The Boy Who Flew with Dragons

by Andy Shepherd

  Kai jumped up and down, batting at his trouser leg, which we all suddenly realised was smoking. Everyone turned and looked at me. I felt my heart plummet through the floor and splat against the tiles in the kitchen.

  Time slowed down like it does in films. I imagined Crystal’s breath freezing everyone and me darting down to grab Flicker and hurry him safely into hiding. But Crystal was long gone. And time couldn’t slow down long enough to stop Kat bending down and peering under the bed.

  When her head reappeared it was more fiery red than any dragon’s flame and her laser eyes bore right into me, sizzling any bravado I might have had to dust. Sitting on her hand was Flicker. He sent out another spray of sparks and fluttered up towards my shoulder.

  Without saying a word, Kat turned, stormed out of the room and thundered down the stairs.

  Kai and Ted stared at Flicker, now perched on my shoulder.

  I could see Kai biting back angry words. In the end he unleashed a garbled shout and stomped out after Kat. Ted looked sadly from Kai’s retreating back to me. Then his shoulders crumpled and he just shook his head sadly and followed the others.

  I watched them go and thought of how Liam always called me ant-boy because I was small. Right then I felt smaller than any ant. I felt flea-sized and just as unwanted.

  The next few days were horrible, with stony glares from Kat and Kai, and sorrowful glances from a bewildered Ted. I’d lied to my best friends and been found out. I couldn’t blame them for treating me like the last mouldy strawberry in the punnet that no one wants. And at home even Lolli was looking glum, after failing to cheer up Tinkle and bring her ‘singsong’ back.

  Which is maybe why I started spending most of my free time in Grandad’s garden. I couldn’t do anything about the dragons leaving, or having upset Ted, Kat and Kai, or about Grandad being in hospital. But I thought at least I could take a leaf out of Grim’s book and make sure the garden was in a fit state for when Grandad got home. I busied myself with clearing rubbish, raking the hard earth, pulling out weeds, tidying the shed and cleaning all the tools.

  Whenever I turned up Grim would poke his head over the fence from next door and give me a nod. A couple of times he even came over to help me drag the wheelbarrow about or bash away at the cloggy mud. I couldn’t help wondering if I’d been wrong about him. He wasn’t exactly the friendliest carrot in the bunch, but he hadn’t really done anything to deserve all the scowls I’d launched his way over the past months.

  I decided it might just be time to follow Grandad’s example. He always said you could never know what was going on with people. They could have sat on a bee or be waiting for everyone to remember their birthday for all we know, he’d say. Maybe he was right and sometimes you just had to fight fire with friendliness.

  Which is why when Grim next lived up to his name, for once I did things differently. He’d been muttering from the other side of the fence and, instead of hiding out of his way or jumping to the conclusion that he was cross and blaming me for something, I leaned over and, taking a steadying breath, I said:

  ‘Er … Is everything OK?’

  Grim looked as surprised by this question as I felt asking it. I thought for a minute he might turn beetroot and blast an angry bellow in my direction. But he actually rammed his spade into the ground and let out a sigh.

  ‘Bloomin’ mouse,’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ I replied sympathetically. ‘Is it nibbling your lettuces again?’

  For a second he looked at me like I was completely barmy. Then a flicker of the first smile I’d ever seen crossed his face.

  ‘Computer mouse,’ he said.

  It wasn’t the mouse’s fault, of course. It was the computer programme that had crashed. The screen was frozen on the face of a young man. Grim had complained all the way up to the house about the ‘dratted thing’ not working and how he couldn’t ‘figure out how to get the blasted device to work for love nor money’. But in the end it didn’t take me long to sort it for him.

  He watched me as I tapped away, shaking his head.

  ‘Guess I’m a bit out of touch with this stuff,’ he said. ‘I haven’t a clue where to start.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘I can show you what I did if you like. It’s dead useful and it’s pretty simple.’

  He rubbed his cheek, looking doubtful.

  ‘I gave Grandad a few lessons last summer. He didn’t think he’d pick it up either, but he did.’

  Grim gave a little huff. ‘So how is your grandad? Better, I hope?’

