Lily and the Shining Dragons (21 page)

‘Where is he going to go?’ Elizabeth whispered.

‘London.’ Lily smiled at him. ‘And he’ll take us with him, if we want to go.’

‘You mean, escape?’ Sarah asked, her eyes widening. ‘Run away from Fell Hall?’

Lily nodded. ‘I know it’s difficult. With your families…’

Mary sniffed. ‘I don’t have a family. I’ll go.’

‘I don’t think ours would take us back anyway,’ Elizabeth said miserably, stroking Lottie’s arm. ‘They haven’t written. And they were so ashamed, when we were taken.’

‘I think – I hope – we have somewhere to go in London,’ Lily explained. ‘A theatre. Anyone who can’t go back home could stay with us there. We might not be able to stay long,’ she added, with a tiny sigh. ‘People were chasing us. But you’ll be safe.’

‘Others are stirring, elsewhere in the house,’ the dragon said, flattening his muzzle against the floorboards, and turning a huge dark eye up to Lily. ‘If we’re going, we must go.’

‘Oh! The boys!’ Lily jumped off the bed, and hurried to the door, to find it opening as she came closer. She hung back, suddenly sure that Miss Merganser had discovered them. The magic rushed into her fingers, struggling against the damping spell that still lingered in the stones of the walls.

But a boy’s face peered round the door, his eyes bulging as he took in the dragon, his wings half open as he prepared to leap after Lily.

‘I dreamed about him,’ he muttered, and he flung the door open so that the rest of the boys could follow him – even Peter, hauled along by two of the others.

‘He was flying us out of here, in my dream,’ the boy added doubtfully to Lily.

‘Now, if you like,’ the dragon agreed. ‘Lily, go and fetch the princess from upstairs. I have left her door open for you. We will meet you in the long gallery, round two corners from here. You know it? I can break out of that arched window at the end.’

Lily nodded, and pushed her way through the boys clustered in the doorway, Henrietta racing after her, and snapping at their heels. ‘Move! Idiots! Can’t you see we have a mission?’

After a dragon, and a princess, the boys hardly seemed to blink at a talking dog, but they flattened themselves against the wall obediently.

As she hurried down the passage, Lily could see the dragon emerging from the dormitory after her, already with children climbing up his back, searching anxiously for handholds. She raced away, dashing for the stairs. It was still only early, but Miss Merganser and Miss Ann would be coming to wake them all soon.

The princess was standing at the top of the stairs, peering worriedly down, and clutching a basket that Lily guessed contained her embroidery.

‘You came – he said you would. Is it now?’

Lily nodded breathlessly. ‘We have to hurry.’

‘What are you doing? Lily Powers! I might have known!’

Lily whirled round, the colour draining from her cheeks. Not now! Not when they were almost away!

‘Run!’ Princess Jane ran down the stairs faster than any old lady should have been able to, and seized Lily’s hand as Miss Merganser strode along the passageway in her sharp-heeled boots. Their tapping seemed to mesmerise Lily. She was fixed to the spot, her hand resting on the carved banister rail, watching the warden approach. The sweetly pretty face was white with anger, the pink lips set into a cruel line.

Something bit her, and Lily jumped, tearing her eyes from Miss Merganser at last, and staring down at the banister.

A tiny wooden dragon glared back and hissed, its wings flapping as though it meant to pull itself out of the carving, and fly away too.

Lily gasped. ‘We have to fly!’ She turned, hand in hand with the princess, and they stumbled down the next flight of stairs. Lily could hear Miss Merganser tapping down behind them. Closer and closer. She didn’t dare look round, just pulled the old princess down the passageways, hoping that she knew the room the dragon had meant. She almost laughed with relief as she turned the final corner – his shining tail was trailing out into the passage. She ran her fingers along it lovingly as they raced into the room.

‘She’s here!’ Georgie cried. ‘Lily, climb on!’

‘We’re being chased!’ Lily screamed. ‘Miss Merganser! Go now!’ She flung herself forward, hauling the princess after her.

The dragon’s shining whiteness was hidden now by children, clutching odd garments, and here and there a treasured toy that had survived Fell Hall. He was huge again, stretching the full length of the gallery, large enough for forty children to find handholds along the ragged spikes of his spine. She counted them as she pelted past – all the girls, Lottie with Elizabeth’s arms wrapped around her. Twenty boys, was that right? Peter was up near the dragon’s front legs, blinking in bewilderment. He was still half-trapped in the spells, Lily realised anxiously. But perhaps the journey on the dragon’s back would wash the last of them away.

‘Here, Lily,’ the dragon called. ‘Bring the princess, and sit here, up by my neck.’ He shot out one enormous clawed foot, pushing them up on to his back. They had hardly settled themselves in the hollows between the spikes before he hunched his wings for the jump.

Lily could feel his muscles bunching under her. She wrapped her arms tightly around his massive neck. Now that the dragon was larger, the huge plates of his scales were so ridged that she could grip on to them with her bare toes.

‘Go,’ she panted. ‘Hurry!’

One of the littler girls screamed as Miss Merganser appeared in the doorway, her eyes angry blue pits as she took in the dragon, and his load.

‘Now,’ the dragon muttered, and he swung his enormous head at the oriel window, smashing the thin stone traceries that held the glass in place, and growling with satisfaction as he caught the scent of the outer air.

He roared as he plunged out of the gaping hole he’d left, drawing his wings tightly in to his sides, and then shooting them out with a desperate lunge as he hurled himself into the air.

They seemed to hang there for a moment, fighting the thinness of the air, and Lily closed her eyes, convinced that they were about to fall.

