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"Now!" Jenna whispered to the dragon.
The dragon's tail twitched. As Simon flew in close, it suddenly flashed in the sunlight; the golden barb whipped through the air and hit him full on, hurling him into the sky. Like a baseball sailing out of the ballpark, Simon arched up, up into the blue in a perfect curve, until, at the peak of his parabola, gravity reclaimed him, and he began his descent, describing an equally perfect curve all the way down to the Hundred-Foot Pit.
Merrin was in the middle of a shouting match with Aunt Zelda when Simon Heap shot past him and entered the pit with the most enormous splash. Being soaked in filthy bog water did not improve Merrin's mood one bit. He was fed up with Aunt Zelda telling him what to dowhat business was it of hers if he had an eyeglass? Wasn't he allowed anything of his own? She was as bad as DomDaniel. No, she was worse. At least DomDaniel had let him keep thingswell, things that no one else had wanted.
The argument had erupted in the middle of Simon throwing his last Thunderflash. As the tremendous roar shook the cottage, Aunt Zelda had looked away in despair, and a glint of sun by the Hundred-Foot Pit had caught her eye. She had seen Merrin gleefully watching the battle through his Eyeglass. The Darke Eyeglass was bad enough, but what had really got to Aunt Zelda was the expression on Merrin's facehe looked happier than she had ever seen him before. Happy, thought Aunt Zelda, at the fact that the three people she loved most in the world were quite possibly about to fall to their deaths.
"Put that wretched Eyeglass away!" Aunt Zelda had yelled angrily.
Merrin had jumped with surprise and then pointedly ignored her. He was not going to miss the best thing he had seen in years.
"I will not have that Darke thing here any longer!" Aunt Zelda carried on. "You will throw it in the pit right now!"
Goaded, Merrin had yelled back, "No, I won't!" and missed seeing the swipe of the dragon's tail. But neither Merrin nor Aunt Zelda missed the gigantic splash Simon Heap made as he fell to earth and disappeared into the black depths of the Hundred-Foot Pit.
Simon Heap shot all the way down to the bottom of the pit, where he desperately fought his way out of a forest of clinging strands of Marsh Bane. Fifty-five seconds later he emerged, gasping for breath and covered in decayed slugs. Merrin was nearly sick with the stench of it, but something drew him toward Simon; the boy offered him a hand and pulled him from the pit. Simon lay in a spluttering, slimy heap on the bright green grass of the knoll and coughed up a few slugs. Merrin sat beside him, staring at this stranger who had arrived out of the blue. Maybe he was a Sign. A savior. A way out of being told what to do by Aunt Zelda. A way out of eating cabbage every day. He glanced up guiltily at the thought of Aunt Zelda, but she had rushed into the cottage and was nowhere to be seen.
Suddenly Simon sat up, coughed up a bucketful of marsh water and noticed Merrin for the first time.
"Where'd you get that?" he demanded.
"What?" asked Merrin in injured tones. Why, Merrin wondered, did everyone always talk to him as though he had done something wrong?
"That Eyeglass."
"Nowhere. II mean I found it. It's mine."
Simon looked at the boy, sizing him up. An unusual lad, he thought. Could be useful. But what was he doing here, out on the Marsh in the middle of nowhere? "You live with the old witch, then?" Simon asked.
"No," Merrin said sulkily, as though Simon had accused him of something really bad.
"Of Course you do. Where else would you live in the middle of this dump?"
"Yeah..." Merrin allowed himself a smile. "It is a dump, isn't it? Stupid cottage full of poxy little potions. She's got no idea what the real stuff is like."
Simon looked at Merrin with narrowed eyes. "And you do?" he asked in a low voice.
"Yeah. I was Apprentice to the best Necromancer there has ever been. He trusted me with everything. Everything."
Simon looked surprised. So this must be DomDaniel's old Apprentice. Somehow he had survived being Consumedthere must be something more to the boy than met the eye.
An idea began to form in Simon's mind. "You must miss him terribly," he said sympathetically.
