“You’re going to break that,” said Bill.
A bird shot out of a nearby tree, and Rob whipped out his sword, looking around hopefully for something to fight. Trudi hushed him and held her breath, listening hard.
She’d discovered something in the past hour—she didn’t like the dark. She wasn’t afraid of it, exactly: It just made her feel uneasy. On the Onion it was fine because you had the stars to navigate by and the open sea reflected back the moonlight, so it was rarely completely dark. But on land, especially on a strange island full of trees, it was a different matter. Every direction looked the same, and every tree looked like it had a monster hiding behind it.
If she were a baby dragon who’d just learned to fly, where would she go? Trudi wished she had a better imagination. She wasn’t a dragon: She was just a pirate who was going to get into a mountain of trouble over this.
She turned around slowly. The trees all merged into the same black mass. “Have you got any idea where we are now?” she asked.
Rob scratched behind his ears with his sword blade. “I thought you were in charge of directions.”
“No, I’m in charge of finding Boswell. You two were supposed to be watching where we were going.”
“You didn’t tell us that,” grumbled Rob.
So now they were lost, too. Just great. Trudi swallowed back her rising panic and tried to ignore the voice in her head that told her this was all her fault. She was a cook, not an explorer. What did she think she was doing here?
“What would Cassie do?” asked Bill.
Trudi told her head to shut up and straightened her shoulders. “It doesn’t matter what Cassie would do because Cassie isn’t here. We are.” She wasn’t just any old cook. She was a cook on board the Onion. She was part of the fearsomest crew that had ever sailed the eight oceans. She had faced monsters and magicians and librarians. She wasn’t going to let a little thing like the dark frighten her.
A branch snapped. Trudi jumped, her heart pounding. All right, maybe the dark did frighten her, but she had a dragon to find and she’d do it whether she was afraid or not.
“This way,” she said, picking a direction at random, and she set off.
Two seconds later someone stepped out from behind a tree. Trudi yelled and leaped back, and then she saw who it was. She lowered her sword—she hadn’t even realized she’d drawn it. “Stella. What are you doing here?”
Stella crossed her arms. “Getting away from the village. Marapi wanted to lock me up with Cerro. He’s pretty much her prisoner now, since you failed to rescue Ren.”
“We didn’t fail,” said Trudi. “It’s just taking a little longer than anticipated. Cassie will bring him back. Don’t worry.”
Stella shrugged angrily. “It doesn’t matter. I still have the balloon. I’m going to go to the castle and look for Ren myself. I don’t need your help.”
She glared, daring them to disagree. Any minute now she’d walk away, Trudi thought, and if she got hurt in the dark, it would be their fault. They were the ones who’d started all this.
An idea squirmed into life in her mind. Stella wouldn’t accept help, but maybe she’d offer it. “We’re in a bit of a mess,” she said. “I think we may be lost, and Boswell is missing.”
Stella turned back to them. “Boswell is missing? Where is he?”
“If we knew that,” said Rob, “he wouldn’t be missing, would he? He flew off the ship. He’s on the island somewhere. Where would a dragon go?”
Stella kicked her feet back and forth. “The volcano, maybe,” said Stella. “Or the lizard swamp. It’s warm there.” She hesitated, torn between stomping off on her own and helping them find the dragon.
“He’s never been off the ship before,” said Trudi. “I hope those teradons don’t find him.”
She immediately wished she hadn’t said it as she imagined Boswell pursued by a flock of vengeful flying dinosaurs.
Stella gave an exasperated sigh. “None of you should be allowed off your ship. You’re a menace. Well, I guess I might as well stay with you, seeing as I’m out here anyway. Shall we try the swamp?”
Trudi gestured for her to lead on. That hadn’t gone too badly. She wasn’t just a cook, after all. She could talk to people and persuade them to help, even if they didn’t really want to. The darkness didn’t seem so bad now. That large tree up ahead that looked like a dinosaur was only a misshapen trunk. She could do this.