  ‘He will be,’ I said.

  I smiled then, and he smiled back. A proper smile this time. And it made him look quite different.

  As the screen woke up I couldn’t help looking at the grinning young man.

  ‘That’s my son, Crispin,’ Grim said. ‘He’s in Australia and I’ve been trying to make this thing work so I can talk to him and my granddaughter.’

  I remembered Grandad telling me that Grim’s wife had died. I couldn’t help thinking it must be hard for him with his son so far away.

  ‘Has he been there a long time?’ I asked.

  Grim nodded. ‘I didn’t want him to go, not one bit,’ he said. ‘Probably the only thing me and my Moll ever fought about.’

  ‘She wanted him to go?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘No, course she didn’t,’ Grim replied quietly. ‘No more than I did. But Molly knew it was what he wanted and he needed to do it. “He’ll be back,” she said. And she was right, as usual. He’s been there a few years now, met Tanika, that’s his wife, and they’ve got a little girl now. But he knows where I am, and I know he’ll come back one day. Maybe not to live, but to visit, I’m sure. When you love someone, you have to love them enough to let them go. Even if that’s the hardest thing for you.’

  I nodded. Somewhere inside it felt like a tight knot was loosening.

  You know what, I think I’ll stop calling him Grim here. Because his name’s Jim. And he’s not grim. And without even knowing it, he was the one to finally make my head catch up with what my heart had known all along.

  That I needed to let Flicker go.

  Now that my head had finally caught up, things were looking pretty clear. For one thing, all the rain we’d been having suddenly made a lot more sense. I mean, what else is going to happen when a weather dragon is feeling sad? It also explained the dull and shedding scales and the fact he hadn’t even been tempted out by the smell of Ted’s vinegary crisps. It was horrible thinking that my keeping Flicker was what had made him so sad. I was beginning to feel like I was as bad as Liam.

  But later, when Flicker curled up on my lap and shimmered his deep ruby red and blew his smoky breath across my hands, he didn’t look sad at all.

  I lay my hand on his back. ‘I don’t want you to leave, but I think you have to go home. It’s for the best,’ I whispered, remembering Grandad’s words. Flicker gave a little rumble. He lifted his head and I felt his diamond eyes looking right into my heart.

  There were two more things that were crystal clear. One was that I needed to talk to Lolli, and the second was that I had to find out what Liam was up to. I was dreading telling Lolli that Tinkle needed to go. But it turned out that, as usual, Lolli knew far more than you’d expect from a three-year-old.

  The next morning she sneaked into my room before Mum and Dad were awake. Without saying anything she climbed up onto my bed and settled Tinkle next to Flicker. Then she shoved a small plastic suitcase into my ribs. I sat up, rubbing my side.

  ‘Ow! What’s up, Lollibob?’ I whispered.

  Carefully she unlatched the case and I saw what was inside. A splodge of hairy blue rock-hard icing, a fairy finger puppet and a crumpled piece of sugar paper with her little handprint on it.

  ‘Tinkle go bye-bye,’ she said, in the kind of voice that would make Cruella de Vil want to give her her own puppy. Talk about pulling at your heart strings – she’d just yanked mine clean out.

  I nodded. Then gave a feeble smile and a dou
ble thumbs up. I hoped Liam would be this good about giving up his dragon. Somehow I very much doubted it though.

  After I led Lolli back to her room, I reached under my pillow and pulled out Elvi’s journal. Without Kat, Kai and Ted, it felt like Elvi was the only one I could talk to – and I wasn’t even really talking to her, just listening. But it made me feel less lonely somehow. She must have felt something similar, leaving Arturo behind knowing that, once she was back home, the secret of the dragons would be hers alone.

  My fingers flicked through the pages until a sketch of a campfire in one of the early entries caught my eye. It was always round the campfire that Elvi and Arturo revealed the most. I began to read.

  My skin tingled. I’d been right! There was a special dragon that had breathed life into the dragon-fruit tree. One that turned the normal fruits into ones that glowed and hatched dragons.

  Flicker blew a warming breath across my hand, which I saw was now shaking. But even with that the room felt suddenly cold.

