Leo came to consciousness with sun on his face. Waves crashed somewhere near, and as he struggled to clear his mind he was drenched by a shower of cold spray. He gasped, opened his eyes, and saw a mass of misty grey beneath a shelf of wet brown rock thick with limpets and periwinkles. Gap, he thought. I’ve been through a Gap.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up. Mimi’s face loomed above him against a background of bright blue sky. ‘Get up, Leo,’ Mimi urged. ‘Hurry! We can’t stay here.’
He blinked at her dazedly.
‘Get up!’ she begged. ‘The Gap took us back to the rocks on the other side of the Cruelcliff headland! The ogre’s castle’s right above us! He’s up there, rebuilding the wall of his secret chamber. We can see him! We’ve got to get out of sight before he sees us!’
Leo jumped up so quickly that his head swam. He swayed and felt a firm hand seize his arm.
‘Steady on, Leo,’ he heard Conker say. ‘We’ll start by getting you to some cover. That big rock over there will do. See it? It’s just a few steps. Spoiler, take his other arm. Stop complaining! The bruises on your backside can’t be that bad. Right! Here we go…’
Leo saw the big rock ahead. He forced himself to put one foot after the other until he reached it. Then he sank down in its shadow and closed his eyes.
‘What is it with that boy and Gaps?’ drawled a muffled but very familiar voice.
Leo’s eyes flew open again. There in front of him, vigorously preening her left wing, was Freda.
‘Freda!’ he yelled, overjoyed. ‘You’re okay!’
‘Never better,’ said the duck.
‘Didn’t I tell you she’d be all right?’ Conker was beaming. ‘She woke up the second we got into the Gap.’
‘The very second!’ Bertha breathed, settling down in the shade beside Leo. ‘Wasn’t it extraordinary?’
‘I woke up long before that, actually,’ Freda told them, starting work on her right wing. ‘But I decided not to say anything.’
‘What?’ spluttered Conker, as Bertha squeaked in outrage and Mimi burst out laughing.
‘It made sense to me,’ Freda said. ‘I came to and where was I? On top of a mountain, in a cage, with a hysterical dragon bellowing about liars and rattling the bars! Who wouldn’t have kept quiet?’
‘You – you devious duck!’ cried Bertha, who had become very red in the face. ‘Why, when I think of the sympathy I wasted on you! I was sick with worry! I thought you were dying!’
‘Me too,’ said Freda. ‘Then suddenly I felt as fit as a flea. Funny, that.’
‘Oh, my lungs and aching arm bones!’ Conker roared. ‘You mean you let me lug you all the way through the dragon’s den like a bundle of old –?’
‘Don’t shout, you lunatic!’ Spoiler moaned. ‘The ogre might hear!’
Bertha edged to the side of the rock and peered upward. ‘It’s all right,’ she breathed, pulling her head back. ‘He’s still working. But in my opinion we should get around to the other side of the headland as fast as we can. We can talk later.’
‘You’re right,’ growled Conker. ‘Can you walk yet, Leo?’
‘Of course I can,’ Leo snapped, feeling unreasonably annoyed at being treated as an invalid.
‘I can’t,’ Spoiler whined. ‘I’m in agony.’
‘Well, no one’s going to carry you,’ Conker said. ‘You can stay here till the tide comes in for all I care. Right, team! To the cliff! On the double!’
They moved out of shelter and hurried across the slippery sheet of rock, dodging pools that looked like jewelled mirrors winking in the sun. Despite what he’d said, Spoiler gathered up his skirts and managed to run almost as fast as Conker and Freda. Mimi trotted after them. Leo staggered along behind, pretending he was hanging back to look after Bertha, whose trotters continually threatened to slide out from under her.
Halfway to the cliff Leo looked up and saw the ogre standing inside the gaping hole high in his castle wall. The ogre’s arms were raised, and moving. He looked as if he was conducting an orchestra. Great stone blocks were floating around his head and sliding into place one by one, leaving neat spaces for windows.
‘Keep moving, Leo!’ Bertha scolded. ‘He could look down any minute!’
It seemed to take an age to reach the base of the cliff where Conker, Freda, Mimi and Spoiler were waiting. Spoiler was whimpering quietly to himself. Conker was glaring reproachfully at Freda, who had begun preening her feathers again. The sound of softly chinking stone floated from above, mingling with the cries of seabirds and the dull roar of the waves.
