Dragon Rescue by Don Callander Page A

at his side for a long time, thinking worriedly of her stepsiblings and of her father and his Queen.
    At last, when the lights in the kitchen and pantry were blown out by the servant girls on their way to bed, she moved close to her husband’s sleeping form and composed herself for sleep.

Chapter Four
    Knollwater Uproar
    Retruance and his brother sat on a sandy Gulf of Carolna beach, paddling their tails in the warm salt waves and wondering what to do next.
    “Just peters out!” cried Furbetrance, irritably. “Do you think he went out to sea? There’re a lot of islands out there. But Papa was ever a Mountain Dragon by choice, you know. Would he have hidden himself on an island somewhere?”
    Retruance shook his head but didn’t reply.
    Furbetrance turned to demand an answer but recognized the far-away look in his brother’s golden eyes.
    “What! What is it?” he asked, anger and frustration forgotten.
    “It’s Tom. Calling me. I must fly to Ffallmar Farm at once!” said Retruance, rising and shaking the sand and saltwater from his tail.
    “I’ve got to go!”
    “Of course you do!” agreed Furbetrance, also rising. “But what shall I do? Go along? Stay here?”
    Retruance lifted his enormously powerful wings in preparation for a fast takeoff, but paused a moment to consider his answer.
    “Try the nearer islands you see out there,” he suggested. “See if the animals or the birds have seen anything of a wayward Dragon. I’ll get word to you as soon as I find out what’s going on...if I can. Good-bye, little brother! Tom wouldn’t call if it weren’t urgent, you know.”
    “I know,” said the other, wistfully watching him soar into the blue tropical sky. “I often wish I had a Companion myself.”
    He took off eastward, more gently and thoughtfully than Retruance had flown northward, mulling over in his mind the matter of a Companion.
    Dragon Companions weren’t all that common. Perhaps one in ten Dragons found such a close Companion in his lifetime. When one comes along, you ‘re supposed to know it at once, no matter who or what, Furbetrance thought to himself. That’s the way it was with Murdan and Papa, I’ve heard them both say, and with Tom and Retruance, too.
    “I’ve always been very much drawn to Princess Manda myself,”
    he said aloud as he flapped along low over the gulf waves. “Why have I never gotten up enough nerve to ask her? Because she’s a Princess, I guess.”
    He slowly circled the first of a thousand small islands that dotted the vast Gulf of Carolna. Most were uninhabited except by birds and turtles and such. Or so he’d heard. Little was known of the gulf, actually. No Dragon he knew had ever lived or even visited there.
    “Which is a good reason to look for Papa there, I suppose,”
    Furbetrance said, sighing.
    He lowered himself toward the closest white sand beach, fringed by graceful coconut palms. A great cloud of seabirds screamed into the air, startled to see the huge stranger arrive. They were cautious but not especially afraid.
    rs
    Tom was awake when he heard his Dragon land in Ffallmar’s farmyard. The rooster in the chicken run had just announced the rising of the sun and, looking up, had choked out a frightened gurk!
    when he saw the dark, reptilian form dropping down upon him.
    He and his hens scattered, clucking and bawling in panic. Things that dropped from the sky meant only one thing to chickens: danger!
    Hawks! And hawks meant death and bloodshed and sudden bereave-ment.
    “Oh, hush!” Retruance snorted after them. “Good morning, ma’am!”
    This last was to a startled farm lass who’d just come to the hen coop to gather breakfast eggs for her mistress.
    “Good morning, Sir Dragon,” she said hurriedly, to cover her start.
    “Welcome to Ffallmar Farm! You are the Dragon Retruance Constable, I know.”
    “Right! Come for my Companion, Thomas of Overhall. Is he here still?”
    “Here and ready for breakfast,” Tom hailed from the bedroom