Then, without warning, Autumn fell over.
“Are you all right?” Cai helped her up.
“Fine.” There was a stick in her path, which had been hidden by a hollow in the ground. She picked it up, brushing away leaves and needles. She had thought it might be suitable for fetch, but no, it was too big. It had probably fallen off the hagberry tree looming over them. She was about to drop it, but something stopped her.
“Did hedgewitches have staffs?” Autumn tried to say it casually, as if the answer didn’t matter one bit. As if the idea of hedgewitches hadn’t been lurking constantly at the edge of her thoughts.
“I don’t know.” Cai’s voice was distant. “But I remember reading that they used hagberry boughs to ward off harmful spells and curses.”
“Hmm.” Autumn examined the branch. It was the right size for a staff, with a nice smooth area right where her hand would go. Other than that, it looked very little like a magician’s staff—certainly nothing like Cai’s, gleaming like a fallen star. It was, in truth, a little creepy. Scaly moss clung to the bark and spiky twigs stuck off the tip at odd angles. A line of small red mushrooms curved along the wood just below her hand. And yet there was something about it that Autumn liked. It reminded her of the walking stick Gran sometimes carried when she went into the Gentlewood.
Cai wasn’t looking at the stick. He wasn’t looking at anything that Autumn could see. Up ahead was a wall of dark—that was all a forest was at night, after all, walls upon walls of dark—and a few drifting wisps.
“Cai?” Autumn said.
“I hear something,” he murmured.
Choo whined. He was standing next to Cai, his highly pat-table head within patting range, yet Cai was ignoring him. Something was wrong.
Cai took a hesitant step forward. Then he broke into a run.
“Cai!” Autumn yelled.
She ran after him, following that glowing staff. Unfortunately, the wisps were almost the same color as Cai’s staff, and they rose out of the forest floor in great numbers as Autumn ran. She didn’t realize she was running toward one until her boot sank into a boggy patch of earth.
She drew back, but now she had no idea which of the bobbing lights was Cai’s. And his cloak, that fine Inglenook cloak enchanted with a dozen protective spells, would only make it harder for them to find each other.
Cai! she yelled in the Speech. Cai, stop!
Autumn kicked a tree in frustration. She couldn’t believe Cai—was he being heroic, or responding to some wicked instinct? What a ridiculous boy, or monster, or whatever he was!
Then she remembered the lock of starlight and fumbled around in her pocket. Why hadn’t she asked Cai how to use it? Was she supposed to throw it into the air? Speak a magic word? Cai had blown on it, so that’s what she did.
The starlight wavered and went out.
“No!” Autumn cried.
Choo cocked his head at Autumn, puzzled. Why was she just standing there? He knew exactly where Cai had gone—his nose wasn’t hoodwinked by wisps or magical cloaks. With a bark, Choo plunged back into the woods. Autumn sprinted after him, her mind full of images of Cai getting sucked into a bog or swarmed by wisps or roasted by the folded dragon.
Cai! she yelled. Cai! She had worked herself into such a panic that she didn’t see Cai until she ran right into him.
She yelped. Cai yelped. He had been doubled over against a tree, his hands pressed to his ears, and barely caught himself on a branch.
“Ow,” he said, rubbing his head. “How is it possible that you’re just as loud when you’re speaking silently?”
“You can’t just take off like that!” Autumn cried.
“I thought you would follow me! I gave you that spell—”
“Which I didn’t know how to use!” Autumn stamped her foot. “I’m not a magician, Cai! I’m not like one of those friends you drag around on your adventures. I’m not like you.”
Choo gave a tremendous sneeze.
Cai looked sheepish. “I’m sorry. I should have—I mean—”
“It’s all right.” Autumn felt embarrassed, too. She realized that she had been enjoying herself in her Inglenook cloak with Cai at her side, playing his sidekick. She thought of the unfriendly stares in the Inglenook study. She didn’t belong in Cai’s world. If she ever forgot that, it would make it impossible to go back to her own.
Choo gave another, even more tremendous sneeze.
“What did you hear?” Autumn said.
