Paint Your Dragon

by Tom Holt

  All right, Kurt, do what you were hired to do. Time for you to become a saint, Kurt. Kill the dragon.

  ‘Pardon me?’

  Don’t be silly, Kurt. You’re a professional, you do what you were told. Now kill the blasted dragon.

  Kurt raised the gun, ever so slightly. He wasn’t smiling any more. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. well?

  ‘Sorry to split hairs,’ Kurt said, ‘but what our agreement actually said was, I was hired to kill a dragon. Not The. A.’

  Kurt. What on earth are you ...?

  Lundqvist stood up in a single smooth movement. The muzzle of the gun traversed the room, covering Bianca, Mike and the dragon. Then it was pointing at the screen.

  ‘Only one dragon in this room, Nosher,’ he said. ‘We got one female human, two male humans, a male saint and you. Reckon that makes you the last of your species.’

  Kurt...

  The shotgun boomed eight times, filling the air with broken glass as all the screens in the room disintegrated into powder. The printer in the corner screamed into action and had filled twelve sides of A4 in two and a half seconds before a blow from the stock of the Remington silenced it for ever.

  ‘Another species extinct,’ Kurt grumbled, mopping a slight cut under his left eye. ‘Don’t you just hate it when that happens?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ‘Taxi!’ Chubby said.

  ‘Yes, miss?’

  Chubby winced. Not that it wasn’t a very nice body - gorgeous was the word he’d have chosen - it was just that it wasn’t, well, him. The tragedy of it was that under normal circumstances he’d have given anything to be this close to such a sensational-looking bird, but somehow he felt that fancying yourself wasn’t a good idea. Made you go blind, he’d read somewhere.

  ‘The airport, please. Fast as you like.’

  Not much to show for a life’s work, he reflected, as he slung the Marks and Spencer bag which contained everything useful he’d been able to find in the studio onto the back seat of the taxi. All he’d been able to find to wear was an old overall of Bianca’s. There had been enough money in the meter to cover a taxi fare. He’d have to think of some way of getting on and off the plane without a ticket or a passport, of course, but provided he could make it to Zurich, his problems should then be over. He could remember the access code to his safety deposit boxes, and for the first time he was in a position to test the hypothesis that diamonds are a girl’s best friend. Personally he didn’t believe it; where he came from, index-linked Government stocks were a girl’s best friend and diamonds were just someone she occasionally had lunch with. But it would be fun researching the point.

  There was a jeep following the cab.

  Coincidence, Chubby assured himself, sliding down the seat. Must be thousands of jeeps in a city this size, and ninety-nine-point-nine of them must be owned by trendy young accountants. The chances of being tailed by - say, for the sake of argument, Kurt Lundqvist—must be so tiny as to be impossible to quantify in Base Ten. Your imagination will be the death of you, Stevenson.

  In which case, he added, it’ll have to get a wiggle on if it doesn’t want to be beaten to it. The jeep had just overtaken the taxi and there was Lundqvist in the driver’s seat shaking a fist at him.

  Or was that meant to be a cheery wave?

  Get real.

  Shucks, Chubby told himself, I’ve been killed once already today. He craned his neck and told the driver to pull in.

  ‘Gone?’

  The dragon nodded. He didn’t want to speculate on where Saint George had gone ...

  (‘But I’m a saint, for crying out loud. Are you blind? We’re going the wrong way.’

  The Captain of Spectral Warriors sniggered. ‘A saint,’ he repeated. ‘Just off to a fancy dress bash, were you?’

  ‘I’m under cover, you idiot. Now let me go.’

  The Captain ignored him. Next thing he knew, they were at the gate, and there, dammit, were five not unfamiliar faces waiting for him.

  ‘Chardonay!’ he shrieked. ‘Snorkfrod! Prodsnap! Tell these hooligans who I am, for pity’s sake.’

  Chardonay and Snorkfrod exchanged glances.

  ‘Never seen this jerk before in my life,’ they chorused.) ... But something told him that it wasn’t going to be nice there. Oh well, it’d be a change for him, after all those years in the other place. If he behaved himself for a couple of million years or so, maybe they’d give him a job in the kitchens.

