He scooped a bite of the tender roast into his mouth and sighed in contentment. “Hilda, are you sure there’s no Faerie blood in your family? This is nothing short of magic. What are your thoughts on marrying Bird Catchers?”
The plump, matronly housekeeper’s face flushed pink all the way to the roots of her gray hair. “Oh, hush. You’re much too young for me.”
He grinned. “That wasn’t a no, which means there’s still hope.”
Ms. Fumley chuckled and gave an amused shake of her head, but she refilled his tea and added a second roll of warm, fresh bread to his plate.
Before he could say anything more, Atlas’s angry voice echoed down the hallway outside the dining room. “What’s that I smell, Ms. Fumley? Another boy you’ve brought to boil for my breakfast tomorrow?”
“Don’t mind him,” Ms. Fumley whispered, leaning in close to Jacques and giving his shoulder a gentle pat. “He’s loud and grumpy, but harmless as a rabbit.”
Jax smiled to himself at the image of the looming giant with large rabbit ears and a twitching nose. Atlas stormed into the room, stopping short before his eyes narrowed into a scathing glare. “You again.”
Jax waved with his free hand as he scooped up another forkful. “Lassie! I wasn’t expecting the pleasure of your company for dinner. Your entrance at the barn was better, though. If I could offer you a critique, you should play on the fear of the unknown—use some nonsense words that will keep people guessing. Oh! And make it rhyme! Rhymes are notoriously off-putting in the hands of a villain. Something like, ‘Fee, fi, fo, fum! I smell the blood of my breakfast come.’” He scrunched his nose as soon as the words came out of his mouth and his ears registered how truly horrible they sounded. “It could use a little work, but you get the general idea.”
Atlas was just as unimpressed. He spoke through gritted teeth, “I told you to go away.”
“And I did!” He spoke around a bite of food. “It’s not my fault that you followed me.”
“Get out.” The giant’s eyes finally landed on Jacques, who was watching the entire exchange with wide eyes. “Both of you.”
The little goose, who apparently lived in the giant’s shadow, bit Atlas’s calf. Jax worked hard to subdue a laugh at the bird’s valiant effort at curbing Atlas’s rudeness. Still, for all that Ms. Fumley had insisted her employer was harmless, he didn’t want to press the giant too far. He pushed from the table with a sigh, grabbing his roll and tossing it lightly in the air and catching it as he spoke. “Very well. I hate to cut short such a lovely visit, Ms. Fumley, but the master of the house has spoken.”
Atlas suddenly lunged forward, moving with a surprising speed despite his size, and his hand reached across the table and seized Jax’s arm. “What’s in the bag?”
Panic shot through him for a brief moment as Ms. Fumley squeaked in protest, but Jax forced himself to remain calm.
He didn’t know about the egg before. He likely just thinks that I’m some kind of thief or common vagrant.
He pulled his arm away and reached into his satchel, retrieving the egg. Dragon song sang between his ears as he spoke, hedging his bets on the fact that Atlas seemed more interested in getting him to leave than anything else. “Are you sure you want to get involved in my business? I’ll happily stay and share all the details, but I insist on doing it over dinner. It makes things much more enjoyable that way.”
As he suspected, Atlas wanted nothing to do with his business. The giant took a step back and held up his hands. “Absolutely not. Just get off my land.”
Aha! I was right. Though I wonder what happened to the poor fellow to make him so grumpy…
He slipped the egg carefully back into his satchel, leaving the mystery of the giant for contemplation another day, and stepped around the table. He bent over to give Ms. Fumley a peck on the cheek. “It’s been a true delight, Hilda. You are a treasure.”
She blushed again as she shooed him away. “Oh, you’re too much, young man. Be careful out there.”
He waved and stepped lightly toward the door, whistling a jaunty, untroubled tune. He stopped as he passed the little goose, unable to resist tipping an imaginary hat. “My lady.”
As soon as he was safely in the hall, he quickened his pace. There were only a few hours of light left, and he wanted to be down the mountain before darkness fell.
“Hopefully the town has an inn with both a soft bed and a wizard waiting with some answers,” he said conversationally as he crossed the open grassy space that led to the cliffside. According to his Uncle Avi, dragon hatchlings could recognize voices they heard while in incubation and were quicker to respond to familiar sounds. “I have a chance of actually proving to my father that I’m not just a disappointing fool, and I would much prefer to bask in the glory of him being proud of me for once than to spend hours querying townsfolk about ambiguous clues left behind by a mysterious old man.”
There was a shout from the house behind him, and Jax paused for a moment, looking over his shoulder. “It appears that our little princeling did not take his eviction quite as well as would be hoped. Let’s hope the scary giant doesn’t chase him out with the axe.” The sound of something crashing spurred him forward. “And that’s our cue to get out of here.”
He reached the cliff, lowering himself down so that his feet dangled over the edge. With a deep breath, he grasped the vines and turned onto his stomach, using his toes to brace himself against the rock while he slid off the solid ground. Slowly, hand over hand, he descended, letting the vines carry most of his weight while he used the cliff for stability.
“I’m just saying, little one, that the next time we have to climb up or down a mountain, I expect that I won’t be doing all the heavy lifting.” His toes slipped, and Jax gripped the vine with white knuckles as he swung precariously for a moment. “In fact, I think the better plan is that we stay far away from them. I thinkyou and I are more forest-and-meadow dwellers. Horizontal living is the way to go.”
A shower of dirt and pebbles fell on his head, accompanied by a scuffling from above. Jax looked up to see Prince Jacques practically vault over the edge of the cliff, sliding down the vine with as little care as if he were merely escaping from a second-story window, rather than hanging over a death trap of sharp rocks. Under one arm he held Atlas’s terrified, honking goose.
“Hey! Be careful!” Jax snapped. His own vine shook and swayed as Jacques carried on his headlong, reckless descent, and his shoulder slammed into the jagged cliff. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”
But either Jacques didn’t hear him, or he simply didn’t care. The prince continued to slide down, and a moment later his feet were at Jax’s shoulder, knocking him to the side. The goose gave a distressed honk, and Jax realized with horror that the poor bird was slipping out of the prince’s hold. He threw out a hand, catching the goose under her tail and pushing her up until she was secure again.
The action threw him off balance, and he felt his grip on his own vine slipping. He tried to recover, but the next thing he knew, cool air was rushing past his ears as he tumbled backwards, hurtling toward the rocks below.
