The Dragon's Eye

by Dugald A. Steer

  And he wrote the following words on the blackboard: Fieldwork, Foresight, Forwardness, Frankness, and Fatalities. He underlined the last word three times before turning back to us.

  “Can you tell me about fieldwork, Beatrice? You have been doing some with the knucker.”

  “Does it mean studying dragons in the wild?” asked Beatrice.

  “Well, it’s a bit more complicated,” said Billy.

  “Why is that?” asked Dr. Drake.

  “Well, you need a record book, and you need to remember the other four F’s,” said Billy. “And it’s best by far to study dragons in their natural environments.”

  “Well, yes, but I think Beatrice was on the right track, don’t you?” said Dr. Drake. “And what about foresight, Darcy?”

  “Proper training and preparation are absolutely essential,” said Darcy.

  “Forwardness, Alicia?”

  “That’s something to do with being brave, isn’t it?” asked Alicia.

  “Oh, come on!” said Billy. “I told you: ‘The student must be both daring and truly courageous.’”

  “Frankness, Daniel?” said Dr. Drake, raising his eyebrow a little.

  “Er, a dragonologist must be frank?” I said.

  “Indeed,” said Dr. Drake. “Which means?”

  “He must tell the truth?”

  “Quite,” said Dr. Drake. “A dragonologist must report honestly what he sees at all times. And as for fatalities, unless these are avoided, I’m afraid you won’t make much progress at all. There is one particular danger, however, that is often forgotten. We studied it last year. Can either of you, Billy or Darcy, tell these other children what it is?”

  They both looked blank.

  “While a dragonologist must never underestimate the dangers of suffering from bites, burns, slashes from claws, death by constriction . . .”

  “Oh,” said Darcy. “Hypnosis.”

  “Can you remember what kinds of dragon can hypnotise people?”

  “Only the larger, more intelligent kind,” said Billy. “And they can only hypnotise people who are intelligent themselves. So the girls will be all right,” he added with a smirk.

  Alicia shuffled in her chair as though she often had to put up with this sort of thing. Beatrice looked as though she was going to say something but decided against it. Dr. Drake looked at Billy archly.

  “I dare say that a dragon could hypnotise nearly everyone in this room if he chose to,” he said.

  “Could the knucker —?” began Beatrice, but she was cut off by a tremendous thud that made the whole building shake. We all stood up at once. It sounded as though someone — or something — was trying to smash the wall down.

  “Look!” said Alicia. A huge dragon’s head appeared at one of the windows. From the size of its head, I guessed that the creature would make the knucker look tiny and would positively dwarf Scorcher. When it saw us, its head started moving against the window as though it were hopping up and down in excitement.

  “Jamal’s gotten out again,” cried Darcy.

  “How on earth?” exclaimed Dr. Drake.

  We crowded over to one of the other windows and looked out to see Emery and Mademoiselle Gamay trying to deal with a dragon that stood at least twelve feet high. He had two enormous wings at the front and two huge back legs, but no front legs at all.

  “Jamal’s come to say hello,” said Billy with a laugh.

  Meanwhile Mademoiselle Gamay was trying to attract the beast’s attention with the remains of the roast beef we had eaten for lunch, while Emery held out a large bowl full of glass beads.

  “Can’t we go and see him?” asked Billy.

  “Not now,” said Dr. Drake. “There will be plenty of time to see Jamal later. But if you watch, you may learn something. I am sure that Emery and Mademoiselle Gamay have got the situation under control.”

  It didn’t seem like it. The dragon was ignoring both of them. Instead, he was testing the wall with his hind claws and tail, as though he was wondering just what it would take to knock it down. Then he moved back a little and thumped the wall again with his tail. The building shook as though there had been a small earthquake.

  “Shouldn’t we get outside?” asked Beatrice.

  “Not just yet,” said Dr. Drake.

  Then a rather red-faced Emery managed to get in front of Jamal, distracting him for a moment by placing the bowl of glass beads in front of him.

  Jamal looked briefly at the bowl, tossed his head, and then turned to continue his tail thumping.

