Chapter Ten
In which Tabitha goes swimming
On a hunch that Kuzo had gone north, Chantra and Tabitha began their search in that direction. Chantra thought that north would be the fastest way to get to the sea, and Tabitha felt that it would be the best place to find a nice, cold, solitary mountain to fly around while he fumed. She had seen his passion beneath the gnome king’s castle, and she didn’t think that he was done fighting yet. She just hoped that they didn’t end up on opposite sides of the conflict.
Before long, Tabitha began to regret their decision to head north, because of the cold. Chantra could keep herself warm forever, but Tabitha had to release a little puff of fire every minute or so to keep her belly burning and, on top of flying, that took a lot of energy.
“I could eat a horse,” she grumbled hungrily.
“Oh no,” Chantra said. “Don’t do that.”
“No, I won’t. But if we don’t catch sight of him soon, I’m going to have to set down and rest for a while,” Tabitha said. “Maybe then we’ll see a bird.”
Tabitha had been keeping an eye out for birds since they left the Fallow Fields, but she had yet to see a single one. Whether it was because they were too far north or the air was too cold or the birds just saw a dragon coming from afar and were keeping their distance, she didn’t know, but that was starting to bother her more than the cold or the weariness.
“Oh!” Chantra exclaimed. “Go back! I think I saw something!”
Tabitha pivoted in the sky and searched the snow-covered ground until she found what Chantra had seen. Something was buried in the snow far beneath them next to a winding river that looked mostly frozen over. It was shaped like a dragon, but it was too far away to be certain. Could Kuzo have crashed? It seemed like an odd place to lie down for a nap. She banked toward the ground and then leveled off to descend more gradually. Chantra gave a shriek of terror at the sudden movement.
“Sorry,” Tabitha said. She glanced back toward the ground, examining the dragon shape beneath them once more. “Maybe he’s just resting?”
“Not after he exhausted all of his fire,” Chantra said. “He would get too cold resting in the snow like that. He must have crashed.”
“I hope he’s all right,” Tabitha said.
Just before they were low enough to see for sure what was beneath them, the wind picked up and filled the air with a fine mist of snowy powder coming off the mountainside. Practically steaming with frustration, Tabitha barreled through it. They were just going to have to walk right up to him and see if he was okay. Hopefully he wasn’t in a bad mood.
When they landed on the ground, a child screamed in fright, and Tabitha roared in surprise, just as startled at finding a child where she had expected a dragon as the child was at a dragon popping out of the snow-filled air.
“Oh my,” Chantra said. “It isn’t a dragon at all. It’s people. It looks like they got stuck in the snow!”
Sure enough, as she dipped her long neck and brought her head out of the snowy mist, Tabitha saw that what they had taken for the body of a dragon was actually a long, haphazard caravan of wagons. Several of them were stuck in the snow and one had toppled over. People were still picking the contents out of the snow. The foremost wagon was tipped halfway in the river, and a dozen men were trying to pull it back out. Apparently they had tried to cross the frozen surface and broken through the ice.
The child’s scream set everyone moving. The men that were trying to fish the front wagon out of the river abandoned it at once and armed themselves with axes and pitchforks from the wagons as they rushed toward Tabitha. A boy nearby threw a stone at her, and it bounced off the scales of her belly harmlessly.
“Oh dear,” Tabitha said.
“Tabitha,” Chantra called up as she climbed gingerly down the spines on her back, “now might be a good time to change into something less threatening.”
“Ooh,” Tabitha said. “Right.” And a split second later, her regular human-sized feet were standing inside her dragon-sized footprints in the snow.
The men drew up short. “Where did the beast go?” one of them asked. “It must have hidden in the trees,” said another. “Spread out!”
“Wait,” a strong voice said, and the others fell silent. A thin man with an aged, stooping walk pushed his way slowly to the forefront of the men, his gaze trained on Chantra. “The dragon did not leave,” he said. His wizened eyes slipped from Chantra’s face to Tabitha’s. “She is here.”
