The Runaway Dragon (9 page)

Not long afterward, the five travelers reached a clearing and stood gawking upward. Finally Lex said, “This is it. This is where Laddy landed.”

“It’s a tower,” Cam said unnecessarily.

Everyone looked at Meg.

“I hate towers,” she said, just in case anybody had forgotten that only a year ago her father had sequestered her in one.

High above them, a head poked out of the window.
“Help?” a girl said, looking positively sweet and definitely imprisoned.

“Don’t worry,” Meg called. “We’ll get you down!” Meg’s face filled with indignation. “What is
wrong
with people? Why are they always putting girls in towers?”

“Only twice,” Lex said, but Meg ignored him.

Then Quorlock stepped forward. He seemed upset for some reason. “Now, just a minute here. You can’t go messing up stories and spells in this forest.”

“Watch me,” Meg said calmly. Apparently rescuing the girl was against those enchanted forest rules Lex had mentioned, but Meg didn’t care one bit, and neither did her friends.

“Of course we have to get her down,” Dilly said.

Quorlock flipped through his notebook as if that would help him stop them, but Meg had already forgotten him and was beginning to circle the tower. The others followed.

“No doors,” Cam said when they had come back around.

Puzzled, they looked up at the girl again. “Who put you there?” Lex asked.

“My mother,” the girl said. “When I was very small. She comes to visit me. Or—she used to. Something’s wrong.”

“How does she visit you without a door?” Dilly asked.

“We use my hair,” the girl said.

“Hair?” Dilly repeated, mystified.

In answer, the girl started feeding a long, ropelike object out the window. It dropped down and down until Meg was astonished to see that it was a long blond braid.

“What is it for?” Lex said.

“My mother climbs up my braid,” the girl said.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” Meg asked.

“I anchor it up here on a hook,” the girl explained. “My mother brings me food. But she hasn’t come in days, and I’ve run out of food.”

“We’ll help you,” Cam said. “What’s your name?”

“Spinach,” the girl replied.

“Spinach?” Dilly repeated. “Why are you named Spinach?”

“My mother liked spinach,” the girl said. “That’s what my mother says—the one I have now. My first mother went away.”

There was a moment’s silence in honor of Spinach’s first mother. Then Meg thought to ask if the girl had seen a dragon.

“Yes,” Spinach said eagerly. “How did you know?”

“Because we’re trying to find him,” said Lex.

“Did he frighten you?” Cam asked Spinach.

“At first he did. I hid under my bed. But then he was whining and poking his nose in the window, more like a puppy than a dragon.”

“What did you do?” Dilly asked.

Spinach was really very pretty, with that delicate lily
look that princesses were supposed to have. That Meg didn’t have, she thought ruefully as Spinach explained about Laddy. “I gave him a piece of bread, and he ate it. So then I scratched his nose. He liked that. But when he decided I wasn’t going to give him any more bread, he got bored and flew away.” Spinach paused. “I wish I could have gone with him,” she said pointedly.

“You can come with us,” Cam replied.

Getting Spinach down wasn’t easy. Meg thought that Lex could use his magic carpet. The carpet didn’t seem very cooperative, however, even after they had coaxed it over to the right spot. “Wish me luck,” Lex said, eyeing the carpet as it quivered impatiently a handbreadth above the grass and dirt.

“I have some rope in my pack,” Cam said, but everyone was watching Lex. The wizard acted like a bear tamer about to tame a bear. Or be tamed by the bear, Meg wasn’t sure which.

“Now, come on, you,” Lex announced. “We need to rescue a damsel in distress.”

“I’m not distressed,” Spinach told them. “Just hungry.”

Lex pounced on the magic carpet, which sullenly bore his weight. “Up, please,” Lex said. The carpet rose a few feet in the direction of the tower. Lex started to look hopeful. The carpet rose through the air more surely, bringing Lex closer to the window where Spinach
waited expectantly. Lex was nearly there when the carpet swerved away suddenly, dove down, and flipped the wizard halfway across the meadow. Then it did the flying equivalent of a saunter, moving away toward the edge of the meadow, where the scarf appeared to be snickering.