  Mademoiselle Gamay had given up on the remains of the beef and instead had gone to fetch an old penny-farthing bicycle. Suddenly, Emery dashed forward, snatched back the bowl of glass beads, and hopped onto the bicycle. Wobbling a little, he pedalled off as fast as he could towards the forest.

  Jamal, noticing that his gift had been taken away from him, now gave Emery his full attention, letting out a roar as he turned his twelve-foot bulk and half flew half ran after Emery, who was whooping with all his might. Soon, both of them had disappeared amongst the trees.

  “He’s only a baby,” said Dr. Drake with a smile. “The glass beads trick usually works. But I do wonder how he keeps on getting out.”

  “Father’s not going to be pleased,” said Billy.

  Dr. Drake said that he needed to go off in case Emery needed help recapturing Jamal, and so lessons ended for the day, but not before he set us some homework to do. Beatrice, Alicia, and I had to study the map on the wall and write short descriptions of all the dragons we found. Billy and Darcy were going to help us with names and descriptions of the species of dragons that they knew. Dr. Drake had also handed them sheets of paper with information about two new dragon species they hadn’t studied before. I had soon copied the map into my record book and drawn rough sketches of the dragons on it. I thought I could recognise a knucker, which looked like Weasel; a wyvern, like Jamal; and a European dragon, which looked a bit like an adult Scorcher.

  “European dragons live amongst mountains or in sea caves,” said Billy. “They grow up to forty-five feet long, breathe fire, and mainly eat cattle, deer, or sheep.”

  “I haven’t actually seen Scorcher breathe fire,” I said. “Only smoke.”

  “That’s because he’s a baby. It takes them a little while to learn how to do it properly.”

  “And what’s this dragon?” I asked. It was in Australia.

  “It’s a marsupial dragon,” said Billy. “I’ve never seen one, but according to Dr. Drake, they raise one young at a time in a fiery pouch.”

  “And they like to box,” I said. I remembered what he had told me about the shady dealer from Shadwell Dock.

  Soon I had made a list of names and descriptions of the dragons in my record book, and Billy had gone into a corner to read the sheets that Dr. Drake had given him. Beatrice, meanwhile, had gotten together with Alicia and had raced through the map exercise with Darcy. I listened as she started asking him about the other posters on the walls.

  “What’s that?” asked Beatrice, pointing to a poster that showed a picture of a hat that had diamonds hanging round the rim.

  “That’s a Back o’ Bourke bush hat,” said Darcy. “They use them in Australia to attract marsupial dragons. You see, Australian cattle drovers sometimes hang corks round their hats to keep the flies away, but dragonologists use fake diamonds instead.”

  “What sort of dragon is that?” asked Alicia, going over to Billy and pointing at the sheet he was reading.

  Billy immediately swung round so that she couldn’t see the sheet.

  “It’s advanced dragonology,” he said. “I don’t expect you girls will get to this level for a while. I’ll show Daniel, though. He seems to catch on quite quickly.”

  He winked at me, and I was just about to go over and have a look when Beatrice hissed, “Daniel, that’s not fair.”

  I sighed and sat down again. It did seem a bit unfair.

  We went back to the house to find that Dr. Drake an
d Emery had returned from rounding up Jamal and reinforcing the fence on his compound. They were deep in conversation, and Dr. Drake looked very worried, but they hushed up as soon as we appeared. Emery fetched a leather ball and told us to kick it around between ourselves.

  “You’ll find out why later,” he said. “But it’s going to be fun.”

  That evening, when Billy was talking to Dr. Drake, Darcy came and showed me the sheets of paper he and Billy had been given. There were two dragons on it. One looked a bit like an imp with arms, legs and claws and was the sort of thing you might expect to see on the side of an ancient cathedral. It was called a gargouille. The other was a small, nasty-looking creature that seemed more like an evil crow than a dragon. It was a cockatrice.

