Snaggle growled, but the growl had a softness to it. The kind of noise a bear might make when going about its business undisturbed. And somehow Zeb could tell from this growl that the dragon was male and that he was old enough to have a few wrinkles round his eyes but probably young enough to hurtle through the sky without complaining of a sore back or a stiff leg.
“Can—can you lead us to the Final Curtain?” Zeb asked. “And then on to the cave that has never been found?”
Snaggle considered this for a moment. Then he dipped his head again.
Oonie approached tentatively until she was level with Zeb on his piano stool. Then Zeb stood up too, and, hand in hand, both children edged closer and closer to the dragon.
They stood before Snaggle, swallowed by his shadow. He smelled of pine trees and bonfires, and Zeb jumped as the dragon swung his head round so that it was level with him, Oonie, and Mrs. Fickletint. Then Snaggle blinked once, very slowly, before lowering his body down to the ground. Zeb felt a rush of panic at what lay ahead: a journey on the back of the wildest creature in the Unmapped Kingdoms!
He leaned toward Oonie. “I think it’s best if you get on first. You’re the captain, after all.”
“If I didn’t know you better,” Oonie replied, “I’d think you were scared.”
“I’m not scared. I’m just incredibly polite.”
Before anyone could say anything else, Snaggle clamped his jaw on the scruff of Zeb’s T-shirt, yanked him off the ground, then set him down again between the spikes on his back.
Zeb’s eyes widened as he placed his hand on the dragon’s scales. They were smooth to touch—and warm—like resting a palm on a rock that has soaked up the sun. But he could feel the dragon’s wildness pulsing beneath its scales. Oonie settled herself between the spikes in front of Zeb, and Snaggle snorted, rising up on all fours and flexing his muscles.
“Takeoff already?” Mrs. Fickletint braced herself. “Oh, I do wish I’d packed us all some altitude tablets.”
Dollop tossed a red-feather quill up to Zeb, who caught it and frowned.
“It’s an omniscribble,” the goblin explained. “There was a bush of them growing on the way up here, and given that these quills can write on any surface and never need ink, I thought it might come in handy for when you write a hopeful ending onto the Ember Scroll.” He looked at Oonie. “Until then, I’ll look after the Kerfuffle for you.”
Zeb shoved the omniscribble into his pocket next to the Unopenable Purse. “Thank you, Dollop.”
Then Trampletusk reached her trunk up to Zeb and wrapped it around his hand. “Remember to feed Snaggle from time to time. Dragons fly better when their bellies are full.”
Zeb balked at Snaggle’s enormous teeth. “What does he eat?”
“Some dragons eat badly behaved children,” Trampletusk replied. “Some, but not nearly enough, eat prattleparrots. And some eat unbroken snow. But Snaggle?” The elephant’s ears twitched. “I believe he eats secrets.” She smiled. “Goodbye, Zeb. Go bring us back that phoenix.”
Then, without warning or ceremony or any sort of safety briefing whatsoever, Snaggle launched into the air. Zeb’s stomach lurched, his palms filled with sweat, and he felt absolutely sure that for the second time in Crackledawn he would topple off a dragon’s back. But the Stargold Wings weren’t yanking him about this time. They knew, as the crew did, that this dragon was worth holding on to.
“Thank you, Trampletusk!” Zeb yelled. “For giving us the memory we needed and—and for everything else, too!”
Trampletusk lifted her trunk and Dollop waved as Snaggle turned and soared out over the ocean. His enormous wings beat on either side of them and Oonie flung out her arms, threw back her head, and whooped.
“We’re riding a dragon, Zeb!”
Mrs. Fickletint shrieked from her lap. “Oh, do be careful, Oonie! Why can’t you just sit still like Zeb?!”
But Zeb, despite feeling wary about the drop to the sea, seemed to have completely lost control of his arms too. He watched, aghast, as they flung out on either side of him. Riding a Crackledawn dragon was like riding the wind, and although it was mildly petrifying, it was also the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him.
Chapter 19
Snaggle hurtled through the sky above an ocean that looked black as far as the crew could see. Morg’s Midnights had been everywhere, it seemed, draining the kingdom’s sunchatter and searching for the Stargold Wings. But there was no sign of Morg, and gradually the tropical waters returned.
