The quiet acorn 4/9

Then early one morning, not too long after the three witches had bought their new brooms, Jennifer Jane flew across to the shop to admire their premises for the first time.
Esmerelda showed her round proudly. “Bit better than the old fire patch ain’t it!”

Jennifer Jane had to agree. Then she enquired after Ermintrude and heard that she was getting on very well with her studies and that Tasmin was very pleased with the progress being made by young Freda.

“It’s still only baby talk, but she can make herself understood quite well now. When Cyril comes over to see his mum he stops to play with her, so she’s seeing several other dragons.”

Jennifer Jane decided against going to see Freda for herself. She wanted to go for a flight to the north of the Witches’ Home to improve her navigational skills and had only intended to stop for a few minutes. So she climbed back onto her scooter, waved goodbye and turning left took off to explore.

She flew off quickly until she reached country that she’d not seen before. Then she slowed down and reduced her height to about two hundred feet so that she could memorise any prominent features of the landscape. Then she went back about two miles and flew up high again trying to spot the same features from the greater height.

She was getting along quite well and guessed that she was about fifteen miles north of the Witches’ Home, when she spotted some one moving slowly towards her a little way in front of her. The countryside in the area was not very well inhabited, so being naturally curious, she decided to go and see who it was.

As she got nearer she recognised Sir George and his horse, but there was something strange about the way he was riding, he was slumped in his saddle, looking very miserable and mumbling to himself as he rode along. She landed just to one side of the road and a little way in front of him, in case she frightened the horse by appearing suddenly and waited for him to speak to her.

To her great surprise neither George nor the horse noticed her. They walked slowly and miserably past, mumbling to each other under their breath as they walked past.

“It’s not blooming possible. No dragon can flame that far.”

“Wouldn’t have got anywhere near him without you or your armour however hard I tried.”

“Even more powerful than the one that old witch made stronger. It’s just not blooming possible.”

“Jolly lucky he only wanted to frighten us off, or there’d be horse steaks for his dinner with tinned knight to follow!”

The mumbling moved off into the distance, the words, ‘not possible’ and ‘horse steaks,’ slowly fading away.

Jennifer Jane didn’t know whether to follow them and find out what had gone wrong, or go along the direction they’d come from and see for herself.

She didn’t think they’d be very pleased to see her if she started asking questions while they were in their present mood, so she made up her mind to fly a few miles further north to see if she could find out what had happened.

If a dragon was causing trouble, then she had to find somewhere where there were caves for him to live. So she flew high up in the air until at last she could see some hills in the distance, then went off as fast as she could in that direction.

It wasn’t too long before she could see signs of scorched ground and bearing in mind what she’d just overheard from Sir George, she landed and looked around cautiously.

She searched the hillside in front of her for caves and soon spotted a likely looking one about half a mile away. A dragon poked his head out of the cave entrance and saw her at the same time.