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Avrel, nearly deafened,flattened his ears and saw the ice break with a rolling crack.A great spout of water gushed into the sky and came crashing back in clinging waves, over his paws. Then from the crack came the body of a woman with the tail of a fish. She crawled out, looking around, hissing threats. Her upper half was dressed in the furs of the natives. Her hair was long and matted with algae, her face crusted and twisted by shells, her eyes yellow with the rot of death. On onehand, all her fingers were missing. On the other, all that remained was a thumb.
    The spirit people sighed. The drumbeats softened. The dogs ceased to howl. Ingavar also. “Do you recognize this creature?” he asked his Teller.
    Avrel nodded in fear. He had seen what he had seen, and here it was to Tell: the story of the day he had walked with the souls of countless men, and seen the blue-eyed Nanukapik,Ingavar, call the sea goddess, Sedna, up from the deep.

8
A M EETING OF M INDS
    T he Pennykettle house was full of many strange and special dragons: the inspirational Gadzooks; the healer, Gollygosh; the wish-maker, G’reth; the mysterious shape-shifting (even to the point of invisibility) Groyne; the feisty potions dragon, Gretel. But the dragon known as Gwillan was not considered “important.” He was special in the sense that he could fly like the othersand speak in dragontongue like the others and turn his oval-shaped eyes from green to violet (stasis to life) just like the others, but he had no
magical
abilities to hurr of. His had always been a life of service and simplicity.
    Until the morning he spotted Gwendolen acting strangely.
    His duty was to
snuffle
— or to put it another way, to clean. He was excellent at it. Truly committed. Therewas barely a speck of dust in the house (including on the scales of his fellow dragons). No crumbs on carpets. No dried autumn leaves just inside the hall door. No falls of ash down the open chimney. All of them snuffled up and burned to cinders. (Cinders, of course, were puffled away later, usually around the roots of the yellow rosebush which grew near to the garden rockery.)
    He was hardworking,uncomplaining, and incredibly efficient. As well as keeping dust bunnies in order, he was able to turn his paws to many other domestic chores, such as hanging out the wash, feeding Bonnington, or chopping up vegetables with his tail. Any small task that might help Liz run the house more smoothly. Putting stray socks into the laundry basket, for instance. Fetching the mail. Tugging Lucy’s wildred hairs out of the drain. Anything. Gwillan loved his work — especially watering the plants.
    He had seen a lot of things during indoor gardening, but he had never witnessed anything as frightening or bizarre as the intense beam of light that poured out of Gwendolen’s eyes that day, the day she sneaked into Zanna’s room. Gwillan almost dropped his watering can (a tiny replica of the big onesused by Liz). His first instinct was to hide, but he was already hidden in the overhanging leaves of a flourishing coleus. Through the greenery, he saw papers being picked up and turned. And when the light went away, he saw it disappear into Gwendolen’s eyes.
    Gwendolen. She was Lucy’s dragon, who, like him, never had adventures or ever got
involved.
Why would she be here, on Zanna’s desk?
    Forseveral days he lived with this knowledge, though he wished that he could puffle it into smoke. He carried it around, but it rattled his scales. If he tried to ignore it, it nagged him like the grime in an awkward place to clean. People noticed he was out of sorts. A potato peeling was found on the floor of the kitchen. Arthur’s slippers were arranged the wrong way around.Bonnington got a bowlof packing peanuts for dinner.
    Bad. Questions began to be asked.
    Eventually, Gwillan himself, realizing that his standards were slipping, made up his mind to tell someone what he’d seen. That someone was Gollygosh, the healing