Zeb gasped as a pod of silver whales surfaced beneath them. They were huge, as big as church spires, and the spray from their blowholes hung in the air in the shapes of castles, mountains, trees, and stars before melting into the sea. The whales disappeared from sight, then, without warning, Snaggle tucked in his wings and dived down toward the water. Zeb and Oonie clung on to the dragon’s spikes as Snaggle shook his head and gills appeared behind his ears.
“Oh, heavens!” Mrs. Fickletint wailed. “We’re going under!”
Snaggle plunged beneath the waves, and after a brief, and very spluttery, panic, Zeb realized that the watergums he, Oonie, and Mrs. Fickletint had swallowed back on the Kerfuffle, did actually work. They could breathe and talk and even laugh underwater!
It was like another kingdom down there. Zeb had seen various sea creatures drifting past the Kerfuffle’s portholes, but being in among them was altogether different. Within touching distance, there was a golden stingray, a cluster of multicolored seahorses, and a shoal of puffer fish swimming backward. But what hit Zeb most were the sounds. All the times Zeb had swum underwater back home, the noises around him had seemed muffled. Here, though, sounds were crystal clear, and they were extraordinary. The golden stingray was humming, the seahorses were giggling, and the puffer fish were whistling.
This underwater world was teeming with life and noise, and it made Zeb wonder what the rest of Crackledawn must have looked like before Morg’s Midnights moved in. He thought of Fox Petty-Squabble and how she might have felt when she explored the glow-in-the-dark rainforest of Jungledrop as a child. Had she felt the same bone-tingling wonder that he did now? Maybe, if everything went to plan and he saw her again, he could ask her about the weird and wonderful magical creatures she’d discovered. Zeb hoped hard that the magic in the phoenix tear Fox had brought to Wildhorn could keep her, the Lofty Husks, and the Unmappers safe just a little while longer, until he and his crew found the Ember Scroll.
Snaggle swam fast beneath the sea. One push from his back legs and they raced past a striped octopus with hiccups. Another push and they glided alongside a jellyfish the size of a tractor wheel. The sunshine poured down from above, and a coral reef—every color of the rainbow—spread out below them, encrusted in parts by bright gold jewels that sang and sneezed and snored.
“Sunchatter,” Oonie laughed. “Untouched by Morg’s Midnights!”
Every now and again, Snaggle turned his head round to check on the crew. And Zeb got the feeling that it wasn’t simply that the dragon was curious now. It felt like Snaggle was watching over them in case they came to harm. Zeb thought of Trampletusk’s words about Snaggle’s loyalty. Dragons didn’t follow rules or bow down to anyone, but it seemed as if this dragon had made a pledge with himself to keep the crew safe. And Zeb felt the invisible shield around him grow a little bigger.
Snaggle swam on down, past a shoal of leopard-print fish and a striped eel that slunk out of a crack in the reef and yawned so loudly it made Zeb jump. But as Snaggle descended into deeper water, the sea creatures began to drift away, the ocean grew quieter, and the coral faded until the reef was nothing more than a stretch of gray. The crew tensed, and Snaggle picked up more speed, his eyes darting here and there as they made their way on.
Suddenly the water around them filled with the smell of rotten fish.
“Sea witches!” Mrs. Fickletint blurted from Oonie’s lap.
Zeb clung on to Oonie’s waist, because through the gloom he
could now see a cluster of women with barnacled skin, seaweed hair, and webbed hands and feet reaching out grappling arms toward them. They opened their mouths wide, but in that second, Snaggle raised his wings to form a cocoon around the crew, and his wings blocked out everything: the reef, the sea witches, and any sound they might have made.
Oonie’s voice was a whisper in the dark: “Sea witches roam the ocean for drowned Sunraiders, and if their cry finds its way into your ear, you fall into an eternal sleep.”
“Thank goodness for Snaggle,” Mrs. Fickletint said.
Zeb shuddered at the thought of the sea witches, but tucked beneath Snaggle’s wings, he felt safe from all the menace the ocean could throw at him. Snaggle kept swimming, and though Zeb knew he should probably let go of Oonie’s waist, he couldn’t quite bring himself to and she didn’t seem to be shrugging him off. Perhaps this far down in the ocean, Oonie was just as out of her depth as he was.
