Outside the window Jandra could see other fires burning across the castle. The dark shapes of sky-dragons swooped and glided among the rising smoke. She looked down. To her relief, no flames were directly below them.
“Take off your shirt, Pet,” she said.
The panicked look vanished from Pet’s face. He raised an eyebrow as he asked, “If we’re going to die, you want to die in a passionate embrace?” He gave a confident grin as he began unlacing his shirt. His fingers flew with well-practiced speed.
“You really have a one track mind, don’t you?” Jandra said. “Silk is very strong. It will make a good rope.”
“My shirt isn’t long enough to reach the lower window,” Pet said, sounding a bit disappointed.
“It will be,” Jandra said, taking the shirt from him the instant he pulled it over his head.
She dipped her fingers into the small pouch of silver dust she carried on her belt. She carefully closed her right hand around the sleeve of his shirt then closed her eyes, so as not to be distracted by the flame. With her left hand she pulled the small tuft of silk she had left showing and began to pull it from her hand. Instead of the shirtsleeve, a silk cord as thick as her pinky emerged from her grasp. Pulling more rapidly, she soon ran the entire shirt through her right hand, leaving her with thirty feet of coiled silken rope.
“Good trick,” said Pet, nodding appreciatively.
“It’s not a trick,” Jandra said. “What you did with the apple… that was a trick. This is something much more complex. I’ve been studying with Vendevorex all my life. He’s teaching me how to reconfigure the basic building blocks of matter.” Jandra stood up on the wide windowsill. She reached up, tying the rope around the roof beam that extended outside the tower. She dropped the rope. The end dangled just below the lower window.
“Okay,” she said, “Let’s-”
She was cut short by a horrendous creaking. She looked into the room and saw that Vengeance had climbed the far wall and cut into the copper plates that formed the roof. She yelled, “Don’t breathe!”
But it was too late. A large copper plate twisted free and fell into the room amidst the Vengeance of the Ancestors, sending large billows of smoke toward them. Jandra tried to inhale one last breath of clean air in the instant before it reached them. Instead, her lungs filled with the awful smell of phosphorous and sulfur. Her lungs felt full of needles as she began to cough uncontrollably. Dark spots danced before her eyes as her strength failed. She was vaguely aware of her feet slipping from the ledge as she tumbled backward into the night air.
“What’s happening?” Zeeky mumbled as Poocher’s squeals awakened her.
“Sorry to disturb you,” Hey You said as he lifted her in his arms and set her onto the straw. “I need my cloak. There’s work to be done.”
“What’s that noise?” Zeeky asked, hearing guttural shouts in the distance, and the faint clangs of metal against metal.
“War. The dragons fight the dragons.”
“Why?” she asked, sitting up.
“That’s of no concern to me. Whatever cause dragons are prepared to die for tonight, I feel obligated to help them along. The family in the farmhouse should be awake by now. I’m going to leave you with them.”
“No!” Zeeky protested. “They’ll take me back!”
“Back where?”
“Oh. Ah,” Zeeky muttered, hugging her knees as she looked at the floor. “To the orphanage?”
“You can always run away again,” Hey You said as he fastened the sheathed knife to his boot. “Running away’s easy.”
“Why can’t I go with you?”
“I’m going someplace little girls shouldn’t go.”
“Where?”
“To hell, eventually,” Hey You said. While he tied his cloak around his neck he stared at her straight in the eyes and asked, “You coming voluntarily?”
“What’s ‘voluntarily’ mean?”
“Fine,” he said, scooping her up under one arm and lifting his bow with the other.
Zeeky screamed as Hey You jumped from the loft. But the ground was closer than she guessed and when they hit, Hey You curled into a ball around Zeeky and rolled forward once, then sprang to his feet. It happened so fast Zeeky didn’t even get dizzy. She could hear Poocher squealing frantically above them.
“Wait!” she yelled. “I’ll go! I’ll go! But I have to take Poocher!”
“Forget the pig,” Hey You said as he carried her from the dark barn into the starlit night.
“No! He’s my friend!”
Hey You stopped and muttered several words Zeeky had never heard before. He put her down and darted back into the barn. He leapt to the ladder leading to the loft, bounding up the rungs quicker than she could blink. Poocher squealed more emphatically as Hey You again leapt from the loft, this time curling into a ball around Poocher as he landed, then rolled to his feet. Now that she wasn’t part of the jump, Zeeky thought it looked fun.
Hey You grabbed her by the hand and ran across the yard. Lights glowed from inside the farmhouse. Zeeky could see flames at the dragon’s castle, with the tallest spire engulfed completely in a pillar of fire, blazing like the world’s largest candle.
Hey You pounded on the farmer’s door. “Open up!” he shouted. “It’s a fellow human who summons you.”
The door opened quickly and Hey You dragged Zeeky into the house, into the presence of a frightened looking family. The farmer and his wife looked young, much younger than Zeeky’s own parents. Zeeky was relieved to see that they had a girl, a little smaller than Zeeky. Her own family was all boys except for her mother.
“I need you to watch after my daughter for a short time,” Hey You said. “We’re travelers, far from home, and I know no one who can watch her.”
“But…” the farmer said.
“Where are you going?” the wife asked.
“To battle,” Hey You said.
“To attack the castle, or to defend it?” the farmer asked.
“To attack the dragons,” Hey You answered. “Will you watch her or not? Time is short.”
“Of course,” the wife said.
“But…” the farmer said.
“Of course,” the wife said more firmly.
The farmer shrugged and said, “Of course.”
“Good. She comes with a pig,” Hey You said, handing Poocher to the farmer. “Don’t eat it.”
“Um,” said the farmer.
Zeeky tugged Hey You’s pant leg. He looked down into her eyes. She said, “Promise you’ll come back?”
Perhaps it was only a trick of the dim light, but it seemed to her that Hey You’s face turned ghostly pale. He stared at her for a long moment before whispering, “I promise.”
Then, he turned to the farmer and his wife and said, more firmly, “Thank you both for your kindness.”
Before another word could be spoken he stepped backward through the door and vanished into the night.
Jandra woke up. The ground lay far beneath her, swirling, spinning, swimming in colors. A heavy weight pressed against her stomach and she remembered she was falling. She closed her eyes, bracing for impact.
But the wind wasn’t rushing against her face. The seconds it should take her to reach the ground were dragging by. She opened her eyes again, blinking to clear her vision. The rope swayed above her, or rather, beneath her, since her head was pointed earthward. The lower window crept ever closer. Looking down and then up, she found herself face to face with Pet’s butt. His feet were pressed against the wall for balance. She was slung over his shoulder. He grunted with each inch as he lowered them, hand-over-hand, down the rope.
“You awake?” Pet asked, his voice strained.
“How’d you know?” she said, coughing as the remnants of smoke in her lungs raked her throat.