by Lari Don
Then she passed round her notebook so they could all see the sketches.
“The most likely stone circle for our riddle is the Ring of Brodgar on the main island of Orkney, just off the north coast. It’s a huge circle, with almost thirty stones still standing, and at least one of the standing stones has runes carved on it. Also a stone went missing from there years ago, and it had a rune on it too. So we could take the stone home, and find your Book at the same time. The only problem is, how do we get there? It’s about 250 miles north of here.”
Sapphire grunted quietly. Perhaps she didn’t want to roar and set the trees on fire. Rona explained, “Sapphire will fly us. She can fly you and me on her back, Catesby can keep up with us and Lavender can perch on our shoulders.”
Yann said slowly, “But I can’t go, can I?” He stamped a hoof, and spoke angrily. “I can’t really fit on Sapphire’s back, not for that long, and even at a gallop I won’t get to Caithness tonight. And the currents in the Pentland Firth are too strong for me to swim anyway. I can’t go. The human girl can go, but I can’t.”
Rona patted his withers. “No, you can’t come this time, but you can go home, and help prepare for the Gathering and keep our people from worrying about where we are. If all of us are missing every night this week, they will start to think we are up to something.”
“So I go home and do housework, while you face danger and find the Book?”
“Have you found out about those teeth yet?” asked Helen, “The teeth of the creature that bit you? You thought that might be useful.” Yann humphed and turned his back on her.
She tried again. “I think I was being watched at school today, by something with a tail, something that breathed in a raspy way. Perhaps you could spend some time working out what is watching us. That would be more useful than sulking, for example.”
He swung back towards her. “I wasn’t sulking. I was thinking.”
Lavender swooped down and pointed her tiny finger at Yann’s nose. “I had to practise synchronized spells while you leapt into the walled garden. You can go and help stamp out the dance floor while we go island hopping. It’s only fair.”
So Yann agreed to go home, to be seen helping with the Gathering preparations, and to work out what creatures the Master was using.
Helen grabbed the last few cheese sandwiches, and watched a drooping Yann walk off through the trees. Then she put the rucksack on her back and joined the others at the edge of the wood. Sapphire had lowered her belly to the ground, and was holding out her front leg as a step. The dragon was clutching the grey riddle rock in her silver claws. Rona climbed on, sat between Sapphire’s neck and wings and beckoned Helen to join her.
Thinking of all the dragon rides she had dreamt of as a child, and wondering if this was real, Helen put her foot gently on Sapphire’s leg and held onto the dragon’s slender silver spikes to pull herself high up behind Rona.
Sapphire certainly felt real. In dreams dragons felt like couches or bikes, comfy and safe. But Sapphire was too wide to sit on comfortably, her scales were bumpy and poky, and as she took a single lurching step forward, Helen nearly fell off. She grabbed onto the nearest dragon spike and held on tight.
Rona turned round anxiously. “Are you alright?”
“I think so.” Helen laughed. “I’ve never done this when I’ve been awake before!”
Then Sapphire took one more clumsy step and leapt into the air. Helen couldn’t see how something so solid could possibly fly, but with a couple of powerful beats of her huge blue-grey wings Sapphire was high in the air and moving forward at great speed.
“Go north!” Helen yelled. “Just go north until we see the sea!”
Chapter 9
Helen found it easier to balance on the dragon when she was in the air. The smooth beats of Sapphire’s wings didn’t swing her from side to side like the dragon’s lurching footsteps did, so once Helen got used to the feel of the dragon’s muscles stretching and contracting under her, and the pressure of the air forced down by the wings at each beat, she felt quite secure.
Sapphire didn’t have a completely spiky back, just half a dozen pairs of spikes spaced along her spine, and the girls sat between them, using them as handles. Helen’s grip on the silver spikes in front of her was soon light and gentle, not tight and white-knuckled.
