The Bone Dragon

by Alexia Casale

  Slowly, slowly, I roll over on to my side so that our eyes are level. And then, finally, I squeeze my eyes closed, until blue and green explode behind my eyelids. When I open them, the Dragon’s expression speaks of disdain.

  ‘Are you nocturnal?’ I whisper, and my heart clenches with joy when I don’t jolt myself awake by speaking.

  After a fashion, the Dragon says. Let us simply say that many things are easier at night.

  Then it slowly pushes up from its crouch, its shoulders rolling languorously backwards as it juts its breast out proudly. When it is sitting bolt upright, tail curled neatly over its feet, it opens its mouth and yawns hugely, just like a cat, showing long, razor-point teeth like stubby needles. Its tongue curls back and then arches out, flicking at the air as if tasting it.

  We should go if we are to venture out tonight.

  ‘Go where?’

  The Dragon gives a tiny shake, like a shiver, and somehow I understand that this is a dragon’s way of shrugging. You do not have your strength back yet so tonight we will not go far. Other things will have to wait.

  I half expect to wake myself by sitting up, but all that happens is that the Dragon tilts its head back to follow my movements.

  ‘Won’t we wake Amy and Paul going downstairs?’ I ask as I pull off my pyjamas, exchanging them for jeans, T-shirt and a hoodie.

  We shall leave via the window, of course, the Dragon says.

  I pause in rummaging at the bottom of my closet for trainers. ‘Amy says that the garage roof isn’t very strong. She says I should only try to cross it if there’s a fire and I need to get out.’

  The Dragon’s expression grows disdainful. You are not heavy. It will serve.

  I’m about to object when I realise that, since it’s a dream, it doesn’t matter anyway. A dream with a Dragon in it can certainly boast a sturdy roof. In fact, I could just dream myself creeping downstairs and not waking Paul and Amy . . . only a Dragon-dream has to be more fun than that: if I can’t even climb down the garden wall, the rest is bound to be pretty disappointing.

  I tug on socks and then my trainers. ‘Will you fly?’ I ask.

  The Dragon yawns again. For now I shall journey on your shoulder.

  Stepping back towards the bedside table, I extend my hand, palm up, terrified suddenly that the Dragon will vanish: that our touching will be like a bolt of electricity, jolting me awake. But there is a sharp, firm pressure on my fingertip as the Dragon steps on to my hand. It fits neatly on my palm, somewhat bigger than the carving, as if the bare bone has literally fleshed out with skin and muscle. I lift my hand to my shoulder and the Dragon climbs gracefully from my palm to my collarbone, curling against my neck.

  Its tail twitches against my shoulder blade as I open the window slowly, slowly, trying not to make a sound because it’s more fun to pretend it’s all real: that I really am creeping out into the night with a dragon.

  There is a flash of irritation that my ribs hurt even in dreams as I inch my hip on to the window ledge, bracing a hand against the pull of the wound so I can swivel, drawing my legs up and over the sill.

  But then the night air rushes clean and cold into my mouth and my throat, swelling my chest with pain and delight.

  The world is silver and blue, shifting and changing as the moon surfaces from the clouds then dives down into darkness again. The garage roof holds firm as I walk to the edge and then step down on to the garden wall, following it along the edge of the house until, stretching down, I can place my foot safely on the top of the wrought-iron garden table. From there I step down to a chair and then to the ground. I want to race across the grass, run out into the maelstrom of cloud shadows, the rushing patches of dark and light, but I know my ribs will not allow it.

  I keep to the garden path as I walk silently to the woods at the bottom of the garden and into the darkness under the trees, emerging on to the unpaved towpath beyond.

  I can’t help it. Even with my heart full of the joy of the Dragon, I find myself turning to stare down the towpath to my left. Seven miles. Only seven miles to the village where Fiona’s parents live. By car, it takes ages – long enough to feel safe – but by river or on a bike, riding along the canal . . .

  ‘To the right?’ I ask, despite the fact that I’m leaning, leaning forwards as if drawn, as if the house and the people in it are pulling me. I don’t know if the feeling this gives me is want or rage or fear or power that I could go there in the dark, ride up the towpath, and no one would ever know . . . But what sort of a victory would that be? To go and stand outside the house and hate.

