It was late afternoon when Millie woke to the smell of sizzling fish and campfire smoke. Francis was squatting beside the fire, turning the stick on which he’d skewered a medium-sized trout. She watched him for a minute, thinking about how nice it was that he had come. She could have made the trip by herself, but having friends along made it more of an adventure and less of a chore.
Francis turned his head and caught her looking at him. “You’re awake. Good. Breakfast is almost ready. Are you hungry?”
“I’m starving,” she said. “I feel like I haven’t eaten for days.”
“Zoë said the cave was in that direction,” said Francis, pointing to the east. “I thought we’d eat, then try to find it. We can get an earlier start that way. I was kind of hoping that if we left early enough, we might be able to lose Simon-Leo. If that cave isn’t very far from here, we could get a good head start before the sun sets.”
“That isn’t very nice,” said Millie. “He really does want to go with us, but having a troll along …”
“I knew you’d agree,” said Francis. “Telling him we didn’t want him with us didn’t work. Maybe this will. And I’ve been thinking … I know you want to be back at your grandparents’ castle before your parents return and, well, so do I. My parents are going to be mad when they hear that we went off without telling anyone, but it won’t be so bad if we’re already back when they hear about it.”
“We’ll do our best,” said Millie. “If you want, we can eat while we walk.”
“Good idea,” he said, handing her one of the sticks. “Now, do you want to figure out which way they went or should I get my dragon scale?”
“I’ll do it,” said Millie. “All I have to do is think about it really hard, and it is easier if I’m looking for a place rather than an object. But don’t ask me to find people yet. I’m still not very good at that. And don’t talk to me while I’m doing this. I’ve never seen this cave, so it might be a little tricky.”
“You sure have a lot of restrictions,” said her cousin.
“Francis!”
“Sorry.”
Closing her eyes, Millie turned to the east and thought about a cave. Because she couldn’t picture a cave she hadn’t seen, she imagined something cool and dark with stone and dirt all around it. She cast her thoughts out and down, because it was sure to be underground. Ah, there was something. Keeping the image of a cave in her mind, Millie opened her eyes and began to walk. “You’d better keep up,” she told Francis. “This isn’t easy, you know.”
“I should have used that scale,” Francis muttered.
Although it was sunny when they started out, clouds soon turned the sky dark. Millie lost track of time, but they had been walking for at least half an hour when they reached the edge of a bog.
“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” asked Francis. “This doesn’t look like the kind of place you’d find a cave.”
“This is it,” said Millie, sounding more confident than she felt. “Just a little bit farther.”
As they entered the bog, the ground grew softer beneath their feet and they had to pay more attention to where they walked. Although some people might have been hesitant to enter a bog when night was approaching, the land reminded Millie of the swamp behind her family’s castle and she wasn’t the least bit afraid. The sun set while they were walking, and with the clouds blocking the moon and stars, they had little light to see by. Millie let her dragon sense take over and continued on without slowing. She heard Francis murmur something under his breath and knew that he was using a spell to help him see.
Soon Millie saw a light flickering in the distance. It drew closer, but she ignored it, for she had a good idea what it might be. It wasn’t long before Francis saw it as well. Touching her arm, he pointed to the light, saying, “It looks like we have company.”
“Will-of-the-wisp,” said Millie. “Don’t pay it any attention and it will go away. All they want to do is lead us astray and abandon us in some perilous situation.”
“I know,” said Francis. “They’ve been banished from Greater Greensward for years.”
Millie kept following her dragon sense, forging a path through the bog, but the will-of-the-wisp began to zigzag in front of them, trying to attract their attention. Eventually, it came so close that Millie could almost see the shadow figure carrying the light.
“Where’s this cave, anyway?” asked Francis. “It’s a lot farther than I expected it to be.”
“We should be right on top of it,” said Millie. “It feels like it’s under us now. Look around and see if you can find an opening.”
When they finally found the cave, it was more like a hole than the image Millie had carried in her mind. Its sole entrance was at the base of a small swell in the ground and it went down and back from there. The space inside was only about three feet high and four feet deep, not nearly big enough for a troll.
“There must be another cave somewhere around here,” said Millie. “No troll as big as Simon-Leo could have fit in this.”
“Why don’t you try finding Zoë?” said Francis.
“I told you that my dragon sense doesn’t work very well when I look for people.”
“So?” said Francis. “I don’t think this worked all that well, either.”
“But I can’t just … I mean, I might … Oh, all right. I’ll give it a try.” This time, when Millie closed her eyes, she pictured her friend Zoë as a bat. Her dragon sense was a little hazy at first, but after a minute or so she began to feel as if she might know where to find her.
“I think she’s in that direction,” she said.
