He had been prepared for dragons, but not for Alice.

She leaned down from her seat at the base of the dragon's neck – black-clad and imperious, with streams of hair fluttering at her shoulders like gilded banners – and said, "I should let them eat you."

Jack looked up at the dragons. If they had been inclined to eat him, he wouldn't have been able to do anything about it. They towered above him like a sheer, silver wall. They were thin and whiskered, like the sort of dragons you saw painted on Chinese porcelain, but they could still have crushed him, or disembowelled him with a swipe of those claws.

But he couldn't seem to muster the fear that a pair of dragons should have inspired in him. There was such a feeling of rightness to this moment. He was still chuckling from the message in the sand, still reeling from his spectacular escape. He felt loved – connected – stitched into a warm tapestry of friends and family that even included Alice Darwin.

Besides, they weren't exhibiting any behaviour he would have classed as hostile. The riderless dragon was nudging the axe along the sand with its nose, as though entranced by the bright light. And Alice's dragon had found the severed tentacle and was chewing on it thoughtfully.

Even Alice didn't seem too interested in taunting him. She was looking at the writing in the sand with a vague, tense frown. She hadn't been expecting it.

In fact, now that he'd got past her terrifying silhouette and monstrous, silvery steed, he could see that she looked rattled. Her hair was loose and unkempt. Her chest was rising and falling in a very noticeable way.

She'd been splashed when the dragons had dipped into the water to retrieve him. Little droplets were spangling her neck like jet beads. Would the lake call to her now? It was difficult to imagine despair operating on a will like Alice's. But it was not nothing, what he had just seen. He would never underestimate it. Somehow, Ellini's message had brought him to an odd, contradictory state in which he recognized the power of despair and yet couldn't imagine despairing ever again.

He couldn't stop smiling either. He knew it would antagonize Alice, but he just couldn't stop.

"Did Ellini send you?" he asked, without thinking.

Alice narrowed her eyes. "I am not at Miss Syal's beck and call."

She threw a glance at James Darwin, who had been edging into view. It was her usual haughty look, but Jack swore there was a wince buried in there somewhere.

"Ah," said Darwin, on being noticed. "Hello, old girl. I did get here, as you see, but it might have... taken longer than expected."

Most unusually, Alice didn't fry him into silence with her glare. She looked away and said, "Well."

Just 'well'. Perhaps it was a couple's code – but whether it meant 'sorry', or 'I've missed you', or 'We'll talk about this later', Jack couldn't guess. Darwin was looking pale and apprehensive, but that wasn't much of a clue.

"How did you find us?" Jack prompted.

Alice stuck her nose in the air. "The dragons seemed to know where they were going."

This was as close as she could come to admitting she hadn't been in control. It probably meant the dragons had gone haring off with Alice clinging to their scales for dear life.

"Did you tell them to rescue me?" said Jack, smiling at the idea.

"I wouldn't lift a finger to save you! Do you think I've forgotten the insults you paid me-?" She suddenly lurched forwards as her dragon's head dipped. It was snapping its jaws at another tentacle, close to Jack's boot.

This one wasn't severed. It withdrew, almost sulkily, when the dragon snapped at it, but not far. The lady hadn't forgotten them.

"I rather think," said Alice, "that the recriminations you are sorely owed had better wait until we're somewhere safer."

"Yes, Alice," he said meekly.

"Perhaps you even need medical attention. I don't much care. You won't find me pouring salve on your wounds."

"No, Alice."

"You will get up behind me, where I can ensure you don't fall and break your fatuous head. James can ride the other dragon."

The silence of complete acquiescence followed these words – as so often happened when Alice spoke. But Jack thought: She doesn't want to be close to her husband yet.

Well, that was understandable. It had been a long time. Perhaps she wasn't sure of him, or wasn't comfortable with the part she had played in his disappearance. Jack had always supposed she felt bad about it, in her angry, self-justified way. But he had never supposed that she loved him. Perhaps it was the lack of love that was embarrassing her.

Jack stood up shakily. Somehow, he could still feel that slimy tentacle wrapped close as a shackle round his ankle.

He turned to look back at the message. He couldn't imagine himself ever forgetting it, but he scooped up two handfuls of sand and stuffed them into the pockets of his trousers, just in case.

"There's a door to Oxford about half a mile back," he said, wondering as he did so whether it was big enough to allow two dragons to pass through. Perhaps it would stretch – though the Faculty on the other side almost certainly wouldn't.

"Oh?" said Alice carelessly. "You would not like to see Miss Syal first?"

