Buffeted by freezing wind, the cage swung sickeningly as the dragon wheeled, turning its head towards the rising sun. Clinging to the bars, pressed hard against them as if holding on tightly would somehow protect him, Leo looked down. A wave of dizziness almost overwhelmed him. Already the ogre’s castle looked as small as a child’s model, the sea crawling around it neatly edged with foam.
They were high – so high! At any moment the dragon might lose its grip and drop its burden, as Leo had once seen an eagle drop a small, furred creature it had caught.
What would it feel like to fall so far? How many seconds of terror would there be before the ground rushed up to meet the plummeting cage and it was all over?
Ignoring the stabbing pain in his head, Leo looked up at the vast body of the dragon. His eyes watered and stung in the gale of the beast’s wing beats, but fascinated dread held him, and he couldn’t look away. The dragon’s underside was pale and ridged. The wings flashed blindingly in the rays of the rising sun. The talons grasping the cage were curved like horns, and razor-sharp. They were made for holding soft prey. They slid and squeaked on the smooth iron bars.
Leo tore his eyes away from them and forced his head down. He was trembling all over, but couldn’t tell if the shivering was caused by cold or fear.
‘You said the queen didn’t know we were there!’ he heard Spoiler screaming against the wind.
‘She didn’t!’ Mimi shouted back. ‘I’m sure she didn’t! She didn’t even glance at Cruelcliff. She was only interested in the storm.’
The mirror, Leo thought numbly, looking down at the silver handle stuck through his belt. The queen sensed me spying on her. Somehow she saw me – realised where I was. I didn’t hide myself quickly enough. This is my fault. My fault.
‘Lawks-a-daisy, what does it matter how she found us?’ Bertha cried, her squashed hat flapping wildly on the back of her neck as she struggled to sit up. ‘The point is, she’s got us. Or her dragon has. And soon –’
Her trotters slid from under her and she rolled helplessly across the cage, slamming against the bars on the opposite side. The unlocked door rattled ominously. The cage tilted sharply.
The dragon’s wing beats faltered. Its talons rasped on the metal as it struggled to keep its grip.
Screams of terror filled Leo’s ears, but he was beyond screaming. He had stopped breathing. The image of the talons loosening, of the cage falling down, down, was so clear that he was amazed when the plunge ceased and the dragon began beating its wings again, labouring to regain lost height.
He sat rigidly, clutching the bars, drawing in great gulps of frigid air, as his heart slowed. And only then did he see, directly ahead, the blurry shape of a mountain, dark against the glowing sky.
His stomach turned over. Was this the first sign of the range of hills that lay along the western part of the queen’s border? Surely not! Surely it was too soon, however fast the dragon was flying.
Desperately, as if it would help to know how much time they had left, he tried to remember the pictures on the music box, tried to work out the distance between Cruelcliff and the queen’s domain.
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t keep his mind focused. It was darting around frantically, like a panicking bird that had flown through a window and become trapped in a crowded room.
The mountain drew nearer. The dragon was tiring – Leo could feel it. Huge and powerful as the beast was, its burden was very heavy. Its talons shifted painfully on the cage bars. Its wing beats slowed… then they stopped altogether.
But the dragon did not fall. Great wings spread wide, it was gliding, riding the wind. Now there was no sound but the soft rushing of the shining air, Bertha’s groans, and Spoiler’s loud, despairing wails.
‘I thought I’d be safe with you,’ Spoiler shrieked. ‘When you dragged me into that ogre’s castle I kept telling myself – they know what they’re doing. In the end, it’ll be all right. I never thought for a minute that – Oh, fool! Fool!’ He beat his head against the bars of the cage, which rocked violently.
‘Stop that!’ Bertha squealed. ‘If the dragon drops us we’ll all be killed.’
‘A quick death would be better than what’s going to happen when the Blue Queen gets her hands on us,’ Conker said.
