Dragon's Egg by Sarah L. Thomson Page A

on foot.”
    â€œVery thoughtless of him,” Mella agreed solemnly. Roger glanced at her and began to grin.
    â€œPerhaps we should complain,” he suggested.
    Mella began to giggle so wildly she had to sit down on an old stump to catch her breath.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she said suddenly, looking up at Roger. He stood leaning with one hand against a tree trunk; with the other he tried, unsuccessfully, to rub the smile off his face. Mella had been wondering awkwardly all morning how she was going to apologize for her temper the night before. She was surprised to hear the words fall so easily off her tongue. “For what I said last night. That it was your fault.”
    â€œWell.” Roger’s smile was gone now, and he picked up the pack he had dropped and slung it over one shoulder. “You were right, I suppose. It was me he was after. You would have been safe and well if I hadn’t been there.”
    Mella looked up at him in astonishment. He had already started to pick his way among the trees, and she had to snatch her sack and hurry to keep up. “That’s nonsense!” she said sharply to Roger’s back. “I’ve never heard anything so thick skulled in my life. You might as well say a man’s to blame for getting robbed, since if he hadn’tbeen there the thief wouldn’t have been tempted.”
    Roger shrugged.
    â€œOh, well, then. Sulk if you please.” Mella tossed her head the way Lilla did. “I was only trying to be civil.”
    Roger pointed wordlessly to something up ahead.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œSee that stream?” Only as wide across as Mella’s outstretched arm, it tumbled across their path and plunged down a hillside. “The dragon said we’re supposed to follow the river. That stream should lead us to it.”
    They made their way cautiously along the streambed, climbing over boulders, slipping on mud, ducking under low branches. At last the water fell over a final bank to spill into the river.
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    Mella grew to hate the river.
    The footing along its bank seemed to alternate between rounded stones that slid under her weight and flats of sticky mud that swallowed her feet up to the ankles. Her skirts became so filthy that shetucked them up into her belt to shorten them—never mind what her mother would have said about letting Roger see her knees. She was sore and bruised from falling and from sleeping on the stony ground. And no matter how much she and Roger struggled, the mountains seemed to come no nearer.
    On the second day of toiling upriver, they left the spruce forests behind. Trees became rare, except for the ragged line of them along the riverbank, and they saw no more wild dragons.
    On the third day the food they had taken from Alain began to run low.
    â€œWe’ll have to go on short rations,” Roger said gloomily as they sat on a broad, flat stone to eat a midday meal.
    Mella groaned dismally at the thought of walking painfully upstream on an empty stomach.
    â€œThere’s nothing else for it. We could fish, I suppose.” Roger looked doubtfully at the river, tumbling swiftly by, the water leaping and clawing its way over stones.
    â€œDo you have hooks and line?” Mella inquired disagreeably.
    â€œNo,” Roger admitted.
    â€œDo you even know how to fish?” Mella had twisted her ankle on a loose rock. Somehow she felt that an argument with Roger would make it feel better.
    â€œI thought you would know.”
    â€œWhy should I?”
    â€œWell, you’re…” Roger looked lost. “From the country, I mean.”
    A peasant, he meant. “My father buys fish for the Inn when we need it,” she said coldly, and shifted on the stone so that her back was to Roger, the rich man’s son.
    She heard him sigh and then get up. “I’m going to climb that rise there,” he said.
    Mella didn’t ask why.
    â€œTo see if there’s