finally wedged himself into a crack behind all of them.
Getting him out was a task made more difficult by the fact
that he did not want to come out.
Finally, though, he stood among them, gawking at the
huge, green, sleeping head of the thing in the hole only a
few feet away. “Wha . . .” He choked, coughed and tried
again. “Wha . . . what that thing?”
Most of them looked at him blankly. Some shrugged
and some shook their heads.
“That not snake,” Tagg informed his leader. “Not stew
stuff, either.”
Emboldened by the Highbulp’s restored presence, old
Gandy, the Grand Notioner, crept a step or two closer to
the sleeping thing and raised his mop handle as though to
prod it. He changed his mind, lowered his stick and leaned
on it, squinting. “Dragon?” he wondered. “Might be.
Anybody here ever see dragons?”
No one recalled ever seeing a dragon, and most were
sure that they would remember, if they had.
Then Tagg had a bright idea. “Dragons got wings,” he
said, adding, doubtfully, “don’t they?”
“Right,” Gandy agreed. “Dragons got wings. This
thing got wings?”
Some of them crept about, trying to see around the
huge head in the hole, to see what was beyond it. But the
dim light filtering in from above did not reach into the
hole. There was only darkness there. They couldn’t see
whether the creature had wings or not.
“Somebody bring candle,” Glitch I ordered. “Highbulp
find out.”
With glances of surprise and admiration at such
unexpected courage, several of them produced stubby and
broken candles, and someone managed to light one. He
handed it to Glitch. The Highbulp held it high, stood on
tiptoes and peered into the darkness of the hole. Then he
shook his head and handed the candle to Tagg, who
happened to be nearby. “Can’t see,” he said. “Tagg go
look.”
Taken by surprise, Tagg looked from the candle thrust
into his hand to the fierce, sleeping features of the thing in
the hole. He turned pale, gulped and started to shake his
head, then saw Minna in the crowd. She was gazing at him
with something in her eyes that might have been more
than the candle’s reflection.
Tagg gulped a shuddering breath, steeling himself.
“Rats,” he said. “Okay.”
The huge, green head almost filled the hole in the wall
of rubble. As Tagg eased alongside it, his back to the
stones at one side, he could have reached out and touched
the nearest nostril, the exposed dagger-points of the great
fangs, the glistening eyelid. The spiked fan of the
creature’s graceful crest stood above him as he crept
deeper, edging alongside a long, tapered neck that was
nearly as wide as he was tall and seemed to go on and on,
into the darkness.
“Tagg pretty brave,” Minna whispered as they
watched him go. Instinctively, her hand went into her belt
pouch and clutched the pretty bauble Tagg had found for
her. Her fingers caressed it, and the great, sleeping
creature stirred slightly, then relaxed again in sleep.
“Not brave,” Gandy corrected. “Just dumb. Highbulp
gonna get Tagg killed, sure.”
Tagg crept through sundered rubble, just inches away
from the big green neck that almost filled the tunnel. Then
he was past the rubble, and raised the candle. The place
where he found himself was some kind of cavern, beneath
a rise in the sundered hill above. It was dim and smelled
musty, and was nearly filled by the huge body of the
green creature.
Where the thing’s neck joined an enormous, rising
body, Tagg spotted ugly, gaping wounds in the scales. He
stared at them in awe, then beyond them, and his eyes
widened even more. The green thing was huge. Arms like
scaly pillars rested below massive shoulders, and ended in
taloned “hands” as big as he was – or bigger. The nearest
shoulder had another ugly wound, and the hand below it
was mangled as though it had been sliced apart.
He raised his eyes, squinting in the dim candlelight.
Above the thing, on its far side, stood a great, folded
wing. Nearer, a second wing sprawled back at an angle,