Jack's smile disappeared. A kind of pleasurable panic shot through him at the thought of seeing her again so soon. "Where is she?"

"Where I left her, if she has an ounce of sense. No guarantees there, of course."

"And where is that?" said Jack, trying to ignore her last sentence.

Alice's lips twitched into a smile. She had found a fool-proof way to annoy him: keeping him in the dark about Ellini. "The dragons know the way. Shall we?"

***

Everything about that journey was unreal: the scenery, the company, the method of locomotion. The dragons were slight and sleek, and must have had hollow bones, but they still seemed too big to fly.

And then there was the way bats would skitter along beside them, threading over and under the dragons like the shuttle on a loom, as if they were weaving the scenery beneath them as they went.

The dragons, who had tried to eat everything beside the lake, didn't seem to have a taste for bats – or perhaps respected them as collaborators – because they made no move to snatch them out of the air.

And the scenery itself! The titanic caves they swept through, the jagged black peaks and lava-filled craters. Huge, hollowed-out stalagmites rising like the Tower of Babel through the fumes that passed for cloud down here, with lit windows and shadowy forms on every level.

Holding onto Alice's waist was unreal too – and hardly caring that he was doing it. He couldn't quite believe he was going to see Ellini, and yet he had the sanguine conviction that their paths would cross eventually – that she would smile at him when they did – that she would be safe and well and full of stories. How could he believe anything else, after the dragons' message?

After perhaps an hour, the dragons soared upwards, into a fissure in the enormous, fume-fogged ceiling. From there, they passed through tunnels and cramped caverns, twisting this way and that to fit their wingspan through the confined space. Jack was forced to cling onto Alice's waist harder than he would have liked.

Then they fluttered into an area of pillars and moonlight. Jack thought for a moment they had entered some large Roman temple, until he saw that the pillars were natural formations where the stalagmites and stalactites had fused together.

For all their silvery grace, the dragons landed like ducks, shifting from side to side until they had their balance, and then folding in their wings like someone closing an umbrella.

Now that he looked at it from a stationary position, this new cave had the appearance of a stable, with loose mounds of rubble piled up in the corners instead of hay. The largest of these mounds led up to a lighted window, and Jack's stomach lurched more than it had at any point during the flight when he saw the figure looking out at them.

He didn't remember getting down off the dragon's back. That was a moment in time which stood between him and Ellini, so he paid it no attention.

She had climbed through the window by now, and came skidding down the slope of rubble to meet him. The momentum carried her so fast that he half-caught and half-grabbed her when she reached the bottom. He was suffering under a momentum of his own.

For a moment, he held her at arm's length while she leaned in, astonished and off-balance and radiant with surprise. He wondered how he could have ever doubted that she loved him.

"Dragons," he said, his mouth dry, his voice oddly flat. "You sent me dragons."

She started to shake her head. "No, I-"

"They had a message from you, Leeny."

This part, at least, didn't seem to come as a surprise. She closed her mouth.

"You don't know what it meant," said Jack, talking fast now, before Alice had time to slide down off her perch and interrupt them. "You don't know what they saved me from-"

And then, quite suddenly, his impatience got the better of him, and he kissed her. He expected to be repulsed, pushed away, or even slapped in the face, but when she moulded herself to him, and moaned faintly against his lips, he heard it in very cell of his body.

And he thought wildly: if she lets me, I'm going to do it right here, in front of the dragons. The others can find another cave, or stay and watch, for all I care. I didn't wade through a lake of despair to pass up an opportunity like this.

But then she stiffened and pulled away, perhaps thinking – quite rightly – that he was hysterical and in no condition to restrain himself, so she would have to do the restraining for both of them.

"What have you been doing to yourself?" she wailed, when they finally broke apart.

"Oh, come on," said Jack, half-laughing. "You've seen me in worse states than this."

She shook her head again. "It's – it's despair. I can taste it."

Jack froze. He should have changed his clothes, tried to wash off the lake-water, before touching her. He never wanted that place to call to her. He never wanted her to see it, let alone taste it. God, what could that lake do to someone like Ellini? She would fit in so well she'd probably usurp the sea-witch and have herself crowned the new lady of the lake.

"Aftertaste," he insisted. "I'll never despair again. You think I haven't taken your message to heart? When you sent it with dragons? You really listen when a dragon tells you something. I'm surprised they don't use them in schools-"

"It was years ago," said Ellini faintly. "I gave them the message when you were in Sicily."

