Dragon Legend by Katie Tsang & Kevin Tsang

Author:Katie Tsang & Kevin Tsang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2021-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

The Life Price

Billy was sure he must have misheard the giant fish. But it kept talking.

‘I’ll let you decide amongst yourselves which one of you I eat.’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Billy. ‘No deal.’ They hadn’t survived all this time in the Dragon Realm only for one of them to be sacrificed to a fish, of all things.

‘Then no trip to the Frozen Wasteland,’ said the fish, sounding bored. ‘I need a life payment to swim through the Blood Strait. There is no other way.’

The friends looked at one another. ‘What kind of life?’ asked Charlotte slowly. ‘Any life? Would a snail do? Surely we can find a snail around here.’

‘Charlotte!’ Ling-Fei said. ‘All lives are worthy!’

‘What? I would rather it be a snail than one of us!’

‘A life heavy enough to sit in my belly,’ said the fish. The word ‘heavy’ made Billy think of something.

‘Wait a minute!’ he said. He reached into the secret pocket in his suit and pulled something out. ‘Would this do?’ He held out the scratched gold soul coin. The eye shimmered and stared at him. Billy shuddered.

The fish blinked.

‘It’s a soul coin,’ said Billy.

‘I’ve never tasted a soul coin,’ gurgled the fish, eyeing it.

‘I think a soul coin should be worth a return trip,’ said Dylan suddenly. ‘For all four of us. Safe passage there and back. Gold and a soul? What a prize.’

‘I will accept the soul coin to take you across the Blood Strait.’

‘And back,’ said Dylan meaningfully. He looked at the others. ‘We don’t want to get stranded somewhere called the Frozen Wasteland.’

‘The bargain is done,’ said the fish. It opened its gaping mouth further, its lower jaw dropping like a drawbridge. Its thick white tongue flopped out.

Billy hesitantly placed the gold coin in its mouth. The fish swallowed loudly. Then it stuck its tongue out again and licked its lips.

‘Delicious,’ it said.

‘So, do we sit on your back?’ said Billy.

‘To reach the Frozen Wasteland, you take the Blood Strait and go beneath the ice,’ said the fish. ‘You would not survive on my back. You must ride in my mouth.’

‘I don’t think we’ll survive in your mouth either!’ said Charlotte.

‘You have paid the life price. I will not eat you. As delicious as I’m sure you all would be.’

‘I think it’s telling the truth,’ said Ling-Fei. ‘It isn’t going to eat us.’

‘Well, in that case, I think we should… trust the fish,’ said Billy. He couldn’t believe this was actually something he was saying out loud, but he knew it was the only way to get to the Frozen Wasteland. This was their one chance of finding the Ice Pearl and ultimately stopping the Dragon of Death.

Charlotte took the first hesitant step forward, then she leaned back and looked directly in the fish’s giant eye. ‘You’d better not try anything… fishy,’ she said. ‘Otherwise I’ll tear you apart from the inside.’

The fish blinked. ‘I do not see how that would help you, as then you would be stuck inside a dead fish in the Blood Strait.

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