J enna, Beetle and Septimus awoke the next morning under a makeshift shelter of HeatCloaks that they had hastily rigged up beside Spit Fyre when fatigue had finally set in. They crawled out and sat on the beach, breathing in the soft, salty breeze and soaking up the warmth of the sun, gazing at the scene before them. It was breathtakingly beautiful.
The storm had left the air feeling washed clean, and there was not a cloud in the brilliant blue sky. The deep azure sea sparkled with a million dancing points of light and filled the air with the sound of its gentle ebb and flow as the tiny waves crept up the beach and then retreated, leaving gleaming, wet sand behind. To their left stretched a long, gentle curve of white sand with hillocks of sand dunes behind, which opened onto a plateau of rock-strewn grass that led to a tree-covered hill. To their right were the round-topped rocks they had so narrowly missed the night before - and Spit Fyre's rock pool.
"Isn't it fantastic?" Jenna whispered in the small hiatus that occurs after the waves wash onto the shore and before they swish back into the sea once more.
"Yeah..." said Beetle dreamily.
Septimus got up and went to check on Spit Fyre. The dragon was still asleep, lying in a dip behind the rocks, sheltered from the sun. He was breathing steadily and his scales were pleasantly warm to the touch. Septimus felt reassured, but when he walked back to the rock pool he felt less so. The water in the pool was a dull reddish color, and through the murky water Spit Fyre's tail did not look good. There was a definite downward kink, and the barb was resting on the sandy bottom of the rock pool. This worried Septimus - Spit Fyre always held the barbed end of his tail high, and the natural curve of the tail would normally have led to the barb sticking up out of the water, not lying limp and lifeless. With a sinking feeling, Septimus realized that the tail was broken. But worse than that, the part of the tail past the break - or the distal part, as Marcellus would have called it - was not a healthy color. The scales had gone a darker green, had lost their iridescence, and the barb, from what he could see of it below the water, looked almost black. Flakes of dead dragon scales were floating on the surface of the water, and when Septimus lay down on a rock and leaned over for a closer look, he realized that the whole pool had a whiff of decay about it. Something had to be done. Jenna and Beetle were daring each other to go for a swim when Septimus rejoined them. He felt a little like Jillie Djinn breaking up a gaggle of giggling scribes as he emerged from the rocks and said, "His tail looks really bad."
Jenna was giving Beetle a push toward the sea. She stopped dead. "Bad?" she said.
"How bad?"
"You'd better come and take a look."
The three of them stood on the edge of the rock pool and looked at the water in dismay.
"Yuck," said Beetle.
"I know," said Septimus. "And if it gets any more yuck he's going to lose the end of his tail...or worse. We've got to do something fast."
"You're the expert, Sep," said Beetle. "Tell us what to do and we'll do it. Won't we, Jenna?"
Jenna nodded, shocked at the sight of the mucky-looking water. Septimus sat down on a rock and stared at the pool in thought. After a while he said,
"This is what I think we should do. First we collect some seaweed and find a long, straight piece of wood. Then - and this is not going to be nice - we get into that pool and we heave his tail out. Then I can get a proper look at it. I'm going to have to clean away all the yucky stuff, and that won't be nice for Spit Fyre, so you're going to have to stay up by his head and talk to him. I'll pack the wound with seaweed because that's got a lot of good stuff for healing in it. If the tail's broken, which I'm pretty sure it is, we'll have to splint it - you know, bind it up with the piece of wood so that he can't move it. And after that we will just have to hope that it gets better and that it doesn't..." Septimus trailed off.
"Doesn't what, Sep?" asked Beetle.
"Fall off."
Jenna gasped.
"Or worse, get what Marcellus used to call, 'the deadly stinking black slush.'"
"Deadly stinking black slush?" asked Beetle, impressed. "Wow, what's that?"
"Pretty much what it sounds like. It gets all - "
"Stop it," Jenna said. "I really don't want to know."
"Look, Sep," said Beetle, "you tell us what to do and we'll do it. Spit Fyre will be fine, you'll see."
Two hours later Jenna, Beetle and Septimus sat soaked and exhausted on the rough grass above the rocks. Below them lay a dragon with an extremely odd-looking tail. It looked, Beetle observed, like a snake that had swallowed a boulder, with the added interest that someone had wrapped the bump where the boulder was in a large red cloth and tied it in a bow.
"It's not a bow," Septimus objected.
"Okay, a big knot then," said Beetle.
"I had to make sure the HeatCloaks stayed put. I don't want sand getting into it."
