With a princess killer to catch, a host of fairy-tale characters to wrangle and a crumbling career to resurrect, fallen hotshot Agent Fields has his hands full. And that's before the case leads to a story-obsessed, dimension-hopping scientist, hellb...
Rendered in gold by the long rays of the lowering sun, a distant flight of birds traversed the faded azure infinity of the endless desert sky, cloudless and clear but for the ghostly crescent of a day-moon. Painted in shades of umber and ochre, the weathered walls of the Dish also glowed dully in the wan light, in pale imitation, in muted tribute, in an infinitesimal echo of the fiery cataclysm from which the ancient crater had been born, so many millennia before.
However, more than mere sunlight illuminated the scene. Its vivid emerald-green luminosity internally rent by eruptions of violent reds, slashes of sulphurous orange and streaks of electric-blue, the sinuous, writhing, reticulated column of the portal now soared a hundred metres or more into the dry desert air, dwarfing the cavernous hangar from which it emerged, and dominating the landscape stretched out before the diminutive figures of the two agents, standing in forlorn isolation on their craggy outcrop, perched precariously on the inner wall of the crater.
Or at least it would have, if the dragon, positioned squarely in the foreground of their view, wasn't proving to be something of a distraction. Despite his re-acceptance of the reality of their situation, Fields nevertheless found something inescapably dream-like in the smooth, slow uncoiling of the beast's scaled, serpentine body, in the unhurried extension of its gleaming, undulous neck, and most of all, in the piercing, unmistakably intelligent gaze of its multi-faceted eyes, flaring flame-red in the rays of the fading sun.
For several long seconds they regarded each other, the two frail, insignificant humans and the mighty, bewinged creature, its iridescent form preternaturally still and silent. Completely at a loss as to how to address a monster that may not understand a word he said, was quite likely to eat him, and was in possession of far more teeth than any creature—mythical or otherwise—really had a right to, Fields was just about to try a careful bow, when the tableau was disturbed by the sudden emergence of an object from the portal.
Although, to be strictly accurate, ejection would probably be a better word for the object's abrupt entrance into the world. Launched at a shallow, climbing trajectory, its tumbling bulkiness was somehow strangely familiar to Fields, but it was only when a mournful lowing reached them, carried clearly through the dry desert air, that actual recognition registered in his reluctant mind.
And as with curious bovine grace the hapless cow sailed up and over the spectral moon, it was a wearily resigned Fields who felt Peregrine's expected elbow dig into his ribcage, her unbridled and completely inappropriate glee somehow evident even in that simple action.
"Look, Fields," she whispered, "the cow jumped over the—"
"Don't," he interrupted, rubbing his eyes. "Don't go there, please. If I hear a single hey-diddle-diddle, I'm going to feed you to the dragon myself."
"Oh, I don't think so. I don't fancy eating Peregrine. Not my cup of tea at all."
Fields stopped rubbing. Slowly, dragging his eyes away from the dragon, who returned his gaze with inscrutable calm, he turned to face his partner. They spoke in unison.
"Did you hear that?"
The answer evident in their shared question, both turned warily back to the beast, who regarded them with something more akin to a cheeky grin than Fields would have thought possible on that ridged and rigid face.
"Besides, she'd be terrible for my cholesterol."
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