by Tom Nicoll
“Bit of manual labour never hurt anyone,” said Uncle Fernando. “They’ll be plenty of that waiting for you back in Mexico, Pan. We’ll build some character in you yet, mark my words.”
A gloomy-looking Pan slumped to the floor. It was going to be horrible not having Pan around, but I realized that it would be much worse for him having to live with those two. I wished I could just make our problems disappear.
Then I realized I could. My eyes had drifted to the toilet handle.
It would be so easy.
I could literally flush our problems away.
So easy…
No, I thought. It wouldn’t work. True enough, they didn’t have their wetsuits, but I had no doubt they’d still manage to get back somehow.
Still … we might get a couple of hours without them, which would be nice.
No, it was a crazy idea. There’s no way I could do it.
“Hey, how about a bit of soap down here?” shouted Uncle Fernando.
FLUSH!!!
I stood there for a few moments in stunned silence. Slowly I turned my head towards the toilet handle where Pan now dangled from it, a look of regret on his face.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Did you want to do that?”
When Pan’s aunt and uncle eventually showed up again, they were not happy.
Obviously.
My bedroom door opened and the two of them stepped in, soaked from head to tail, and fuming. Pan and I tried our best not to laugh, but it was tough.
“You flushed us down the toilet!” said Aunt Maria, pointing a claw at Pan.
“While we were bathing, I might add,” said Uncle Fernando, as if that somehow made it worse.
“Did he put you up to it?” asked Aunt Maria, pointing towards me.
“No,” snapped Pan. “I did it myself, because I don’t want you here. And I don’t want to live with you. I want to stay with Eric.”
“Mini-Dragons don’t belong with humans!” shouted Uncle Fernando. “You’re coming home with us and that’s the end of it.” He snatched the facecloth I had offered them. After drying himself, he took a bite out of the material.
Aunt Maria looked appalled. “Fernando! Junk food!”
“I’m starving, Maria!” he said. “I haven’t had a goat in days and in the last few hours I’ve been nearly eaten by a cat and flushed down the toilet. Would you rather I ate a prawn cracker?”
For the rest of the night, the atmosphere in my room was tense to say the least. Uncle Fernando worked alone on the top of my chest of drawers, repairing the broken helmet by fusing the pieces back together with his dragon breath. Pan sulked in his sock drawer. I pretended I had some homework to do, and Aunt Maria went to bed early.
My bed.
Uncle Fernando and Aunt Maria refused to sleep in my drawers and, with the mood they were in, I didn’t feel like arguing with them.
So at bedtime I took a spare blanket and pillow out of the cupboard, lay down on the floor and fell asleep.
It was early the following morning when I woke up, thanks to a tiny claw pressing into my cheek.
“Pan?” I yawned. “What do you want?”
“Shhh!” he whispered. He pointed towards my bed, where I could hear the sound of two Mini-Dragons snoring. “I think I have a plan to get rid of them for good.”
I rubbed my eyes, still half asleep. “Pan, you’ve already tried feeding them to my cat and flushing them down the toilet. What else can you possibly come up with?”
Pan whispered in my ear.
I sat bolt upright, completely awake.
I didn’t think it was possible, but Pan had come up with an idea that made the others seem harmless.
It was terrifying.
It was crossing a line.
It might just work.
Toby’s mum answered the door wearing a fluffy pink dressing gown, her normally neat hair looking like a lion’s mane, shooting off in all directions. But some things never change – she was still tapping away on her phone, barely acknowledging me.
“Is Toby there?” I asked.
Her eyes drifted briefly from the screen to me then back again. She walked off without saying a word.
Moments later a bleary-eyed Toby appeared wearing what I knew was a very expensive pair of silk pyjamas. I knew because, like with all his things, he made sure I knew what they cost.
“Crispo?” he said. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Sorry, I know it’s early,” I said.
“What do you want?” yawned Toby.
