The Runaway Dragon (23 page)

Meg was halfway through her second egg when it struck her. “Oh!” she cried. “Cam and Dilly and Nort and Spinach!”

“How many days do we have left? I’ve lost track,” Lex confessed.

“So have I,” Meg said, feeling guilty.

“You were a little busy trying to break out of the dungeon and not be eaten by a dragon,” Lex reminded her.

“While you read books—”

“And drank hot chocolate. I know. I’m sorry, Meg. She clouded my mind a bit, but I shouldn’t have believed her.”

“You were right about her being beautiful,” Meg said, testing the waters.

Lex blushed. “She is.”

“She has a wonderful workroom, doesn’t she?” Meg continued.

Lex leaned his chin on his hand and sighed wistfully. “She does.”

“What’s going to happen to the books?” Meg asked him.

Lex looked extra vague. “I, ah, thought I would send them back to my house in Crown.”

“To keep them from falling into the wrong hands, of course,” Meg said gravely.

“Some of them are very dangerous.”

“Weren’t those artifacts on her desk dangerous, too?”

“Oh yes,” he said, and Meg had to smile. Then she wiped her mouth with a black napkin and got to the most important part.

“What about Malison and her fortress?”

“I can take the fortress down,” Lex told her. “It’s a very good spell, but it’s still just a spell.”

“And?”

Lex chewed for a while without answering.

“You’re not thinking of giving her voice back, are you?” Meg persisted.

“Of course not.”

“Well, in that case,” Meg told him, “let her go. If she can’t talk to spell-cast, she can’t hurt anyone else.”

Lex thought this over. “We shouldn’t leave her in the village. They might get ideas about revenge.”

“We’ll give her a pack full of food and a few coins and send her on her way.”

Lex agreed, to Meg’s great relief. Then they tackled the problem of Lorgley Comprost. They decided it had
been three days since they left the giant with his captives. “So we’re meeting him day after tomorrow,” Meg said. “Do you think we can find the thief by then?” She had recently realized that it wasn’t enough for someone to be a powerful wizard: a magic-maker had to be able to figure out which spell to use in order to actually get something done.

“We have all those books,” Lex said. “No, wait a minute! Malison has a scrying bowl. A really nice one.”

“Why don’t
you
have a scrying bowl?” Meg asked.

“I do, back at home,” he informed her. “I just hardly ever use it.”

“Because of your sparks?”

“Right. But they can’t find a stranger without some idea of where to look. Scrying will be better.”

“And then we can use the magic carpet to hunt him down and get the frobble back.”

Lex looked dubious. “First let’s find out where he is.”

They left their hot chocolate cups behind, hurrying up the stairs to Malison’s workroom to find the scrying bowl. It took Lex a little while to make the bowl cooperate. Meg read one of the now-quiet magic books while she waited.

“Ready,” the wizard said at last. “Sit here so you can see, too.”

Meg dragged a chair to the worktable and leaned over to watch Lex cast his thief-finding spell. After a moment, the water inside the silver bowl stirred and
shifted, painting a picture. Then it stopped moving to hold the image clearly. “No!” Meg exclaimed in her astonishment.

The face in the scrying bowl was Bain’s.

That night in the Sky Kingdom, the little group under the elm tree was unusually quiet. They had eaten dinner, but vegetables weren’t particularly filling, so they were all hungry. Nort was as battered and bruised as if he had been in a fistfight. And then there was poor Crobbs. He had searched the elm tree for an hour before he had come down alone, thinking Nort had been eaten by a giant squirrel. After that, Crobbs had gotten lost trying to find the others to tell them the terrible news. The big blond boy was still in shock from the day’s trauma. He seemed more upset than Nort over what had happened, sitting in a daze beside Cam.

Dilly rebraided Spinach’s endlessly growing hair in the twilight while the others leaned against the tree trunk in silence. Finally Nort asked, “Crobbs, what did you see?”

“What?” Crobbs said, his voice dull.