Jack tried to steady himself. What he needed now was one of her stories – something soothing to distract them both while he tried to compose himself. He needed a story much more than he needed food and rest.

"Tell me," he said, in a would-be casual voice.

Ellini's head-shaking grew more insistent. "No, no, no. Why is it always that way round? Whenever we've been apart, it's always me who tells a long, rambling story about everything I've been up to, and you never give me a hint until-"

She broke off. But in his head, Jack finished the sentence for her: Until some horrible woman tells you I killed Violet.

Perhaps she heard it – or imagined it – because she went on in a softer voice. "Where have you been? What have you been doing?"

"I will tell you, mouse," he said, gathering up both her hands. "I have to. Only let me catch my breath for a second. I was pulled out of a lake and then flown across a demon continent by a pair of dragons. I just want to have a quiet sit down."

He wanted to tell her. He wanted to watch her eyes grow wide with sympathy. He wanted to modestly hint at his heroic exploits and how hard they'd been.

But he knew she would not believe Sita was back until she saw her. Maybe not even then. If he hinted at it – and he would have to at some point, just so it didn't come as a surprise – she would withdraw into herself. It was too much, too emotionally fraught, too painful to hope for. He understood that. He would have felt the same if somebody had tried to tell him she was alive, in the dark, desperate months when he had thought he'd killed her.

Ellini ducked under his arm and helped him up the hill of rubble. He was on the point of telling her that he could have flown up there, he was so happy to see her, but then he felt the warmth of her skin against his, and closed his mouth.

They met James and Alice on the way. Alice had been contriving to help her husband down from the dragon without touching him, and she gave Jack and Ellini a quelling look when she saw them soldered so closely together, as if they were making a spectacle of themselves.

James Darwin seemed a bit more wistful, but then he'd been underground without female company for seven years, and you didn't need to know him very well to know that he had a softer heart than Alice's.

"Miss Syal, I didn't realize I was to be acting as courier for your love-notes," said Alice haughtily.

Jack started to tell her to sod off, but Ellini's apologetic instincts were too quick for him.

"I'm sorry, Mrs Darwin – I didn't realize they were my dragons until it was too late to call you back."

Alice flinched, as though she was pained by all these riddles. "Your dragons-?"

"Yes. The ones I gave the message to."

"Have you been acquainted with many dragons in your lifetime?"

"No, Mrs Darwin," she said, faltering a little. "But – well, what were the chances of my coming across the same dragons twice?"

Alice sighed. "When we have rested and eaten, I would like a more coherent explanation from you."

"Yes, Mrs Darwin."

"Alice will do."

She led her husband up the hill of rubble without touching him. She seemed to be able to twitch his nerves like puppet-strings. Perhaps that was why she'd married him – because she could get a better class of obedience from him than from anyone else.

Jack and Ellini let them get a head start before walking on. For the first time, Jack realized there was another figure at the window – a frail, bent form that was all beard and leathery sinew.

"Who's that?"

Ellini answered him in a carefully neutral voice. "He says he's Dr Faustus."

"Do you believe him?"

"I'm afraid I do."

"Is he naked?"

She gave him a swift, shy smile that he was at a loss to interpret. "I think he's been on his own for so long that he doesn't see the point in social niceties anymore."

Jack didn't answer. He didn't know what her smile had meant, but he didn't like it.

"Who's the man with Mrs Darwin?" she added in an undertone.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Ellini gave a sharp sigh. "Well, isn't that just typical of our relationship? I give you an answer and you give me a riddle?"

Jack couldn't help smiling. "You like riddles."

"Not all the time!"

Much as he enjoyed her annoyance – much as it made him tingle – Jack relented. "His name is James Darwin. He's Alice's husband."

Ellini stopped so suddenly that they sank ankle-deep into the rubble. "Is that what the favour for your friend was? You were rescuing Alice's husband?"

"No, he rescued me," said Jack. "Pulled me out of a lake. Said he was just passing."

Ellini frowned. "I thought the dragons pulled you out of the lake."

"That was the second time."

She pursed her lips like Alice Darwin. "You owe me an awful lot of explanations."

"You'll get them, mouse." And then he added, half-hoping to see her scowl again, "It would be good if we were alone, though. You know, so as not to be interrupted? Somewhere private and comfortable – somewhere I could lie down if I was still feeling-"

She gave him that lovely smile of hers. Despairing amusement was the best way to describe it. "I think Dr Faustus and Mrs Darwin will have other ideas. They seem to think the world needs saving."

***

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