Miss Ellicott's School for the Magically Minded Read online

She winced. The thought of Miss Ellicott’s betrayal still hurt.

  “Always mine,” said the dragon.

  “Wow,” said Franklin.

  Miss Ellicott had said a snake was an immature form of dragon. If Lightning had been immature until just recently, then that couldn’t be him on the wall. Unless—

  Unless, Chantel thought with some embarrassment, it had been her that had been immature.

  “How old are you, Lightning?” said Chantel. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “Old as the city,” said the dragon, his tongue darting back and forth as he flicked the words out of a mouth shaped all wrong for speaking. “Older. Old as first humans. Called.”

  “You mean they summoned you? Like I did when I was six?”

  Lightning looked slightly offended. “Was here.”

  “Oh, of course,” said Chantel, not quite understanding this.

  The dragon preened his golden wings. “Genius loci,” he said modestly.

  “Okay,” said Chantel. “Um, good.”

  This seemed to satisfy the dragon. He turned away from the pictures, squeezed past Franklin and Chantel, and slithered up the dark passage.

  Chantel followed his long gold-scaled tail as he swished, snake-like, through caverns and galleries. Marvelous ripples of flowstone hung like glistening curtains. Crystals sprouted up from the floor in places, and there were curious rubbles of rounded rocks that were really, Chantel found when she touched them, all one stone.

  Yet it seemed to Chantel that someone had been at work here, sometime, forming the stone, smoothing out places to walk and even places to sit.

  Once they passed a drawing of stick-figure people standing in a circle.

  Chantel’s heavy wet robes clung to her legs and tired her.

  At last they reached a huge chamber, bigger than the room where Chantel had met the king. This was very clearly a dragon’s room. It had an arc-shaped dragon bed along one wall, and several chests which, in the nature of things, must contain treasure. A waterfall tumbled from halfway up the wall, filling a shallow pool that fed a stream that babbled away into the darkness of a side passage. Beside the pool were a human-sized table and chairs.

  We’re not the first people to come here, Chantel thought with a stab of jealousy. And then—of course we’re not. If he’s really as old as he says, maybe he’s been other people’s familiar over the centuries.

  The dragon settled himself along the couch with a contented sigh. His tail snaked around and tapped one of the chests. “Things.”

  “You want me to open it?” said Chantel.

  The dragon nodded.

  There was a key in the chest. She turned it and lifted the creaking lid. Inside were mostly ordinary things: blankets, sheets, a winter cloak, some old-fashioned-looking robes, all slightly musty. Some dishes and silverware, and a couple of pots. Housekeeping, in fact. The only unusual thing was a cup made of gold, with an elegant enameled painting on it, showing the sea and a high green hill beside it. On the hill were tiny people, standing in a circle. They reminded Chantel of the stick figure people she’d seen on the tunnel wall.

  She turned the cup over in her hands. She thought it must be very, very old.

  “Clothes,” said the dragon. “Wet.”

  He was right. Chantel put the cup back. She dug around in the chest and found some robes. She handed one to Franklin.

  He made a face at it, but they both changed their clothes anyway, turning away from each other.

  She quite liked the robe she’d found that fit her, which was warm and purple and had many interesting pockets, inside and out. It had an enormous dragon embroidered in green and gold, wrapping all the way around the robe with its head on one shoulder and its tail at the hem.

  She looked at her reflection in the pool. Mistake. Her eyebrows weren’t completely gone from the dragon’s flame, but her eyelashes were. Her sea-wet, flight-swept hair was a mess. And there was something else. Maybe it was just the ripples in the pool, but she didn’t look the least bit shamefast or biddable.

  She looked like a girl who rode dragons.

  She was surprised to discover the bundle of cakes had stayed in her sodden robe. She hung up the wet clothes on rock outcroppings in the wall, while Franklin stood around looking annoyed, and also rather old-fashioned in a red silk robe with gold lions embroidered on it.

  “Think now,” said the dragon. “Plan. Sit.”

  What Chantel was thinking was that she wanted to get out of here. But you couldn’t very well argue with Lightning.

