The Runaway Dragon (25 page)

They were about to shake hands with the giant, or touch fingertips or something, when Meg and Lex and Bain heard an odd popping sound, and Malison stood before them, lifting her hands triumphantly and sneering around in a way that was probably meant to be sinister, but instead just seemed smug.

“Not
again!”
Meg cried. She felt her scarf slip behind her back to hide.

The giant looked down at the newcomer, puzzled.

Malison spun about, pointing at each of them in turn. “I will feed you to the swamp monsters of Slirlin,” she told Meg. “And you will carry the stones to build my new fortress one at a time, with your teeth,” she told Bain. “As for you,” she said to Lex,
“you
I will shrink to the size of an ant and keep in a jar on my desk! Right next to the Angled Orb of Non-being, as soon as I get it back, you thief!”

“I THOUGHT
HE
WAS THE THIEF,” Lorgley said,
indicating Bain, but Malison ignored the giant, which was pretty hard to do, considering his size.

“
Now
do you believe me?” Meg demanded, glaring at Lex.

“I just—”

“You just made it temporary, didn’t you?”

Lex hung his head. “I was hoping maybe she’d learned her lesson.”

“Lesson?” Malison said scornfully, determined to have everyone’s attention. She threw a spell in Bain’s direction, and he stood up a little straighter. “Mistress, how may I serve you?” Bain said in somber tones.

“Oh no,” Meg grumbled. “The guard captain’s back.”

Malison began a complicated spell, but she paused to order Bain, “Don’t just stand there! Hit the wizard!”

Lex shook his head. “That only works when I’m not expecting it.” He pointed his left pinky finger at Bain and said a single piping word. In the space of a heartbeat, Bain turned into a brown puppy. He barked and ran to Malison’s side, begging her to play.

“There
is
such a thing as too much black,” Lex told Malison.

She shoved magic at him with a bloodcurdling yell, but nothing happened.

“It’s not like I haven’t changed my protection spells since last time I saw you,” Lex said.

Malison threw spell after spell at Lex as Bain frolicked around her feet and Lorgley and Meg watched in
amazement. The sorceress was making herself hoarse, but nothing worked, not even a little. “NO!” Malison screeched, and she kicked the puppy.

“Lex,” Meg growled, not even noticing that Malison had just decided she would be better off casting spells on Meg.

“Got it,” he said, as angry as Meg had ever seen him. Lex usually hemmed and hawed over picking just the right spell, but now he suddenly towered, his vivid hair standing up like forks of lightning and his normally kind eyes turning hard. Even as the words of Malison’s next spell leaped from her mouth, Lex’s incantation took hold of the sorceress. The ground shook and Meg lost her footing, falling down in a heap.

When she sat up, a very beautiful life-size doll with long black hair lay on the grass in front of her.

Lex, who was starting to look like his usual self again, turned to speak to Lorgley. “A gift for your daughter.”

“I SEE,” Lorgley said gruffly. He tucked the frobble in his shirt pocket and reached for the doll. “THERE’S NO CHANCE—”

“None,” Lex assured him.

“I SUPPOSE HER MOTHER DOESN’T NEED TO KNOW WHERE I GOT IT.”

“Just what I was thinking,” Lex said.

“WELL THEN. GOOD DAY.” The giant picked up his hat and turned to go, carrying the sorceress doll very carefully. Out of nowhere, a stairway glittered into existence.
Lorgley Comprost walked heavily up it into the clouds. Soon all they could see were the giant’s feet, and then nothing, until the stairway itself shivered to match the sky and then disappeared altogether.

Lex stood staring after the giant, his smile slowly shifting into an uneasy expression.

“Are you going to change Bain back?” Meg asked him. She had to say it twice before Lex heard her. Lex called the puppy to him and whispered in its ear. Instantly, the puppy changed its shape and became Bain. “What happened?” he said, confused.

“Lex turned you into a puppy and Malison into a doll,” Meg told him.

“Why?”

Meg couldn’t help rolling her eyes. “She enchanted you again.”

Bain groaned. “Not ‘Yes, mistress.’”

