‘Well, of course I’d have changed places right away!’ retorted Lola snippily.
Which was probably the truth. Twigleg was still trying to think up a good answer when someone cleared his throat behind them.
TerTaWa was squatting on Kraa’s abandoned throne. He had pinned a jasmine flower to his jacket in honour of the day.
‘Shrii asked me to take you to him.’ The gibbon could hardly speak, he was smiling so broadly. ‘Shrii Dragonfriend! Shrii Emeraldfeather! Shrii Conqueror of Kraa… I’m still working on his titles, but anyway, he wants to see you and say thank you.’
And with that he pointed invitingly at the entrance to Kraa’s palace nest.
It was brimful when Ben and the others followed TerTaWa in. But the tiny birds who built the griffins’ nests knew their trade. Kraa’s palace easily held all the visitors. Except for Hothbrodd and Sorrel, all those who had helped to end Kraa’s reign were there. When Ben followed Tattoo, he saw Patah in the crowd. The macaque was looking rather contrite after not only the gibbon but even Kupo had shown themselves braver, yet even his face, which was usually so glum, showed some happiness and relief.
Shrii was sitting on the platform where Kraa had slept, and the other five griffins were standing in front of it. They had lowered their beaked heads, but Ben wasn’t sure whether that expressed defiance or submission.
Shrii had laid his snake-tail around his paws and claws, and was looking down at the other griffins watchfully. His emerald-green feathers shone as if the jungle had grown in through the sand-coloured walls. The griffin was such a magnificent sight that Ben felt his heart beating faster. And it was surely not the only heart to do so.
‘Yes, you heard correctly, Roargh,’ said Shrii, while Ben went over to Firedrake’s side. ‘Choose one of yourselves as your new king. It makes no difference to me. I shall go away. I never wanted to sit on Kraa’s throne.’
Neither TerTaWa nor Shrii’s other supporters seemed surprised by what he said, but Roargh let out an angry growl. He did not bother to hide the fact that he still disliked Shrii. But Hiera, the youngest she-griffin, took a hesitant step forward.
‘If you will allow us,’ she said, bending her neck to Shrii, ‘we will come with you, Shrii Dragonfriend.’
A second griffin, Greiir, joined Hiera. ‘I’ll follow you too,’ he said with a bow, ‘if you will let me.’
Roargh stared fixedly at the two of them.
‘You will both be welcome,’ said Shrii, standing up. ‘And don’t worry, Roargh,’ he added. ‘We will leave you a fair share of Kraa’s gold – when our visitors have been compensated for the lack of hospitality they have been shown here.’
Roargh and the other three griffins who had not joined Shrii turned around, looking at Barnabas and Ben with such a hungry expression that Firedrake raised his head watchfully.
‘Oh, no, no!’ said Barnabas hastily. ‘We take as little interest as you in treasures, my dear Shrii. Gold has as devastating an effect on humans as on griffins. All we wanted was a sun-feather. Now, sad to say, they have been turned to stone – like Kraa himself, but we have won the friendship of a griffin, and that is such an unexpected and wonderful gift that we can leave this island feeling grateful. I am sure we will never forget it.’
Roargh examined the claws of his right forepaw as if he were imagining ripping Barnabas’s head off with it.
‘Nobly spoken, I’m sure, glass-eyed man!’ he growled. ‘Your species always has a liking for sentimental talk. I’ve eaten many of you just for that.’
Shrii came down from the platform and stopped so close to Roargh that their beaks were almost touching.
‘I think you failed to hear why they came to this island,’ he said in a soft voice – soft, yet it still expressed both derision and a threat. ‘They need a sun-feather.’
Roargh returned Shrii’s glance with barely concealed hostility.
‘So?’ he croaked as he fluffed up the feathers on his head. It looked as if a gust of wind had blown on him.
‘You have three sun-feathers,’ stated Shrii, and the threat was still there in his soft voice. ‘Give them one of those feathers.’
Roargh’s laughter reminded Ben of the barking of hyenas.
‘Has your parrot plumage made you forget what a sun-feather looks like, Shrii Dragonfriend? I don’t have any. Not a single one.’
His snake-tail wound its way around his hind legs, with the forked tongue darting out, and both Firedrake and Tattoo tensed their muscles in alarm.