  She sat. Franklin sat across from her. She undid her handkerchief full of cakes and looked inside. Everything was smooshed. She reviewed in her head in what order she properly ought to offer the cakes. She and Franklin were the guests, but the dragon was certainly the oldest. “Would you care for a cake?” she asked the dragon.

  He shook his head.

  Franklin grabbed a tart without waiting to be asked. He looked at it dubiously, and then wolfed it down and reached for another.

  Chantel took a battered pink-frosted cake. But she wasn’t really that hungry. She set it down on the table, where it oozed pink seawater.

  “Now,” said the dragon. “You choose.”

  She knew he wasn’t talking about the cakes. “Which side I’m on, you mean.”

  He nodded.

  “And which side you’re on?” Chantel asked, because after all he was her familiar. But she immediately felt stupid for saying it. It was quite clear that while he might be her familiar as a small side job, he was something very much more than that in the main.

  “No,” said the dragon. “That I know.”

  He was watching her closely. She had a feeling she was being tested. She spread her hands on the table and looked at them. There was a dab of pink frosting stuck to one thumb. “Well. The patriarchs want to rule the city. I mean they want to go on ruling the city. If I’m on their side, that means I help them with what they’re doing. Controlling everything, and keeping everyone . . . locked in.”

  She looked up at the dragon to see if he agreed with her. He blinked his great golden eyes.

  “But it also means I can help the patriarchs repel the Marauders. Sorry. The Sunbiters,” she added, looking at Franklin. “After all, the patriarchs are the ones who command the soldiers.”

  The dragon merely waited.

  “If I help the king—” she licked the salty frosting off her thumb. “Then I’ll be doing what Miss Ellicott wants me to do, and I ought to do that because I’m grateful for my education and for having a home and not being a servant or a factory girl.”

  This gratitude had been urged upon her from the time she was small, of course, and she felt she really ought to be grateful for these things. The problem was that her education, and so forth, were so much a part of her that she found it impossible to be grateful for them. It was like trying to be grateful you were born.

  The dragon was still waiting.

  “If I help the king, then I’ll be doing my duty,” said Chantel uncertainly.

  The dragon nestled his enormous head on a scaly forearm and stared at Chantel and waited.

  “I don’t know who I ought to help,” said Chantel. “The truth is I don’t actually like the king or the patriarchs.”

  And as for the sorceresses—Chantel felt suddenly as if she might cry. She pressed her lips together hard. Franklin was watching her intently, and so was the dragon.

  “I . . . can’t I just be on the city’s side?” she asked.

  Lightning smiled, and flames deep inside reflected off his long white fangs. “Yes.”

  He yawned hugely, ending in a ROWRR that shook the cups on the table. “Sleep now.”

  “But—” Chantel said, dismayed. She wanted to go home. She wanted to make sure the girls and Bowser were all right.

  The dragon was already asleep.

  “Come on,” said Franklin, finishing off his fourth saltwater-soaked tart. “Let’s find a way out of here.”

&n
bsp; “I don’t think we should,” said Chantel, doubtful. “He’s expecting us to wait for him.”

  Franklin made an exasperated noise. “Well, let’s at least look around.”

  Chantel lifted the light-globe high. There was that tunnel by the waterfall, through which the stream ran away into the darkness. But there was also a dragon-sized doorway at the far end of the chamber.

  Beyond it was another passage, and it split immediately.

  “We could get lost,” said Chantel.

  “Not as long as we can hear the dragon,” said Franklin.

  In fact, the dragon’s rumbling snore filled the passage.

  On the left, the passage opened into another cavern. This room was full of . . . well, not treasure exactly. It was more of a junk room. There was furniture, much of it broken. There were weapons, and an entire suit of armor. There were flowerpots, for some reason. And tools of various sorts. A large brass cauldron. An old cart. It was all a jumble and a terrible mess.

  “Let’s go the other way,” Franklin suggested.

  They reached another chamber. And stopped and stared.

  “Owl’s bowels!” said Chantel.

