Twigleg rose cautiously to his feet behind the tuft of grass. The backpacks! That was the solution. Sorrel certainly wouldn’t want him going with them, however much the boy might. But if he simply hid in Ben’s backpack … Silent as a shadow, the homunculus stole over to it.
“What was that?” asked Sorrel, leaning down from Firedrake’s back. “Something just shot out of the grass! Are there desert rats here?”
Diving headfirst in among Ben’s clothes, Twigleg disappeared.
“I have something for you, too, Sorrel,” said Barnabas Greenbloom, reaching into his basket. “My wife gave me these to cook with, but I think you’ll make better use of them.” He pressed a small bag into Sorrel’s paws.
She sniffed it curiously.
“Dried wood blewits!” she cried. “Girolles, chanterelles, morels!” She stared at Barnabas Greenbloom in amazement. “Are you really giving me all these?”
“Of course!” The professor smiled. “No one appreciates mushrooms better than a brownie, am I right?”
“You certainly are.” Sorrel sniffed the bag happily once more and then leaped down off Firedrake’s back to stuff it in her backpack, which was lying on the sand beside Ben’s. Twigleg hardly dared to breathe as they strapped the two backpacks together, ready for the journey. But Sorrel was too intoxicated by the fragrance of her mushrooms to notice the manikin among Ben’s clothes.
Ben looked all around him. “Twigleg really does seem to have disappeared,” he murmured.
“Thank goodness for that!” said Sorrel, making sure the bag of mushrooms was pushed well down in her backpack, although not before she’d taken one out to nibble. “He reeked of bad luck, you take my word for it. Any brownie would have spotted that at once, but you humans never notice anything.”
Twigleg would have loved to nip her furry fingers, but he controlled himself and didn’t so much as poke the tip of his nose out of his hiding place.
“Perhaps it was just the fact that he’s a homunculus you didn’t like, Sorrel,” said Professor Greenbloom. “Such creatures are seldom popular with beings born naturally. In fact, they seem sinister to most people. So a homunculus like Twigleg often feels very lonely and rejected and clings to whomever made him. Although they do usually live much longer than their makers — much, much longer.”
Sorrel shook her head and closed her backpack. “One way or another,” she said, “he smelled of bad luck and that’s all there is to it.”
“She’s stubborn as a mule,” Ben whispered to the professor.
“I’d noticed,” Barnabas Greenbloom whispered back.
Then he went over to Firedrake and looked into his golden eyes once more. “All I have for you is this,” he said, holding out his open hand to the dragon.
A scale lay on his palm, gleaming, hard and cold — and golden. The dragon bent over it, curious. The professor placed another scale beside it.
“I found these two scales many, many years ago in the northern Alps,” the professor explained. “Cows and sheep had been disappearing there, and the local people told horror stories of a terrible monster prowling down from the mountains by night. At the time, I’m afraid, I could find nothing but these scales, which look remarkably like your own but feel entirely different. There were some tracks around, too, but they’d been blurred by the rain and the angry farmers who’d been milling around.”
In his hiding place, Twigleg pricked up his ears. Those scales could only have come from his master! Nettlebrand had lost three scales in the course of his life, and in spite of sending out all his ravens in search of them he had never recovered any of them. He wasn’t going to be at all pleased to hear that a human had found two of the precious scales.
The manikin stuck his nose out of Ben’s backpack to get a look at them, but the professor’s hand was too far above his head for him to see anything.
“They have no scent,” said Firedrake, “as if they were made of nothing. Yet they feel as cold as ice.”
“May I see them?” asked Ben, bending over the professor’s hand.
Twigleg was listening.
“You can hold them,” said Professor Greenbloom. “Look at them closely. They’re curious things.”
Ben carefully took one of the scales from the professor’s hand and ran a finger over its sharp edges. It did feel like metal, yet there was something else about it, too.
“I believe they’re made of false gold,” the professor told him, “a metal used by alchemists in the Middle Ages when they were trying to make the real thing. They never succeeded, of course. But this must be alloyed with something else because that scale is very, very hard. I couldn’t make the slightest scratch on it, even with a diamond cutter. Ah, well.” Barnabas Greenbloom shrugged his shoulders. “Take one with you. You might unravel this mystery, too, on your travels. I’ve been carrying those scales around with me for so long that I’ve given up hope.”
“Shall I put it in with our things?” Ben asked the dragon.
Firedrake nodded. Thoughtfully he raised his head and looked out to sea. Sorrel scurried up onto the dragon’s tail. Ben threw her the backpacks, and she caught them and slung them over Firedrake’s back.
“Here we go!” she cried. “Who knows, tomorrow morning we might even land where we meant to for a change.”
“The weather seems fair, Sorrel,” said the professor, looking up at the sky.
Ben went over to him and shyly offered his hand. “Goodbye, Professor,” he said.
Professor Greenbloom took Ben’s hand and pressed it hard. “Good-bye, Ben,” he said. “I really do hope we’ll meet again. Oh, yes,” he added, handing Ben a small card, “I almost forgot this. It’s Zubeida’s card. If you do visit her after you’ve stopped off to see the djinn, give her my regards. And should you need more provisions or anything else, I’m sure she’ll be happy to help you. If the village where she’s working hasn’t changed too much, then its people will still be waiting hopefully for the dragons to return. But you’d better make sure of that before Firedrake walks in on them!”
Ben smiled and put the card away with his other treasures. Then he clambered up on Firedrake’s back.
“You’ve still got my card, too, I hope?” said Professor Greenbloom.
Ben nodded.
“The best of luck, then!” cried the professor as Firedrake spread his wings. “And think hard about the question you ask the djinn. Beware of basilisks. And write to tell me if you do find the dragons!”
“Good-bye!” called Ben, waving.
Then Firedrake rose into the air. The dragon circled once over the professor, breathed a blue flame into the night as a farewell, and flew away.
16. Flying South
Over the next few nights, Firedrake flew faster than the wind. Impatience drove him on. The airstream blew so hard in the faces of his two riders that Sorrel stuffed leaves in her ears, and Ben wound the cloth the professor had given him tightly around his head for protection.
The nights were cool, but by day it was so hot that they found it hard to sleep. They took the professor’s advice and rested among the crumbling walls of ruined cities, far from roads and villages. While Firedrake and Sorrel slept in the shade, Ben often sat for hours among the ancient stones, gazing across the hot sand to the horizon, where every now and then a dusty truck drove by, or camels swayed through the heat of the day on their long, thin legs. He would have loved to see more of this strange land, but it was only at night, when Firedrake occasionally flew low over a town, that he caught a few glimpses of domes, slender minarets, and flat-roofed white houses crowded together inside old walls.