Shrii, however, looked at TerTaWa with an enquiring expression.
Jumping on his back, the gibbon pointed to Roargh’s neck. Roargh’s plumage was the colour of pale yellow desert sand, but Ben couldn’t see a sun-feather in it.
‘He has them painted by The Hands,’ said TerTaWa. ‘Kupo has seen it. But she didn’t want to tell the humans.’
Everyone looked at Kupo. You could tell how frightened she was of Roargh, but when his glance fell on her she stood up very straight, even though she was trembling all over.
‘Kraa had two sun-feathers, Roargh has three,’ cried Kupo. ‘He knew Kraa wouldn’t forgive him for that, so he hid them. It was poor Manis who usually had to paint them for him. Maybe that’s why he killed her when they destroyed our nests!’
Patah stroked her tiny head consolingly when she began to sob.
Roargh cast TerTaWa an icy look. By way of an answer, the gibbon only bared his teeth maliciously.
‘What are you waiting for, Roargh?’ asked Shrii. ‘Pluck out one of your three feathers and give it to the humans. Perhaps it will console you to think that by doing that, you are paying your dead king’s battle debts.’
Ben felt Barnabas gripping his arm. Maybe the Pegasus foals were not lost after all.
‘Suppose I don’t pay them?’ retorted Roargh. ‘Will you set your dragons on me?’
Tattoo gave vent to a growl.
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ said Shrii. ‘No. I’ve seen all the fighting I want to for the time being. You have two passions that I don’t share, Roargh: for war and for gold. Give the humans the sun-feather, and I will give you my share of Kraa’s treasure.’
Roargh’s eyes widened with distrust. And greed. That was a royal price to pay. No one knew better than Roargh how much gold Kraa had hoarded in his long life. All the same, Ben could see that he would rather have eaten them all, probably tearing TerTaWa and Kupo to pieces first. But Firedrake and Tattoo never took their eyes off Roargh. Curse the lindworms! They were looking at him as calmly as if they owned the world. Yet they didn’t seem to have the faintest wish to rule it. Roargh imagined crunching their scales in his beak like seashells. But he remembered the stony figure of Kraa only too clearly.
‘Well, why not?’ he croaked. ‘Give me your share and they can have the feather.’
Shrii nodded to TerTaWa.
The hatch over the treasure was secured with hundreds of knots. Kraa’s lorises had tied them, and only they could undo them. But Kupo had been one of those lorises for long enough to know how.
The treasures that she and TerTaWa heaped up before Roargh’s claws were of enormous value: the crowns of long-forgotten kings, silver-plated chainmail worn by Kraa in equally long-forgotten battles, golden circlets that he had used to adorn his paws like bangles…
One of those looked very familiar to Twigleg, and he was not the only one to have noticed it. TerTaWa reached for it before it rolled over to Roargh’s beak and put it in Barnabas’s hands. ‘I think this is yours, Greenbloom,’ he said. ‘I’m sure Kraa will ask no more payment.’
As Barnabas thankfully put Bağdagül’s bangle in his pocket, Roargh dug his beak into the treasures with as much relish as if he were going to warm himself on the gold.
‘See that! Shrii isn’t just brave, our friend is also clever,’ Barnabas whispered to Ben. ‘He’s sowing discord among his enemies. Do you see how enviously the other griffins are staring at Roargh?’
Roargh straight
ened up, with his claws planted on his loot. Then he pushed his beak into the plumage around his neck, plucked out a feather and threw it at Barnabas’s feet.
Barnabas bowed as if he didn’t notice the hatred in the griffin’s eyes.
‘I will treat this feather with the utmost respect, Roargh,’ he said. ‘I know it was won with great courage.’
The griffin moved his head, and for the first time looked at Barnabas with a touch of interest.
‘That feather grew when I killed three sand basilisks who were foolish enough to attack our nests. It was ten times ten years before the colour turned golden. Don’t tell me what you want it for, or I might kill you after all!’
Yes, he might well have done that very thing.
Barnabas was careful not to pick the feather up too quickly.
‘Will Shrii grow a sun-feather for today’s fight?’
