Jenna shrugged. "Queen stuff. Really boring most of the time. Gosh, the water's cold, my feet have gone numb. Shall we go and see what Sep's doing?"
"Okay." Beetle followed Jenna back to the dragon, longing to ask about "Queen stuff" but not daring to.
Meanwhile Septimus had gone domestic. He had pulled the sodden saddlebags off Spit Fyre and had spread the contents out on the sand. He was very impressed - and touched - by what he found. He realized that, during the dark winter evenings by the fire, when he had often talked about his time in the Young Army, Marcia had not only listened to his descriptions of the night exercises, she had remembered them - right down to the makeup of various survival backpacks. To Septimus's amazement, Marcia had put together the perfect Young Army Officer Cadet Hostile Territory Survival Pack, with some rather nice added extras in the form of a self-renewing FizzBom special, a Ma Custard bumper variety pack of sweets and a fancy WaterGnome. He could not have done it better himself. He was eyeing the collection with approval when Beetle and Jenna sat down beside him.
"Anyone would think Marcia had been in the Young Army," said Septimus. "She's put in everything that I would have."
"Maybe she was," Jenna said, grinning. "She does the same kind of shouting."
"At least she doesn't do the same kind of shooting," said Septimus with a grimace. He held up a small box with a circular wire attachment on the top of it. "Look, we've got a stove with that new Spell she was doing, FlickFyre. You just flick it like this - " He demonstrated, and a yellow flame shot out of the top of the box and ran around the wire.
"Argh, hot!" Septimus quickly put the stove onto the sand and, leaving it burning, he showed off the rest of the contents of the saddlebags. "See, there's food to last us for at least a week, plates, pots, cups, stuff to build a shelter and look - we've even got a WaterGnome." Septimus held up a small figure of a little bearded man wearing a pointed hat.
"Is that one of the rude ones?" asked Beetle.
"No way," Septimus said with a laugh. "Can you see Marcia letting one of those through the door? The water comes out of his watering can. See?" Septimus tipped the figure and, sure enough, a small spout of fresh water came out of the WaterGnome's tiny watering can. Jenna picked up one of the leather cups and held it under the spout until it was full, then drank it down in one gulp.
"Tastes good," she said.
Using an assortment of packets labeled WizDri, Septimus put together what he called a "Young Army stew, only much better." They sat and watched the stew bubble in the pot on the stove until the aroma made it impossible to just watch it anymore. They ate it with Marcia's StayFresh bread and washed it down with hot chocolate - made by Jenna with the help of her ChocolateCharm, which she had used on some seashells. As they sat around the flickering FlickFyre stove, silently drinking the hot chocolate, each one of them felt surprisingly content. Septimus was remembering another time on another beach - the first time he had ever tasted hot chocolate or ever sat around a fire and not had someone yelling at him. He looked back with a feeling of real fondness for that time; it had been the very beginning of his new life - although back then, he remembered ruefully, he had thought it was the end of the world. Jenna felt happy. Nicko was safe. He would be sailing home soon, and all the trouble that had begun with her taking Septimus to see the Glass in the Robing Room would be over. It would not be her fault anymore.
Beetle felt amazing. If anyone had told him a few months ago that he would be sitting on a deserted beach - well, deserted apart from a snoring dragon and his best friend - in the moonlight with Princess Jenna, he would have told them to stop fooling around and go and do something useful, like clean out the Wild Book Store. But here he was. And right next to him was Princess Jenna. And the moon...and the gentle splish-splash of the sea and... eurgh - what was that?
"Spit Fyre!" Septimus jumped up. "Oof, that was bad. I suppose his stomach is a bit upset. I'd better go and bury it."
Marcia had thoughtfully provided a shovel.
Chapter 22 The Island
J enna, Beetle and Septimus awoke the next morning under a makeshift shelter of HeatCloaks that they had hastily rigged up beside Spit Fyre when fatigue had finally set in. They crawled out and sat on the beach, breathing in the soft, salty breeze and soaking up the warmth of the sun, gazing at the scene before them. It was breathtakingly beautiful.
The storm had left the air feeling washed clean, and there was not a cloud in the brilliant blue sky. The deep azure sea sparkled with a million dancing points of light and filled the air with the sound of its gentle ebb and flow as the tiny waves crept up the beach and then retreated, leaving gleaming, wet sand behind. To their left stretched a long, gentle curve of white sand with hillocks of sand dunes behind, which opened onto a plateau of rock-strewn grass that led to a tree-covered hill. To their right were the round-topped rocks they had so narrowly missed the night before - and Spit Fyre's rock pool.
"Isn't it fantastic?" Jenna whispered in the small hiatus that occurs after the waves wash onto the shore and before they swish back into the sea once more.
"Yeah..." said Beetle dreamily.
Septimus got up and went to check on Spit Fyre. The dragon was still asleep, lying in a dip behind the rocks, sheltered from the sun. He was breathing steadily and his scales were pleasantly warm to the touch. Septimus felt reassured, but when he walked back to the rock pool he felt less so. The water in the pool was a dull reddish color, and through the murky water Spit Fyre's tail did not look good. There was a definite downward kink, and the barb was resting on the sandy bottom of the rock pool. This worried Septimus - Spit Fyre always held the barbed end of his tail high, and the natural curve of the tail would normally have led to the barb sticking up out of the water, not lying limp and lifeless. With a sinking feeling, Septimus realized that the tail was broken. But worse than that, the part of the tail past the break - or the distal part, as Marcellus would have called it - was not a healthy color. The scales had gone a darker green, had lost their iridescence, and the barb, from what he could see of it below the water, looked almost black. Flakes of dead dragon scales were floating on the surface of the water, and when Septimus lay down on a rock and leaned over for a closer look, he realized that the whole pool had a whiff of decay about it. Something had to be done. Jenna and Beetle were daring each other to go for a swim when Septimus rejoined them. He felt a little like Jillie Djinn breaking up a gaggle of giggling scribes as he emerged from the rocks and said, "His tail looks really bad."
Jenna was giving Beetle a push toward the sea. She stopped dead. "Bad?" she said.
"How bad?"
"You'd better come and take a look."
The three of them stood on the edge of the rock pool and looked at the water in dismay.
"Yuck," said Beetle.
"I know," said Septimus. "And if it gets any more yuck he's going to lose the end of his tail...or worse. We've got to do something fast."
"You're the expert, Sep," said Beetle. "Tell us what to do and we'll do it. Won't we, Jenna?"
Jenna nodded, shocked at the sight of the mucky-looking water. Septimus sat down on a rock and stared at the pool in thought. After a while he said,
"This is what I think we should do. First we collect some seaweed and find a long, straight piece of wood. Then - and this is not going to be nice - we get into that pool and we heave his tail out. Then I can get a proper look at it. I'm going to have to clean away all the yucky stuff, and that won't be nice for Spit Fyre, so you're going to have to stay up by his head and talk to him. I'll pack the wound with seaweed because that's got a lot of good stuff for healing in it. If the tail's broken, which I'm pretty sure it is, we'll have to splint it - you know, bind it up with the piece of wood so that he can't move it. And after that we will just have to hope that it gets better and that it doesn't..." Septimus trailed off.
"Doesn't what, Sep?" asked Beetle.