The Runaway Dragon (3 page)

“Oops,” Meg said. And she went to face her father.

When Meg walked in, King Stromgard was leaning forward in his ornate throne, looking tragically at a ragged something or other held up before him by two solemn guardsmen. As she got closer, Meg could smell a nasty charred scent. “Excuse me, but what is that thing, Father?”

The king finally met her eyes. “That is, or that was …” He cleared his throat and fell silent.

Queen Istilda spoke from her seat beside him. “It’s what’s left of the flag of Greeve.”

“The
royal
flag that represented our proud kingdom,” Meg’s father elaborated.

“Oh,” Meg said. “The flag Great-great-grandmother Ameliana embroidered? With the daisies and the, um, the dragon, and those little bent thingies?”

“Chevrons,” said the queen.

The courtiers rumbled and hissed against the throne room’s backdrop of heroic tapestries. Meg tried not to look at any of them. “What happened?” she asked, raising the inevitable.

“Your dragon happened,” King Stromgard told her. “At least,
a
dragon happened, and I’ve just been informed it was your pet! The creature you
promised
would stay at that farm! Instead it flew over
my
castle—” The king turned to his captain of the guards. “What did it do, exactly?”

Looking more stern than usual, Hanak picked up the tale. “The dragon surprised Lady Lilac out picnicking on the green. Then it headed straight for the top of the north tower and burned the flag. Upon being targeted by the arrows of the castle guard, the beast apparently became frightened and flew away.”

“Peripheral damage?” the king said.

“Lady Lilac is in her rooms being treated for general hysteria, repeated fainting, and intermittent shrieking fits. Also, in their rush to attain safety, two members of the court fell down a flight of stairs. One bloodied his nose.”

Meg’s eyes fell on Lord Fredrick the Thin. Although the man was holding an elaborately embroidered green
and-purple handkerchief to his nose, he still managed to glare at her.

“So, daughter,” the king said. “What do you intend to do about the havoc your unsuitable charge has wreaked on our kingdom?”

Meg knew the right answer, and it wasn’t what she was thinking, which was: Poor Laddy! I have to go and find him! Instead she applied her lessons in statesmanship and said, “I am
very
sorry. Of course, I must see to replacing our flag and ensuring that Laddy does no further damage.”

King Stromgard looked ever-so-slightly mollified.

Prime Minister Garald spoke up, earnest as always. “Princess, when you say you plan to replace the flag, I assume you mean you will embroider a new one. That seems fitting.”

The king and queen exchanged glances. The only thing worse than Meg’s magic was her embroidery. “Great-great-grandmother Ameliana was a queen, while I am merely a princess,” Meg pointed out. “Surely it falls to my mother, who, by the way, embroiders really well, to create a new flag.”

“Well said. Grand idea,” the king put in hastily.

“My ladies and I will begin this very day,” the queen said. “Perhaps we can even improve upon the design.”

Meg stifled a grin. The old flag had been amazingly ugly.

With a few more promises and a couple of curtsies (Lady Evalines, she hoped), Meg managed to get out of the throne room. Before she did anything else, she knew she had to look for Laddy at Hookhorn Farm, which was where he was supposed to be, after all. Maybe once he’d pulled his stunt at the castle, he’d gone back to the farm in a snit. Somehow, Meg didn’t think so, but she had to be sure. She took Dilly with her, not only for company, but so her mother wouldn’t fuss. It was getting harder and harder for Meg to slip off by herself these days.

As they rode into the Witch’s Wood, Dilly told Meg all about what had happened when the dragon flew over the castle. It seemed Nort had knocked Dilly down and bruised her shoulder.

“Why would he do that?” Meg asked.

Dilly let out a huff of air. “I have no idea. Addlepated guardsman.”

“Addlepated apprentice guardsman,” Meg remarked without malice.

“Right.”

Nort had been very helpful a year ago, and Meg considered him one of her friends now. But Dilly didn’t seem very happy with him. Meg changed the subject to her dragon. “Are you sure it was Laddy? Maybe everyone’s wrong. Maybe it was some other dragon,” she said, twitching Chloe’s reins and leaning sideways to avoid some low-hanging branches.

