Dragons of the Watch - Donita K. Paul [46]
She washed her face and crept to the back door. The closed door momentarily stymied her desire to go outside. She didn’t have a clue as to how to open it. Following the wall, she came to the opening they’d crawled through the night before. She pushed halfway through and stopped to gape at the garden. Gorgeous, lush bushes crowded the yard, and each had bright flowers of different sizes and colors. She hadn’t seen any of this splendor when they arrived by the light of the moon. Everything had been shades of gray. She twisted to lie on her back for a better view.
For several minutes, she reclined half in and half out of the small portal. A flock of heliotrope birds fussed at each other in a tragabong tree. Butterflies with shimmering wings flitted between the flowering bushes. A breeze rattled a chiming tree, and the little bell-like leaves quaked. The musical jangle rose and fell, sounding a pleasant natural percussion in the early morn. Later in the day, the leaves would soften in the heat of the sun and no longer sing softly to the world.
Ellie felt Tak pushing her from behind. She wiggled out and sat on the grass as the goat followed. “So you decided to get up after all.”
A rooster crowed.
Ellie sat up straighter. “Did you hear that? Where there’s a rooster, there are chickens. Where there are chickens, there are eggs.” She jumped to her feet. “Come on, Tak.”
Det and Airon joined the two early birds.
“Are you coming with us?” Ellie asked.
Airon assured her that they would be back soon. At the same time, Det mindspoke their intention to check for news from the watch. Ellie found she received the simultaneous messages with a little less confusion than before. Perhaps she would become skilled at communicating with the little messengers. The dragons flew off toward the center of town.
Ellie and Tak followed the sounds of clucking down the alley and came to a huge lawn behind a mansion. A barn stood on one corner. Two giant horses grazed in a pasture beyond. Dozens of normal-sized cats scooted around the paddock and outbuildings.
“It must be perilous to be a mouse around here,” she said to Tak. “I don’t see any goats or cows or pigs. I guess this was not a working farm but more of a hobby.” She looked again at the mansion on the hill. “No farmer I’ve ever known lived in a house like that.”
The rooster ran in front of them on an urgent mission. He challenged a smaller bird that had the audacity to strut in front of his hens.
“I’m glad they’re not giants like the horses. I think I’d run.” She glanced around the barnyard and stopped to consider the small wooden hutch. “I don’t think they’ve been laying in that chicken coop. Let’s look in the bushes.”
She examined the shrubbery nearest the alley with Tak right behind her, who was plucking green leaves for his breakfast. There she found dozens of eggs. Many eggs were clustered, and the grass and foliage around them showed obvious signs of a hen’s devotion. Having run off from the house without a basket of some sort, she tucked up the hem of her skirt, making a pouch to put the eggs in.
She and Tak meandered back to the house where they’d slept, enjoying the early morning feel in the air and fascinated by the trappings of the urohm neighborhood. When they finally made it back, Ellie sat beside the hole in the wall and, one by one, put the eggs inside. With her skirt pouch emptied, she stretched out on her stomach, reached through the skinny portal, and carefully moved the eggs aside. Finally, she crawled in, and Tak followed.
An empty flowerpot stood against the wall, and she loaded her find into the makeshift bowl. In the kitchen, she placed the pot on the seat of a chair and brushed twigs and bits of dirt from her clothes.
“Is that you, Ellie?” Bealomondore called from somewhere in the house.
“Yes.”
“Come here. I want to show you something.”
She followed the sound