Dilly helped Lex to his feet. “Are you all right?”

Lex coughed. “More or less.” He shook his head. “Sorry, Meg. We’ll have to think of something else.”

“First the horse, now the carpet—none of your vehicles likes you,” Meg said.

“The forest doesn’t like
this,”
Quorlock admonished them. “It won’t let you.”

But Cam stepped forward. “Let’s keep it simple.” He held out a coil of rope. Quorlock retreated to the other side of the clearing, his expression dour.

They ended up tying the rope to Spinach’s braid so Spinach could pull the rope up. Then she tied the rope to the hook inside the tower instead of her braid.

The braid was actually kind of a problem. It kept tangling in the rope as Spinach tried to come down. Finally Cam climbed up the rope and helped Spinach sort herself out. He was awfully patient about it.

Dilly nudged Meg. “Look at those two.”

Meg squinted. “Two what?”

Dilly laughed softly. “You just don’t notice these things, do you, Meg?”

“What things?” Meg flushed. She liked to think she was observant, but it seemed spending time with the
ladies-in-waiting had taught Dilly a whole new kind of observation.

“Never mind,” Dilly told her as Cam and Spinach descended.

They had to redistribute things to empty out a pack so they could stuff Spinach’s braid into it, otherwise the hair would have dragged along the forest floor behind the girl as they walked, catching on everything.

“Have you ever thought of cutting it off?” Meg asked cautiously, but Spinach seemed so shocked at the idea that Meg didn’t say anything more about it. Meg wasn’t sure what to think of this girl. She was sure of one thing, though, and that was that no one should be stuck in a tower.

N ANOTHER PART OF THE ENCHANTED FOREST
, ten guardsmen and a camp cook lay groaning in a heap. Nort lifted his head and stared around, bewildered. There were no horses in sight. Lieutenant Staunton seemed to be unconscious. Nort’s heart sank. He was supposed to catch something, and he had failed. But he couldn’t remember what it was. “The stag,” somebody moaned, and Nort remembered. He sat up, which made his head hurt. They had been hunting the white stag. But now it was gone, and nothing mattered at all anymore. Nort frowned. There was something else—a castle? A king? Nort gasped as his mind filled up with knowing, like water pouring itself into a cup. “Get up, all of you!” he cried. “We’ve lost the princess!”

Meg thought Quorlock would stop complaining about Spinach now that the girl was actually out of the tower,
but he seemed to get angrier and angrier. When Meg and her friends shouldered their packs to continue their journey, Quorlock stood there as if he had taken root.

“Aren’t you coming?” Meg asked.

“You have to respect the enchanted forest,” Quorlock said stubbornly. “Put her back.”

“Spinach?” Meg said, amazed. “We just got her down.”

“Getting her down is a job for a handsome prince!” Quorlock roared. “This is
not
her story!”

“Maybe it is,” Lex remarked. “Maybe you think you know her story, and you’re wrong.”

Quorlock sputtered, then said again, “Put her back.”

“Or what?” Meg asked. “You mean you won’t come with us if we take Spinach?”

“That’s right,” the old man told them.

“Well then, thank you for all your help, but we’re leaving now, and Spinach is, too. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” Meg’s friends chorused, not disappointed in the least.

From the look on Quorlock’s face, he couldn’t believe they weren’t going to obey him.

Meg and her companions began to walk away. Then Lex said, “There’s one more thing.” He stepped toward Quorlock. “Isn’t there?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, I think you do,” Lex said pleasantly. “Don’t you
have a little gift for the quester, to speed her on her way and encourage her success?”

Quorlock crossed his arms. “She’s not a very nice royal quester.”

“How can you say that?” Dilly demanded. “She gave you bread and listened to all your stories and rescued a bunch of animals. She’s a
very
nice quester.”

Lex’s eyes gleamed. “You accuse her of not following the rules, but you’re about to break one?”

