Over the Wall

Biscuit opened her wings.

She had never opened them all the way indoors. In the hold of the Plum Duff there had not been room, and in the glass case there had been no room at all. Now there was a ballroom. She stretched them out on either side of her, wide and wider, until they were wider than the stage, wider than the great chandelier hanging over it, and the wind of them went across the room and laid every candle flame over sideways.

The keepers in the doorways stopped where they were.

By the windows, Dr. Pye held up one hand, and not one of them came forward.

Biscuit looked up.

Above the chandelier, high over the ballroom, was the dome. It was made of glass, hundreds of panes of it, curving up to a point, and through it Josie could see the summer night, dark blue, with the first stars.

Biscuit lifted her head towards it and breathed.

The fire went up in one long golden rush and met the glass at the top of the dome. For a moment nothing happened. Then the glass began to glow. It went red, then orange, then gold, and then, very slowly, the top of the dome began to open. The panes softened and bent outwards, one after another, like the petals of a flower opening in the morning. Melted glass ran down over the outside of the roof in long, slow, shining streams. A cool breath of night air came down through the hole into the hot ballroom.

Somebody in the crowd said, "Oh," very quietly.

"Toby," said Josie. "The blanket."

Toby turned round. The small glass case with Grandpa's blanket in it stood at the side of the stage, where the footman had set it. Beside the stage there was a great marble fireplace, and beside the fireplace a stand of fire-irons. Toby grabbed the poker. He brought it down on the top of the case with both hands.

The glass broke with a crash. Toby reached in through the hole, pulled out the grey blanket with the red stripe, and stuffed it down the front of his jacket. Josie snatched up Moss's long brown coat from where Biscuit had dropped it, and pulled it on over her raincoat. It came down to her ankles.

"Now," said Josie. "Get on."

She bent down and made a step of her hands. Toby put his foot in it, and she heaved, and he went up onto Biscuit's back, just behind her shoulders, between the wings. He grabbed hold of her neck.

Then he turned round and reached down.

"Josie," he said. "Come on."

"She can't carry two."

"Come on."

Josie took his hand. He pulled. She scrambled up behind him, with her knees against the hot copper scales, and put both arms round her brother's waist.

Biscuit ran.

She ran along the stage, three great bounds, with her wings beating, and the boards shook, and the crowd in front of the stage fell back. At the end of the stage she sprang.

The keepers threw.

A net went up from the left-hand doorway, spinning, and another from the right, and the first one missed, and the second one caught Biscuit's tail.

It wrapped round it. It held. And the keeper on the other end of it, a big man with a red face, dug his heels into the dancing floor and pulled.

Biscuit lurched in the air. Her back end dropped. The children slid sideways, and Josie felt her knee lose its grip, and the floor of the ballroom came swinging up at them, all shiny boards and upturned faces.

Biscuit twisted.

She bent her long neck round, back over her own shoulder, past Josie, and breathed one short hot puff of flame down her side at her own tail. The net round it went red, and then it was not there. The keeper sat down hard on the dancing floor with an empty pole.

Biscuit's wings beat once, twice, three times. They went up past the chandelier, so close that the crystals rang against Josie's boots. They went up into the dome. And out through the melted hole at the top of it, with gold drips of glass falling past them on either side, into the cool dark open night.

They were over the roofs of Harrowgate Hall.

For one long moment, before anything else happened, Josie looked down.

She had never seen anything from above before. Not like this. Below her the whole of Thistlecombe was spread out in the last of the dusk, with its first lamps lit, like a map: the street, and the church, and the square of light that was the post office window, with a small round shape in it that could only be Mrs. Figg. Beyond the village, up its lane, she could see the farm. The house. The barn with its patched roof. Even the white dot in the yard that was Gertrude, asleep on one leg.

"We're flying," Toby was shouting into the wind, over and over. "Josie. We're flying."

Below them the chimneys went by, and the lit windows, and the courtyard with its green carriages, and the long lawns going down the hill in the dark. The wind was enormous. Josie could not hear anything but the wind and the beating of the wings.