“Something strange.” Cai cocked his head, listening. “There it is again!” he murmured.
Autumn listened, but she heard only the rustle of the leaves, the soft trill of some distant stream.
Choo sneezed again, this time so forcefully he raised a cloud of dirt.
“Choo, will you shush—” Autumn’s voice faltered.
Something was moving through the forest. Not toward them, but across their path. Autumn felt it before she saw it, for the creature was large enough to stir the breeze, and send it drifting through the forest, scented with brimstone.
It was the Hollow Dragon.
16
IN WHICH CHOO SAVES THE DAY
Autumn knew the creature was the Hollow Dragon because it couldn’t be anything else. There was the flash of jagged claws, the quiver of a spiny back, the muffled glow of a throat filled with embers. And yet she was equally certain that it wasn’t a dragon at all.
Weaving in and out of the shadows with a strange singsong gait, the Hollow Dragon couldn’t be seen, only glimpsed. But those glimpses told Autumn that something was very, very wrong. The dragon was taller than the beastkeepers’ cottage—twice as tall, three times even. His skin flapped like the oilcloth of a tent, as if it held nothing but air. His eyes were empty sockets that seemed to stare at nothing and everything.
Choo woofed, his posture alert. Was this something he could chase, or something that would chase him? He liked both.
“Get back.” Autumn took Cai’s arm and drew them into the deepest shadows, where their cloaks would hide them. Cai murmured a word, and the light in his staff went out.
The Hollow Dragon gave a long, undulating howl, and Autumn fell back against the tree, her hands pressed to her ears. The trees in the Gentlewood seemed to bend toward the dragon, and as they did, they darkened and grew wilder. The thorn tree’s thorns sharpened; the rowan’s roots twisted like snakes, ready to snare and tangle. To Autumn’s horror, one of the neighboring trees gave a shiver, for it wasn’t a tree at all, but a sleeping monster too gnarled and ancient to decipher, and it was waking.
The forest is answering, she thought numbly.
She turned to Cai and found that he’d collapsed in a patch of moonlight, his hands tangled in his hair. Choo sniffed him, whining.
“I’ve heard that before,” he murmured. “It’s what I hear in my visions. This is worse, Autumn. It’s worse than any of the other times. I can’t stop it—”
“Yes, you can,” Autumn hissed. She grabbed his arm and pulled him back into the shadows. “Just do it over here. Choo, quiet.”
The dog understood the command and stopped panting. The smell of smoke grew stronger, and the wind lifted Autumn’s hair from her brow. Had the Hollow Dragon sensed them? She lost sight of the monster as he passed through a dense copse of oak trees.
“That song,” Cai murmured, so quietly that Autumn had to lower her ear to his mouth. “It’s beautiful.”
Autumn went cold. She couldn’t hear anything. She clamped her hands over his ears.
“Don’t listen,” she whispered. “Don’t listen.”
Cai’s head fell back. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow. So much for my theory, some distant part of Autumn noted. True, Cai hadn’t fainted immediately. Perhaps she should count that as an improvement.
Autumn managed to drag him behind a fallen tree. She crouched next to Cai and drew the hood of her Inglenook cloak over her white hair, praying that it would conceal her.
“Useless hero,
” she muttered.
She arranged Cai’s cloak so that it covered his legs and his face and gave his hand a quick squeeze. “Don’t worry. I’ll protect us.”
She felt relieved, at least, that this couldn’t be the prophecy coming about—Cai couldn’t exactly fight the Hollow Dragon unconscious. She just hoped it wasn’t some prologue to the prophecy that the seer hadn’t bothered mentioning, one in which a nameless servant got herself roasted alive while Cai took a nap.
Autumn gripped her walking stick and peeked over the lip of the tree. Choo poked his nose over.
At first, she didn’t see anything. The forest was dark and silent. Something gleamed among the boughs—a wisp, Autumn thought. But the gleam grew brighter, warmer. The shadows played tricks on her eyes, and she couldn’t work it out.
