The dragon was far worse than anything Flax had imagined.

It was bigger.

It was noisier.

It had passed so close that it was a wonder it hadn’t seen them, and snatched them up and eaten them.

‘We’re going home,’ she declared, as soon as she got her breath back. ‘We’re going home right now.’

She turned away from the black stone, and began to hurry south across the flat, marshy land, sure the pup would follow.

But he didn’t. He stared towards the east, where the dragon had gone, and made a frightened noise in his throat.

Then he set off after it!

Flax couldn’t believe her eyes. ‘It’ll eat you!’ she shouted, as the pup got further and further away. ‘It’ll snatch you up and gnaw your bones.’

The pup looked over his shoulder.

‘And then,’ shouted Flax, ‘there won’t be a single Spellhound left in the Floating Forest!’

To her relief, that brought him trotting back.

‘It’s dreadful about your parents,’ she said when he stood in front of her. ‘But it’s no use throwing your life after theirs. You don’t want to mess with that dragon – what a horrible great thing it was. Did you see its snout, and those awful eyes—’

Flax knew she was babbling, but she didn’t care. She was giddy with gladness, because they were going home, where the only things she had to worry about were sketters and mor-kits.

(And the Dark and Terrible Secret, of course. But right now, even that didn’t seem quite so bad.)

The pup gazed down at her. ‘I don’t want it to eat me.’

‘Of course you don’t,’ said Flax. ‘No one wants to be eaten by a dragon. Now let’s go before it comes back.’

‘I don’t want it to eat you, either.’

‘Which is why we’re going to hurry,’ said Flax, turning south again.

The pup didn’t move. ‘You could use your amazing magic to hide us. If the dragon can’t see us or hear us or smell us, it won’t eat us.’

‘But we’re not going after the dragon.’

‘Yup, we are.’

‘No, we’re not.’

‘I am,’ said the pup.

Flax’s heart bumped in her chest. She stared southward, wondering if the cloud on the horizon was the Floating Forest.

Maybe. Maybe not. But she had no doubt she could find it.

Why was she so sure?

Because minch-wiggins are famous for their sense of direction. You could blindfold a minch-wiggin, spin her around seven times, tip her upside down and toss her into the deepest, darkest well you could find, and she would still be able to tell you which direction was north, and which was south and west and east.

If, that is, she was willing to talk to you after you had treated her so badly.

Flax trotted in a small circle. It helped her think.

Then she trotted in a bigger circle. Round and round, while the pup watched.

‘If I go home without him,’ she mumbled to herself, ‘griv might come. Because Grandpa might have been wrong some of the time. But he was right some of the time, too.’

She wondered if it would come straight away. Or if it would hold off for a while.

‘Maybe if I try really hard to keep the pup safe, and to get him back to the forest as soon as possible, griv will leave us alone.’

She stopped halfway around the circle. It wasn’t a very good plan. She didn’t know how she was going to keep the pup safe, or how she was going to get him back to the forest if he didn’t want to go.

But at least it gave her a glimmer of hope.

She wrapped her arms around the satchel. ‘I’m not supposed to use the magic for small things,’ she said to the pup. ‘It’s only for destroying dragons.’

‘But you know how it works?’

Flax did know how it worked. No one had told her – it had just sort of popped into her head after Grandpa died.

She nodded. It was a very small, uncertain nod, and the answering wag of the pup’s tail was a very small, uncertain wag.

‘Please?’ he said. ‘Please, Flax?’