"Yeah," muttered Merrin, persuading himself that he did indeed miss DomDaniel. "Yeah, I do."
Simon looked Merrin up and down. He wasn't ideal, but he was someone he could do business with. And he wanted to get his hands on that Eyeglass. "D'you want a job?" asked Simon.
"A job?" asked Merrin, taken aback.
"Yes. You know, similar to what you did before."
"How similar?" asked Merrin suspiciously.
"How do I know," said Simon, somewhat exasperated, "seeing as I don't know exactly what you did before? Are you going to take the job or not?"
"Merrin!" Aunt Zelda's angry shout suddenly pierced the air. "Merrin, get away from that evil mancome back here right now!" Then, with more pressing things to do, she rushed into the cottage.
Merrin watched Aunt Zelda's angry patchwork figure disappear. How dare that old witch yell at him like that? What made her think he was going to do what she told him?
"Well," said Simon impatiently, "are you going to take the job?"
"Yes," said Merrin, "I'll take it."
"Shake on it," said Simon. Merrin took Simon's outstretched hand and before he knew what was happening, his arm felt as if it was being pulled from its socket.
"Aah!" Merrin yelled in pain as his feet left the ground and Simon pulled him roughly aloft. With some difficulty Simon managed to gain just enough height to take him over the roof of Keeper's Cottagealthough Merrin's dangling feet caught in the thatch and one of the boy's boots fell off. Merrin looked down at the roof in horror, already regretting his snap decision. "Help!" he yelled.
His voice drifted down the chimney and did no more than enter Wolf Boy's fevered dreams. Aunt Zelda heard nothing. She was too busy to notice that the boy she had saved from being Consumed, the boy she had carefully nursed back to health, had left her and gone back to where he had come from.
Chapter 32 Landing
The Dragon Boat was rapidly losing altitude. Septimus had just managed to avoid crashing into a small island overrun with chickensand that had taken the Dragon Boat's last ounce of strength. Now her head hung low, her eyes were dull and her one good wing was trembling with exhaustion.
"Tell her it's not far now. I can see the river," Septimus called to Jenna, who was murmuring a constant stream of encouraging words to the dragon. "Tell her if she can just keep going for a few more minutes..."
"We're awful close to the ground, Sep," muttered Nicko, peering over the side of the boat. They were skimming over a large area of bright greenwhich was a sure sign of the sinking Quake Ooze. "P'raps we ought to look for somewhere to crash-land."
"Like where?" snapped Septimus.
"I dunno. A flat bit I s'pose."
"A nice flat bit of Quake Ooze, you mean? With a load of Brownies in it?"
"All right, Sep. No need to get snappy."
Septimus's eyes were fixed on the river. "I justI just want to get her back safe. Whoaaaaaa!" The boat gave a terrifying lurch.
"Come on. Come on," Septimus muttered under his breath. "You can do it. Yes ... yes, you can."
Nicko willed the dragon on. He felt helpless, and feeling helpless on a boat was the worst thing in the world for Nicko.
Suddenly the deck tilted down ominously. "We're not going to make it, Nik," Septimus said flatly.
"Yeah, maybe not. Can you crash-land her?"
"Can't say I've tried recently. This is scary."
"I know."
The Dragon Boat dropped again and Septimus felt as though he had left his stomach behind.
"Going down, Sep," Nicko said grimly.
"Yep. Down wehey, hang on ... what's thatoh, that's all we need."
A small white cloud had appeared over the Marsh and was racing toward them.
"Simon doesn't give up, does he?" said Nicko. "And I don't suppose he's come to give us a hand. Oh, pigshe's fast."
No more than a few moments later the cloud was upon them, and a thick white mist had enveloped the boat.
"Can you see him, Sep?" Nicko's voice came through the cloud.
"Nowhere is he?" Septimus hung on to the tiller and stared grimly ahead, seeing nothing but impenetrable white and bracing himself for the crack of a ThunderFlash or the splash of the Quake Ooze.
