by Webb, Holly
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.
‘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.
‘Oh, a likeness, I’m sure,’ she told Maisie firmly, wrapping an arm round her friend’s bony shoulder. Really she had no idea, but she knew Maisie dreamed about that locket all week, and the hour on Sunday when she got to hold it was her most special time, and Rose couldn’t spoil it for her.
‘Maybe of my mother. Or perhaps it was hers, and she had my father’s picture in it. Yes, that would have been it. I bet he was handsome,’Maisie said dreamily.
‘Mmmm,’ Rose murmured diplomatically. Maisie wasn’t ugly, exactly, but she was very skinny, and no one looked beautiful with their hair cropped short in case of lice. It was hard to imagine either of her parents as handsome.
All Rose’s friends spent Sundays in a dream world, where they were the long-lost daughters of dukes who would one day sweep them away in a coach-and-four to reclaim their rightful inheritance.
Strangely though, unlike all the other girls, Rose did not dream. She had no Relic to hang her dreams on, but that wasn’t the main reason. Quite a few of the others didn’t either, and it didn’t hold them back at all. Rose just wanted to get out of St Bridget’s as soon as she possibly could. It wasn’t that it was a bad place – the schoolmistress read them lots of improving books about children who weren’t lucky enough to have aHome. They lived on the streets, and always went from Bad to Worse in ways that were never very clearly explained. Girls at St Bridget’s were fed, even though there was never enough food to actually feel full, only just enough to keep them going. They had clothes, even a set of Sunday best for church, and the yearly photograph. The important thing was, they were trained for domestic service, so that when they were old enough they could earn their own living. If Rose dreamed at all, that was what she dreamed of. She didn’t want to be a lady in a big house. She’d settle for being allowed to clean one, and be paid for it. And perhaps have an afternoon off, once a month, although she had no idea what she would do.
Occasionally, girls who’d left St Bridget’s came back to show themselves off. They told giggly tales of being admired by the second footman, and they had smart outfits that hadn’t been worn by six other girls before them, like Rose’s black Sunday dress and coat. She knew because the other girls’ names had been sewn in at the top. Two of them even had surnames, which was very grand. Rose was only Rose, and that was because the yellow rose in Miss Lockwood’s tiny garden had started to flower on the day she’d been brought to St Bridget’s by the vicar. He’d found her in the churchyard, sitting on the war memorial in a fishbasket, and howling. If Rose had been given to dreaming like the others, she might have thought that it meant her father had been a brave soldier, killed in a heroic charge, and that her dying mother couldn’t look after her and had left her on the war memorial, hoping that someone would care for a poor soldier’s child. As it was, she’d decided her family probably had something to do with fish.
Rose hated fish. Although of course in an orphanage, you ate what there was, and anyone else’s if you got half a chance. She knew no grand lady was going to sweep into the orphanage and claim her as a long-lost daughter. It must have been a bad year for fish, that was all. It didn’t bother her, and just made her all the more determined to make a life for herself outside.
‘What do you think they were like?’ Maisie asked pleadingly. Rose was good at storytelling. Somehow her stories lit up the dark corners of the orphanage where they hid to tell them.
Rose sighed. She was tired, but Maisie looked so hopeful. She settled herself as comfortably as she could under the shelf, tucking her dress under her feet to keep warm. The storeroom was damp and chilly, and smelled of wet cleaning cloths. She stared dreamily at the side of the tin bath, glistening in the shadows. ‘You were two, weren’t you, when you came to St Bridget’s?’ she murmured. ‘So you were old enough to be running about everywhere… Yes. It was a Sunday, and your parents had taken you to the park to sail your boat in the fountain.’
‘A boat!’ Maisie agreed blissfully.
‘Yes, with white sails, and ropes so you could make the sails work, just like real ones.’ Rose was remembering the illustrations from Morally Instructive Tales for the Nursery, which was one of the books in the schoolroom. The two little boys who owned the boat in the original story fought about who got to sail it first, which obviously meant that one of them drowned in the fountain. Most of the books in the schoolroom had endings like that. Rose quite enjoyed working out the exact point when the characters were beyond hope. It was usually when they’d lied to get more jam.
‘You were wearing your best pink coat, but your mother didn’t mind if you got it wet.’ Rose’s voice became rather doubtful here. She hadn’t been able to resist putting in the pink coat but really, it was too silly…
Suddenly she realised that Maisie was gazing longingly at the side of the tin bath. ‘Yes, look, it’s got flower-shaped buttons! Are they roses, Rose?’