“You mean where the will-of-the-wisp lights are headed?” asked Francis.
“No … Oh, wait … Yes, I guess so. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence,” she said, watching the lights float across the bog. There were more of them now and they all seemed to be heading in the same general direction, which just happened to be the way Millie wanted to go.
They fell in line behind the lights, following them around sinkholes and puddles that looked shallow, but that Millie could sense were treacherously deep. Then another set of lights appeared, angling across the bog to intersect the lights that she and Francis were following. Millie had a feeling of foreboding as the second set approached, as if some real danger was coming to meet them. She had just caught the sound of something large stomping through the muck when suddenly all the lights flared, showing them an angry two-headed troll and a bat only yards away. For a moment Millie could hear the shadow figures laughing, then the lights went out all at the same time and she and her friends were left in the dark.
“It’s about time you showed up!” exclaimed Simon. “Those little nits have been leading us all over this quagmire, doing their best to get us lost.”
“I told you not to follow them,” said Zoë. “It doesn’t matter how much you threaten them; will-of-the-wisps are never going to take you where you want to go.”
“When I get my hands on them, I’m going to rip their heads off and stuff them down their necks!” growled Leo.
“I don’t know if they have necks,” said Francis. “Or heads, for that matter.”
“Watch it, pipsqueak,” said Leo. “I’m not in the mood for jokes.”
“What happened, did you wake up on the wrong side of the rock?” Francis asked.
“Uh, gentlemen,” said Millie.
“He’s just in a bad mood ’cause the cave was kind of small,” said Zoë.
“I’ve seen rat holes bigger than that,” said Leo. “I had to spend an entire day rolled up in a ball so the sun couldn’t reach any of my valuable body parts and turn them to stone. My back is killing me.”
“It’s my back, too,” said Simon. “But my neck hurts worse than my back.”
“I bet my neck hurts worse than yours does,” Leo said.
The grass rustled. Millie could sense the presence of the will-of-the-wisps, watching and waiting for something bad to happen. She had heard that they enjoyed witnessing other people’s pain and suffering, which is why they liked to lead people astray. They couldn’t have known that she and Francis knew Simon-Leo and had been looking for him all along. Because the will-of-the-wisps were probably expecting some sort of fight, it was the last thing she wanted to give them, so it irritated her that her friends wouldn’t stop arguing.
The pressure was starting to build up behind her eyes when Millie tried again, “Everybody, this isn’t getting us—”
“Simon and Leo have been whining like that all day,” said Zoë.
“I’d hold my tongue if I were you, bug breath,” said Leo. “You should have told me how far it was to that cave.”
“And how small,” added Simon.
Leo grumbled, “I have half a mind to …”
“You have half a mind, period,” said his other head.
“I tried to tell you—,” Zoë began.
“Please stop arguing,” said Millie. “This isn’t—”
“Don’t you try to tell us what to do,” said Simon, with an edge to his voice. “You soft skins think you’re so much better than trolls, but let me tell you—”
The pressure behind her eyes was getting worse, but Millie was trying not to give in to it. “I never said we were better than—”
“You don’t have to say it,” said Leo. “We’ve seen the way you look at us. That goes for you, too, baby wizard. You think you’re something special, but your magic is no match for my strength!”
Francis muttered and a ball of fire flared to life on his palm. Although it was small, the ball was big enough to light up the bog around them. Simon-Leo was crouched on the other side of a puddle, all four eyes reflecting red in the firelight. Zoë darted back and forth between her friends, too agitated to land.
“Care to test that theory?” asked Francis.
“That’s enough!” Millie roared, the transformation already begun. She felt her scaled feet sink into the squishy ground and the cool night breeze ruffle the edges of her wings as she rose up on her hind legs to tower above her friends. The will-of-the-wisps’ whispers of fear were so soft that she almost didn’t hear them.
Although Leo’s eyes never left Francis, Simon glanced at Millie and froze. “Leo,” he said, “I think you should look over here.”
“Why? Francis is just … Whoa!” Leo said. “Did you do that, wizard boy? ’Cause if you did, you’re better than I thought. Last time you just made dragon sounds. This looks like a real dragon!”
“I am a real dragon,” Millie said, shaking out her wings. “I’m also Millie and I did this to myself. I wouldn’t be so quick to disparage soft skins, Simon.”
Lights flickered back to life as the will-of-the-wisps edged away from the dragon that Millie had become. She turned and looked out into the dark, seeing all the shadow figures, including the ones that weren’t carrying lights. Taking a deep breath, Millie exhaled a long tongue of flame that sent them scurrying across the bog.
“Now,” she said, turning back to her friends, “maybe we can get going before someone else tries to use us against one another.”