The Topaz Quest by Gill Vickery Page B

and bathed her in full sunlight. It glittered off her scaly hide and to her astonishment she saw that she was a golden-red colour. She’d turned to the colour of human-Tia’s hair. Without another thought, she dived from the rock and soared into the sky.
    Being a dragon was wonderful. She slipped through the air as easily as a fish slips through water.

    She dived and twirled and swooped. She flew fast, she flew slowly. She flew upside down and ran into a skein of geese making its way towards the far-away lakes of Holmurholt. They honked in alarm and their V-shape formation broke up.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ Tia called to them but they took no notice, just re-formed and flapped away.
    Stupid geese
, Tia thought a bit guiltily. She really should’ve looked where she was going. And that reminded her; she had a job to do – finding the best way over the mountains and into Stoplar. She wheeled round and found herself flying dangerously close to the spell she could see shimmering like spider silk in the sun. She thought of the warning chant all dragons knew by heart:
    If the jewels of power see a dragon soaring secretly
Over the lost lands of the six towns
The spell will blast them away, blowing
Like a feather in the wind
.
    She turned away and flew at a safe distance round the towering spikes of black rock enclosing Stoplar and its lands. She didn’t see another pass during her long flight and her muscles ached as she neared the place she’d started from.
It’s hopeless
, she thought,
there’s definitely no other way through. We’ll have to do what Finn suggested and let him fly me in
.
    A tremendous groaning startled her into back-winging furiously. The storm ground to a halt with a great creaking and moaning, splinters of ice crashed to the ground, and the mists parted. Tia hovered in surprise as a line of people with horses and carts made their way out of the pass.
    â€˜Traders!’ Tia scanned the faces of the people below and saw her special friends, Kizzy and Florian. They’d be amazed to see a small golden dragon flying above them – and even more amazed if they knew it was her.
    She glided down. Kizzy spotted her and pointed, wide-eyed. Tia couldn’t resist breathing fire. She only meant to show off a little, but a great stream of flames shot from her mouth. The terrified horses squealed and threw their riders or kicked at the traces of the carts.
    Tia couldn’t believe what she’d done – she’d acted like Torkil who enjoyed making trouble for the Traders.
But I didn’t mean to do that
, she thought.
I’ll change back and see if I can help
. She looked round for a place where she could turn into her own form without being seen and realised, too late, she’d flown into the spell.
    It caught her by the tail and shook her until her wings crumpled. She tumbled helplessly away fromthe mountainside, over the foothills and towards the river. And then she was falling.
    She’d reached the edge of the spell’s power and it had dropped her but she was too exhausted to flap her wings and save herself. She plunged towards the river.
    In desperation she gripped the opal with a scaly foot and thought –
fish!
She instantly changed into a salmon, twisting and turning as she hurtled to the river.
    Splash! Salmon-Tia hit the water and was torn away by raging currents. Frantically she dodged the clashing ice floes streaming wildly along in the torrents of freezing water. Two floes closed in on either side and she leapt out of the water just as they crashed together. Down she came again, dodging jagged lumps of ice flashing by. She dived deep, right to the bottom of the river bed, and powered along with ice swirling above her.
    She swam for what felt like miles before the current grew weaker and the floes moved more slowly. Then she drifted along until she reached shallow water. At last she changed back into herself, stumbled to the bank and fell