“I’m afraid so,” Meg said. “We gave the doll to the giant for his daughter to play with.”

Lex said nothing. He just stood there looking troubled. Meg patted his arm. “I know it was hard, but you did the right thing, Lex. Truly.”

“She didn’t give you much choice, did she?” Bain said.

Lex acted like he hadn’t heard either of them. “Why don’t people believe me when I tell them I’m the greatest wizard in the known kingdoms?” he asked plaintively.
“Well, except for that very old wizard on the Isle of Skape.”

“I heard he died,” Bain said, trying to be helpful.

“Oh.” Lex gulped. Apparently he had liked knowing about the elderly wizard. “So I really am? The best, I mean?”

“Yes,” Bain explained. “Only I think you’ll find that most of the time it’s the people who aren’t actually the best who go around saying that they are.”

“So they’re lying, these people.” Lex was thoroughly perplexed.

“They’re bragging,” Bain said, giving Meg a swift look.

“Lex,” Meg said. “
I
know you’re the best, and
Bain
knows you’re the best, and that’s enough.”

“It is?”

“You
are
the greatest wizard for miles around,” Bain said. “But …” He looked at Meg again.

“But,” Meg said, “that’s not very important.”

Lex drew himself up, looking more suited to his status than he usually did. “Malison thought it was,” he said, offended.

“Malison’s a doll!” Meg exclaimed. “She didn’t understand that being a wizard isn’t nearly as important as, as …” She paused.

“As hot chocolate?” Lex ventured.

“Exactly!” Bain exclaimed. “Not to mention having the kind of friend who would take on a sorceress to protect
you because you’ve been knocked on the head, never mind by whom.”

“With a sneeze spell,” Lex said, chuckling. “She stopped that girl with a sneeze spell.”

“All right, already,” Meg griped, secretly feeling relieved. She suspected that somehow a disaster of far greater than Malisonian proportions had just been averted, and from the look in Bain’s eyes, he felt precisely the same way.

HE SUN ROSE HIGH, BUT STILL THE FIVE
travelers slept behind the flowering bush, Cam having gone back to sleep with the others. When they finally woke up, it was to the sight of the giant emerging from the sky-well. “We could have gone with him,” Dilly cried.

“Shh,” Nort told her. “He would have taken us back to that dollhouse. Besides, we have Spinach’s hair.”

“Get ready,” Nort said as Lorgley went in his front door and shut it behind him. “Now it’s our turn.” He found himself looking around for the two enchanted squirrels, but there seemed to be no way of catching up with them. He hoped they would be safe.

“I’m first, remember?” Cam said.

“Right.” Nort looked at Dilly. “What are we going to do with you?”

“Me?”

“You’re afraid of heights,” Spinach said in cheerful tones. She’d been far too happy ever since her hair had become the hero of this little endeavor, Dilly thought sourly.

“I hadn’t forgotten,” Dilly told the others.

“Why are you afraid?” Spinach asked. “Is it because you’re usually down low? Is it because—”

“This is a lot higher, is the problem,” Nort explained before Spinach could ask any more questions.

“You’re not helping, saying that,” Dilly hissed.

“I’ll bring her down again,” Crobbs said.

There didn’t seem to be a better solution.

They had unbraided Spinach’s hair the night before, trusting it to grow longer before morning. Now they laid it out in a series of long lines, looping back and forth in the shadow of the sky-well, away from prying eyes in the giants’ house. Dilly started at the back of Spinach’s neck and braided till her hands cramped, then Nort took a turn, and then Cam, and finally Crobbs. Then they all took another turn, and another, until finally they had a fantastically long rope made from Spinach’s hair.

“Are you ready?” Cam asked Spinach.

She looked a little anxious, but she nodded. Cam took his knife out and with great care used it to cut Spinach’s braid off just above her shoulders. “Thank you.”

Spinach lifted her chin. “You’re welcome.”

It took some doing to secure the rope in the sky-well, but they found a huge metal hook that must have held a bucket long ago and double-looped the braid around that. Cam climbed gingerly into the well’s gaping mouth. “If you feel the braid go loose, then wait a minute. It will mean I’ve reached the bottom, and after that I’ll give the braid three short tugs. Which will mean it’s safe for the next person to come down.”