There were murmurings among the men, and the boy who had thrown the stone at her earlier came forward a few steps. The old man addressed Chantra, “I remember you. The Mage of Fire. You look just the same as when I saw you last, though old Bast is now transformed.” He tapped himself on the chest. “I doubt that you recognize me now. No, I see that you do not. No matter, you did not know me well.”
“I’m sorry,” Chantra said.
“No matter,” he repeated, waving her words away. He turned and indicated the caravan. “My village has been stranded, as you can see. We only just heard the news about the evacuation. There are few men in our village, and I do not expect that anyone from Calderon will come up to help us. They think of us as a tough and self-reliant people, when they think of us at all—and we are. But I am afraid that the river has bested us.”
“Maybe we can help,” Tabitha said, peering around the men and rolling up her sleeves.
“Tabitha,” Chantra said. “We can’t take too long. We need to find Kuzo.”
“We don’t even know where he is,” Tabitha said dismissively. “These people need help. Besides, it’s what Brinley would do.”
“That’s fine,” Chantra said, raising her arms defensively, “I want to help too. I’m just saying we don’t have a lot of free time right now.”
“We have enough,” Tabitha said absently, waving to the boy who had thrown the rock. “Hello there, don’t worry. You didn’t hurt me.”
The boy blushed and ducked away. Then Bast spoke again. “Er…my lady?” He seemed unsure of how to address Tabitha. “Do you think, if you, eh…turn into a dragon again you could lift the wagon out of the river?”
“Oh, yes,” Tabitha said, striding forward. The people let her through and stepped clear as she changed into a dragon in front of the wagon. Several of the women screamed, and the horses closest to her whinnied and tried to run. The boy, who was standing nearby watching her, whooped and laughed enthusiastically. A girl that looked like his sister handed him a baby all bundled up in thick blankets, and he bounced the child on his knee as he watched.
Tabitha braced her back legs deep in the snow and took hold of the back of the wagon gingerly. Her greatest fear was breaking the wagon when she pulled. She was always so surprised at how delicate everything became when she was a dragon. Luckily the wagon came out in one piece, but she did leave giant gashes in the rear panel with her claws.
“Oops,” she said, inspecting them after she changed back into herself.
“I don’t think you’ll be able to carry the wagons over the river,” Chantra said, coming up beside her. “Your claws are too sharp to hold the wood gingerly, and even if you could, I don’t think they will withstand being lifted off the ground like that.”
Tabitha inspected the wagons and saw that she was right. All of them were very old and decrepit. The one that she had just handled was by far in the best shape. No doubt that was why it was picked to try the crossing first.
Several people passed around them and began to remove things from the wagon—a wicker chair, a basket of clothes, a teapot—and dried them off one by one.
The old man was standing behind them thoughtfully, listening as they spoke, when a younger man approached him. “Reckon the witch could turn into a dragon again, Bast? Lift the wagons over?” He had an accent that Tabitha hadn’t heard before.
Bast shook his head. “Nope. Can’t do it. That’s what they just said.”
“Well, then what are we going to do?”
“We could melt the ice,” Chantra suggested. “Between the two of us, that shouldn’t be too hard. And then we could build a raft, maybe? There certainly are enough trees around here.”
Bast nodded, but his face held a frown. “A good idea, but that might take a few days, even with your help. We don’t have that kind of time. We dropped everything when we heard the news, o’course. Thought we had better make it to Ninebridge as soon as we can, though how that’s going to save us…”
“Broken, bumbling, bum of a plan, I say,” the younger man grumbled. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. The whole kingdom standing back to back won’t be enough to scare Shael back to where he came from. We’ll all just die together.”
“Oh, but there is more to the plan than that,” said Tabitha. “I’m sure you will all be quite safe.”
“Hmph,” the young man said.
The sister of the boy, who had been watching Tabitha, said, “Pip won’t be safe either way.”
“Who’s Pip?” Tabitha asked, and the girl took her hand and walked her to the back of the third wagon in line while Chantra continued to talk with the men.
