by Shoo Rayner
‘I don’t believe it!’ Ryan’s dad was open-mouthed. ‘It drained the battery in six seconds! There wasn’t any juice left to steer it to a safe landing. We need more power if you are going to win the Dragon Gold!’
Ryan didn’t know what to say. He knew how hard his dad had worked on the plane and how much it meant to him.
‘Oh, well.’ His dad shrugged his shoulders. ‘Back to the drawing board.’
* * *
‘Let’s take Tân for a walk!’ Harri suggested. ‘Everyone will be full of Christmas pudding and falling asleep in front of the telly. The park will be empty. No one will see.’
A lot had happened in the last few weeks. Harri had got better and gone back to school. In fact, he seemed fitter than ever. ‘You’ve grown, Harri!’ said Mr Davies on his first day back. ‘What have they been feeding you?’
If only he knew, thought Harri, but he knew
not to tell. What would people say if they knew he’d been drinking a witch’s brew for
medicine?
Mum and Imelda had made it very clear that Tân should remain a secret as long as possible. There would be a lot of fuss if the TV and the papers found out he had a real dragon!
Imelda had moved in with them. She’d become a sort of honorary gran. She helped Mum look after the shop.
And … would you believe it? Those stinky, green love potion candles were a hit. Imelda couldn’t make them fast enough. The shop had done brisk business for Christmas and the bank manager was happy again.
‘Wait! Look, over there! It’s Ryan and his dad.’ Harri hid behind the rhododendrons and watched the short, sad flight of the J-20 Mighty Dragon.
Harri couldn’t make out everything Ryan’s dad said, but he heard him wail, ‘We need more power if you are going to win the Dragon’s Gold!’
‘What are they up to?’ Harri wondered as he watched the pair pack up and drive back home. ‘That’s not a dragon!’
Checking that no one was about, Harri opened his backpack and let Tân out for his first flying lesson.
Chapter Six
Imelda and his mum clapped themselves to get warm as Harri placed Tân on top of a tree stump. Harri gave Tân a push. Tân slid down the side of the stump, scrabbling frantically with his claws, and fell to the ground. Tân shook his head and gave Harri a look, as if to say, ‘What was that about?’
Harri put him back and stretched Tân’s wings to show him what he was meant to do.
The same thing happened, again and again. ‘Maybe he’s just not ready to fly,’ Harri suggested. ‘We could try again later in the week? We’d have to go up in the hills so no one can watch us.’
Just then, Tân stood up on his hind legs. His ears quivered and his eyes narrowed in total concentration. In one elegant move, his wings swept out and he leapt off the tree stump. Silently, wondrously, he streaked through the air, landing on all fours, head down, ready to attack. With a flick of his head, he pulled a worm from the grass and swallowed it whole!
Harri stood open-mouthed. ‘Did you see that?’
Imelda laughed. ‘Obviously, the way to a dragon’s heart is through its stomach.’
Harri searched the grass for more worms. He’d once seen a hawking display in the park. The people flying the hawks wore gauntlets on their hands. Imelda had given him some strong gardening gloves for Christmas so his hands wouldn’t get ripped up by Tân’s claws.
Harri held the worm between his finger and thumb. ‘Tân! Come and get it!’
At the sound of his name, Tân looked up. He saw the worm and stood to attention on his back legs, erect and gimlet-eyed. Harri thrilled as Tân spread his wings, beat the air and flew straight to him. His claws grasped the leather of his glove and his jaws ripped the worm in half. The wriggling pink blob slid down his throat in one gulp before he burrowed into Harri’s gloved hand for the other half.
It was the most amazing thing Harri had ever done. Mum and Imelda clapped and applauded as Harri took a bow.
‘I thank you!’ He laughed, taking a bow. ‘Thank you, very much!’ Harri looked Tân in the eye and whispered, ‘That’s the way to do it, you clever little thing, you!’
Tân’s pupils grew huge, a sign that he was pleased to have made his master happy.
