he rode it as a boat might ride a cresting wave, skidding downward on the wild rush of air. As he reached the edge of the roof, he snatched it with his talons and peeled it off, just as you might peel the hat off your head. The entire roof came off in one piece. The dragon carried it a little distance, then released it. Freed to take off on its own, it sailed across Cockshott Point like a huge sheet of cardboard, turning and tumbling, until it crashed into the ferry’s loading dock and splintered into a thousand pieces.
Having unzipped the roof, so to speak, all the dragon had to do was turn and watch, and the wind did the rest. Peering down into the roofless hangar, she saw to her enormous delight that someone had left a light, flimsy aeroplane, which struck her as the perfect toy. She picked it up and turned it over curiously once or twice to see how it worked and what it was made of. Then, because she thought it might make an interesting kite, she tossed it into the air. The Bird didn’t stay up long, of course. When it landed hard on the shingle, it was upside down, one wing was broken off, the tail had splintered, the propeller was smashed, and the center float had split open like a pea pod.
When she saw that her new toy had broken into bits, the wind was so annoyed that she blew in all four walls of the hangar, one after the other. Luckily, the guard had taken shelter under a sturdy table when the dragon peeled the roof off. He crawled out of the wreckage of the hangar, very shaken up but without injury. Nobody would ever believe him, of course, if he said that he had seen a small green dragon with leathery wings peel the roof off, just before the wind picked up the Water Bird and began tossing it around. He didn’t believe it, either, and went off to the nearest pub for a stiff one.
The wind, who as you know is entirely amoral and has no conscience or any sense of consequence, found a great many toys to play with in the neighborhood of Cockshott Point that night. She blew down the Presbyterian Church steeple in Bowness, snatched the roof off a stable and the school in the town of Windermere, turned over several wagons at the lumber mill, and shoved the ferry onto its loading ramp, seriously damaging the hull. Farther afield, she pulled up any number of trees, flooded fields, and set a house and a haystack afire with lightning bolts. Altogether, she had a very entertaining evening for herself, and when she finally got tired and went home, she could think back on her games with a great deal of pleasure.
As for the dragon and the owl, they waited until the wind left and then flew back across the lake. The owl went straight to the drinks pantry in his beech tree and poured himself a double shot of elderberry wine. The dragon flew on to Briar Bank, where he crawled under the covers of his bed and slept for a whole twelve hours before he woke up, to find that Bailey and Thackeray were having bacon and eggs (borrowed from Mrs. Crook’s chickens) for lunch, along with fresh-baked bread, butter, and strawberry jam. Thorvaald had second helpings of everything.
25
In Which We Tie Up All the Loose Ends—But One
The days after the storm were filled, as you might expect, with plenty of work for everyone, as people in the Land Between the Lakes repaired the shingles and slates on their houses and barns and sheds, picked up the broken branches, sawed the fallen trees into firewood, swept up the flood debris, and got things back to normal again.
But there was to be no return to normal for the Water Bird, which was damaged beyond repair. Oscar Wyatt went to his new investor to ask for money to rebuild it, but she turned him down flat. She? Yes, indeed. The investor who had taken Mr. Baum’s place, believe it or not, was Lady Longford. It was one thing, she said, to invest in a going project that had every chance of success. It was quite another to invest in an aeroplane that had to be rebuilt after every storm.
If you’re surprised to learn that it was Lady Longford who promised money for the hydroplane—in spite of