A Most Magical Girl - Karen Foxlee Page 0,62

hurts.”

Annabel thought and thought and thought in the darkness.

She wondered what a real dragon looked like. She wondered if it was always bad or perhaps had a good side, too, the way Hafwen had seemed very bad but had turned out rather charming in the end. Hafwen, who had given up everything. She was a very brave troll. Annabel supposed there had never been a braver one.

Then she thought of London Above going about its business. All the streets and hospitals and churches and houses and inns and taverns and Parliament, with all the lords in their silks, and all the ladies in the parks taking a turn, and none of them, not any of them, aware of what went on down below. That there was a wall made from faery bone and there was the maze of Trollingdom, and that deep below their feet slept a dragon.

Annabel stopped rowing. It seemed the boat was moving itself now, riding the small waves, up and down, lulling them. Hafwen had begun to snore quietly in a rumbly troll way, and Kitty’s head was lolling in the darkness. Curled at the end of the boat, she looked peaceful and sweet. Annabel felt the seeing glass pressed against her chest.

She had asked it to show her Hafwen; now perhaps it could tell her how to approach a dragon. She took it from her dress and placed it on her palm. It was blank, of course. Empty. She sighed at her stupidity. She needed light to see inside the glass. Yet as she was about to put the glass away, she noticed a tiny glimmer within. A flicker. She looked up toward the cavern ceiling, which she had thought would be lost in darkness, but she saw that it was studded with pinpricks of light. They were like tiny stars, and she wondered if they were fireflies or some kind of precious stones.

There—the little glass flashed again. She held the ruby-red seeing glass higher, toward the ceiling. If she could align the glass with one of those specks of light, it might illuminate the piece. But it was difficult. The lights high above on the cavern ceiling seemed to be moving, because the boat was moving. The ruby-red glass would flash, and then the boat would glide on, the speck left behind.

She experimented for some time. She tried to match the glass with a speck in the far distance, the farthest she could see, and finally she captured one. The ruby-red glass flashed crimson, and she saw inside it.

She saw nothing useful.

She saw ruby-red glass suddenly glow.

It was a start.

She felt Hafwen breathe beside her and heard Kitty murmuring in her dreams. She looked deeper into the ruby-red glass. There were shadows now. The shadows were moving, and one of them was tall and one short, and that made her breath quicken. Her head said, Look away, the way it always had, from puddles and shiny silver spoons and lacquered jewelry boxes, but into the glass she looked.

The shadows moved toward her, and through the glass they grew giant. Now the cavern ceiling was aglow in ruby-red light. The shadows loomed huge across it: a tall woman and a short woman. And though she could not see their faces, she knew they were her great-aunts, and it filled her with joy.

“Miss Henrietta,” she started to cry, but her great-aunt’s shadow on the red cavern ceiling held a shadow hand up to her shadow face and hushed her.

“You have come a long way, Annabel Grey,” the small shadow said. Or the waves said, the stones said, the cavern ceiling said.

“But I don’t know where we will go next, or how we will…,” started Annabel. “You see, there’s a dragon. You didn’t tell me about the dragon!”

The taller shadow flickered darkly against the stones but did not speak.

The two shadows swam murkily on the ceiling, became nothing, and then formed bodies once again.

“You must not fear the dragon,” said the short shadow, who Annabel knew must be Miss Estella. “You have the broomstick.”

“Oh,” said Annabel.

That seemed easier said than done. She wondered if Miss Estella or Miss Henrietta had ever been anywhere dangerous or met a dragon. How could she defeat a dragon with a broomstick?

“Time moves quickly,” said the shadow Miss Estella. “The darkness is gathering.”

“We’re trying awfully hard,” whispered Annabel.

She thought of the Ondona thrown on the fire, and her heart beat faster.

“Never mind that,” said the little shadow.

The shadows unshaped themselves again and