Paint Your Dragon

by Tom Holt

  He felt well. True, the actual fuel content in fermented liquor wasn’t all that high, and he’d probably have done better in practical terms to have called in at a petrol station and taken a long swig from the pumps. But there was no point in going out of one’s way to appear conspicuous, or at least not yet. Pretty soon he’d be so conspicuous they’d be offering him a Saturday job as a lighthouse. Patience, patience.

  The summer breeze was warm on his back and he instinctively looked upwards. Good thermals, if he wasn’t mistaken. On a lovely calm day like this it was horribly frustrating to be stuck on the ground. As if in sympathy, his shoulder-blades began to itch and he paused a while to scratch them against a gatepost.

  While he was standing and looking at the sky, he became aware of an unusual noise; a bit like thunder, a bit like the roar of a food-processor in full cry, with a tantalising hint of movement and a dash of power. A moment later, two jet fighters swept across the sky, flying perhaps a trifle lower than regulations permitted. They were only visible for a second and a half at most, but in that time his exceptional eyes scanned them and reported every detail of their appearance and construction to a suddenly lovesick brain. True, he’d come across aircraft before, like the big fat lumbering thing he’d come in on - a huge flying metal slug, a parody of flight. These, though, were something else entirely. It was as if a man brought up in strict seclusion by elderly nuns had just wandered into the changing room at a top-flight fashion show. Yes, shouted every fibre of his being, I want one of those.

  He concentrated and quite soon one of the fighters came back. At his subsequent court-martial, the pilot was unable to offer any explanation. The best he could come up with was that it was a sunny day, it looked like a nice place, and there was this friendly looking man in the road below waggling his thumb.

  ‘Hi.’

  The pilot pressed a button and the windshield slid back. ‘Hello,’ he replied. ‘What...?’

  ‘Nice machine you’ve got there.’

  ‘Yes. Um ...’

  ‘I particularly like the way it just sort of drops in on the ground. I always thought you had to find a flat open space and come in gradually.’

  ‘Not any more,’ replied the pilot. ‘Vertical take-off and landing. Look—’

  ‘Mind if I have a go?’

  ‘Well, actually, it doesn’t belong to me, so perhaps—’

  ‘Ah, go on.’

  ‘All right.’

  There were, he noticed as he clambered into the cockpit, all sorts of knobs and levers and things which presumably made the thing go. Superfluous, of course, in his case. He applied his mind.

  ‘Excuse me!’

  He looked down at the pilot. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Before you take off,’ shouted the pilot above the roar of the engines, ‘put the windshield back up. Otherwise you’ll be blown—’

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks. I get claustrophobic in confined spaces.’ How true. How very, very true. ‘Cheerio.’

  Then ... straight up in the air, no messing. This was something he could get used to. And to think, last time he’d been here the best the poor fools could do was stick feathers to their arms with beeswax and jump off cliffs. All credit to them, they’d certainly been busy.

  As the slipstream clawed vainly at his face and the ground became a fast-moving blur far below him, he snuggled back in his seat, sighed with pure contentment and groped with his mind for the weapons systems.

  Bianca was used to inspiration. Scarcely a day went by without some rare and splendid gift of the gods slipping in through the cat-flap of her mind and curling up, nose to tail-tip, in front of the radiator of her genius. It was getting to the stage where she couldn’t walk past a stone-built building without seeing hundreds of enticing images peeping out at her from the heart of the masonry, like socks leering through the glass door of a tumble-drier.

  The Birmingham job, though, was something else entirely. A terrible cliché, of course, to say the thing had taken on a life of its own, but that was about the strength of it. The further the work progressed - and she was amazed at how far she’d got in such a short time—the less actual control she seemed to have. Not that the work was inferior - on the contrary, it was superb, if you liked naturalism in your sculpture. But it was odd, because neither Saint George nor his scaly chum were turning out anything like the way she’d imagined them. George, she couldn’t help thinking, ought to be taller, more heroic, less - well, dumpy and middle aged. He should only have one chin, and that a sort of Kirk Douglas job, the kind of thing you could surround with sea and put a concert party on the end of. He certainly shouldn’t have round little piggy eyes and a squadgy little mouth like two slugs mating. And as for the dragon ...