  The dragon shook himself all over, like a dog. ‘Now what?’ he demanded. ‘What I’d really like is an affidavit from the Holy Ghost saying the rest of my life’s my own, but I’m not going to count my chickens till they’ve come home to roost.’

  Bianca shrugged. ‘Kurt’ll be back soon,’ she said. ‘He’ll probably know.’

  They waited for two hours, which was, as it happened, two hours wasted. Then Bianca suggested that they take a walk.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A walk. Out in the open air.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Fun,’ Bianca replied. ‘It’s something humans do. You’ll have to learn these things if you’re going to be a human the rest of your life.’

  The dragon looked at her. ‘Much risk of that, is there?’ he said. ‘In your opinion, I mean?’

  ‘What’s wrong with being human?’

  The dragon winced. ‘Give me a break,’ he said. ‘Quite apart from the not flying and not breathing fire and not gliding effortlessly above the clouds, feeling the sun on your back and the wind in your scales, I think you humans have a really horrible time. And you’re welcome to it. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Settle down somewhere and get a job?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Bianca replied, as they stepped out into the street. ‘Maybe there’s some sort of agency that resettles you. You know, flies you out to Australia, gives you a new identity, teaches you a useful trade ...’

  ‘Get stuffed: I don’t want a useful trade. And where’s Australia?’

  ‘I think you’d like Australia. It’s big. And hot. You could be the flying doctor, or something.’

  They walked in silence for a while, until the dragon sat down on a bench, complaining that his feet hurt.

  ‘Now,’ the dragon said, ‘if I could only get my nice statue back.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Bianca replied grimly. ‘Not again.’

  ‘But it’s all in one piece,’ the dragon replied, attempting a winning smile. ‘I saw it for myself, back on its plinth. Oh go on, be a sport. I promise to be careful with it.’

  ‘It’s not the statue I’m worried about,’ Bianca said. ‘Now, if you’d promise to be careful with the planet—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I wouldn’t believe you. Gosh, look where we are.’

  In front of them, dominating attractive Victoria Square like a Rolls Royce Corniche in a Tesco’s car park, was the statue. For all that it was the work of her own hands and every square inch of it was familiar to her as her own body, Bianca’s heart stopped for a moment and her breath lodged in her throat like an undigested chunk of bread roll. It would be so easy to believe it was really alive.

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ she said, grabbing at Fred and missing. ‘Come back here. Leave it alone!’

  She was, of course, wasting her breath. The dragon had sprinted up to the statue, he was climbing onto it, scrabbling with his fingers ...

  He was still there.

  ‘Bianca,’ he said quietly. ‘It won’t let me in. It’s locked or something. It’s ... dead.’

  Bianca stood still. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t be allowed to have it, but truly I am sorry.’

  The dragon looked up and met her eye. ‘Not to worry,’ he said. ‘You can always make me another one.’

  ‘Over my dead body.’

  ‘If you insist,’ the dragon replied. ‘A plinth like that one would do me fine, but you’re the creative one, you have what you like.’

  ‘I am not,’ Bianca said, ‘carving you another statue.
You’ve already got a body. There’s starving people in the Third World who’d be glad of a body like that.’

  ‘Cannibals, you mean?’

  Bianca shrugged. ‘I could do you an owl,’ she said. ‘Or a nice seagull. You’d suit a nice seagull.’

  ‘You know I wouldn’t, Bianca. I’d pine away, or fly into a telegraph wire, or get my feathers covered in oil slick. I’m a dragon, Bianca. I need to be what I really am.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Bianca replied, shaking her head. ‘If it’s any consolation, you’re not the only one. In point of fact, the number of people who’re ... Dragon? Oh, for God’s ...’

  The dragon had clambered right up onto his own head. It was a long way to the ground from there, as the crow flies. Not so far as the human falls, but landing safely is more problematic that way.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Bianca demanded.

  ‘I’m standing on my head. What does it look like I’m doing?’

  ‘Come down,’ Bianca shouted. ‘It isn’t safe!’