‘Very likely,’ growled Roargh. ‘And I hope one day a human comes along wanting that feather. But a more warlike human than you, glass-eyes. One who will repay Shrii’s treachery by drenching this island in his blood!’
Then he turned abruptly, and with his beak he beckoned several monkeys over to his gold.
Barnabas stroked the tawny down of the feather. Yellow loam came off, colouring his fingers, and the feather began to shine as if the light of the sun were nesting in it.
Ben hardly knew what to do with himself, he felt so happy. They had done it. They had actually done it!
Shrii was standing beside Firedrake and Tattoo. Barnabas went up to him and bowed so low that his glasses almost slipped off his nose.
‘Noble Shrii!’ he said. ‘I must confess that before I came here I did not have a very high opinion of griffins. But you have taught me better!’
Shrii gracefully returned the bow.
‘And I did not have a very high opinion of your species, Barnabas Greenbloom,’ he replied. ‘Maybe we should choose our friends not by their species but by what their hearts are like?’
‘A wise rule,’ Barnabas agreed. ‘And I understand very well why you do not want to be a king. But may I say that you would have been a good one?’
‘I’m not so sure of that!’ replied Shrii. ‘Do you know that our kings have to sit on their thrones without moving for hours every day? I’m afraid that after a week I’d have been as cruel as Kraa!’
Shrii did not change his mind.
When Ben visited the island a few years later, with Winston, Shrii was living on the other side of it with a family of very colourful sons and daughters. But Roargh and the other griffins had disappeared, and Kraa’s royal tree was inhabited by a colony of gibbons who had chosen TerTaWa as their leader. The stone figure of Kraa still stood in front of his throne, now weathered by wind and rain, and the frescoes on the outside of his nest looked as if they were hundreds of years old. But The Hands had added a new picture to the interior. It showed two dragons with human boys on their backs, a man with glass eyes, a rat in a flying suit, and a jenglot in very strange clothes standing fearlessly on the head of the petrified Kraa.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Time to Leave
Everything has to come to an end sometime.
L. Frank Baum, The Marvellous Land of Oz
Ben was standing outside Kraa’s nest with Firedrake, looking out at the jungle as it slowly filled with the light of a new day. They had said goodbye to TerTaWa and Shrii, to Me-Rah, Patah and Kupo. And they had promised to come back again.
Barnabas was already on his way to the beach with Hothbrodd. But they didn’t have the sun-feather with them. Tattoo was going to take it to MÍMAMEIĐR. Even Hothbrodd’s wonderful plane was slower than a dragon in flight, and if Twigleg’s calculations were correct, there was hardly a day left until the foals would be too large for their eggs. Sorrel was busy feeding Tattoo moonlight-flowers so that he could fly even in daylight, and as well as Winston and Berulu, Lola was going with their party as a pilot. After all, neither Tattoo nor his two dragon riders had ever been to MÍMAMEIĐR, and Ben… Ben would be setting off with Firedrake to the Rim of Heaven.
To his relief, Barnabas had taken his decision calmly, although he hadn’t been able to hide his sadness.
‘I understand. You were a dragon rider before we met,’ he had said, giving Ben a hug. ‘But if you feel you’d like to be with humans, don’t forget that you’re a Greenbloom too!’
How could he ever forget that?
Ben glanced at Firedrake. He had made the right decision – hadn’t he? Twigleg, up on his shoulder, heaved an unhappy sigh. Firedrake lowered his head until he could look into Ben’s eyes.
‘I am honoured that you want to come with me,’ he said quietly. ‘You know there’s nothing I wish for more. But the Rim of Heaven isn’t the right home for you. Ask the homunculus if you don’t believe me.’
Twigleg nodded to the dragon gratefully.
‘You belong with your own kind, master!’ he stammered. ‘Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. You’d be very lonely in the valley of the Rim of Heaven. In spite of Firedrake!’
‘True,’ agreed the dragon. ‘And you’ll be much more useful at MÍMAMEIĐR. That’s what life is all about, isn’t it? Being useful. And the Greenblooms need you, just as you need them.’
But I need you too! The words were on the tip of Ben’s tongue, but he didn’t say them. He knew Firedrake was right. If only he wasn’t so tired of doing without him.