“Here,” I said, shoving a taped-up shoebox into his hands.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“It’s something you’ve wanted for ages,” I said.
Toby’s eyes lit up. “A Ferrari?”
“What? No!” I said, shaking my head. “How would I even… No – the other thing you’ve wanted for ages.”
Toby had to think for a moment or two. “You don’t mean…? Not the dragon toy?”
I nodded. “Yes. Well, no, not that one. But one just like it. Two, in fact.”
Toby suddenly didn’t seem so tired any more. In fact, I couldn’t remember seeing him more alert. “Two dragon toys?” he said. “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” I said.
Toby went to open the box, but I put my hand on his. “No,” I said firmly. “Not here. Wait until you’re inside.”
Toby looked at me suspiciously. “What’s going on? Why would you give these to me? Where did you even get them? I can’t find them anywhere.”
“Enough questions,” I said. “Do you want them or not?”
Toby looked at the box. “Well, yeah, of course, but—”
“Great,” I said. “Enjoy!”
I turned and ran back towards my house, leaving before Toby could utter another word.
Pan and I sat on the end of my bed, contemplating what we had just done.
“Min and Jayden are coming around this morning,” I said, trying to break the silence.
“Oh?” said Pan quietly. “That’ll be nice. Do you think we should have told my aunt and uncle that Toby thinks we’re all toys? To avoid confusion, I mean?”
I thought about this, then shook my head. “No,” I said. “We would have had to wake them up first for that. And they wouldn’t have listened anyway.”
Pan nodded and we returned to sitting in silence.
“We’re horrible, aren’t we?” I said, after a while.
Pan nodded. “A little bit,” he said. “Not as horrible as they are.”
“But we just gave your horrible aunt and uncle to the most horrible person we know. That makes us horrible times horrible.”
“We’re horrible squared?” asked Pan.
“I think so,” I said.
A picture formed in my head of Toby playing with the Mini-Dragons. What if he wanted them to light their own farts like he had seen Pan do once? Somehow I couldn’t picture Aunt Maria agreeing to that. But Toby doesn’t like to take no for an answer. I imagined him tearing the two of them apart, looking for the buttons that made them breathe fire.
I knew what we had to do.
“We have to get them back,” I said, with zero enthusiasm.
Pan let out a resigned groan. “You’re right. We can’t just leave them with Toby. No one deserves that.”
It was going to be easier said than done though. Toby had wanted a Mini-Dragon ‘toy’ for ages – he wasn’t going to hand them over without a fight.
There was a knock at the door. Pan and I looked at each other.
A few moments later, Dad shouted up the stairs. “Eric, that’s Toby at the door for you.”
Downstairs, I found a very agitated and jittery Toby waiting for me. Before I could open my mouth, he had shoved the shoebox back into my hands.
Then he ran away.
“Well, that can’t be good,” I said to myself. I hated to imagine what could have happened for Toby to give them up so easily.
I brought the
box back up to my room then opened the lid. Two very angry Mini-Dragons glared back at me.
“Oh, there you are!” I said, hoping to sound relieved that we had found them.
“Don’t either of you even try to talk your way out of this one,” said Uncle Fernando, as they both flew out of the box and perched themselves on my chest of drawers.
“What did you do to Toby?” I asked.
“Toby?” said Uncle Fernando. “Is that what you call him? The silly boy seemed to think we were toys. Kept putting us up on his shelf. So I tried giving him a history lesson on Mini-Dragons, but then he started yammering on about finding my ‘Off’ switch until eventually he bundles us back into the box. A very rude young man, but no more than I’ve come to expect from humans.”
“You’re in for it now,” said Aunt Maria, shaking a claw at Pan.
Pan didn’t seem to care. “Oh yeah? It’s not like you could do anything worse to me than make me go and live with you.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” said Uncle Fernando. “There’s still one thing we can do that you’ll dislike even more.”
“And what’s that?” asked Pan, folding his arms.
