The Runaway Dragon (10 page)

The sun was low in the sky. Not that they could see it, but the shadows were darker and the green leaves of the trees were dimmer now. Furthermore, everybody seemed to be walking more slowly. “This will do,” Meg said.

They were too tired to bother with a campfire. Meg and her friends ate dried meat and increasingly odd-tasting cheese from their packs again. Lex had run out of hot chocolate, which Meg at one time would have said was impossible. There wasn’t much food left, either. But Meg had worse things on her mind. She was getting more worried about the missing guardsmen—and feeling guilty on top of it for having been glad they were gone.

Meg wasn’t the only one who was worried, either. “They’re just lost, aren’t they?” Dilly asked her.

“Who’s lost?” Spinach asked. “Did you have more friends with you before you came to my tower? How many were there? Did you find them, like me, or bring them from home?” When she stopped to catch her breath, the others explained what had happened to their former companions. After that, they took turns asking Spinach questions about her life in the tower. Spinach seemed a little surprised not to be the one asking questions, but she told them as much as she could.

At last it was night and everybody fell asleep, worn out from walking for hours. Everybody except Meg. Her mind wandered here and there, until finally Meg concluded that she couldn’t sleep at all. She got up to walk restlessly around their makeshift campground in the starlight. They hadn’t posted a sentry, she realized suddenly. Lieutenant Staunton would not have approved.

Meg brightened as she thought of a way to banish Lieutenant Staunton from her mind, along with all of
her other worrisome thoughts. She would practice her magic, just a small spell. Meg glanced at her sleeping companions. For some reason, they seemed to think she shouldn’t ever do magic. Which was silly, because how was she going to get any better at it if she didn’t practice?

Even so, Meg moved well away from her friends before she got started. At first she couldn’t think of a spell she could do with the materials at hand, let alone one that might be easy to do in the dark. But the darkness reminded her of one of the first spells Master Torskelly had tried to teach her. Meg found a rock and began muttering the spell, which was supposed to make the rock glow.

She had only said a word or two when Meg heard a voice from behind her. “What are you doing?” Oh no, she thought. It
would
be Lex.

“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

The boy had a real nose for magic, unfortunately. “Was that a spell?” he demanded.

Meg didn’t answer, which was pretty much an answer. Finally she said, “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Now, Meg,” Lex said gently, “this place is full of strange magic. Who knows what the forest might do if it meets up with your magic?”

Meg was about to snap at him, but something poked Meg in the back and she yelped instead.

“Are you all right?” Lex asked, alarmed.

Meg had already recognized the source of the motion. “It’s only my scarf,” she said.

The scarf caught Meg by the hair and tugged.“What?” Meg asked.

“I think it wants you to go somewhere,” Lex observed.

Not for the first time, Meg wished her scarf could talk. She started to walk after it, trying to see where it was going. She’d rather do that than quarrel with Lex about how bad she was at spellmaking.

“I’ll come with you,” Lex said.

“All right.” Meg didn’t know whether to be glad or envious that Lex didn’t need any glowing rocks to make a light. He simply held up one hand, his palm shining. Meg concentrated on making her way between the shadowy trees and bushes, following the midnight-blue flitter of her scarf.

They had been walking for at least twenty minutes when the scarf stopped and hovered, pointing with one end, which seemed to have been designed for just that purpose. Meg and Lex saw that the scarf had led them to a cottage. More of a hut, really, though it was hard to see very far in the faint light from Lex’s gleaming hand.

As they drew closer, they saw that the hut was leaning at an odd angle. It appeared to be made out of lizard skins, or even dragon skins, Meg thought, her heart lurching. But the skins, stretched over some kind of
knobbly framework implying tree branches, were weathered as if they were ancient. They were black and gray and brown, too. Only one piece gleamed green in the light Lex cast on it.

“Should we go in?” Lex whispered.

Meg spared him a look. “You’re not scared, are you?” Some bodyguard he was turning out to be, she thought wryly.

