“Yes,” said Janet. “What do baby dragons feed on? Milk?”
“Michael tried me with milk, but I didn’t like it,” said the dragon. “I have minced steak now, and I’m growing beautifully. When I’m big enough, he’s going to take me back, but meanwhile I’m helping him with his magic. I’m a great help.”
“Are you?” said Janet. “What do you do?”
“I find old things he can’t find himself.” The dragon fell into a flickering croon. “I fetch him animals from the abyss – old golden creatures, things with wings, pearl-eyed monsters from the deep sea, and whispering plants from long ago.”
It stopped and looked at Janet with its head on one side. “That was easy,” it remarked to Cat. “I’ve always wanted to do that, but no one let me before.” It sighed a long blue fume of smoke. “I wish I was bigger. I could eat her now.”
Cat took an alarmed look at Janet and found her staring like a sleep-walker, with a silly smile on her face. “Of all the mean tricks!” he said.
“I think I’ll just have a nibble,” said the dragon.
Cat realised it was being playful. “I’ll wring your neck if you do,” he said. “Haven’t you got anything else to play with?”
“You sound just like Michael,” said the dragon in a sulky roll of smoke. “I’m bored with mice.”
“Tell him to take you for walks.” Cat took Janet’s arm and shook her. Janet came to herself with a little jump and seemed quite unaware that anything had happened to her. “And I can’t help the way you feel,” said Cat to the dragon. “I need some dragon’s blood.” He pulled Janet well out of range, just to be on the safe side, and picked up a little china crucible from the next bench.
The dragon hunched up irritably and scratched itself like a dog under the chin until its wings rattled. “Michael says dragon’s blood always does harm somewhere,” it said, “even when an adept uses it. If you’re not careful, it costs a life.”
Cat and Janet looked at one another through the smoke it had made with its speech. “Well, I can spare one,” said Cat. He took the glass stopper off the big jar and scooped up some brown powder in the crucible. It had a strong, strange smell.
“I suppose Chrestomanci manages all right with two lives,” Janet said nervously.
“But he’s rather special,” said the dragon. It was standing on the very edge of the bench, rattling with anxiety. Its golden eyes followed Cat’s hands as he wrapped the crucible in his handkerchief and pushed the bundle cautiously into his pocket. It seemed so worried that Cat went over to it and, a little nervously, rubbed it under the chin where it had been scratching. The dragon stretched its neck and pressed against his fingers. The smoke came out of its nostrils in purring puffs.
“Don’t worry,” Cat said. “I’ve got three lives left, you see.”
“That explains why I like you,” said the dragon, and almost fell off the bench in its effort to follow Cat’s fingers. “Don’t go yet!”
“We’ve got to.” Cat pushed the dragon back on the bench and patted its head. Once he was used to it, he found he did not mind touching its warm horny hide a bit. “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” said the dragon.
They left it staring after them like a dog whose master has gone for a walk without it.
“I think it’s bored,” Cat said when he had shut the door.
“It’s a shame! It’s only a baby,” said Janet. She stopped on the first turn of the stair. “Let’s go back and take it for a walk. It was sweet!”
Cat was sure that if Janet did any such thing, she would come to herself to find the dragon browsing on her legs. “It wasn’t that sweet,” he said. “And we’ll have to go to the garden straight away now. It’s going to tell Mr Saunders we took some dragon’s blood as soon as it sees him.”
“Yes, I suppose it does make a difference that it can talk.” Janet agreed. “We’d better hurry then.”
Cat walked very carefully through the Castle, down and out of doors, and kept a hand on his pocket in case of accidents. He was afraid he might arrive at the forbidden garden with one life less. He seemed to have lost three of his lives so easily.
That kept puzzling him. From the look of those matches, losing life number five ought to have been as much of a disaster as losing the sixth one last night. But he had not noticed it go at all. He could not understand it. His lives did not seem to be properly attached to him, like ordinary people’s. But at least he knew there were no other Cat Chants to be dragged into trouble in this world, when he left it.
It was a glorious start-of-autumn day, with everything green and gold, hot and still. There was not a soul around, and very little sound except the lonely crunch of Cat’s and Janet’s feet as they hurried through the formal garden.
Halfway through the orchard, Janet said, “If the garden we want looks like a ruined castle, we’re going away from it now.”
Cat could have sworn they were heading straight for it, but, sure enough, when he stopped and looked round, the high sun-soaked old wall was right behind them. And now he came to think of it, he could not remember how he and Gwendolen had got to it before.
They turned back and walked towards the high wall. All they found was the long, low wall of the orchard. There was no gate in it, and the forbidden garden was beyond it. They went along the orchard wall to the nearest gate. Whereupon they were in the rose garden, and the ruined wall was behind them again, towering above the orchard.
“This couldn’t be an enchantment to stop people getting into it, could it?” said Janet, as they plodded through the orchard again.
“I think it must be,” said Cat. And they were in the formal garden again, with the high wall behind them.
“They’ll be coming out of church before we’ve found it at this rate,” Janet said anxiously.
“Try keeping it in the corner of your eye and not going straight to it,” said Cat.
They did that. They walked slantwise with the garden, not really looking at it. It seemed to keep pace with them. And suddenly, they came out somehow beyond the orchard into a steep, walled path. Up at the top of it stood the high old wall, with its stairway masked by hollyhocks and bright with snapdragons, breathing warmth out of its crumbling stones into their worried faces. Neither of them dared look straight at the tall ruins, even while they were running up the path. But the wall was still there, when they reached the end, and so was the overgrown stair.
The stair made a nerve-racking climb. They had to go up it twice as high as a house, with one side of themselves pressed against the hot stones of the wall, and a sheer drop on the other side. The stairs were frighteningly old and irregular. And they grew hotter and hotter. Towards the end, Cat had to keep his head tipped up to the trees hanging over the top of the ruins, because looking anywhere else began to make him dizzy. He had glimpses of the Castle in the distance from more angles than he would have thought possible. He suspected that the ruins he was on were moving about.
There was a notch in the wall at the top, not like a proper entrance at all. They swung themselves in through it, secret and guilty, and found the ground beyond worn smooth, as if other people had been coming that way for centuries.
There were trees, thick