Chapter Seven
Tân wasn’t so little anymore. He’d been eating and growing all over the Christmas holidays. He’d discovered that he liked sausages, Christmas pudding, St Gertrude’s Pies and Dylan’s cat food as well as nice fresh worms.
Dylan had got used to sharing his space. He and Tân could often be found curled up together on the landing windowsill, either basking in the weak, winter sunshine or luxuriating in the heat of the radiator.
Now the new term had started, the park was busy again. Harri would rush home from school and take Tân up the hillside behind the town. No one bothered to go there at that time of day. There he could let Tân stretch his wings and fly.
If you’ve never seen a dragon fly, you’ll never know the thrill of watching how they twist and curl through the sky. They are quite unlike birds or bats. Dragons can hover and even fly backwards. Their papery wings rustle while they flap them, but they’re completely silent as they glide in for the kill.
A bond had grown between them. Harri only had to call and Tân would fly to his glove. He didn’t need to bribe him with worms, although Tân was very pleased if there was a tasty reward when he got there!
Harri wasn’t entirely alone on the hillside. He’d spotted Ryan and his dad testing out their plane one day.
After seeing them in the park on Christmas Day, Harri had gone home and done some Googling. He’d typed Dragon, Plane and Red Star into the search box and looked through the images that came up. There it was, halfway down the page, the J-20 Mighty Dragon – Chinese Stealth Fighter Aircraft. It looked just like the plane that Ryan’s dad had made.
Tân was fighting with a pile of Christmas wrapping paper. Harri watched him and thought a while.
Would it be cheating if he flew a real dragon at the Eisteddfod? Wasn’t he meant to have made his flying dragon? He clicked onto the school website again and re-read the rules of the competition for the hundredth time.
There will be a bag of Dragon Gold for anyone who can make a dragon fly for more than ten seconds at the school Eisteddfod on St David’s Day, the first of March next year.
That was as clear as mud. It didn’t say what kind of dragon or what it had to be made out of. It didn’t say how big or small or if it had to flap its wings.
But then again, it didn’t say what the dragon couldn’t be. It could be anything that could be called a dragon and it had to fly for more than ten seconds. That’s all that the rules said.
‘So that’s what Ryan’s dad is up to!’ Harri smiled. ‘It doesn’t say the dragon can’t be an airplane, just that it has to fly for more than ten seconds.’
Tân could fly for more than ten seconds … and he was a dragon! Why couldn’t he enter Tân? No one could beat a real dragon at flying!
But wasn’t he supposed to have made his dragon? Well, in a way he had. It was his drawing that had come to life. He’d made the drawing in the first place.
But what would Mr Davies say if he brought a real dragon to school? What would the other children say? What would the world say if the news got out that he had a real dragon? They might come and take Tân away from him and put him in a zoo!
Tân was climbing up the inside of the Christmas tree. The branches shook and all the decorations jingled and tinkled. Harri had given up trying to stop him. It was his favourite game at the moment.
Tân’s head popped out just below the glass bird near the top of the tree. With a squeak of joy, he launched himself into the air and glided onto Harri’s lap.
‘You daft thing!’ Harri laughed.
He scratched Tân under the chin – he loved that. It made him close his eyes and go all dreamy. As Tân relaxed, it was almost as if a spring was uncoiling inside him.
‘If only you were a remote-controlled model,’ Harri mused. ‘Then I could…’
A huge grin spread across his face as he imagined him and Tân winning the Dragon Gold and finally beating Ryan and his dad. Maybe, just maybe, his idea would work.
Chapter Eight
‘Everything is in the box,’ Ryan’s dad explained for the absolute final time, as he dropped Ryan off at school. St David’s Day had come at last. All his hard work was about to pay off and Ryan was going to win that Dragon Gold.
The box was so big, he’d strapped it to a trolley so Ryan could wheel it into school.
‘Remember to plug it in. It needs to be completely fully charged.’ He wasn’t that worried. All his modifications meant that the J-20 Mighty Dragon could fly for a minute and still be under radio control for a gentle landing if the motor ran out of power.
