Dragonfell

by Sarah Prineas

  “Coal,” Maud tells me. Skarth is a center of industry, she says, which I assume means it’s stuffed full of factories that eat up the coal and spit out clouds of black smoke after.

  Something is tickling at the edge of my thoughts. The factories in Skarth run on coal, maybe even the coal that’s mined in the Coaldowns. Where the time dragon keeps breaking the mineworks. The dragon who said that the answers to my questions were in . . . Skarth. Dragons and factories and coal—they must be connected somehow.

  It’s late afternoon as Maud and I come to the top of a hill, and we stop to take in the view. Filling the entire valley below us is the city. The sun is leaning toward the distant fells, and a thick haze lies over the land. Sticking up through the haze are hundreds of tall smokestacks like dark fingers pointing at the sky, with black smoke billowing from their tops. A wide river makes a curve before the city; it’s silver in the afternoon light, and crowded with barges—more coal—and smaller boats. Other roads lead into the city, where lights in the buildings are beginning to come on. There are more lights, too—fires like giant furnaces, and flames that burn at the tips of some of the smokestacks.

  Poppy bumps the back of my leg and complains, maaaah, that it’s past time for milking.

  Maud is staring at the city laid out before us. “Are you sure we have to do this, Rafi?” she asks, with a little tremor in her voice.

  “Yes.” I take a deep breath. “Do you remember me talking about Mister Flitch?”

  Her eyes blink rapidly. “The one who gave your friend the Igneous Ratch book. I remember.” She swallows.

  “I can’t . . .” I’m not sure how much to tell her. “Mister Flitch doesn’t like me very much. He—”

  “You’ve met him?” Maud interrupts. “I thought . . .” She shakes her head. “Never mind. Go on. Mister Flitch doesn’t like you. And?”

  “The thing is,” I tell her, “Flitch is from here.” I point at the city. “He lives in Skarth.”

  Then her face brightens. “Oh, I see. You can’t just walk into the city and start looking for . . .” She shrugs. “. . . For whatever it is that the Coaldowns dragon thinks we’re going to find here.”

  “Dragons,” I tell her. “We’re looking for dragons.”

  “Yes, of course we’re looking for dragons,” Maud says impatiently. Then her eyes widen. “Wait a moment. Wait, wait, wait.” She grabs my arm. “Rafi. Are you saying there’s a dragon here, in Skarth?” Then she shakes her head. “There can’t be. It’s impossible.”

  “I don’t know for certain sure,” I admit. “But the Coaldowns dragon told us to come here.” And then I add, “It mentioned cliffs.”

  “Oh!” she exclaims, “I know—” She snaps her mouth closed, blinks twice, and then starts again. “Cliffs,” she says more carefully. “We’ll have to go into the city and look for cliffs.”

  I don’t say anything, but I’m starting to suspect one of the things that Maud doesn’t want to tell me. She lied about being from around and about. It seems she knows about Skarth. She might even be from here.

  Chapter 17

  After sunset, the goats crowd close to me as we walk down the hill toward Skarth. The houses get bigger, and closer together, and the rutted dirt road turns into a cobblestoned street. A vaporwagon rattles past, and then another one. The air is heavy with the smell of smoke and loud with a kind of humming roar that isn’t any one thing, like voices or factory noises or wagon wheels on the streets, it’s all those things at the same time.

  “How many people live here?” I ask as we walk down a dark street edged with tall buildings built of bricks. Lights shine from every window. The goats prance along behind us.

  Maud shrugs. “Oh, hundreds of thousands, I expect.”

  I didn’t think there were that many people in the entire world. Never mind in just one city.

  We’re heading down a narrow street when a ragged boy with a smudged face steps suddenly in front of me, and I bump into him.

  “Oi, watch where you’re going,” he complains.

  Maaaah, Poppy puts in.

  Another ragged boy bumps me from behind, then gives me a shove. “Move it.”

  I shove back, and my spark flickers. Maud steps closer. “Rafi,” she warns. At the same time, somebody else bumps into her and she stumbles. I catch her with one arm and turn to glare at the two ragged boys again, but they’re gone.

