Affretz swung up his sword to whack the dragon away, but the dragon let go at once and shook its head.
“You don’t understand!” Steam dribbled from its nose as it whined, “You’ve broken half the spell! Help me break the other half!”
“Spell?” demanded the prince. “Oh, I get it! What happened? A wicked fairy at your christening?”
“No,” said the dragon. “Come this way. I had an evil stepmother: one of the ogre’s friends. Walk faster. No, you can leave your horse and things. He won’t be back. Whenever anybody beats him he goes down to the lowest towers of the castle and pouts for days, kicking anything that lives there. Can you walk faster?”
Affretz tried, but between the rough forest track and his limp, it wasn’t easy. “Why? Where are we going?”
“By helping a dragon, you broke the part of the spell that kept me from talking. Now I can only get my own shape back by helping you rescue somebody else.”
“Rescue?” said Affretz. “Who? Deedee?”
“I don’t know any Deedee.” The dragon bit a fallen branch and stepped over it to leave the path. “Look out for that rock there: it bites. But Gelvander said there were princes in the forest. If he thought YOU were an ogre, then he meant somebody else.”
“Oh.” Affretz was following as quickly as he could, but he was taller than the dragon, and had to push back low hanging branches, some of which tried to tug at his sleeves. “My brothers. But they’ll be all right. They’re the best there is at what they do. Alain’s the bravest and handsomest prince in the world, and Archels is the strongest and smartest.”
“They must also be the deafest,” said the dragon, “If they didn’t come running to find out what was going on when Gelvander was shouting. Or are they asleep? Can’t you walk any faster? You walk funnier than I do, and I’m a potbellied old dragon.”
“I can’t help the way I look, or the way I walk,” Affretz replied, kicking away some ferns who were clinging to one of his boots.
“Oh?” said the dragon. “Did you have an evil stepmother, or was it your christening?”
“A fairy,” Affretz replied. “And they hadn’t even made her mad or anything.”
“I think fairies are more trouble than they’re worth,” said the dragon. “But anything magic makes me nervous. I’d love to go home and just be a prince again. Abnormal phenomena just make me all fluttery.”
Affretz didn’t think the dragon looked much like a prince, but, after all, the ogre had felt the same way about him. “So where ARE we going?”
The dragon blew a cloud of steam at a large snake with two mouths. The serpent slithered away. “I heard the wailing trees. They’ve caught something.”
The dragon raised its wings, releasing billows of dust. “Let me just fly ahead and see if what they caught is worth bothering about.” The round purple bulk bounced into the air and floated among the trees, looking like a lost balloon.
Affretz raised his sword: the purple beast might be leading him into a trap. Then the pudgy form turned around and came back.
“It looks kind of like you,” the dragon said. “Only with arms and legs like tree trunks and a face that wouldn’t stop a waterfall on its way down.”
“That’s Archels.” Affretz kicked a rock that was sneaking up on them. “He won’t need any help.”
“The strong, smart one, is he?” said the dragon. “The wailing trees must have been a nasty surprise to him.”
Affretz heard a high-pitched hum, but before he could ask about it, he spotted an immense striped spider lurking in the foliage. He raised his sword above his head.
“That’s not the problem,” the spider told him. “Hey, stop! Don’t touch that!”
Affretz, looking for even ground to brace himself on for a spider fight, had been about to steady himself by putting a hand against a tree trunk. He jerked his hand back as a brown blob of glup fell onto it.
“Little drips like that are no threat,” the dragon said, as Affretz tried to shake the goo loose. “Some animals take them home as ornaments. But if you get coated with the big drops, YOU’RE the ornament. Like that spider. Or your brother…Archels, did you say?”
Affretz looked beyond the spider and saw a struggling shape covered in brown ooze. He recognized the boots, though, the only part of Archels that wasn’t yet covered.
“How do we get him out?” Affretz exclaimed, hurrying forward behind the dragon.
“Keep that sword ready to pry him loose,” the dragon replied. “I’ll see how much of that stuff I can melt with my steam.”
