The Land of Roar

by Jenny McLachlan

  He gives a cry of exasperation. ‘Mate, you’re Arthur Trout, Master of Roar ! How can you fight Crowky if you’re scared of flying through a hole?’

  Win’s words burn into me. They make me stare straight ahead, heart thumping, cheeks flushed. Not because I’m angry, but because I know he’s right. If I’m ever going to see Grandad again, I need to stop thinking about all the ways I could slip, fall or tumble, and start to believe I can do this . . . on my own.

  I came to Roar, didn’t I? I climbed down that bridge to get to Rose, and right now I’m sitting on a dragon! I don’t take my eyes off the rocky archway as Vlad’s heat rises up through me. What was Rose shouting when we took off ? It sounded like gobbledygook . . .

  No, not gobbledygook: Obby Dobby.

  Obby Dobby was a made-up language that Grandad taught me and Rose. Only I never got it as well as them, and they used to drive me mad chatting away in it. Rose told us to say ‘robise’ to make the Vlad take off, which is the word ‘rise’ with ‘ob’ stuck in the middle of it. Could Obby Dobby be Rose’s mysterious dragon language?

  There’s one way to find out.

  I lean close to Vlad’s ear, and yell, ‘Dobown! ’

  Instantly Vlad’s head drops and he dives towards the sea. My stomach drops too as cold air races past us and we’re flung back.

  ‘YES!’ screams Win.

  I keep my eyes open, forcing myself to watch and just before Vlad’s snout touches a wave, I shout, ‘Globide!’ He rears up and next thing I know, we’re coasting smoothly over the Bottomless Ocean. I’m half blinded by sea spray and smoke, but I can just see the archway rising up out of the sea. I glance at Vlad’s outspread wings. Can they possibly fit through the gap? I nudge him to the left, and then a little bit further until he’s flying at an angle. Win and I lean as far forward as we can, our knees pressed into Vlad’s scaly sides.

  ‘Do you reckon we’re going to make it?’ Win’s voice sounds strangely . . .  scared.

  ‘Definitely,’ I say, then I fix my eyes on the gap as Vlad speeds up. We shoot into the archway and I’m blinded by smoke. Win screams, the dragon growls, then I see blue sky and realise I’m breathing fresh air . . . I did it. I flew Vlad through the archway and we survived!

  ‘HEAR ME ROAR!’ I cry, punching my fist in the air. Vlad breathes out a triumphant blaze of fire and his wings pound down, lifting us back up. While Win laughs hysterically, I wipe the sea spray from my face and stare at the Bottomless Ocean.

  ‘Boback tobo Rose!’ I command, and Vlad bellows his approval as he turns and heads for land.

  It’s a beautiful journey across Roar. The sun is setting, creating a glittering path on the sea for Vlad to follow. I can see the Archie Playgo and the Tangled Forest is in front of us, a vast expanse of shifting, swaying trees.

  Just when I’m thinking how wonderful it is to be here, flying over Roar and not feeling scared, I spot something ahead.

  It looks like a swirling black cloud, which is strange, because we’re in the Good Side, and there isn’t another cloud in sight.

  ‘What’s that?’ I point it out to Win.

  ‘I dunno. It looks like . . .  birds.’

  He’s right. As Vlad flies closer I see that it isn’t one thing – a cloud – but actually lots of birds – crows – huddled together and flying as one. They swoop up in the sky, turn, then pour down in our direction.

  ‘Fobastober!’ I shout. ‘FOBASTOBER!’

  Vlad dives down, but so do the birds until they’re surrounding us – a mass of black squawking feathers and pecking beaks – driving the dragon wild. I cover my face with one arm and lash out with the other. The birds are small, but there are so many of them I can’t stop their claws and beaks from scratching and pecking at my skin.

  Soon Vlad’s had enough. He whips his head round, breathes out a jet of fire and sends the birds fluttering in all directions, smoke drifting from their singed wings.

  ‘What was that all about?’ I say, brushing away feathers, and licking the blood from a deep scratch on my hand.

  Win sweeps a pile of feathers off Vlad’s back. ‘Spies of Crowky’s, I reckon. I’ve seen them around before, swooping over the forest and following me on my bike.’

