He nodded, satisfied. "Even if it means going on an adventure?"
Nyla's eyes went wide. "Would it be a dangerous adventure?"
"Now, what kind of question is that from a girl who came here looking for traveling shoes? There are dangers in your own garden. There are dangers climbing to the tree house where you liveaafter all, if you fell, your wings could not save you."
She thought about it and nodded.
The cobbler smiled. "The only way to repair these shoesa"the most wonderful traveling shoes ever madea"is to replace the missing scales."
"How?"
"The only way to replace the missing sales is by finding new scales."
"But there are no more dragons."
"Are there not? How can you be so sure?"
"How can there be? No one ever sees a dragon. People would talk about it if they did. Everyone would say if they saw a dragon. They'd tell us that in school."
"School tells you about everything that happens in Oza"that much I know. Schools are great that way," said the cobbler. "Butathey don't tell you about anything that happens outside of Oz."
"Outside?"
"The dragons never lived in Oz," he said. "Never ever. Dragons only ever lived in one place."
"Butabutathat's all the way over the sea. I meanawhere the sea used to be. On the far, far side of the Deadly Desert."
He gave the tip of her nose a tiny little touch. "You are so very correct, my girl. Across the bones of the Sea of Shallasa in the land where dragons once lived there is a single dragon living still." He raised his eyebrows. "And can you guess what kind of dragon still lives there?"
"Aaaasilver dragon?"
"Yes, indeed. A great and vastly old silver dragon. The very dragon, in fact, whose scales were used to make this pair of shoes."
-3-.
"Oh my!" gasped Nyla. "But the dragon is on the other side of the Deadly Desert. No one can cross it and live."
"That is very nearly true," agreed the cobbler, "but it is not absolutely unreservedly true."
"What do you mean?"
He pointed to the shoes. "These are magical shoes as we both know. Magic traveling shoes covered in the scales of a dragon. Such shoes can take the wearer anywhere. Across the whole Land of Oz, up and down the tallest mountain, and even across the burning sand of the deadliest of Deadly Deserts."
"Butahow?"
"That's the right question. The dragon-scale shoes let the wearer travel so fast that nothing can catch upa"not heat or cold or anything that troubles the foot or troubles the wearer. Remember, the princess for whom these were made traveled the whole length and breadth of Oz. She went everywhere and anywhere, and she did it quick as a wink."
"But the shoes are broken. The magic is asleep."
"The magic sleeps," he said. "However, when the right person puts on the shoes, it will wake the magic from its slumber. Not all the magica"oh, no. Unfortunately much of the magic of the shoes was lost when the scales fell off. But even a little magic is still magic, and to cross the sand in shoes like these, you only need a little magic."
"Why hasn't anyone else used the shoes to find the dragon scales?"
"They won't fit anyone else," said the cobbler sadly. "Until they've been restored to their full glory, these shoes will remain as small and as ugly as they have been since the Wizard of Oz stole the Land from the princess."
She shook her head, unable to understand that.
"It doesn't matter," said the cobbler. "What matters is that the right person could wear the shoes and awaken enough magic to cross the Desert. Do you know why?"
She shook her head.
"Because in these shoes, the journeya"even across the Deadly Deserta"will take only a few seconds. Your feet will move so fast that the Desert won't even know you're there."
"My feet?" Nyla raised one leg to show him her foot. "The shoes were made for girl feet and I have Monkey feet. Will they fit?"
Bucklebelt shrugged. He touched the bunched silk and pushed the shoes toward Nyla.
"Why don't you try them and we'll both find out?"
Nyla stared at him for a moment and then looked at the shoes. They really did look bad. There were at least a dozen scales missing from each shoe, and the soles looked very thin. It was hard to imagine that those shoes had once adorned the feet of a great princess.
"Go on," urged the cobbler. "Try them on."
Nyla chewed her lower lip for a moment. Then she reached out to take one of the shoes from where it nestled in the silk. She gave a soft cry at what happened when her fingers touched the shoe. It was like touching something warm and alive. The shoe seemed to shudder under her fingers, and Nyla almost dropped the shoe. But the feeling was not unpleasant. Not at all. In fact it was as comforting as picking up her pet hamster. The shoe seemed to want her to pick it up.
Is that was magic was like? Was it that way for everyone?
