Thomas and the Dragon Queen by Shutta Crum

Author:Shutta Crum [Crum, Shutta]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-375-89629-3
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2010-07-13T04:00:00+00:00

As his friends rounded a bend in the trail, Thomas lowered his hand and rested it on his filthy chest. “So now I have neither a sword nor a steed,” he said aloud, and shook his head. “Some champion I’ve made.”

Beneath the mud, Thomas could feel the leather jerkin his father had made him. Well, I still have my jerkin, he thought. Perhaps, with its protection, I can get close enough to the dragon to rescue the princess.

But right now Thomas stank so much, he could hardly stand it. However, he did not want to touch the spoiled waters of the lake again. He wanted nothing more than to get far from that dismal place.

He was sore and bone-tired. Carefully skirting the quicksand of the shore where he’d stood earlier, he made his way steadily—if not as swiftly as he would have liked—along the trail the king’s men had blazed ahead of him around the lake.

He came to the spot where the king and his men had fought the beast. Thomas saw long drag marks disappearing into the lake. There were dark stains on the upturned boulders and on the sand. Bits and pieces of clothing littered the shore. His stomach felt queasy. However, he did not pause except to look quickly about for any sign of the king’s standard. He saw only a strip of the blue flag floating on the water.

Along the way he kept a keen eye out for the iron shaft from Starfast. He did not find it.

From this point forward Thomas had to forge his own route around the lake, breaking through the dense tangle of shrubs and grasses. Without a sword to hack at the growth, or Bartholomew to stomp down a path, it was slow going. Yet Thomas found that his smallness helped him slip easily beneath branches and past the sharp edges of grass that could slice through skin. Many a time, the padded jerkin protected him. By late afternoon, he’d made it to the far side. A slender shoulder of dune and a pebbled beach were all that separated the sea from the tangled thicket at the back of the lake.

Coming over the dune, Sir Thomas heard pounding, like a giant heartbeat knocking against his ribs. Then he saw the sea for the first time in his life. There were rumbling waves rolling in and in, beating mercilessly at the shore.

The endlessness of the blue water meeting the blue sky frightened him. After the gloomy lake, it hurt his eyes. If he squinted hard enough, however, he might be able to see the farther shore of the bay. He could hardly believe that there was a place where the world simply disappeared into the horizon.

He shielded his face and looked toward the westering sun. Not far in that direction, there was something he couldn’t miss—a dark shape. Just down the shore, sitting in the entrance from the ocean to the bay, was an island with two mountains like jagged brown teeth. It had to be Barren Isle.

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