Charmed Life - Diana Wynne Jones [67]
“I’ve no idea,” said Cat. He scrambled out of bed and scuttled up to his room to find some clothes. He felt perfectly well—marvelously well, in fact. He danced around his room while he put on his shirt. He sang putting on his trousers. Even the cold lump of dough on the carpet could not damp his spirits. He whistled tying his boots.
Janet came into the room as Cat was shooting out of it, pulling on his jacket and beaming with health. “I don’t know,” Janet said, as Cat shot past her and hammered away down the stairs. “Dying must agree with you, or something.”
“Hurry up!” Cat called from the bottom of the stairs. “It’s on the other side of the Castle from here. Millie says dragons’ blood is very dangerous, so don’t you touch it. I can spare a life on it and you can’t.”
Janet wanted to remark that Cat had not spared the last one very easily, but she never caught up with Cat sufficiently. Cat whirled through the green corridors and stormed up the winding stairs to Mr. Saunders’ room, and Janet only reached him when he was actually inside it. Then there was too much else to take up her attention.
The room was heavy with the scent of stale magic. Though it was much the same as when Cat had seen it before, Mr. Saunders had tidied it a little for Sunday. The cresset was out. The torts and limbecks and other vessels were all clean. The books and scrolls had been piled in heaps on the second bench. The five-pointed star was still there, blazoned on the floor, but there was a new set of signs chalked on the third bench, and the mummified animal had been neatly laid at one end of it.
Janet was immensely interested. “It’s like a laboratory,” she said, “except that it isn’t. What weird things! Oh, I see the dragons’ blood. Does he need all that huge jar? He won’t miss a bit out of that lot.”
There was a rustling at the end of the third bench. Janet’s head perked towards it. The mummified creature was twitching and spreading its filmy little wings.
“It did that before,” said Cat. “I think it’s all right.”
He was not so sure, however, when the creature stretched and got to its doglike feet, yawning. The yawn showed them dozens of small, sharp teeth and also let out a cloud of bluish smoke. The creature ran pattering along the bench towards them. The little wings rattled on its back as it came, and two small puffs of smoke streamed behind it from its nostrils. It stopped at the edge of the bench to look up at them inquisitively from a melting glitter of golden eyes. They backed nervously away from it.
“It’s alive!” said Janet. “I think it’s a small dragon.”
“Of course I am,” said the dragon, which made both of them jump violently. Even more alarming, tiny flames played out of its mouth as it spoke, and they could feel the heat from them where they stood.
“I didn’t know you could talk,” said Cat.
“I speak English quite well,” said the dragon, flickering flame. “Why do you want my blood?”
They looked guiltily at the great jar of powder on the shelf. “Is that all yours?” said Cat.
“If Mr. Saunders is making it give blood all the time, I think that’s rather cruel,” Janet said.
“Oh, that!” said the dragon. “That’s powdered blood from older dragons. They sell it to people. You can’t have any of that.”
“Why not?” said Cat.
“Because I don’t want you to,” said the dragon, and a regular roll of fire came from its mouth, making them back away again. “How would you like to see me taking human blood and playing games with it?”
Though Cat felt the dragon had a point here, Janet did not. “It doesn’t worry me,” she said. “Where I come from we have blood transfusions and blood banks. Dad once showed me some of my blood under a microscope.”
“It worries me,” said the dragon, uttering another roll of fire. “My mother was killed by unlawful blood-stealers.” It crept to the very end of the bench and stared up at Janet. The flickers in its golden eyes melted and changed and melted again. It was like being looked at by two small, golden kaleidoscopes.