The Boy Who Flew with Dragons

by Andy Shepherd

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1. Starlight Flicker Bright

  Chapter 2. The Blue Tornado and the Not-So-Early Worm

  Chapter 3. A Present for Lolli

  Chapter 4. Once Upon a Fairy-Tale Party

  Chapter 5. Flying Dragons, Screaming Lions and the King of Trouble

  Chapter 6. You Did WHAT?

  Chapter 7. The Elephant in the Bobble Hat

  Chapter 8. Happy Halloween, Cloud Boy

  Chapter 9. Captain Brain and the Lightning Bolt

  Chapter 10. Eyebrows 0, Dragons 1

  Chapter 11. If Only Dragons Could Talk

  Chapter 12. Buried Treasure

  Chapter 13. Daleks Don’t Make Tea

  Chapter 14. La Ciudad Oculta de los Dragones

  Chapter 15. Missing Pieces

  Chapter 16. Chicken on Toast

  Chapter 17. The Seed of an Idea

  Chapter 18. A Slippery Customer

  Chapter 19. Telling Tales

  Chapter 20. Time to Let Go

  Chapter 21. Goodbyes and Lies

  Chapter 22. Tell It to the Heart Cos the Head Ain’t Listening

  Chapter 23. Destination: Panic

  Chapter 24. No Place like Home

  Chapter 25. Superheroes Shouldn’t Lie

  Chapter 26. Some Grim Advice

  Chapter 27. A Rare and Special Creature

  Chapter 28. Undercover

  Chapter 29. Into the Rainforest

  Chapter 30. Maximus Gigantimus

  Chapter 31. Liam’s Big Secret

  Chapter 32. Trust the Superhero Squad

  Chapter 33. Tinkle, Tinkle, You Little Star

  Chapter 34. A Diamond Is Forever

  Afterwards – And You Thought It Was All Over?

  About Andy Shepherd

  About Sara Ogilvie

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  For Ian, Ben and Jonas

  With all my love always

  We grow dragons. Dragons that flicker, that frost, and some that fill the sky with fire.

  We sit cross-legged round our dragon-fruit tree, watching and waiting. Dragons perch on our shoulders, their tails curled around our necks. Diamond eyes glitter. Claws tread. Sparks crackle. And hot smoky breath warms us to our hearts. All of us are waiting for the moment when the red ripe dragon fruit starts to glow. When it drops from the vivid tendril. When a new tiny dragon is ready to hatch. All of us are wondering what kind of dragon it will be.

  Will it glow and glimmer like Flicker, shimmering through every colour from ruby red to turquoise? Will it cover us in icicles like Crystal does, leaving us to tinkle like a frozen xylophone? Will it disappear before our eyes, a master of camouflage like Dodger, or pulse with golden light as Sunny does?

  Who knows? Maybe it will do all this and more. But one thing’s for sure – hearing this, I bet you want one too, right? A dragon of your own. Of course you do.

  But first there’s something I need to tell you.

  So keep listening, because you haven’t heard the whole story yet. And once you have, you might not be quite so quick to rush out and grow yourself a dragon.

  Because it’s not just the mess, the flames, the claw marks, the smouldering sparks. It’s not even the pyrotechnic poo. It’s something even more devastating.

  One day you will have to let your dragon go – and that, my friends, is the hardest thing of all.

  The first thing I noticed was that Flicker wasn’t there. The comforting glow of his little body had gone. I’d fallen asleep with him nestled against me as always, but I woke up with a shiver, missing his warming breath across my chest.

  I rubbed my eyes, blinking the sleep away, reliving the dream I’d been having – a familiar dream that if I’d been a cat would have left me purring. Snatches of it glittered before me. Green light across the sky. A vast mountain. A rocky land below. And then it was gone.

  Sitting up in bed, I saw Flicker. He was perched on the windowsill of my bedroom and it was so bright with stars and moonlight that it almost looked like morning had come. I clambered out of bed and pulled the curtains all the way back, feeling the rush of cold night air from the open window. Flicker fluttered out onto the ledge and lifted his head. He sent out a spray of sparks that fizzled in the air. They left the trace of a ring, like the fiery after-glow from a sparkler on Bonfire Night. And glittering inside the ring was the North Star. It wasn’t the first time I’d found Flicker staring out of the window but it was happening more often. I watched the glow fade, then reached out and touched his back. A ripple of gold shimmered under my fingers as his scales changed colour.