Aunt Maria gave her nephew a cruel smirk, before saying, “We’re going to tell your mum on you!”
“Eric, your friends are here,” shouted Mum.
“Thanks, Mum,” I said, rushing down the stairs to greet Min and Jayden. “Can we keep using the computer?”
“OK,” she replied. “But remember I’ll need it in a little while for my class.”
At the top of the stairs, Min and Jayden looked at me with concern. “Everything all right, Eric?” asked Jayden.
“No,” I said, before filling them in on our attempts to get rid of the unwelcome Mini-Dragons.
“Wow,” said Min. “You really handed them over to Toby?”
I nodded. “Although it’s probably Toby we should feel sorry for.”
“Where are they now?” asked Jayden.
“They’re in the computer room speaking to Pan’s parents,” I said. “Getting him into trouble. But I have an idea.”
Min frowned. “It doesn’t sound like your ideas have been that great recently.”
“I know,” I said. “But this is our last shot. The helmet’s fixed so Fernando and Maria want to take Pan away this morning. We have to convince Pan’s parents to let him stay.”
The three Mini-Dragons were gathered around the laptop screen, furiously shouting over the top of each other, as Pan’s parents looked on with weary expressions. It was impossible to make out what anyone was saying, especially since they were all talking in their dragon language.
“QUIET!” Pan’s mum shouted at last, silencing the room. I guessed from the way she was looking at us that the switch to English was for our benefit. Whatever she had to say, she wanted everyone to hear it. She reminded me of my own mum in a lot of ways. She was kind-hearted, but there was definitely a side of her that you didn’t want to mess with.
“Pan,” she said in a much lower voice, “I’m very disappointed with you. Your behaviour is unacceptable. First you smash your diving helmet, which I don’t believe for a second was an accident. Then you send your uncle off to hunt a cat … when you know perfectly well your uncle is a hopeless hunter.”
“Hey!” protested Uncle Fernando.
“Then you flush them down the toilet,” continued Mrs Long, ignoring Fernando. “And then you bundle them into a box and give them away!”
“We didn’t raise you to behave like that, did we?” said Pan’s dad.
Pan shook his head.
“He’d better not behave like this when he’s living with us,” said Aunt Maria.
“I don’t want to live with you!” shouted Pan.
“Now, son,” said Pan’s dad, “we’ve been over this. Until it’s safe for you to return to China, you have to live with your aunt and uncle. Only other Mini-Dragons can teach you the ancient Mini-Dragon ways.”
Pan didn’t look convinced. “Ancient Mini-Dragon ways?” he said. “Like the dragon codes that only dragons know how to use?”
“Exactly,” said Pan’s dad.
“That Eric managed to figure out in, like, five seconds?” said Pan.
His father squirmed a little. “Well … all right, so he got lucky there. But only a Mini-Dragon can bestow upon another Mini-Dragon the five qualities they must have if they’re to become well-rounded adults. Leadership, Ingenuity, Bravery, Loyalty and Kindness.
Pan’s aunt and uncle nodded smugly in agreement, not that I had seen them display any of those qualities themselves.
“But Pan already has all of these things,” I said.
“Oh yes,” said Aunt Maria, smirking. “He was very kind when he flushed us down the toilet. And so loyal when he gave us away. How brave he was sending us off to get eaten! What ingenuity he showed when smashing his helmet! And he displays such tremendous leadership letting himself be brainwashed by a human!”
The room fell silent. Everyone was looking at me for a response. I could feel my blood boiling. There had to be a way to prove them wrong.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, rushing out of the door.
I found Posy downstairs looking at a book with Dad. She caught sight of me, smiled then raised her little camera and almost blinded me with the flash.
“Thought I’d take Posy through some of the photo albums,” said Dad. “As it looks like we’ve got a little photographer on our hands here.”
“Hey, Posy,” I said. “Would it be OK if I borrowed your camera for a bit?”
