Abarat

torrent that struck Geneva with such force it threw her across the deck. Her sword went out of her hand and spun across the boards.

Geneva pulled herself to her feet, her boots sliding in the slime of the dragon's stomach juices. Twice she slipped, but on the third attempt, she succeeded in standing upright. She had picked a new weapon—one of the bigger bones the worm had spewed up. Racing back across the deck she beat the bone back and forth against the snout of the dragon, and when the bone shattered, she picked up another, continuing to strike at the thing until that bone, like its predecessor, was smashed to smithereens.

'How long is this little game going to go on for ?' the dragon said, putting on a show of weariness. 'I'm getting irritated .'

Mischief and the brothers were standing watching all of this, not knowing whether to hide or fling themselves over the side.

'I'm not going near that thing,' John Serpent warned.

'You of all people, Serpent ,' said John Pluckitt, 'should be happy in its company.'

The exchange had drawn Geneva's attention.

'Mischief!' she yelled. 'Distract it!'

'Do what?'

'You heard me: distract it!'

'How?'

'Use your imagination!'

So saying, Geneva went down on her knees in the stinking filth that had been expelled from the worm and searched for her missing sword.

'The grappling hook!' said John Moot. 'Mischief! Listen to me! Get the grappling hook.'

'Where is it?'

'Behind us!' said John Drowze.

'I don't see it!'

'On the cabin wall, Mischief!' John Moot yelled. 'Are you blind?'

There was indeed a hook hanging in place against the wall of the cabin. Unfortunately, it was directly beneath the dragon, which had reared up to better assess the dispersal of its enemies.

'Don't worry,' Drowze said. 'It's not interested in us! We're beneath its notice.'

'Famous last words,' said John Serpent.

But Drowze was right. For the moment at least the dragon was uninterested in the John brothers. It was watching Geneva on her hands and knees, smiling with satisfaction at the sight of her humiliation.

Mischief ducked beneath the snaking neck of the beast and snatched the grappling hook out of its cradle. It was about six feet long, and it had an iron hook at its end, but it didn't feel like the most potent of weapons.

'It's going to break!' Mischief said.

'You've no choice!' John Drowze yelled to Mischief.

'I know,' Mischief said. Then he hollered up at the great worm. 'Hey you !'

The dragon glanced down at the brothers for a moment with a supercilious look, then it casually knocked them aside with its snout, as though they were a piece of bad meat that had somehow found its way onto its plate. With Mischief floored, it slid its huge spiked head past him to get to the cabin door. 'Girl- child!' it said. 'You can come out now.'

It pushed at the door, which flew open, its hinges wrenched from the frame.

Giddily, Mischief got to his feet. He heard Tom yelling to the beast to stay out. The creature drew a breath and expelled it. As it did so, all the windows in the cabin blew outwards, and a wave of smoky heat erupted from the interior. Coughing and blinded by tears, Two-Toed Tom and Tria stumbled out of the cabin, driven from their refuge by the heat.

Then the dragon opened its mouth, sliding its scaly chin over the ship's creaking boards to scoop up the child.

Before it could do so, Kiss Curl Carlotti came at it with a short sword and stabbed the tender flesh around its nostril.

Dark blood sprang from the wound and hissed as it hit the Belbelo's boards. The dragon's lip curled with anger and it opened its mouth horrendously wide, dislocating its bottom jaw so that its mouth gaped like a tunnel.

'Watch out, Carlotti!' Mischief yelled, scrambling over the wet deck to draw the dragon's attack away from the child.

He went straight for its eye, driving the grappling hook at the narrowed orb. The hook caught under the dragon's eyelid, more by chance than design.

'Pull !' John Serpent yelled.

Mischief did exactly that. The delicate membrane of the dragon's eyelid tore and a second spray of blood came from the beast. Some of it spattered on Mischief's bare arms. It stung ferociously.

The dragon shook its head, forcing Mischief to let go of his weapon. It reared up, letting out a bellow of narcissistic fury.

'My face !' it cried, its din making the vessel reverberate from end to end. 'My perfect face! My beautiful face .'

It shook its head, loosing the hook from its lid. More blood spouted from the wound, filling the dragon's eye.

'I think you did it!' John Moot said.

'I wouldn't be too sure,' said Mischief, backing away over the blood-slickened boards.

Half-blinded, the dragon lowered its head to the deck again, opening its tunnel mouth and sliding its lower jaw over the boards to scoop Mischief up.

Weaponless now, all the brothers could do was retreat before the creature's vast maw, yelling for help as they did so.

'Geneva! Somebody! Please God, it's going to eat us alive!'

'I'm coming !' Geneva called back to him.

She was still digging through the vomitus, searching for her sword. Her endeavor was not helped by the violent rocking of the boat, which was escalating as the dragon's motion turned the waters around the Belbelo to a seething frenzy.

The dragon's maw was a foot or two from the brothers now.

Having nowhere else to run, Mischief fled into the smoky cabin.

'Meat !' the dragon yelled, determined to devour its mutilators. 'You are all meat !'

The spikes on the dragon's hood prevented it from getting through the door, but the maddened beast wasn't going to let a little detail like that stop it. It shook its head back and forth with such violence that the doorframe cracked and broke. Then it pushed its head in through the opening it had made and into the cabin.

The brothers were trapped.

'Kick it !' yelled Fillet.

'Punch it !' yelled Drowze.

With no hope of escape to left or right of the monster, and only the prospect of its hot-breathed throat ahead, Mischief went into a flailing frenzy, punching its snout, its lips, even its gums. But it availed him nothing. The worm thrust its head into the cabin and closed its teeth around the brothers' body. It did so with a curious gentility. No doubt it could have bitten Mischief in half if it had desired to do so, but it apparently wanted to torment him with a slow devouring, to which end it dragged the screaming brothers out through the smashed door.

On deck, everybody was yelling now, with the exception of Tria. Threats, demands, prayers: all were being offered up to keep Mischief from being eaten alive.