“It was him,” Dilly said.

Meg wished Dilly were wrong. After all, her father had warned her that keeping a dragon wasn’t a good idea, but what was she supposed to do? Leave him out in the mountains? He’d nearly been killed by one of those awful princes. No, she had saved Laddy, and she was very glad she had, even if the flag of Greeve was in cinders because of it.

They were nearly to Gorba’s cottage, so of course they had to stop in and say hello. Gorba was the witch of Witch’s Wood. Gorba was cranky, but she wasn’t wicked—not unless she was provoked, anyway. Today she sounded provoked. Meg and Dilly could hear her shouting as they rode up to the cottage. The two girls tethered their horses to the rickety front porch. Then Meg knocked on the door more tentatively than usual.

The door jerked open. Gorba’s purple hair stormed about her head, matching the grimace on her lump-nosed face. “What do you want?” Her expression softened a fraction when she saw them. “Oh, come in.”

“Is something the matter?” Meg asked. The first time she’d seen Gorba’s cottage, it had been filled with enchanted frogs that croaked and hopped and swam around in old basins and bathtubs. But they had all turned back to princes and gone on their way. The place seemed awfully quiet without them.

“It’s this, this
creature!”
Gorba spat, leading them into the cottage. There, sitting in a ladylike fashion in the middle of a rag rug, was a small gray kitten. The kitten
stared back at them inscrutably, then licked one dainty paw.

“A kitten?” Meg and Dilly stepped closer.

“How sweet,” Dilly cooed.

“Sweet? Ha!” Gorba said.

“Not sweet?” Meg ventured.

“Not one bit!” Gorba said. “It’s always been frogs with me. Frogs listen, you know. Frogs do what they’re told.” She stamped across the room to glare at the kitten. “But Miss Mystery here does not.”

“Listen, or do what she’s told?” Meg asked.

“Neither!” growled Gorba. She flung herself down on the sofa, which was cozily printed with sprigs of hemlock. “I’m at my wits’ end!”

The kitten, bored, sauntered off in the direction of Gorba’s kitchen.

Gorba snarled on, sounding like a cat herself. “After the others left and then Howie—well, I needed a bit of company about the place, didn’t I? And I thought, I’m a witch, aren’t I? I’ll get myself a nice little kitten!”

“She’s a pretty thing,” Meg said. Prettier than Howie, the frog Gorba had carried in her apron pocket until the terrible day he had died of old age. He was buried in the witch’s herb garden under an algae-colored ceramic plaque that said
Howie, Beloved Frog Friend
in curly letters.

Gorba wasn’t finished ranting about the kitten. “She’s scratched my furniture and she’s broken the china
statuette of the Bogeyman my old mother left me,
and
she walks around here like she owns the place!”

“That’s what cats do,” Dilly dared to point out.

Gorba didn’t seem to hear. She pointed one wrinkled finger at the new arrival. “I’ll show her. I’ll cast
such
a spell.”

“I’ve heard magic doesn’t work on cats,” Meg said, trying not to smile. “They’re a lot like witches that way.”

Gorba gave Meg a look. “Watch it, young lady. Just because you’re a princess doesn’t mean you can be disrespectful!”

“Sorry, Gorba. We’ll come back another time, won’t we, Dilly?”

“We will,” said Dilly. “Bye, Gorba.” The two girls let themselves out, leaving the witch muttering on the sofa. They untied their horses, mounted up, and went on toward the farm. They waited a sensible two minutes before they started to giggle and then laugh and even guffaw. The horses were startled and a little offended by the way Meg and Dilly pitched about in their saddles. Dilly’s nearly threw her off.

Meg and Dilly finally stopped laughing and got their horses calmed down. “It could be worse, you know,” Meg said.

“How?” Dilly asked.

“She could have gotten a dragon.”

HEN THEY REACHED THE FARM, JANNA CAME
out to meet them. “If you’re looking for your dragon, he’s gone,” she told them.

“He flew over the castle and caused a ruckus,” Dilly said.