  I rock back on my heels, as if the thing that was drawing me forwards has suddenly released. I shiver, willing away the sense that my Dragon-dream is about to descend into nightmare.

  When you are strong, we can do anything you wish, the Dragon says softly: an answer to what is in my heart, not my question.

  ‘To the right,’ I say, stating it this time: resolving upon it.

  The Dragon tightens its grip on my shoulder and I feel the steel-strength of its talons graze my skin.

  Brackish water glints in the dyke between the fields as the world opens out around me. The Dragon’s breath comes in little drifts of warmth against the side of my neck.

  Here, the Dragon commands, and I turn off the path into the low scrub wood edging the fields.

  The grass is long, but even the odd snatch and pull of a bramble cannot hold me back. Ahead, I can make out the outline of a wall and the ruin of a little building. Beyond it, catching the light in brief flashes between the clouds, there is a pool, still and dark. A single late-flowering evening primrose stem spears up from the reeds, bell-shaped flowers glowing a ghostly pale green.

  I sink on to the moss-covered trunk of a fallen tree and watch the water, my eyes prickling with the threat of tears and that strange feeling that could be absolute happiness . . . or grief that you can never hold anything perfect still and safe.

  The air is heavy with the sweet, viscous scent of fallen leaves mulching down into mud. The sharp smell of burning and the richness of charcoal. The acid tang of rotting reeds. And the thick copper and iron smell of slow water.

  Something stirs in the pool. Ripples billow across the surface, fragmenting into waltzing shadows in the water. Above me, the bare tree branches spike upwards like long black thorns and the clouds rip and tear themselves ragged, raw edges weeping away into the light like blood fraying in water as they force themselves on: rank upon rank of tattered monsters, hunting each other across the sky. But as they cross in front of the moon they glow suddenly cream and gold, passing into greens and purples, making rainbows at the edge of darkness.

  The Dragon and I don’t speak there in the clearing, or on the walk home, or as I climb carefully back up to my window and into my bedroom. I settle the Dragon back on the bedside table, then undress, tucking my damp trainers away in the back of the wardrobe before pulling on my pyjamas and climbing into bed. I curl on to my side despite the pull across my chest.

  ‘What should I call you?’ I ask, as I lie watching the intermittent drift of smoke from the Dragon’s nostrils.

  Do I need a name? the Dragon asks. Is there another like me?

  I smile, the question echoing after me as I drift into sleep.

  When I wake, the Dragon is bare bone once more, solid and lifeless. I can’t bear to check whether the trainers in the back of my wardrobe are still damp.

  ‘You look like you slept well!’ Amy says when I pad into the kitchen.

  ‘No nightmares,’ I say, putting some toast on.

  ‘That’s wonderful, darling. Maybe with your ribs getting better you’ll start sleeping soundly more often.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Amy doesn’t tell me to think positively, but she smiles hopefully. ‘Well, I’ll keep my fingers crossed,’ she says.

  I think about night after night of uninterrupted sleep. Of Dragon-dreams, vivid and strange. Of waking and feeling calm and rested rather than as if I have bee
n trapped, struggling desperately in the darkness all night long.

  I should be glad that we’re studying Hamlet for our English GCSE, but I’m not. It’s like sand under my skin. Something about it bothers me.

  ‘You look puzzled, Evie,’ Ms Winters says.

  ‘Hm?’ I say stupidly, then realise I must have been pulling faces as I itch at the prickly feeling the play gives me. ‘Oh. No. Just thinking.’

  Someone – Sonny Rawlins probably – makes a rude noise at the back of the class.

  Ms Winters ignores it. ‘Anything good?’ she asks. She’s not being mean: she thinks it’s as weird as I do that I just can’t seem to get my head around the play. We’ve even stopped working on it in our little after-school sessions and swapped to The Tempest instead.

  We’re still doing our ‘extra classes’ even though I’m back at school and up to date with everything. When Ms Winters suggested we keep going, she phrased it in terms of it not being right for me to be bored in English when I love to read so much. But we both know that part of things is just a reward for my putting up with the not-counselling aspect of her visits.