There was a longer pair of spikes on Sapphire’s head, and a cluster of smaller ones, like a medieval weapon, on her tail. She had gleaming blue scales, shining in the moonlight. The scales on her legs and neck were quite small, but on her back they were as big as Helen’s hand.
The smooth, dry scales were leaf-shaped, and fitted neatly together in clusters and rows. Helen thought she could glimpse patterns and shapes in the scales … clouds, crystals, spirals and feathers.
The wind whizzed past them, carrying the occasional surprise, like a shocked and swerving owl, or a sudden slap of cold wet cloud.
Helen cried out the first time she was surrounded by tiny swirling drops of water, and then laughed with relief a moment later as they flew on, leaving the cloud behind. This was nothing like dragon dreams or dragon stories; it was much, much better!
For most of the journey, Lavender sat on Helen’s shoulder, holding onto her hair, whispering in her ear and giggling, which was quite tickly. Catesby flew above them, keeping up comfortably with the dragon and her passengers.
After they had flown for so long that most of the stars had come out, Sapphire swooped down through a layer of cloud and landed beside a wall of huge flagstones shoved into the bare earth. Helen and Rona slid to the ground, and Catesby glided down beside them. Lavender perched on Sapphire’s snout, a safe distance from her nostrils.
But the wind that had battered them as they flew, which Helen had thought was caused by their speed through the air, didn’t die down much as they landed. They took shelter behind the wall, so they could hear each other, and Lavender lit a few light balls, which she kept near the wall so they wouldn’t blow away.
“This is Caithness,” Lavender explained to Helen as Sapphire rumbled. “The last land in Scotland before the Pentland Firth. Now we need to decide how to get to the right island, and what we will do when we get there.”
Helen wished she had brought a map of Scotland as well as the sketch of the stone circle she had shown them earlier.
“Have any of you been to Orkney?” she asked.
“I have,” said Rona, “but I went by sea. The islands shouldn’t be too hard to find. We’ll listen for waves on rocks and the sound of seabirds, or we could just ask for directions.”
Catesby squawked briefly and Rona explained, “Catesby thinks we shouldn’t land inside the circle, in case the Master’s creatures are already there. We should land a little way off and sneak up to the circle.”
Helen didn’t like to ask whether dragons can sneak, especially dragons carrying rocks. Instead she asked, “Are we looking for a clue or for your Book?”
“Both. If the Book is there, we treat it with great respect and ask it to return with us. If it has been scared off again and has left a clue, we grab the clue and get away as quickly as possible.”
“And if the Master or his creatures are there?” Lavender’s voice wobbled a little.
“Then we still have to get the Book or the clue. By force, cunning or sacrifice if need be,” Rona said grimly.
Lavender nodded, “Then we must decide where to look.”
Glancing at Helen’s sketch, the fairy drew the stone circle on the bare earth with her tiny toe. She jumped into the middle. “I will search the centre, as that is where the power of the circle is concentrated. And the rest of you must look at each stone on the edge, including the gaps where stones have fallen or been taken, as there will still be energy in their emptiness.”
From her position in the centre, she split the circle into four quadrants and gave each of her friends an equal stretch of the edge to search.
They agreed to split up outside the circle, and return as quic
kly and quietly as possible to their landing site once they had explored their quadrant.
Helen’s tummy, which hadn’t objected to dragon swoops and swings, was starting to somersault at the thought of searching for a stone circle in the dark, on her own. It had been exciting hearing the tales of the others’ adventures and patching them up afterwards, but now she was inside the adventure, putting herself at risk, facing barely understood dangers to find something she had never seen. However, she could hardly back out now, miles from home and so close to the circle.
As they climbed back on to Sapphire in the fading fairy light, Helen noticed that Rona had a small fur fabric bag on her back. “Is that to carry the Book home in? Because we could use my rucksack if you like.”
“No, this is my skin. If we find what we need without meeting danger or anyone getting hurt, I may go and visit my cousins off Stromness before we leave. I need my skin to return to my real seal shape.”