“Pip’s my age,” she said. “He’s from our village, but he stays in Calderon during the week to bring home news, and also because he doesn’t get along with his ma. He ran his horse hard, all the way from Calderon on his own, in the storm, just to bring us the news, and he nearly froze himself to death. Bast says he thought he was going to be okay, but then he went and dunked himself in the river trying to get the wagon out.”
“Oh my,” Tabitha said as the girl pulled aside the canvas closure of the wagon. There was a young boy of about ten or eleven inside, wrapped in a large bundle of blankets. A woman, who she assumed must be the mother that he didn’t quite get along with, was trying to feed him something hot, but he was drifting in and out of consciousness.
“Go and get Chantra,” Tabitha said, turning the girl around and pushing her in the right direction. “Tell her to come quick.”
Tabitha climbed into the wagon and put her hand to the boy’s head. Then she checked his pulse. It was very slow, but stronger than she expected it to be.
“Tabitha?” Chantra said, coming around the end of the wagon. “What are you—oh.” She stopped short and covered her mouth in surprise.
“You need to warm him,” Tabitha said. “I won’t be able to do it as gently as you can. I don’t think it would be good to just set him on fire.”
The boy’s mother, who had brightened as Tabitha was checking on her son, suddenly looked worried.
“It’s okay,” Chantra assured her as she climbed in beside Tabitha. “I know what I’m doing.”
She unfolded the blankets that encircled him and took him in her arms, and then Tabitha helped the boy’s mother wrap the two of them back up together.
“It’s going to get a bit warm in here,” Chantra said. Then her face began to shine. Sure enough, heat began to radiate from Chantra as if someone had lit a small fire in the center of the wagon. For a moment, Tabitha was worried that the boy might get burned, being so close to her like that.
“Wait, have you done this before?” the boy’s mother asked.
“No,” Chantra said. “But how hard could it be?”
“Just make sure you don’t cook him!” Tabitha said ernestly.
His mother did not see the humor in this, but she said nothing. Already some color had returned to Pip’s cheeks. Tabitha took his pulse again and was pleased to find that it was stronger and much more regular.
“I think that will be enough, Chantra. Come out of there.” She helped her friend detangle herself from the blankets, and Chantra touched the little pot of soup that Pip’s mother was holding. The woman set it down abruptly, waving her hand and wincing.
“Oops,” Chantra said. “Sorry. Wait a few minutes and then give him some more of that, though I don’t think he will need too much. He’s quite warm now.”
At her words, Pip opened his eyes slightly and blinked at Chantra. He gave her a small smile and arched one eyebrow in a question that he was too weak to form. Then he slipped back to sleep.
“Love at first sight, I expect,” Tabitha said, and Chantra elbowed her in the side as they got back out of the wagon.
“That was awesome!” a boy’s voice said, and Tabitha realized that they had now gathered a small group of onlookers. The boy with the baby was standing at the front of the group. “Wow. I thought you were going to turn into a dragon and warm him up with your fire, but that was still cool. Can you turn into a dragon again?”
Tabitha smiled. “Not right now, sorry.” she said.
“Why don’t you stay a dragon all the time?” he asked breathlessly. “If I could turn into a dragon, I would stay that way all day and all night.”
Tabitha laughed. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Daren,” he said enthusiastically. “And that’s my sister, Shar.”
“Well, Daren,” Tabitha said. “I like being a dragon, but I tend to squish too many things when I’m that big. And all my friends are smaller.”
“Oh.” He sounded disappointed. “But you always change into a dragon to fight, right? Can you teach me that? I could fight anybody if I were a dragon.”
“Not always,” she said. “Sometimes you need to be small to fight, and sometimes you need to be big. But the most important thing is that you don’t fight at all if you can help it.”
The boy looked taken aback, then waved his hand. “Oh, I know that.”
Back by the river, they found the men gathered around a small campfire, still discussing the best course of action. Tabitha listened to the talk for a while, trying to come up with helpful suggestions, but it was Chantra who finally came up with a solution.
“We’ll build a bridge,” she said. “I can help melt the ice and snow away from the base of those two tall trees.” She pointed to a pair of giant pines that stuck out above the tops of the other trees. “And then Tabitha can help you cut them down and lay them across the river so that you can roll the wagons over.”