  I stared out of the window and pictured Ted, Kat and Kai curled up with their dragons. And I couldn’t help smiling. Together we were the superhero squad and there wasn’t much we couldn’t do with dragons by our side.

  And then Liam, our nemesis, muscled his way into the picture and stomped all over it, messing it right up, reminding me that things might not be quite that simple.

  You see at the beginning of the summer he had sneaked into Grandad’s garden and got himself a dragon. I know, sneaky or what! Not only that, but when his dragon breathed on stuff it made things grow really fast – and really big! After super-sizing his sunflower to try to win the school competition, Liam had quickly moved on to super-sizing a dragon fruit. The dragon that hatched out of the giant fruit went from turkey to Tyrannosaurus in about ten minutes.

  That was definitely one you wouldn’t want to curl up with! Thanks to Flicker lighting up like a beacon, Tyrannodragon had been led up into the sky and towards what we hoped was home. Although where home was for the dragons we still had no idea.

  Wondering how we were going to find that out was just one of the things constantly swimming laps round my head – along with trying to guess what Liam might get up to next with the dragon he still had. The one that could make pumpkins grow to the size of Cinderella’s carriage.

  I was about to lean over and close the window when the bedroom door creaked open. I grabbed the curtain and yanked it across, hoping Flicker would stay behind it and out of sight. I was on constant red alert for Mum or Dad – especially these days. Mum is always juggling vet work, stray animals and my sister Lolli, like an octopus with serious circus skills, and Dad is usually locked inside his headphones-bubble of music. But even they had started to notice things. There are only so many scorch marks and claw scratches it’s possible to hide. Or blame on your cat.

  A little messy head appeared and I sighed with relief.

  ‘What are you doing, Lolli?’ I whispered. ‘You should be asleep. Big day tomorrow.’

  Lolli grinned. ‘Me up now.’

  I glanced at the clock next to my bed. It was three o’clock in the morning. Officially it was her birthday, but I doubted Mum and Dad would appreciate starting the celebration this early. I shook my head.

  ‘Not time yet, Lollibob. Much too early.’

  She rumpled her face into a frown. But it quickly vanished when the curtain started bulging and Flicker found his way out through the gap.

  He zipped over and started circling her head, letting out little smoky puffs. She giggled, delighted, eyes twinkling as brightly as Grandad’s did. I couldn’t help grinning. Especially when I thought of my secret. You see, ever since she’d tried to hatch a dragon from a pineapple and turned our lounge into a swamp in the process, I’d known that more than anything Lolli wanted a dragon. And so with the latest crop of dragon fruits red and ripe, I knew I could give her the best birthday present ever.

  It was time for Lolli to have a dragon of her own.

  Lolli made it to five o’clock before she d
eclared her birthday officially open. Dressed in her Batman costume she paraded up and down the hall banging a drum until the rest of us stumbled out to join the festivities.

  When we got to Nana and Grandad’s later for Birthday Breakfast, Lolli burst through the door like a miniature tornado. She was entirely fuelled by icing, after licking out the bowl Mum had been using to decorate her cake. Mum had made a mermaid on top of a rock – well, that was its official title. To be fair, it looked more like a seal in a wig. And that was if you squinted and were feeling generous.

  Nana put down the stack of pancakes she’d been holding and caught Lolli up in a huge hug.

  ‘Hippity hoppity happity birthday, little Lolli,’ she chuckled.

  Lollibob squeezed Nana tight and giggled happily.

  ‘Guppie!’ she cried, and started looking around for Grandad. I peered out the window, expecting him to be coming up the garden. It would be just like him to be out digging at this time of the day.

  And then I saw a little look pass between Mum and Nana.

  ‘Grandad’s having a lie-in,’ Nana said, lowering Lolli to the floor.

  Now to most people this might not seem like that big a deal, and Mum would probably sell the house for a lie-in. But not Grandad. He’d go and embarrass the early worm by being up, dressed and mowing the lawn before it had even wriggled out of bed.