Then the outline of the Hollow Dragon seeped out of the darkness like oil rising through water, and Autumn realized that he had been there all along. The glow came from the embers deep in his throat.
She froze.
What moved through the forest couldn’t be alive—and yet it was. The stories said the Hollow Dragon was skin and bone, yet Autumn had never guessed how horribly accurate that would prove. Ribs poked through a hole in the dragon’s hide, and his tail was a long curve of bone—hide and bone and fire were all the dragon was, as if everything else had been eaten away. Autumn had once seen the corpse of a dragon deep in the forest that had looked similar—dragon hide was tougher than leather and remained long after the soft parts had decayed.
She looked closer. The Hollow Dragon had two horns just behind his ears, though one was broken. His skin was covered in patchy fur the color of a winter forest. He looked like a boreal dragon—clearly a male, given the horns. Gran had kept a boreal dragon in the menagerie when Autumn was little, until it had grown too big, and she had released it. While large, dragons of that species were nearly harmless. They avoided people, keeping to their gardens of mushrooms and winter berries in their snowy northern fastness.
The boreal dragon gliding through the forest was clearly dead. Yet monsters couldn’t rise from the dead any more than people could. Autumn knew of only one explanation for what she saw.
Something’s possessing that dragon.
Her stomach roiled. Gran had spoken once of monsters who could possess other living things. They were ancient monsters whose names had long since been lost to human memory. Some of the stories said they were bodiless, like boggarts; others that they had bodies, but abandoned them to drink the souls of other creatures. At some point, the monster inside the boreal dragon had taken over his body, and then the dragon had died—or perhaps he had already been dead. And the monster had been inside him ever since.
What was the Hollow Dragon? And could he even be fought?
The monster slid closer. He hadn’t seen them. He would pass by.
Cai’s body twitched, as if he was trapped in a nightmare. Autumn reached out a hand to still him.
Cai groaned.
The Hollow Dragon stopped. His head turned.
His empty eyes met Autumn’s.
A terrible hiss sounded in his throat, like a cauldron boiling over. Steam billowed from his nostrils and clouded the trees. Leaves caught fire from the heat and tumbled to the ground, black and smoking. The Hollow Dragon drifted toward Autumn.
When he did that, Choo stood up. And, for the first time in his life, he growled.
Choo had no enemies. He was beloved by everyone he met, monsters included—who, after all, were just animals with more interesting smells. On the odd occasions he’d been swatted or charged by one of the creatures in the menagerie, he had accepted it as an amusing spot of roughhousing between friends. Yet although Choo knew himself to be universally cherished, some deep-buried part of him was aware that his family, the Malogs, were not so blessed. They had enemies. All two-legged creatures did, the poor lumbering things.
So when Choo saw the Hollow Dragon turn slowly to face the smallest member of his family, fire in his throat and rage in his empty eyes, Choo knew what he had to do.
“Choo, no!” Autumn cried. The dog wrenched free of her grip and charged at the Hollow Dragon’s ankles. Barking madly, he dodged and wove and nipped at any bits of dragon he could reach.
The Hollow Dragon drifted backward. He appeared more confused than anything. Like the boggart, he didn’t quite touch the ground. Also like the boggart, he was all quicksilver grace. One moment, he was in front of Choo; the next, behind him, fanged mouth stretched wide as fire bloomed in his chest.
Autumn leaped out from behind the tree. Stop!
She put everything she had into that command. The trees trembled, leaves spilling from their boughs. For a moment, the Hollow Dragon seemed to tremble too. He looked at her, his decaying face empty and yet terribly intent.
He glided toward her.
Stop! Autumn cried again.
But the Hollow Dragon did not stop. Autumn wasn’t Gran; she hadn’t learned to command every monster. Autumn wasn’t sure if even Gran would have power over this creature. But she knew that she had none.
Choo hadn’t finished with the Hollow Dragon, though the monster had dismissed him as something akin to a fluffy insect. He latched on to the dragon’s leg and pulled. The Hollow Dragon howled.
“Choo, come!” Autumn shouted. She lifted Cai and slung him over her shoulder. The first time she toppled over, but the second she managed to stand up. Then she was running.