  “This isn’t a very nice part of the city,” Maud explains, hoisting her bag onto her shoulder again. “Come on. Let’s skulk this way.”

  I give her a sharp look, thinking she’s enjoying this more than she should be.

  With a grin and a shrug, she turns a corner, and we go into an even narrower, darker street. The goats follow. “There,” Maud points. A dim light is shining from a grimy window with a handwritten sign in it. “Rooms for rent,” she says. “It won’t be very nice, but we can stay there and get some dinner, and look for the cliffs tomorrow.” She heads up a set of stone stairs and into the rooming house. Leaving the goats to nibble on whatever trash they can find, I follow.

  Inside is a dark hallway that smells like boiled cabbage and sweaty shirts. A tired-looking woman with stringy brown hair emerges from the dimness. “Want a room?” she asks. Before we can answer, she says, “Pay up front. Six shillings.”

  “That’s fine,” Maud says brightly. Setting down her bag, she digs inside. She’s had money to pay for everything, so far, silver and gold coins that she keeps in a fat leather purse. “That’s odd,” she says slowly. “I thought I put it in . . .” She swallows, then goes to her knees and starts pulling everything out of the bag—shirts, her books, a comb, an extra pair of socks. No purse. She looks up at me with wide eyes. “Those boys. The ones who bumped into you. They were pickpockets.”

  It takes me a second to figure out what she means. We don’t have thieves in the Dragonfell. “They stole your purse?” I ask.

  She nods and starts stuffing everything back into the bag.

  “Can’t pay, get out,” the woman says, and jerks her chin toward the door.

  Maud gets to her feet. “But we—”

  “Out,” the woman repeats.

  “Come on,” I say to Maud, and we stumble out of the rooming house and into the dark, smelly street.

  Maud looks gray with worry, and she speaks through stiff lips. All of a sudden, this isn’t an adventure anymore. “Rafi, I have absolutely no money at all.” She stops and takes a shaky breath. “Not even a penny. What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell her. “I’ve never been in a city before.”

  “We’ll have to find somewhere to sleep.” She looks around, as if we’ll find a spare bed lying in the street.

  “Onward?” I ask.

  She gives me a tired smile. “Yes.”

  As we wander the city, we pass huge brick buildings with rows of windows and fat smokestacks that belch clouds of sooty smoke into the air. The streets are dark, with just a lantern here and there, or a fire in a heap of trash, with ragged figures huddled around it. We pass a warehouse, looming and silent in the night, and another factory, still lit up and rumbling with noise. A bitter wind blows at our backs. We turn down one street, and another, and go along a trash-clotted alley until we come to a square yard enclosed on all four sides by ramshackle six-story houses. The air smells like the swirling cesspool in the middle of the yard, and of the piles of rotting garbage. Strung across, from one crack-paned window to another, are ropes with ragged laundry hung out to dry. As I watch, a red-eyed rat scurries along one of the clotheslines. A few shadowy people are gathered around a fire.

  “I can’t walk another step,” Maud whispers.

  “Neither can I,” I say.

  Without speaking, we find a space next to a wall and clear away the trash, and we settle on the hard ground. The goats wander into the yard, nosing in the garbage, looking for something to eat. We have no place to sleep but this, and no dinner.

  Maud rests her head on her be
nded knees. “Rafi,” she says, and I can hear the tears in her voice. “This is awful.”

  “It is,” I agree. I shift closer to Maud to try to share my warmth with her, but I can feel her shivering.

  “Will you tell me something nice, Rafi?” she whispers. “So I don’t have to think about how hungry I am?”

  I think for a minute. I know what will cheer her up. “Will you tell me why you’re so interested in dragons?”

  “Oh, well,” she says, looking up, and her hazel eyes go dreamy, as if she’s seeing something far away from this dark, stinking place. “Because dragons are wonderful. I mean, think about it!” Her face brightens. “Professor Ratch’s book says they’re dangerous and all that, and I know these days people don’t like them very much, but really they must be magnificent creatures. Can you imagine what it would be like to be flying wingtip to wingtip with other dragons, soaring over a city like this one, seeing the tiny streets and the lights and the factories below and then leaving it behind, swooping up above the clouds to fly with stars all around you?”