Tattoo and Sorrel came out of Kraa’s nest. Winston and Berulu were already sitting on his back, and of course Lola had tied herself into her place between his horns. There had to be the spice of a little danger, even if the crazy rat said she’d chosen that place so that the dragon could hear her better.
‘I think you’re going to have another rider too, Tattoo,’ said Firedrake.
Winston smiled at Ben, but his smile showed that he already understood how difficult it was for a rider to be parted from his dragon.
‘Boletus and mildew fungus!’ murmured Sorrel as she climbed on Firedrake’s back. ‘I wish I could say the same of myself. It’s so much nicer in MÍMAMEIĐR.’
But Ben stood where he was, and couldn’t move towards Tattoo.
‘Do you have the scale safe?’ Firedrake nudged him in the chest with his nose.
Ben felt for the locket. Yes. And now and then, when he wanted to be with Firedrake too much to bear, he would hold the scale. Just to send the dragon his love.
‘Off you go, then. We’ll see each other soon. Tattoo will bring you with him when he comes back,’ said Firedrake. ‘After all, you have to see our young dragons.’
Tattoo! Yes, of course. From now on there would be two dragons who could take him to the Rim of Heaven. Tattoo would be flying back!
Ben’s heart felt so light – almost as light as the feather that they would be taking to MÍMAMEIĐR.
‘Right!’ he stammered. ‘Right! Then… then maybe I’ll fly to MÍMAMEIĐR first. Guinevere will need me to help her. I guess that three Pegasus foals will give us a lot of work! If the feather works!’ he added.
‘It will. I’m sure of that,’ said Firedrake. ‘And once the foals don’t need you any more, you can come and help me teach young dragons how to fly.’
That sounded almost too good to be true.
Ben flung his arms around Firedrake’s neck, while Twigleg crept into his pocket.
‘Hey, dragon rider! Time for us to leave!’ called Lola from the top of Tattoo’s head. ‘Do you want us to arrive too late, after all the trouble we’ve been taking?’
She was right.
Ben let go of Firedrake, and looked up at Sorrel.
‘See you soon,’ he said.
‘And when you do I hope you’ll have a few chanterelles in your backpack!’ replied Sorrel. ‘And some porcini. And one or two…’
‘Ben!’ shouted Lola in a high-pitched squeal. ‘If you’re going to hang around waiting to hear Sorrel’s entire wish list of mushrooms, pretty soon there won’t be any Pegasi left on
this planet, that’s for sure!’
Firedrake gently pushed him over towards the other dragon.
‘Tattoo!’ he called as Ben buckled himself on behind Winston. ‘You have a dragon rider of your own now, so don’t go thinking you can steal mine as well. I want him back.’
‘I promise!’ cried Tattoo, as Ben hauled himself up by his tail. The wings that the young dragon spread looked as if the surrounding trees had sprinkled flowers over them.
‘Dragonmail for MÍMAMEIĐR!’ cried Winston, while Berulu scrambled into safety under his jacket.
Tattoo took off from Kraa’s throne platform, and soared into the sultry morning air.
Ben turned back to look at Firedrake until the jungle hid the griffins’ tree from his eyes. It hurt. But not as badly as usual, because every one of Tattoo’s wing-beats was a promise that he would soon see Firedrake again.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
At Last
To come to the end of a time of anxiety and fear!
To feel the cloud that hung over us lift and disperse –
the cloud that dulled the heart and made happiness no
more than a memory! This at least is one joy that must
have been known by almost every living creature.
Richard Adams, Watership Down
Guinevere was having breakfast with Vita and a few nisses when Gilbert Greytail suddenly appeared in the doorway. His whiskers were quivering, a very unusual sight in the always self-controlled rat, and Guinevere almost forgot to breathe. Gilbert had undertaken to keep an eye on the radio equipment.
‘They’re bringing it!’ he cried. ‘They’re bringing the feather!’
Vita spilled coffee on her bread and marmalade, and Guinevere jumped up so quickly that two of the nisses fell off their chairs.
‘But… but, Gilbert!’ she said. ‘There’s no more than a day left! And the flight in itself…’
‘Guinevere Greenbloom!’ the rat interrupted her impatiently. ‘I hadn’t finished my message! The feather will be arriving by dragonmail!’