by Philip Reeve
Skarper and Zeewa didn’t need telling. Frightened and alone in this strange world, they just wanted to hide, and there was no hiding in the white light of the super market. They ran past walls of jam jars, through avenues of fruit and vegetables, through an aisle of shelves that held more books than all the bumwipe heaps of Clovenstone combined. People in the strange, brightly coloured clothes of that world ran with them, or past them, or blundered in front of them, shouting, “Fire! Fire!”
Zeewa saw what she thought was a door – a glimpse of an evening sky above a landscape crowded with so many strange and unknown objects that it was easier just not to look at it. They sprinted towards it, but it wasn’t a door – it was a window, filled with a sheet of glass so clear and wide that Skarper could not imagine how it had been blown, and so strong that it did not shatter when he and Zeewa slammed into it.
As they stumbled backwards, dazed, there was a weird, wild hooting from outside. It reminded Skarper of a banshee who had once roosted for a while in the ruins of the Outer Wall at Clovenstone, but even she had not been quite so loud. He stared as a huge red shape slid past outside the window. He had heard tell of carriages that moved by themselves in other worlds – he had even ridden in the Lych Lord’s old Rolls Royce Silver Shadow, although it belonged to Carnglaze now and was pulled by horses in the normal way. But surely there couldn’t be a carriage as big or as red as the thing which was rolling to a stop on its huge black wheels outside the super market? And what were those lights on its back, flashing blue, blue, blue? And who were these warriors, helmeted, visored, jumping down from its opening doors?
He clutched Zeewa’s hand; she clutched his paw. They shrank back together into the shelter of a large cardboard cut-out of a celebrity chef. Skarper would rather have been back in Elvensea, facing the fire-breathing dragon.
“Oh no!” said Breenge.
“What is it?” asked her brother.
“I have lost Fuzzy-Nose! I had him with me on the stairs, but he must have fallen out of my tunic somewhere in these silly corridors! I must go back and look for him!”
Henwyn could barely believe it. They had spent ages hunting for a way down. Now, at last, they had found one: a tight corkscrew of stone stairs descending on the opposite side of Elvensea from those other stairs where Grumpling was holding off the crabs. And now they were here, Breenge was refusing to go down them. “He’s only a rabbit!” he said, pushing her as politely as he could towards the stairs. “You and Rhind go down. I’ll meet you at the bottom.”
“You’re going back?” asked Rhind. He looked as if he were afraid that Henwyn was about to out-hero him, and for a moment Henwyn was worried that he was going to refuse to go down the stairs, too.
“I have to fetch Grumpling,” he said.
“Do you?” Rhind looked doubtful. “He’s never been a friendly fellow. To be honest, I wondered why you brought him with you. He never seemed to like you much.”
“Nor I him,” Henwyn agreed. “But he is my companion, and it would be wrong to leave him behind. You and Breenge go on. I’ll fetch Grumpling and be right behind you. And I’ll look for Fuzzy-Nose on my way.”
“We’ll see you at the ship,” said Rhind.
“And if we see that dragon, we shall find out how it likes the taste of the arrows of the Woolmark,” promised Breenge.
They started down the stair, and Henwyn turned back through the maze of buildings. He was very afraid that he would lose his way again, but either his sense of direction was improving or some spell that had confused him when he entered was losing its power, for he went back with barely a wrong turning to the stairway where Grumpling had made his stand against the crabs.
As he neared it he began to notice the smell of roasted crab, ominous but mouth-watering. When he emerged on to the balcony where the stairway ended he cried out in amazement at what he saw there.
All across the balcony, dead crabs were strewn. They were heaped three deep around the head of the stairs, and all the way down the staircase too. When he peered over the balustrade Henwyn could see scores of them scattered on the streets and roofs below. There seemed to be not a single live crab left in Elvensea, apart from little ones, which had appeared out of the weeds to feast upon the bodies of their outsize cousins.
At the top of the stairs, and on the balcony, the mounds of crab carcasses seemed to have been swept by a wildfire. They were blackened and still smouldering. Saffron flames licked up here and there from a still-burning shell. A haze of dirty smoke hung in the air. Of Grumpling, there was no sign.
