Sebastien was waiting for us at the dock. This time there was no dinghy behind his boat.  “So,” he asked, “how’d it go? Saw an awful lot of fairies and one big dragon leaving in a hurry over my lake.”“It went all right,” Soy said modestly. “I got to tackle an evil fairy.”“Good for you,” …

I opened my hand and looked at the pen that Tryt had been so ready to give up. I wished harder than I ever had before that I was right. Lifting the pen, I started to write in mid-air.  The first stroke gave off a few sparks, almost too few to notice. But the next …

As the pen formed, we heard fluttering from near the door. Two grey stones came alive and took off in flight out of the grand room. “What was that?” asked Soy.“I think we’re going to find out,” answered Deli.  With a great swooping noise, the low purple light from the lake was blocked by an …

The room we found ourselves in was about half the size of the entire Stagwood School. To our right was a deep hole with a rope going down, hanging from wooden supports. The hole glowed the same orange as the shield over my flying bed. To the left there was a similar hole, except that …

I didn’t have to wonder how long the fall was after that. I listened to Soy scream at the top of his lungs for about two minutes before he was deposited on the ground in front of me, with Deli on his stomach. She looked like she had actually enjoyed it.  “See, now that’s the …

It wasn’t hard to get inside the mountain itself. The opening had been waiting for us. But once we were inside, things got a lot trickier.  The way was lit with torches that burned violet. They led us down a path that ended abruptly at a stone wall. We saw right away that there were …

I spent the next hour staring out the orange shield, down onto the ocean. Nowhere felt safe. Ream had found us in the middle of the sky. He’d known where we would be, and he’d been waiting. Still, when I did finally decided to speak, it was about something else.  “Deli, what did Ream mean …

The bed couldn’t fly inside the cloud and started to dip the moment we broke through. We hit the ground hard and skidded to a soft stop.  The cloud was hollow, just like Pavidale. I doubted this place had a nice name, or any name at all. It was empty and sad. The ground was …

The current we were riding started turning red as we got farther away from Pavidale. It stretched out ahead of us for what must have been miles, with no end in sight. Tryt had been right about how fast we’d be going; it was twice as fast as we had on our way to Pavidale.  …