Nyla held the shoe, turning it this way and that. At close range the shoe did not seem to be that badly damaged. The holes in the sole no longer seemed to go all the way through. The heel wasn't ground down quite as much as she thought. And not as many of the stitches were frayed as had initially seemed apparent. How strange.
"Try it on," coaxed Bucklebelt.
Nyla did so, and to her surprise and delight, the shoe fit perfectly. Even though it had been crafted for a human princess, it seemed perfectly suited to her Monkey foot. She eagerly reached for the other one and put it on as well. Like the first, it was less weathered and battered than she thought, and it fit like a dream.
"Let me help you down," said the cobbler, and he lifted Nyla to the floor. "Now, try walking in them. But be carefulathe magic may wake up at any time."
Nyla took a single step, and suddenly the cobbler and his stall and the whole market was gone. She yipped in fear and surprise as she turned and looked around to see that she stood by the east gate of the Emerald City.
"But Ia" She backed away from the grim-faced guards who stood at the gate. But as she took that backward step, suddenly she was in a meadow of wildflowers that grew inside the west gate. It was impossible. A single backward step had taken her all the way across the Emerald City.
She turned her head but was very careful to keep her feet where they were.
She was close to the yellow road that curved and snaked its way back into the heart of the City. That road ended at the market square. Nyla knew that she had to go back to Mr. Bucklebelt's stall, but how to get there if every step took her too far?
In her consternation she took a half-step, and suddenly she stood in front of the cobbler's stall. He still sat on his stool, and he wore a great grin, which stretched from ear to ear.
"Ah-ha," he said with a chuckle, "and is that a great princess I see before me wearing dragon-scale traveling shoes?"
"Ia"Ia"Ia"
"That's exactly what I thought you would say."
"These are amazing!"
"Now," he said with bright eyes glowing in his face, "do you see how a person wearing these shoes could go anywhere? Even all the way across the Deadly Desert?"
"Yes," said Nyla, almost hopping with delight and wonder. "Oh, yes!"
Then she stopped, and her smile faded.
"Butaeven if I could cross the Desert, how would I ever find the last silver dragon?"
The cobbler chuckled again and went once more to the chest. He rummaged around until he found a scroll tied with silver cord. He undid the knot and carefully opened the scroll to show that it was a map of such great age that it crackled and seemed on the verge of falling apart. It showed a map of the Land of Oz, with the Emerald City in the center.
"This map was made by the great-great-great-great-great-ten-more-times-great-grandson of the cordwainer who made the dragon-scale shoes. See here? That dot is the town square right here in the Emerald City with the four major countries around it. All around Oz was the broad gray waste. To the Gillikins of the north, it was the Impassable Desert; in Munchkin Country to the west, it was the Shifting Sands; the Quadlings of the south called it the Great Sandy Waste; and to the Winkies of the east, it was the Deadly Desert, which is also what it is generally called here in the Emerald City."
Beyond that desolation were other places, though, and Nyla had never before seen a map that gave names to those nameless and forgotten places. The Kingdom of Ix, the Land of Ev, the Vegetable Kingdom, Mifkits and Merryland, and others. Most fearsome of all was the Dominion of the Nome King, and even Nyla and her people had heard dark things of that terrible place. But the spot that was marked with an X was to the far southeast.
The Country of the Gargoyles.
"Oh dear!" whispered Nyla. "Must I go there?"
"If you want me to fix the dragon-scale shoes, then go you must, and go now."
"Now?"
"The shoes are awake," said the cobbler. "But they are not strong, and if you don't hurry, they will soon fall asleep once more."
Twenty-six different reasons why she was sure that she should not do this occurred to her, but Mr. Bucklebelt pressed the map into her hand and gave her the gentlest of pushes toward the southwest.
Before Nyla could utter a single one of her twenty-six very good reasons, she was no longer in the market square. Nor in the Emerald City nor even in the Land of Oz.
She stood under a sun so hot that it made her gasp, and on sands that were hotter than a bread oven. All around her the flat and lifeless sands stretched away.
She was in the middle of the Deadly Desert.
-4-.
Nyla took in a huge breath, intending to scream her head offa"because finding yourself alone in the middle of the Deadly Desert is really an appropriate reason to scream one's head offa"but the air was so hot that it scorched her mouth and throat. She did scream, but it was so tiny and high-pitched that even she didn't hear it.
There were bones in the sands. Human skulls and the rib cages of animals and some bones that she couldn't tell what they were from. There were even gigantic bones and Nyla wondered if these were the bones of dragons, or of great fishes that once swam in the Sea of Shallasa.