  The dragon stood, motionless, gazing. He could see a long way from there; almost as far as he’d been, and almost as far as he had to go. At first Bianca, and then Bianca and a lot of professional people with loudhailers and certificates to prove they were experts at getting people down from high places, tried to persuade him to come down. He didn’t seem to hear them. He was miles away.

  In the middle of all this excitement, a jeep rolled up and parked on the edge of the crowd, behind the TV van. They listened to the reporter jabbering happily into his microphone.

  ‘He’s got it all wrong, of course,’ Mike said.

  ‘Only to be expected,’ Kurt replied. ‘Just as well, probably. If they knew exactly who he was they’d be shooting at him.’

  On the back seat of the jeep, Father Kelly knelt, head bowed, palms together. Kurt rather wished he wouldn’t; it had been ever so slightly flattering at first, when this priest came running over pointing to something Kurt couldn’t see, three inches or so over the top of his head, and gibbering about haloes and saints. That had been two hours ago and he hadn’t let up one bit in all that time. Furthermore, he kept asking Kurt to do things he couldn’t do, and wouldn’t even if he could; in particular, the requests concerning disarmament and world peace would put Kurt personally out of a job. Kurt had tried asking him nicely to stop, shouting and even hitting him with the tyre iron; the clown didn’t seem to notice. Finally he’d decided to try ignoring him till he went away. There was a chance it might work in maybe forty years or so.

  ‘Ah shucks,’ Kurt sighed. ‘Guess I’d better deal with this. I think it’s the last of the loose ends.’ He climbed out of the jeep, shoved something down inside his jacket, glanced in the wing-mirror and smoothed his hair. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I get to thinking, maybe it’d be nice if some other guy sorted out the loose ends, just once. In my dreams, huh?’

  ‘In my dreams,’ Mike replied, ‘I get chased down winding corridors by a seven-foot-tall saxophone. Count yourself lucky.’

  Kurt nudged and shoved his way to the front of the crowd and waved. The dragon saw him and waved back.

  ‘Yo, Fred,’ Kurt shouted. ‘What are you doing up there, for Chrissakes?’

  ‘Using my head,’ the dragon replied. ‘Following my nose. That sort of thing.’

  Kurt shrugged. ‘Up to you, man,’ he said. ‘If you come down, you can have maybe fifty years of quiet, mundane existence; a splash of fun here and there, from time to time a kick in the nuts from God, and eventually a one-way ride on the celestial meathook.’

  ‘Kurt,’ the dragon replied, ‘you missed your calling. You should have been in advertising.’ He grinned and stood on one leg while he scratched an itchy ankle. ‘I think it was Confucius or one of that lot who said it’s not necessarily better to eat shit than go hungry.’

  ‘Depends,’ Kurt replied, taking a bar of chocolate from the top pocket of his jacket and breaking off a chunk. ‘Raw, yes, agreed. What confuses the issue is books like Shit Cookery Oriental Style and 1001 Feasts Of Faeces. Boy, you don’t know what anything’s like until you’ve tried it.’

  ‘Bless you,’ the dragon replied. ‘You’d be good at this sort of thing if only your heart was in it. But I’ve seen more sincerity on a game show.’

  Kurt shrugged. ‘Catch,’ he said. He pulled something out from under his jacket and tossed it to the dragon, who caught it one-handed.

  ‘What’s this?’ the dragon asked.

  ‘Ah,’ Kurt replied, and walked away. For the record, on the third day he ascended bodily into Heaven, where they gave him a job searching new arrivals in case they’d tried to take it with them. He was very good at it and bored stiff. Eventually he broke into the reincarnation laboratories, then ran away and joined a flea circus.

  The dragon opened the package Kurt had thrown him. He studied it for a while, puzzled; then, just as the TV cameras managed to zoom in and focus on it, he threw it into the air. Then he followed it.

  Bianca, among others, screamed and looked away as he hit the ground. When she looked up again, she saw that her statue of Saint George was back in position, horse rearing, shield held forwards, sword raised. It was stunningly beautiful, and all wrong. Even before the crowd had dispersed, she knew what she had to do.