After a while, Snaggle peeled back his wings, and the ocean, with all its sounds and creatures, returned. The reef and the sea witches were gone, and the water was altogether darker, and colder, now. Snaggle sniffed the crew, one by one, as if double-checking that they hadn’t come to any harm, then, satisfied, he swam on.
Remembering that they hadn’t yet fed Snaggle and there could be worse than sea witches ahead, Mrs. Fickletint whispered a few secrets into his ear to keep his belly full: “Sometimes, when I’m in a filthy mood, I snack on chocolate before breakfast.” “Once, when my to-do list got completely out of control, I ate it in protest, and I didn’t stop burping for a week.” Snaggle swallowed, as if gobbling down the words in delight. Then he licked his lips and swam on.
Eventually, the seabed came into view, and Zeb glimpsed a patch of sunchatter on the ocean floor. But the jewels were glittering darkly. Any magic they had once possessed was now long gone.
“How do we know the Midnights who cursed this sunchatter have moved on?” he asked. “What if this part of the ocean is filled with fire krakens and ogre eels? There are no Bother-Ahead Beacons to help us now.…”
“We’ve got to trust Snaggle,” Oonie replied.
And Zeb could have sworn he heard the dragon purr then, as if he had heard Oonie’s words and was acknowledging that trust. Snaggle hastened on over the ocean floor, his ears cocked. He could sense something ahead that the others couldn’t. Even Oonie couldn’t seem to hear what the dragon could. Zeb kept listening until he came across a noise at the furthest point of his hearing—a low rumbling that seemed to be coming from somewhere ahead.
“Can you hear that?” he whispered to Oonie and Mrs. Fickletint.
“I’m afraid so,” the chameleon replied.
“But I can’t think what it could be.” Oonie frowned. “It sounds like an engine whirring, but that doesn’t make any sense. All the boats in Crackledawn are sailboats, and I thought it was just Dollop living out past the Blackfangs.”
The rumbling grew louder and louder until it became a roar—a deafening, thundering roar. Snaggle showed no sign of stopping.
“What about a little pause here?” Mrs. Fickletint shouted over the roar. “A brief chat about what’s ahead?”
But Snaggle only swam faster, thrusting his back legs again and again through the water. And then, suddenly, the roar made sense. Up ahead, stretching the width of the ocean as far as they could see, was an underwater waterfall.
Zeb gasped. “It’s like we’ve reached the end of the world!”
The waterfall was a wall of white water, blocking the way on, but Zeb saw a glimmer of silver behind the water, hinting that there was something beyond it. Perhaps this wasn’t the end of the world but the start.
Oonie, it seemed, could sense something similar. She ran her tongue over her top lip, then shouted: “The sea here—it tastes of mysteries!”
Mrs. Fickletint buried herself in Oonie’s tunic. “I am not in the mood for a mystery!”
“But Snaggle led us here,” Oonie cried. “He knows what he’s doing.”
Zeb blinked, because the Stargold Wings were glowing through the pouch—fainter than when they’d shone down in the Kerfuffle’s cabin, but a light nonetheless, a sign that something promising lay ahead.
“What if this waterfall is what we’ve been trying to find all along?” Zeb shouted. “What if this is the Final Curtain?! The Stargold Wings said we’d have to sail on south and step beyond all we know is certain. Maybe this is as far south as the ocean goes and that’s why the waterfall is called the Final Curtain—because it’s the end of Crackledawn as you know it! Maybe the cave that has never been found lies beyond!”
“Hold on tight!” Mrs. Fickletint yelled as Snaggle hurtled on toward the waterfall, clearly not planning to stop.
Zeb clung to Oonie and buried his head in her hair as Snaggle charged into the waterfall. He waited for the pummel of the extra water hammering against his skin, but what he felt instead was a cool sort of tingling, like electricity rushing through his bones.
“We’re passing through an enchantment!” Oonie cried.
Mrs. Fickletint yelped. “Let’s hope it’s a good one!”
They burst out the other side of the waterfall. The ocean was crystal clear again, and it was quiet. As if someone had turned the volume on the waterfall right down. There was no sign of a cave, but there was something else. Something large and carved from silver stone that rose up before them into dizzying heights.