‘Yes, Dad,’ Ryan sighed. He’d been rehearsed a thousand times. He knew what to do. He could fly the blooming J-20 in his sleep!
Everyone was wearing a daffodil of one kind or another as they poured through the gates of the school. St David’s Day was not only the national day of Wales but, as everyone knew, it was also the school Eisteddfod.
The children were nervous and excited. Everyone had some small part to play in the day’s events. Some had larger parts and would be performing on their own. They’d been practising and rehearsing for weeks, just as Harri and Tân had been. This was a big day in the school’s calendar.
A few of Harri’s classmates had made attempts at making flying dragons. Mostly they were paper airplanes with pictures of dragons glued or drawn on the side. Most of them had been constructed quickly the night before. None of them were going to fly for ten seconds. They were already pretty beaten up from test flights.
Ben had had a great idea. His little brother, Daniel, had been given a shiny, metallic balloon in the shape of a number 5 for his birthday. Ben had borrowed one of his brother’s toy plastic dinosaurs and had tied it to the string of the balloon.
He was showing off his brilliant idea in the playground before assembly, when a stray football sailed through the air and slammed into his stomach. Winded and in pain, he let go and the balloon rose gracefully into the air. Many hands grabbed for it, but a gentle breeze caught the balloon and, within seconds the dinosaur was headed for the heavens. In a minute it was lost from sight in the stratosphere.
Ben’s little brother stood on the infant’s playground slide. He stared up to the sky. His bottom lip trembled as he wailed, ‘My Blooon! My Dinysor!’
‘Shush, Danny!’ Ben soothed. ‘Dinysoar just wants to go back home for a little while.’ He turned to Harri and snarled. ‘Kids! And I bet that was a winning design too!’
Harri tapped his cardboard box, to reassure himself it was still there. Tough luck for Ben but at least it was one less dragon to worry about.
Harri put his box safely on the cupboard top at the back of the classroom. He’d painted the box to look like a sort of dragon cage. It had flames swirling all over it and warning stickers too.
Keep out! Danger!
Warning – Dragons Bite!
Tân was brilliant in the box. As soon as the lights went out, he’d go to sleep for hours, until he was brought out into the light again, when he would wake up and be almost instantly ready to play.
Ryan wheeled his box near a power socket and plugged it in. It was black with a large red star and the letters J-20 painted on the top in army style stencil lettering. The box was plastered with stickers that said Top Secret and warned of Radioactivity and Biohazards. Neither boy was going to show what was inside their boxes until it was time for the competition.
Harri had hardly been able to eat breakfast he’d been so excited. His tummy was rumbling from lack of food and from the butterflies he felt whenever he thought of flying Tân in public for the very first time.
‘What have we got here then, boys?’ Mr Davies asked as he inspected their boxes. A huge leek stuck out of the breast pocket of his jacket. You could rely on Mr Davies to make big gestures.
‘You’ll have to wait and see, sir,’ Harri said, seriously.
‘Oh, top secret, is it?’ he asked in a conspiratorial tone. ‘We won’t be able to see if your dragons can fly until this afternoon, I’m afraid. We’ve a packed schedule this morning.’
He’d been winding them up for weeks, asking how their plans were going, making jokes about dragons and flying, asking them what they were going to do with the Dragon Gold if they won.
The boys were strangely secretive. He’d not got any information out of them at all.
* * *
The morning dragged. The whole school sat in the hall while representatives of each class came forward and showed what they had made for the Eisteddfod. Some had made clothes, others paintings and drawings, others had made models out of toilet rolls and plastic cola bottles.
Then there was the recitation competition. It went on for hours, with poems in Welsh and English.
After break came the singing. Each class had its own choir and a song they had learned and then some children came to the front and sang on their own, while Mrs Harding played the piano for them. Megan sang something from a Disney film. Harri never knew she could sing like that. She was really good.
Then came the musicians. There weren’t that many. They played violins, clarinets and recorders. Some played in duets with Mrs Harding. Rhys Evans played a pop song on his guitar. The audience jigged about and waved their hands in the air like they were at a pop concert!