He sounded completely unlike himself. Leo looked around. Conker sat slumped in a corner of the cage, bent over Freda’s limp body. One of his elbows was hooked through the bars, anchoring him in place. His hair and beard were whipping wildly in the wind. His eyes were dull with misery.
He saw Leo looking at him and his arms tightened protectively around the duck. ‘She’s still alive,’ he muttered, as if he’d read Leo’s mind. ‘I can feel her heart beating.’
‘Of course she’s alive!’ snapped Bertha. ‘It would take more than a wall to stop Freda. And by a miracle, we’re alive, too. We’re in a tight spot, but, speaking personally, I’d rather be in a tight spot than lying in that ogre’s forbidden chamber with my head bitten off. Which is where I’d be right now, I’d like to remind you, if the dragon hadn’t saved us.’
‘It didn’t save us, you crazy pig!’ Spoiler screamed hysterically. ‘It captured us. It’s taking us to the Blue Queen! We’re doomed!’
‘Not necessarily!’ Bertha said crisply. ‘And I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head!’
She puffed away a hat ribbon that had blown across her mouth. ‘Now,’ she went on, with the air of getting down to business, ‘the ogre unlocked the cage door, didn’t he? That means we can escape.’
‘Escape?’ Spoiler shrieked. ‘We’re up in the clouds, you –’
‘What’s it doing?’ Conker shouted suddenly. ‘Oh, my lungs and liver! The mountain! We’re not going to clear it!’
Leo looked ahead and his heart seemed to stand still. A huge, rough triangle of craggy rock loomed directly in front of them, framed by rays of dazzling sun. The dragon was hurtling towards the mountain top, making no attempt to climb or wheel to avoid it.
Sun in its eyes? Leo thought numbly, Mimi’s screams and Spoiler’s howls echoing in his ears. Exhaustion? The cage too heavy to…
‘Hold on!’ Conker roared. ‘Hold –’
With a shuddering crash the floor of the cage hit rock. The door sprang open. The cage bounced and tipped, but by some miracle did not roll over. Stunned, the prisoners lay where they had fallen as the gale of great wing beats pinned them down.
Then there was a thudding, scrabbling sound, and silence.
Leo felt warm air fan his cheek and ruffle his hair. The smell of ash drifted into his nose. It felt as if he were lying by a fire. Cautiously he opened his eyes.
Terror sparked through his body like an electric shock. He felt sweat break out on his forehead. The hot breeze he could feel was the dragon’s breath. The dragon was right beside him, its snout pressed against the open doorway of the cage. It was huge – so vast that it could have swallowed any two of its captives whole.
But it seemed that, at present, it wasn’t thinking of food. Its flat, golden eyes were inspecting the prisoners closely with what seemed to be puzzled disgust.
It didn’t crash into the mountain, Leo thought slowly. It landed. It dropped the cage then calmly landed beside it. What’s happening?
He ordered his body to move, but his arms and legs would not obey him. His heart was thudding so hard it felt as if it were about to burst through his chest.
‘Show it to me!’ hissed the dragon. ‘I cannot see it, yet I know you have it. Show it to me at once!’
It can talk! Leo thought, and then wondered why he hadn’t expected it. He could hear Bertha, Mimi and Conker whispering behind him. Spoiler was moaning dully in the background. Move! Leo told himself again. But not a finger would stir.
‘Show it to me!’ the dragon repeated. Its nostrils flared. The spikes on its neck rose, quivering. Its eyes hardened.
Its eyes… Something stirred at the back of Leo’s mind. He groped for the thought, but couldn’t drag it into the light.
‘I’m – I’m sorry, but we don’t know what you mean,’ he heard Mimi say breathlessly. ‘What is it you want?’
‘I scented it in the wind before dawn,’ the dragon hissed. ‘Just a trace, but it was enough. I went in search of it, and the scent led me to Cruelcliff, and to you. I know it is in your keeping. I must see it! I must know!’