“An underwater palace?” Zeb whispered in disbelief. “All the way out here?”
The building was a glistening jumble of turrets, domes, and spires, like something out of a fairy tale.
“Steepledoor is real,” Oonie murmured.
“And there we were assuming that it just existed in Petronella Piffle’s Fabulous Fables,” Mrs. Fickletint said. “But it exists! An underwater palace, ruled by merglimmers, at the edge of the kingdom!”
“Merglimmers?” Zeb asked warily.
“Mermen and merwomen with mirror-skin tails,” Mrs. Fickletint explained. “No one I’ve ever known has seen one, but the stories claim they were the first magical creatures conjured by the phoenix, so they’ve always been on our side.”
Zeb frowned. “But we want a cave, not a palace ruled by merglimmers.”
“He’s right, Oonie,” Mrs. Fickletint said. “Isn’t he?”
Feeling the weight of the crew’s expectations upon her, Oonie wriggled. “I’m finding it hard to work out what we want with you squeezing the life out of me like this, Zeb.…”
Zeb whipped his arms away.
“Petronella Piffle never mentioned the Final Curtain in her book,” Oonie said. “What we just passed through was an enchantment, and enchantments change the whole time. It’s a wall of water—a bit like a curtain—today, but when Petronella visited Steepledoor, the enchantment could have been anything: a reef, an underwater cave, a shipwreck.… So, this could still be the Final Curtain and the cave could still be here somewhere.” She leaned forward to Snaggle’s ears. “What do you think, Snaggle? Was the waterfall the Final Curtain, and are there merglimmers here who might know something about the cave that has never been found?”
The dragon dipped his head almost immediately, and the crew grinned then, and cheered. With Snaggle’s help, they had reached their first milestone! They had found the Final Curtain with a night still to go before the full moon rose! And judging by the fact that the palace was still in one piece, it seemed they had made it here before Morg. Snaggle swam a little closer to Steepledoor. Then he stalled before the steps leading up to the palace, his nostrils flared, his amber eyes roaming.
“What is it, Snaggle?” Mrs. Fickletint asked. “What can you see?”
The dragon backed away from the palace and skirted round the side of the building instead. The palace went on and on—a vast clutter of spiral towers and domes—but all around it there was nothing. Only crystal-clear water and golden sand.
“It feels too quiet…,” Zeb murmured. “Where are the merglimme
rs?”
“There are no sea creatures either,” Mrs. Fickletint whispered. “Not so much as a single fish.”
“And no sunchatter,” Oonie added nervously.
Snaggle rounded yet another cluster of towers, and that’s when the crew heard what the dragon’s ears must have caught before: moaning. And it was growing louder as Snaggle swam on.
“There!” Zeb pointed to a lone tower set back from the palace. “I saw something moving behind the bars across the window at the top.”
“Merglimmers?” Oonie asked.
Mrs. Fickletint followed Zeb’s gaze. “Yes! It’s them! I can see their mirrored tails shining. But why are they locked up inside their own tower?”
The answer, which had been lying in wait beneath the silt, exploded out of the sand in front of them: a long, thick purple body—even bigger than Snaggle’s—with flickering gills, row upon row of razor-sharp teeth and a single bloodshot eye in the center of its forehead.
“Ogre eel!” Mrs. Fickletint screamed.
“Turn back, Snaggle!” Zeb roared. “Turn back!”
But then something even more horrifying happened. Snaggle began bucking his legs and thrashing his tail until one by one the crew tumbled off his back onto the sand. The dragon took one last look at them, then he turned away and hastened back toward the Final Curtain.
Chapter 20
Zeb’s mind was a blur. Snaggle was meant to be on their side. He had been leading the crew toward the Ember Scroll, keeping them safe all the way here. Had Trampletusk been wrong about where this Crackledawn dragon’s loyalties lay? Had he always planned to lead the crew into the hands of Morg’s Midnights?
The ogre eel rose before them, its forked tongues quivering. It was used to disloyalty in magical beasts; dark magic thrived on it. And now it had the Faraway boy and the Sunraider girl exactly where it wanted. Swinging its tail round toward them, it scooped them into its grasp and hissed.
Zeb Bolt and the Ember Scroll Page 13