“Your mommy must miss you, too,” Jess told Breezy. “Why don’t you go home?”
The dragon shook her scaly head. “Can’t! Grizelda put a spell on us. We can’t fly away from the forest.”
Goldie turned to the others, her tail twitching crossly. “Grizelda said she kidnapped the dragons, didn’t she? They don’t want to be here at all!”
“I know they’ve caused lots of problems, but I feel sorry for them,” said Jess.
Lily nodded. “If we can break Grizelda’s spell, I bet they’d go home!”
When they told Breezy their idea, the dragon shook her scaly head. “No one can stop Grizelda’s magic,” she said sadly. “We’re stuck here forever.”
“Well, we’re going to try,” Jess told her, pushing her windswept curls out of her face. “But first, will you do something for us? Can you free the Gigglepips from the tornado?”
Rosie’s little face peeked out from inside Lily’s cape. “Oh, yes!” she squeaked, clasping her paws together. “Please, Breezy!”
But Breezy shook her head sadly. “I only know how to start tornados,” she said. “Mommy hasn’t shown me how to stop them yet.”
Rosie’s whiskers drooped with disappointment.
“It’s okay,” Lily said, cuddling her close. “We’ll free them soon, I promise. Now, where can we find out about dragons and dragon magic?”
They all thought hard as the wind swirled around them. Then Rosie gave an excited squeak.
“I know!” said the little guinea pig. “Mrs. Taptree’s library!”
“Of course!” cried Jess. “Let’s go!”
They hurried through the raging storm, struggling over broken branches and weaving through great billowing clouds of fallen leaves. Only Breezy seemed to find the journey easy, zipping along above them. At last, Goldie stopped at a broad chestnut tree. Its branches were swaying wildly in the storm and it had a door in its trunk. “Here we are!”
Mrs. Taptree’s chicks, Dig and Tipper, were peering through the window. They waved excitedly and their mother opened the door.
“Come in out of the wind!” Mrs. Taptree cried. “Quick! Quick!” Then she caught sight of Breezy, and squawked, “No, no! You’ll blow away my books!”
“Breezy will wait outside, Mrs. Taptree,” said Goldie. She hurriedly explained to the Taptrees why they’d come. “Do you have any books on dragons?”
“Ladders?” said Mrs. Taptree, clapping her wings together. “Dragon books, please! Quick!”
The ladders glided along the shelves. Goldie and the girls collected some books and searched through the pages as fast as they could.
Mrs. Taptree closed a book. “This tells you how to clean dragons’ teeth,” she said. “That’s no good.”
“I’ve got How to Dance Like a Dragon,” said Lily.
“Mine’s about teaching dragons to swim,” Jess said.
Goldie shut her book. “This is about famous dragons and their daring deeds,” she said.
But Rosie gave another excited squeak. “Look!” she cried. “I’ve found a spell to summon dragons!”
Jess glanced outside at the wild storm.
“I think there are already too many dragons in Friendship Forest, Rosie. We don’t need any more!”
Rosie frowned thoughtfully. “No, wait,” she said. “Grizelda’s spell stops the dragons flying away from the forest … but maybe we could summon their mother to come and get them!”
Goldie’s green eyes gleamed. “That’s a wonderful idea! Oh, good job, Rosie!”
“And Breezy said her mom could stop the tornado, didn’t she?” added Lily. “So if we can do the spell, we can ask her to free the Gigglepips!”
Rosie gave a delighted squeak and clapped her paws together.
Jess studied the book. “Smoke Signal Summoning Spell,” she read. “To summon a dragon, you must send clouds of smoke up into the air. It’s important to follow a special pattern: Smoke … smoke smoke … smoke … smoke smoke …” She pulled out the little sketchbook and pencil she always kept in her pocket, and copied down the pattern.
“There’s just one problem,” Lily said. “Where can we get smoke in the middle of a storm? It’s too wet to make a fire.”
The little guinea pig squeaked again. “I know where to get smoke!”
“Where?” everyone cried.
Rosie smiled. “From the dragons, of course!”
“Good luck!” called Mrs. Taptree, as the three friends and Rosie stepped back out into the storm.
