Azrael's Twins

by V. J. Mortimer

  ‘Why can’t you do this every morning, Niamh?’ asked her father. ‘Especially school mornings. You never get out of bed without a fight. Why so different this morning?’

  ‘Because we don’t get magic wands every morning, Dad, of course,’ said Niamh with mock exasperation on her face. ‘Can you and Mum just hurry up? We want to get to town!’

  ‘Slow down, Niamh,’ said Grace, walking into the room with a towel wrapped around her head and dressed in jeans and a white top. The shops won’t be open until at least nine o’clock. And anyway, Uncle Garrett is taking us in. We haven’t flown a dragon in traffic for a while so he’s offered to drive us today.’

  ‘Well, can we go chase him along then?’ asked Grady. ‘Maybe he’s slept in, and we wouldn’t want him to keep you waiting.’

  ‘Keep you waiting you mean, Grady. Why don’t you see if you can get one of the faeries to take you?’

  ‘Yeah!’ said Niamh. ‘Great idea, Dad.’ Niamh quickly clapped her hands and said loudly, ‘We need help to find Uncle Garrett, please.’ In moments one of the faeries popped into view in front of her. The faerie said in a clear chiming voice, ‘Follow me if you will.’ The children needed no more encouragement. As the faerie turned and headed for the door the children bounded along behind it, looking just like the dogs do when being taken for a walk.

  As they disappeared out the door Grace walked over to Merritt and put her arms around his neck giving him a big hug. ‘Think Garrett will be ready?’ she said, laughing.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he will be. He’s really quite excited at having Grady here. He’ll be ready, though I’m not sure he quite knows what he’s in for with Grady!’

  The parents took the time waiting for the children to return to get themselves ready. Some people from the king’s treasury turned up to set them up with all the details they needed to access money and pay for the things they needed. Many things had changed since Merritt and Grace had left for the other world. Most people didn’t use real money any more. The iWand had revolutionised so many things – transactions were made through the new Wand Wide Web using the iWand so there was no need to carry the old gold and silver coins around. But there were some places – especially those in the less salubrious parts of town – that still liked the feel of cold hard coin in their hands.

  By the time the children returned dragging their uncle behind them the supplies for the day had been set up. ‘Eager little beggars, aren’t they,’ said Garrett as he walked into the room.

  ‘Yes, you may be in for an interesting day with them, though at the rate they are burning things up at the moment they’ll probably collapse by lunchtime,’ said Grace. Niamh stuck her tongue out at her mother and tried to jump onto her uncle’s back. If Grady hadn’t been trying to do the same thing at the same time there probably wouldn’t have been a problem, but the ensuing collision, collapse onto the floor, and cries of recrimination from Niamh to Grady and back the same way were the only possible outcome. As Garrett tried to separate them the noise just got worse. Merritt and Grace looked on chuckling and staying well out of the field of fire between the three figures sprawled on the floor in front of them.

  ‘Hey! Come on you two! Cut it out!’ yelled Garrett, trying to be heard over the cacophony of sound on the floor. ‘If you don’t cut it out you’ll regret it!’

  The children might as well have been the only people in the room for all the good their uncle’s shouting did. Before they could go much further with the argument Garrett whipped out his own wand and flicked it in the direction of the children. Instantly, all sound from the two stopped – but their mouths did not. Grady and Niamh suddenly realised they couldn’t make a sound and were mouthing words at each other uselessly. Garrett sat back looking pleased with himself. ‘I told you you’d regret it. Now will you be quiet for me or do I have to leave that spell on you all day?’

  Grady and Niamh scowled at their uncle and parents. But then, after the silliness of their situation sank in, they gave each other a quick glance and with a little smirk they launched themselves at Garrett, bowling him over backwards into the breakfast table and slopping milk over his head.

  Roaring with laughter now Merritt turned to his brother and said, ‘We did warn you! Don’t underestimate or turn your back on these two.’

  As Garrett sat up the two children laughed loudly, or at least they would have if only they could have made any sound. Garrett picked himself up off the floor and again flicked his wand at the children. Their voices returned mid-laugh as if the mute button on a stereo had been turned off. Garrett used his wand to remove the milk from his hair and the floor. ‘Serves me right, I suppose,’ he muttered.

  ‘One all?’ said Niamh, smiling.

  After regarding his niece with a baleful look he returned the smile and stuck out his hand. ‘Yep. Okay. One all. I won’t try that again till you have your own wands and know how to use them.’ He turned to Grace and Merritt; ‘And speaking of wands – are you ready to go? We’ve decided to leave the security behind. The risks seem pretty low right now, so it’s just going to be us.’

  ‘Is that wise?’ said Grace.

  ‘Bel seems fairly sure there’s no risk and we’ve seen nothing to suggest we should worry. Don’t fret, Grace. We’ll be fine. And help is never far away.’