  But, she had to admit, she did like the dragon. It had style. In fact, it had so much style you could bolt a wheel at each corner and give it an Italian name. It was graceful, attractive, dangerous; you could see the power in those tremendous muscles and hear the whistle of the wind in those amazingly broad, delicate wings. Above all, it made you think, if someone came up to you and offered to bet you money on the outcome of the fight, you wouldn’t take George’at anything less than seventy-five to one. The result had to be a foregone conclusion.

  She said as much to her friend Mike one evening as he helped her with the tarpaulins. Mike nodded.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to have just sold George a life policy,’ he said. ‘A single-premium annuity, yes. I think I’d be on pretty safe ground there. But straight life or accidental death cover, no.’

  ‘Strange,’ Bianca agreed. ‘Do you think it might be symbolism?’

  ‘Probably. What did you have in mind?’

  ‘Well.’ Bianca stood back and took a long, dispassionate look. ‘There’s all sorts of things it could be symbolising, actually.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Um. The ultimate futility of imperialism?’

  ‘Nice try.’

  ‘Um. Male violence towards women?’

  ‘Could be. In which case, the male is definitely on a hiding to nothing, unless you chip off George’s moustache and beef the pectorals up a bit. Talking of his moustache, by the way, had you noticed the strong resemblance to Alf Garnett?’

  ‘All right, then,’ Bianca said. ‘How about World Peace?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mike, nodding. ‘Silly of me not to have realised before.’

  Bianca sighed. ‘You’re right,’ she said, ‘it’s definitely up the pictures. Here, help me get the sheet over it before I get too depressed.’

  ‘Didn’t say I didn’t like it,’ Mike replied, as a gust of wind turned the tarpaulin into a mainsail. ‘I think it’s absolutely amazing. It’s just...’

  ‘Yes. Quite.’

  ‘How much more are you planning on doing to it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Bianca replied pensively. ‘Either I’m going to leave it pretty much as it is, or else I’m going to take a sledgehammer to it first thing tomorrow morning. What do you think?’

  ‘I think,’ said Mike, ‘that if you choose Plan B, I could use the chippings. There’d be enough to cover every driveway in the West Midlands.’

  At that moment, the rogue Harrier jet that had been shooting cathedral-sized divots out of Salisbury Plain suddenly stopped in mid-air, stalled and fell into a spin, dropping out of the air like a shot bird.

  Cuddled in the arms of a warm thermal, the dragon watched it fall and shrugged. He’d been wrong. Compared to his real shape, it was just a toy; fancy dress, a tin overcoat. As it hit the ground and exploded, he flicked his tail like a goldfish, rose and hovered over the swelling mushroom of smoke and fire. Ruddy dangerous, too, he added. One little bump on the ground and they blow up. Shit, I could have been inside that. Doesn’t bear thinking about.

  He throttled back to a slow, exhilarating glide and began an inventory of his new shape. Neat. And gaudy too, which he liked. A little bit more gold wouldn’t have hurt and maybe a few more precious stones here and there; still, what did you
expect from something that owed its original genesis to local government? But in terms of function, of efficiency and power-to-weight ratios, he couldn’t fault it. For a moment, he almost wished there were other dragons in the world. He’d have enjoyed giving them the name of his tailor.

  When Bianca arrived on site the next morning, the tarpaulin was already off and Mike was struggling to fold it; in this wind, a bit like trying to cram the universe into a paper bag. He looked up and gave her a sad smile.

  ‘I asked you to save me the chippings,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘That’s all right. Next time.’

  ‘No, sorry as in what the hell are you talking about.’

  Mike frowned. ‘The dragon,’ he said, pointing. ‘You came back last night and scrapped it. Quick work.’