“Of course not!”

They approached the hut’s ill-cut door together. Meg tried the handle, which stuck a bit. She pushed the door open slowly, and she and Lex went inside.

Though it wasn’t nearly as nice as Gorba’s, the hut was a witch’s house. Meg could tell because of the snarling black cat, the noxious herbs hanging on the walls, and the shelf filled with malevolent-looking books. Also because of the dead witch on the bed.

T FIRST MEG AND LEX DIDN’T KNOW SHE WAS
dead. They stumbled and shoved their way back outside, whisper-shouting, “Did you see that?” and “Hurry up!” But if the witch was merely sleeping, their entrance hadn’t wakened her. The only sound was the mew of the cat. He had changed his mind almost immediately in a catlike way, deciding to be friendly to the newcomers—no doubt because they were alive, a useful sort of state to be in.

After a long pause during which absolutely nothing happened, Meg and Lex made themselves go back into the hut and get a better look at the witch. She lay atop the rickety bed like a badly wrinkled statue. She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t breathing. Unless she was under some astonishing new kind of spell, she was dead. She also seemed sort of dried up, which might have explained why the smell wasn’t worse.

Nervously, Meg and Lex explored the hut. They weren’t at all sure what they were looking for. Lex was the one to find it, though. “Come see,” he told Meg softly, holding his glowing palm next to one of the rough shelves on the wall of the hut. There among the shrew skulls and dried mushrooms, between a jar marked
Orifices
and a metal box filled with wood shavings and who knows what else, was a picture in a pink frame. Inside the frame was a painting of Spinach—a few years younger, perhaps, but definitely Spinach. She was half curtsying in a fluffy blue dress, her braid done up in a towering triple crown of braids that was evidently meant to be fancy.

“Oh,” Meg said. They both looked back over at the witch. “Maybe …”

“She’s very old,” Lex said.

“I always thought of witches as dying in horrendous battles or iron ovens or magical backlashes,” Meg explained.

Lex grinned. “You would know something about magical backlashes.”

“That’s not funny.” Meg tucked the portrait into her pocket. “Let’s go.”

The cat left through one of the back windows before they could bring him out the front door.

Just outside the edge of the enchanted forest, something was happening. From high overhead, a patch of sky
rolled downward, reforming itself improbably into the shape of a staircase. Then anyone who was listening could have heard the sound of giant footsteps descending ponderously. THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD.

Closer and closer the footsteps came, until finally two colossal feet reached the ground and stepped off the sky-stairs, crushing a couple of saplings that happened to be growing in what had suddenly become a treacherous spot. Three crows flew off squawking dramatically, as if on cue. But nobody was there to look up and up and farther up to see the giant’s tremendous body, and to see higher still his gruff red beard followed by grouchy but not-at-all-stupid eyes.

Not yet.

Nort hung back to help Crobbs again as the men ahead of them called that they had found a stream and rushed down to the water to drink. Crobbs was only a few years older than Nort, but he was more than a head taller. If he hadn’t been so dull and pleasant, with a smile always spread across his round face, Nort might have been jealous, since Nort had always wished he were a head taller and two years older than himself. And now Crobbs was acting a little funny—he had been ever since the guardsmen had recovered from the stag’s enchantment. The big blond boy was prone to wandering off in the wrong direction. Nort wasn’t sure if Crobbs had bumped his head or if the spell of the stag was lingering in the older
boy’s mind, but he had taken it upon himself to keep an eye on Crobbs so they wouldn’t lose him in the forest.

If Nort hadn’t been busy herding Crobbs for the fourth time that morning, he would have taken a drink from the stream, too. As it was, he and Crobbs were walking up behind the rest of the men when they saw something strange and dreadful happen. The other guardsmen and the cook, who had been wiping their wet mouths and laughing and talking, grew quiet, looking at each other with frightened eyes. Then one by one the nine men shrank, yelling until their yells were cut off as their bodies distorted into smaller shapes and fur sprouted across their hands and faces. Their clothes dropped to the ground in heaps. Nort and Crobbs watched, not thinking to move or speak until it was over and nine squirrels lay atop eight piles of guardsmen’s uniforms and the drab clothing of the cook.

