Chapter 8
Perched on the dragon’s back, where his head meets his neck, she feels like a flea on a giant. The dragon hadn’t protested their climbing up here, but it had rumbled questioningly at the rope Neven had wrapped around its neck so they could hold on better. An extra hour had been spent using pieces from the bone pile to create the scabbard that straps diagonally across her back from shoulder to hip. The sword sits in it perfectly. For all his faults, Neven’s brain is something to be admired.
Still, she’s not so sure about this latest idea.
“Come on dragon, fly!” Neven calls out from behind her, the princess clinging to his back. For all his wariness of the beast, he’s caught in an idea. And she knows from experience that ideas can make him fearless, something that doesn’t always end well.
The dragon twists his massive neck around to look at them, then exhales a puff of smoke into their faces. They choke, Bonnie leaning forward to try and find fresh air to clear the burning from her throat. The ridge of tough bone and tougher scale runs from base of skull to tip of tail, a darker red than the rest of him. It provides them with a seat of sorts, and the thicker scales covering the ridge hold none of the smoothness on other parts of his body. The roughness under her fingers gives her something to grip.
“Maybe a different command?” Bonnie says between coughs. She turns around to catch the princess’s eyes. The girl’s commands had worked well enough before.
The princess ducks her head behind Neven’s shoulder, but eventually she speaks. “Please Sir Dragon, we have need of your wings. Will you please fly us over the forest and to my father’s palace?”
The dragon lowers his giant head, making that grumbling noise again. He exhales a stream of dark smoke over the ground.
“Maybe this was a bad idea,” Neven says grudgingly. “This is never going to woooooooorkkkkkkkkk.”
The dragon launches himself into the air like a stone flung from a catapult. Bonnie grips the rope and flattens herself onto the dragon’s body in order to stay on. Her stomach seems to fling itself right down to her toes, searching for the ground. She glances down and wishes she hadn’t. The ground is so far below, the hollow tree is nothing more than a dot. She can see the castle from here with its fallen tower. She can even see one of the great stone pillars that marks the edge of the circle, emerging a little way out to sea.
Neven groans behind her, sounding like he might throw up. Air sick as well as sea sick. She hopes he doesn’t throw up as much as he did on the boat. She can’t imagine the dragon would like that much.
The dragon flaps his wings, and they soar higher over the forest. From this high the Dark Forest doesn’t look as frightening as she’d thought from the tales people whisper, and the ones Jack sometimes tells through his puppets. Monsters are supposed to live in there, with witches, dark spirits, demons, and all kinds of products of dark magic. There is good magic; the kind trained druids carry out for the King and other rich lords and ladies, and there is bad magic carried out by the untrained and cruel hearted. Those found using dark magic are either killed or flee to the Dark Forest that covers the land almost from the bottom of the circle to the very top. Miles and miles of forest that would take many weeks to travel on horseback.
Only, from this far up it doesn’t look like it’s teeming with dark magic. It just looks like a forest. A large forest certainly, the trees as far as she can see, and beautiful. Definitely beautiful, but a forest. Nothing more than that.
The dragon makes that groaning sound again. Only, now he sounds like he might throw up. Wouldn’t that be a sight? Absentmindedly she pats the dragon’s neck, although she doubts he can feel her through the rough ridge. “You’re fine. It’s going to be alright.” She catches herself mid-pat. What is she doing? The dragon is supposed to be her enemy. Instead she almost feels sorry for it.
“What’s going on?” Neven yells, leaning close to stop his words from being swept away by the wind.
“I think he’s sick.” Bonnie leans sideways as far as she dares with the rope in one hand and her legs firmly gripped over the dragon’s ridge. She catches only a glimpse of his face, far into the distance, but it’s enough. “His eyes are closed. I don’t think he likes heights.”
“You’re kidding me? He’s a dragon! How can he be afraid of heights?”
Bonnie has no clue. She racks her memory for some kind of explanation but comes up empty. The last time she’d seen him he’d been a lot smaller, and hadn’t been flying yet. There was a moment when -
No. She doesn’t want to think about that. It makes her heart ache in ways she doesn’t know how to deal with. One day soon she’s going to use her father’s sword to kill him. She doesn’t need an aching heart for that, she needs a fierce one.
Her stomach lurches. She grips the rope tighter, looking for the cause. Either side of her the dragon’s giant wings have stopped their steady flapping. They’re frozen like the crooked sails of some giant ship.
Her insides feel like they’re trying to rise up above her. A sudden rush of blood thumps around her head, making her skull seem like it’s about to burst. It’s when her legs rise off the dragon’s back, and she has to grip the rope to stay seated that she understands.
They’re falling.
The forest turns from an indistinct mass of greens to giant trees close enough to count their branches. Bonnie can’t see, but she knows the dragon still has his eyes closed. He’s scared, and they’re going to crash. “Dragon open your eyes!” She shouts as loud as she can, hoping some of it reaches his ears over the wind. “Dragon! Gelert! Open your eyes!”
He must do, because all at once his wings start to flap again, but it’s too little too late. Bonnie presses herself against Gelert’s back, gripping rope and scale as tight as she can. The first tree they hit cracks so loud she thinks her ears might burst. Then they hit the second, third and fourth all at once and the sound of the first seems a whisper in comparison.
She lurches forward, slamming her head hard against the dragon’s rough scales. Her hands grip the rope so tight that she can’t feel her fingers. The dragon skids along the forest floor, knocking down trees left and right, and churning up a wave of dirt and grass that flies just short of her feet. It’s a relief when she feels Neven’s arms wrapped tightly around her waist. She thought she might have lost them for a minute.
It seems an age before the dragon finally skids to a stop. He raises his head from where it’s half covered in dirt and shakes it blearily.
Bonnie twists around to take in her companions. The princess clings to Neven like a very young child, her eyes squeezed shut. Neven sits, his brown eyes dazed, and his tanned skin an unhealthy grey.
“My Da was right,” he says, the words shaking. “Flying. It’s not natural.” He leans over and throws the contents of his stomach up over the dragon’s side.