  “Yes, I can imagine it,” I say. I’ve had dreams like that before, full of fire and stars and the swift rush of flight.

  “Glorious,” she says with a happy sigh.

  “There was a dragon on the Dragonfell once,” I tell her.

  She rolls her eyes. “Of course there was, Rafi. The Dragonfell? You know, I would have come there eventually, for my research. Maybe we’d have met then. If we hadn’t met before, I mean. Do you know anything about your dragon?”

  “Not much,” I say, not wanting to mention that it burned my da and made me dragon-touched. “People don’t talk about it. I do know that it hoarded teacups painted with blue flowers.” I take out the shard of teacup from my pocket and hold it out to her.

  She peers at it in the dim light. “Oh!” she breathes. “That’s lovely.” She leans her head against my shoulder. “They all hoard something different, isn’t that fascinating? And not like what Ratch says in his stupid book, not jewels or princesses. The Coaldowns dragon hoards pocket watches. I’ve read about one that hoards sea glass, and one that hoards silver spoons, and one that hoards spiders. Can you imagine? A spider-hoarding dragon?” She falls silent. Then she gives my arm a comforting pat. “You’re like me. You can imagine.”

  I can. But . . .

  In my coat pocket I can feel the crumpled paper, Gringolet’s notice that I don’t know how to read.

  Maud doesn’t know why I left the Dragonfell. She thinks I’m like her—that I want to find the dragons because I’m curious about them. She doesn’t know that I’ve been lying to her since the moment we first met.

  Chapter 18

  I wake up in the dark before morning. Maud is still asleep, with her black coat hunched around her.

  Nearby, Poppy’s eyes blink open. “Don’t come with me,” I whisper to her, getting to my feet. Maud will know I’m coming back if the goats are still here.

  I slip away, determined to find us something for breakfast before we start our day of searching the city for the cliffs and the Skarth dragon. The streets are narrow, and dark, and twisty, and I can smell bread baking. It reminds me so much of my village and of Tam Baker’s-Son, that I feel a little hollow, and not just with hunger.

  Following my nose through the dimly lit streets, I round a corner, and run right up against somebody I know.

  Gringolet.

  She is just as strange and threatening as she was the first time I saw her, talking to my da outside our cottage. She’s added a row of pins in her eyebrows, and she looks even thinner and more drawn-out than she did before. “Well, well,” she says in her rough voice, drawing a long, glitteringly sharp pin out of her coat sleeve. “I’ve been scouring the city for you, spark boy, and here you are!”

  I look around quickly for Stubb, but he’s nowhere to be seen.

  “Now, come along nicely,” Gringolet says.

  I take a step back. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you’re running out of time.” She points at me with the pin. “If Mister Flitch doesn’t get what he needs from you, and soon, he’ll take it from your village.”

  My eyes narrow. Mister Flitch said the same thing to me, back in Old Shar’s front yard. “He told me that he’d take something from under my village,” I say. “But there’s nothing under my village except rock.”

  “Oh really!” she sneers. “But what if the rock under your village is . . . coal?”

  I stare. That possibility hadn’t occurred to me. Mister Flitch’s factories run on coal. He wouldn’t dig up my village to get the coal under it. Would he?

  Of course he would.

  And if he did, the Dragonfell would end up looking like the Coaldowns—sooty and dirty and surrounded by mullock heaps. And my not-quite-friend Tam would spend his whole days “under,” just like the miner boy I’d met there.

  I gulp. “Mister Flitch said . . . he said he wanted something from me. What do I have that he wants?”

  Gringolet moves snakelike to the side. “You tell me, boy.”

  The only thing I can think of is . . . “My spark?”

  She nods. Her eyes are fixed on me. She never blinks, I realize, and she never looks away.

  “But he can’t take my spark. Can he?” I ask.

  “Can he?” she asks, and her voice sounds twisted and bitter.

  I blink. Wait. Gringolet is so strange and ashy. Like a fire gone out. Did she used to be different? “Did you have a spark once?” I ask her.