They began to walk around the headland, keeping as close to the base of the cliff as they could. For a long time they didn’t speak, but when, sighing with relief, they rounded the headland and saw the golden sand of the beach beyond the rocks ahead, Conker obviously felt that his argument with Freda could be safely resumed.
‘The least you could have done was tell me you were awake, Freda,’ he grumbled. ‘You could have winked at me, or something.’
‘You’d have given the game away if I’d let on,’ Freda retorted. ‘You’re a terrible actor. And it was good tactics for me to play dead. It’s an old trick but a good one. If that dragon had turned really nasty –’
‘Much you could have done about it if it had,’ sneered Spoiler.
Freda turned to snap her beak at him, then paused and pecked irritably at her right wing instead. ‘My feathers are sticky,’ she complained. ‘Your fault, Conker! Your hands must be as mucky as –’
‘Stop fussing,’ Conker growled. ‘It’s just a bit of dragon’s heart. Nothing to –’
‘What?’ Freda quacked, stopping dead.
‘Keep moving, Freda,’ Bertha urged nervously.
‘Did you say dragon’s heart?’ Freda gasped, half-running and half-flying to catch up with Conker. ‘Where in Rondo did you get hold of that?’
Conker puffed out his cheeks and stomped on without speaking.
‘We hadn’t got round to telling you, Freda,’ Mimi said in a low voice. ‘We found out from the dragon that the cream in the queen’s silver box is made of… dragon’s heart.’
Freda shut her beak with a snap.
‘I got some on my hands and wiped them on you, if you want to know,’ Conker said belligerently.
‘Did you?’ said Freda, looking very impressed. ‘You used dragon’s heart to save my life, right under the dragon’s nose? That took a bit of nerve!’
‘What do you mean?’ Bertha squeaked.
‘Freda, are you saying it was the dragon’s heart that cured you?’ Leo asked, glancing at Conker, whose mouth had fallen open in astonishment.
‘Of course!’ said Freda. ‘There’s nothing like dragon’s heart for giving you a big burst of energy. Everyone who’s anyone knows that. Right, Conker?’
‘Right!’ Conker blustered. ‘Absolutely. Common knowledge, isn’t it?’
‘Well, I had no idea!’ Bertha retorted.
‘Oh well, you wouldn’t, stuck away on that farm with a bunch of goodie-goodie hens,’ Freda said. ‘The stuff’s illegal these days – you can’t get it anywhere. Cruelty to dragons, and all that.’
‘I should think so!’ Mimi said fiercely.
‘So it was dragon’s heart the queen was looking for,’ Freda muttered. ‘Well, it’s hard to know how to feel about that. On the one wing, it saved my life. But on the other…’
‘Yes,’ Bertha sighed. ‘On the other trotter, we’re almost back where we started.’
‘What do you mean?’ Mimi demanded, stopping and staring. ‘We’re not back where we started! We got to the dragon’s heart before the queen did! And if it’s as rare as Freda says, she won’t be able to find any more. So she won’t be able to finish whatever potion she’s making, will she?’
There was a small, uncomfortable silence.
‘Well, she won’t!’ Mimi repeated, looking around at her friends’ troubled faces. ‘She’s got the seawater, and the wind, but we’ve got the dragon’s heart!’
It was amazing to Leo that she didn’t see it. He took a deep breath. ‘The queen doesn’t need the preserved dragon’s heart all that desperately any more, Mimi,’ he said gently. ‘She’s got a real, live dragon of her own, hasn’t she? She can take his heart, any time she wants.’
Mimi went very still. ‘She wouldn’t,’ she said in a strangled voice. ‘Surely even she wouldn’t…’
Her voice trailed off as she met Leo’s unhappy eyes.
‘She’d do anything to get what she wants,’ Spoiler said. He sounded half fearful, half admiring.
Mimi glanced at him, expressionless, then looked back at Leo. Her face was very white. ‘But that means – that means because we’ve got the silver box, the green dragon is going to be killed!’ she said. ‘We can’t let that happen! We can’t!’
‘You’re not suggesting we hand the silver box over to the queen, are you?’ Conker demanded. ‘Because I’m telling you right now that –’
‘I’m not suggesting any such thing!’ Mimi flashed back. ‘I’m just saying we’ve got to find a way to save the dragon!’
‘Easy-peasy!’ Freda said sarcastically.