The tree moved.
“Is that a dinosaur?” asked Bill.
* * *
Peter turned around slowly. Eyes watched him from everywhere. Various shades, ranging from yellow to bright green, and all of them narrowed to hungry slits. Peter’s breath came faster. He took a step back, and his feet splashed into water. The patch of ground he was standing on was so small, he could cross it in six steps. The starshell in his hand was cold, empty of magic right when he needed it most. He picked up a tree branch and swung it around his head. The end was rotten and fell off, but the rest would do as a weapon.
A lizard about the length of Peter’s forearm slithered out of the swamp and snapped at his foot. Peter kicked it away, picked up a stone, and threw it into the murky water. The swamp turned into a mass of thrashing bodies as every lizard within reach converged on the spot. Well, at least that gave him some idea of how many creatures there were—a lot of them, and not just small ones. Some of them looked bigger than he was.
“It could be worse,” he said out loud in case that helped—but it didn’t. He was trapped in the middle of a swamp full of hungry reptiles: How could it possibly be worse?
A brown back broke the water right by him. Peter jumped back as the reptile burst out of the swamp and knocked him flat. The monster landed on top of him, pinning him to the ground. Peter tried to push its jaw out of his face, but it was too heavy to move. It snarled and snapped, dripping swamp water everywhere.
Peter had faced certain death before. Not on his own, though. Brine and Tom would never even know what had happened to him. He strained at the monster with both hands, but his arms were starting to give out. The jaws edged closer.
Then the night filled with a flurry of wings and flame, and something roared right in his ear. The monster on top of him leaped back as if Peter had forced it away with magic.
“Boswell!” Peter shouted.
How had Boswell gotten here? Peter’s sudden elation at seeing the dragon changed to terror. Boswell was going to be killed; he couldn’t win a fight against something that was twenty times his size. But the monster, which could have eaten Boswell in a single bite, let out an enormous sneeze and rolled off Peter and back into the swamp. Boswell chased it, blowing out more fire. The monster cowered in the water, sneezed again, and sank under the surface.
Peter got up, shaking, feeling himself all over for injuries. It was several moments before he could say anything.
Boswell landed on his feet.
“Well done,” Peter croaked.
A muffled sneeze sounded from underwater, and a few bubbles rose to the surface. Could a swamp monster be allergic to magic? Allergic or not, it would be back, Peter thought. He had to get out of here. He stepped into the swamp and immediately sank to his waist in warm water. The only way out of here was to swim. In the dark and surrounded by reptiles that seemed to think that he was a special food delivery. Something chewed his shoe, and he scrabbled hastily back onto the patch of land and sat down right in the center, his knees drawn up to his chin.
“Having fun?” a voice inquired.
* * *
Magic is creative energy; it is potential: a spark of life waiting to happen—and who has more potential, more creativity than children?
The original spell designed to draw creativity out and capture it worked too well. The subject needed too much time to recover. Based on my findings, I have created several modified spellstones and am ready to try them. What’s needed now is something to keep the subjects engaged and using their creative minds so that the spellst
one can have maximum effect. Some sort of toy or puzzle.
Brine wasn’t sure how long they sat in the library, poring over Kaya’s notes. She lost track of time as she read, and she read everything—some of it twice. This couldn’t be true. She wanted it not to be true. Kaya wasn’t trying to cure the children: He had done this to them.
But Kaya was her father, and he was trying to save the island.
Yes, but he was taking children and draining their minds of everything.
And the one thought that turned everything inside her into a storm: She had also lost her memories. Had Kaya used her, too?
“Maybe it’s not as bad as it seems,” said Tom, his face crumpling.
“You think? Because, from where I’m sitting, this is very, very bad.” She pushed the book off her lap. “You know when Cassie says things could be worse? This is what she means—this is the worst thing.”