They had to duck goo-covered elbows and knees, but the dragon and Affretz took up a position behind the struggling captive. As steam started to puff from the dragon’s nostrils, the hum around them turned into a series of short, sharp notes.
The dragon glanced up. “Oh, don’t blubber. You can get other prisoners. I need this one.” He took a deep breath. “Oh, this is going to be simply awful for my sinuses.”
Hot fog streamed in such clouds from the dragon that Affretz had to turn away. “Try the sword, try the sword!” the dragon called, stopping to take another breath.
Affretz pushed the point of his sword into the amber grease and twisted. Archels pulled the other way, his head popping out of his helmet, and the brown prison. Long threads were pulled out of the ooze as the strongest prince in the world struggled to break free. The dragon breathed another cloud of steam across the captive prince, and Affretz cut at the threads of ooze. Archels pulled away some more. “I can….” He started to say.
A roaring pop split the air as Archels split through the brown prison and rolled onto the forest floor. He was up in a moment, eyes open for new threats.
“Yay!” shouted Affretz, raising his sword.
“Yay!” echoed a voice he had not heard before.
Where the dragon had been producing steam there now stood a young man wearing brown velvet robes, a tufted hat, and large black spectacles. He shook out the sleeves of his robe and then tossed both hands in the air.
“I am I! Prince Nestor once again!”
“Thank you, Prince Nestor,” said Affretz, as Archels, who was rubbing brown paste from his face, nodded in agreement. “And congratulations. Now if we can find….”
But there came another roaring pop, and Prince Nestor disappeared. In his place was a large owl the same color as the prince’s robe.
“It is SO nice to have things normal again,” said the owl, in prince Nestor’s voice. “I can fly home to my tree where we don’t have any truck with magic.”
“You’re an owl prince?” Affretz inquired.
“You guessed it,” said Nestor. “And this is the time of day for owls to be sleeping. I can get a decent nap without that ogre kicking my cage to wake me up. Brrrr, those magic creatures make me twitter.”
“Turn human for a while,” Affretz requested. “I have another brother somewhere in these woods!”
“I haven’t seen MY brothers in years,” Nestore replied. Long wings swung out. “I’ve got no time to stop and sniff the flowers.”
“Wait!” But Prince Nestor has risen toward the tops of the trees, and was gone in a moment. Affretz turned to Archels. “Did you see that?”
“No,” said his brother. “Help me get this stuff out of my eyes.”
Affretz explained as they pulled goo from the prince’s face. A little more steam might have been helpful, but they had had as much help as they were going to get from the purple dragon. “I’d rather deal with your ogre than these trees,” Archels said. “Has Alain come back yet?”
“Not so far,” said Affretz. “Maybe he found the door to the ogre’s cave.”
The two princes set off in the general direction of the road Alain had taken. They found it, but not Alain. “Just trees.” Archels poked one with the tip of his sword. “They aren’t sticky, at least.”
“They look like they’re watching us.” Affretz pointed down the path with his own sword. “Maybe they’re guarding that beautiful flower. Are there footprints or….”
His head jerked up and his eyes went from the path to the massive red and blue petals folded in on each other all over the flower. “Prince Nestor said something about flowers. Was it a clue, do you think, like what the old man told us?”
Archels frowned. “It’s too early in the day for flowers to be all closed up that way.”
Something whispered, “Sssslay! Sssslay!”
The voice was not coming from the flower. “Who said that?” Affretz demanded.
Archels grabbed his arm and pointed. “Look! Alain’s sword!”
The two princes ran at the flower and found spiky leaves rising from its base to hold them back. Archels swung his sword down at them. With a BOINGGGG, the blade bounced off of the plant’s stem.
“Rootssss!” the whispering voice called. “Rootssss!”
“Dig up the roots!” shouted Affretz. Both princes jabbed their swords into the dirt, not the most efficient means of gardening.
But it was effective. They had managed to dig a small hole when a hand shot up from the dirt to grab Affretz’s nearer ankle.
Blogsy Babbles 