“Where?” everyone cried.
Rosie smiled. “From the dragons, of course!”
Chapter Six
Gathering Dragons
“Good luck!” called Mrs. Taptree, as the three friends and Rosie stepped back out into the storm.
“Breezy!” Goldie shouted over the noise of the wind. “Breezy, we’re ready to try breaking Grizelda’s spell!”
The red dragon gave an excited twirl in the air as she flew over.
“Yippee!” she cried. “I’m going to see Mommy soon!”
Jess laughed. “That’s the plan. Grizelda’s magic won’t let you fly away from the forest, so we’re going to summon your mom here to take you home. What do you think?”
Breezy gave a roar of delight and blew a gust of wind so strong it made a tall beech tree shudder.
“To call your mom, we just need you to breathe your fire so we can have some smoke,” Goldie explained.
But Breezy’s face fell. “Fire?” she said. “Smoke?” She shook her scaly head. “I’m no good at breathing fire. My brothers and sister are much better than me, and I don’t know where they are.”
From inside Lily’s cape, Rosie gave a sob. “That means I won’t see my mommy either! Or my daddy, or my sisters Posie and Josie...”
“Hang on,” Jess said. “We’ve helped all the other dragons—Chilly and Dusty and Smudge—we know where they are!”
Breezy flew a loop-the-loop. “They can make smoke!” she said excitedly.
Goldie grinned at the girls. “Then let’s gather some dragons!”
They set off through the storm. Rosie curled around Lily’s neck and peeped out of the cape hood.
“There!” Goldie shouted over the wind, pointing to a soft light up ahead. “The glowworm bush—that means we’ve reached the Winter Cave!”
“Chilly’s inside,” Lily told Breezy. “Can you call him for us?”
The red dragon flew down, skidding to a stop by the cave entrance. She stuck her nose inside. “Chilly, come with me!” she rumbled. “The girls and Goldie are going to fetch Mommy!”
Chilly came out from the cave, his eyes wide. “Will we really see Mommy again?” he asked.
“We hope so,” Jess said.
“Yippee!” shouted Chilly and blew a puff of snow into the air.
“To Coral Cove next!” said Goldie. Dusty the yellow dragon loved sunbathing, so Lily and Jess had told her about Coral Cove, a little beach by the river. It was near Grizelda’s dark, gloomy tower, so they kept well hidden in the wind-tossed bushes as Breezy told Dusty what was happening.
Then they hurried through the storm to the lighthouse where the Fuzzybrush fox family lived. Smudge the black dragon had loved dancing with Ruby Fuzzybrush, Goldie, and the girls so much that little Ruby had asked him to stay with them.
When Smudge came out to join his brother and sisters, all the Fuzzybrushes stood at the door, waving.
“Good-bye, Smudge!” Ruby called over the wind that whistled around the lighthouse. “Remember the dance moves I showed you!”
“I will!” Smudge promised. He did a twirl in the air, but a gust caught his tail and he bumped into one of the swaying trees, scattering soot everywhere.
Lily giggled. “He’s still as clumsy as ever!”
Jess looked up at the four dragons flying above them and grinned. “Back to the Whirligig!” she cried.
The girls and Goldie huddled under their capes as they battled their way back through the trees. Lily kept Rosie inside her cape, safely tucked under one arm. By the time they reached the magical windmill, the dragons were very excited.
Goldie called up to the Gigglepips, who were still trapped up inside the whirling tornado. “Don’t be frightened of the dragons,” she shouted, “they’re here to help rescue you!”
The four baby dragons landed on the wet ground.
Jess took out her notebook, where she’d written down the smoke-signal pattern. “We need you all to blow big puffs of smoke together,” she told Chilly, Dusty, and Smudge. “I’ll tell you when. And Breezy, we need your wind to blow the smoke straight up. Remember, we don’t want any fire, just smoke!”
Dusty looked disappointed. “Not even a little bit of fire?”
Jess shook her head.
“A really tiny bit?” begged Smudge.
“Definitely not,” said Lily firmly.
The dragons sighed.
“Everyone ready?” asked Jess. “One... two... three... BLOW!”
Chapter Seven
Smoke Signals
Chilly, Dusty, and Smudge all puffed out their cheeks and blew. Jets of smoke shot out of their mouths, forming a huge, dark cloud above them. Then Breezy’s wind caught it and the smoke whirled up, higher and higher in the sky.
“BLOW, BLOW!” Jess shouted. The dragons puffed out two more clouds of smoke, one following quickly after the other. After a moment, Jess yelled, “BLOW!” Then she shouted, “BLOW! BLOW!” again.
The clouds of smoke rose up high above the forest.
“Well done, everyone!” cried Goldie.
The dragons flapped their wings happily. Breezy did a loop-the-loop and landed next to her brothers and sister.
Jess grinned. “Now we’ve just got to wait for their mom to arrive.”
They all stood looking up at the sky. The wind howled around them, making Jess and Lily’s capes flap. Rosie stood under the tree where her family were trapped, her little paws tightly crossed for good luck.
But nothing happened.
Breezy gave a huge sigh that rippled the tops of the trees. “It didn’t work,” she said sadly. “Mommy isn’t coming!”
The four baby dragons huddled together miserably.
“I don’t understand,” said Lily, shaking her head with dismay. “What did we do wrong?”
“I don’t know,” said Jess. “But the dragons are still stuck in the forest, and we’ve got no way of getting the poor Gigglepip family down.”
Rosie stood by herself, looking wet and forlorn.
Suddenly, Lily’s eye was caught by something flying toward them through the rain. She grabbed Jess’s arm.
“Look, it did work! She’s coming!” Then she gasped. “Oh, no—that’s not a dragon... it’s Grizelda!”
The witch’s yellow-green orb floated toward them. As it exploded into stinking yellow sparks, the baby dragons dived under a tree, their wings wrapped around each other.
The sparks cleared, revealing the witch. The wind blew her green hair around her head even more than usual, and her thin, bony face was purple with rage.
“I might have guessed!” Grizelda screeched. “So you pesky girls made those smoke signals! What were you doing?”
Before anyone could reply, Grizelda spotted the dragons. She pointed at them, sending a jet of hot sparks that made them jump.
“What are you doing here?” she snapped. “Go and wait in the dungeon beneath my tower. Now!”
But then a great dark shadow fell over them all.
Lily and Jess looked up.
A huge dragon was hovering above the clearing. Her scales were all the colors of her babies—red, yellow, blue, and black—and she was even bigger than the Toadstool Café.
The girls grasped each other’s hands.
“Our spell worked after all!” Jess cried. “We’ve summoned the dragons’ mom!”
Lily’s eyes were wide. “Jess, do you think we did the right thing? I bet she could burn the whole forest down with one breath if she wanted to!”