By the time they were over the lake by their cave, the sun had set. Bookworm had to drop Magda off into the shallow water. He then executed a water landing in the deeper part of the lake, to avoid putting weight onto his injured paw. Bedraggled and exhausted, they crawled out of the water and into the cave. Bookworm was shivering violently, and his head hurt. Although dragons normally are not bothered by wintry weather, drinking from the Ice Spring and then lying for hours on the glacier in a faint was too much even for the dragon constitution. Bookworm came down with a nasty cold.
Magda was stumbling with exhaustion. Nonetheless, she went right to work to make the dragon as comfortable as she could. Using her wood-chopping axe, she made him a crude splint for his paw. Squatting by his head, she fed him choice bits of poetry and some lullabies. Finally, the dragon began to doze. "I will go to Deer Lake to get us some supplies; I will be back as soon as I can," Magda whispered to him. She lay a few books and another piece of parchment with the lullabies next to him and then was off.
She rode all evening and all night. It was lucky that the moon was nearly full. Magda made it to Deer Lake just as the shops were opening at dawn. She bought as many books as she could. She also got some woodworking and metalworking tools, a large cauldron and a lump of pitch for sealing boats. Shop owners were giving her suspicious looks, but she hushed all inquiries by the clinking of gold dealt out with an unstinting hand. Then she hurried back up the mountain. If it were not for Acorn's intelligence, Magda probably would not have made it. She kept falling asleep in the saddle. But Acorn picked out the right path, and by nightfall they were back at the cave.
"What took you so long?" Bookworm croaked hoarsely by way of a greeting. He looked terrible. His eyes were bleary, his ears drooped, something like burning candle wax dripped out of his nostrils.
The next few days Magda stumbled about in a blur of exhaustion. She was busy from dawn ‘til night humoring and cajoling her difficult patient; fetching him clean gravel from the lake to sop up the drippings from his nose; reading to him; singing and writing down lullabies; and carrying out the used gravel and the empty book bindings. She chopped and carried firewood to keep hot the cauldron filled with pitch. Bookworm, as any person with a head cold, found some relief in hot foot soaks. Needless to say, ordinary hot water would not do the trick for a dragon. But pitch kept at a slow boil was just right. Bookworm could only soak his uninjured left paw, but he compensated by also sticking his tail into the cauldron. Magda used the remnant of the inspiration for mechanical inventions that Ice Spring conferred upon her to make a much better splint for the broken paw. It surrounded the scaly limb with a rigid external framework of latticed wood reinforced with metal. The splint had a movable joint in the middle, so that Bookworm was able to bend his paw when he wanted to lie down. The splint even allowed him to hobble about a bit without putting any weight on the broken bone.
On top of all this hard work, she had to be constantly on the alert, whenever she was in the cave. Anyone who takes care of a dragon with a head cold can tell you that if you hear him go "Ah-ah…”, you better get out of his cave before the "Choo!" comes.
But by far the worst part of Magda's ordeal was Bookworm's crankiness. Of course, he was sore and generally uncomfortable, so he complained about that. The dragon was impatient, and if Magda took more than one minute to deliver whatever he asked for, he sniped at her most unpleasantly. He grumbled about his food. The books Magda was able to procure in Deer Lake were primarily of two genres, and Bookworm developed distaste for both of them. He said he was sick and tired of books about making weapons and armor, building bridges and water mills, and treating various ailments of humans and livestock. He was even more tired of the long, glum sagas about mighty warriors and their doomed lady loves.
Bookworm apparently needed some figure whom he could blame for his misfortune. Luckily, he did not pick Magda for this role. However, he developed an absolute fixation on Ludwig the Archer. He claimed that it was all Ludwig's fault — if Ludwig had not been prejudiced against dragons and had not threatened Magda, then Bookworm and Magda could have gone to Ice Spring back in early July. If they had gone back then, there would not have been an avalanche, so Bookworm would not have broken his paw and gotten a cold. And so on, and so forth.
Magda felt sorry for the suffering dragon and remembered his heroism in the avalanche. So, she gritted her teeth and bore his crankiness with fortitude, listening patiently as he vented his anger. On the evening of the fifth or sixth day, as she hurried into the cave with yet another load of firewood for the cauldron, Bookworm declared with vengeful satisfaction that he had invented a fitting punishment for Ludwig the Archer. Magda froze in her tracks. "You remember all those fancy wooden curlicues on Ludwig's house? I have figured out a great scheme for fireworks. As soon as I am better, I will mix a good batch. I will land on his roof at night. I calculated exactly, how much I will need and where I will put the charges so I can blow off each one of those curlicues. His flowery shutters will go sailing all the way to Ice Spring! I bet Ludwig will wet those britches that he is so proud to wear! After I am through with him, he will be more docile than Bertrand the cheese maker. I believe I can get all the ingredients right around here…" At this point, Bookworm's speech was interrupted by clatter of firewood dropping on the stone floor. Magda's hands flew to her hips; her face flushed deep red and veins stood out on her forehead. "I've had it!" she shrieked at the top of her lungs. "I've absolutely had it with you! Do you know why you are sitting here eating all these armor and bridges books instead of some nice sonnets and sestinas from down South? I’ll tell you why: because you got as drunk as a hog at a brewery spill, and turned a whole country upside down with fright. We had to sneak out like thieves without any supplies and were not able to take any trips down there ever since, that's why! I don't like this Ludwig one bit, but you are proving him right! You drank from the inspiration spring and what are you inspired to do? Blow things up! If you think that I am going to sit around and wait," here her voice spiraled up another octave into pure shrill, "until you drive another country berserk with some crazy trick, you are sadly mistaken! As soon as you get better, I am packing up and going back to Seven Hills! I will march straight to the city council and tell them that they are welcome to pick anoth… What are you looking at?" she added in a somewhat more normal tone. Bookworm's expression was startled and even contrite, but his eyes were fixed unblinkingly upon the tip of Magda's nose. Bookworm dropped his gaze and his tail twitched. He answered in a rather small voice: "I was scared that you were going to breathe fire at me, and that it would be hotter than a dragon's." Magda stared at the cowering dragon in disbelief. Then she burst into laughter. In a moment, Bookworm joined her. They laughed so hard that tears streamed out of Magda's eyes and steam came out of Bookworm's ears.
