What they were moving toward was, in fact, another castle. It was quite as large as the castle Dimity had grown up in, and even the larger one where her uncle had been kind. It could not be seen above the trees of the grisly grove, however because unlike the majority of castles, which lift towers high enough to cast shadows across whole countries, this was built to extend down into the ground. It had been dug more than built, and it was the home and castle of Gelvander.
Gelvander was a large and ancient ogre who entertained himself by kidnapping fairies, stealing babies, locking princes in deep dungeons, and so forth. He slept on a bed of rotting moss which stretched across a layer of sharp stones. It was his belief that if you got up in the morning feeling bad and smelling bad, this made it all the easier for you to BE bad.
Today when he woke up, his back hurt, his stomach hurt, and he had an earache. He marched across a floor strewn with broken dishes to fetch his breakfast: stale pond water from a cracked jug. It was terrible. With a smack of his lips, he said, “What a perfect day to do horrible things!”
A sound like all the thunder of a thousand storms rolled through the room, making his slap his hands over his ears and squinch his eyes shut. Growling, he stomped back across the room to his bed and knelt to pull a heavy iron chest from under a broken chair with no seat. This chest was making the noise.
Bringing one hand in front of his face, he used to other to unlatch the rusty hasp which held the chest shut. The lid popped up at once. Burning white light shot out and filled the room.
“Oooooh,” said Gelvander, pressing both hands against his eyes now. Then, leaning forward, he spread the fingers of one hand the tiniest bit and looked down into the light.
This came from a glowing ball which had the power to show the ogre everything that happened in his forest, when he cared to look. The light hurt his eyes so much that he did not do this often. But that thunderous alarm had warned him the someone or something was approaching the doors of his castle.
The globe showed him a woman driving a wagon. A fine-looking man rode on either side of him, while a ferociously ugly creature was lying unconscious in the wagon.
Gelvander considered the intruders. “A princess, without a doubt,” he growled. “And two princes! No doubt they rescued her from one of my brother ogres, and tossed his dead body in the cart. Hmmmm. And the princess has…long hair. She can help me floss.”
Grimacing to show long and untidy teeth, he marched back across the littered floor, hurting his feet some more, and kicked a covered metal cage. “Wake up in there!” he roared.
A pale purple head came up to the bars of the cage, only to have Gelvander swat it back. “Wait until I get the door open!” the ogre roared. “There now!”
The purple head eased forward as the door creaked open. Gelvander reached down, grabbed the bulbous purple nose, and pulled the purple body out onto the floor. Steamy tears rolled down the creature’s face.
“There are princes in my forest!” Gelvander bellowed at the balloonish purple dragon. “I wan them led astray. Get to it, you worthless firepig!”
One heavy ogre foot came up hard against the soft purple stomach. The dragon grunted and, uttering “meep meep mumble”, shuffled from the room.
Meanwhile, Dimity was listening to Sir Bee tell a story he had read in an old book at his college. The princess was listening politely: she liked old stories, but at this point she had been listening to the story for nearly five hours.
The way the three knights travelled, with one sleeping and two riding, struck her as perfectly ingenious, especially as they stopped now and again to let the horses rest. For one thing, there was someone for her to talk to all the time. She had talked with Ae and Ceee while Bee slept, and with Bee and Ceee while Ae slept. Now she was talking with Ae and Bee while Ceee slept.
Each knight seemed happy to have an audience, and never once mentioned the fact tht “Deedee” never seemed to need to sleep herself. Dimity didn’t refer to it herself. She was feeling a little better, now that she got to ride at the front of the wagon instead of walking all the way. And each knight had different things to talk to her about, all of which were new and interesting.
Sir Ae told her about the people in the castle where he lived, what they looked like, and how they talked. It did not surprise her or bore her to learn that they generally talked most about how handsome and how brave Sir Ae was.
Sir Bee liked to talk about the things he’d read about. He did seem to have a rather low opinion of people who had n’t read as many books as HE had. Dimity had of course read quite a lot of books herself, but nowhere near as many as Sir Bee.
She could not look for long at Sir Ceee, but she found she could talk to him. He knew nearly as many stories as the other two, and he liked to discuss them with her. He and Dimity had discussed such burning topics as why Mother Hubbard kept bones in her cupboard and how Miss Muffet could have run anywhere with a spider in her whey. They did have to keep assuring each other they were listening, though, as both kept yawning all the time they talked.
Sir Ceee was sleeping now, of course, and Sir Bee was explaining, “Of course, this is completely contradicted by St. Gregory of Tours in his sixth book, where he claims….”
“Hold, brother.” Sir Ae raised a hand. “What was that?”
Sir Bee fell silent and, after a look at his brother, frowned at the forest. Dimity tried to listen, too, but the brothers must have had the best hearing in the world, for each was already drawing long steel blades before the princess heard the first footstep.
“A dragon!” whispered Sir Ae as a purple body the size of a horse appeared between two trees. The dragon saw them at the same time, and released a stream of steam from a potato-shaped snout.
“I’ve always wanted to find a dragon!” Sir Bee whispered back.
“Ne too!” said Dimity.
The purple dragon hissed again and then backed away, its head bobbing as if to say “You go your way and I’ll go mine and maybe nobody will get broken.”
“Since none of us is really going anywhere,” said Sir Ae, jumping down from his horse, “It doesn’t matter what time we get there. So I think we should take some time to go look this dragon over.”
“Wait here,” Sir Bee told Dimity.
“Wait here?” the princess demanded. She had been getting ready to jump down and go study the dragon herself.
“Somebody has to watch the horses and stuff,” Sir Bee told her. “And Aff…Sir Ceee needs his sleep. He missed his nap yesterday.”
“We’ll tell you all about it when we get back,” Sir Ae promised. “And if the dragon is agreeable—or dead—we’ll bring it back with us.” The dragon was almost invisible now among the trees, so he hurried after Sir Bee to follow.
Dimity thought about waiting a few minutes and then slipping quietly after them, but, looking around, she thought this would be a terrible place to leave the horses unguarded. And she was the last person in the world to be waking someone like Sir Ceee up. People needed, she knew very well, their sleep.
So she took out her map and drew the dragon n on it. Then, flipping the map over, she started to sketch Sir Ceee’s face, stopping only once or twice to shudder. When she simply couldn’t take any more, she flipped the map over again and looked at the dragon she had drawn.
”I don’t know for sure that it WAS a dragon,” she said, starting a note under the picture. “It could be a prince under a spell.”
“He is,” growled something behind her, just before the bag came down over her head.
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