“Oh-kay,” she said, handing it to me.
Out of curiosity, I picked up the photo album and quickly thumbed through it. “Actually, can I borrow this, too?” I asked.
“Sure,” said Dad, giving me an odd look. “What for, exactly?”
“Just a little project I’m working on,” I shouted, as I raced up the stairs.
I burst into the room, put down the photo album and started scrolling through the hundreds of pictures Posy had taken on the camera. As I neared the end, I almost fell over. What I had been looking for was there, but there was also something even better.
“Eric, is everything all right?” asked Pan.
“The boy’s completely lost it,” muttered Uncle Fernando.
“No, I haven’t,” I said, “and everything’s fine. Better than fine.” I plugged the camera into the laptop and started clicking away.
“OK,” I said at last, looking directly at Pan’s parents on the screen. “You want leadership? Take a look at this.”
I attached the files and clicked the send button on the computer. It made a little whooshing noise as it sent a bunch of images to Pan’s parents. I watched as they opened the email on screen.
“I don’t understand,” said Pan’s mum. “What am I looking at?”
I double-clicked on the files so that everyone could see the pictures. Images of a party in full flow appeared on the screen. “These,” I said, “are photographs taken from my parents’ surprise party. A party that Pan organized every last detail of – from the invites to the decorations to the music to the colour of the balloons. He arranged it all. How’s that for leadership?”
Pan’s parents looked impressed. “You did all that?” asked his father.
Pan nodded.
“That woman in the photos reminds me of someone,” said Mrs Long, before shaking her head. “Well, I mean, it’s very impressive but still—”
“I’m not finished,” I interrupted. “There’s more. I’m sending you a video file.”
I couldn’t believe it was on there. Posy had been hanging around outside the room when it happened, she must have been filming at the same time. I opened the file. The footage was pretty shaky – probably about as good as you could expect from a two-and-a-half-year-old who had accidentally switched the camera on to video mode – but it was good enough to show the moment when Pan confronted Pusskin and saved his uncle’s life.
Pan’s parents let out huge gasps.
“My little boy!” said his mum, holding her claws over her mouth. “So brave!”
“Good job, son!” said his dad, beaming with pride.
An indignant Uncle Fernando sniffed. “I had a perfectly good plan for escaping,” he said.
“Was your plan to let Pusskin choke on you?” asked Jayden, causing everyone to burst out laughing. Except Pan’s aunt and uncle, of course.
Min must have figured out what I was trying to do, as she was already flicking through the photo album. Her face lit up as she removed a photo and held it up to the screen. It was a picture of my dad and the football team he managed, the Kippers, celebrating on the pitch.
“Here’s loyalty,” she said, her face beaming with pride. “This is a picture of Eric’s dad’s football team after winning their second game in history – thanks to Pan, who stayed up all night working on their tactics after he accidentally set them on fire and got Eric into heaps of trouble.”
There was a brief silence as it seemed to dawn on Min that the last part of that story didn’t make Pan sound so good.
“Moving on,” said Jayden quickly, who was also holding a photo. He held it up to the screen. It was a picture taken from my ninth birthday party, with Toby shooting through the air on my electric scooter. “Ingenuity,” said Jayden. “Pan once made a scooter fly.”
Of course Jayden had left out the part about Pan doing this by accident. And the part where the scooter crashed into a tree moments later.
Pan’s dad had an excited look on his face. “I had no idea you were into tinkering,” he said, looking admiringly at Pan. “Chip off the old claw, eh? Have you done anything else?”
“Well, I once made a golf cart go faster than a car,” admitted Pan.
“Wow!” said his father. “That’s amazing. You must tell me all about it sometime.”
“I will,” said a grinning Pan.
It looked like we were starting to win over Mr Long, but I wasn’t so sure about his wife. She looked delighted to hear good things about her son, but she had that same pained look on her face that my mum got when it was time to break it to me that I had to go to the dentist.