EarthFlight Two: Dragon's Quest

across the dance floor towards the red door simply unable to resist its pull.

  Across the room Dragon saw Wabbit move like mercury on silk towards the door. Everyone was oblivious to her and she to them. Dragon sighed. He watched Wabbit put her ear to the door and then he blinked and she was gone.

  Wabbit couldn’t remember opening the red door, or crossing the threshold, or descending the steps which spiralled into the vast indigo void. She felt like she should know where she was, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Why was it vaguely familiar? She tried to concentrate by squinting her eyes. It helped, for now she was aware of millions of tiny pinpricks of light that upon closer inspection were not the lights of glow worms’ bums, which was her initial thought, but little mirrors in the shape of rabbit eyes.

  Wabbit walked on and on down the staircase. She could not stop. There was no end in sight and no safety rail. She remembered when she was a wee rabbit – Kit she was called, but so were all her siblings called Kit which must have been very confusing for her mother, she was afraid of heights and her feet used to tingle if she so much as climbed the carrot tree in the back garden. How odd that she should think of it now. She mused that if she should think of that at all it would be as she piloted Dragon; after all, there was no safety rail on him and at times they flew so high she was scared to open her eyes, which she kept very quiet about for if Dragon knew that she sometimes closed her eyes while she was piloting him he might fire her.

  On the next step was something flapping about. It was a fish with pearly scales and blue eyes. Wabbit bent to pick it up but it slipped out of her hands and used its tail to bounce up the stairs that Wabbit had just come down.

  ‘Where are you going?’ called Wabbit.

  The fish shrugged. ‘Up,’ he replied.

  ‘But why?’ asked Wabbit.

  ‘No one remembers the fish who goes with the flow,’ he said. ‘My ol’ dad said to me before he ended up smoked on French toast, Son, you’ve gotta swim upstream in this life. Make your mark. Be proud of the fish you are.’

  Wabbit chewed the inside of both cheeks so that her lips pursed. What a wise fish his father must have been, she thought. Then her feet kept treading down the stairs and she followed.

  Suddenly a breeze rustled her pixie dress and the little cut glass beads that hung on the bottom of each point tickled her legs. It was exactly the same feeling she used to get when she listened to Wilbert play the violin. Oh, how that sent shivers up and down her spine. She startled. No sooner had she thought about Wilbert and his violin than a distant strain of a violin concerto could be heard. Abandoning herself to the beautiful music she waved her arms in the air and swirled about so that her nearly turquoise dress reflected in the rabbit-eye mirrors. Why, she hadn’t thrilled to such a feeling since... since... actually since she and Dragon danced Mairi’s Wedding.

  But her little feet kept walking and she kept following them. Soon she left the Wilbert violin concerto behind. She was just about to drop her bottom lip because she would have quite liked to dance some more, when on the next step was a thought. Wabbit furrowed her brow and bent a little closer.

  ‘I thought I recognised you,’ she said. ‘Are you lost?’

  The thought danced all around Wabbit’s head, almost as though it was looking for a way in. It tugged playfully at Wabbit’s golden hair. ‘Lost! Ha ha. Very good. A lost thought. Lost in your thoughts.’

  Wabbit realised that her feet had finally stopped walking. Then she had a thought herself.

  ‘Are you my lost thought by chance?’ she asked.

  The thought darted to the tip of Wabbit’s nose so she had to go cross eyed to look at it.

  ‘Of course I am,’ said the thought. ‘Haven’t you missed me?’

  Wabbit thought for a moment, pulling some stretchy faces to leave the thought in no doubt that she was actually thinking. It was true that she didn’t quite need as many thoughts as she used to now that she was Dragon’s pilot... Oh no! She was getting muddled. It was ideas she didn’t need so many of, since Dragon was never short of those. But thoughts...

  Wabbit shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. No.’

  The thought huffed and darted back and forth in front of her face.

  ‘Well, try this for thinking,’ he challenged. ‘Do you know where you are?’

  It seemed such a long time since Wabbit was anywhere but here, and as far as she could remember she wasn’t actually planning to be here. She flung her hands in the air.

  ‘Where am I?’ she asked.

  The thought looked smug. ‘You’re inside your mind.’

  Wabbit threw her hands to her mouth as she gasped. No wonder it felt familiar.

  ‘How can I be inside my own mind?’ she asked. ‘And what’s a fish doing in it?’