  ‘Hey up, Chipstick,’ Grandad said with a grin as I gingerly opened the bedroom door. He was sitting up in bed with a tray on his lap, building a boat out of a massive pile of matchsticks. He lowered it to safety as Lolli twirled her way into the room and leaped onto the bed.

  ‘Are you OK, Grandad?’ I asked, perching on the edge of the mattress.

  ‘I’m fine. Nana’s just being a fusspot, that’s all.’

  Lolli wriggled in closer, and Grandad tucked her under his arm.

  ‘So you can still come to the party?’ I asked.

  Grandad gave Lolli a squeeze. ‘Not this time,’ he said.

  And I could tell he was just as disappointed about it as we were, but in true Grandad fashion he wasn’t about to say that.

  ‘But you’ll save me some jelly, won’t you, Lolli?’ He grinned.

  Lolli was giving him a hard stare and I wondered if she might go supersonic. It really wasn’t a good idea to mess with the party plan. But instead she leaned over and kissed Grandad on his whiskery cheek. Then she reached into her pocket and took out a sticky lump of blue icing. It was covered in fluff from her pocket, but Grandad obviously knew this was an offering of epic proportions.

  ‘Thank you, Lolli,’ he said gravely. ‘It’s just what I need to liven up that there porridge. Can you pop it in the bowl for me?’

  Lolli climbed out of bed and happily began stirring the dish of cold gloop which had been Grandad’s breakfast and was now a murky shade of blue.

  ‘So, Chipstick …’ Grandad said.

  And I knew exactly what he meant by that and what was coming next. You see, in the chaos of Liam hatching his super-sized dragon, Grandad had found out all about us keeping Flicker and the others. And even though it was brilliant that Grandad knew now and I didn’t have to fib any more, what wasn’t so brilliant was that he’d insisted I made a deal. And the deal was that we’d let all the dragons go at the end of the summer holidays.

  We’d seen what a properly big dragon could do, the havoc it could cause, and Grandad said having four that size was not something any of us could handle.

  A tiny part of me knew he was right. But it was such a tiny part it was easy to squish it flat and sit on it. The thing was, I still hadn’t told the others what I’d agreed to. I just couldn’t bear to break it to them. I knew how disappointed they’d be.

  I kept hoping I could change Grandad’s mind. And I did, a bit, buying us two extra months. He’d finally agreed to let us keep them until October, until Ted, me and last of all Lolli had had our birthdays. But I knew there would be no more persuading him. And with Lolli’s party hours away, time was running out.

  ‘After today it’s time to let the dragons go. We had a deal, remember?’ Grandad whispered.

  My hands started feeling prickly. I really didn’t want to answer him, because if I did I’d be agreeing to it all over again. And the more time I’d had to think about it, the more I’d realised it just wasn’t something I could agree to. I needed a different plan. But I couldn’t think of anything. Nothing at all. Here was I with a brain that usually couldn’t stop flinging out ideas and it was like it had decided to switch off.

  And then Nana and Mum clattered into the room and started fussing round, tidying things up and telling us to let Grandad have a bit of ‘peace and quiet’.

  He was looking me square in the eye and I could pretty much see the words he wasn’t saying lit up above his head: ‘Remember what you promised.’

  I let Nana bundle me out of the room, the hot prickly feeling spreading fast. Because, even though I’d known exactly what Grandad had been thinking, I couldn’t nod. I couldn’t even really look him in the eye any more. Because I already knew I wasn’t going to be able to keep my promise.

  Look, before you get all judgy, I couldn’t possibly let the dragons go now. How could I? Not when Lolli was just about to hatch one. Here you go, Lollibob, your dream’s come true and by the way you have to give it back tomorrow. Honestly, how mean would that be?

  Leaving Mum and Nana fussing over Grandad, and Dad listening to the radio, I led Lolli out into the garden.

  I could see Grim – that’s Grandad’s grumpy neighbour – over the fence. He was loading a wheelbarrow with beanstalks he’d just pulled out. I didn’t want to run into him and burst Lolli’s birthday bubble. Grim still hadn’t got over the utter devastation to his garden that Liam’s super-sized dragon had caused.