It raised its awful head. Its forked tongue flicked in and out, tasting the air. Its neck turned and scales glittered golden in the sun. Freed from its gaze, Leo felt as if binding ropes had dropped from his limbs. He rolled away from the bars and managed to sit up.
His mind felt as if it had been turned upside down. None of this made sense. He looked around slowly, trying to get his bearings.
Sky was all around him – blue dappled with bright pink. Far to the north stretched the line of hills that marked the queen’s border, with what looked like mist rising above it. To the west lay Cruelcliff and the glittering sea.
Bertha and Mimi were huddled together behind him. Spoiler was a little further away, lying curled up with his arms wrapped around his head. But the dragon was not looking at them. Its eyes were fixed on Conker, who was crouched against the pack in a far corner of the cage, still clasping Freda in his arms.
‘It is there!’ the dragon hissed. ‘He has it!’
Conker shook his head, gripping Freda’s body more tightly.
‘He has it,’ the dragon said again, baring its fangs and lashing its tail. ‘His hands reek of it.’
His hands reek of it… I scented it in the wind before dawn…
Drifting, jumbled thoughts suddenly clicked into place in Leo’s mind. ‘Conker,’ he said huskily. ‘The silver box!’
Conker stared.
‘The dragon came for us because you opened the box near the window and it smelled the stuff inside,’ Leo gabbled. ‘Conker, the box is in your pack. Get it out! Quickly!’
‘I’ll scrape the stuff out and stamp it into the rock before I’ll turn it over to the Blue Queen,’ Conker snarled. ‘Do you think we can trade our lives for it, Leo? Don’t fool yourself.’
‘This isn’t the queen’s dragon,’ Leo hissed. ‘Don’t you see? Its scales are gold, not green! Its eyes are clear. It’s not under a spell. It’s not acting under orders. It wants the box for its own reasons.’
Bertha gave a muffled cry. Mimi turned abruptly, crawled over to Conker and held out her hand.
Scowling, still not quite convinced, Conker dug deeply into the pack and pulled out the heart-shaped silver box, getting the sticky cream inside all over his fingers in the process. Mimi grabbed the smeared box from him, turned to face the dragon, and opened the lid wide.
The dragon’s tongue flickered. Its eyes went blank. It hissed, long and low.
‘It is not his,’ it said. ‘It is nothing like – too old by far, and female. Ah… thanks be to the sun and the sky and the waves of the deep! I was mistaken.’
It drew back from the cage. The spines on the back of its neck flattened. It turned its head to face the rising sun, and wrinkled eyelids slid sideways over its serpent eyes.
For a brief moment Leo considered trying to rouse the others to make a run for it. He looked around, and dismissed the idea at once. The cage was on a sheet of flat rock just below the very top of the mountain. There were sheer cliffs on every side. There was nowhere to run.
‘Put that box out of my sight,’ the dragon said harshly. ‘It is an abomination.’
Mimi looked down at the creamy substance inside the heart-shaped box.
‘What is it?’ she asked bluntly.
The dragon turned its head. Its eyelids rolled aside.
‘Can you mean you do not know?’ it demanded. ‘You carry this monstrosity about with you, and do not understand what it means?’
‘Indeed we don’t,’ Bertha said earnestly. ‘We have no idea. All we know is that this box once belonged to the Blue Queen.’
‘Ah, yes…’ the dragon hissed. ‘The witch of the north would possess such a thing. But others value it also–value it more highly than rubies. In the past, greedy humans hunted for it. Often they paid for their wickedness with their lives. Sometimes, rarely, the blood spilled was not theirs, but blood far richer and more precious.’
‘Precious?’ Mimi repeated uncertainly. ‘You mean –’
She shrank back as the dragon turned the full force of its golden glare upon her.
‘Ignorant girl!’ the beast spat. ‘Shut that box and put it out of my sight! It sickens me! Do you not understand? The substance within it, pounded, whipped and preserved to make it fit for vile human use, was torn from the body of one of my kind! You hold in your hands a dragon’s heart!’