  “It’s some kind of library, isn’t it?” said Franklin. “We, er, burned one once.”

  It was like no library Chantel had ever seen. Darkwood shelves lined the walls of the chamber, twenty feet high. They had been carefully crafted to curve and slope where the cave did.

  Besides that, there were other shelves that twisted their way into smaller caves, high in the wall, and within these caves Chantel could see more shelves and more books.

  Spindly spiral staircases climbed the shelves in the main chamber, and insubstantial-looking green copper walkways stretched before every seventh shelf. These were for the humans to access the highest books, Chantel supposed. Lightning could simply reach for any book he wanted, and probably stretch his long neck into the high caves, too.

  Chantel had never seen so many books in her life. She hadn’t known there were so many books.

  She took a book from a shelf. It smelled of leather and old, old paper. She paged through it. It was about plants. Plants did not interest her particularly. But this did: there was no purple stamp on the book anywhere. Every book she’d ever read had had APPROVED stamped inside it, sometimes covering the words.

  Was this the long-lost lore?

  She put it back, and took another book. And another. None of these books were approved! They were unapproved books.

  “Chantel,” said Franklin.

  There was an odd diffidence in his voice. Chantel turned to look at him. His red hair was still wet, and plastered flat on his head. He rubbed his crooked nose nervously.

  “I was wondering,” he said. “Um, how did you find a dragon?”

  “He came out of my head,” said Chantel.

  Franklin looked hurt. “Well, if you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine.”

  Chantel managed to avoid sighing in exasperation. Her deportment was that good. “Remember how I had a snake in my head?”

  “I thought that was just an expression.”

  “No, it wasn’t an expression, it was a snake,” said Chantel. “And I went to see the king, and he took me prisoner, and the snake came out as a dragon, and broke through the roof of the castle and we escaped. Then we saw you about to be executed, so we flew down to rescue you.”

  Franklin gave her a pained look. “That didn’t really happen. About your head, I mean.”

  “All right, suit yourself,” said Chantel. She turned back to the books.

  There were books about architecture, and books about geography. There was a long book about a country Chantel had never heard of. There was a book about beetles. None of these books were approved. Not one of them. Not even the most boring one she’d seen yet, which picked sentences apart and laid them out on stick drawings.

  “Well, say that was really what happened—” said Franklin.

  “I beg your pardon. I believe I did say that,” said Chantel.

  “What’s the dragon going to do with us now?”

  “I don’t know,” said Chantel, putting the book about sentences back on the shelf. “I’ve never met a dragon before today, and I’m not familiar with their habits. I think he’ll probably show us the way out of here, if we ask nicely.”

  “You don’t think he’ll eat us?”

  “He might,” said Chantel, and then felt mean for saying it. “No, I don’t think he will. This is his house. Do you see any signs of eaten people around here?”

  “Just that empty suit of armor,” said Franklin. “And these clothes.” He pulled at his crimson robe in disgust.

  Chantel felt an uncomfortable twinge. But she really didn’t think Lightning was going to eat them, and she did her best to convince Franklin of it. It was odd he needed reassuring, she thought, when he’d been so brave about being executed on the wall.

  The fact was, now that the snake was out of her head, she didn’t find Franklin nearly as annoying. Even his twangy accent didn’t bother her as much.

  “Is Karl the Bloody your father?” she asked.

  Franklin looked down at the floor. He walked over to a table and sat on it. He swung his feet so that they thumped against the table’s stone leg.

  “Yeah,” he said. “But we don’t get along.”

  Chantel didn’t know what to say. She remembered how Karl the Bloody had jerked his head at Franklin and said kill him. It seemed to her that that went a little beyond not getting along.

  “Well, so you ran away from home,” she said.

  “Yeah. And I thought if I could just get into the walled city, I’d never have to see him again.”

  “Karl’s not attacking the city because of you, is he?”

  “Nah. He’s always hated all that stuff about the pass and the harbor and everything. Even before my mother died. Everybody hates you guys for the toll road and the harbor fees.”