  Then I notice something on my lap. At first I haven’t got a clue what it is, until I pick it up. It’s a plastic carrot with a smiley face. Dangling from the carrot are two keys. I curl my fist round Grandad’s allotment key ring.

  ‘Those crows weren’t spies,’ I say. ‘They were messengers.’

  Vlad circles over the dojo.

  ‘What are they doing?’ says Win, peering down.

  The Lost Girls have been busy since we left. They’re scurrying about all over the dojo, rolling stones into place and digging up great mounds of earth. Their previously smooth training area now looks like a building site.

  ‘Making the Magic Road. Look, there’s the tunnel –’ I point at a place near the trees where a girl’s head is poking out from a tarpaulin – ‘and over there, where they’re piling up earth, that’s the big rock where the dragons are going to pick us up.’

  ‘Those girls might be small,’ says Win, ‘but they’re strong . . . and fast.’

  He’s right. We’ve only been gone a few hours, but already the Lost Girls have transformed the dojo, recreating a rough outline of the Magic Road, making it spiral in on itself so they can fit it all in. And that’s after going on a five-mile jog.

  ‘There’s just one problem,’ I say. ‘Where can we land Vlad?’

  As Vlad glides down, getting closer and closer to the dojo, I try to direct him towards the place with the fewest girls in it. ‘Dobown,’ I urge, nudging him to the right, then right a bit more. ‘Dobown . . .’

  It’s all going smoothly. Vlad is preparing to land, talons outstretched, not too fast and not too slow, but then he sees Rose standing with Stella at the start of the Magic Road. He roars with delight, swings left and plunges towards her. Win and I scream. Rose and Stella scream, then they throw themselves into a muddy ditch as Vlad crashes to earth.

  Win and I shoot over Vlad’s head, land with a thud then slide into Rose and Stella’s ditch.

  ‘Arthur!’ yells Rose, wiping muddy water from her face.

  ‘Sorry, but someone forgot to tell me how to land!’

  The Lost Girls creep forward, fascinated by the dragon and the sight of Chief Stella covered in mud.

  ‘If any of you laugh,’ she says, squeezing muddy water from her vest, ‘I’ll take away five of your bracelets and put you on toilet-pit cleaning duty for a week.’

  No one laughs. Except Win, and he doesn’t stop until Stella gives him an arm burn.

  Our crash landing does have one unexpected benefit. The ditch was being dug out to provide a realistic wateriness to the Magic Road, with the camp’s water supply diverted to fill it. When Vlad heaves himself up and flies off to find Pickle, he leaves behind a vast crater which immediately starts to fill with water.

  After consulting the map, Stella decides that the crater will become Big Leap, the point on the Magic Road where there’s a huge gap between two rocks. Now we can all practise doing the jump, with a pool of water beneath us, just in case we don’t make it.

  By now it’s almost dark, so Stella issues dinner and tidying-up instructions. ‘But not you three,’ she says, nodding at me, Win and Rose. ‘You can stay up here and finish the rocks round Big Leap.’

  I’m exhausted and battered, but one look at Stella’s determined face tells me there’s no point arguing. If Rose is bothered about being stuck with me and Win, she doesn’t complain. We watch the Lost Girls trudge into the Tangled Forest then start adding rocks to the pile the girls have already made. Rose looks from me to Win. She takes in our burnt hair, our smoke-covered faces and our bruises and cuts. ‘So what exactly happened to you two?’

  I touch a particularly painful graze on my cheek. ‘We nearly died because someone told us to get on a dragon, but didn’t tell us how to fly it
.’

  Rose laughs. ‘Yeah, but you didn’t die, did you?’

  ‘We came close,’ I mutter, but then I can’t help smiling. ‘We flew through this archway in a rock, Rose . . . It was small, and we had to fly Vlad on his side. But we did it and it was incredible!’

  She heaves a spade full of muddy soil over her shoulder and slaps it down. ‘I knew you could do it,’ she says.

  I slip my fingers in my pocket and wrap them round the carrot key ring. I decide not to mention it to Rose. She just did a kind thing for me, so I can do a kind thing for her.

  When it’s totally dark we abandon our digging and go down to the camp. We all agree that we’re starving and can’t wait to eat. Rose is pretty certain Stella mentioned something about beans on toast, and suddenly there is nothing I want more than a sloppy pile of baked beans on buttery toast.

