A FEW MINUTES LATER THEY CAME OUT of the Caves of Fire and Night into bright sunlight. Cimorene had to shade her eyes against the sudden glare. As her eyes adjusted, she saw a large clearing around the mouth of the cave. The ground was covered with short grass, so lush and dense that it made Cimorene think of green fur. Here and there a tiny flower twinkled among the blades of grass. At the edge of the clearing the forest began, but Cimorene could only make out the first row of trees. They were enormous, so large that they dwarfed even Kazul.

“Leave the lamp here,” Kazul said. “There’s no sense in carting it around the forest when we won’t need it until we come back.”

Cimorene set the lamp on the ground just inside the mouth of the cave. “Now what?” she said.

“Now we go to Morwen’s,” Kazul said. “And we’ll get there more quickly if you ride. If you climb up on that rock over there, you ought to be able to get on my back without too much trouble.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Cimorene said, scrambling up onto the rock Kazul had indicated.

“I wouldn’t have suggested it if I minded,” Kazul said. “Right there will be fine. You can hang on to the spike in front of you and you won’t foul my wings if I have to take off suddenly.”

Cimorene did not like the implication that there were things in the Enchanted Forest that were nasty enough to make a dragon want to take off suddenly, but she did not say so. It was too late to back out, and she certainly wasn’t going to wait at the mouth of the cave all alone while Kazul went off to visit Morwen. There was no reason to think that waiting would be any safer than going along.

As soon as Cimorene was settled, Kazul set off in to the forest at a rapid pace. At first Cimorene had to concentrate on holding on, but after a while she began to get the hang of it. Soon she was able to look at some of the things they were passing. The trees were huge; Cimorene guessed that even if there were four of her, holding hands, she would not be able to reach all the way around one of the trunks. The ground was carpeted with bright green moss that looked even thicker than the grass in the clearing. Cimorene saw no flowers in it, but she spotted several bushes and a vine with three different colors of fruit.