The Runaway Dragon (18 page)

“And the key? Who gave you the key?”

Meg sighed. “While I was in the enchanted forest, there was this hawk—”

Malison pursed her lips. “I can see you’re going to lie about it. Very well. We’ll skip ahead to the part where I terrorize you a bit before I send you to your doom.” She examined her scarlet-dagger fingernails. “I
could
suspend you from the highest tower, where you would slowly starve to death, burned and pummeled by the sun and the rain respectively.”

“You could,” Meg said with more bravado than she felt.

“Or I could have my black horses drag you up and down the mountain in a barrel filled with nails. That’s always a hit.”

“Nails pointing in or out?” Meg said pertly.

“Puh-lease,” Malison said, and continued. “I could
assign a minion to tickle you until you choke on your own laughter.” She paused. “But that’s just a little too cute.”

Meg took a step toward Malison, not feeling diplomatic in the least. “Blah, blah, blah. What are you really going to do? Turn me into a statue, like Alya?”

Malison leaned forward in her throne and said tauntingly, “No. She wasn’t a princess.
You
are a princess.”

“True.” Meg waited for the sorceress to get to the point.

Malison was too pleased with herself to notice Meg’s sarcasm.
“I,”
the sorceress said with a dramatic flourish of her hands, “am going to feed you to my dragon.”

Meg’s eyes grew wide. Laddy! She forced her mouth to stay still. “You have a dragon?”

“I do,” Malison said proudly.

“Not—not a dragon,” Meg said, and her voice trembled. She wasn’t certain whether to laugh or cry. She couldn’t know for sure, but she could hope.

“Oh, indeed,” Malison said. “My gorgeous, slithery, hungry pet. Bain!”

“Yes, mistress?” Those seemed to be the only two words he knew, Meg thought irritably.

“Take this girl and throw her to the dragon.”

Bain’s forehead wrinkled as if he were trying to remember something, but all he said was, “Yes, mistress.”

“Just a minute!” Meg said. “I have a question for you, Your Evilness.”

“A last request? Go ahead.”

“What have you done with Lex?”

“Why, he’s my new best friend,” Malison said. “He’s going to help me with my conquests.”

“He wouldn’t do that!”

The black-haired girl didn’t bother to argue. She simply watched, smiling, as Meg was dragged away to die in time-honored princess fashion.

For Cam and the others, freedom mostly meant hiding from Loris, who spent the morning searching the flowerbeds for them, but ranged farther afield after lunch. At last evening came and the giant child went in for her supper and bedtime. The five travelers crossed another stretch of grass in the twilight and camped out.

The next morning, after an uneasy night between a mammoth elm tree and a stone wall, they woke up to find that Spinach’s hair was three times longer than she was. Braiding it helped, but their packs were variously lying where the giant had taken them prisoner or tucked away in Loris’s bedroom drawers. Spinach had to wrap her braid around her waist so many times she practically waddled when she walked.

There was no breakfast. Bruised from the previous few days’ adventures and hungrier than they had ever
been in their lives, the five companions sat in a little circle arguing about what to do next.

“We need food,” Cam said immediately. Dilly could hear Crobbs’s stomach growling to her left and Nort’s stomach growling to her right. Her own stomach, hearing the noise, soon joined the chorus.

“We need to find out how the giant gets down,” Nort put in. “So we can go home.”

“Maybe it’s magic,” Dilly said.

“Or there’s a door, or an invisible stairway, or something,” Nort told her. Dilly resisted the urge to point out that if the stairway was truly invisible, Nort wouldn’t be able to see it. Everyone was disheartened enough as it was.

“We should catch a bird,” Crobbs insisted.

Finally they came to an agreement: Cam and Dilly and Spinach would journey behind the house to find out if the giants had a vegetable garden where they could get something to eat, while Nort and Crobbs would climb up the elm tree and look out over the giants’ land to see if there was any sign of a way down. After that, Nort promised, he would help Crobbs try to catch a bird.

“Don’t get lost,” Nort told the other three by way of farewell.

Dilly had no intention of getting lost. “We won’t,” she said with asperity. “We’ll stick close to the house and come back the same way.”

To the relief of the three explorers, Loris didn’t resume her search for them today. Dilly wasn’t sure whether the giant child had lost interest or Loris’s mother had told her not to look anymore. Either way, it was one less thing to worry about. But Spinach brought up a new worry. “If there isn’t a vegetable garden, what will we do?” she asked. “Will we have to eat bugs? Won’t they taste nasty?”

“We’ll have to go back inside and find food in that kitchen,” Cam said.

This was so unthinkable that they were quiet for a while afterward. They finished crossing the grass and traveled along in single file next to the house. They didn’t meet any more worms, although they saw several pill bugs and a number of determined-looking ants. They nearly bumped into a stinkbug, too. “Watch out for the skunk,” Cam informed the others. Dilly laughed, but Spinach stared at them, bewildered. She hadn’t had much practice with jokes, either, Dilly realized as Cam explained about skunks.

It was nearly noon when they came to the back corner of the giants’ house and peeked around it. At first they couldn’t see anything but more towering trees and bushes, but then Cam pointed. “There!” he said. “Those are cornstalks!”

“Food,” Dilly said happily.

“I don’t like corn,” Spinach said.

“There will be other things,” Cam said, grinning.
“Tomatoes, squash, beans—lots of good growing things.”

“I don’t like vegetables,” Spinach said. “I like bread and butter.”

“Perhaps we’ll find a bread-and-butter tree,” Cam said. Spinach looked at him doubtfully for a moment before she realized he was joking and smiled. There was hope for her yet, Dilly thought with a smile of her own.