“Today, up in the tree. When I looked, I saw the giants’ house and part of the vegetable garden, then the well and a back wall. And a neighbor’s house beyond that. What about you?”

Crobbs tried to think. “I saw leaves and branches.”

“What else?” Nort asked patiently.

“I saw a wall, and a road, other houses. Rose bushes. And a well.”

“The neighbors’ well?” Nort asked.

Crobbs shook his head. “No. It’s across the grass from this tree. Over in the corner in front of the house.”

“Two wells?” Dilly said. “That’s strange.”

“Unless one of them is actually a doorway,” Cam said.

“A
well?”
Nort asked dubiously.

“Could be. Maybe it doesn’t look so much like a well up close.”

“We could check,” Dilly suggested.

“In the morning,” said Nort. He clapped Crobbs on the back. “Good job!”

Crobbs smiled wanly.

There was no more talk of catching a bird.

The next morning, the five small people hiding out in Lorgley Comprost’s yard split up again after a breakfast of slightly squishy vegetables. They had planned to go look at the well together, but Spinach’s hair changed things. It had grown longer still and had gotten tangled up with grass and tree roots. The stuff wound around and around like a mad snake the color of straw. Dilly suspected that if they pulled it out in a straight line, the hair would reach clear to the front door of the giants’ house. “Spinach,” she said gently, “we really should cut it off.”

Spinach clenched up her face and started to sob. “It’s my hair!” she cried. “It’s the only thing I have
left!
And you’re just like that giant girl! She wanted to take it away from me, and now you want to take it away, too!”

Dilly stepped back, startled. It struck her that the things that had happened the last few days would be a bit much for anyone. They must have been especially trying for a girl who had been stuck in a tower for years—a girl whose greatest challenge in a very long time had been a whole lot of boredom. Her hair had been her only connection to the outside world, Dilly realized. No wonder Spinach was falling apart.

Nort and Crobbs seemed confused by Spinach’s outburst, but Cam exchanged a meaningful look with Dilly over Spinach’s head. Then he squatted next to Spinach, putting one hand on her shoulder. “You can keep your hair, Spinach. We’ll just have to figure out a way to carry it.”

“Right,” Dilly said. “I’m sorry I said that. I’ll help you get it sorted out so we can carry it more easily.”

Spinach sniffled. “No cutting?”

“Not even a little,” Dilly said reassuringly.

So it was decided: the three boys went off to examine the well while Dilly helped Spinach with her hair.

All of which was complicated by the fact that it was a beautiful day, and the giants had emerged from their house to weed the flowerbeds and hang the laundry out to dry. Dilly and Spinach spent the morning hiding in a
hollow spot at the foot of the elm, pulling the hair in after them as best they could. It wasn’t till lunchtime that they were able to come out and sit behind the elm’s trunk to untangle Spinach’s hair.

Nort and Cam and Crobbs were halfway across the grass to the well-that-might-not-be-a-well when the giants came out. They hit the ground and lay hidden, sure they were about to be discovered. Instead, they simply had a long, boring wait before they were able to scurry beneath the bushes and make their way from one bush to another, till finally they reached the well. It was late afternoon when they came back to the elm, just as Dilly finished rebraiding Spinach’s hair.

“Well?” Dilly said.

Cam and Nort started to laugh, but Crobbs and Spinach looked confused.
“Well,”
Cam repeated. “That’s where we went.”

Dilly laughed a little, even though she didn’t think it was that funny. “What did you find?”

“It’s the door,” Nort said soberly.

“That’s wonderful!” Dilly exclaimed. “But if you found the door, why aren’t you happy?”

“There’s no ladder. No stairs,” Nort explained.

“No way down?” Spinach asked. “Then how does the giant do it? Can he fly? Is he magic?”

Nort and Cam shrugged while Crobbs stared at the ground.

“Lex and Meg might be back soon,” Cam told the others, trying to raise their spirits.

“Maybe we should have stayed in that dollhouse,” Nort said.

Spinach turned pale.

“No,” Dilly said firmly. “It’s better to be free.”

Even so, they passed a very hungry and dispirited night beneath the elm tree.

