Chapter 20

Cordelia woke just after 7:30, when the sky was like a dark gray smudge of charcoal, and the sun rising looked like a fire burning over the horizon. Elizabeth looked out over the edge of the basket, the wind lifting her hair behind her and the dragon perched on her left shoulder. In that moment, she looked so much like the girl Cordelia remembered—like her old best friend, the girl who jumped in puddles and hunted the streams for salamanders—that Cordelia was almost afraid to move and disturb the picture.

Then Gregory stirred and muttered something in his sleep, Elizabeth turned around, and the dragon lifted off from her shoulder and began circling through the air.

“Come look,” Elizabeth said. There was a strange expression on her face—as if she had accidentally swallowed a fly.

“Good morning to you too,” Cordelia grumbled, wiping sleep from her eyes with a fist. But she stood up, stamping the cold from her feet, and joined Elizabeth at the side of the basket.

“What is—?” she started to ask, and then she saw, and the words dried up in her throat.

They were skimming over a dark stretch of sea, approaching a coast studded with rocks, where whitecaps were breaking on the shore. Tall ships rose and fell on the swells. Dark pines were interspersed with stubbly beaches, all of them dusted with snow. Beyond them, Cordelia could see crowded spires, touched with gold in the morning light, glittering like enormous icicles pointing in the wrong direction.

They’d made it back to land.

“It’s beautiful,” she breathed. Elizabeth only nodded.

For a while, they stood in silence.

“I’m sorry,” Cordelia said. “About the goblin. I wish I’d never found that stupid tunnel.”

Elizabeth knitted her hands together. “It’s all right,” she said finally. “It wasn’t your fault.” But Cordelia wondered whether she really believed that.

They drew closer to the shoreline, descending through a veil of mist, passing so low over the water that Cordelia could see individual waves breaking around the wharves. So low that Cordelia could see longshoremen gaping at them from the docks.

Too low.

Cordelia turned and saw that the flame keeping the balloon aloft was barely sputtering.

No sooner had she taken a step toward the flame than the balloon dropped. Cordelia screamed. Elizabeth toppled backward, landing on Cabal’s tail. The bottom of the basket hit the water with a splat and a whoosh, and Cordelia thought for one panicked second that they would be thrown over into the hungry waves.

Then, just as quickly, the balloon rose again, and the basket rolled back in the other direction. Cabal landed on top of Cordelia, and she pried him off her chest.

She staggered to her feet as the flame once again sputtered and the balloon dropped, rocketing her stomach into her throat. She lurched toward the flame and grabbed the small canister of gas below it.

Empty.

“Cordelia!” Gregory yelled. The balloon skipped over the waves, skimming the surface of the ocean, careening straight for an outcropping of toothy rocks biting up from the shoreline. “Hold on to the—”

Before he could finish his sentence, the balloon plummeted again and he went sprawling to the bottom, on top of the filch. Water sloshed over the sides of the basket, drenching them all. Up and down they went, like a gigantic yo-yo, hurtling toward the shore.

Elizabeth clung to a support rope, her face green, her eyes wide and terrified. The dragon circled overhead, shrieking in distress.

The dragon.

The idea came to Cordelia vividly, all at once: dragons made flames.

She jumped and just missed the dragon’s leathery wing tips. Down she went, crashing to her knees as the basket once again touched the surface of the ocean, releasing a fine spray of freezing water. She tried again, and this time managed to grab hold of the dragon. He wriggled in her hands, shrieking, batting his wings against her wrists.

“Come on,” she said. She held the dragon to the dying flame and gave him a little shake, as if the dragon were a bottle and the fire was stuck at the very bottom of him. The dragon coughed and two small lines of steam uncoiled from his nostrils. “Come on!” she said again. This time, the dragon did nothing but blink at her.

“Hold on, Cordelia!” Gregory shouted. “We’re gonna crash!”

She risked a glance over her shoulder and saw that they were speeding toward a gigantic rock face; any second, they would hit. She was filled with a white-hot panic.

“Please,” she whispered to the dragon, “make fire for us.”

“Now, Cordelia!” Gregory screamed.

Her mind was spitting up random bits of information, churning out memories: how chupacabras have blunt teeth and strong jaws and how specters can glow in the dark and how dragons loved to be tickled on their chins. . . .

And she remembered the time their old dragon, Digbert, had nearly burned down the living room after a particularly lengthy tickle session.

That was it.