  “Dr. Drake says that cockatrices are very rare, but that they are among the most dangerous of dragons because they can kill their prey merely by breathing on them. They usually live in Mediterranean mountain forests, but I’m sure Dr. Drake mentioned one that lives in England or Wales somewhere. It’s called Bog-Crow. He also said that a few of them migrated to North America. He thinks that it might have been the source for the legend of the Marie Celeste — all the passengers and crew were killed by cockatrices, but the dragons got away.”

  “Let’s show Beatrice,” I said.

  But when we knocked on the door of the girls’ dormitory, there was no reply.

  I knocked harder, and a voice shouted back, “Sorry. Closed for Q.T.B.”

  “Beatrice,” I hissed. “Do you want to see a cockatrice?”

  The door flew open. Inside, the room was already covered with pictures and diagrams of dragons that Beatrice and Alicia had made, and their dragonological record books were open alongside Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Beatrice had obviously been teaching Alicia everything she had learned about evolution. Alicia was sitting on the floor beside a large version of the map and some figures of dragons and dragonologists. It seemed as though Beatrice had made up some kind of dragon game.

  “What’s Q.T.B.?” I asked.

  “It’s a club,” said Beatrice. “No boys allowed.”

  “All right,” I said, “I believe you. But do you want to see this cockatrice?”

  Beatrice fetched a piece of paper so that she could copy it all out.

  “Do you mind?” she asked Darcy.

  “Not at all,” he said. “And I’m sure Dr. Drake won’t mind either, now that you have done the homework he set.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  While Beatrice copied out the details, I tried to have a look at the game she had invented.

  “How do you play?” I asked.

  “Sorry,” said Beatrice. “Q.T.B. members only.”

  “But what does it stand for?” I asked.

  “Quicker than boys.”

  And she shut the door.

  The following morning we had an introduction to Eastern dragons. We learned that while dragons in the West are often thought of as horrible monsters, in the East, dragons are considered beneficial helpmeets to mankind and are celebrated with dragon dances and dragon boat races.

  In the afternoon we learned about a polar cousin of the European dragon known as the frost dragon. We charted the migratory routes of some frost dragons based on sightings by various S.A.S.D. agents. One of the sightings had come from a place in northern India. I wondered if our parents had reported it.

  The next day Emery and Mademoiselle Gamay taught a class on the life cycle of dragons. Mademoiselle Gamay told us that dragons grow continually through their lives, like snakes and crocodiles, and we spent some time looking at various pictures of dragons and estimating their ages from their sizes. Emery showed us an interesting series of pictures that showed how a dragon embryo develops in the egg.

  On the fourth day Dr. Drake brought in to the schoolroom a pile of what he called dragon-tracking paraphernalia. There was a flameproof cloak, which looked like a piece of canvas that had been painted with some sort of flame-retardant paint, a whistle that was supposed to summon dragons, and a pair of binoculars that had a convenient compass set into the handle. After he had let us look at them — cautioning us not under any circumstances to blow the whistle — he pointed to the blackboard, which still had the diagram he had drawn showing how dragons breathe fire.

  “Can anyone remember how fire is produced?” he asked.

  Beatrice’s hand shot up. So did Billy’s, but it was a fraction of a second later.

  “Well, Beatrice?” said Dr. Drake.

  Beatrice smiled. This was obviously Q.T.B. in action.

  “The dragon has a special pouch where it puts a piece of flint and a piece of iron something or other.”

  “Pyrites,” said Billy and Dr. Drake at the same time.

  “Iron pyrites. It uses them to make a spark, and the spark lights the flammable venom in its fangs.”

  “Quite correct,” said Dr. Drake. “Now I think it is time for a little visit to see Scorcher. But we must be careful.” And he looked at me. “Scorcher is quite recovered from his illness now, but you mustn’t get too close to him. While he is here, I think we can see how he is learning to produce fire. It is quite remarkable, given that he is so young.”

  We trooped over to the coal shed, and Dr. Drake, who had brought a lantern, unlocked the door. Being very careful not to open the door very wide, he went in first and soothed Scorcher with the same lullaby I had heard him use before, and then he called us in.