  Of course, thanks to Grandad, Grim believed it was a methane explosion caused by his compost bins – not a gigantic fiery fart from a ginormous dragon. But even with the compost-bin explanation, he still seemed to blame me. At least that’s what it felt like from the permanent scowl he aimed at me whenever he saw me. I stopped by the beehives, which Grandad had promised to fill with bees one day, and lifted the lid off one to show Lolli. She stuck her head inside eagerly, and then popped it out again looking disappointed. I think she thought I’d put her birthday present in there.

  Thankfully Grim was marching his way past us up to his house. I kept my back turned to him and pretended to be very interested in the hive until he’d disappeared inside.

  Then I headed further down the garden, leading the still-disgruntled Lolli by the hand. Flicker fluttered above us until we reached the dragon-fruit tree. Then he flew down and landed on one of the long cactus-like leaves. Dragon-fruit trees are about the weirdest-looking plants you’ll ever see. Grandad said he thought it looked like an upturned mophead when we cleared the garden and saw it for the first time. A spiky green mop anyway. It also has vivid yellow and orange tendrils and special moon-white flowers that bloom for just one night. And after the flowers have bloomed, that’s when the dragon fruits start to grow.

  Lolli peered at the tree, but she knew better than to touch. I’d always been super-strict about that. The fruits needed time to grow and ripen, and I couldn’t risk little hands pulling them off before they were ready. But today was different.

  I could see a few dragon fruits on the tree and they were all a rich red. In fact, some of them looked fit to burst, with their spiky pineapple-like leaves bulging out. It was so good to see the dragon-fruit tree looking healthy again. With no more super-sizing dragon breath to deal with, and a daily sprinkling of ash, it was going from strength to strength.

  ‘Hey, Lolli,’ I said trying to keep things calm. I figured when I told her today was the day she’d get to hatch her very own dragon, the scream she’d unleash might just break the sound barrier.

  ‘Can I hear your most whisperiest, quietest voice?’

  Lolli screwed up her nose and mouth in a puzzled look.

  I wh
ispered the question again, almost mouthing the words and giving her a smile to show it was the start of a game. Lolli could never resist a game.

  ‘Shhh,’ she breathed as quietly as she could and started crouching down to match the size of her teeny-tiny voice.

  ‘Brilliant,’ I whispered back. ‘Now, can you use that voice when I show you your birthday present?’

  Lolli’s eyes went wide. She nodded seriously.

  ‘Good,’ I said. I took her hand and led her closer to the tree.

  I grinned. ‘Happy birthday, Lolli!’

  She looked from me to the tree and back again. I nodded towards one of the fruits. ‘You do want a dragon?’ I said, teasing. ‘I mean if you’ve gone off the idea, that’s fine.’ To be honest I had had some second, third and fourth thoughts about her having a dragon. But in the end I’d decided that between us, Flicker and I could handle things.

  Her eyes nearly popped out on stalks and I could feel her hand jiggling in mine as she realised what I was saying. I felt the jiggly feeling shoot all the way up my arm too and I couldn’t help grinning.

  Eagerly, Lolli stepped forward and reached up towards one of the fruits. Flicker puffed a smoky breath in her face and she gave a little sneeze and pulled her hand back. She tried again with another fruit and Flicker did the same. She lowered her hand, a frown on her face. Slowly she moved around the tree, carefully inspecting each of the fruits. Finally she spotted one deep within the leaves of the tree. It was tiny compared to the rest, but when she reached towards it, the red skin of the fruit began to glow. And the next second it dropped into Lolli’s outstretched hands.

  She stared at it, her mouth in a little round ‘O’.

  Then with a POP the fruit burst and a dragon shot out. It landed on the ground in a sticky mess of seeds and pulp. I watched Lolli bend down and gently scoop the little dragon up. I couldn’t help remembering the night Flicker had burst out of his fruit. And how it had felt when he had hopped onto my hand for the very first time.

  This dragon was brilliant silver with bright blue spines along its back and at the end of its tail. Its horns shone like they had been dipped in the sparkly glitter glue Lolli covered all her pictures in.