  ‘It’s . . . I’m just . . . I’m really fed up about how much Hamlet whines about everything,’ I say, and am both surprised and pleased when a whole bunch of the class laugh. ‘I mean, I get that he’s . . . he’s frustrated and angry and that he feels helpless. But why does he have to whinge about it so much? I mean, either he’s willing to make sacrifices to get revenge for his father or he isn’t, right? Why doesn’t he just make a decision instead of mucking around so much?’

  Ms Winters smiles. ‘What does everyone else think?’ she asks.

  Everyone else is busy looking elsewhere, thinking nothing at all, at least about Hamlet. I prop my chin on my hand and let my gaze drift towards the windows.

  For once, English drags by. When the bell goes, Lynne and Phee are out of their seats before I’ve even raised my head. I trail after them as they chatter on about some TV series I don’t like, lamenting the lack of boys worth snogging in real life apart from sixth-formers, who aren’t interested in Year 10s. Lynne laughs as Phee gesticulates energetically, her face alive with intent. They link arms: a careless, automatic gesture.

  I slow, watching them laugh and jostle their way down the corridor, ploughing through the ranks.

  Phee and Lynne were best friends for over a year before I started here and our form teacher asked them to look after me. Sometimes I wonder if that’s all our friendship is: my tagging along after them and them feeling a bit sorry for me. I mean, I know they like me – it’s not like I have any weird idea that they hate me and just pretend not to – but sometimes I think they’d be at least as happy without me always turning their pair into a trio. They’re not the sort of people who’d tell me to push off and leave them alone just because they felt they could take or leave my company, but who wants to be tolerated, however nicely?

  Most of the time, I try not to worry about it too much but recently, with all that’s happened, I can’t help feeling that gaps are opening up and showing how it was all along: that I’m not really wanted. That I don’t really fit. That there’s Phee and Lynne, and me somewhere on the outside, following along after them.

  They’re already queuing outside the science labs when I finally get there. They’ve got their heads pressed together, making plans for the evening.

  ‘Can I come too?’ I ask.

  They both blink at me in surprise. I watch their eyes.

  ‘But we’re going to do a season one marathon,’ Lynne says.

  ‘We didn’t think you’d want to,’ adds Phee. ‘But you’re welcome if you fancy it.’ She looks to Lynne and I try to translate what passes between them.

  Lynne shrugs, then grins. ‘So, does this mean you’re finally ready to be inducted into the fan club?’

  ‘Are we going to find out you’ve been sneakily watching by yourself? Will you know all the trivia in the special features?’ Phee adds, laughing.

  And I know that they’re doing their best to make sure I don’t think they’re trying to exclude me, but perhaps that’s just because their parents have told them to be extra nice to me . . . But even if it’s not, the united front, minds-in-concert thing they’re doing is making all the unease that welled up in me during English a thousand times worse. As we’re called into class, I trail after them wretchedly, wishing I could just go home and hide under my bed.

  Instead, I reach into my bag and take out the pot with the Dragon in it and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until I’m afraid the plastic will shatter as I will myself to believe that last night’s Dragon-dream is just the first of many: that when I ‘wake’ tonight, the Dragon will be there watching me, waiting to greet me.

  ‘Amy says you’re still adamant that you don’t want to visit Fiona’s grave,’ Ms Winters says out of the blue, as we pore over Waterhouse’s painting of Miranda and the Tempest.

  Pressing down on the book’s spine to flatten the pages, I lean closer to the picture, refusing to look up.

  Amy thinks that because she needs to visit Adam’s gravestone, and Aunt Minnie’s and Grandad Peter’s and Nanna Florrie’s, that it’s the same for me and Fiona. But it’s not. It’s not the same thing at all.

  ‘She’s dead,’ I say. ‘She’s buried. There’s a grave. End of story.’

  ‘Closure isn’t that simple, Evie.’

  I think of all sorts of things to say to that but manage to keep my mouth shut.

