Dragon Shield

by Charlie Fletcher

  The dragon had a choice of three aisles to search. Will was in the middle one. It was quite crowded with frozen people. The two men in turbans made the kind of barrier he could see the dragon would not be able to squeeze past. Maybe that would save him. He saw the dragon turn into the aisle to his left and heard it snuffle and trudge its way along, its progress marked by little grunts as it shoved at what Will himself was beginning to think of as Regulars.

  He tried to calm his shallow breathing as he heard the dragon draw level with him, on the other side of the shelves. There was a rattle and clatter of tinny wheel noise and a screech as the creature climbed over a trolley blocking its progress. Its wingtip smashed into the hanging light which began to swing wildly back and forth, strobing on and off, throwing crazed shadows dancing across the walls.

  Will realized that the dragon would get to the top of the next-door aisle and come at him from behind. The two men in turbans would be of no use to him as a barricade.

  He couldn’t think of anything to do. He found his left hand was resting on the scarab bead on the bracelet round his right wrist. It seemed to have got hotter as the dragon got closer. He wondered if it could sense the dragon and was acting as a kind of warning device. Then he worried that the dragon might also be able to sense the stone. And as he worried even more about how painful and horrific things would get if the dragon did discover him he realized he did have one way out.

  He could slip the bracelet off his wrist.

  If his theory was right he would then be as frozen as any other Regular. It was a last choice, the kind of thing you do in despair. He wondered if it was just cowardice, a kind of suicide even. But surely this nightmare wouldn’t go on forever? Surely the world would reboot and everything would go back to normal, and him with it? Taking the scarab off his wrist might not be a betrayal of Jo, of his mother?

  And then, just as he was about to give up, he realized all hope was not quite lost. His one chance would be to wait until the dragon was committed to the aisle behind him, and then run for it. He could get past the two men in turbans, the dragon could not. The people jamming the aisles were a kind of maze for the large creature with its awkward wings and long spiny tail. It would have to double back and go down the other aisle to get after him. That might mean he could get out into the street, and have at least a chance of getting away. He wouldn’t have to give up!

  He steeled himself not to move as he tracked the dragon’s progress by sound alone. The strobing light swinging back and forth made everything seem even more frightening and disorienting and so he closed his eyes. It helped him concentrate on the sound. He heard it scrabble and grunt some more, and then the sound of its talons dragging across the tiled floor got clearer and he realized it was now approaching him from behind. In Will’s memory there were only a couple of people between him and the back of the shop, but he wasn’t sure. It had just been an impression and he hadn’t focused on it, largely because he had had no idea his life would depend on the information. He decided to wait until he heard two grunts as the dragon pushed people and then sprint for it.

  And then his stomach rumbled. Loudly, rudely and disastrously. All the fizzy sugary energy drink had betrayed him. The dragon stopped dead. He could hear it listening.

  And worse than that, he could feel a ball of fizzy gas trying to force its way back up his windpipe in what was going to be a colossal burp. He tried to block his throat. He clenched his teeth tight shut, locking his jaw. He tried to swallow the burp back down. But it was no good. He was going to burp or burst.

  He would have to run for it.

  And as he opened his eyes two really bad things happened at once. He saw Hodge the cat perched on the shoulder of one of the turbaned men, waiting for him, its tail flicking mockingly back and forward, and he felt the wet heat of the dragon’s breath and the heavy, slimy weight of its tongue sliding round his neck. He bunched every muscle in his body, ready to resist the dragon’s coming shove, but it never came.

  The dragon made a grunt like a nasty chuckle and slid a talon gently down his back, slitting the jacket clean as a razor. It knew. A cascade of wrapped sandwiches fell about his feet. The cat stared at him. He felt his eyeballs drying out as he tried not to blink. He felt his lungs begin to scream for air.

  All they had to do was wait for him to breath or belch or blink and he was done. He heard the dragon’s scales slither as it drew back it arm to shove him, and in the momentary blackness of the strobing light he did the only thing he could do.