  “Oh,” said Chantel.

  “Plus we hate the wall. And maybe we hate the whole idea of having a city on a hill looking down at us.”

  It was hard to continue a conversation after being told that everyone hated you, so she turned back to the books.

  “If I promise to believe you, will you tell me what happened?” said Franklin.

  “Why, if you hate me?”

  “I don’t! I didn’t say that!” Franklin looked distraught. “I didn’t mean it. Girls, sheesh.”

  “You did say it,” said Chantel. “And don’t blame girls.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry,” said Franklin. “Everyone hates the toll and the harbor fees. Is that okay?”

  “I suppose so,” said Chantel. “I didn’t even know there were harbor fees until you told me. Maybe because I’m a girl.”

  “I said I was sorry,” said Franklin.

  Chantel knew she was being difficult. She’d had a hard day. But then, she reminded herself, so had Franklin.

  So she left the books, and sat down on a bench, and told him everything that had happened.

  “Huh,” said Franklin, when she finished. “So you found your Miss Ellicott, and she turned out to be just as bad as my dad.”

  “She did not,” said Chantel.

  “What does she want from you?”

  “I’m not sure. I—do you think she could have known about the dragon?”

  “Stands to reason,” said Franklin with a shrug. “You said her familiar was a snake, right? Did the dragon ever come out of her head?”

  Chantel could not imagine a dragon emerging from Miss Ellicott’s very proper mouth, or a snake ever daring to crawl into her ear.

  “We could ask him, I suppose,” she said doubtfully.

  “I bet it didn’t,” said Franklin. “Otherwise what would she need you for? It’s obvious she wants you because you’ve got the dragon.”

  “I didn’t, then.” Chantel thought. “And she told me she outgrew the snake.”

  Franklin looked skeptical. “I wonder if she even had
the snake.”

  Chantel wasn’t used to hearing Miss Ellicott’s veracity doubted.

  “I wonder if Karl the Bloody will think I’m dead now,” said Franklin.

  “But he must’ve seen us rescue you—”

  “Nah,” said Franklin. “He saw me captured by a big dragon. That’s what it must’ve looked like, if you think about it.”

  He sounded hopeful.

  “Why—” Chantel had been taught not to bring up difficult subjects. “Why would he—” she faltered.

  “Want me dead? Because I don’t want to be a chieftain.” Franklin swung his feet, kicking the stone bench. “My older brother was supposed to be heir, but he died.”

  “I’m sorry.” Chantel wondered if this was also her city’s fault. “Was it spotted swamp fever?”

  “Nah. Crossbow bolt. In a battle with the warrior tribe of Shone. He died covered with honor. But you couldn’t see it for the blood.”

  “Oh,” said Chantel. “Er. That’s too bad. But why do you have to be the heir? Couldn’t they just give the, er, job”—she wasn’t sure how these things worked—“to the person who’s best at, er, crossbow-bolting or whatever?”

  “I suppose. But that would be me,” said Franklin, with a touch of pride. “I can shoot the head off a chicken at three hundred paces.” He frowned. “But I don’t like to. I mean, I like it better when it’s a stick. And in battle, you know, it’s not sticks or chickens.”

  “I see,” said Chantel. “So you ran away. Well, you’re free of that now, anyway.”

  Franklin looked doubtful. “I don’t . . . well, maybe I am.”

  They talked of other things. They speculated about Lightning, and how old he was, and how many times he had been a snake and a dragon over the centuries.

  It wasn’t until they were both too tired to talk anymore that Chantel remembered Franklin had wanted to look for a way out. But she didn’t remind him. They went back to the dragon’s lair.

  There was no place to sleep except the dragon’s couch. It was squashily soft and covered with rich purple velvet. Franklin and Chantel got blankets from the chest and found places at the tail end of the dragon. Franklin fell asleep immediately.

  Chantel did not.

  First, for a long time she couldn’t stop staring at Lightning. He had gotten so very much bigger, and he was clearly an old and powerful dragon and not just a little creature she wore around her neck.