Frist was a reddish brown, and so was Monley. Lieutenant Staunton made a particularly striking squirrel, with a glorious gray pelt and tail. At first the squirrels simply lay there, and Nort wondered if his bespelled companions were even alive. But the little animals soon stirred, beginning to sit up, peer about, and scurry along the forest floor. One by one, the squirrels started to venture up the nearest tree trunks.

“Nort,” Crobbs whispered, “do you suppose any of the other squirrels in this forest used to be guardsmen?”

Nort finally realized what he should have been doing
for the last minute or two. “I don’t know. But we’ve got to catch them. How can we ever get them turned back if we don’t?”

“They’ll get mixed in with the other squirrels, else-wise,” Crobbs said. “Can’t say it’ll be easy, though.

“ No, Nort thought. It wouldn’t.

In a distant clearing, Dilly was the first to wake up. It took her a while to figure out what was wrong, and then she did a little scouting before she came back and poked Cam hard. “Cam, wake up!”

Cam rolled over in his blanket, prying his eyes open.“Dilly?”

“Meg’s gone!”

Cam sat up. “She’s not, um, attending to nature?”

Dilly shook her head, plopping down on her own blanket. “I checked. I couldn’t find Lex, either. And their blankets are cold.”

“So it’s just us two left.” Cam glanced over at Spinach. “Us three.”

There was only one thing to do. “Let’s pack up. We have to go look for them,” Dilly said, practical as ever.

Cam grimaced. “I want to get out of this place. These trees”—he gestured to the great trunks and branches all around them—“aren’t friendly. Not like my vegetable garden, is what I mean.”

“I don’t think enchanted forests like having people in them,” Dilly said.

“Lex’s carpet is still here,” Cam pointed out, changing the subject. They both stared at the carpet, wondering if it would be willing to carry them.

As if in response to their stares, the carpet lifted itself up on one end. It stretched like a person just getting out of bed. Then it flopped into the air, where it swam lazily through the morning light, up and over the trees, and disappeared.

“It
was
here,” Dilly said. And she leaned over to wake Spinach.

It is said that when you try to reach the edge of an enchanted forest, the forest amuses itself by leading you toward the center instead. Cam hoped this wasn’t true. He and Dilly and Spinach were attempting to go south by traveling in a direction perpendicular to the path of the newly rising sun. They walked for a very long time before they found anything at all, and what they found was a stream. Since their water bags were nearly empty, this was a hopeful discovery, but no one moved to drink from the stream at first.

“Is this the same one?” Cam asked.

“It might be,” Dilly said cautiously.

Spinach’s success with the last stream had emboldened her. “I’m going to try,” she announced, and she crouched down, reaching out to scoop up the water in her hands.

But behind them, someone hollered,
“Stop!”
Startled,
Spinach lost her balance and nearly fell into the stream. Instead Cam grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet.

“Dilly?” Nort asked.

“Oh. It’s you,” Dilly said in a too-calm voice.

“Where’s Meg?” Nort asked.

“She and Lex disappeared last night,” Cam explained. “We were hoping we could find them.”

Nort’s companion, a big-boned young guardsman whose name Dilly didn’t know, swung a leather bag off his shoulder. “Where should I put this?”

“Careful, Crobbs,” Nort said wearily as the boy put the bag on the ground.

Dilly stepped closer to get a better look at Nort. “What happened to your face?”

Nort lifted one hand to his face and winced. “Squirrel bit me.”

Now Dilly could see that Nort and Crobbs were scratched and bitten all over their arms and faces. “You got in a fight with a squirrel? Or a bunch of squirrels?”