  It turns out Stella actually said bees on toast, which is disappointing and very alarming until we’re handed slabs of toast dripping with honey.

  As we sit round the campfire, licking honey off our fingers, Stella talks about Crowky.

  ‘At first he stole things – our food, our weapons – then he came with the scarecrow army and set fire to Treetops. Luckily the girls were out hunting, but he caught me in my tree house and stuffed me, then left me for the girls to find.’ She shudders at the memory and digs a stick into the embers of the fire. ‘If he finds us here, I don’t know what we’ll do. I think he got really angry when he stopped flying.’

  I look up with surprise. ‘But he flew yesterday. He lifted me in the air.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t seen him flying in ages,’ says Stella.

  ‘Now I think about it, neither have I,’ says Win.

  Stella shakes her head. ‘That’s not good. If he’s flying again, he could be anywhere.’

  Automatically everyone’s eyes shift from the fire to the canopy of leaves above us. Then Stella breaks the silence. ‘Has he been to your cave, Win?’

  ‘Nope, he can’t find it because I use camouflage . . . and magic.’ Then he pulls out his wand, says, ‘Whistle fur!’ and a single white marshmallow bursts out of the end of his wand. I’m not sure who’s more surprised – us or Win. He proceeds to toast the marshmallow in the flames of the fire, then eat it slowly, pulling strands of goo off with his fingers, ignoring the big hungry eyes of the Lost Girls.

  ‘Do it again,’ says one of the smallest ones, Clara, tugging his sleeve. ‘That was awesome.’

  ‘Really?’ Win is so surprised to have genuinely impressed someone with his magic that he fluffs his next spell and produces first a cherry tomato and then what looks like a bit of cheese. But after that he starts magicking up marshmallow after marshmallow, and the Lost Girls creep closer and closer to him, hands outstretched.

  When Clara is eating her marshmallow she suddenly says, ‘Arthur, why are we saving this man?’

  The question takes me by surprise. ‘Oh,’ I say, ‘because he’s our grandad.’

  She scowls. ‘I know that, but why’s he so important?’

  I guess the word ‘Grandad’ doesn’t mean much to Clara or the other Lost Girls; the only family they have are each other. I wonder how I can possibly explain that without Grandad and his fun, and the endless games he let us play in the attic, there might never have been a Roar. I look at Rose for help, but she’s staring intently into the fire.

  Now all the Lost Girls are watching me, waiting for my answer. ‘Our Grandad is important because he believes in magic,’ I say, then I stop talking. I have to. I have a lump in my throat and my eyes are watering. I could pretend it’s because of the smoke from the fire, but I’d be lying.

  ‘OK,’ says Clara, then she turns back to Win and holds out her hand for another marshmallow. Like Rose, I fall quiet, gazing at the flames until Stella announces that it’s time for a wrestling bout.

  Apparently this is something the Lost Girls do every night before they go to bed, and soon logs are pushed out of the way and two girls are selected and take up their positions.

  I quickly discover that the Lost Girls take wrestling seriously and it’s a good distraction from my thoughts of Grandad. As they hurl each other to the ground Stella circles them offering tactical advice, like ‘Poke her in the eye, Nell!’ and ‘Bite her, Flora, BITE HER!’

  I notice Flora yells, ‘Hear me roar!’ as she slams into Nell.

  ‘See,’ I say, nudging Rose. ‘She doesn’t think it’s a lame thing to say.’

  She rolls her eyes. ‘Well, it is.’

  After the wrestling, there’s a short ceremony in which a Lost Girl is given one of Stella’s loom-band bracelets. The girl is small and has a long plait and is wearing a yellow T-shirt. I realise she’s the girl who cut the ropes on the bridge. Presumably she’s found her way back to camp and is now being rewarded for trying to kill us, but I still find myself joining in with the applause because she looks so proud when Stella slips the bracelet round her wrist.

  Next it’s biscuits and tea, and then bed.

  ‘Magic Road training tomorrow,’ says Stella, crunching thoughtfully on her biscuit. ‘Then we’ll travel to the start of the Magic Road during the night.’ She looks at Win. ‘You’re sure about when it appears?’

