‘I. Smell. Minch. Wiggin,’ whispered Flax, and a shiver ran from the tip of her whiskers right down to her toes.

But after seven days of travelling together, she knew how stubborn the pup was.

She picked up her satchel and undid the buckle. The pup sat up, ears pricked. ‘You’re going to use your magic again?’

‘I’m going to try,’ said Flax.

She picked out a thread.

Put it back.

Picked out a bigger one.

Stared at it.

The can’t-see-me knot had been obvious. So had the can’t-hear-me. The can’t-smell-me had been harder, though she’d worked it out in the end.

But how was she supposed to tie an understand-what-they’re-saying knot? And what if she got it wrong? She would have wasted a whole thread.

Maybe if she tied a knot that looked like a mouth …

No, that didn’t feel right.

What if she made it look like an ear?

But that wasn’t right, either.

Perhaps if she made it look like a mouth and an ear …

The pup’s big black nose nudged her hands. ‘Is it done yet?’ he asked, in the common language of the Floating Forest.

‘Not yet,’ said Flax, in the same tongue. ‘I don’t know how— Maybe if I talk to it—’

In the end, she tied a perfectly ordinary knot. But as her fingers twisted the thread into a loop, and slipped one end past the other, she whispered to it in the common language of the Floating Forest.

Kept whispering as she rested her hand on the pup’s shoulder.

Swallowed the thread …

The sounds of the town changed. And suddenly, Flax could understand every word the humans were saying.

She heard, ‘Come along, Pinch, don’t dawdle!’

And, ‘Fresh figs, all the way from Quill!’

And, ‘Did you hear about the witch they caught, out near Mount Tangle? Oh yes, she was definitely a witch. She looked just like anyone else, but she had feathers on her elbows and no heartbeat at all – that’s how you can tell.’

Flax could understand the hounds, too.

She heard, ‘Whoa, dead rat. This is my lucky day!’

And, ‘Wanna go for a run? Huh? Huh?’

And, ‘Do I want a biscuit? Of course I want a biscuit!’

She could understand the mice and the earwigs and the birds nesting in the eaves, and the spiders and caterpillars.

But she couldn’t understand the dragons.

They just roared. There was no sense to the sound. There were no words.

Flax wondered if the thread of magic had been too small. Maybe dragon language was so big and important that you needed a big, important thread to understand it.

Or maybe she’d got the knot wrong.

But before she could work out what to do, one of the dragons stopped nearby.

A door opened in its side. A human climbed out and walked away, unharmed.

Flax and the pup stared at each other in astonishment. ‘The dragon – ate the human?’ the pup said uncertainly. ‘But it – escaped?’

‘Through a door?’ said Flax. ‘I’ve never heard of dragons having a door in their side.’

She studied the monster. ‘I think it’s asleep. And – and even if it wakes up, it can’t see us. Or hear us. Or smell us.’

Before she could lose her courage, she stood up and crept towards the sleeping dragon, with the pup padding beside her.

There wasn’t just a door in the dragon’s side. There was a window.

The pup sniffed the long snout. ‘It doesn’t smell like the dragon that stole my parents.’

‘I don’t think it’s a dragon at all,’ whispered Flax, peeping through the window. ‘I don’t think it’s even alive.’

She expected the pup to be pleased. She was pleased, and not quite as frightened as she had been a few minutes ago.

But the pup sat on his haunches and let out a howl of anguish. ‘Then where’s the dragon? Where are my mother and father? What if I never see them again? What if I never find them?’

And he fell to the ground in a heap of long legs and misery.