As they bumped out of the water and hopscotched toward the giant elbow of rock, Cordelia eased one finger under the dragon’s chin and begin to tickle. The dragon shivered. The dragon snorted.

And then the dragon opened his mouth and released a long, vibrant stream of fire.

The balloon soared upward. They were so close to the rock that Cordelia could have stretched out a hand to touch it; she saw their shadow skate across its pitted surface. Then they were above it. They passed safely inland, skimming over trees threaded with mist. Elizabeth and Gregory whooped for joy. Cordelia kept tickling, and the dragon kept exhaling long, satisfied streams of flame.

But they weren’t yet out of danger. Cordelia knew they would need a place to land safely, and soon. Dragons couldn’t make flames forever, especially not baby dragons—and already she could tell that her dragon was tiring.

As they came over the ridge of trees, a dazzling vista of stone buildings, white-carpeted lawns, churches, and snowy streets unfolded beneath them. Cordelia could see students in university robes huffing through the cold, tracking footprints in the covering of new snow. At one corner of a great quadrangle was a large bell tower, which was just chiming the hour. Eight o’clock.

“We have to find a way to land!” Cordelia called out over the steady roar of the wind.

“I don’t think we have much choice,” Gregory said.

He was right. They were sinking. They drifted over the complex of redbrick walls like a cloud scudding on the wind; and inch by inch, foot by foot, as the dragon gasped for air and Cordelia’s fingers cramped, they dropped.

Cordelia was hoping they might land on the university’s central quadrangle—the lawn, at this time of year, blanketed under a heavy layer of snow—where at least the impact would be softened. But no. They were hovering over the quadrangle—she saw a man she took for a professor gasp and stagger backward—and then they were beyond it, heading directly for the bell tower. The bells were still ringing. The noise was deafening; even the air vibrated with it. Cordelia could feel the sound in her nails, in her teeth.

Gregory yelled something, but she couldn’t make out what it was. Elizabeth tried to steer, but it was too late. Gregory threw himself to the floor and covered his head, as though it would protect him from the impact of a thousand tons of brass. The bells kept ringing, ringing—vast, large as metal horses, tossing and bucking, and Cordelia imagined being trampled beneath them, mashed into a pulp.

The basket jerked to a sudden stop, barely an inch from the bells’ sweeping path. “What—what happened?” Gregory uncovered his head. At that moment, the bells stopped ringing. In the resulting silence, Cordelia could feel her jaw buzzing.

“We’ve stopped.” Cordelia edged carefully to the side of the basket and peered over the rim. They were suspended a hundred feet above the ground; below them, two professors, dressed in maroon robes and matching caps, were shouting and pointing. “Just in time too.”

She looked up. The balloon had snagged on the bell tower, hooked by its fabric to the steeple, like a hat pinned onto a hat rack.

“Any idea how we’re going to get down?” Gregory said.

A dozen feet below the basket was a small stone ledge abutting a set of narrow glass windows. Cordelia guessed they could enter the tower that way; there must be a staircase that gave the ringer access to the bells. It was worth a shot, anyway. Better than hanging in the air like a rotten fruit, just waiting to drop.

When Elizabeth and Gregory lowered the rope ladder, it just skimmed the top of the ledge. Clutching Icky tightly to her chest, Cordelia took a deep breath and climbed over the side of the basket, ignoring the outraged shouting of the two robed men down below. The ladder twisted violently in the wind, and her stomach plummeted.

But she made it safely down the ladder and onto the narrow ledge and moved into a crouch, trying very hard not to think of the sheer drop only an inch or so to her left. The first window was painted shut, but after a few minutes of digging with her pincers—which, luckily, were still in her pocket—she managed to pry it open. She shimmied through the window legs first and deposited Icky on the floor, then gestured for Elizabeth and Gregory to follow her with Cabal and the dragon.

Cordelia’s instincts were correct: she had landed in a small, circular room, which gave access, via a rickety ladder, to the bells up above. A set of rough stone stairs, spotted with dampness, wound down toward the courtyard. Cordelia caught sight of a dirty brass plaque winking dully on the far side of the room and crossed over to investigate. She had to wipe the plaque clean with the bottom of her shirt before she could make out what it said.

The University of King’s College at Halifax, founded 1789.

Cordelia’s heart sank. She knew the University of King’s College, and Halifax—both from the stacks of correspondence she had turned up in her mother’s study.

Halifax was in Nova Scotia.

Nova Scotia, Canada.