Then one of the crabs stirred and shifted, its cracked shell creaking. Henwyn sprang back, readying his sword, but the creature was long dead. It rolled on to its back, legs in the air, and out from under it came crawling Grumpling.
He had paid dearly for his victory. Dark goblin blood spilled from a dozen wounds. One eye was swollen shut, or perhaps gone entirely, Henwyn couldn’t tell. And the fire had charred him too, burning his hair to stubble, blackening his face.
“That bloomin’ dragon!” he croaked. “I dealt with the crabs all right, but that dragon cheated. It was flying about up there an’ I thought it was another statue till it came swoopin’ down an’ burped fire all over me. Bloomin’ dragon.”
“Oh, Grumpling,” said Henwyn, catching him as he collapsed – or trying to, for Grumpling was very heavy. “Statues don’t fly!”
“Well, nobody tole me that,” the dying goblin grumbled. His surviving eye swivelled round to glare at Henwyn. “I never liked you, softling. Only reason I came on this stupid quest is cos Flegg said we’d have a chance to get my scratchbackler back, an’ maybe get rid of you, an’ then I’d be King of Clovenstone. Cos that’s what I oughter be. I’m the biggest an’ toughest and most magnifificent of all the goblins.”
Henwyn looked about him at the mounds of dead crabs, and at the notched and buckled blade of the axe still clutched in Grumpling’s massive paw. He felt almost as sad as he had when Princess Ned died. He had never imagined feeling sad for Grumpling.
“You are,” he said. “You are bigger and tougher and more magnifificent than any of us, and I am going to make sure that everyone knows it. Ballads shall be sung about Grumpling the Great, and how he Held the Stair at Elvensea. I shall make sure everyone knows of your bravery. If we get back to Clovenstone, I shall try and get a statue done of you.”
“A fat lot of good that’s goin ter be ter me,” said Grumpling, grumpily. “Just get rid of that bloomin’ dragon, softling.”
And with that he died, and Henwyn knelt there for a moment with him, and then remembered that there was a dragon and a mad elf witch to deal with, and laid Grumpling’s axe across his chest, and left him there, and ran back to the other stairway where he had bade farewell to Rhind and Breenge. And as he ran he thought, I wonder what’s become of Skarper? I hope he’s all right. But I expect he is – Skarper usually finds a way to be all right.
Outside the super market window, the warriors from the red carriage assembled their battle gear, unrolling long leathery-looking hoses, taking down canisters of silvery metal from cupboards in the carriage’s side where axes and other devices were also stored. Their captain moved across the pavement outside the super market. He was acting as warriors act in every world, proud of his power and his big voice, ordering people to move back and make way.
Peeking from behind the cardboard cut-out, Skarper thought that it was little wonder the elves had sent people to this world as a punishment. He could see nothing outside the window but walls and roofs and strangely dressed people and little brightly coloured carriages. There were a couple of trees, but they were sad little things, growing through holes in a plain of stone, their trunks imprisoned inside wire cages. It was not an elfy sort of place at all.
“Skarper!” said Zeewa. “Get down!”
The warriors were coming inside the super market now. Skarper could hear the
tramp of their big boots even over the racket of the bells and banshees. Three of them came right past the place where he and Zeewa crouched. They shouted things to each other, and into crackly boxes strapped to their tunics. They did not seem frightened of the fire. They strode towards it, two of them hefting those shiny cylinders. There were short hoses attached to the cylinders’ tops, with nozzles at the end. They reminded Skarper of the contraptions which the dwarves used to shoot flame at their enemies. But that couldn’t be right, could it? Were the warriors planning to fight the fire with more fire?
He supposed that, in this strange world, anything was possible.
As the warriors stomped past him and vanished up the aisle where the fire had started, Skarper nudged Zeewa. “Come on, let’s follow them!”
“Why?”
“Because I want to see what they’re doing. And anyway, where the fire started is where we came through from Elvensea. If we’re going to go back, that’s where we need to be.”