  Three months later, the vice chairman of Kawaguchiya Integrated Circuits (UK) formally declared the revamped Victoria Square open. It was raining; flinging it down with the special reserve stock extra wet rain with added real water that you only get in Birmingham. As an extra precaution, some men from the Council had attached inch-thick steel hawsers to the legs of the statues, but they needn’t have bothered. The new George and Dragon group wasn’t going anywhere, or at least not for some time.

  Critical opinion was divided, as always, ranging from ‘strikingly innovative and original’ to ‘gratuitously perverse’. The latter school did wonders for the statue’s popularity, as hundreds of people who thought they knew what ‘perverse’ meant turned out to have a gawp. What they actually saw was a tiny dragon backing away from a huge, towering George, advancing on his minuscule opponent with his sword raised above his head.

  Later critics recognised the piece’s true merits; and now it’s in all the books and you can buy little plastic Saint Dragon and the George key-rings in the library gift shop in nearby Chamberlain Square. In any event, it was Bianca’s last sculpture; she retired, hung up her chisel and went into partnership with Mike, running the biggest chipping and gravel merchants’ firm in the West Midlands. Ex-friends still ask pointedly why someone who devoted so much of her life to making statues should now devote an equal amount of energy to buying them up in bulk and turning them into limestone fertiliser. When asked, Bianca will generally smile and make some oblique remark about slum clearance and doing her bit to put the finality back into Death, until Mike interrupts her and explains that actually, there’s more money in it. Which, incidentally, is perfectly true.

  The dragon rose.

  This high above the clouds, with no ground visible and nothing else to be seen in any direction except straggling white fluff, perspective goes by the board. What looks like a small dragon up close could be a large dragon far away, or vice versa. Not, of course, that it actually matters.

  True, Kurt’s gift-wrapped parcel had turned out to contain a six-inch-long plastic toy dragon, bought from the Early Learning Centre in the Pallasades, off New Street. But, as Kurt himself deposed in evidence in front of the Celestial Board of Enquiry, it stood to reason that if it was in a kids’ shop, it was probably a kid toy dragon, and maybe it just grew up.

  Or maybe it didn’t want to grow up. Maybe it just thought a happy thought and flew the hell out.

  There’s an urban folk-myth that says that every time a child says he doesn’t believe in dragons, somewhere a dragon dies. This is unlikely, because if it was true, we’d spend half our lives shovelling thirty-foot corpses out of the highways with dumper trucks and the smell would be intoler
able. Slightly more credible is the quaint folk-theorem that says that the higher up and away you go, the less rigid and hidebound the rules become; it’s something to do with relativity, and it limps by for the simple reason that it’s far more trouble than it’s worth to disprove it.

  In any event, the dragon rose. With nobody to see and nobody to care, it was as big as it wanted to be. It was huge.

  This high up, small is large and large is small, fair is foul and foul is fair; and this is fine, because problems only arise when people on the ground point and say, ‘This is small; this is big; this is good; this is bad.’ Which points out the moral of the story: stay high, stay aloof and there’ll be nobody to fuck you around. It works flawlessly if you’re a dragon, which very few of us are. Unfortunately, there’s no equivalent pearl of wisdom for human beings, who therefore have to make out the best they can.

  The boy who stuck feathers to his arms with wax and learned to fly eventually went so high that the sun melted the wax, and he fell. But that was all right, too, because it served as an awful warning, and besides, he was heavily insured.

  In any event, the dragon rose. The dangerous heat of the sun warmed his plastic wings but didn’t melt them. An airliner, carrying the Kawaguchiya Integrated Circuits team back to Tokyo, flew past directly below, looking as small as a child’s toy in comparison. A little higher up, a communications satellite bounded back the amazing news that earlier that day, in Mongolia, the mythical Saint George had killed what could only be described as a dragon, along with fifty thousand innocent bystanders, who on further enquiry turned out not to have existed, and so that was all right. The item was sandwiched between the latest in the Southenders-Star-In-Love-Romp-With-Plumber story and an entirely inaccurate weather forecast; what the guys in the trade call Context.