Helen hesitated before sitting down behind Rona. That bag was real fur. More than that, it was real living fur. It was part of Rona’s body that she put on and off.
Rona seemed the most normal of Helen’s new friends; no wings, only two legs, no fire-breathing. But Helen suddenly realized that Rona was probably the strangest of them all; Rona changed shape.
“Does it hurt, changing shape?”
“It’s a bit stretchy and itchy and quite tiring, but it’s not sore. However, I do have to take good care of my seal skin. I have to keep it with me or else leave it with someone I trust completely, because if I lose it I can never swim or sing in the sea again …”
Then Sapphire leapt off into the dark air, and the speed of her flight into the wind dragged the rest of Rona’s words right past Helen’s ears.
Helen had no idea how they found the mainland of Orkney. They flew north for a few more minutes, until they were surrounded by the sound and smell of the sea. Then Sapphire circled round and flew so close to the tops of the waves that they were splashed by the salty spray thrown up by the gathering wind.
Rona called out a question in a strange, shrieky voice and some seals answered her, heads rising out of the churning sea. Rona pointed Sapphire in a new direction, and soon they could see a faint glow of light from towns on the edges of the islands.
They swerved round a burning flare from an oil terminal on one of the smaller islands, and found themselves above the sand, rocks and fields of the Orkney mainland. Seals resting by a rusting pier gave Rona further directions to the circle.
They found the ring a couple of miles inland, on a small hill between two lochs, just beside a narrow road.
From above, the stones looked like great slabs of darkness in the night. Sapphire landed gently and silently at the side of the road, between the larger loch and the circle. Catesby and Lavender perched on fence posts. Rona slid down off the dragon, then Helen followed her. They huddled together.
“Off we go, each to their own search,” instructed Lavender.
And everyone but Helen moved away.
Lavender and Catesby flew off silently. Rona climbed over the fence, jogged through the long waving grass towards the circle and was quickly lost in the darkness. Helen’s question about whether dragons could sneak was answered when she realized that Sapphire had vanished from her side too.
The light of the moon and stars was just enough to see the circle ahead, over a flimsy gate and a gentle rise of uneven grass and heather. She couldn’t see or hear anything move, neither friend nor foe. She didn’t know what the foes would look like or sound like anyway. She didn’t have any idea what a clue from a Book would look like either. If it was carved on a huge stone, she wouldn’t be able to take it away with her, though she could scribble the words in the notebook tucked in her fleece pocket.
Helen still hadn’t moved.
She had to do this now, or Lavender would soon be back from her search of the centre.
She took a deep breath and forced herself to put her right foot forward. Pushing her way against the wind and her own fear, Helen clambered quickly over the fence and the rough ground towards the circle. She could see gaps where half the stones had fallen or were missing, but it was still an amazing sight. Nearly thirty massive stones jutted up to the sky; the only solid things unmoved by the wind swirling round the island.
The circle was on a slope, so the lower stones, nearest to Helen, were harder to see, but the ones on the top edge were outlined clearly against the grey sky and the stars.
She was safe so far, and seemed to be alone, which was scary. But alone was better than being surrounded by evil creatures with teeth and dark powers. Suddenly the ground fell away from her and she pitched forwards into emptiness. Was this a pit; a trap dug by the Master’s creatures? For a moment she panicked, then realized it must be the ditch round the stones. She rolled down to the bottom, with heather scratching her but also catching her and breaking her fall.
Helen shook her head. She should have been more careful. She’d known about the ditch, and had even sketched it in the library. She didn’t bother standing up, just scrambled straight up the steep side of the ditch to the stones above.
Helen had been asked to search the quadrant of stones nearest their landing place. When she reached the first stone in her section, she patted its base and the grass around it with her hands, feeling for books or bricks, stones or jigsaw puzzles … whatever the clue might be. She ran her hands over the grainy stone surfaces of its front and back face, reaching high over her head to feel for any recent carving. But all she felt were patches of lichen and rough cracks.