“If you’re hungry enough, I suspect you’ll be able to swallow a vegetable or two,” Dilly told the girl.

“I suppose,” Spinach replied, though she didn’t sound convinced that beans and squash were any better to eat than rocks and dirt.

Meg waited till she was clear of the great hall before she asked Bain, “What does this dragon look like, the one that’s going to eat me? Is it one of those extra-toothy green dragons from the Eastern Seas? Or a black ripper from the Islands of Konsi?”

“I’m not supposed to talk to you,” Bain said, and that was all he would say. He and three other guards marched Meg silently through the halls of the fortress to an outer courtyard with a small iron gate on the opposite side.

Those few minutes were far too long for Meg.

What if she was wrong?

What if she was right?

The beasts weren’t housed in the main fortress but in a special building behind it. Meg could smell the building before they reached it, and then she could hear it:
the shrieks and growls and barks of Malison’s inhuman prisoners.

Bain hurried Meg through the menagerie, but she still managed to glimpse a number of its inhabitants. There were creatures she’d heard of, like griffins and grendels and chapalus and firebirds, and others she hadn’t, like the giant blue snake that was turning into a tree, or the furry thing that flew around its cage on spinning rainbow wings howling like death. “Are the cages reinforced with magic?” she asked nervously after a stomach-face threw itself against the bars, trying to attack them as they passed.

Of course Bain wouldn’t answer.

There was no sign of a dragon in the main menagerie. Meg and her guards traveled beyond it through several twisting corridors that led to a rough stone flight of stairs. Down they went, and then down again, this time along a tunnel. Besides the fact that they were descending, the dampness of the air told Meg that they were underground. But gradually the tunnel rose, and after another long walk, Meg could see a door ahead of them. Bain stopped, reaching for his keys. The lock seemed rusty, as if the door were seldom used. “In there,” Bain said, gesturing.

Meg didn’t have time to think. She stepped through the door and heard it slam shut behind her. In front of her was a walkway followed by open space. Meg forced
herself to move forward, and she peered out cautiously into a large underground chamber.

Her first thought was that the room was full of gold and rubies. Then suddenly the gold and rubies moved, and Meg could see a dragon.
Her
dragon. She was so overjoyed to find him at last that she completely forgot she should be relieved, since seeing him also meant she wasn’t on the verge of being eaten. “Laddy!” Meg cried.

HE DRAGON LIFTED HIS HEAD. LADDY WAS
much bigger than he had been the last time she’d seen him, and he was so beautiful he really should be posing for a knight’s shield, with his deep red back like a tumble of roses and his sides shimmering with scales like the coins piled up around the cave. Laddy lay upon a heap of gold and jewels, completely surrounded by casks of treasure goblets, filigreed silver ceremonial armor, ornamental headdresses covered with pearls, and spills of necklaces glittering like letters from a rich and forgotten alphabet. Everything shone in the torchlight, and someone other than Meg might have been tempted to dive off the ledge just to be able to touch the treasure as he died breaking his neck on the golden bust of an ancient king.

But all Meg could think about was Laddy. He wasn’t
answering, and at first she wondered if he had lost the ability to speak in her mind.
Laddy?
she said again.

Oh, it’s you
, came the voice in her head. Meg’s dragon could still speak, but he wasn’t very happy to see her.

I’ve been looking for you
, Meg said. There didn’t seem to be a way down.
Can you help me?

What do you want?
Laddy asked.

Get me down so we can talk.

We can talk like this.

“Can you understand me when I talk out loud?” Meg asked. It was something she’d been wanting to know.

Laddy looked at her for a moment without answering. Finally he said,
It’s harder.

I see.
Meg sat on the edge of the overhang, which she suspected had been designed just so people could be pushed off it. She supposed she was lucky Bain hadn’t come in and given her a push, since it was quite a long way down.
Don’t you want to hear how I found you?

Go ahead.

Meg sighed.
Are you mad at me?

He didn’t answer.

Laddy?

Yes.

I came to say I’m sorry. And to find out if you were all right.

You didn’t visit me anymore
, he grumbled.

I know.

You promised.

I did promise
, she told him.

I had to sleep in the barn.

That’s not good.

With the cows.

Meg suppressed an inner grin, he sounded so woeful about the cows.
Oh dear.

And you promised me a name
, the young dragon reminded her.

I’ve been working on that, actually.

Laddy couldn’t help asking,
Really? Like what?

Well, Lex and Dilly were helping me, but we couldn’t think of anything good enough. Not yet, anyway.
Meg told him some of the names they’d thought of, and why they wouldn’t do. Laddy laughed, especially when she told him about Gariloon.

How did you end up here?
Meg asked.

Laddy sat up on his haunches.
I wanted to find my mother’s treasure. I found her cave on the mountain, but the gold was gone.

I guess it
should
have been your gold
, Meg said, realizing this for the first time. So Laddy hadn’t just been running away—he had been looking for his dragonly heritage.

And when I thought hard, when I pictured the gold, I could sort of smell it, off to the south.

Dragon magic
, Meg said, impressed and bemused. She’d been busy thinking about her quest for days, but Laddy had had his own quest all along.

So I followed the smell, and I met some people along the way—

Also some sausages
, Meg said reprovingly.

Laddy snickered.
Sausages, too. And I came to a village. But it was empty and I could smell the gold up in the fortress, so I went there and talked to a sorceress.

Malison
, Meg said with ill-concealed distaste. It galled her to think that Laddy had communicated with that despicable girl.

She’s nice. She gave me my mother’s gold and jewels and her own treasures, too, and said I could guard them for her. And she promised—
Laddy stopped.

What?

Never mind.