  ‘No I didn’t,’ Bianca said, pointing. ‘It’s still ...’

  Gone.

  When you’re a dragon, sobering up can be a nasty experience.

  The last of the Polish vodka burned off just as he was attempting a flamboyant triple loop, about seventy thousand feet above sea level, and sixty-nine thousand feet directly above the very pointy tips of some mountains. At that point, something nudged him in the ribs, gave him an unpleasant leer, and said, ‘Hi, remember me?’ It was Gravity.

  Fortunately, he had sufficient height and enough of a breeze to glide quite comfortably down onto a flat green stretch in the middle of the large human settlement he was presently overflying. As he made his approach, he noticed that his chosen landing strip was dotted with humans, all dressed in white and staring up at him, while around the edges of the field, crammed onto rows of wooden benches, were several thousand other humans, also staring. The dragon was puzzled for a moment. He didn’t have a fly, so it couldn’t be undone. Hadn’t they ever seen a dragon before?

  Having felt for the wind, he put his wings back, stretched out his legs, turned into the breeze and dropped lightly down onto the turf, landing as delicately as a cat jumping up onto a cluttered mantelpiece. The white men had all run away, he observed, and the spectators - he assumed that was what they were doing; either that or they were some kind of jury - were trying to do the same, although they were finding it hard because they were all trying to do it at the same time. Some blue men were walking towards him with the slow, measured tread of people who feel they aren’t being paid enough to die. He wished there was something he could do to put them at their ease. He was, however, a realist; the only thing he’d ever managed to do that helped human beings relax was to go away, and unless he could get to a gallon or so of strong drink, that wasn’t among the available options.

  Or maybe it was. The green area was divided from the rows of benches by a thin wall of painted boards, with words on them; National Westminster Bank, Equity and Law and - he recognised that one - Bell’s Whisky. That, if he wasn’t mistaken, was one of the brands of fuel he’d taken on board at the pub. If they had its name written up on a hoarding, perhaps they had some about the place. It would do no harm to ask.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  At once, the blue men stopped dead in their tracks, and began talking frantically to little rectangular boxes pinned to the collars of their coats. This puzzled the dragon at first, until he worked out that the boxes were some sort of pet, that his rather loud, booming voice had frightened them, and the blue men were comforting them with soothing words. The dragon rebuked himself for being inconsiderate and lowered his voice a little.

  ‘Hello,’ he repeated. ‘I wonder if you could help me. Have you got any Bell’s Whisky?’

  Perhaps the little boxes didn’t approve of whisky, because they needed even more calming down this time. Painfully aware that tact had never been his strong point, the dragon modulated his voice into a sort of low, syrupy hum, and beckoned to the nearest of the blue men.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he cooed. The blue man stared, until the dragon was afraid his eyeballs would fall out of his head, assured his pet box that it was all right really, and took a few nervous steps forward. The dragon considered a friendly smile, but thought better of it. His friendly smiles, it had to be admitted, did rather tend to resemble an ivory-hunter’s discount warehouse. It’d probably frighten the poor little box out of its wits.

  ‘You talking to me?’ said the blue man, in a rather quavery voice.

  ‘Yes,’ replied the dragon. ‘Bell’s Whisky. Is there any?’

  ‘What you want whisky for?’

  Softly, softly is all very well, but the dragon was beginning to get impatient. ‘I’ll give you three guesses,’ he replied. ‘Look, either you have or you haven’t, it’s not exactly a grey area.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the blue man replied. ‘I’m a policeman, not a bartender.’

  ‘I see. Would you know if you were a bartender?’

  ‘I suppose so. Why?’

  The dragon sighed. If it had had a fuel gauge, it would be well into the red zone by now, but even so the flames that inadvertently ensued were four feet long and hot enough to melt titanium. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, observing that the policeman had gone ever such a funny colour, ‘you’d be terribly sweet and go and fetch me a bartender, so that we can get this point cleared up once and for all.’

  ‘Um. Yes. Right.’

  ‘Thank you ever so much.’

