Should I have trusted Farthing to help me in the face of this giant beast?

If I had lain flat and stayed completely still, covered by the ferns, I might just have had a chance. Yet here I was, stumbling over the bare lava field once more, chasing a green lizard much faster than I was, in clear view of the sky beast … and it had seen me. It swooped in lazy circles above.

Farthing sped along so fast her claws were a blur. She had spotted the flying beast too, but she was so small, she’d be less than a mouthful for it. So what was she doing?

“By the stones, Farthing, where are you leading me?” I whispered, panting.

Farthing was just an animal—she didn’t have reason—and I’d been a fool to follow her. But my stride widened to keep up.

Too late.

The beast dived toward us.

I had no idea what the lizard was doing now because she was running toward the beast, not away. I was following at full pelt, even though I knew I’d taken leave of my senses! My lungs were bursting, my foot throbbing.

I glanced up and my breath caught.

It was the best view I’d had of the beast yet and it was what I had thought it was, what I had known it was … but it wasn’t possible. I had eaten and slept, and it was daylight, so it couldn’t be a nightmare, could it?

Which meant it was a myth. A myth come to life.

I was being stalked by a dragon.

Yes, a dragon.

Now it seemed it had been blindingly obvious all along.

Its scales glistened in the sunlight, gold as a sovereign. Its four legs were powerful, and its wings were bigger than the main rig on the Beagle yet thin enough that the sunlight shone through from above, deep bronze.

I gaped as it streamed past, my legs pumping as if they’d forgotten how to stop, the wind in its wake chasing water from my eyes. Soon it would either kill me or snatch me up to drop me into the sea again, or on the rocks, or just crunch me to bone broth in its claws. Even if—for whatever strange reason—it toyed with me like last time, I’d now been weakened by the centipede poison and surely wouldn’t survive another ducking.

I’d be killed by the only dragon in the world—if there were others, even folks like me would have heard of them—and no one would even know what happened. I supposed, as deaths went, at least it was interesting.

But I was determined to live.

My legs found new life as I wove at top speed after Farthing, ducking as the air from the beast’s wings buffeted me. We hit another patch of vegetation, but only grass and low ferns, nowhere to hide. Any second I’d be swept into the air.