“A Dragon can cross,” said Madoc. “A true Dragon, at any rate. I have been one in the past, and the Zanzibar Gate proved that I carry with me some of the aspect of a Dragon still. But this is different.”
“How is it different?” asked Charles. “It’s just a wall, isn’t it?”
“On this side, yes,” said Madoc. “But behind it is the true Unknown Region. It is the source of the Dragons, and all the magic that is in the Archipelago. It is the true beginning of the world, and whatever lands we may find might very well be within sight of the shores of heaven itself.”
“So how do we get over it?” asked Charles.
“We don’t go over,” said Madoc. “We go through.”
Two great doors, hundreds of feet high, with sculpted angels on either side, suddenly materialized out of the mist and gloom as if they had been there all along—which, the companions realized, they probably had been.
“It’s like with the Zanzibar Gate,” said Laura Glue. “Your presence alone activates whatever is needed.”
“Such is the power of a Dragon,” Madoc murmured. “If only I had known then . . .”
He took the reins to the goats from Fred and urged them onward with a gentle shake, and quickly, they crossed the wall into the Unknown Region.
♦ ♦ ♦
“It’s an old children’s poem, I think,” Madoc said as they surveyed the landscape past the Great Wall. “Something about an impossible desert, or something like that . . .”
“I can tell,” Archie said, dropping from his perch atop the airship’s balloon, “that you have sorely neglected your studies while I’ve been away.”
“Is that what you call it?” Madoc replied with a grin. “ ‘Away’?”
The clockwork bird ignored him and instead began to recite a poem. To his delight, Laura Glue joined in, chanting the verses along with him.
Cross the uncrossable desert, tally-yee, tally-yay.
Climb the unclimbable mountain, tally-yee, tally-yay.
Swim the impassable sea, tally-yee, tally-yay.
Find the house that angels made,
On the isle of bone.
Pay the price that angels paid,
On the isle, alone.
Choose the Name that shows your face,
Drink your tea and take your place.
At Hades’s gate or heaven’s shore.
There to live, forevermore.
Tally-yee, tally-yay.
“There, Caretakers,” Madoc said, winking at Rose. “Find that bit of wisdom in your little Geographica.”
“It isn’t in the Imaginarium Geographica,” said Fred. “That’s what the Little Whatsits are for. Page two hundred ninety-six.” He looked up at Archimedes. “I see what you mean about his education.”
Madoc laughed. “Point taken, little fellow.”
“So what does it all mean?” asked Charles.
“It’s our map,” said Jack. “All the wisdom in the world can be found in fairy tales and nursery rhymes. And, it seems,” he added, scratching Fred behind his neck, “in the Little Whatsits.”
“I see the end of the desert already,” Laura Glue said, shading her eyes, “and beyond that, the mountain.”
“Surely Samaranth passed this way years and years ago,” said Charles.
“Perhaps,” Rose said. “But remember what Enoch told us—time has been flowing differently here. It changes with one’s own perception.”
“And,” said Madoc, “we aren’t carrying the history of an entire world on our shoulders. It’s going to go much more quickly for us.”
♦ ♦ ♦
As Madoc predicted, the passage over the mountain and then across the sea went quickly; in a short while, the airship passed over the last of the bridge, where it was tossed about by the storm clouds that circled the island.
“The Lonely Isle,” said Fred. “The last haven in all the world.”
“There’s an inn on top,” Charles shouted over the wind. “Aim for that, and let’s see if we can’t land without crashing.”
They needn’t have worried—once they were close to the inn, the storm stopped. It was around the island, but in the center, it was calm. Outside the inn were some scrubby trees where they could tie up the goats and leave the airship.
“We’re either just in time, or barely too late,” Jack said. He pointed to the other side of the island, where a familiar black ship, also converted to an airship, had been moored.
“The Black Dragon, or, ah, Black Cat, or whatever it is now,” Charles sputtered. “They’re already here!”
Quickly the companions rushed up to the door, which swung open at their approach. A tall, stern-looking woman with a frazzle of graying hair spread out behind her stood there, appraising the newcomers.