  As my eyes fell on those last words it was like a burst of flame rocketed through me. A dragon that made things grow. A dragon with fiery green breath. A dragon just like Liam’s!

  I looked at Flicker. He was hovering in front of me now, shimmering electric orange, his tail cracking sparks against the headboard of the bed.

  If I was right and Liam really did have an activator dragon, then things were even worse than we’d thought. He could be out there right now, hatching as many dragons as he liked. Every day that dragon stayed in our village was a day too long. It could destroy everything!

  For a moment I thought I should try to appeal to Liam’s better side to persuade him to let the dragon go. But then I remembered he didn’t have one. Really the only option was to be as sneaky as he was. I wished the superhero squad were with me. But after what I’d done, I couldn’t expect them to come to the rescue – not this time. It was up to me.

  Thanks to Ted telling me about Liam getting on the Number 6 bus after school every day, it wasn’t too hard to find him. Luckily the bus stop nearest to his house was just before a junction. This meant I could keep out of sight till the last minute. I peered round the hedge on the corner of the street and saw him waiting. He was looking the other way, up the street, obviously looking out for the bus. He had a bag slung over his shoulder, and by the way he was leaning I could tell it was quite heavy. And he kept hugging it close to him, like I was doing with mine in fact, aware of Flicker and Tinkle curled up inside. As I watched, his bag shook slightly. Yup! It was pretty clear it wasn’t just his lunch in there. After a few minutes a double-decker bus appeared at the top of the road and rattled its way down towards the bus stop.

  Now, obviously I couldn’t just run out and jump on. I needed to stay undercover to see where he was going. Hopefully it was somewhere a bit less public because, let’s face it, trying to wrestle a dragon off him on a bus that was full of people wasn’t really an option. I watched him pay the driver and waited, willing him to head upstairs. If he stayed on the lower deck I doubted my expert disguise of Dad’s fishing hat and Mum’s knitted scarf would really stand up.

  The bus was crowded, but through the window I could see that there was a spare seat, next to a woman holding a tiny dog. It was wearing what looked like a woolly jumper and had its nose pressed against the glass. Liam obviously decided to take his chances upstairs. As soon as his foot hit the second step and his head had disappeared from sight I bolted towards the bus stop.

  It was no good though. I wasn’t going to make it. I could hear the driver revving the engine. He hit the button and the doors began to close just as I reached the curb. In a panic I grabbed my scarf, lunged forwards and whirled it through the narrowing gap. The doors closed on it with a clunk. As the bus lurched into motion I clung to the other end. Just for a second there I was running alongside the bus, gripping my scarf. I could see one of the passengers waving at me to let go and another man shouting to the driver.

  By the time the driver stopped the bus and opened the doors I had a feeling my career as an undercover agent was well and truly over.

  ‘What the dickens are you playing at?’ said the driver crossly as I staggered up the steps.

  ‘Sorry,’ I panted, trying to think quickly and acutely aware of the many eyes fixed on me. ‘I was meeting a mate. He just went upstairs and I didn’t want to miss him.’ I paused to give him a weak smile. ‘Same fare as him, please.’ I held out a trembling handful of loose change, desperately hoping it was enough.

  The driver grumbled something and picked out some coins.

  ‘Er … Where is it I’m going?’ I asked.

  The driver looked at me and frowned even more. I must have sounded like a total muppet. I mean, who gets on a bus and has no idea where they’re even going?

  ‘Botanic garden,’ he barked. ‘Although if you don’t leave me in peace sharpish, you’ll be going nowhere.’

  The botanic garden? The words hit me like a punch in the stomach, knocking the air right out of me. What better place to find – or grow – an exotic plant? I didn’t need to be a genius to work out that Liam must have got himself another dragon-fruit tree. I staggered as the bus moved forward.

  I shuffled down to the seat next to the lady with the miniature dog.

  ‘Your friend is up there,’ she said, smiling, and pointed to the steps leading upstairs.

  ‘That’s OK,’ I said awkwardly. And then with a total brain-wave I added, ‘I don’t like heights.’