  They picked up their bags and headed out the door. Garrett led them past the hall of statues but turned off down a doorway set into the wall and indistinguishable from its surroundings. It led down another passageway – this one colonnaded on one side with busts of various figures set in alcoves along the other wall. Eventually they made their way to a smaller side entrance to the castle where a group of coachmen had a smaller version of the carriage they had arrived in ready and waiting. A slim and lithe-looking dragon snorted in its harness and turned a baleful eye upon them as they walked towards the carriage doors.

  ‘This is the usual runabout, kids. This dragon is quick enough on his feet that we can use him on the ground in town. Normally we’d park in one of the dragon parks and zip in on our broomsticks, but as you don’t have those yet we’ll just trot on into town.’

  ‘Who wants to sit up front with me?’ asked Garrett.

  ‘I do!’ both children yelled at the same time.

  ‘Thought so,’ said Garrett. ‘Up you come then.’ A clearing of the throat from behind Garrett made him turn round. Grace was standing there with arms folded and a disapproving look on her face.

  ‘So are you deliberately trying to scare them, Garrett, or have you genuinely not engaged your brain today?’

  The children stopped in mid-scamper up to the seat beside Garrett as they heard the tone in their mother’s voice. ‘Awww, Mum,’ said Grady. ‘Why can’t we?’

  ‘You know full well,’ replied Grace. ‘You’re scared of heights, my little man. If you aren’t inside a plane or a gondola or something like that then we can barely get your fingers out of whatever seat you are hanging onto when you’re finished.’

  ‘Grace, I promise I’ll go easy on them. Grady especially is going to have to get used to this. If he doesn’t there’s not much point getting him a broomstick, is there?’

  Merritt stuck his head out the window of the carriage. ‘He’s right for a change, Grace. If you can’t get used to open air heights like this then they are going to hate school. They won’t be able to get into any of the fun stuff like broomstick racing.’ Grace looked dubious as any overprotective mother would. ‘Garrett wouldn’t do anything to scare them – not today, anyway. Would you, Garrett?’ Merritt asked his brother.

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to get boiled in a barrel of banshee bogies if I do scare them, Grace,’ said Garrett in reply.

  Grace looked repulsed at his answer but gave in. ‘Okay then, but none of those loop-the-loops or show-off barrel rolls. The first sign of one of those and I’ll get the bogie barrel myself.’

  The children smiled at each other and leapt up beside their uncle as Grace joined Merritt in the carriage. ‘S
trap yourselves in, kids. This is going to be fun.’ The children buckled themselves in with some help from the coachmen. With a flick of the harness ropes the dragon started forward and out onto the runway which sloped downward away from the castle. ‘We only use this one for take-offs,’ Garrett said to the children. ‘The downward slope gives the big dragons some extra lift, but this one doesn’t really need it.’

  The children found themselves holding on tighter as the carriage picked up speed. Garrett pulled out his wand and made a slightly complicated flick in the air, drawing the wand in a circle over their heads and down in front of them. The effect was that the breeze which had started to ruffle Grady’s hair dropped away completely and the children found themselves cocooned in a bubble of air.

  ‘Just making sure we don’t get any bugs in our teeth when we fly. The shield will stop the wind and the speed from blowing you off. Hang on now – off we go!’

  The dragon quickly accelerated down the runway. After just a few steps his big red and gold wings beat powerfully and the carriage lifted into the air. Grady let out a whoop of delight while Niamh just squealed as the unexpectedly fast lift-off caught her by surprise. After a moment or two, Grady’s whoop turned into a cry as they rose higher and higher and the land dropped rapidly away below them. The dragon banked around to the left and the ground fell further away. The cry from Grady was only cut short when he ran out of breath. Garrett felt his nephew grab his arm with both hands and hold on for dear life.

  ‘Don’t panic, Grady – the fun has only just started!’

  Garrett steered the dragon back round to the city and lined it up on the centre of town. The sun was still off to their right and climbing into a clear blue sky. Below them the castle fell away and the hills opened up to either side. Up ahead they could see the sparkle from the twin rivers and a number of tall spires and other buildings rising out of the plain below. The city was bigger than the children remembered when they first flew in to the castle. They could see now ahead of them a multitude of other flights taking place –broomsticks, large dragon and small dragons alike.

  Their dragon didn’t seem to need much steering as it headed towards a place where a number of other dragons seemed to be focusing. Grady’s initial fear and screams of panic had dissolved away under the amazing view – both of the city and the flapping dragon ahead of them. He marvelled at the way the dragon steered with deft flicks of its tail and at the speed with which they appeared to be moving. The distance between them and the city was narrowing at a rapid pace.

  Niamh had barely had time to catch her breath before the dragon and carriage were swooping in towards a landing site. Beside one of the rivers a long strip of paved road was laid out. Garrett was obviously joining a landing queue as ahead of them other dragons flamed in their approach. ‘How do they know whether they can land or not?’ she asked Garrett.

  ‘Telepathy, Niamh,’ he answered. ‘All dragons communicate with other dragons by using just their minds. That’s how they manage to land here without having fights about who gets to go first. Could you imagine us humans trying to sort out these beasts like that? It would be a right mess.’

