The Magnificent Merlin Sprottle

Chapter Three - The Grouchy Prince's Mission

Guided through the riproaring party and its pulsating magic lights into the hall by Merlin, I swayed like a particularly skinny pond reed caught in a stiff wind. Merlin, who seemed very irritated by his supposed friend, had scarce shut the door on his friend's nose when we heard the door pop open again, and the prince's hurrying footsteps as he followed us down the quiet hall.

"Merlin!" he said. "You left me back there! I was talking!"

"Really?" said Merlin, shifting my arm across his shoulders. "I hadn't noticed."

Pale vampires lingering on the stairwell watched us totter down the silent hall as they smoked. I felt their hungry eyes watch my weakened body sway away to safety, and I shivered.

"Are you going to be sick?"

"No," I said, shaking my head. "They scare me."

"Fair enough," he said. "I should have said there was champagne in the punch."

Leslie had by then rejoined us (unfortunately - I didn't like him much). I swayed to the right, and the strong prince pushed me back up so hard I swayed to the left, where Merlin (searching his pockets for the skeleton key that locked his private library's iron-reinforced door) stuck out a careless hand to right me. I was beginning to feel rather like a football, tossed back and forth in the air between men much higher on the evolutionary scale than I was, when Merlin said: "Aha!" and unlocked the door.

As the door swung slightly ajar, I realized in that single harrowing instant that the sign hanging on the library door was the one that scream (in the boldest, broadest, most frightful lettering): 'If the dragon gets out again, DO NOT call the cops!'

"A-Are w-we really going in there?" I asked Merlin.

"Sh," hissed Leslie behind me. "You'll wake him up."

'Him,' doubtlessly, was the dragon.

"OW!" I yelped: Upon trying to enter the door, I'd run my nose straight into the doorframe.

"Sh!" hissed the prince, clinging to me. "Do you want to get us roasted alive?"

The prince was scared as I was. 

"Bob won't roast visitors if I tell him not to," said Merlin. "He's polite like that."

He calmly led the way inside.

"Oh, no!" I said. "I'd rather face vampires! Go ahead alone!"

No sooner had I turned my back than these two newest acquaintances hoisted me off my feet by the scruff of my neck and set me back on the ground going the right way. I could hear distant snoring rumbling inside the pitch black room ahead. It was far too dark in there to see what it was that snored. I had my suspicions.

As a fluffy cloud of befeathered women giggled away behind us, Merlin shut the door. By the faint glow of his cigarette lighter we tripped our careful way around Bob (?) the dragon's long, long green tail, stretched around the wall like an armored python. By a flash of white lightning through the barred window I saw a terrible vision of green scales, lidded eyes, horns, and spikes.

"Eep!" I squeaked.

The dragon groaned.

It stretched its lazy claws, arched its back like a housecat, and yawned. A gust of air from a gigantic sail-like wing, swung over my ducking head, put out Merlin's lighter-light.

"Go! Run for the door! Not that way! Leslie, set him the right way!"

"Oh no, you don't," said Leslie, and the prince deftly turned me round. I couldn't escape into the blessed security of the vampire-filled hallway, so blind I couldn't see my own hand in front of my nose, so I sprinted behind the prince deep into the dragon's den.