“Do you think there will be a way back?”
“Maybe,” said Skarper. He fingered the amulet around his neck. “Etty gave me this stone. It’s full of slowsilver, and I can feel it kind of pulling, wanting to get back to the Westlands. It doesn’t belong in this place any more than we do. Maybe if we can find the place where the wall between the worlds is thin, it will pull us through with it.”
Carefully, holding the cut-out celebrity chef in front of them like a shield, they crept after the warriors. It was raining now in the aisle where the fire had started; indoor rain sprinkling down from the ceiling. The rain had stopped the fire from spreading, but some of the boxes which Skarper had set light to still burned merrily, giving off smells like burnt biscuits. One of the warriors set down his silver cylinder, raised the nozzle on the end of its hose, and sprayed a hissing cloud of white smoke at the flames. For a moment Skarper could not imagine what he was trying to do. Wasn’t there enough smoke already? Then he saw that wherever the white smoke touched, the fire withered and went out.
“Look!” he said. But Zeewa was looking at something else.
At the far end of the aisle, beyond the warriors, strange things were happening to the smoke. It was not so much swirling as whirling, forming a spinning ring a bit like an upright version of the whirlpool that had first bared Elvensea. In the centre of the ring was a milky mist, and through it, very faintly, shapes could be glimpsed: the tapering pillars and cracked ceiling of Hellesvor’s pillared hall.
“It is the way home!” said Zeewa.
“And it’s shrinking!” said Skarper.
He was right. The ring was slowly diminishing in size. It had filled the aisle when they first saw it; now it was not much larger than a door.
He felt something tug at his neck. Etty’s stone was floating, straining at its cord in its eagerness to pass through the smoke and return to its own world.
“Quickly!” said Zeewa. “Before it is gone altogether!”
The warriors had noticed the smoke ring now. The one with the smoke squirter had stopped squirting and was staring at the strange portal. His comrade beside him stared too, and spoke quickly and urgently into the crackle box on his shoulder. The third man stood a little way behind them, holding his own smoke squirter ready. He was the only one to look round as the cardboard cut-out chef came scuttling towards him from the other end of the aisle.
“Delia?” he said, in a surprised way. And then added, in a still more surprised way, “Ooof!” as Zeewa’s fist lashed out from behind the cut-out and caught him on the chin. He crashed backwards against more shelves of food boxes, and Skarper reached out a hairy paw and snatched his smoke squirter. The other two warriors sprang aside as Zeewa, Skarper and the cut-out dashed past them and dived into the heart of the smoke ring…
Which closed behind them with a faint “pop”.
“Trick of the light,” the warriors said to each other later, when the fire was out. “Reflections on the smoke. Kids mucking about.”
“Lost my balance on that wet floor,” said the one whom Zeewa had punched.
But the people who worked in the super market exchanged knowing glances. It was not the first time there had been strange goings on in the cereals aisle.
They surfaced through the white mist in Hellesvor’s pool: Zeewa, Skarper and the beaming cut-out. They left the cut-out bobbing there and scrambled out.
“Where is everyone?” asked Zeewa. “And why does everything smell of overcooked crab?”
Skarper did his best to explain, and while he did so, Zeewa helped him carry the heavy smoke squirter out on to the balcony. They looked down at the crab-strewn city, the black ribs of the Sea Cucumber still burning on their tower. Far, far below, tiny figures fled across an open square.
“Henwyn!” shouted Skarper. “Wait for us! We’ve got a thing! A thing for fighting dragons with!”
Fentongoose and Doctor Prong had a thing for fighting dragons with, too. They were not sure that it would work, but they had to do something to defend the Westlands if the goblins’ quest should fail, and it was the best they had been able to come up with at short notice. It was the Bratapult, the massive old war machine from Blackspike Tower, and they had bolted it to a hastily assembled wooden hat and strapped the whole lot on to Bryn’s head.