  “Did I?” she snipes.

  “Flitch took it,” I guess.

  “No, he didn’t,” she says. She edges closer, still holding the pin, ready to strike. “I gave it to him.”

  I shake my head, because it doesn’t make any sense. “You were dragon-touched, and you gave up your spark?”

  “I had my reasons,” she says, and there’s that bitterness in her voice again. “You have reasons, too,” she goes on. “Unless you like being a freak and an outcast. You have a choice to make, just as I did.”

  A choice? I stare at her, realizing what she means. Flitch wants me to give up my spark to save my village.

  Gringolet still has her unblinking eyes fixed on me. Suddenly she glances to the side and gives a little nod, and I whirl around to see Stubb, sneaking up on me from behind.

  I dodge, quickly.

  “Grab him!” Gringolet shouts, and lunges at me with the pin, and I squirm out of Stubb’s reaching hands and sprint away.

  “Make your choice!” Gringolet screams after me.

  I whirl around a corner and race down another alley, and around another, and then lean against a brick wall, panting. There’s no sound of pursuing feet. But they know I’m here in the city—they’ll be searching.

  I catch my breath. I have to think about this.

  Gringolet was like me, dragon-touched, and she gave up her spark. And now she’s this ashy, bitter thing. That’s what’ll happen to me, too, if I give my spark to Mister Flitch.

  And what will he do with it, once he has it?

  I have no idea.

  I shake my head and push off from the wall. Gringolet says I have a choice to make, but what Mister Flitch is offering is no kind of choice at all.

  Keeping an eye out for Gringolet and Stubb, I hurry through the dark alleys, back to where I left Maud. Now I know what he wants from me, but I’m not stupid enough to make any deals with Mister Flitch. My plans won’t change. I still have to find the dragons, and help them, and find out what it really means to be dragon-touched. Certain sure I’m not giving up my spark before I find out why, exactly, I have it.

  And it’s another secret that I’ll be keeping from Maud.

  When I get back to the dilapidated square where we spent the night, a new goat has joined Poppy and Elegance. She is white, and very fat, with a little goat beard on her chin, and curved black horns.

  Maud blinks her eyes open. “Oh,” she says in a rusty voice, sitting up. “A new goat.”


  “Yep,” I say, surveying them, my own little herd, and it makes me feel a lot less worried about Gringolet.

  “What will you name him?” Maud asks.

  “Her name is . . . Fluffy,” I decide.

  “Fluffy,” Maud repeats. “Really?”

  I nod. It’s a good name, even though Fluffy’s white fur is limp and dusted with soot.

  The sky is turning gray with dawn as Maud gets stiffly to her feet and we leave the trash-filled square.

  “I was thinking,” Maud says, giving me a wan smile. “There’s a river. That’s most likely where we’ll find cliffs, don’t you think?”

  I nod, and we make our way through the awakening city, keeping to the most secret alleyways. The goats follow, stopping now and then to nibble at a bit of trash on the ground, then scampering to catch up.

  After an hour of skulking, we get to the river that sweeps in a wide bend around the city, and to the docks, where silent steamships ride at anchor out in the rushing water, and the cranes and pulleys for loading them are just creaking to life. The air smells dank and sour.

  We reach the end of the docks and the warehouses. To our right, the river surges past. To our left is a pebbly beach and steep, white cliffs.

  “If you were a dragon,” Maud muses, studying the cliffs, “where would you lair?”

  “High up,” I answer, thinking of the Dragonfell.

  She cranes her neck. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Neither do I,” I say. Not even with my farseeing eyes. “Come on.”

  Carrying our bags, I lead Maud onto a path that winds along the edge of the river. The cliff to our left glimmers white in the rosy morning light.

  “My goodness,” Maud says faintly. “I’m hungry.”

  I don’t bother answering. Our footsteps go crunch, crunch, crunch over the pebbly riverbank.

  And then I see it. A spot of shadow on the cliff face, high overhead. “Look!” I point it out.

  Maud squints. “Where?”

  I lead her closer and then point again. “There.” Way overhead, high on the cliff face, is an opening like a wide, dark mouth.