Rose gulped. ‘I’m not sure,’ she murmured, staring wide-eyed at the picture flickering on the metal. ‘Daisies, I think…’ Had she done that? She knew her stories were good – she was always being bothered for them, so they must be – but none of them had ever come with pictures. Pictures that moved. A tiny, plump, pretty Maisie was jumping and clapping as a nattily dressed gentleman blew her boat across a sparkling fountain. White trousers! Rose’s matter-of-fact side thought disgustedly. Has this family no sense?
‘Oh, the picture’s fading! No, no, bring it back, Rose! I want to see my mother!’Maisie wailed.
‘Ssssh! We aren’t meant to be here, Maisie, we’ll be caught.’
Maisie wasn’t listening. ‘Oh, Rose, it was so pretty! I was so pretty! I want to see it again—’
‘Girls!’A sharp voice cut her off. ‘What are you doing in here? Come out at once!’
Rose jumped and hit her head on the shelf. The picture promptly disappeared altogether, and Maisie burst into tears.
‘Come out of there! Who is that? Rose? And you, Maisie! What on earth are you doing?’
Rose struggled out, trying not to cry herself. Her head really hurt, a horrible sharp throbbing that made her feel sick. Of all the stupid things to do! This was what happened when you started making pictures on baths. Miss Lockwood looked irritable. ‘Maisie, you know you’re not supposed to take that out of my office,’ she snapped, reaching down and seizing the locket. The flimsy chain broke, and Maisie howled even louder, tugging at the trailing end.
Rose could tell that Miss Lockwood was horrified. She really hadn’t meant to snap the locket, and she knew how Maisie treasured it. But she couldn’t draw back now. ‘Silly girl! Now you’ve broken it. Well, it’s just what you deserve.’ Red in the face, she stuffed it into the little hanging pocket she wore on her belt, and swept out. ‘Go to bed at once! There will be no supper for either of you!’ she announced grandly at the door.
‘Well, that’s no great loss,’ Rose muttered, putting an arm round Maisie, who was crying in great heaving gulps.
‘She – broke – my – locket!’
‘Yes,’ Rose admitted gently. ‘Yes, she did. But I’m sure we can mend it. Next Sunday. I’ll help, Maisie, I promise. And I don’t think she meant to. I think she was sorry, Maisie. She could have made us stand in the schoolroom with books on our heads all evening, like she did to Florence last week. No supper’s not that bad. It would only be bread and milk.’
‘
It might not be,’ sniffed Maisie, who seemed determined to look on the black side of things. ‘It might be cake.’
Rose took her hand as they trailed dismally back to their dormitory. ‘Maisie, it’s always bread and milk! The last time we had cake was for the coronation, nearly three years ago!’ Rose sighed. She couldn’t help feeling cross with Maisie for getting her into trouble, but not very cross. After all, she’d been tempting fate with the windows anyway. Maisie was so tiny and fragile that Rose always felt sorry for her. ‘Do you want me to tell you a story?’ she asked resignedly, as they changed into their nightclothes.
‘Will you make the pictures come again?’ Maisie asked, her eyes lighting up.
‘I don’t know,’ Rose told her honestly. ‘It’s never happened before. And there might be trouble if we get caught, I’m sure it’s not allowed.’
‘It isn’t in the Rules,’ Maisie said, pouting. ‘I know it isn’t.’
Miss Lockwood read the Rules on Sundays before church, so they’d heard them that morning. Rose had to admit that Maisie was right, she didn’t remember a rule about making pictures on baths. Which was odd – it must mean that it wasn’t a very common thing to do, because the Rules covered everything. Even the exact length of an orphan’s fingernails.
‘It just feels like something that wouldn’t be allowed…’ Rose said. Which is why it’s such fun, part of her wanted to add. ‘Oh, all right. But I think it needs something shiny for it to work.’ She looked round thoughtfully. The dormitory was long and narrow, high up in the attics of the old house. Everything was very clean, but shiny was in short supply. There was hardly room for the girls to move between the narrow, grey-blanketed beds, let alone space for polished furniture.
Maisie followed her, craning her neck to peer into corners. ‘My boots are shiny!’ she suggested brightly.
Rose was about to say they couldn’t be, then realised that Maisie was right. All the girls’ shoes were made and mended by the boys from St Bartholomew’s orphanage over the wall. They had a cobblers’ workshop where the girls had a laundry, so that they could be trained up for a useful trade. Maisie’s boots had just come back from being mended, and they were black and shiny, even if they’d been patched so often that there was nothing left of the original boot. If she could make pictures on a bath, why not a boot?