And then the wings stretched out fully with a sharp, satisfied snap, and they beat, once and then again. There was a rush of air past Lily’s ears, and she dared to open her eyes.

There was a great pearly expanse of wing on either side of her, shining in the early morning sun, like the insides of the shells she’d picked up so long ago on the shingle at Merrythought. They had to be as wide as he was long, she realised, blinking. She had never seen them stretched out.

They were spiralling, up around Fell Hall, gaining height, and below them she could see little figures spilling out on to the grass, staring up.

‘They’ll try to throw spells at us,’ she screamed at the dragon, the wind whipping her words away. ‘They know we’re escaping!’

‘Higher soon,’ he gasped back, beating his wings ever harder. ‘Won’t catch us.’

They spiralled higher, and then shot forward, lifted on an air current, like some huge bird of prey.

Behind her there came a sudden, surprised noise, not quite a sigh, and Lily glanced round.

‘Peter!’ she screamed, and she saw Georgie stretching out desperately, her fingertips scrambling at the old jacket he’d flung on over his nightgown. But she couldn’t reach him, and he was tumbling through the air beneath them, his hands convulsing as if he was trying to find some way to hold on to nothing.

‘He fell!’ she screamed to the dragon. ‘He fell, can’t you catch him?’

The dragon was peering round, stalling in the air, and falling in sickening jerks.

‘Him or us,’ he muttered, beating up again. ‘I cannot. I would never get airborne again. And they are throwing spells at us, look. If I go lower, they will bring us down.’

Peter was smaller and smaller now, falling horribly fast towards the velvet grass.

Lily leaned forward against the dragon’s neck, tears burning her eyes. It seemed so unfair, when she had found Peter again, after so long. How could she lose him now, so carelessly?

‘Lily, look!’ Georgie screamed, and Lily pulled her head up, her hair tangling across her eyes with wind and tears, and gasped.

Fell Hall was shaking.

The walls shuddered, and the tiny figures on the terrace seemed to mill around like ants pouring out of a nest.

Exploding out of the dust of the collapsing house came another dragon, red-gold, and another and another.

A dark blue-black creature twirled in a delighted somersault, and shot underneath the falling boy. Lily caught her breath – did the black dragon even understand what was happening? Had it seen Peter, or was it just glorying in the feel of the air on its wings?

With another lazy twist, the dragon darted up towards the boy, catching him like a cat patting at a mouse, and then bounding further up into the sky after them.

‘The others!’ Lily shrieked to the dragon. ‘They’re awake! They’re here! And one of them caught Peter.’

The dragon glanced back, and nodded. ‘Good.’ His wings beat more strongly again. ‘Very good. London, then, little cousin?’

And Lily nodded, smiling as the wind from his wings streamed her hair behind her. They had done it. They’d rescued Peter, and they had the secret they’d been searching for. And they were flying! The Derbyshire hills rolled beneath them as they sped onwards, and it was too exciting, too wonderful to worry about breaking into a magicians’ prison, guarded by who-knew-what. She rubbed one massive scale on the dragon’s neck, and nodded again.

‘London.’

www.orchardbooks.co.uk/rose

Rose peered out of the corner of the window at the street below, watching interestedly as two little girls walked past with their nursemaid. They were beautifully dressed in matching pale pink coats, and she found them fascinating. How could anyone keep a pink coat clean? She supposed they just weren’t allowed to see dirt, ever. The little girls strolled sedately down the street, and Rose stretched up on tiptoe to get one last look as they turned the corner. The bucket she was standing on rocked and clattered alarmingly, and she jumped down in a hurry, hoping no one had heard. The tiny, leaded windows at St Bridget’s Home for Abandoned Girls were all very high up, so that the girls were not tempted to look out of them. If any of the matrons realised that Rose had discovered a way to see out, they would do their utmost to stop her, in case her virtue was put at risk by the view of the street. Perhaps they would even outlaw buckets, just in case.

Rose straightened her brown cotton pinafore, and trotted briskly along the deserted passageway to the storeroom to return the bucket. She stowed it carefully on one of the racks of wooden shelves, which was covered in more buckets, brushes and cloths. If anyone saw her, she was planning to say that she had been polishing it.

‘Pssst! Rose!’ A whisper caught her as she headed for the storeroom door, and Rose shot round, her back against the wall, still nervous.

A small greyish hand beckoned to her from under the bottom shelf, behind a large tin bath. ‘Come and see!’

Rose took a deep breath, her heartbeat slowing again. No one had seen her unauthorised use of the bucket. It was only Maisie. ‘What are you
doing
under there?’ she asked, casting a worried look at the door. ‘You’ll get in trouble. Come on out.’

‘Look,’ the whispery voice pleaded, and the greyish fingers dangled something tempting out from under the shelf.

‘Oh, Maisie.’ Rose sighed. ‘I’ve seen it before, you know. You showed it to me last week.’ But she still crouched down, and wriggled herself under the shelf with her friend.

It was Sunday afternoon. At St Bridget’s that meant many of the girls had been in Miss Lockwood’s parlour, viewing the Relics. Rose didn’t have any Relics, which was why it was a good time for borrowing buckets. Even if anyone saw her, they would probably be too full of silly dreams to care.

‘Do you think it’s meant to hold a lock of hair?’ Maisie asked wistfully. ‘Or perhaps a likeness?’

Rose stared thoughtfully at the battered tin locket. It looked as though it had been trodden on, and possibly buried in something nasty, but it was Maisie’s most treasured possession – her only possession, for even her clothes were only lent.