“Breezy!” Goldie shouted over the noise of the wind. “Breezy, we’re ready to try breaking Grizelda’s spell!”
The red dragon gave an excited twirl in the air as she flew over.
“Yippee!” she cried. “I’m going to see Mommy soon!”
Jess laughed. “That’s the plan. Grizelda’s magic won’t let you fly away from the forest, so we’re going to summon your mom here to take you home. What do you think?”
Breezy gave a roar of delight and blew a gust of wind so strong it made a tall beech tree shudder.
“To call your mom, we just need you to breathe your fire so we can have some smoke,” Goldie explained.
But Breezy’s face fell. “Fire?” she said. “Smoke?” She shook her scaly head. “I’m no good at breathing fire. My brothers and sister are much better than me, and I don’t know where they are.”
From inside Lily’s cape, Rosie gave a sob. “That means I won’t see my mommy either! Or my daddy, or my sisters Posie and Josie …”
“Hang on,” Jess said. “We’ve helped all the other dragons—Chilly and Dusty and Smudge—we know where they are!”
Breezy flew a loop-the-loop. “They can make smoke!” she said excitedly.
Goldie grinned at the girls. “Then let’s gather some dragons!”
They set off through the storm. Rosie curled around Lily’s neck and peeped out of the cape hood.
“There!” Goldie shouted over the wind, pointing to a soft light up ahead. “The glowworm bush—that means we’ve reached the Winter Cave!”
“Chilly’s inside,” Lily told Breezy. “Can you call him for us?”
The red dragon flew down, skidding to a stop by the cave entrance. She stuck her nose inside. “Chilly, come with me!” she rumbled. “The girls and Goldie are going to fetch Mommy!”
Chilly came out from the cave, his eyes wide. “Will we really see Mommy again?” he asked.
“We hope so,” Jess said.
“Yippee!” shouted Chilly and blew a puff of snow into the air.
“To Coral Cove next!” said Goldie. Dusty the yellow dragon loved sunbathing, so Lily and Jess had told her about Coral Cove, a little beach by the river. It was near Grizelda’s dark, gloomy tower, so they kept well hidden in the wind-tossed bushes as Breezy told Dusty what was happening.
Then they hurried through the storm to the lighthouse where the Fuzzybrush fox family lived. Smudge the black dragon had loved dancing with Ruby Fuzzybrush, Goldie, and the girls so much that little Ruby had asked him to stay with them.
When Smudge came out to join his brother and sisters, all the Fuzzybrushes stood at the door, waving.
“Good-bye, Smudge!” Ruby called over the wind that whistled around the lighthouse. “Remember the dance moves I showed you!”
“I will!” Smudge promised. He did a twirl in the air, but a gust caught his tail and he bumped into one of the swaying trees, scattering soot everywhere.
Lily giggled. “He’s still as clumsy as ever!”
Jess looked up at the four dragons flying above them and grinned. “Back to the Whirligig!” she cried.
The girls and Goldie huddled under their capes as they battled their way back through the trees. Lily kept Rosie inside her cape, safely tucked under one arm. By the time they reached the magical windmill, the dragons were very excited.
Goldie called up to the Gigglepips, who were still trapped up inside the whirling tornado. “Don’t be frightened of the dragons,” she shouted, “they’re here
to help rescue you!”
The four baby dragons landed on the wet ground.
Jess took out her notebook, where she’d written down the smoke-signal pattern. “We need you all to blow big puffs of smoke together,” she told Chilly, Dusty, and Smudge. “I’ll tell you when. And Breezy, we need your wind to blow the smoke straight up. Remember, we don’t want any fire, just smoke!”
Dusty looked disappointed. “Not even a little bit of fire?”
Jess shook her head.
“A really tiny bit?” begged Smudge.
“Definitely not,” said Lily firmly.
The dragons sighed.
“Everyone ready?” asked Jess. “One … two … three … BLOW!”
Chilly, Dusty, and Smudge all puffed out their cheeks and blew. Jets of smoke shot out of their mouths, forming a huge, dark cloud above them. Then Breezy’s wind caught it and the smoke whirled up, higher and higher in the sky.