‘Our orders are to find out what the queen’s up to, not get ourselves killed trying to rescue enchanted dragons,’ Conker said, very firmly.
Mimi glared at them both.
‘Howdy-doody!’ squeaked a voice behind them.
Everyone jumped and looked round. A small gold head fringed with a straggling seaweed beard was poking out of a nearby rock pool.
‘You again!’ said Conker in disgust.
‘Didn’t think you lot would be back!’ the magic fish chortled. ‘Drowned or eaten, that’s what I thought.’
‘Well, you were wrong,’ Bertha said haughtily. ‘Please go away. We are having a very important conference.’
‘Is that so?’ the fish jeered. ‘Oh, pardon me!’ It tossed its beard and did a backwards somersault, slapping the surface of the water hard with its tail and showering them all with spray.
‘Pelican bait!’ Freda quacked after it.
‘Now, Mimi,’ Bertha said, tossing a dripping poppy out of her eyes. ‘It’s all very sad about the golden dragon’s mate, but Conker is right. There’s nothing whatever we can do about it.’
Mimi’s mouth set into the familiar straight, stubborn line, but for once this didn’t make Leo prickle with irritation. He understood why Mimi was so upset. He, too, felt that somehow they had cheated the golden dragon, who had given them names, and helped them. He, too, loathed the thought that the green dragon was doomed to die because the Blue Queen had failed to find her silver box of dragon’s heart.
But getting angry at Bertha, Conker and Freda won’t help, he thought. They’re only being practical. There isn’t anything we can do to help the green dragon. And even if there was, Hal sent us to find out what the queen’s doing. That has to be our first priority…
And suddenly an idea occurred to him. ‘Listen!’ he said slowly. ‘There might be a way we can follow orders and save the dragon.’
‘We know the queen has collected wind and seawater, and we know about the dragon’s heart, right?’ Leo said, his eyes on Mimi. ‘We think she’s making some sort of potion that uses those ingredients. If we can find out what the potion is – and what it’s for – we’ll have the information Hal needs.’
‘Oh, my heart and lungs, Leo, we know all that!’ Conker grumbled.
‘But you see, once we’ve got the potion’s name, we can do something else as well,’ Leo went on, refusing to be rattled. ‘We can find out what its other ingredients are. There can’t be just three. There must be others – maybe lots of others. And if we can stop the queen getting even one of them, she won’t be able to make the potion at all! It’s a slim chance, but it is a chance!’
Mimi raised her head, and he felt a rush of warmth as he saw the glow of hope and gratitude in her eyes. She had followed his reasoning and realised where it was leading. But even more importantly, she’d understood that he had taken her feelings seriously and was trying to find a compromise. She knew she wasn’t alone.
‘If we can stop the potion being made it will be good for Rondo – and it will save the green dragon as well,’ he said, spelling it out. ‘The queen won’t kill the dragon for his heart until she has everything else, will she? He’s too useful. She’ll save him till the very end.’
‘Brilliant, Leo!’ shouted Conker, punching the air with his fist.
‘A quest in two parts!’ Bertha exclaimed. ‘How scientific!’
‘Great plan,’ Freda drawled. ‘There’s just one small problem. How in Rondo are we going to work out what the queen’s potion is, just from three ingredients?’
‘I… well, I thought Brewer would be able to help us with that,’ Leo said. ‘He’s the expert.’
‘He’s not a mind reader though,’ said Freda. ‘There are probably thousands of recipes for spells and potions with wind, seawater and dragon’s heart in the ingredients.’
‘Thousands?’ Mimi wailed.
‘Brewer’s got a lot of old books,’ Conker said. ‘Wurzle and Bing and the others would have old books too. We’ll have to go through them all and work out which –’
‘But that could take months!’ cried Bertha. ‘The queen will have completed the potion long before we’ve finished. Oh, this is so disappointing!’
Leo turned to Spoiler, who was leaning against the cliff face picking miserably at the limp frills of his blouse.
‘Spoiler!’ he said urgently. ‘You’ve got to help us! You’ve got to think! That potion the Blue Queen always wanted to make – was one of the ingredients dragon’s heart? What did the potion do? What was its name?’
‘I’ve got no idea!’ Spoiler moaned. ‘I can’t remember, I tell you! It might have had dragon’s heart in it. I think it did. But who knows what it’s called?’
‘The Tideseer would know,’ a squeaky voice piped from the rock pool. ‘The Tideseer knows everything.’