She started placing the books and papers back into the opening beneath the floor. Her whole body felt numb. “We have to find Peter.” She wasn’t sure what difference Peter would make, but she usually felt better when he was in trouble with her. She made sure the rug was back in place and everything looked the same as before. Then she opened the door and walked out and straight into Kaya.
CHAPTER 24
Orion’s Keep, like the Onion, is full of magic, and its walls have not corroded. Stone would probably last longer than wood, but after all this time there should be some sign of damage. Three things, then, should have corroded but have not—the Onion, the castle, and Peter.
(from THOMAS GIRLING’S BOOK OF PIRATING ADVENTURE)
Boswell flattened himself to the ground and hissed.
Peter looked up at Marfak West. The ghost looked more transparent than usual, faded around the edges. “Not you again,” groaned Peter. “I thought you couldn’t leave the Onion.”
“Who says I can’t? It seems I can follow you around just fine. Isn’t this fun? How is Kaya, by the way? I did tell him I’d come back, though I have to admit I didn’t expect to do it like this.”
Boswell blew fire at the ghost. It went straight through.
“Is Kaya really Brine’s father?” asked Peter.
“That’s not your story to know.”
“Suit yourself.” Peter turned his back on him. Of course, that meant he had nothing to look at except the reptiles circling in the swamp, but he reckoned it was better than staring at the ghost’s grinning face.
Marfak West drifted in front of him. “It’s rude to ignore someone, you know.” He sketched a shape in the air, paused, and did it again.
Peter sighed. “All right, what are you doing?”
“Showing you the spellshape for translocation,” said Marfak West. “That’s moving from one place to another with magic. It’s a dangerous spell, because if you get it slightly wrong, you might translocate yourself to multiple places at once and end up looking like something Trudi cooked. It may, however, be preferable to being eaten by a crocosaurus.”
“Is that what those things are?” Oddly, the presence of a dead, evil magician made the monsters seem less terrifying.
The crocosauruses swam closer. Boswell flapped into the water and blew a flame at one, and it backed away. How much fire did a dragon have, anyway? Peter wondered. He watched Marfak West repeat the spellshape. “I don’t suppose you have any starshell?” he asked.
“As you keep pointing out, I’m a ghost. How am I supposed to carry starshell? In my ghost pockets?” Marfak West crossed his arms and smiled. “If you don’t have starshell, it’s a waste of time showing you the spellshape. I’ll see you back on the Onion—if you make it back alive, that is. Otherwise I’ll see you much sooner, I suppose.”
He started to fade.
“Wait,” said Peter.
The ghost disappeared with a faint, mocking laugh.
Boswell landed back beside Peter.
“Don’t worry,” said Peter, scratching the small dragon behind its scaly ears. “He’s gone.”
But if Boswell could see Marfak West, that meant the ghost was real, not a dream or hallucination. And if Marfak West was real, the spellshape was probably real, too. Marfak West wouldn’t lie about magic. Not that it was going to do Peter any good if he didn’t have starshell.
Then something that Hiri had said came into Peter’s mind. Some spellstones work in pairs—like speakstones and movestones—and you move yourself between them.
Kaya had sent Peter here, so there must be a spellstone here somewhere. So all he had to do was find the other spellstone, and he could activate the spell to get back to the castle.
Peter spread his hands, trying to catch the prickling sensation of magic. He couldn’t feel a thing, but that didn’t mean anything—spellstones twisted magic around so that it was hard to feel.
“Keep guard, Boswell,” said Peter. He began digging into the soft ground with his hands, pulling up soggy earth. If there was starshell here, the only place it would be safe was underground.
Boswell watched him for a while, then spread his wings, blew fire at the circling lizards, and took off across the swamp.
Peter jumped up. “Boswell!”
The little dragon didn’t stop. Soon he disappeared into the darkness. Peter flopped back down onto the ground. Maybe he should try scratching Brine a message here so that if anyone ever found his body, they’d know he’d tried to escape.