“BLOW, BLOW!” Jess shouted. The dragons puffed out two more clouds of smoke, one following quickly after the other. After a moment, Jess yelled, “BLOW!” Then she shouted, “BLOW! BLOW!” again.
The clouds of smoke rose up high above the forest.
“Well done, everyone!” cried Goldie.
The dragons flapped their wings happily. Breezy did a loop-the-loop and landed next to her brothers and sister.
Jess grinned. “Now we’ve just got to wait for their mom to arrive.”
They all stood looking up at the sky. The wind howled around them, making Jess and Lily’s capes flap. Rosie stood under the tree where her family were trapped, her little paws tightly crossed for good luck.
But nothing happened.
Breezy gave a huge sigh that rippled the tops of the trees. “It didn’t work,” she said sadly. “Mommy isn’t coming!”
The four baby dragons huddled together miserably.
“I don’t understand,” said Lily, shaking her head with dismay. “What did we do wrong?”
“I don’t know,” said Jess. “But the dragons are still stuck in the forest, and we’ve got no way of getting the poor Gigglepip family down.”
Rosie stood by herself, looking wet and forlorn.
Suddenly, Lily’s eye was caught by something flying toward them through the rain. She grabbed Jess’s arm.
“Look, it did work! She’s coming!” Then she gasped. “Oh, no—that’s not a dragon … it’s Grizelda!”
The witch’s yellow-green orb floated toward them. As it exploded into stinking yellow sparks, the baby dragons dived under a tree, their wings wrapped around each other.
The sparks cleared, revealing the witch. The wind blew her green hair around her head even more than usual, and her thin, bony face was purple with rage.
“I might have guessed!” Grizelda screeched. “So you pesky girls made those smoke signals! What were you doing?”
Before anyone could reply, Grizelda spotted the dragons. She pointed at them, sending a jet of hot sparks that made them jump.
“What are you doing here?” she snapped. “Go and wait in the dungeon beneath my tower. Now!”
But then a great dark shadow fell over them all.
Lily and Jess looked up.
A huge dragon was hovering above the clearing. Her scales were all the colors of her babies—red, yellow, blue, and black—and she was even bigger than the Toadstool Café.
The girls grasped each other’s hands.
“Our spell worked after all!” Jess cried. “We’ve summoned the dragons’ mom!”
Lily’s eyes were wide. “Jess, do you think we did the right thing? I bet she could burn the whole forest down with one breath if she wanted to!”
“I don’t know,” said Jess, “but we’re about to find out …”
The mother dragon swooped down and landed neatly beside the Whirligig.
“Mommy! Mommy!” yelled the dragons. They flapped over to her, and their mother folded her wings around them.
“My beautiful babies,” the mother dragon said in a deep, soft voice. “I’m so happy to see you!”
And she planted a kiss on each of their heads. The baby dragons gave gurgling roars of delight and snuggled even closer under her wings.
Jess grinned at Lily. “We definitely did the right thing!”
“I’ve been so worried,” the mother dragon said. “Where have you been?”
From the corner of her eye, Lily caught sight of Grizelda tiptoeing away toward the trees.
“I’d forgotten she was there,” Lily whispered to her friend.
“Chilly hasn’t,” Jess giggled. The blue dragon was pointing his wing at Grizelda.
“We were kidnapped,” he told his mother. “Kidnapped by her!”
Breezy, Smudge, and Dusty flapped over to Grizelda. “Her! It was her!” they cried.
The mother’s eyes flashed silver. “Bad!” she thundered. She reared up. With a roar that was far louder than the storm, she blew a stream of red, blue, yellow, black, and ice-white flames at the witch.
Grizelda jumped out of the way just in time. She tumbled into a pool of mud and landed with her legs in the air.
“If you come near my babies again,” the mother dragon roared, “I’ll toast you to a crisp!”
Grizelda scrambled upright. “I’m sorry!” she screeched, staggering as her high heels sank in the mud. Her green hair, covered in brown ooze, stuck to her bony cheeks. “I’m sorry! I’m going!”
With a snap of her fingers, she disappeared in a splatter of smelly sparks.
Everyone cheered. The dragons flew happily around their mother and Lily picked up Rosie and spun her around. The little guinea pig squeaked happily.