She did the same with the second stone a few paces away. It was only a shattered stump, with layers of rock splitting apart like the pages of a slightly open book. Helen knelt beside it and poked her fingers cautiously into each space. She found nothing but cold and darkness.
The third standing stone in her search was one of the tallest in the whole circle, which towered over her as she walked towards it and began to run her hands over it. Suddenly, she heard a small scream carried on the wind. It sounded like Lavender and was coming from the centre of the circle.
She turned towards the sound of the scream and, as she did so, she tripped over something stuck in the ground at the base of the stone and fell full length on the hard ground. She reached back and touched something taller than it was wide, pointing up to the sky just like the stones, but not much bigger than Helen’s foot. She tugged it out of the earth, shoved it in her fleece pocket and ran towards the circle’s centre.
As Helen ran, the noise from the centre grew louder and more confused. Lavender’s high-pitched screams were joined by other screeches and squawks that Helen couldn’t identify, though they reminded her, bizarrely, of holidays at the seaside.
The blackness in the centre began to glow and glimmer. Helen recognized balls of fairy light from Lavender’s wand, moving crazily in the wind, and sparks and small flames from Sapphire’s throat. The others must be gathering there too, to help Lavender. And Helen would join the fight just as soon as she got there.
But suddenly, in the flickering light, she saw a sight that stopped her breath and her feet. She saw all her friends in a group round a pile of small stones. Lavender and Catesby were flying above the stones, Rona and Sapphire were on the ground, all hitting out at large white birds that were attacking them. But high above their heads, unnoticed by any of them, was a huge green net held in the beaks of dozens more birds.
Helen saw the danger at once and yelled, “Run! Scatter!” Before her friends could move, there was a sudden flurry as all the attacking birds flew away from the fight and the net was dropped. Rona, Sapphire, Lavender and Catesby were trapped.
Lavender was so tiny that after being knocked to the ground by the net, she was able to fly through one of the diamond-shaped holes and escape, but she was immediately mobbed by the birds, which Helen now recognised as massive grey and white seagulls. The fairy weaved and danced through the air to avoid their beaks and claws.
Parts of the net vanished instantly but Rona screamed. Drops of molten plastic had landed on her bare arm.
Helen was crouched in the heather, hoping the seagulls wouldn’t see her, and rummaging in her rucksack. Most of the birds were swooping above the net, pecking at their captives, and beating them with their wings. Sapphire blasted more flame into the mass of wings, and blew many of the seagulls, scorched and screaming, up into the sky. There was a sudden stink of burnt feathers.
Most of the seagulls flapped off to join the flock trying to catch Lavender as she zigzagged round the stones. She was fast and nimble enough to escape the seagulls, but the wind kept catching her and blowing her back at them.
Sapphire kept twisting, tangling herself further and knocking Rona off her feet.
“Stop!” yelled Helen. “Stop struggling and stay still.” She had found a large scalpel in the bag and started to hack away at the thick strands of salty net, which still had bits of seaweed and fish scales embedded in it.
First she freed Rona, who was sobbing and holding her arm, but who immediately ran off to call encouragement to Lavender and urge her to fly down to the ground.
As Helen started to slice through the net round Catesby, she was whacked in the back by a force so strong that she fell forward onto the phoenix.
She whirled round to see a seagull flying straight at her head. She ducked, but it wheeled round and flew at her again. Its webbed feet scraped her shoulder this time, ripping her fleece. As she shoved it away with her elbow, it lunged for her face, the yellow beak so close that she could see the red dot on its sharp lower half as the hooked upper half tried to gouge into her eyes.
Seagulls were such common birds; she had never noticed just how huge they were, nor how sharp and long their beaks were, nor what terrifying birds they could be if you were their prey.