Laughter really is the best medicine. Both Magda and the dragon slept long and soundly that night. In the morning, Bookworm's cold was a lot better.
Over the next two weeks, Magda basked in perfect peace. She took long naps in the mild late-summer sunshine, picked berries and mushrooms, bathed and fished for trout in the cool, clear water of the mountain lake. Bookworm, on the other hand, was bubbling with inventive inspiration. Apparently, the effect of Ice Spring had been delayed, but not eliminated, by his illness. The dragon took over the tools and the remaining iron ingots that Magda had brought from Deer Lake. He set up a makeshift smithy and wood-working workshop just outside of the cave. He also took out the brushes and the jars with pigments that Magda used to paint maps, but did not ask for any parchment. Magda, knowing dragon nature, was suspicious at first that he might be still planning some spectacularly frightening trick to teach Ludwig a lesson. But Bookworm gave her his word of honor that he was not going to make any contraptions for injuring or scaring Ludwig or doing anything to his house. Satisfied, Magda left him to his tinkering.
One evening, Bookworm hobbled out to the lakeshore and called to Magda. "Come, come! Look at what I made!" Filled with curiosity, she followed him to the cave. He pointed to an object that hung on a tree. It was a wooden replica of a house with ornately carved beams and brightly painted shutters. It was the size of a large book. Beneath it hung a rock, swaying back and forth on a thin metal rod. Magda was puzzled at first, thinking he had made a toy for a child. Then she noticed that instead of a round attic window, the little house had a dial with two pointers, just like the big mechanical clock that she had seen once on the church tower. When she looked closely, she saw that the longer pointer was rotating slowly, advancing with regular clicking steps around the dial. This really was a working clock! She gazed up at Bookworm with admiration. "Bookworm! A clock! How did you make this? And it is so small! And beautiful, too. It's just like those pretty houses in the towns around here." Bookworm was beaming, pleased with her praise. "I remembered the design of that clock mechanism in the church. But I added a few touches of my own." He lifted one side of the roof and Magda saw cogs and wheels, clicking steadily as they moved. She tried to figure out exactly how they were interconnected, but it was complicated, and she could only see part of the mechanism. As Magda looked at the marvelous clock, she suddenly realized with great unease, that it was not just any little house. It was an exact small replica of the house of Ludwig the Archer. She opened her mouth to demand an explanation, but at that moment the long pointer reached the top of the dial, while the shorter one pointed straight down. The doors of the house suddenly swung open and a small wooden figure of a black dragon with a gilded crest slid out. In a mechanical but clear voice the clock chimed: "Ludwig eat dung! dung! dung! dung! dung! dung!" Then the wooden dragon slid back and the doors closed.
"You made me promise not to do anything to Ludwig or his house," Bookworm explained smugly, "but I thought that Ludwig's name deserved to be immortalized. I did not promise anything about his name, did I?" he added hastily, noticing that Magda was goggling at the clock, with her mouth open. Then, Magda began to laugh. Bookworm, thinking that she was appreciating the sparkling wit of his trick, perked up again. The more Magda looked at the clock and the gloating dragon sitting next to it, the harder she laughed. What she really found so funny was the idea that the meeting of two magical forces, dragon fire and the Ice Spring, resulted in "Ludwig eat dung!"
Bookworm's paw was still not completely healed, so they had a lot of time with not much to occupy them. Magda had an idea. "I think we could sell a mechanical clock, like this one you made, and get a lot of money for it. Can you make another one?"
"Certainly," Bookworm answered. "I still have plenty of metal left; it does not take much." It took Magda some time to convince Bookworm not to put the dragon with "Ludwig eat dung!" mechanism into the next clock. She thought that such a strange feature would scare off customers. The dragon was still more interested in expressing his feelings about Ludwig than in making a profit. But eventually he relented. "Still, I would like to put something there that comes out and chimes the hours! That's the part I invented!" insisted Bookworm.
"Well, how about a bird, a nightingale or a lark?" Magda suggested.
"A nightingale or a lark? Their songs are too complicated and delicate. I do not think I can make a mechanism that imitates even a robin. Let's pick something that makes a simple, repeating sound. A frog maybe?"
"How about a cuckoo?" asked Magda, as she saw a gray bird fly across the glade. Bookworm considered for a few moments. "That would not be too hard."
By the time Bookworm's paw healed completely, he and Magda managed to make three more clocks. Each one was fashioned as an ornate alpine house, and each contained a meticulously painted bird that slid out and chimed "Cuckoo!" to count out the hours. Magda was right. Eventually she sold these clocks for a lot of money and replenished their kitty considerably.
By mid-October, they were back on the road, now moving down the slopes on the northern side of the mountain range, with the snowy alpine winter following close at their heels.
CONTINUED IN THE NEXT CHAPTER