Lois was having the most fun she'd ever had in her life, if the blasting-bright-hot little sun in my skull was anything to go by. Maybe it was the comparison with the little sun, plus my own fears, that made the big rock in my head seem even bigger and knobbier and heavier and more headachy than usual and the boulder field squallier. At least up on top here the Headache eased a little but that internal storm-mauled feeling kept me dizzy and nauseated. I spent most of that flight with my check pressed against the base of Gulp's skull, because it was like I didn't have the strength to hold my head up. (Also that meant more of me stayed warm. And flying was a lot less confusing when my eyes were shut.) Lois had managed to wedge herself between these sort of horny places a little higher up and farther forward, and every now and then I got hit in the head by her wildly flailing tail — which was now long and heavy enough for some pretty impressive wild flailing. Ow. Not among my best moments however you look at it.

We stopped several times, but that could have been because Gulp needed a breather, carrying passengers, or a chance to get her normal balance back. And yes, she did stretch and shake her neck every time we got off. I know that horses can carry something like ten percent of their own weight in tack and rider over big jumps, but Gulp was flying. And flying and flying. Very energy intensive, flying, and worse when you've got like a very heavy hat tipping you forward all the time. But there wasn't any place else we could have stayed on, not bareback anyway.

I'm pretty sure Gulp went the long way around. The angle of the daylight kept changing direction from more than the sun rising and going back down again. (At one point I wondered faintly and queasily if even Billy could keep his sense of direction, flying dragonback.) Was she deliberately confusing our trail, or did dragons always leave a confusing trail? Something as big as a dragon you wouldn't think they'd've learned to bother — that they'd think they needed to. Unless, of course, this was all part of the Smokehill dragons trying not to be watched or studied. Or maybe they never had the faith in our fence that us stupid humans had had, before the poacher.

We arrived where we were going a little after sunset, although I think that was deliberate too. We'd had kind of a long pause, the last time Gulp came down, and the last flight was more of a hop. The Lois-sun in my head began to fade and it wasn't round any more. As the bright light died the shape of the thing began to soften like the light did, and by the time it was no more than a faint glow it was also a sort of collapsed blob, like jam let out of its jar. Lois was tired. So was I. The big Gulp-rock had sunk down so it was lower than it was high too, but it hadn't got softer, it had got harder. Just having it in my head hurt. It wasn't so much a headachy feeling any more though, it was more like by sheer literal weight it was grinding its way down through the bottom of my skull. If I'd had to give it a definition I'd've called it stubbornness. I didn't want to think about what Gulp might have to feel stubborn about but I couldn't help being pretty sure I could guess.

After we climbed back up her neck the last time and settled in, she shook herself a couple of times, sharply, and the big rock in my head developed spikes and sank them into my brain. Ow. I felt like a mountainside with pitons being banged into it. Lois gave a little squeak or mew, so I put my arm around her and tried to brace my feet and hands. I was tired and starving, and it wasn't easy — the waning daylight felt like the waning me and nothing to do with the sun setting like it does every evening — but Gulp was obviously saying "hang on."

Because my head was so sore and heavy anyway and the wind made my eyes water — and yeah, I was scared, but try and tell me you wouldn't be — I put my face down against one of the thick plates on Gulp's neck again, although I could peer a little. Lois, who'd been pretty much playing Gallant Figurehead Breasting the Airy Ocean all day like something out of a blue-yonder version of Hornblower, was subdued enough now to let me pull her down too. Also as soon as the sun disappeared it started getting cold and plastering myself along Gulp's hot neck felt good.

We were at the bottom of another, bigger canyon with a lot of tumbled rock and scree everywhere and a few little patches of dull greenery. The remains of daylight couldn't show much down here though. The shadows got pretty spooky pretty fast but I was on the scariest shadow of them all . . . and my sense that she was nerving herself for what happened next was scarier yet. Gulp went round a pillar and between two boulder falls with this amazing snakelike (passenger-cracking) writhe she could do . . . and suddenly went down and it was suddenly very dark, and then it wasn't dark any more but the light was red and flickery, like firelight, only not like normal firelight either. The light kind of made me remember something, it was way too familiar. . . .

. . . And then there was an incredible roaring in my head and my ears, and Gulp was standing up on her hind legs and roaring back – the vibration felt like sitting on the biggest engine in the world at the moment when the biggest engine in the world is about to fly into smithereens — and twice she turned herself sharply one way or another and the arrow of fire that had no doubt been meant to wipe me off her back went wide, and I only barely stayed on, still hanging on to Lois, who was howling with terror and trying to look for her mom's pouch again which wasn't making my life any easier.

After the first two flame-spears there weren't any more, maybe because whoever was doing it had noticed that there was a little dragon up there with me. (are all dragons this trigger happy?), but the roaring still seemed to go on for a very long time. . . . I have to be imagining this, but at the time I would have sworn that Gulp's spinal plates rattled like castanets from the reverb of her roaring . . . although maybe not as long as it seemed because even after I stopped hearing it in my ears I was still hearing it my head. It felt like an avalanche of boulders and I couldn't see or hear through it. I wasn't sure I wasn't in a real avalanche of boulders, and if I was, presumably I was about to die.

Gulp may have tried to let us climb down the way we'd been doing all day and I didn't notice or couldn't do it. Which is how I found out that she could reach around to the back of her neck with her forelegs when one of her front claws closed — gently — around me. I think I may have yelled — okay, screamed — but then I recognized what she was doing, and tried to let go of the way I had myself wedged in but I was so stiff with terror and confusion that it was pretty impossible, it was like I'd lost track of my own legs and arms, and I couldn't let go of Lois who was petrified and clinging to me. Mom instinct had kicked in again: I was off my head, but I was holding on to my daughter. Even Gulp had some trouble peeling us out of there and we had a very jerky and stomach-turning ride down to ground level.

My legs just folded up like wet string, although I was also carrying the hysterical Lois. We collapsed together, and then had the insane-making sensation of Gulp coming down to four legs over us, with us directly under her belly, and her heat poured over us like one of Yellowstone's boiling geysers. A tiny little portion of my mind, still trying to make rational thoughts against stupendous odds, which was pretty heroic of it in the circumstances, was saying, She's protecting you! I could hear it, and it made sense and everything, to the extent that anything was making sense, but I was way beyond my deal-with-it boundary. Also the Headache was doing what felt like the cranial version of the John Hurt scene in Alien. I'm afraid I passed out.