Missy don't come?”
“Sure, honey,” said Ardene. “We'd better bring the Egg.”
Falcon looked at it, glowing in its linen nest, and shook her head. She knew that she would feel better if the Egg stayed here, at Ardene's. “If you move an egg from its nest, the mother bird won't take care of it,” she said.
Ardene looked at the Egg and then at Falcon. “And I suppose you are the mother bird, is that right?”
“Sort of,” said Falcon.
“Well, maybe you are at that. I have an idea.” Ardene left the room and came back with a huge furry hat lined in quilted brown satin. She said it was from Russia, and had belonged to her late husband, William. He had never worn it because he thought it looked silly. Ardene chuckled. “It did, too, made him look like a hairy mushroom.”
Falcon had seen the wedding picture beside Ardene's bed. Ardene wore a white, gauzy dress, and she towered over William, who stood beside her, gazing not at the camera, but at her. He had died the year before Falcon was born, which was hard to imagine. How could the world be without her to know it?
She watched as Ardene took the Egg and carefully placed it inside the fur hat, which almost completely enveloped it.
“There!” she said. “That's safe and private and warm.” She smiled at Falcon, who wrapped her arms as far as they would go around Ardene's green silk self, and hugged her hard.
LIVE THE FALCON’S DRAGON LIFE
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FOR MOMS AND DADS
OF KIDS
WHO LIKE DRAGONS, WITCHES AND MAGIC
FALCON’S DRAGON was written by Luli Gray, an award-winning author of books for pre-teens and young adults. This is a perfect choice for young readers and listeners before they embark on the Harry Potter series.
Here are some comments about Luli Gray’s work from organizations that know:
"...a story that dances along the boundaries between fantasy and reality..."
- New York Public Library's Central Children's Room
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"A wonderfully beguiling story of a Manhattan sixth grader who finds something unusual in Central Park."
- Kirkus Reviews
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"...Gray has succeeded in expertly capturing the wonderment of dragons with the very real confusion of growing up..."
- Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
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"Artfully braiding together real life and fantasy...imaginative and meaningful..."
- Publishers Weekly
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"Gray has created a magical fantasyland of such realism..."
- Booklist
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"A compelling rite-of-passage tale..."
- School Library Journal
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Luli Gray’s work has also won many awards and commendations. Here are some for her first book, Falcon’s Egg, (now Book 1 of FALCON’S DRAGON - the digital eBook from Stay Thirsty Press):
- American Library Association - Notable Children’s Book for 1996
- School Library Journal - Best Book of 1995
- New York Public Library - “One Hundred Titles for Reading and Sharing”
- Publishers Weekly - “Flying Start” (December 18, 1995)
- Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, Recommended (October 1995)
About the Author
Luli Gray was born in Argentina and grew up in a bilingual family of readers, writers, and talkers. She has lived in South America, Europe, and New York City. She currently resides in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where she says, "the possibility of wonder is just around the next corner."
Links:
FALCON’S DRAGON T-SHIRTS, COOL STUFF AND A TREASURE BOX
Visit the FALCON’S DRAGON Store for more.
The Song of FALCON’S DRAGON
An original song composed and performed by Brock Kristorsson and Jan Gunborg is available on CD Baby and amazon.com.
FALCON’S DRAGON on Facebook - Help Falcon Tell the Planet!
Luli Gray’s Profile at Stay Thirsty Publishing