And who would help, if they knew? Who could you count on?
Nobody, that’s who. Not Miss Ellicott, nor any of the other sorceresses. They had betrayed Chantel, betrayed the school. And not Miss Flivvers—if she knew Chantel was stuck on a rock in the ocean, she’d probably flap her hands helplessly and tell Chantel to recite the 423 situations in which a magical maiden must never find herself.
Not the patriarchs—they only cared about themselves. And the king was no better. And the other girls, even Anna, well, they really relied on Chantel to know what was best. Bowser wouldn’t know what to do.
An image of Franklin came into Chantel’s head. The one person who might actually know what to do, but he’d been captured by the—
A wave washed over Chantel’s feet.
She took a step backward and almost fell. She scrambled to regain her footing. The entire rock was underwater now except the little bit she was standing on, and the waves were lapping over that.
The tide was coming in. She’d read about that in books. The dragon had left her on a rock that disappeared at high tide!
She was going to have to swim for it. Or drown for it, more likely . . . she couldn’t even remember which way the land was. She—
There was an almighty crash, and a wall of water knocked Chantel off her feet. She was in the ocean, fighting the waves and her entangling robes.
Then a dragon head loomed out of the mist. “Sorry,” it said. “Forgot.”
“You—!” Chantel swallowed salt water and sank.
The sea roiled around her, and then she was rising, the dragon beneath her. The dragon gave a grunt and a small shrug, and Chantel slid into a space between his back and his neck.
The rock was completely submerged now, but he rose up, standing on it.
Chantel was just feeling around desperately, realizing there was nothing at all to hold on to on a dragon, when the dragon’s muscles bunched. He sprang forward and glided out over the open sea.
Chantel threw herself flat and wrapped her arms around as much of his neck as she could reach. The dragon sailed upward, rising through the fog. They broke out into sunlight. Chantel saw the fog like a sea below her, and then it slowly broke apart and she saw the ocean, deep blue and spreading to the horizon. Here and there it was dotted with ships like toys. She saw a cluster of fish at the surface—no, not fish, she thought. Whales! I’m seeing whales!
She felt a rush of joy. Whatever happened now, even if she fell off the dragon and died—she had flown. And she had seen whales.
The dragon flew higher still, over the harbor and over the city and over the marshes where the Sunbiters were camped, and up to the mountains.
And there he landed, on a shelf of rock, his claws grating and sending up sparks.
Chantel slid from his neck. She was shivering with cold.
“Sorry,” said the dragon again, in his odd voice. “Forgot the tide.” He gave an apologetic shrug. “Snake a long time.”
“What’s your name?” Chantel asked. She had named the snake Japheth herself. It seemed to her now to have been a terribly forward thing to do.
“Lightning.”
Chantel remembered the dragon asleep under the apple tree in the Ago. Queen Haywith had called him Lightning. But no—it wasn’t possible. That dragon had been much smaller. And after five hundred years? Besides, Miss Ellicott had said a snake was an immature form of dragon.
Miss Ellicott. She wasn’t ready to think about Miss Ellicott just yet.
“Shoulders?” Lightning inquired. He lifted a claw and pointed.
“Oh,” said Chantel. “Um, they’re fine—”
Actually, they hurt. She pulled her robe off one shoulder and looked. There would be claw-shaped bruises later.
“It’s fine,” she said. “Thank you.”
She gazed down at the marshes. She got her first good look at the Sunbiter camp.
There were thousands of Sunbiters.
Thousands upon thousands. Their camp went on for miles. She saw men cooking and men eating. There were men polishing shields and sharpening weapons. There were enormous catapults, poised to fling huge rocks into the city, and there were siege engines, tall wooden towers on wheels for reaching the top of Seven Buttons.
The camp stretched nearly to the harbor walls—which, Chantel saw, were bristling with Lightning Pass soldiers.
Chantel saw more camps, further out in the marshes—the Sunbiters’ families, she guessed. Laundry flapped in the breeze. There were tiny people tending tiny herds of cattle and flocks of geese.
A procession was coming from the harborside, headed for the Sunbiters’ camp. From the bright colors of their velvet capes and hats, Chantel recognized the patriarchs.
“Can we go down closer?” Chantel looked around for a path. There was nothing but a sheer cliff down to the road below—which must be the toll road, Chantel realized.
“Can fly,” said Lightning with a shrug.
“Wouldn’t they see us?”
The dragon cocked a sardonic eyebrow at her. This was the first time Chantel had noticed he even had eyebrows.
“Well, they would,” she said. “And then what?”
“Then they see us,” said the dragon laconically.
That was probably an easier attitude to take if you were an enormous firebreathing dragon than if you were a Chantel. Still—
“Maybe you could set me down on Seven Buttons?” Chantel suggested. “So that I can see what happens. And then you could come back for me, so that I don’t get captured by the king or—or the sorceresses. That is, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”
She considered curtseying, but her robe was too wet and she was too tired.
The dragon nodded. “Can do that.”
She mounted by using the dragon’s front leg as a step, just above the elbow. It was like stepping on slightly slippery metal tiles.
“I beg your pardon,” she said. “I hope I’m not hurting you.”
There was a fiery rumble deep inside the dragon which Chantel thought might be laughter.
Right. Next step. Chantel reached up and put her hands flat on the dragon’s back. She heaved herself up. She bunched her soggy robe underneath her.
“Hold on,” said Lightning.
And with no more warning than that, he plunged from the crag.
Chantel fell forward and held on as tightly as she could. They swooped and circled over the Sunbiter camp. Chantel heard shouts of alarm down below, and a thunder of feet running in all directions. She half-hoped (and half-feared) that the dragon was going to blast the Marauder camps with fire.
Then suddenly she found herself sliding off Lightning’s neck onto the wall-walk atop Seven Buttons, and Lightning was flapping away.
And nobody even noticed she was there. Of course they didn’t. They were too busy staring, running, and yelling. When a girl rides in on a dragon, nobody notices the girl.
She did a self-abnegation spell anyway.