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Ben glanced down at him in surprise. “What on earth do you mean? Who’d be looking at you? The fish?”
“Yes, yes, that’s what I mean!” Twigleg giggled nervously. “The fish.”
Shaking her head, Sorrel climbed on Firedrake’s back.
“What utter rubbish he talks!” she growled. “Even the elves aren’t that stupid, and they can chatter on all night.”
Twigleg stuck out his pointed tongue at her.
Ben couldn’t conceal a grin. “Want me to leave the backpack open?” he asked the homunculus.
“No, no,” said Twigleg, “strap it up, by all means, young master. I’m used to the dark.”
“If you say so.” Ben closed his backpack, climbed onto the dragon’s back with it, and strapped himself to Firedrake’s spines. Then he took the compass out of his pocket. If they weren’t going to rely on Sorrel’s instincts, they’d be needing it over the next few days and nights. Hundreds of kilometers of seawater lay ahead of them. There would be no coastline to help them find their way, only the sky above, and none of them knew much about navigating by the stars.
“Ready?” called Firedrake, shaking the desert sand from his scales for the last time and spreading his wings.
“Ready!” Sorrel called.
Firedrake rose into the dark sky and flew toward the moon.
It was a fine, warm, starlit night.
They had soon left the mountainous coast behind. Darkness swallowed up the land, and ahead of them, behind them, to the left and to the right of them stretched nothing but water. Now and then the lights of a ship winked on the waves. Seabirds flew by, squawking in alarm at the sight of Firedrake.
Just after midnight, Sorrel suddenly gave a terrified shriek and bent over the dragon’s neck.
“Firedrake!” she called. “Firedrake! Have you seen the moon?”
“What about it?” asked the dragon.
All this time his eyes had been fixed on the waves below, but now he looked up. What he saw made his wings feel as heavy as lead.
“What is it?” Ben leaned over Sorrel’s shoulder in alarm.
“The moon,” she cried frantically. “It’s turning red.”
Now Ben saw it, too. The moon was indeed taking on a tinge of coppery red.
“What does it mean?” he asked, baffled.
“It means it’ll disappear any moment now!” cried Sorrel. “There’s going to be an eclipse — a moldy old eclipse of the moon! Now, of all times!” She gazed down at the crashing, foaming waves in terror.
Firedrake was flying more and more slowly, his wings beating as sluggishly as if invisible weights hung from them.
“You’re flying too low, Firedrake!” called Sorrel.
“I can’t help it!” the dragon called back to her wearily. “I’m as weak as a duckling, Sorrel!”
Ben looked up at the sky, where the moon now hung like a rusty coin among the stars.
“We’ve seen eclipses before,” babbled Sorrel, “but we were always above solid land at the time. What are we going to do now?”
Firedrake dropped lower and lower. Ben could already taste the salty sea spray on his lips. And then, in the last red glow of light cast on the waves by the fading moon, he suddenly saw a chain of small islands rising from the sea in the distance. Strange islands they were, rising humpbacked from the water like half-submerged hills.
“Firedrake!” shouted Ben as loud as he could.
The pounding of the waves tore the words from his lips, but the dragon had keen ears.