  He said sorry in his head and slid the scarab bracelet off in one tiny, very fast movement of his hand.

  He didn’t even have time to realize he was right about the scarab and what would happen if he took it off.

  His world stopped. He saw nothing, not even black.

  He felt nothing, thought nothing, was nothing.

  It was over.

  He was done.

  15

  The Prudential Angels

  And then he wasn’t.

  His vision kicked back in and everything was different. The swinging light had stopped swinging, there was no hot tongue round his neck, and he couldn’t see the nasty cat because the Fusilier’s blurred face filled his field of vision, too close to focus on. Something was tugging at his hand.

  ‘There you are,’ grinned the Fusilier and stepped back. Will looked down to see Little Tragedy pushing the scarab bracelet back onto his wrist.

  Will felt swoony and sick, but still had enough energy to spin round and see what had happened to the Dragon.

  The shop seemed to have experienced a small explosion in the toilet tissue aisle.

  ‘It’s gone,’ said Tragedy proudly. ‘We was in that bus over the street. Fusilier had his gun on the Dragon and was about to shoot it when you just went still.’

  ‘Bloody thing, thought it had you bang to rights,’ said the Fusilier. ‘Truth is it did, ’cos it was going to be a tricky one. Didn’t have a clear shot and with all that swinging light I was as likely to drill you as it. Then it tried to shove you.’

  ‘Tried to shove you so hard that when you didn’t move it fell backwards,’ laughed Tragedy. ‘Ho! It didn’t expect that, did it? Fell right into all those packs of paper streamers and got itself into a right old how’d you do!’

  ‘Stormed back into the street festooned in bog paper,’ said the Fusilier. ‘Very cheesed off it was. Grabbed poor old Hodge by the tail and tossed him over the roof opposite. Howled like a screaming firework, that cat did!’

  ‘Serves him right,’ said Tragedy, feeling the gashes on his cheek. ‘Maybe it’ll knock some normal back into him. What’s bog paper?’

  The Fusilier exchanged a look with Will.

  ‘Not something you need ever worry about,’ he said. ‘Not an issue for us lot. Now Will boy, we should get going.’

  Will slumped against the shelves and felt his arm. It was throbbing again. And though he still felt sick, it was a different kind of sick to being sick with fear. This was being sick with relief. He’d survived. He could still rescue Jo. He looked down at the sandwich packets round their feet. He bent and picked one up. The Prawn Mayonnaise.

  ‘This is all I need,’ he said. ‘That and some paracetamol.’

  ‘What’s parrots-eat-’em-all?’ said Little Tragedy.

  ‘It’s why there aren’t any aspirin in the jungle,’ said Will.

  Little Tragedy crinkled his brow and looked at the Fusilier who shrugged.

  ‘It’s a joke,’ said Will. ‘Just the wrong way round.’

  ‘Must be a Regular thing,’ said the Fusilier with another shrug.

  ‘Like bog paper?’ said Tragedy.

  ‘You really don’t want to know,’ said the Fusilier. ‘Trust me.’

  Two minutes and a couple of painkillers later, they were back on the street and jogging through the frozen commuters scattered across their pathway like an obstacle course. Will felt lighter and stronger. They’d retrieved the dragon shield and Tragedy was helping h
im carry it, but in truth the longer he held it the better he felt, as if it were somehow charging his battery.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘I can take it now. I feel better.’

  ‘That parrots-eat-’em-all must be magic stuff,’ said Tragedy, looking a little let down as he relinquished his grip on the shield. Will realized he really did like being part of something, like the little kid who always wants to play with the older ones. He remembered being that kid. He remembered Jo being that kid too.

  ‘Not them,’ said Will. ‘I think it’s the shield. Don’t know why. Thanks for the help, Tradge. Couldn’t have managed without you.’

  Tragedy beamed proudly.

  ‘Maybe we can ask at the meeting,’ he said.