  He nods. ‘Twice a day: an hour before dawn, and again twelve hours later.’

  ‘So tomorrow we train, rest in the afternoon, then set off for the Bad Side.’ She looks round the fire, until her eyes settle on me and Rose. ‘Then we go to the Crow’s Nest, fight Crowky and get your grandad back.’

  She jumps to her feet, grabs Win’s very last marshmallow and announces: ‘Bedtime!’

  While the Lost Girls settle down in their camp, Win, Rose and I go back to the dojo where we’ve tied hammocks between the trees. The dragons have decided to sleep up there too and are curled together between the muddy rocks of the pretend Magic Road.

  As more and more stars come out Win chatters on about how heroic we were riding Vlad, ignoring Rose’s frequent requests to, ‘Please, shut up!’ Eventually he drops off and soon his snores are competing with the low rumbling coming from the dragons.

  I can’t sleep.

  I sway in my hammock, my mind stuck on Grandad. I’ve been doing this all day, counting down the hours, trying to work out just how long we’ve got left. I tell myself we’ve got time, that I need to stay calm and focus on getting into the Crow’s Nest. But then I start doing sums again, and before I know it I’m wondering if Grandad can feel cold or hunger when he’s stuffed. If it’s made his asthma better or worse. If he’s frightened.

  I hate thinking that while I’m safe in my hammock, with the warm stars shining on me, he’s chained up in a cold dungeon. I hate thinking about this, but I can’t stop myself, and soon I’m willing the night away so that we can get on with our training and set off for the Crow’s Nest.

  Rose’s voice drifts out of the darkness. ‘You awake, Arthur?’

  I look over and see that she’s sitting up, gazing towards The End. The stars are shining on the snow-topped mountains, turning them pink then purple then pink again.

  ‘We never did get over there,’ I say.

  She shakes her head. ‘It was always too far away.’

  That’s why we called it The End, because for us it’s where Roar ends.

  In the middle of the dojo a dragon growls and flames roll towards us. Sparks drift past us like fireflies.

  ‘Still think this isn’t real?’ I say.

  Rose stares straight ahead. ‘I can’t. It’s too frightening. People disappearing, the ground opening up, Crowky making an army and burning things down. We used to be in control of this place, but I don’t know who’s in control now.’ In the darkness I see her hug her knees. ‘I can’t wait until we go home and can go back to forgetting this place ever existed.’

  The ground starts to shake, slowly at first, then harder, as if the roots of all the trees in the Tangled Forest are twisting and turning. My hands tighten round the ropes of the hammock as leaves fa
ll on us and the dragons stir in their sleep. Suddenly I realise that exactly the same thing happened yesterday.

  ‘Rose . . . I think you just made that happen.’

  She turns to face me. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The same thing happened when we landed on Mitch’s island: you said Roar wasn’t real and straight away there was an earth wobble, or whatever it was Win called it.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, just then you said you didn’t believe in Roar and – boom – an earthquake hits.’

  ‘But . . . Roar isn’t real, is it? Not like home. There aren’t photos of it. It’s not on any map. Right now we haven’t got a clue where we are!’

  There’s a grumble of thunder then a flash of lightning bursts from the sky and lands metres away from us. The dragons’ eyes slide open and the hairs on my arms stand on end.

  Rose lets out a long deep breath. ‘OK . . . that was strange. Shall I say something to test it out?’

  ‘No! Don’t even think it. If Roar comes from our imaginations, then maybe when we stop believing in it, it starts to fall apart and sinkholes open up and people . . . disappear.’

  Rose stares at me. ‘Are you saying that the things that have gone – Mitch, the mermaids, the unicorns – they went because I stopped believing in them?’

  ‘I stopped believing in them too. Until I saw Win in the attic and found the map, I’d almost forgotten about Roar.’

  ‘But not totally?’

  ‘No,’ I admit. ‘There’s something else. Win said that big crack appeared on our birthday, at dusk, and we both know what happened then.’

  ‘The dragon fight . . .’ says Rose, and I nod.

  I’d been out watching the new Star Wars film, and when I got back Rose announced that she’d had a clear-out and given Dad some toys to take to the charity shop. But they weren’t any old toys. They were the models of dragons that we’d both been collecting for years.