  Scorcher was sitting in a corner of the shed, looking rather sleepy. He was no longer in his cage, but instead was sitting atop the strangest pile of things imaginable. There were some rocks and pieces of coal, a lot of shiny silver knives, forks, and spoons, two old plates, and some pieces of broken mirror. Right on the top were a few of the glass beads that Emery had used to distract Jamal.

  “This is the closest I could get to mimicking a dragon’s lair at short notice,” said Dr. Drake. “A baby dragon like Scorcher will still spend most of his time in his mother’s lair, eating and growing until he is big enough to start learning to fly.”

  From what I had seen at Dr. Drake’s Dragonalia, Scorcher was already learning to fly, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to do anything much except look at him.

  Dr. Drake took a glass bead from his pocket and showed it to Scorcher, who immediately perked up and gave a little screech.

  “Keep back and watch,” he said.

  He pocketed the bead, and Scorcher immediately left the top of the pile and hopped over towards us.

  “Now,” said Dr. Drake. “Fetch!”

  He pretended to throw the bead over Scorcher’s shoulder.

  Scorcher raced back over to where he thought the bead had landed and sniffed for it. When he couldn’t find it, he became agitated. Pretty soon I saw him making a sort of strange movement with his jaw, and I guessed he was jiggling about a piece of flint and iron pyrites. Sure enough, when you knew what to look for, you could see the little sparks that he was making. I also saw a wisp of the same cloud of sulphurous smoke I had seen in Dr. Drake’s Dragonalia.

  Scorcher turned and looked right into my eyes as though asking me what had happened to the shiny thing that Dr. Drake had thrown. I couldn’t turn away, and I felt a sudden urge to go over to him. As I started going towards him, someone pulled me back, but I shook the person off. Beatrice shouted, and Scorcher started screeching loudly and flapping his wings. I can’t remember anything that happened after that until I came to outside. Beatrice and Dr. Drake were standing over me and the other children were standing nearby, looking worried.

  “Will he be all right?” demanded Beatrice. “What happened to him?”

  “I’m afraid that Daniel has undergone a small case of dragon hypnosis,” said Dr. Drake. “I am sorry. It is quite unprecedented for a dragon as young as Scorcher to hypnotise someone. But he will be all right — I promise.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Daniel,” said Dr. Drake gravely, “you must r
est. When you have rested, I want you to come and see me in my office. But until then I am going to ask you to let me have your dragon record book. And I am going ask you to stay in another bedroom.”

  I was devastated. Did this mean I wasn’t going to be able to study dragons anymore? But I felt so light-headed, I didn’t know what to do, so I let Dr. Drake and Mademoiselle Gamay take me upstairs to a bedroom. I lay down and slept for what felt like three days.

  As I slept, I dreamt. At first I dreamt that Beatrice was sitting by my side but that when I turned to look at her, I saw Scorcher instead, baring his teeth at me. I tried searching for the beads that he was looking for, but I couldn’t seem to find them. He looked angrier and angrier, and sparks and smoke started coming from his mouth as he leaned over me. Then he turned into Dr. Drake, mopping my brow with a damp cloth. Then Dr. Drake turned into Ignatius Crook, holding up one of the glass beads triumphantly.

  “It is mine!” cried Ignatius in my dream. “The Dragon’s Eye is mine!” He let out a wicked laugh and disappeared into a dark doorway between the window and the wardrobe.

  After he had gone, I tried to get up to warn Dr. Drake, but I felt as though I were lying on a bed made of bits of broken mirror and I daren’t move in case I rolled over onto anything sharp.

  At last I woke up properly in a cold sweat. I felt ravenously hungry, so I got up and went into the kitchen, where Emery was making some coffee.

  “Hello, trooper,” he said smiling. “You’re a sight for sore eyes. Do you feel up to some soup?”

  I nodded glumly.

  “You’re quite a phenomenon,” said Emery. “You know, dragons can’t usually hypnotise people until they are fully grown. I don’t think Scorcher meant to do it. It just happened.”

  “Will I be able to carry on studying dragonology?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “Have some soup!”

  But I was worried about it. While I was having my soup, Beatrice came rushing in and gave me a hug.

  “I was so frightened, Daniel,” she said.