  ‘Um. Don’t mention it.’

  ‘Hope the flames didn’t frighten your box.’

  The blue man backed away, turned and ran; and for a long time, the dragon sat quietly where he was, conserving his energy and watching the pigeons waddling about on the grass. The whole area was empty by now, except for two or three of the blue men, huddled behind benches at the very back. It dawned on the dragon that something was going on. He frowned. It was, he felt, a bit much. Back in the old days, the humans hadn’t made this much fuss when he dropped in on cities demanding princesses to go, hold the onions.

  You’d think, he reiterated to himself, they’d never seen a dragon before.

  Hey!

  Maybe they hadn’t seen a dragon before.

  Anything’s possible. Perhaps, in this strange and rather down-at-heel century, dragons had become scarce. If this was a remote, out-of-the-way district (his exceptional eyes, scanning generally for a clue, picked out the name Old Trafford written on a board, but it didn’t mean anything to him) then it was conceivable that he was the first dragon they’d ever set eyes on. Reviewed in that light, the behaviour of the humans made some sort of sense. Rewind that and let’s think it through logically.

  Assume they’ve never actually seen a dragon. They will, nevertheless, have heard of dragons; everybody has. And, facing facts, he wasn’t so naïve as to imagine that what they’d heard was necessarily accurate. Humans, he knew, are funny buggers, delighting in the morbid and the sensational, eclectic in their selection of what to remember and what conveniently to forget. Quite likely, that was the case when it came to the popular image of dragons. If he knew humans, they’d ignore the ninety-nine per cent of its time a dragon spends aimlessly flying, basking in the high-level sunlight, chivvying rainclouds to where they’re needed most and persuading winds to behave themselves. More likely than not, the perverse creatures would focus on the five per cent or less of its life a dragon spends at ground level, ridding the world of unwanted and troublesome armour fetishists and saving kings the trouble of finding husbands for superfluous younger daughters.

  In which case ...

  Damn.

  What a time, the dragon reflected ruefully, to run out of gas. Because any minute now, some macho nerd on a white charger is going to come galloping up through the gate with an overgrown cocktail stick under his arm, hell-bent on prodding me in the ribs. Normally, of course, this wouldn’t pose any sort of problem; one sneeze, and all that’s left is some fine grey ash and a pool of slowly cooling molten iron.

  Without fuel, however, he was going to have to rely on teeth and fingernails, which was a pest because it was ever so easy to crack a molar on those s
illy iron hats they insisted on wearing, and if dragons really are scarce, chances are there’s precious few competent serpentine dentists within convenient waddling distance.

  What I need, muttered the dragon to himself, is a good stiff drink of kerosene. He turned his head slowly from side to side, dilated his nostrils and sniffed. Over there ...

  At the back of the enclosure some tall iron gates swung open and four strange green vehicles rolled through. They were big, made of iron and fitted with long iron ribbons under their wheels - socks? go-anywhere doormats? - and when the dragon pricked up his exceptional ears, he heard a blue man by the gate shout to a colleague that it was going to be all right, the tanks were here now.

  Tanks.

  Yes, right, said the dragon to himself, tanks, I remember now. Big metal vessels used for the storage of liquids. At long last, here comes the Bell’s Whisky. And there was me thinking they were out to get me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It can’t,’ Bianca protested, ‘just have disappeared.’

  Mike shrugged and made a pantomime of patting his pockets and poking about in Bianca’s toolbag. ‘Bee, love, it’s a tad on the big side to have rolled away and fallen down a grating somewhere. Of course it’s flaming well disappeared. Obviously, someone’s pinched it.’

  ‘Pinched a fifteen-foot-long statue of a dragon? Kids, maybe? Bored housewife who didn’t know what came over her? Don’t be so bloody stupid. It’d take a whole day just to saw it off the plinth.’

  ‘True.’ Mike peered down at the stone beneath Saint George’s charger’s hooves. ‘And no saw marks, either. In fact, no marks of any kind. You know, this is downright peculiar.’