"Spit Fyre did really well, didn't he?" said Jenna.
"Yeah," Septimus agreed. "He's a good dragon. He does listen when he knows it's serious."
"Do you think it still is serious?" asked Beetle. Septimus shrugged. "I dunno. I did my best. It looked a lot better when I cleaned all the grunge out, and..."
"Do you mind not mentioning grunge, Sep?" asked Jenna, looking queasy. She stood up and took a deep breath of air to clear her head. "You know," she said, "if we're going to be stuck somewhere for a few weeks, I can think of worse places to be stuck in. This is so beautiful."
"I suppose we are stuck here until Spit Fyre gets better," said Beetle. The amazing possibility of long, lazy weeks in such a beautiful place in the company of Princess Jenna - and Sep, of course - washed over him. He couldn't quite believe it. Jenna was restless. "Let's go and explore a little," she said. "We could go along the beach and see what's on the other side of those rocks right at the end." She pointed to a distant rocky outcrop that marked the boundary of the far left side of the bay. Beetle jumped to his feet. "Sounds like a great idea," he said. "Coming, Sep?"
Septimus shook his head. "I'll watch Spit Fyre. I don't want to leave him today. You go ahead."
Jenna and Beetle left Septimus sitting beside his dragon and set off down the beach, wandering along the line of seaweed, driftwood and shells that had been thrown up by the storm.
"So...what do you remember about the islands from your Hidden Histories?" Beetle picked up a large, spiky shell and held it up to see what was inside. "Like, does anyone live here?"
"I don't know." Jenna laughed. "I guess you'll have to shake it and see what comes out."
"Huh? Oh, funny. Actually, I don't think I'd like to meet what lives in here. Big and spiky, I bet." Beetle put the shell back on the sand, and a small crab scuttled out.
"Actually, I was thinking about that this morning before all the yucky tail stuff," said Jenna, picking her way through the pile of seaweed to reach the firmer sand below. "But I don't know if anyone lives here. I remember now - I only read the first part of the chapter about the islands. It was when all that stuff with the Glass happened and then we lost Nicko...and when I got home, my tutor was annoyed that I'd missed so much and she made me start straightaway on the next subject, so I never read the rest. Bother!"
Jenna kicked a tangle of seaweed in irritation. "All I can remember is that there are seven islands, but they were once one island, which got flooded when the sea broke through and filled up all the valleys. But there must be some kind of secret here, because the chapter was called 'The Secret of the Seven Islands.' It is so annoying. I have to read so much really dull stuff; it's typical that the one thing that would have been useful is the one thing I didn't get to read."
"Well, we'll just have to find out what the secret is." Beetle grinned.
"It's probably something really boring," said Jenna. "Most secrets are, once you know them."
"Not all," said Beetle, following Jenna through the seaweed and down toward the sea. "Some of the Manuscriptorium secrets are incredibly interesting. But of course, I'm not supposed to tell - or rather, I wasn't. Well, actually I'm still not supposed to tell - ever."
"So they're still secrets, which means they're still interesting. Anyway, Beetle, you like stuff like that - you're clever. I just get bored." Jenna laughed. "Race you."
Beetle raced after Jenna. "Whoo- hoo!" he yelled. Jenna thought he was clever - how amazing was that?
Septimus was sitting on the warm rocks, leaning against Spit Fyre's cool neck while the dragon slept peacefully. There was something very relaxing about the breathing of a sleeping dragon, especially when in front of him lay a deserted strip of white sand and, beyond that, a calm blue sea. The only sounds Septimus could hear, now that Jenna and Beetle had disappeared over the rocks at the far end of the bay, were the slow swish-swash of the waves, punctuated by the occasional snuffling snore from Spit Fyre. The weariness from the last week began to catch up with Septimus. Lulled by the warmth of the sun, his eyes closed and his mind began to drift.
"Septimus..." A girl's voice, light and melodic, wandered through his drowsiness.
"Septimus," it called softly, "Septimus..." Septimus stirred, and he half opened his eyes, looked at the empty beach and allowed them to close once more.
"Septimus, Septimus."
"Go 'way, Jen. I'm 'sleep," he mumbled.
"Septimus..."
Blearily Septimus opened his eyes and then closed them again. There was no one there, he told himself. He was dreaming....
A slim girl in green stood in the sand dunes above the rocks looking at the dragon and the boy below. Then she slid down the dunes and padded silently over to a warm, flat rock, where she sat for a while and Watched Septimus as he slept, exhausted, in the sun.