Found in a folder

"It's not as though you have to remain a dragon," said Drusilla, in a superior tone that implied it had been she, rather than Livia, who had mucked about with the spell book. "There's always a whatchamacallit, a counterspell, don'cha know? We just have to find out what it is."

"Mrflxgq!" said Max, which was the closest his dragon-mouth could come to forming human words. What those words might have been, we leave to your imagination.

"It's bound to be something fiendishly difficult," Drusilla continued, warming to the subject. "Like wearing out a pair of iron shoes, or knitting shirts from nettles. I wonder if dragons can knit?"

"Plrqxxzln!" said Max. "Rmmphl."

"Or it could be a quest. You may have to travel to the mountains behind the moon, and bring back the Giant-Queen's silver underdrawers, which the warrior princess will sew into a sail for her star-sailing galleon. I just made that last bit up. Don't you think it's awfully clever?"

"Ngllopmxvn," said Max, shaking his head until the scales rattled.

"As a matter of fact," drawled Livia, who was lazily munching a croissant, "it is a quest. I looked it up while you two were yammering."

You might have said something earlier, Max tried to say. Except it came out as "Grmxxqh!"

"Where's he going, then?" Drusilla asked, only slightly deflated.

Livia buttered another croissant. "Max has to go to Brickford, and bring back a box of toothpicks."

"Brickford!" Drusilla protested. "Why, that's hardly an hour's walk! Couldn't it be South Xanadu or the coast of Tartary?"

"It's definitely Brickford," Livia said. "And it's definitely toothpicks. Although a box of unsharpened lead-pencils may work as well. It said that in a footnote."

"Oh," said Drusilla. "Trust you to pick a boring spell. I could have done much better."

Max was silent. He had been to Brickford a hundred times, mostly buy cinnamon buns or escape his trigonometry tutor. It was, as Drusilla had said, an hour's walk from the castle.

But it was also the place he had directed Sir Reginald just this morning, with the promise, so lightly made and half forgotten, that there the Questing Knight could find and slay a dragon.