“Oh, dear,” the farmer said. “Come in and tell me all about it.”

Meg and Dilly left their horses happily cropping grass in Janna’s pasture and went inside, hoping for scones.

It was biscuits today. They were hot and buttery, fresh out of the oven. Meg and Dilly sat down at the kitchen table with Janna and ate their fill, trying to tell her what had happened at the castle without talking with their mouths full. Between the two of them, they got the story out.

Janna leaned back, folding her hands over her aproned stomach. “He’s been acting so strange these past few months.”

“Strange how?” Dilly asked.

“Well, he used to be such a cheery little thing. But ever since he got too big for the kitchen, even a string of sausages didn’t help him out of those moods of his. He just lay in one corner of the barn with the gold coin you gave him, snuffling and whimpering to himself. A regular pity festival, I must say.”

“Anything else?” Meg said.

Janna thought. “The last few weeks, early in the morning, he did a lot of flying. I’d see him at it, soaring over the cow pastures in the first rays of the sun. He made a pretty picture, as if he were painting the clouds with his wings.” Cam’s sister sighed. “I had no idea he’d go over to the castle and cause trouble, though.”

“And then fly away,” Meg said.

“He was getting very big.”

“Too big for the barn?” Dilly asked.

“No. But he was restless. That made him too big for the barn, if you see what I mean.”

“He couldn’t stay there anymore,” Meg said. She thought she knew how Laddy felt. She was feeling too big for the castle herself. She wished she could buzz the castle and fly away like Laddy. Meg smiled to herself. Of course, she might not have wings, but she had feet. She
had four feet, actually, thanks to her horse, Chloe. And now, she was beginning to see, Meg had the best thing of all: a reason to go.

Meg soon convinced Nort and Dilly to go a-questing. She would have invited her friend Cam, but he’d made it clear he didn’t particularly like adventures, so she left well enough alone. Fortunately, Lex agreed to go with her, too. The young wizard thought he could use one of Laddy’s scales to cast a spell for finding Meg’s lost dragon. What was more, Meg suspected her mother’s usual worries would be calmed once she heard that Lex was willing to act as a sort of magical bodyguard to her daughter. And Meg was right.

Last of all, she approached her father, with her mother prudently in tow. To Meg’s relief, King Stromgard approved of her going on a quest to search for Laddy. But he didn’t approve of her going with just three friends, even if one of them was Lex. “The boy could fall asleep or wander off, and then where would you be, eh?”

“But—” Meg started to say.

“No daughter of mine goes anywhere in this kingdom with fewer than thirty guardsmen!” the king announced, sounding as if he were in the throne room instead of in his study, surrounded by bookcases and stodgy family portraits.

Meg refrained from pointing out that she’d been to Janna’s farm yesterday with only Dilly for company.

“Now, dear, perhaps twenty guardsmen might suffice,” the queen told her husband.

“Pomp and circumstance, Istilda, pomp and circumstance!” said the king.

Meg wasn’t sure what this had to do with anything, but thirty guardsmen? Her quest wasn’t turning out to be much of a quest, and she hadn’t even
left
yet. Next her father would be demanding she dress up for the journey.

“And she’ll wear her best court dress at all times,” the king told the queen, as if on cue. “Can’t have the populace thinking my daughter wears rags, can we?”

“Even to bed?” Meg asked, trying to remind them she was in the room.

“Silk jammies,” the queen said automatically, and for a moment Meg was afraid her mother would take her father’s side on this one. But Istilda wasn’t finished. “Dear, we
have
been letting her study swordplay.”

“Just in case,” the king said, swirling one hand. “Really just for show.”

“Or for palace coups,” Meg said hopefully.

“Right. Palace coups.” The king swept on. “This will be a royal processional, my dear, can’t you see that?”

The queen cocked her head to one side. “It’s more of a quiet affair. Ten guardsmen, riding skirts for our daughter, and don’t forget the wizard.”

King Stromgard frowned at his wife, but only a little. “Fifteen guardsmen.”

“Twelve,” countered the queen.

Meg had the good sense to hold her tongue during these deliberations.