  I sank down into the seat, cradling my coat and the bag with Flicker and Tinkle inside, my head full of Liam and what I would find in the botanic garden. The little dog wriggled across the woman’s lap and started whining. His pointy ears pricked up and he had his eyes fixed on my bag. He started straining to get a closer look, his little sniffs getting more urgent. Then the whining got louder and several people started tutting about animals on buses.

  The woman looked at me again, a mix of embarrassment and crossness colouring her face. I shrank down lower, cradling the bag as it began to shift about. I imagined Flicker’s head popping out and sending a fiery sneeze at the inquisitive dog. People were definitely staring in our direction now. But if they thought a boy in a fishing hat and purple knitted scarf clutching a wriggling bag was weird, wait till they found out they were traveling with two dragons. Three, if you counted the one I was pretty sure was upstairs.

  I didn’t appear any less weird when we reached the stop for the botanic garden. As Liam came down the stairs I dived to the floor and started scrabbling under the seat in an attempt to hide. The now overexcited dog jumped down after me, seizing his chance to get his nose in my bag. He was so alarmed by what was inside that he was baring his teeth. And those teeth looked like sharp little needles, I can tell you.

  A shout came from the front of the bus and I looked up to see the driver leaning round from his cab up front.

  ‘Oi!’ he said again. And pointed at Liam, who was already off the bus and scurrying down the street.

  ‘I’m not having any more last-minute dives for the door. Look lively, will you?’

  Casting an apologetic look at the woman, whose dog had thankfully been diverted by another passenger’s bag of shopping, I raced off the bus. Somehow I didn’t think I’d be catching the Number 6 again in a hurry.

  I hurried after Liam, keeping out of sight. The gates of the botanic garden were already locked, but this didn’t seem to bother him. I saw him take a quick look around and then wriggle through a gap between the hedge and the metal railing. He pulled his bag after him and disappeared into the undergrowth on the other side. This obviously wasn’t his first time sneaking in.

  It was getting late and the weather wasn’t helping much. I can’t say I relished the idea of creeping round the huge park-like garden on my own in the dark. But I’d be doing just that if I didn’t follow Liam quickly to see exactly where he was heading.

  I pushed my way through the same gap and battled the thorny stems until I em
erged covered in damp leaves. Liam was jogging away down the path, brushing bits of hedge out of his hair. Mum and Dad brought us to the botanic garden quite a lot and I knew bits of it well, but there were gloomy edges and shadowy corners that didn’t seem quite as inviting to explore in the dark. I reached into my bag and lifted out Flicker and Tinkle, glad that they were here with me. I couldn’t help noticing the scales left in the bottom of the rucksack. Flicker had been shedding more than ever in the last few days. I settled a dragon on each shoulder and then followed Liam.

  He was hurrying down the path, past the pond and the magnolia trees and straight on towards the glasshouses.

  I remembered the last time we’d visited, the sweltering wall of heat that had met us as we left the cooler alpine room with its delicate flowers and opened the door into the dangly tangled vines of the rainforest area. And then how we had gasped in relief as we finally reached the less intense heat beyond, where huge palms grew.

  Peering through the glass doors I could see that it was into the humid rainforest room that Liam was now creeping.

  I waited for him to disappear inside and then turned the handle of the main door and pushed, wincing as it creaked slightly. The glass-roofed corridor I found myself in was lined with exotic plants, their heady scent filling the air. I passed a plant with broad leaves and strange bird-head flowers, edging away from the rolled-up pointed green of the beak, with its orange and purple petals sprouting like a plume of feathers. They watched me beadily as I went past.

  Crouching low, I saw Liam on the other side of the glass. He stepped off the path and pushed his way past the giant fronds of a prehistoric-looking fern. I held back a moment and then followed him inside.

  The damp heat clung to me as soon as I entered. Thick rope-like vines hung down through glossy leaves as big as dinner plates, and vast pitcher plants in bright reds and yellows leaned towards me, like they could taste me in the air. It really was like being transported to a tropical rainforest, and I couldn’t help thinking of Elvi and Arturo pushing their way through the undergrowth.