Page 47 of Wondrous

The mock dragon loped out of the forest, almost casually. She was slightly smaller than the last one, but this wasn’t a comfort. Her face was a grinning skull with hardly any skin at all, roughly deer-shaped, with towering antlers rising from a disturbingly lustrous head of long black hair. The rest of her body wasn’t skeletal, though, but bearlike, black-furred, with huge paws tipped in rapier claws. The only dragonlike thing about her was her membranous dark wings, more substantial than the other mock dragon’s. I guessed she could probably fly, though not gracefully.

In short, she was the most horrifying sight I had ever seen.

I would have fainted, but Alex had flung the thing in her hand with a cry, and the forest filled with explosions.

I screamed and threw my arms over my head. The mock dragon gave an awful cry, like the groan of a hundred rusty door hinges. I watched the firework burst above me, releasing great showers of green and blue and topaz. It was beautiful, but I was in no position to appreciate this.

“The next one will be aimed at your head,” Alex said with more iron in her voice than I would have been able to muster. She stepped in front of me and Maria.

Unfortunately, I could see that Alex wasn’t holding anything else, and so, it seemed, could the mock dragon. She regarded us with her empty eye sockets for a moment, and then she lunged, flame surging up her throat.

We screamed and dove out of the way, Alex and Maria going left and me going right. The mock dragon was as fast as a steam locomotive and about as graceful; she plowed past us and collided with a tree.

She whipped around and hissed smoke at us. “That’s very rude,” she said in a creaky, whispery way, as if her voice were a skeleton, too. “The others held still. You should do the same.”

“The others,” I repeated, dread settling over me. “Have you—have you met other Alices since you came here?”

The mock dragon made no reply, only grinned her skeletal grin. She inhaled, the flame surging up her throat.

But suddenly Grackle was there, and trailing him was a flock of moths so numerous they resembled a solid cloud. Grackle had lured them there, somehow, and now they had their sights set on the dragon—or, rather, the light in her mouth.

“Grackle!” I cried, realizing two things: One, Grackle was about to sacrifice himself for me, and two, I actually cared whether the murderous speck lived or died. I wasn’t happy about either.

But I was wrong about the first one, of course, for Grackle was Grackle. He veered off just before he reached the dragon’s maw, but the other moths were too transfixed by the flame or too foolish to follow him. They plowed straight into the mock dragon’s open mouth and down her throat.

The mock dragon erupted into a wheezing, gagging cough, and a cloud of smoke and ash burst from her mouth, rather like a campfire doused by a bucket of water. She slumped to the ground, clawing at her throat.

“Run!” I shrieked at Alex and Maria. The two of them had gone back to their tent; Maria emerged carrying something that resembled an enormous cobweb.

“We can trap her with this!” Maria said. “I used a snuggle stitch—the more she fights, the tighter it’ll get.”

She shook it, and I gasped. The net looked even more like spider silk up close and gleamed in the starlight.

“How did you—” I began.

“I took up with three talking sheep when I visited Wonderland,” she explained hurriedly. “They wove all sorts of silly things out of wool, such as bowls and spoons. But their wool must have magic in it, because it’s indestructible—even fireproof.”

The mock dragon had drawn herself half upright, hacking and spitting fried moths onto the ground. I grabbed the net from Maria before she could stop me.

“I have a plan,” I said. “You two go.”

“What? We’re not leaving you!” Alex said, making a grab for the net. I darted out of reach.

“Trust me,” I said, the words leaving my mouth before I could call them back. It was a ridiculous thing to say. I didn’t trust them, so why should they trust me?

I tossed the net over my shoulder and scrambled up the closest tree. I’d been an excellent tree climber as a child, and I loved to nap in trees with Dinah, before my mother found out and made me stop. As it turned out, tree climbing was like swimming: Once you knew how, you never forgot. I was soon at least ten feet off the ground. If I could only get a little higher, I could throw the net over the mock dragon’s head.

The mock dragon was recovering, though, and I was in a precarious position: directly in her line of sight—and her line of fire. But an echoing bang sounded to our left, and the mock dragon’s head swiveled away.

Alex lit another firework and flung it at the mock dragon’s feet. This one reminded me of popcorn: tiny white flames that danced as they exploded, making the mock dragon shriek and jerk out of the way.

I climbed higher. I was just reaching the perfect position when a branch snapped beneath my foot.

The mock dragon’s skull shot up, her eyeless gaze fixing upon me and the net before I could hide behind the tree trunk. She grinned and spread her wings.

I screamed and scrambled up the tree, moving so fast I barely noticed the smaller branches slapping me in the face. I had been right—the mock dragon wasn’t a very good flier. It took her several tries to become airborne, but once she had, she opened her bone jaw wide. She didn’t need to fly as high as me—she only needed to get close enough to blast me.

Alex, back on the ground, unleashed firework after firework. But they had little effect on the mock dragon now that she’d seen me. I let out a sob and scrambled still higher. I couldn’t throw the net—the mock dragon would see it coming and dodge, and even if she didn’t, I didn’t think it would cover her with her wings unfurled.