The old man made a harsh sound like a raven’s croak. “Young people these days,” he snapped, and he started digging around in various pockets.

Meg opened her mouth to ask Lex what was going on, but he was already explaining. “He’s giving you a magical artifact, Meg. It’s the way these things are done.”

Come to think of it, Meg could remember reading stories like this. “Really? What kind of artifact?”

“Amulet, magic sword, invisibility cloak,” Lex said, watching Quorlock closely. “Something like that.”

Quorlock growled all the more, his long beard quivering with indignation, but he tried another pocket and finally fished out a small object. He glared at Lex before slapping the thing ungraciously into Meg’s outstretched hand.

Meg inspected the object.

“What is it?” Spinach asked.

Cam leaned over to see. “A broken piece of china?”

“Hand-painted with roses,” Dilly added sarcastically.

Meg looked up at Quorlock. “What does it do?”

“That, young quester, is for you to discover,” Quorlock pronounced, and he grumped away into the enchanted forest.

Meg tilted the shard of china in her hand, hoping it would change into something more impressive.

Lex reached out to touch the china with one finger. He licked the finger, which sparkled for an instant. “It
is
magic,” he said.

“Well, it must do something,” Meg said. “We’ll figure it out. But for now, let’s get going.”

With that, the five of them marched off to find the next place Laddy had touched down. Spinach trailed behind a little as she checked once more to make sure her entire yellow braid was tucked away in her pack. Then she caught up with the others and asked, “What are those green-eyed things under the bushes?”

Once Nort and the other guards had stopped feeling dazed and weak, they switched over to feeling embarrassed and angry at themselves. Lieutenant Staunton was the worst. They were finally able to rouse him and he proved able to walk a little, but he soon went into a dark mood, making pronouncements such as, “I have failed my monarch.” They tried to reassure him in vain. It was only when somebody suggested that they really should go look for the missing princess that he seemed to recover a
little of his crisp leadership style. Well, not so crisp, actually. The men straggled rather than marched, and nobody wanted to admit that they didn’t know where they were in the slightest, let alone what had happened to their horses. All the guardsmen and the cook could do was to follow Staunton, hoping they would come across Princess Margaret and her friends. “That wizard is probably taking good care of her,” Nort said, trying to be consoling, but for some reason this didn’t make the lieutenant feel any better.

Spinach wanted to know about everything. “Why is your hair that color?” she asked Lex. “Why are you following a dragon?” she asked Meg. She pestered Cam to tell her about the castle of Greeve. She inquired why Dilly wasn’t as skinny as Meg. Dilly flushed and avoided Spinach for a while after that one.

“It’s like having Quorlock, only with questions instead of answers,” Lex whispered to Meg, who knew exactly what he meant.

Late that afternoon, Meg’s party came across another stream. “Oh good,” Spinach said happily. “I’m thirsty!”

Meg opened her mouth to speak, but Lex beat her to it. “The water is dangerous.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” Cam explained. “But we haven’t wanted to take the chance.”

“Is it poisonous?” Spinach asked, crestfallen.

“Worse,” Lex said. “It might be magic.”

“Might be?” Spinach repeated. “You mean bad magic? How can we tell? Does magic water sound funny, or taste funny, or does it act just like regular water?” She stepped closer to the stream, and the others followed. It looked ordinary enough, with pebbles and the occasional larger stone showing beneath clear tumbling water. Grasses and small bushes leaned over the banks as if they might fall in at any moment. “It seems fine to me,” Spinach said longingly.

“I’ll go first,” Cam said.

“No, I will,” Spinach insisted, and Meg decided maybe the girl with the endless braid wasn’t so bad, after all.

Spinach knelt down beside the stream, scooping up water in her hands to drink it. “It tastes nice,” she told them.

They waited a few minutes just to be sure, but Spinach didn’t seem any different from before. Relieved, the others drank the water. They filled their water bags, too.

Cam came over to talk to Meg. “Do you want to keep going? I was thinking maybe we could camp here.”