“And if the braid’s not long enough?” Spinach asked.

“Then I’ll climb back up.”

“What if your weight disappears, and we don’t feel any tugs?” Spinach persisted.

“Spinach!” Dilly said sharply.

Cam looked around at the others. “That will mean something else, won’t it?” With those words, he grasped the rope of hair and began his descent.

Meg and Bain and Lex climbed back onto the magic carpet, arguing about the best way to find their missing friends. “We should have gone with Lorgley,” Meg said. “They’re somewhere up there—they have to be!”

“That’s why we have a magic carpet,” Lex told her. “A very
nice
carpet,” he said as the carpet gave a little lurch.

“Yes, but how will we find the Sky Kingdom? You think it’s just sitting up there on top of the clouds?”

“It was when I went,” Bain said.

“How
did
you get up there?” Lex asked.

Bain grinned. “I waited for the giant to come down and hitched a ride.”

“He didn’t notice?” Meg said.

“He was bringing back some timber. I hid in the bundle.”

And that’s when all this trouble started, Meg thought but did not say. She tried to pinpoint the exact spot where Lorgley had disappeared. “We should go straight up where those stairs were and look around.”

“Carpet, follow that giant!” Lex said. “The one who just left.”

The magic carpet rose slowly into the air. They were well above the tree line now, up toward the clouds, but they couldn’t see anything. Just mist.

They flew still higher, then searched and searched, looping aimlessly about in the area where they had last seen Lorgley. Finally they went back down to eat the lunch the village women had packed for them. After that they flew back up to try again.

“Meg, we may never find them,” Lex said.

“Keep looking!” she said with gritted teeth. “Bain, how did you get back down?”

He made a face. “It wasn’t easy. There was this bird … Anyway, it won’t help us now.”

“I’m thinking pretty soon they’ll get hungry and talk to Lorgley,” Lex said. “Then he’ll bring them back down for us.”

“No,” Meg said in a strange voice, “he won’t.”

“Why not?” Lex asked.

“Because Cam’s right over there.” She pointed at the nearest cloud, off to their left.

Lex thought she was imagining things, but he didn’t want to argue with Meg in her current mood, so he asked the carpet to go over to the left. Suddenly they were hovering in the air directly in front of Cam, who nearly lost his grip on the rope he was clinging to when he saw them. “Meg?” Cam managed to say. “You came back!”

“Of course I did,” she said, with a knowing smirk for Lex and Bain. “Let’s get you down.”

It took a while, but after various trips up and down on the magic carpet, Dilly’s with her hands covering her eyes, the five travelers from the giants’ house were safely back on the ground below. Lex had gone up the sky-well again, this time to let Lorgley Comprost know what had happened.

“You mean, he would have brought us down?” Crobbs said, bewildered. “Nort didn’t have to get batted around with a broom or half eaten by a crow?”

“Yes, he did,” Dilly said firmly. “Spinach and I could not have stayed in that dollhouse one minute longer.”

“True,” said Nort, with a glance at Dilly. “Me neither.” Nort was talking with his mouth full, but nobody seemed to care. Meg and Bain had prepared a second picnic for the hungry new arrivals, who were happily eating everything they could get their hands on.

“What about you?” Cam asked Meg. “Did you have any adventures? How did you find the thief?”

“A few things happened,” Meg said. “Have another meat pie for now. I’ll tell you about it later.”

Cam was glad to oblige. He and Dilly and Crobbs acted as if they were starving. “I never want to see another vegetable in my life,” Dilly moaned.

“I do,” said Spinach.

“Really?” Cam looked at her.

“I’ve decided vegetables are nice.”

Dilly inspected Spinach’s hair. “It’s down to your waist again.”

The braid rope hadn’t reached the ground. Cam had insisted on checking. It stopped about thirty feet up, though, which Nort said was pretty close.

“Besides,” Dilly said loyally, “we didn’t give it a chance to finish growing. It would have reached the ground if it had had time to grow a little more. Right, Rosalina Liliana?”