‘Hold on tight,’ said the dragon.
From within the bag she heard a familiar ‘Oh no! Oh, me horrid aunt!’ as Feathering took a few running steps that shook the mountain, causing an avalanche below, and launched himself into the air.
10
The Forgotten Teller
As they whooshed up, up and up into the sky Oswin’s panicked cries of ‘Oh noooo! Oh, me greedy aunt! Where’s me stove? Oh, Osbertrude!’ filled the air.
A part of Willow’s mind was going Oh nooooo herself. It was one thing being on Whisper, and quite another being on a very large dragon, who flew over vast mountain ranges and wide sweeping rivers faster than she could blink. In fact, it was some time before she was able to open her eyes. When she did she gasped, though this time it had nothing to do with fear. The wind was icy and cold, but the view was spectacular; she could see the floating Cloud Mountains and, in the distance, a large colourful forest.
Wisperia.
It was unlike anything she’d ever seen before. In the woods near her home in Grinfog the trees were all roughly the same – green leaves, brown bark and the occasional pretty flower. But this was something else entirely. The leaves were in shades of electric blue, sunset pink, violent orange and bright magenta. It looked like someone had upended a paint box over the horizon. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. It was like the pictures in the forgotten teller’s room brought to life.
‘You okay there?’ came Feathering’s voice.
‘Y-e-s-s,’ said Willow, feeling vaguely frostbitten as they flew through cloud. She was realising that flying on the back of a dragon was just as good as flying on a broomstick!
She lifted her arm to the sky, and a few seconds later her grandmother’s old, rather hideously lumpy green-and-brown quilt came hurtling through the sky. Willow wrapped it round herself gratefully. Though she knew later she’d have to ‘lose’ it again, she was glad of its warmth.
‘If you was back home, you’d be doing the washing now,’ observed Oswin, his one eye peeking out of the top zipper and staring out into the distance with a scowl, his fur the colour of pea soup. He swallowed, looking rather sickly.
She grinned widely. ‘I know.’
‘I likes washday,’ he grumbled. ‘You leaves me to sleep usually – and don’ put me in a smelly bag made o’ hair and go flyings with blooming great feathered beasts.’ He groaned, then zipped himself back inside.
Feathering ignored Oswin’s grumblings. ‘Where to in Wisperia?’ he asked in his deep, wind-rattling-a-doorknob voice.
‘I guess we could start by finding the tree.’
‘In a forest?’ It sounded like the dragon was laughing. There was a tinkling sound like a wind chime.
‘I think it’ll be blue and really big.’ As she stared she saw that there were trees of all different colours. ‘This is mad,’ she said with a sigh, wondering how they’d find it with so many strange-coloured trees around.
As they got closer to the forest, though, Feathering breathed. ‘Maybe not so mad. Look,’ he said, tilting his head to the left.
Willow stared. An enormous tree dominated the entire forest. It was the colour of blue sea glass and was about as wide as several farmhouses stuck together. It reached out to the very top of the sky, and was shrouded in bright white swirling clouds. Perched at the very top of the tree was a small wooden house, surrounded entirely by clouds. It looked as if it were floating on air, but she could just make out the stilts creaking softly as it swayed slightly in the wind. As they drew closer Willow saw teapots strung below the windows filled with an array of plants, just like those they’d seen in Ditchwater.
‘That must be the forgotten teller’s house!’ she exclaimed, pointing.
Feathering nodded and flew towards the very top of the enormous tree. He landed on a branch the size of a large road, causing the tree to shudder and shake.
Willow slipped off Feathering’s back, her knees wobbling as she did and her hands firmly clutching her carpetbag.
Feathering inclined his massive blue head. ‘Who’s choosing a slightly extreme way to get out of having a bit of company. Look!’
While Willow did think calling a large dragon a bit of company seemed a stretch, she saw that he was right. A tall spindly man wearing lots of lumpy clothing with odd bits of vegetation poking out of every pocket was currently fleeing the house with everything he could carry, including a tea set and a large brown dog, with a tongue the length of a soup ladle, squashed beneath his armpit. Only the man was running the wrong way and he almost slammed straight into Willow before he looked up.
‘Gadzooks!’ he exclaimed, rocking backwards on his heels, and dropping the teapot, which slopped tea everywhere. He had enormous pale blue eyes and long, wispy all-white hair, which made him look like an old man, even though he was probably quite a bit younger than her father. It was the boy from the portrait, she realised, the one with the plant that had all those blinking eyes. Except now he was grown up.
‘Um – sorry?’ tried Willow, though it was hardly her fault that he had almost run into her …
The man took an involuntarily step backwards as if she might bite. His mouth opened but didn’t close. Willow saw that he was wearing what looked like every bit of clothing he possessed, including a necktie shaped like a bird in flight. He also seemed to have more pockets than his skinny frame should allow – all of which were bulging, some overflowing with bits of vegetation and others that seemed to be regarding them with interest. Willow could have sworn that a leafy tendril waved at her.
Just then the man smacked his forehead, his eyes going from blue to white and back again in an instant, and Willow wondered if she’d imagined it when he started to laugh, his thin shoulders shaking. ‘My old room … the pictures … You figured it out,’ he said with an admiring sort of laugh, and Willow wondered if he’d seen it as a vision or simply guessed. His smile faltered fast, though, when he looked past Willow and finally seemed to spot Feathering. His face went the colour of ash, his eyes seemed to pop, and he silently mouthed the word ‘dragon’ before he keeled over backwards in a dead faint.
‘Oh bother,’ said Willow.
She took the StoryPass out of her pocket, which commiserated with ‘One Might Have Suspected as Such’.
‘Happens all the time,’ said Feathering, shrugging a colossal blue wing. ‘Humans always faint when they see us now – it’s like they think a cloud dragon would actually eat a human. Can you imagine?’ he said in apparent disgust.
‘Er,’ said Willow, who was not about to admit that that had been precisely her first thought when she’d first encountered him.
‘I din’t faint,’ said a voice from within the hairy carpetbag.
Feathering looked at the bag and said, ‘I don’t think we’ve formally been introduced.’
The bag started to shake and there was a faint ‘oh no’ sound.
‘That’s Oswin,’ she said. ‘He’s a little shy …’
There was a low gasp. Then a furry tangerine head with pointed ears shot out of the bag, pumpkin-coloured eyes blazing in fury. ‘I isn’t shy! I is a little scared of that great feathery beast,’ he said, pointing with a long rusty claw. ‘’E don’ eat humans, so ’e says. ’E never said nuffink about not eating kobolds – but that don’ mean I’s shy,’ he huffed, crossing his paws. Then he shot back inside the bag fast.