Then there were silver cups and book tokens for prizes and sweets for the runners up. And then it was dinner time. The dinner ladies swept into the hall, noisily setting up the tables and chairs. They rolled up the shutters to the kitchen and in no time the hall was full of noisy children, discussing each other’s performances.
There were sausages for lunch. Harri slipped one into his pocket and looked around. Sausages were one of Tân’s favourite foods.
‘Aren’t you going to eat those?’ he asked Megan, pointing to the neat pile of sausage ends on her plate.
‘I don’t like the ends,’ she said, making a sick face. ‘Why, do you want them?’
Harri wiped the baked bean sauce off them and put them in his pocket too.
He was supposed to go outside after lunch. Mr Davies was eating a sandwich and marking some exercise books in the classroom.
‘Can I just check my dragon is okay, sir?’ Harry asked.
‘Does it need feeding, then?’ Mr Davies joked.
‘Err … something like that, sir.’ Harry turned his back to Mr Davies so he couldn’t see what he was doing.
‘Are those sausages?’ Mr Davies asked. Harri froze. He hadn’t been careful enough.
‘Err … no, sir.’ Harri scrambled for an explanation. ‘Err … they’re special fuel cells.’
‘Oh.’ Mr Davies carried on marking. ‘They looked like sausages to me. Now off outside when you’re finished.’
‘Yes, sir, Mr Davies.’ Harri breathed a sigh of relief. He’d passed that test!
* * *
‘I wonder how they’re getting on,’ Imelda said, cutting a slice of bread for Harri’s mum. ‘Harri and Tân, that is.’
‘I’m not sure we should have let him take Tân to school.’ Harri’s mum looked worried. She dipped the bread into her carrot soup. ‘I don’t know what will happen if anyone finds out Tân is real.’
‘But the Eisteddfod is the reason Tân exists. It would be pointless for Harri not to take him. This is his big chance to beat Ryan’s dad.’
Harri’s mum blew on her soup. ‘I suppose so,’ she sighed.
* * *
Ryan’s dad waited for his man-sized, chunky vegetable soup to warm up.
‘Popty Ping!’ he sang, as the microwave rang its little bell. He poured the soup into a bowl and stared at it for a while. He wasn’t really very hungry. All he could think about was how Ryan was going to handle the J-20 Mighty Dragon and if they were going to w
in the Dragon Gold.
‘Come on, son,’ he kept muttering to himself. ‘Do the business!’ It was out of his hands. He felt useless. There was nothing he could do but wait until school was over.
* * *
It was one of those really dark, grey afternoons that you get in February and March. Mr Davies led his class out into the playground. They all wore coats and scarves. It was cold. Mr Davies looked up to the skies.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if it snowed later,’ he mused.
Harri and Ryan set their boxes up by the basketball hoop. The paper airplanes managed no more than five seconds in the air. Harri and Ryan were the only real contenders.
‘Give them some space,’ Mr Davies ordered. ‘Come along, everyone go and stand against the wall. Now, who’s going first? Harri … heads or tails?’
‘Heads!’ Harri called as Mr Davies tossed a coin into the air.
The coin spun as it landed on the ground. ‘Tails! Your choice, Ryan. Do you want to go first or last?’
Ryan screwed up his eyes as he tried to judge what Harri had in his box. It would be best if he knew what he was up against.
‘Harri can go first, sir.’ He smiled insincerely at Harri.
Harri hoped it wasn’t a bad sign that he’d lost. He opened his box and pulled out the remote control and switched it on. There was nothing inside it but a battery and a light that he’d torn out of a broken torch. The bulb was only there to make it look as if he’d switched on some complicated electronics inside.
Harri extended the aerial. He’d pulled that off an old, broken radio, and had stuck it on the side with the glue gun his mum used for packing mail orders. Ryan looked impressed. He was going to be the hardest one to fool.
For the past few weeks, Harri and Tân had been practising their deception. While Tân flew about in the air, Harri would wave his fake radio-control unit about as if he was making Tân fly, following Tân’s movements to make it look like he was in charge.