Biscuit was not climbing any more.

She was beating her wings as hard as she could, and they were going down. Slowly, and then not slowly. The lawns came up. The wall at the bottom of the park came up, a long black wall with a line of iron spikes along the top, and Josie saw it coming and could not do anything about it at all.

"She's too tired," shouted Toby. "We're too heavy."

"Lean forward," shouted Josie. "Make yourself small."

They leaned forward, both of them, flat against the hot back, and Biscuit gave one more great beat of her wings, with a sound in her chest like a sob, and the wall went by underneath them so close that one of the iron spikes caught the tail of Moss's long coat, flapping out behind Josie, and tore it.

They were over. They were over the lane, and the dark gardens of the village, and the green.

Ahead of them was the village pond.

Biscuit went down towards it, skipping low. She did not land. She skimmed it, low, with her wings stretched out flat, so low that the children's boots trailed in the water and sent up two long white wakes behind them, and the ducks went up in the dark all round them, quacking. Then the pond was behind them, and they were climbing again, a little, just enough, up over the hedge at the bottom of Grandpa's lane.

The hayfield was a long pale shape in the dark.

Biscuit came down into it like a load of hay coming off a cart. Her legs folded. Her chin hit the ground. The children went over her head together and rolled away through the long grass, over and over, and stopped.

Josie lay on her back and looked at the stars.

Nothing hurt. She tried everything, one at a time, and nothing hurt. Beside her Toby was laughing and could not stop.

Something heavy and warm came through the grass towards her.

Biscuit pushed her hot nose into Josie's hands and kept it there, with her copper light shining on the grass all round them. Josie sat up and held the dragon's head and stayed quiet.

Then Biscuit lifted her head, and pursed her lips, and blew.

Two notes came out. Clear and true. The first two notes of Grandpa's tune.

They took her to the barn.

She went up the ladder into the hayloft by herself, with her wings folded, one rung at a time, and lay down in the hay at the far end, near the hole in the wall where they had found her egg. Josie and Toby climbed up after her. Then Biscuit turned round, looked at the top of the ladder for a moment, and put her head down to the two big iron hooks that held it to the edge of the loft. She ate them. Crunch. Crunch. The ladder, with nothing to hold it, leaned slowly away from the loft, and fell over in the dark below with a clatter.

"Now nobody can come up," said Toby.

"Now we can't get down," said Josie.

Josie spread Moss's coat out on the hay. Biscuit lay down on it, and closed her eyes, and was asleep before either of them could say anything else.

Toby sat down next to her with the blanket round his shoulders.

"The Keeper's going to come," he said. "Isn't she? Tomorrow. With the nets."

"Yes," said Josie.

"What are we going to do?"

Josie looked at the dragon asleep in the hay.

"I don't know yet," she said.

Toby thought about that. Then he lay down against Biscuit's warm side, and in a minute he was asleep too.

At midnight they heard sticks in the yard, and slow steps, and somebody stopped at the bottom of the barn.

"All here?" said Grandpa's voice, out of the dark below.

Josie looked at her brother, asleep in the hay with the grey blanket wrapped round him, and at the dragon, asleep beside him, glowing like a banked fire.

"All here," she said.

She heard Grandpa let out a long breath, and stand there a while, and go back across the yard to the house.

Josie could not sleep. After a while she took Mum's letter out of her pocket and unfolded it, and read the last page again by the light of the dragon's glow. We'd like you to help us choose. Have a think. She tried names under her breath, the way Mum said she and Dad had been doing. Names out of books. Names of girls at school. Grandma's name. None of them fitted yet. She folded the letter up again and put it under her cheek.

Some time later, something made her lift her head.

She went to the little loft door at the end of the barn, the one they used for throwing down hay, and opened it a crack, and looked out.

Down at the bottom of the lane, where it came up from the village, there were lights. Lanterns. A long line of them, coming slowly up the hill towards the farm, swinging as they came.

Every one of them was green, and there were a great many of them.