Rosie Gigglepip’s Lucky Escape

Chapter Seven Smoke Signals

Chilly, Dusty, and Smudge all puffed out their cheeks and blew. Jets of smoke shot out of their mouths, forming a huge, dark cloud above them. Then Breezy’s wind caught it and the smoke whirled up, higher and higher in the sky.

“BLOW, BLOW!” Jess shouted. The dragons puffed out two more clouds of smoke, one following quickly after the other. After a moment, Jess yelled, “BLOW!” Then she shouted, “BLOW! BLOW!” again.

The clouds of smoke rose up high above the forest.

“Well done, everyone!” cried Goldie.

The dragons flapped their wings happily. Breezy did a loop-the-loop and landed next to her brothers and sister.

Jess grinned. “Now we’ve just got to wait for their mom to arrive.”

They all stood looking up at the sky. The wind howled around them, making Jess and Lily’s capes flap. Rosie stood under the tree where her family were trapped, her little paws tightly crossed for good luck.

But nothing happened.

Breezy gave a huge sigh that rippled the tops of the trees. “It didn’t work,” she said sadly. “Mommy isn’t coming!”

The four baby dragons huddled together miserably.

“I don’t understand,” said Lily, shaking her head with dismay. “What did we do wrong?”

“I don’t know,” said Jess. “But the dragons are still stuck in the forest, and we’ve got no way of getting the poor Gigglepip family down.”

Rosie stood by herself, looking wet and forlorn.

Suddenly, Lily’s eye was caught by something flying toward them through the rain. She grabbed Jess’s arm.

“Look, it did work! She’s coming!” Then she gasped. “Oh, no—that’s not a dragon... it’s Grizelda!”

The witch’s yellow-green orb floated toward them. As it exploded into stinking yellow sparks, the baby dragons dived under a tree, their wings wrapped around each other.

The sparks cleared, revealing the witch. The wind blew her green hair around her head even more than usual, and her thin, bony face was purple with rage.

“I might have guessed!” Grizelda screeched. “So you pesky girls made those smoke signals! What were you doing?”

Before anyone could reply, Grizelda spotted the dragons. She pointed at them, sending a jet of hot sparks that made them jump.

“What are you doing here?” she snapped. “Go and wait in the dungeon beneath my tower. Now!”

But then a great dark shadow fell over them all.

Lily and Jess looked up.

A huge dragon was hovering above the clearing. Her scales were all the colors of her babies—red, yellow, blue, and black—and she was even bigger than the Toadstool Café.

The girls grasped each other’s hands.

“Our spell worked after all!” Jess cried. “We’ve summoned the dragons’ mom!”

Lily’s eyes were wide. “Jess, do you think we did the right thing? I bet she could burn the whole forest down with one breath if she wanted to!”

“I don’t know,” said Jess, “but we’re about to find out...”

The mother dragon swooped down and landed neatly beside the Whirligig.

“Mommy! Mommy!” yelled the dragons. They flapped over to her, and their mother folded her wings around them.

“My beautiful babies,” the mother dragon said in a deep, soft voice. “I’m so happy to see you!”

And she planted a kiss on each of their heads. The baby dragons gave gurgling roars of delight and snuggled even closer under her wings.

Jess grinned at Lily. “We definitely did the right thing!”

“I’ve been so worried,” the mother dragon said. “Where have you been?”

From the corner of her eye, Lily caught sight of Grizelda tiptoeing away toward the trees.

“I’d forgotten she was there,” Lily whispered to her friend.

“Chilly hasn’t,” Jess giggled. The blue dragon was pointing his wing at Grizelda.

“We were kidnapped,” he told his mother. “Kidnapped by her!”

Breezy, Smudge, and Dusty flapped over to Grizelda. “Her! It was her!” they cried.

The mother’s eyes flashed silver. “Bad!” she thundered. She reared up. With a roar that was far louder than the storm, she blew a stream of red, blue, yellow, black, and ice-white flames at the witch.

Grizelda jumped out of the way just in time. She tumbled into a pool of mud and landed with her legs in the air.

“If you come near my babies again,” the mother dragon roared, “I’ll toast you to a crisp!”

Grizelda scrambled upright. “I’m sorry!” she screeched, staggering as her high heels sank in the mud. Her green hair, covered in brown ooze, stuck to her bony cheeks. “I’m sorry! I’m going!”

With a snap of her fingers, she disappeared in a splatter of smelly sparks.

Everyone cheered. The dragons flew happily around their mother and Lily picked up Rosie and spun her around. The little guinea pig squeaked happily.

“We’ve defeated Grizelda!” Jess cried.

“Friendship Forest is safe!” Lily chanted.

They grabbed Goldie’s paws and danced around each other, not caring about the storm.

The young dragons flapped happily above them, while the mother dragon looked down at the girls.

“I am Saffire,” she said. “Thank you for your kindness to my little ones, and for bringing me here. What are your names?”

“I’m Jess, and this is Lily,” said Jess. “Our friends are Rosie Gigglepip and Goldie. They live here.”

Saffire looked at the trees whipping around in the wind, the snapped branches, and the fallen leaves. “Breezy!” she bellowed. “Did you make this mess?”

Breezy nodded sheepishly.

Saffire turned to her other babies. “And I suppose you’ve been spoiling this lovely forest, too?”

The young dragons hung their heads.

“Sort of,” said Dusty.

“A little bit,” said Chilly.

“Well, maybe a lot,” admitted Smudge.

“Naughty children!” said Saffire. “If you made the mess, you must clean it up. We’re not going home until you do.”

Rosie bravely crept forward and tapped Saffire’s huge clawed foot. “Please, do you think you could help my family?” She pointed up to the tornado in the tree. “They’ve been trapped there for a long time, and Breezy said that you could free them. Then we can fix the Whirligig and stop the storm!”

Saffire’s great head swooped down until her big, scaly nose almost touched little Rosie’s pink one.

“Of course I’ll help, little one,” the mother dragon said.