Or, rather, limping. Autumn was stronger than most girls her age, but carrying an entire boy was no joke. The Hollow Dragon would have caught her in a heartbeat if not for Choo.
Choo. He was still back there. Was he all right? Autumn didn’t dare look. Her legs shook with terror.
Help, she shouted in the Speech as she staggered and stumbled through the trees. Help.
She threw the word into the forest like a net, grabbing at any monsters she could reach. Wisps swarmed out of the trees, chittering in confusion. They were among the easiest monsters to command. Autumn glanced back. They had swarmed the Hollow Dragon, darting into its empty eye sockets and through its fleshless ribs. For a moment, it looked as if the creature wore a cloak filled with glowing bees.
The Hollow Dragon hissed. But Autumn knew the wisps wouldn’t delay the beast, whatever it was, for long.
Help, she screamed.
Choo raced to Autumn’s side, circled once, and ran ahead. He was leading them back home. She shoved her way through a dangling wreath of honeysuckle—the sticky flowers caught at her hair. What was honeysuckle doing in the Gentlewood?
She managed to pick herself up the first time she fell, though her shoulders screamed and her left arm was completely numb. The second time, though, she couldn’t lift Cai again, no matter how hard she tried. Her legs simply wouldn’t cooperate. They wobbled and shook like jelly. Choo circled the two of them, barking madly. He seized Cai’s trouser leg and tried to drag him on. Burnt leaves drifted over them, along with something sickly sweet-smelling—rose petals? Autumn realized they were in a clearing, sitting on a neat bed of winter pansies, which tumbled down a tiered path. Where were they?
Autumn looked back.
The dark boughs rocked in a smoky wind. There among the darkest shadow was a gleam of light, like a campfire hovering in midair. Slowly, other things came into focus—the patchy fur of the Hollow Dragon’s belly; the gleam of his teeth. The creature drew near, not bothering to hurry, until they were separated by a scant few paces. He opened his steaming jaws.
Autumn closed her eyes. She was still crying for help, but now it was a whisper inside her. Choo was barking and growling, but the sound seemed far away. She gathered Cai in her arms and buried her head in his shoulder. She felt the little light flicker inside her, as if somewhere, wherever he was, Winter could sense her danger.
I’m sorry, she told the light. I’m so sorry.
Something gave a rumbling growl.
The Hollow Dragon’s head whipped around. The growl came agai
n, louder this time. Leaves rustled, as if a small animal—surely no larger than a bird—darted through the trees.
Two huge nostrils poked through the boughs. The nostrils were followed by a fanged snout, gleaming black eyes, and curving horns. Folds of skin gave the face a droopy appearance, like an old hound, but there was nothing hound-like about those glittering teeth, nor the plume of smoke wrapped about it like a scarf.
The folded dragon howled. He had been shaken out of a deep, satisfying sleep by Autumn’s cry. Only the old woman who lived at the edge of the forest could shout like that, and so the dragon had come to investigate. He didn’t like the old woman, but he respected her, and she would surely reward him if he helped her out of a bind. Perhaps another basket of daffodil bulbs?
But instead of the old woman, he had found an intruder. What was this strange counterfeit of a dragon doing in his garden? And was that his rosebush it had scorched, his honeysuckle it had mangled?
The folded dragon lunged at the intruder. But the Hollow Dragon faded back into the shadows and unleashed a geyser of flame at the folded dragon’s side.
Suddenly the forest was on fire. The tree next to Autumn and Cai burst into flames. Autumn screamed: the light threw the Hollow Dragon into relief, illuminating every rotting tear and gash in his ancient hide. Her terror filled her with new strength. She managed to pick Cai up again and stagger on.
Choo raced at her side, barking encouragement. There was heat at her back and smoke clouding her vision, and her hair fell into her face tangled with ash. The hisses and howls of the dragons reverberated through the forest even after she could no longer smell smoke. Autumn ran and ran until she couldn’t run anymore. She put Cai down and began slapping his face.
The School between Winter and Fairyland Page 17