Chapter Twenty-Four
When Frida woke up, she thought it had all been a dream.
But as she lay in something soft, which she soon realised was grass, everything felt tender, from her hair to her bones.
Her lungs burned and her throat was sore.
Maybe from screaming, or maybe from swallowing more worms, twigs, roots and soil than any human ever should.
Slowly returning to consciousness, she managed to roll over with a groan.
Was that what it felt like to be buried alive?
She cracked one eye open and winced.
The light was the warm hue of high summer.
Strangely reassuring. And there was a sound coming from nearby that couldn’t help but make her smile.
It was like a baby canary being tickled.
A few yards away, a massive purple dragon was rolling around on his back, giggling, sunlight streaming off his amethyst scales.
Around him, huge golden insects the size of bats fluttered in an excited cloud, and she had to blink a few times before she realised they were dragonflies.
Though unlike any dragonfly she’d ever seen.
Suddenly, sitting up too fast, she choked out a cry. Lucky immediately swung his massive snout around and gave a howl of delight. ‘LITTLE STINK! YOU’RE ALIVE!’
She clutched her head at the volume as she got up on wobbly legs. ‘Lucky, where are we?’
His belly was exultant. ‘Exactly where we should be!’ His lips widened in a grin, and then he went back to rolling around in the grass. In a daze, Frida lifted her gaze past him. Her nostrils flared as the scent of salt and sea air wrapped around her.
The sea. They were by the sea.
Before her stretched a vast expanse of blue that seemed to go on forever, melting at last into a white misty haze on the horizon.
Letting out a whimper, she stumbled across the grassy hillside.
She walked over to the edge where she saw undulating white chalk cliffs extending left and right as far as she could see.
Below her, a rocky beach was speckled with pebbles.
Above a great searing sky, the sun a knife-sharp white hole.
For a long moment, she just stood there.
She’d stood on this exact spot before. Many times, in fact.
To her left, she should have been able to see a long metallic pier jutting into the dark blue water, crowned by the infamous red and white rollercoaster, the Kraken’s Rift.
She should have been able to see busy tarmacked roads sandwiched against winding old, cobbled streets.
She should have seen the seaside promenade, the jaunty seafront cafes, the striped deckchairs, tourist coaches gridlocked in traffic jams, the Italian restaurant where her mum had worked, the wind farm in the bay . . .
Beyond all that, she should have seen the sprawl of Liberty Park creeping up the hillside, and the massive twinkling golden walls of the LEZ. The ornate gilded entrance, the colourful roofs of the plaza, the network of thoroughfares leading towards the seven sections of the LEZ like a sunburst.
She stood there, not quite able to process what she was seeing.
Or, more accurately, what she wasn’t seeing.
This was Melody-Upon-Sea. Except – it wasn’t.
She didn’t know how long she stood there before Lucky eventually lumbered over, a warm cloud of smoke heating her back as he came to stand next to her.
‘Where’s the LEZ?’ she whispered.
Lucky emitted a self-satisfied chirp from the back of his throat. Around his head, those ethereal dragonflies still hovered. They flittered between sunbeams. Or . . . did they?
‘Big-dragon-big-dragon,’ they purred. Their quivering voices filled her head with sunlight. ‘Fire-light-burn-heat-hot-bright-fly-fly-fly.’
She swayed, disbelieving.
There was a poster on the back of her kitchen door, yellowed and peeling at the edges. It had been there since she’d been a child. She looked at it every time she put on the oven. The Best British Extraordinary Insects Throughout History.
‘Galin’s greater golden dragonfly,’ she murmured.
As big as two handspans. They didn’t move between sunbeams. They were made of sunbeams. Found in two types of habitat: forest meadows, with lots of standing water, and big open cliff faces where they could catch sunlight reflecting off the waves below.
She looked around at the cliff, with the water below, and felt her heart flip-flop.
It had been almost two centuries since they’d been hunted to extinction, victims of a Regency fad for dragonfly lamps.
She watched, captivated, as their wings whirled, dancing across Lucky’s scales as if skimming a giant purple pond.
They were sunshine incarnate, splaying shards of diamond light across the backs of her eyelids.
It wasn’t possible.
And yet, her eyes dropped to where Melody should have been.
Instead, what she saw was a small village nestled in a nook between two rolling hillsides, a sparkling river meandering down to meet the sea.
There was a long dirt track, and she could just make out a horsedrawn cart trundling towards the ocean.