  ‘Is there anything you do want to talk about?’ Ms Winters asks when she sees that I’m not prepared to cooperate on the subject of visits to gravestones.

  I shrug again. Talking about my frustrations over all the things I’ve missed at school – all the in-jokes I don’t understand, all the memories I can’t share – isn’t going to make me feel any better about it. Besides, what can Ms Winters say? I’ll get better. I’ll catch up and there will be newer things that I am part of. It’s just a matter of waiting. In the meantime I’m going to watch lots of TV that bores me to tears so that I’m no more out of the loop than I can help.

  But before I can direct her attention back to the book, Ms Winters is asking, ‘Do you have any good memories of Fiona you could tell me about?’

  I hold very still while I think about how to deal with this. Only for a few seconds of course: any longer and I know Ms Winters will never let it drop. Oh, she might for today, but she’ll come back to it. She’ll keep coming back to it. I fix her with my most unpleasant stare and heave a grumpy, petulant sigh as if the whole thing is just an irritation.

  But Ms Winters meets my stare and returns it.

  I slump back into the armchair and look away. I want to ask how anyone could possibly think I associate anything good with Fiona . . . but there is a picture of our old garden path in my mind, of the crooked concrete slabs leading to the blue back door and the dandelion by the mat.

  ‘My old school had a half day once. I don’t remember why,’ I find myself saying. ‘I thought for a while that no one was home, so I let myself in with the key they probably still keep under the petunia pot by the back door . . . And Fiona was standing there in the kitchen, with an apron on, making a cake. They were both out. I don’t know why. But it was just us, in the kitchen, making cake. We ate the whole thing, sitting at the kitchen table and playing games. It was sunny. I remember the kitchen all lit up with sunlight and Mum’s . . . Fiona’s hair glowing like copper and gold.’

  Outside our window, the day is grey and drizzly.

  ‘That was before I knew she was sick. Before . . . before,’ I say firmly, closing down that avenue of discussion. ‘I think we hadn’t lived there very long yet,’ I offer instead.

  ‘Was it like that with Fiona and your dad, before you went to live with your . . . her parents?’ Ms Winters prompts, though she has the sense not to look at me as she says it, fixing her eyes on Miranda instead.

  I shrug, going for nonchalant. ‘I don’t remember,’ I lie. ‘I just remember th
at I was really happy that day in the kitchen. And I hadn’t been. Neither of us had been. That day in the kitchen, when we heard the front door open, Fiona started to cry. Then she started washing up. Things from the draining board. Clean things.’

  For a moment, hope rises that I’ve said enough, but Ms Winters has her next question all lined up: ‘Why do you think Fiona took you to live with her parents after your father died?’

  I sigh inwardly. I know the only way to escape the topic is to go with it just enough for her to think I’m not afraid to talk about it. ‘They probably told her to come home. Without Dad there to stop her, she probably didn’t even argue. Just went,’ I say shortly, hoping (against hope) that Ms Winters will decide not to push if I merely show annoyance. I turn my attention to a catch in my nail.

  ‘I know you don’t like thinking about it, Evie, but it’s important that you understand that they probably did the same things to Fiona when she was young.’

  Clearly Ms Winters, like Amy and Paul, thinks I’ll feel sympathy for Fiona if I believe this. They don’t seem to understand that, if it’s true, then what Fiona did was even worse: if it’s true, then Fiona knew. Didn’t just close her eyes and ears so she could pretend nothing was happening. She knew. And she still just went into the kitchen, every time, and washed up the clean things from the draining board so she could pretend she wasn’t meant to be doing anything else – anything else in the world – but that.

  ‘Maybe Fiona was too frightened of her parents – had been frightened of them for far too long – to be able to stand up to them. I am not trying to excuse what she did,’ Ms Winters adds quickly, ‘but maybe it’ll help to understand it.’

  I dig the nail of my index finger into the catch in my left thumb nail. I want to say that I understand everything I care to. Fiona was a coward. She went back and took me with her. Because with me there she was safe.

  ‘Do you think that perhaps Fiona let them persuade her to go back home when she found out about the cancer: when she knew she was going to keep getting sicker?’