Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower - Tamsyn Muir Page 0,28

a penny in the box since being kidnapped, still hoped she might go there if she didn’t do anything too horrid; so she had to tell herself that she had done the right thing, and that if you looked at it a certain way she had even given Cobweb much more stimulating employment than she used to have. And of course she was as nice to Cobweb as she knew how, and made a lovely little bed for her right next to her pillow, and sewed her beautiful little frocks embroidered with miniature rosebuds in the tiniest of stitches. Even Cobweb admitted these were pretty.

But if you have ever been walloped because you were naughty, and then you were taken out for a good time afterwards to cheer you up about it, you might have a good idea of how Cobweb felt, which was all mixed up. She hated Floralinda with all her fairy heart, and more besides, because Cobweb was more intelligent than most fairies and therefore quite unusually good at hating; and it was all mixed up with grudgingly admiring Floralinda for doing the exact thing she would have done, and feeling a furious pleasure at bossing Floralinda about, and then disrespecting Floralinda for being bossed, and being frightened at all times throughout. That is how Cobweb felt in those early days. So she just thought as hard and as quickly as possible, and muddled through somehow, and kept long-term thoughts boiling in the back of her pretty little head.

“Now go and see what’s on the next flight; you’re such a slowpoke that the dragon will die of old age,” said Cobweb.

“You’re teasing me; dragons live for ever,” said Princess Floralinda plaintively. Which was the first time that Floralinda had contradicted her.

The first flight they dealt with after that fateful moonlit night was flight thirty-five, which Floralinda still hoped in her obvious heart could be taken care of with some fire, or some other trick; but when they opened up that staircase door, a sooty red glow hit them with dazzling heat, like opening an oven. This was quite pleasant for the first few minutes, as the cold had drawn in, but then it grew stuffy, and Floralinda had to take off her blanket coat.

The air shimmered before them like it does in the desert, and it was quite dark except for slithery orange lights here and there. The hot, airless room didn’t have any windows, and instead was separated into rocky partitions with liquid reflections in them, as though someone had heaped up stones in a pool. Even Cobweb had no idea what they were looking at as those orange lights moved and scattered, and then she said—

“Salamanders, of course.”

For salamanders they were, amphibians the size of dogs, who like to live in volcanoes and take dips in the lava. The witch could afford the lava but couldn’t afford the keeping thereof, so there was no real lava in that flight; but there was plenty of boiling oil, which the salamanders kept boiling themselves. It must have been a little rough on the salamanders, but if we begin to feel sorry for every single thing the witch locked up, we shall be here all day, so let’s not begin. Very few things that the witch had captured were completely innocent, after all.

The moving orange lights had grown still. In the hot darkness, ten white lights that both Floralinda and Cobweb had taken for reflections turned towards them: they were pairs of eyes. Cobweb drew Floralinda back from the trap-door and they heaped stones upon it, because they had learned from the devil-bear (whose chain was still stretched taut out the window and who had since expired, we hope, or otherwise was having a worse time than anyone else in this story).

“It’s terribly hot down there,” said Floralinda cautiously, “and there’s not a great deal of light to see by; I don’t think the spear will be much use, Cobweb, dear.”

Cobweb, dear said briskly: “Nonsense. This is all part of my grand plan. I am happy with this outcome. Salamanders are flesh and blood like anything else is, even if their blood is boiling hot; that’s what we wanted. You should have guessed what we are going to do.”

But Floralinda could not think. Even if you are currently delighting in a diet rich with two types of bread, milk, water, oranges, and everything inside a little bird, it can be difficult to think if you are under stress.