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Dragon Rider

Page 36

by Cornelia Funke


  Well, perhaps the big black dog who guarded the farmyard really was stupid, perhaps it was even more stupid than a squirrel (which really would be rather stupid), but it had a very, very good nose. And it wasn’t chained up. Oh no.

  Sorrel hadn’t gone far when the huge black shadow emerged from the night. She’d never known that dogs could be so big. This wasn’t a dog, it was a calf! And how horrible its hot breath smelled!

  The dog chased her—chased her through the night, chased her relentlessly through thorns and thistles, uphill and downhill. Sorrel swerved sideways, she sobbed as she ran, she cursed herself for her recklessness—and she heard the huge black dog panting and gasping behind her. “I’m sure it’s never tasted a nice juicy brownie before,” she told herself despairingly. “I’m sure such a delicious smell has never risen to its big black nose! It’s going to eat me, skin and bones and all, that’s what it’s going to do, and no one will ever know I ended up inside its stomach! What a dreadful fate! When I’m only just twenty-three winters old—and is that any age for a brownie? No! No, it’s no age at all!”

  She sobbed and stammered like this as her stumbling feet ran on, and then …

  Then, all of a sudden, there was the dragon.

  The jagged crest on his back covered the moon, and his scales shone like silver in the moonlight. And he was big, oh goodness, he was enormous! He lowered his head with its terrifying horns and examined Sorrel as if he had never in his life seen a brownie girl before, then he raised it again and looked at the dog as it came bounding through the undergrowth, panting. The snarl that emerged from the dragon’s chest was not very loud, but it sounded extremely menacing, and the dog put its tail between its legs—uttered a howl, and didn’t even glance at Sorrel before racing away just as fast as it had been running after her.

  As for the dragon, he looked at Sorrel again. Sorrel stood with her knees trembling, not sure whether to run away like the dog or simply die of fright on the spot. But when she looked into those golden dragon eyes— “There’s no finer sight!” Wasn’t that what her mother always said? “No finer sight!”— when Sorrel looked into those eyes she suddenly wanted nothing in the world more than to drive away the sadness she saw there.

  “What’s your name?” asked the dragon, and she could hear from his voice that he was still young.

  “Sorrel,” she said softly, so softly that the dragon lowered his head again to hear her better. “What’s yours?”

  “Firedrake,” replied the dragon.

  So that was how the two of them met: Sorrel and Firedrake. Sorrel rode into the valley of the dragons on Firedrake’s back, and from then on she sang him to sleep on many wet and rainy nights—and she discovered that what her mother had told her was true: There’s nothing more wonderful in the world for a brownie than to be a dragon’s companion.

  About the Author

  CORNELIA FUNKE has become one of today’s most beloved writers of magical stories for children. Her internationally acclaimed, bestselling titles include The Thief Lord and the Inkheart trilogy. She lives in Los Angeles, California, in a house filled with books.

  Copyright

  First published in Germany as Drachenreiter by Cecilie Dressler Verlag, Hamburg, 1997

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  Original text copyright © 2000 Dressler Verlag

  Original English translation copyright © 2001 by Oliver Georg Latsch

  This translation by Anthea Bell copyright © 2004 by Chicken House

  Cover art © 2004 by Don Seegmiller

  Inside illustrations copyright © 2004 by Cornelia Funke

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. Originally published in hardcover in 2004 by Chicken House, an imprint of Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, CHICKEN HOUSE, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc. www.scholastic.com.

  This edition first printing, April 2011

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

  eISBN: 978-0-545-40598-0

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  1. Bad News

  2. A Meeting in the Rain

  3. Advice and Warnings

  4. A Big City and a Small Human Being

  5. Gilbert the Ship’s Rat

  6. Dragon-Fire

  7. Waiting for Dark

  8. Flying Off Course

  9. Nettlebrand, the Golden One

  10. The Spy

  11. The Storm

  12. Captured

  13. The Basilisk

  14. Professor Greenbloom Explains

  15. Twigleg’s Second Report

  16. Flying South

  17. The Raven

  18. A Visitor for the Professor

  19. The Signpost

  20. The Djinn’s Ravine

  21. Twigleg’s Decision

  22. The Vanishing Moon

  23. The Stone

  24. The Anger of Nettlebrand

  25. The Indus Delta

  26. An Unexpected Reunion

  27. The Dragon

  28. The Tomb of the Dragon Rider

  29. Twigleg the Traitor

  30. All Is Revealed to Nettlebrand

  31. Return of the Dragon Rider

  32. All Lies

  33. Face-to-Face

  34. Snatched Away

  35. The Nest of the Giant Roc

  36. Losing the Trail

  37. An Old Campfire

  38. The Monastery

  39. The Rat’s Report

  40. Work for Gravelbeard

  41. Burr-Burr-Chan

  42. A Farewell and a Departure

  43. The Pursuers

  44. The Rim of Heaven

  45. The Eye of the Moon

  46. The Dragons’ Cave

  47. No, No, and No Again

  48. The Captive Dwarf

  49. Making Plans

  50. Deceiving the Spy

  51. Polishing Nettlebrand for the Hunt

  52. Nettlebrand’s End

  53. The Dwarf’s Request

  54. A Dragon Wakes

  55. What Now?

  56. The Way Back

  57. Good News

  Also by Cornelia Funke

  Praise for Dragon Rider

  Letter from the Author

  Who’s Who in Dragon Rider

  Dragon Tales

  Sorrel’s Story

  About the Author

  Copyright

 

 

 


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