‘Lucky,’ she said, her voice dangerously low.
He’d cocked his head and was watching her with eagerness. Those blasted dragonflies twinkling around his face. ‘Do you understand, little stink?’
She sagged, her knees turning to jelly. Either this was a parallel universe, or . . .
‘Did you actually burrow through time?’ she whispered.
Saying it out loud, oh sweet shrimps. But they were definitely not in the LEZ, and there below was vintage Melody-Upon-Sea: a sleepy seaside town with no tourist coaches, no blinding multi-coloured arcades, no wind farm, no Italian restaurant with legendary ice-cream.
No LEZ. Just cobbled streets and horsedrawn carts.
Desperately, she fumbled for her phone, but then she realised she’d left it behind, discarded it right before they’d swan-dived through the earth. Swan-dived through time!
‘Yes, little stink!’ Lucky wagged his tail encouragingly.
‘I knew you’d understand. It really is an adventure, isn’t it?
’ He looked around, his eyes wide with exhilaration.
‘Dada told me what to do, and he promised you’d be ok, but I wasn’t sure.
I’ve never done such a thing, and I don’t know if any human has either.
It is very very dangerous for you to travel the dragon paths. ’
Frida could only gawp at him.
You need to go back to the beginning.
Suddenly, the little postcard pinned to her bedroom wall of Forge House came back to her, and her head swum.
She’d had no idea what Fireheart had meant, but .
. . She gazed up at Lucky, comprehension and excitement dawning.
If those were truly GGG dragonflies, flitting around his head, then they must be at least two hundred years in the past. That would fit with the horse drawn carts – it all looked very Jane Austen.
She gazed across the sea.
Where had Fireheart been in the 1800s? Somewhere out there?
Or . . . slowly, Frida turned to look back in the other direction, across the rolling hills, peopled with the occasional little coils of chimney smoke, green swathes of woodland, patchworks of fields, and a blue-grey blur of mist on the far distant horizon. Her mind seemed to blaze with sunbeams.
You need to go back to the beginning.
What beginning?
She was standing where the LEZ should have been.
But the LEZ wasn’t here. It was far over that horizon, in a mansion house made of creamy stone.
Forge House. Fireheart had been brought there in 1835, which fit the horsedrawn carts perfectly.
Maybe the Jewel had been broken during her capture, but if the old dragon had managed to keep it with her, it might have ended up there somewhere, hidden, at Forge House. It was a beginning, anyway.
If she was wrong . . .
She didn’t want to be wrong.
‘There.’ Frida pointed inland, towards that distant, smoky horizon.
Lucky’s reaction made her want to leap for joy. ‘Clever little stink!’ he crowed as he bounced on his front legs, the impossible dragonflies zipping around him. When he flapped his wings, a sulphurous wind lifted the braid from Frida’s neck. ‘Get on my back, little stink! We’ll go right now!’
He was already wriggling backwards to get more distance between him and the edge of the cliff.
Seagulls wheeled above, squawking in alarm.
And . . . were those bloobodecks she could see, swooping through the air currents?
Bloobodecks had survived a bit longer than the dragonflies, and it was still possible to find them in the wildest of places, if you were lucky.
But she’d never seen one. Local historians said they used to nest in the cliffs around Melody.
The unmistakable translucent sheen of their bodies rippled as they shrieked their indignation at being disturbed.
Part water, part air, and a great deal of feathers, the tiny creatures swooped in and out of the holes they’d made in the cliffs.
Frida didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
‘Lucky,’ she gasped, ‘are you going to fly?’
‘OH YES!’ His shout of exultation sent even more animals scattering and Frida’s head swam with the squeals of the bloobodecks, the droning purr of the dragonflies, and the cloying scent of sulphur as Lucky beat his wings harder.
‘Have you done this before?!’
He was propelling himself in lopsided circles.
He panted, ‘Yes!’ Then he amended, ‘A few times. Only once. But it’s not hard! Dada said I was very, very good.’
Frida paled, but before she could do anything, Lucky unceremoniously scooped her up by the back of her shirt, grabbing on with his teeth, and dumped her between his shoulders with an ungainly thud.
Drool dribbling down her back, she was too shocked to squeal.
She just clung on as he took a running leap towards the cliff edge.
Bloobodecks, dragonflies and seagulls scattered in their wake.
When he began to plummet, she finally found her voice, but the wind whipped the screams from her lips as they dropped like a stone towards the pebbly beach below.