Now they clung to it as the young giant ran towards the sea. Bryn’s long legs could cover in one stride the distance that Skarper and his friends had travelled in an hour. The only trouble was, the passengers on his head had a bumpy ride, and so did the various goblins and twiglings who had come along, clinging to his beard and his broad shoulders. Close behind him came Fraddon, carrying more seasick goblins, and a few huge boulders that would be the Bratapult’s ammunition.
Fraddon had been unsure at first about asking Bryn to help. If there were really dragons in the offing it could be dangerous, even for a giant. For all their size, his kind were not natural fighters. Leave the little peoples to their quarrels; that was the giants’ way, and that was how Fraddon had thought once. But then he had made friends with Princess Ned, and with other little people, and their friendship had been good for him. He wanted Bryn to be their friend too, right from the start. And if you were friends with someone, you could not let them set off to fight dragons alone.
Besides, Bryn wanted to help. He was young and strong, and eager for adventure.
The Wastes of Ulawn were covered by low cloud that morning. The people there sensed that something was coming down the road from Clovenstone, but they did not know what. “Goblins!” they shouted, snatching their scythes and pitchforks, reassembling their barricade and gathering behind it. They had just enough time to scatter again when the huge shape of Bryn loomed out of the murk. His left foot, big as a barn, booted the barricade to pieces. Fraddon’s right foot, big as a boat, hammered the pieces flat. “Terribly sorry!” called Fentongoose, peering over the edge of Bryn’s plank hat.
“Whoops!” cheered the goblins, clinging to his beard.
“Happy to pay for any damage!” added Doctor Prong.
Then they were gone, giants, goblins, old men, all off along the road to the sea, leaving the Ulawn folk to stare after them and wonder about building a bigger barricade. They left the clouds behind them too, and came out into sunlight on the cliffs west of Floonhaven.
Everything seemed calm. Bright sails speckled the blue sea at the mouth of the River Floon. People were gathering on the harbour wall and the battlements of the castle to stare at the two giants. A fresh west wind blew the smells of the salt sea over them, and Bryn breathed deeply and said, “This is it? The sea?”
“That is the sea,” said Fraddon. “I stepped down off Choon Head once – a little south of here – and picked up Ned’s ship. I was as big then as you are now.”
“There is no sign of any dragons,” said Doctor Prong.
“I am delighted to say you’re right,” agreed Fentongoos
e. “The goblins’ quest must have succeeded.”
“But I am quite sure we heard the Elvenhorn sound,” said Doctor Prong.
“You are quite certain it was the Elvenhorn? The wind can make strange noises sometimes, blowing round the towers of Clovenstone. Not to mention the goblins’ tummies…”
“Look!” shouted one of the goblins just then. “What’s that?”
“Fire!” said Fentongoose. “There is fire on the Autumn Isles!”
Out there at the edge of sight, where the islands lay like ghosts of islands on the Western Ocean, a tower of smoke was rising. A black speck rose with it.
“A butterfly?” asked Dr Prong, hopefully.
“A bird?” said Fentongoose, as the speck grew larger.
“A bat, a very large bat, perhaps the lesser-spotted Barraganese fruit bat…” pondered Doctor Prong.
But they both knew what it really was.
So did the goblins. “Dragon!” they shouted. “Dragon!” And the giants took up the cry in their sky-wide voices, and so the bad news of the dragon’s coming spread to Floonhaven. The people there abandoned their boats and nets, their crops and cottages, and ran up the hill to the king’s castle to seek shelter. Out on the sea the ships scudded for shelter too. Goblins crowded on to Bryn’s hat, heaving the boulder which Fraddon passed them up into the cup of the Bratapult, while Fentongoose trained his telescope on the approaching dragon and Doctor Prong called out helpful things like, “Don’t shoot till you see the reds of its eyes!” and, “Remember, short, controlled bursts!”
And all the while the dragon came on.
Henwyn was standing at the foot of the tower where the Sea Cucumber had come to rest when Skarper and Zeewa finally caught up with him. Breenge and Rhind sat nearby on Spurtle, who was still in his sofa form. They were all looking up at the charred black skeleton, which was all that remained of their ship.