  ‘The Tithing?’ said Will, remembering Victory’s words. ‘What’s this Tithing this all about, anyway?’

  ‘It’s just a get-together. Of Spits. Like a parliament of statues sort of thingy, if you like. When something goes . . . odd like this we all get together at the Ghost Church and discuss what’s to be done and who should do it.’

  ‘Ghost Church?’ said Will. ‘That doesn’t sound very good . . .’

  ‘Just a name,’ said the Fusilier, curtly. ‘Names can’t hurt you. Not paying attention can. So keep up and stop asking questions.’

  He jogged ahead. He jogged onwards, threading through the dark forest of pedestrians stuck on the pavement. Tragedy ran a little closer to Will and spoke quietly.

  ‘I been thinking: come midnight, if that dragon you took the shield from gets popped back on its plinth by the other dragons, maybe it’ll come looking for it. Might be more dangerous than safe, see. Dragon’d be able to sense where it is and come for it. Come for you.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll swap it then,’ said Will, with more bravado in his voice than he actually felt. ‘Maybe it can have its shield back if they give me my sister.’

  ‘And maybe worms can juggle,’ snorted the Fusilier. ‘Dragons don’t work like that. Least not the silver ones. Silver ones are stupid, all made from the same dull mould. The old Temple Bar Dragon, on the other hand, is a whole different kettle of fish.’

  ‘Or lizards,’ grinned Tragedy, looking up at Will. ‘Kettle of lizards. ’Cos it’s a dragon. That’s a joke’.

  ‘Yes,’ said Will. ‘That’s a good one.’

  He was about to ask what the Temple Bar Dragon was like, but the Fusilier accelerated and he needed all his spare breath to keep going.

  They followed him along the wide street called Holborn, then he suddenly disappeared.

  It took Will a moment to realize that he had turned sharp left and run under the arch of a red-brick building that looked like the architect couldn’t choose between designing a castle or a cathedral, and so had decided to build both at once. Will followed the Fusilier through the arch and slowed suddenly.

  This was a place where some of the outside lights had clearly been on when time froze, because the space he was now in was glowing like hot coals: uplighters splashed deep orangey red illumination on the brick vaulted ceiling of the cloister he was standing below. It should have been a warm and welcoming glow in the heart of the largely dark city, but Will found it unsettling.

  He slowly followed the Fusilier across a small open space and under a much wider arch into the second, central courtyard. They had to wind their way through a party of Japanese tourists frozen in the act of listening to a tour-guide, who was pointing at the glowing dome poking up through the ground, as if someone had made a glass replica of St Paul’s Cathedral beneath them and jammed the roof up through the paving stones. It too was lit from below and surrounded with a base of shiny pink granite and black stone, like a giant snow globe. It threw light on the surrounding high walls and gothic windows that now penned them in. Like anything lit strongly from underneath, it looked dramatic and sinister, and just a bit infernal.

  Because the great dome was so bright it took him a moment to see who the Fusilier had started talking to, but as he stepped forward he saw that there was a huge war memorial jammed in the corner, and it was with the bronze angels on top of it that he was speaking. There were two of them, and they had huge wildly overcomplicated wings stretched above them as they cradled the body of a dead soldier who they were regarding with looks of the most heartrending sadness.

  They perched on top of a tall and impressive plinth which had bronze statues of young nymphs holding funeral wreaths at all four corners.

  ‘Need a spot of help,’ said the Fusilier to the angels. ‘Got a boy here with a hurt arm.’

  ‘That’s right,’ piped Tragedy. ‘Could do with some ministering.’

  The angels looked at him. They didn’t say anything, but their wings – which definitely looked too much for just two of them – shifted, and the light robes they wore riffled in their own invisible breeze in a way that reminded Will of Ariel’s. Then they looked away, back down at the dead soldier, as if dismissing the Fusilier.

  Will’s arm throbbed badly again. The running had made the blood pound round him and the paracetamol weren’t very strong. He sat down on the stone bench round the dome and got his breath.