Something stamped and crashed in the distance. A crocosaurus poked its nose out of the swamp and snapped at Peter curiously. Peter hurled a stone at it. “Get back!”
To his surprise, it worked. The crocosaurus fled—and not just that one, but all of them. They streaked away, disappearing under the water as they went.
Peter straightened up, watching the trees. The crashing and stamping increased in volume, and then several trees split apart and the biggest dinosaur Peter had ever seen in his life stepped through.
He couldn’t see it clearly in the dark, which was just as well because he’d probably have run screaming into the swamp and drowned. A long neck, an even longer tail, and a body so vast, it eclipsed everything.
Everything, that is, apart from a small dragon-shaped object flying in front of it.
Boswell flew around the dinosaur’s head, occasionally blowing out a stream of fire as if pointing out the way he wanted it to go. Astonishingly, the animal obeyed, lumbering into the swamp. The dark water sloshed around its body, and crocosauruses fled out of the way as it came.
The dinosaur reached the ground where Peter stood and stopped. Boswell flew down and nudged at Peter’s legs.
“You want me to get on that thing?” asked Peter, feeling almost delirious with shock. Another part of his brain seemed to answer. Boswell seems to have it under control. Can it be any more dangerous than staying here?
The dinosaur lowered its head, and Peter climbed up and slid down to sit in the curve at the base of its neck. Its skin was surprisingly smooth and warm, like old leather that had been left out in the sun. Peter’s arms just about met when wrapped around the creature’s neck. He clung on tightly, grinning to himself and wishing there was someone besides Boswell to see him. He bet even Cassie had never done anything like this.
The dinosaur waded back through the swamp and paused on the far bank. Boswell flew in front, blowing out flames, and Peter sat back to enjoy the ride. Trees bent in front of him as the dinosaur marched through. He patted the animal on the neck, though it probably had as much effect as a butterfly hitting it.
There was nothing to do except cling on and hope for the best. In the end, the slow lurching lulled Peter half asleep and he lay back, cradled in the dip of the dinosaur’s neck, trusting Boswell to lead them to safety.
And finally, a long while later, he heard people shouting.
* * *
Kaya knew, thought Brine. She could tell by the way he looked at them. He knew what they’d found in the library, and he was trying to decide what to do about it. For a moment she considered feigning
innocence, but what would be the point?
“How could you?” she asked.
Kaya was still for so long that Brine thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he let out a long, quiet sigh and shook his head. “It wasn’t my idea. The castle needs magic constantly just to exist, and the amount it needs is increasing every year. I told you about the magician, the one you call Marfak West. He had a theory that magic is a special form of energy. Anytime you change one kind of energy into another, some of it becomes magic. And so, he said, you should be able to deliberately—to change nonmagical energy straight into magic. And then, of course, we fought, and he killed most of us. But, later, I couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said. If I could find a way of turning other energy into magic, it would solve all our problems.”
“Except that, when you take someone’s creative energy, you take all their memories with it,” said Brine. She had a bitter taste in her mouth. She should have known that Marfak West had started all this. “So my mother wasn’t just trying to get me away from the castle—she was getting me away from you.”
Kaya leaned on his staff, looking exhausted. “You were always telling stories; you created whole worlds in your mind. All I did was take that potential and turn it into magic. You didn’t know it, but you were saving the castle all by yourself. But then your mother stole you away from me. I haven’t found another child like you, though I keep looking.”
“But now you know what it does to people,” said Brine. “Ren and the others. You’re stealing their memories … their lives—don’t you care?”
“Of course I care. But if Marfak erupts, everybody will die. What choice do I have?” Something in his face looked broken. “Please try to understand. Orion’s Keep exists to save the island, and without magic and magi, the castle will fall and the whole island will be engulfed in boiling rock. I can’t let that happen.” He coughed. “Please go to bed now. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”
“No,” said Brine. How could Kaya have kept all this hidden from her, and what else was he hiding? “Where’s Peter?” she demanded.
The Journey to Dragon Island Page 14