“We’ve defeated Grizelda!” Jess cried.
“Friendship Forest is safe!” Lily chanted.
They grabbed Goldie’s paws and danced around each other, not caring about the storm.
The young dragons flapped happily above them, while the mother dragon looked down at the girls.
“I am Saffire,” she said. “Thank you for your kindness to my little ones, and for bringing me here. What are your names?”
“I’m Jess, and this is Lily,” said Jess. “Our friends are Rosie Gigglepip and Goldie. They live here.”
Saffire looked at the trees whipping around in the wind, the snapped branches, and the fallen leaves. “Breezy!” she bellowed. “Did you make this mess?”
Breezy nodded sheepishly.
Saffire turned to her other babies. “And I suppose you’ve been spoiling this lovely forest, too?”
The young dragons hung their heads.
“Sort of,” said Dusty.
“A little bit,” said Chilly.
“Well, maybe a lot,” admitted Smudge.
“Naughty children!” said Saffire. “If you made the mess, you must clean it up. We’re not going home until you do.”
Rosie bravely crept forward and tapped Saffire’s huge clawed foot. “Please, do you think you could help my family?” She pointed up to the tornado in the tree. “They’ve been trapped there for a long time, and Breezy said that you could free them. Then we can fix the Whirligig and stop the storm!”
Saffire’s great head swooped down until her big, scaly nose almost touched little Rosie’s pink one.
“Of course I’ll help, little one,” the mother dragon said.
Saffire strode up to the tree where the Gigglepips were trapped. She opened her huge mouth, but instead of a roar, she let out a stream of bubbles. They floated around the tornado, and as they burst in a shimmer of sparkles, the whirling wind vanished. In a flash Mr. and Mrs. Gigglepip, Josie, and Posie were standing safely on a branch, free at last.
Rosie squealed with delight. “Thank you!” she cried.
Saffire dipped her nose toward the guinea pigs. “Climb on,” she said with a smile.
The four Gigglepips hopped onto the dragon’s nose, and she carefully lowered them to where Rosie was waiting.
“We’re so happy to see you!” cried Mr. Giggl
epip.
“Thank you so much for looking after Rosie!” said Mrs. Gigglepip.
“And for saving us!” squeaked Posie and Josie.
“It’s about time we stopped this terrible storm,” said Mr. Gigglepip. “Come on—let’s fix the Whirligig. Everyone inside and hold tight to a whirler!”
Jess and Lily peeped through the doorway and watched each guinea pig take hold of a whirler, which was like a spinning top. Some whirlers were big and some small, and the Gigglepips darted from one to the other, spinning them, stopping them, then spinning again.
“That’s complicated!” said Jess. “No wonder only the Gigglepips can take care of the Whirligig.”
The sails began to slow down. As they did so, the wind began to drop. “It’s working!” cried Lily.
The rain stopped, the sun came out, and a rainbow arched across the sky. A soft breeze blew gently through the trees.
“Finally! The storm’s over!” said Jess happily, shaking out her tangled curls while Lily shrugged off her cape.
“Look,” cried Goldie. “All the animals are coming out!”
A family of blue birds flapped their wings dry and turned their faces to the sun. Lola Velvetnose strolled over, whistling cheerfully. Lily and Jess waved as the Prickleback family gathered around the Whirligig, drying off their spines. “Sunshine at last!” called Mrs. Prickleback. “Now, what can we do to help clean up?”
Before long, all the forest creatures were busy cleaning up the mess made by the storm. The young dragons flew back and forth, taking fallen branches to Mr. Cleverfeather, the owl, for him to use in his inventions. Saffire breathed warm air into the Toadstool Café to dry it out, then lifted the roof and put it back on.
As dusk fell, the forest was almost back to normal.
Mr. Longwhiskers hopped onto a tree stump. “Everyone’s invited to a celebration at the Toadstool Café,” he shouted. “And the dragons will be our special guests!”
Soon the girls, Goldie, the Gigglepips, the four baby dragons, and all the animals were sitting around tables outside the Toadstool Café. Saffire sat nearby, looking proud and happy.
Rosie Gigglepip's Lucky Escape Page 2