Only to wake up and find that Spinach’s hair had taken over the world.

AIN KNOCKED ON THE DOOR OF THE WORK
room lightly before he stepped in to face Lex and Meg, looking sheepish. “I brought your sword back,” he told Meg, holding it out.

He’d been the one who had given it to her in the first place. Then he had taken it away as Malison’s henchman, and now he was giving the silver-hilted sword back again. It was really very odd, Meg thought as she stood to belt the sword around her waist. “Thank you,” she said without smiling. She’d been avoiding Bain ever since Lex took Malison’s spell off the night before.

“I’m the one who has to say thank you,” Bain said. “Thank you for saving me. For saving all of us.”

Meg snorted softly. Bain was back to his usual charming self, but he’d caused ten kinds of trouble while he was enchanted.

“There’s something else,” Lex said.

Bain threw up his hands. “I wish I didn’t remember everything I did while I was under that spell, but I do.” He addressed Lex humbly. “I’m sorry for a lot of things, but first, I want to apologize for hitting you on the head last night.”

“Right when I was corralling Malison,” Lex said.

“Right then. I was just—”

“Doing your job,” Meg said.

“And I’m sorry about the sword fight,” Bain told her. “Good thing—well, it’s just a good thing.” He felt the side of his head. “I’ve still got the bump to show for that.”

Meg finally smiled. “Thanks to Stefka.”

“I’ve got one, too,” Lex said stiffly.

“Sorry again,” Bain told the wizard. “Anyway, everything’s going well now.” He looked more closely at their faces. “Isn’t it? What’s wrong?”

“It’s about something you stole,” Meg said.

“Not anymore. I’m a reformed bandit, remember?”

“Something you stole from a
giant?”
Lex said meaningfully.

Bain was speechless. When he had recovered his voice, he sputtered, “It’s not—well, I
—how do you know about that?”

Lex tapped the scrying bowl. “I have my sources.”

“And because you stole from that giant,” Meg went
on, trying to speak calmly, “Dilly and Cam and Nort and one of my father’s guardsmen are now the giant’s prisoners. His
hostages.”

Bain grabbed a chair and sat down.
“Really?”

“Really.”

“I suppose he wants it back,” Bain said. “Though I don’t have it anymore.”

“Where is it?” Meg asked.

“Why don’t you talk to your dragon friend?” Bain said ruefully. “Malison took everything we had and set him to guarding it.”

“That’s not all,” Lex told Bain. “The giant doesn’t just want his treasure back. He wants you, too.”

Bain moved forward to the edge of his chair as if he were thinking of making a run for it, but then he sank back down. “I suppose you want me to pay for my crimes.”

“We want you to help,” Meg said.

Bain gave her a bittersweet grin. “For you? I’ll help.”

When Dilly woke up, there was hair everywhere. She coughed and sat up. Her face was full of hair. Around her, the others were struggling to pull free of Spinach’s hair, which had come loose from its braid during the night and was piled so high that they had to swim their way through it, frantically searching for a way out.

At last they emerged and sat to one side of the hair, panting. “This is absurd,” Nort said.

Spinach started to cry again. Clutching two handfuls of hair to her face to wipe her eyes, she wailed, “You can’t make me cut it!”

“Why does it keep growing like that?” Cam said, baffled.

Dilly looked at him for a long moment and then jumped up. “Spinach!” she said excitedly. “Has your hair ever grown this long before?”

Still crying, Spinach shook her head. “No. Never. It was just the right length for my tower.”

“Aha!” Dilly said triumphantly. The others stared at her in confusion, so she sat back down to explain. “Don’t you see?” She grabbed up two handfuls of hair herself. “This hair is our way down!”

“What?” Crobbs said. “Hair?”

Spinach’s eyes grew wide and she let out an even louder wail, so loud Cam thought maybe the giants could hear it inside their house. “You’re just saying that so you can cut it off!” she sobbed.

“No, listen,” Dilly said. “Cam got it right.
Why
is the hair growing so long? So very, very long?”