They set to work at once. Chantra melted a path through the snow so that the men could get back to the two tall trees, and Tabitha slashed at the very base of the trees until she was halfway through. Then she flew into the air and rammed the top of the tree carefully while the men pulled from the opposite side with ropes.
In an hour they had both trees down and Tabitha was struggling to lift them and place them across the river. In the end, Chantra had to fly out over the river with her and together they melted the ice so that the logs could be set down level with the riverbanks, allowing the wagons to roll straight out onto them.
“Now for the hardest part,” Chantra explained. “The wagons won’t roll very well across the bridge since it isn’t very smooth, but we don’t have time to make them even, so Tabitha is going to guide them.”
“I am?” Tabitha said, confused.
“Yes.” Chantra explained how ropes could be attached to Tabitha’s back legs and she could fly above the bridge while the men helped the horses pull the wagons over. That way, if they started to fall, Tabitha could pull them back to safety without having to grab the wagons or the horses with her claws.
Before the afternoon sun had begun to set, Tabitha had helped all but one of the wagons cross the bridge safely. As it turned out, each one was a bit more difficult than the last since the trees became more and more slippery as the wagon wheels peeled the rough bark away and left their smooth sides exposed, and water from the river occasionally splashed onto the top. The last wagon was the one that Tabitha was most nervous about taking across: it was Pip’s wagon.
She had told the men to just take him out so she didn’t have to be worried, but they’d insisted that everything would be all right. Except for a tiny bit of slipping on one of the wagons, and one horse that nearly fell into the river earlier, everything had gone very smoothly so far. So Tabitha changed into a dragon for the final time and hovered carefully above Pip�
��s wagon as the horses eased it onto the logs.
At first, everything seemed fine, but then the left horse began to slip. And then the right.
“Oy!” Bast shouted, who was sitting beside the wagon driver. “Pull us just a bit. Everyone out now, just in case!”
Tabitha pulled them gently back toward the center, and the horses had just begun to find their footing when one of the ropes that tethered her to the wagon snapped.
“Oh no!” she heard someone cry from down below, but she didn’t have time to see who it was. There was a loud splash and several screams, and then she was in the water helping the driver and Bast out. She was careful not to crush the wagon as she entered the river, and in a few moments, she had lifted the two men out of the water with her tail and set them back on the bridge.
“Did Pip get out?” Chantra shouted from the bridge, and Tabitha looked around frantically.
“I don’t know!”
“Stop thrashing around!” Chantra screamed. “If they’re in the river you might kill them doing that.”
Tabitha froze, scanning the water frantically for a sign of them. They had to still be in the wagon. It was tipped up on its end in the river beside her, wedged against a floe of ice. She cut the canvas side off the wagon with a claw and peered into it. It was full of water, and she was too big to go in and help. Without thinking, she changed back into herself and climbed in.
The shock of the cold water nearly made her forget what she was doing, but she soon regained her composure and changed into a fish. She would never be able to pull a person out as a fish, but until she found them, she might as not freeze to death.
The wagon was empty. The canvas on the other end of it had been torn aside, and she swam through it, thinking that they must have tried to get out just as the wagon tipped.
Pip and his mother were floating right outside the wagon, trapped under the surface of the water because they had drifted too far downriver beneath the ice. How long had they been without air? She took a deep breath and changed back into her own shape. Her head struck something sharp as she did so—some part of the wagon or a piece of driftwood, she never knew which. There was a loud crack that sounded like her head being split open, and she was temporarily blinded by pain. She hadn’t taken into account how much bigger she would be when she changed from a fish into herself again. Seeing double, she thrashed in the water and managed to grab ahold of Pip. She had decided to take him first, figuring that’s what his mother would have wanted, and she kicked toward the surface. He was heavier than she expected, and it was hard to swim back, even though the current was slow. Strong arms lifted him out of her hands when she broke the surface of the river. They tried to lift her out of the water as well, but she beat them away, gasping for breath, and dove under again.
Magemother: The Complete Series (A Fantasy Adventure Book Series for Kids of All Ages) Page 69