  The thought sighed and explained. ‘The fish represents your courageous self, for you really are quite brave.’

  Wabbit had never thought of herself as brave. ‘Go on,’ she said suspiciously.

  ‘The music represents your passion,’ the thought continued.

  Wabbit liked that. She agreed that she was a passionate girl; about everything really. She threw her arms to the indigo void.

  ‘Yes,’ she exclaimed. ‘I am passionate.’

  Then she clasped both hands over her heart. ‘And the mirrors?’

  The thought raised his eyebrows so they joined in the middle and made him look serious. ‘Look again at them, Wabbit.’

  Slowly Wabbit peered intently at the closest mirrors and she startled backwards when she noticed one blink. Then they all blinked. Why hadn’t she seen that before?’

  ‘They aren’t mirrors at all,’ Wabbit gasped.

  ‘On the contrary,’ said the thought. ‘They are your true self. You are merely observing you.’

  Wabbit frowned and tried to make herself very small. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be observed, even by herself.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ said the thought.

  ‘Of course I’m not afraid,’ Wabbit said looking up the staircase to see if she could see the red door. ‘Mr. Thought, did you know I was coming?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said the thought indignantly. ‘Even you did not know. That’s the great thing about thoughts; you never know when you might have one.’

  The thought slung his thumbs behind his flowery braces. ‘And quite often they can be rather good.’

  ‘Oh I see,’ said Wabbit, who didn’t see at all but it was something she said to Dragon quite a lot when he explained astrophysics or chemistry or why they never fell out of the sky.

  It was then that Wabbit had a thought. Her face shone with the revelation of it and as the thought said, it was quite a good thought. If Dragon were to enter through the red door he may find some answers regarding his quest. Who knew what might be lurking inside Dragon’s mind underneath all the clever stuff. There might be something about his clan.

  Wabbit clapped her hands and swung around to thank the thought but he’d gone – vanished. She looked about her but he was nowhere to be seen, so she skipped up the stairs without even puffing all the way to the top to the red door, except it was more of a plum colour on this side.

  The door was pulsating in time to the music and Wabbit felt every note surge through her as she turned the door knob. Everything was as she’d left it: the party was in full swing and Dragon was exactly where she’d left him. She kicked the door shut with her bare foot as she entered the room holding the drinks she’d got for herself and Dragon, which in actual fact she couldn’t remember getting at all.

  The GO sign lay on the dance floor and the cow was leaping over it, her ear tags jangling each time she landed. The woolly mammoth was playing Home on the Range while a Dodo hammered out honky tonk.

  Dragon caught Wabbit’s eye and manoeuvred himself adroitly through the dance floor to sidle up to her.

  ‘There you are!’ Dragon said. ‘I couldn’t think what kept you.’

  Wabbit looked at him blankly. ‘I had a thought,’ she ex
claimed. ‘But it’s lost now.’ She tuttered and shook her head. ‘I might think of it later.’

  Dragon led Wabbit outside for some fresh air and as they leaned over the veranda an amazing sight beheld them. Wilderbeest! A great migration of wilderbeest was thundering past the house, their hooves beating the air so loudly Dragon and Wabbit couldn’t make themselves heard.

  On and on the wilderbeest came and went; millions of them kicking up so much red dust that it seemed like sunset. Some of them had handlebar horns and others had plain horns. They appeared to be in a hurry and were unaware they were running past a great party.

  Suddenly Dragon and Wabbit slid off the veranda as everyone in the house came out to watch the stampede and the house tilted beneath their feet. Dragon flapped his wings and dived beneath Wabbit who was tumbling into nothingness. He pulled up beneath her and she snuggled into her plush saddle squeezing her legs into Dragon’s side.

  ‘Oh, Dwagon!’ Wabbit exclaimed. ‘That was a bit too exciting.’ Her heart thumped wildly and she panted when she tried to talk. ‘I’m not sure I need so much excitement.’

  Meanwhile all the party birds flapped wildly to right the house. Dragon pulled up alongside it. The cow sheepishly showed herself. She’d gone quite red and she dragged the stop-go sign behind her.

  Dragon gazed at the receding wilderbeest. ‘Is that what we were waiting for?’ he asked the cow.

  The cow tried to make herself small; invisible even. She looked behind her to make sure Dragon wasn’t addressing the woolly mammoth