Nyla felt herself suddenly growing very drowsy and weak and she realized with horror that the terrible heat of the desert was already sapping her strength and her life. She tried to flap her tiny wings, but all they did was tremble and flutter uselessly.
She managed to murmur a single word as she stumbled forward.
"Southeast."
The Desert wind blew past the spot like a hot scream, but there was no one there to hear it.
-5-.
When Nyla opened her eyes she expected to see that unrelenting Desert stretched out all around her, but a cool breeze blew across her face and the ground beneath her feet was covered in green grass. Flowers grew upward on long stems that towered over her like young trees, and butterflies as big as kites danced from blossom to blossom.
"Oh dear," said Nyla. "I must be dreaminga"
"We are all dreaming," a voice behind her said. "Everything is a dream."
Nyla yelped and whirled and then stood quite aghast.
For a moment she was quite sure that a house had just spoken to her. It was hugea"many times as high as Mr. Bucklebelt's market stalla"and covered all over in plates of polished metal. A chimney smoked at an odd angle.
However, it was not a house at all, and the smoking chimney was not a chimney.
It was a dragon.
A dragon that was as big as a house, with a tail that lay threaded through the grass like a giant snake. A long, long neck rose higher than a chimney and smoke puffed from nostrils that were bigger than feast-day dinner plates. The whole thing, from the tip of the tail to the crest of horns on its massive head, was coated in silver metal. In plates and ringlets, in shingles and in sequins. But as the beast breathed, the metal expanded and contracted the way an animal's hide would, for this metal was clearly alive.
And yeta Nyla could see that the metal around the dragon's face was tarnished with great age, and many of the scales and plates were cracked and uneven. The eyes of the dragon were large and red, but although they may once have been fierce, now those eyes were rheumy with age and sickness.
It broke her heart to know it, but Nyla could tell that this great silver dragon was dying. Even though it was a dragon and not at all a monkey, it looked like her grandpoppa had looked before he climbed into the great tree that leads all the way up to the stars.
"Youayouayoua" she said, but that was the only word her mind could think of.
"IaIaIawhat?" asked the dragon.
"You're a dragon."
The red eyes blinked once and the big head turned to look at its tail and its bulk. "Why, yes. It appears I am. Now how about that? It took a monkey from who knows where to tell me that I am a dragon, when all this time I thought I was a teapot."
"That's not what I meant!" insisted Nyla. "It's just that I've never seen a dragon before."
"Clearly. But, to be fair," said the dragon, "I have never seen a talking monkey before who didn't have wings."
"IaI do have wings," said Nyla, and she felt the sting of shameful tears in her eyes.
"Let me see them."
Nyla turned and showed him the tiny wings that sprouted from the brown fur of her back. She fluttered them and then her wings and her shoulders slumped.
"Oh my my my," said the dragon, and Nyla thought she heard real sympathy in the beast's booming voice. He sat there in the green field, his silvery body shining with reflected sunlight as fleets of white cloud sailed above his head.
"Do you have wings?" she asked, craning to see over his bulk.
"Alas, my wings are gone," he said heavily.
"Gone? What happened to them?"
"They broke off," said the dragon and Nyla thought that he looked a little embarrassed. "You seeawhen I was a much younger dragon I had wings so huge, so great that the shadow of them would darken this entire field. I needed them, you see, because I am made of metal and metal is very heavy. Other dragons had smaller wings, like the corn dragon, who weighed very little, or the fire dragon whose body was filled with hot gases. I was always the heaviest of the dragons, but in my prime I could fly. Ohahow I could fly! I would climb up the side of a mountain and hurl myself into the wind, and my wings would spread out all the way to the horizon on either side and when I beat my wings the world shook and trembled. I would fly high and high on my wings until the world was nothing but a pretty blue marble below me. Ahaah, those were the days. Those were lovely days," he said sadly, "but they were long ago. Over the years I kept growing and growing until I was so big that my wings could not even lift me. One day, as I stood atop a mountain preparing to fly, I wondered if I had become too big, too old, and too fat for my wings. But I leaped into the air anyway. My wings beat once, twice, and then I heard a crack and a clang like the breaking of a thousand swords. Down, down I went, tumbling over and overa"me, the big, old, fat dragon and the broken pieces of my wings." He sighed.