Free The Dragons 3 by Colin Thompson Page A

balloons didn’t exist. The only thing that was big and strong enough to lifta person was a dragon and dragons never went anywhere near the Diabolical Islands.
Make a REALLY BIG catapult. Then everyone can be thrown across to Avalon. This was an excellent idea, apart from the fact that elastic hadn’t been invented yet.
    There was only one plan that could possibly work:
Forget about the whole thing and stay at home.

    Merlin’s spies told him all this and the old wizard decided to do something about it. It wasn’t that he wanted to see Avalon overrun by pirates and fake King Arthurs, but knowing the Diabolical Islands and all their terrible inhabitants were just sitting there over the horizon was constantly nagging at the back of his brain. There was no way of being certain that they wouldn’t one day find a way to invade Avalon. Even if they couldn’t all come, they could still send a fewpeople to do nasty things, like putting turnip-eating maggots in the turnip fields, or dribbling into the water tanks. If he could get them all to come over to Avalon when he wanted them to, they could be dealt with once and for all. For the past two hundred years, he had had an army of marine worms eating away at the Diabolical Islands in the hope they would break free from the sea floor and drift far, far away, but the islands were made of very hard rock 33 and the worms’ teeth wore down very quickly.
    Far away from Avalon, in fact, far away from everywhere, there is a place called the Sargasso Sea. It is a sea within a sea, a strange enchanted place, 34 where huge rafts of seaweed are home to millions of eels, who travel there from all over the world to lay their eggs. There are some who say that the great rafts aremore than just seaweed. These people believe that they are floating islands with grass and small trees where mysterious beings live. This, of course, is absolutely true, or rather, it was back then in the Days of Yore.
    It took very little magic for Merlin to take the largest seaweed island and make it drift towards the Diabolical Islands. As it floated along, it collected stuff: fallen trees, two half-wrecked ships and a small shed with an ancient mystic meditating inside. Birds landed and built nests, and a group of sea lions hauled themselves on board.
    Knowing what the inhabitants of the Diabolical Islands would do to them, Merlin waited until the sea lions were asleep and then set them adrift to float south, away from danger.
    By the time the Sargasso raft reached the Diabolical Islands, it was as big as an island itself. There was enough room for all eight hundred or so of the Diabolical Islands’ inhabitants to climb aboard and set sail to Avalon.
    Everyone thought it was wonderful.
    â€˜What a fantastic bit of luck,’ they said.
    Everyone except Princess Floridian, that is. Sheknew luck that amazing just never happened.
    It’s that wretched wizard, she thought, though she couldn’t prove it.
    Since she’d caught the two crows, all the other bird spies had made sure they kept out of reach and well away from anything that looked like it might be a trap.
    â€˜It’s a trap,’ the Princess kept saying, but no one wanted to hear her crazy theories about the magical raft and told her she was just a suspicious old misery.
    They even ignored the ominous words, all three lots:
It will end in tears.
There will be tears before bedtime.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
    Everyone was obsessed with the Golden Turnip and, of course, whose story was that?
    Princess Floridian’s.
    She thought of staying behind, but the idea of being left alone on the Diabolical Islands with only Blind Pew for company was more frightening than going. She had seen him wandering around in themoonlight doing Naughty Things that convinced her he wasn’t blind at all.
    She made plans to ensure that if they got out to sea and the island sank, which is what she suspected Merlin was