  He looked to his right and saw there was another pair of smaller war memorials, like bronze noticeboards facing each other on either side of a second entrance to the courtyard. On top of them, two knights were standing with lances from which bronze pennants fluttered. They had no helmets and looked more like modern soldiers than mediaeval knights. In fact they looked like a couple of clean cut young men about town, the kind he’d seen in the old black and white films his dad liked to watch, a couple of dandies who had dressed up in the armour as a spot of fancy dress fun.

  They were also only three feet tall, but nevertheless they were leaning forward and looking at him.

  Statues moving around was one thing when they were human sized or even when they were bigger than he was – his shocked brain had begun to get used to that – but there was something about these miniature humans that added an extra layer of strange to everything.

  ‘By George, George!’ said one to the other. ‘It’s a boy. And he isn’t frozen like the others.’

  ‘You’re right George,’ the other replied. ‘Deuced odd, if you ask me.’

  They both sounded very old fashioned and rather posh.

  ‘Maybe we should ask him,’ said the first. ‘Looks like a decent enough chap . . .’

  Will couldn’t really cope with extra strange right now, so he turned away from them before they spoke to him and looked at the Fusilier instead. At least he was close to normal size.

  ‘Why aren’t they helping?’ he said to the Fusilier. ‘You said that the angels would help.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t want their help,’ said a gentle girl’s voice. ‘Not theirs, my word, no you don’t . . .’

  He looked up to see that one of the nymphs had stepped off the plinth and was walking towards him, so light-footed that she seemed to waft an inch above the shiny pavement. Before he could say that actually he did want help, because his arm was getting more and more painful by the second she smiled and reached out a hand.

  ‘Come,’ she said. ‘These two angels are in charge of easing the passage from life. You can see just by looking at them that they’re sad angels of Passing, plain as a pikestaff. Same as I can see you’re too young to be needing that kind of help right now. Your wound is not going to kill you . . .’

  She led him round the back of the memorial where the mystery of the complicated wings was revealed: what had looked from the front as if the sculptor had not known when to stop adding feathers was in fact the back view of the wings of a third, hidden angel who sat behind the other two, facing the corner. She was not cradling a corpse, but was instead holding a small baby.

  ‘She’s for Life, you see?’ said the nymph, pushing him forward encouragingly.

  As if in response to her words the baby gave a happy shriek of delight, followed by a gurgling laugh that echoed around the four walls and for a moment made everything seem b
etter, as if all was well with the world.

  The angel looked up from the baby’s face and smiled at him.

  ‘You’re in pain, my child,’ she said.

  Will felt a thick knot rise in his throat at her words. It made him unable to speak without choking on it, so he just nodded mutely and concentrated on keeping his eyes dry.

  He was surprised to find that there were suddenly tears lurking there, and he didn’t want to be seen letting them out.

  It wasn’t what she said.

  It was the voice she said it in.

  It was so exactly like his mother’s voice that it made the hair rise on the back of his neck. It also made him feel like a little child, something he had not been for a very long time.

  The angel stepped off the plinth and handed the gurgling bronze baby to the waiting nymph. She rolled up her sleeves and came and knelt in front of him. Her hands, which were much softer and warmer than he would have expected, reached out and held his head, gently touching his cheeks. Her eyes peered into his. He could not look away, nor did he really want to. They were full of warmth and understanding, and he could see crinkles at the edges as she smiled at him.

  ‘You’re hurt,’ she said.

  ‘My arm,’ he replied.

  ‘Your arm I can fix,’ she said. ‘But that’s just physical pain. It will do you no lasting damage. What’s really hurting you is inside, and only you can heal that.’

  Her hand dropped to his burned arm and he felt the throbbing pain leech out, to be replaced by nothing more than a gentle warmth.

  Now his arm was not troubling him, he felt all the other things that were: he felt tired and frightened and hungry and thirsty and most of all, worst of all, stuck and powerless. He felt powerless because he didn’t understand any of this. It was too big. And he was too small.