“Go away!” Blade told it.
The demon was laughing. It found both of them hilarious. The laughter went through Blade in waves, and it hurt. He felt the demon say, I shall go now, but I’ll see you again soon.
Blade wanted to say something like “Come near me again and I’ll kill you!” but that would have been ridiculous, and anyway, he had no strength left. Sweat from holding out against the demon was running down from his hair into his eyes. He wanted to cry like Elda.
“It’s gone!” Elda cheeped thankfully. Then she squawked. “What was that?”
It was the noise of Derk falling over a chair on the terrace and then a twoing as he kicked Shona’s harp. “Dad!” Blade shouted.
Derk came and held up his lantern to look at them. “What’s wrong?”
“The demon was here!” they told him in chorus. “And it told Blade it was coming back! Don’t let it!” Elda added.
Derk had not the courage to explain how very wrong his conjuring had gone. He said soothingly, “We don’t need it yet, not until I’ve made the Citadel. Don’t worry. Where’s everyone else?”
“Coming,” said Elda. But it was a good hour before weary wingbeats brought Kit, Callette, and Shona home, and a further half hour after that before Lydda staggered in with Don.
“You blew her into the air, leaving with Elda,” Don said to Blade. “I think she’d have had to walk if you hadn’t. It was awful. She kept saying she had to land, and I had to shout at her to keep her flying.”
“And Dad had left when we got to the inn,” Shona said disgustedly. “Where’s he gone now?”
“Eating supper,” said Elda. “It’s gone all cold and horrible, but he’s gobbling.”
EIGHT
ELDA WAS FIT AS A fiddle the next day, and everyone else felt terrible. Lydda lay facedown on the living room sofa, filling it to overflowing. “Someone else can see to food today,” she said. “My shoulders hurt.”
“Well, that won’t be me,” Shona said, examining the rope burns on her fingers. “I can’t even play the piano. Mum wants me to take Callette and Elda over to Aunt’s house today, and I’m too tired to try. Where’s Callette?”
Callette was sulking in her shed, saying she was bored because she had finished the gizmos. Don’s opinion was that she was as stiff as the rest of them and too proud to admit it. Don lay on his back with his wings spread all over the dining room floor, refusing to move for anyone. He was not proud, he said.
Blade felt strange, as if the demon had pushed something sideways in his mind. “Have I still got my soul?” he asked Kit anxiously.
Kit glared into Blade’s eyes. “Of course you have! Fool!” Kit had got up at dawn and flown a circuit of the valley in order to convince himself he was fit. The opposite proved to be the case. Kit came home in such a ferocious bad temper that only Blade dared go near him.
Derk supposed he ought to tell them all off for taking so many risks last night—night flying, going too far, dangling Shona and Blade on the swing, and barging straight into that demon—but he was too depressed about his double failure yesterday. He sat in his study and worried, unable even to think of designing a new carrier pigeon. He found he was rather touched at the way Elda had tried to go after him. She had carefully saved him her orange peel and pips as well. He could not bring himself to scold her. Instead, he sighed and went to plant the pips.
They were all jolted out of their gloom around midday by Elda, followed by Pretty, galloping across the terrace shrieking, “The dragon’s coming! The dragon’s coming!”
No one except Derk had ever seen a dragon. There was instant huge excitement. Kit and Callette burst out of their dens; Lydda and Shona tangled in the living room doorway, both trying to get outside at once; Don knocked over every seat in the dining room, getting to his feet; Blade raced down the wood and marble stairs; Derk pelted around from his workroom; and they all rushed to join Elda and Pretty at the gate, along with every one of the pigs. The dogs and the geese clamored to be let out, too, but no one could spare them any attention. The Friendly Cows and Big Hen simply clamored, catching the general excitement.
The dragon was now halfway up the valley and seemed to fill it from wingtip to wingtip. Blade said, awed, “I didn’t know they were so big!”
“She’s actually only a medium size,” Derk said.
“They don’t fly at all like us,” Don observed.
“More like seagulls,” Lydda agreed.
The dragon lifted her wings and came to an elegant landing on the grass downhill from the gate. She was altogether elegant, slender, glistening, and lavender-colored, phasing to a creamy color underneath. With her wings folded as she came winding up to the gate, she almost had the look of a very large lizard.
The pigs, by this time, were snuffling nervously and backing away. Pretty was shaking all over. When the dragon arrived, towering over everyone except Kit, and emitted a delicate curl of smoke from each nostril as she halted, Pretty had had enough. He screamed and bolted, wagging his undeveloped wings frantically. The pigs broke and ran with him, squealing and soon taking to the air for speed. Pretty was so frightened that he rose into the air with them. Nobody noticed Pretty’s maiden flight. They were all staring at the fine violet and green blood vessels in the dragon’s wings, the way her scales refracted the sunlight like jewels, and the deep, deep look in her purple eyes.
There came a dreadful clamor from the pens and paddocks beyond the house as all the animals caught the dragon’s scent. The dragon politely ignored it. “I am to collect a number of objects from here, I believe,” she said. Her voice was like cellos and clarinets. Shona sighed.
“I’ll fetch them,” said Callette, and tore herself away the short dist
ance to her shed.