Flax crouched under the leaves, waiting for the magic to come.

To fill the time, she cleaned her fingernails with a piplum thorn. She groomed the tip of her tail. She sang an old song about blueberries and beechnuts.

Halfway through the second verse, she stopped.

One of the dawn-singing birds had fallen silent.

Flax knew every part of the Floating Forest. She knew where the owls slept, and where the sketters lurked. She knew the exact time of year when mor-kits grew their hunting teeth, and where the best acorns could be found, and the sweetest streams, and where the magic danced and sang and whispered.

She knew when there was something in the forest that didn’t belong.

Another bird stopped singing. And another. The frogs stopped croaking. The horned globs no longer moaned.

Even the trees seemed to be holding their breath.

Every hair on Flax’s body stood on end. Danger, she thought. DANGER!

She peered up at the sky, hoping with all her heart that the dragon hadn’t come.

She couldn’t see anything. She couldn’t hear anything, except the dreadful silence.

But she kept watching the sky, right up until—

Right up until something HUGE and BLACK and MONSTROUS blundered down the path – straight through her carefully woven web – and kept running.

Flax was so shocked that she forgot to let go of the rope. And by the time she got her wits back, she was being dragged through the forest so fast that she didn’t dare let go.

Trees flashed past. Sketters, horned globs and vicious little mor-kits dived for cover. Owls, wrens and fluffy drongos took to the sky in a fluster of feathers.

Flax hung on desperately, with the sword and the satchel bouncing on her back.

Was this the dragon? Was this the monster she was supposed to destroy?

Eek! she thought. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!

She jammed her eyes shut. The monster had to stop soon. Or at least slow down. And when it did, she would drop the rope, dive under the nearest bush and pretend to be a stick.

But the monster didn’t stop. It kept running and running—

Until it came to the edge of the Floating Forest.

What, you didn’t realise the Floating Forest would have an edge?

Everything has an edge. And some edges are more perilous than others.

The edge of a dragon’s temper, for example.

But we are not talking about a dragon’s temper.

Not yet.

Anyone with any sense would have turned back from the edge of the forest. Even the smallest, silliest minch-wiggin stayed away from it.

But the monster kept going.

One moment, Flax was being dragged willy-nilly between trees, bushes, bracken and bark.

The next, she was flying through the air.

No, not flying.

Falling.