  The children had no time to ask any more questions as the dragon lined up the runway to land. If taking off was scary, Grady found the landing even worse! The dragon dived steeply at the ground – so steeply they felt they would surely end up ploughing into the runway. This time both Grady and Niamh let out a scream. But a gentle tweak on the reins by Garrett was all that was needed to bring the dragon’s nose back up as it smoothly touched down. A gentle blast of flame from the dragon slowed the coach right down. Niamh and Grady could feel the braking effect of the flames as they rocked forward just a little.

  The dragon cantered smoothly over to the edge of the landing area and pulled to the side of what was obviously a road out towards town from the landing strip. ‘Would you like a moment to recover from that?’ said Garrett, looking down at his passengers. Neither Niamh nor Grady could reply. They were hanging onto each other taking big gulps of breath in to try and recover from the shock of the landing.

  ‘Next time, I ride inside,’ said Niamh as she let go of her brother and tried to compose herself.

  ‘What about you, Grady? Feel like another go?’ asked Garrett.

  Grady took a moment longer to recover before looking back at his uncle saying, ‘Let’s do that again!’ with an undisguised look of joy on his face.

  Garrett let out a hearty laugh before shouting down to Merritt and Grace, ‘Did you hear that? Scared of heights, was he? You’ve got the makings of a great dragon rider here, brother!!’

  ‘Never mind that, you show-off,’ said Merritt. ‘Let’s just get into town. We’ve lots to do yet and scaring the kids wasn’t on that list.’

  ‘All right. Calm down,’ said Garrett. He gave a short, odd whistle. The beast broke into a canter at the noise and started moving briskly down the road. As they reached the end of the runway access road they came to a gate in a wall which surrounded the landing field. Ahead of them, other dragons were pausing before plunging out onto the main road. Niamh and Grady found themselves sitting open-mouthed at the sight in front of them. Along the road moved dragons of all shapes and sizes in one lane while alongside them, clearly in another lane, zipped witches and wizards on broomsticks and even slimmer reedy-looking pieces of wood. Oddly, thought Niamh, only the witches were riding these insubstantial pieces of wood. There were clearly families sailing along in groups – young witches and wizards zipping along behind their mothers and fathers – and here and there the odd show-off riding far too fast and having angry fists shaken at them by older wizards wearing hats, which even to Grady’s eyes marked them out as being twenty years out of fashion! The traffic was not heavy but Garrett was obviously pausing to give the children a good view of the passing tide of magical folk.

  ‘Off we go, then,’ said Garrett as they moved out into the traffic. As they entered the road they found the carriage surprisingly comfortable. There was none of the jarring or bouncing they expected. The dragon was ramrod steady as it trotted down the road moving much more smoothly, thought Niamh, than any of the horses she had ridden back at Avalon’s End.

  ‘We’ll head into the town centre and go for a walk from there,’ said Garrett, looking down at the children. He smiled to himself as he saw Niamh and Grady’s heads snapping round from left to right as they tried to look at every single one of the odd assortment of people and carriages racing back and forth along the road.

  They trotted on past beautiful old dark stonewalled buildings with high arched windows, odd round doors, shops with sparkling lights and displays in the windows, and all interspersed with old majestic trees and beautifully tended garden plots. It seemed that each street corner had its own special bed of flowers which was tended by one or two faeries. Grady could see that these faeries were different to those in the castle. They looked more wild and unkempt with mainly brown rough tunics and brightly decorated wings which wrapped around them when they had settled down onto the plants they were fussing over. Several times Grady thought he was looking at a flower when it turned into a faerie that zipped out of one plant and over to another to attend to another bud or bough.

  The streets began to narrow the closer they came to the centre of town. ‘Time to pull over,’ said Garrett, turning the dragon into another of the beautiful stone buildings. Entering the gloom their eyes took a moment to adjust before they realised they were entering a dragon parking lot – just like a car park back home but here there were dragons of all shapes and sizes in various pens. Pulling over to the side they came to a stop. From out of nowhere a faerie popped into view and gave Garrett a ticket which he put into his jacket. ‘Everyone out,’ said Garrett. Grace and Merritt stepped lightly from the carriage as Garrett helped Niamh and Grady down. As they stepped off their perch the faerie whistled towards a block of stone a few metres away. Fractures appeared from nowhere in the rock as it started to unfold itself from the ground. The
children realised it was not stone unfolding, but a troll! This one looked just like the paintings in her mother’s books – books Niamh now realised had probably come with them when they left this world.

  The big block of granite continued to rise until it stood just a full head taller than Merritt. The faerie took the reins as the troll came forward and floated them over to it. The stony attendant delicately took the reins and tugged on them to lead the dragon towards a spare pen at the end of the building. Niamh and Grady watched it as it herded the dragon into the pen and then slowly settled itself back down in front of the beast, folding into itself the same way it had unfolded. In moments it looked as though the big stone block in front of the pen had always been there – practically indistinguishable from the grey paved floor on which it sat.

  Garrett turned to the children as they watched the spectacle. ‘Not terribly smart, your average troll, but if you need something watched while you park your dragon then they are world beaters. Right up there with gargoyles for staying in one place.’ Turning back to the smiling parents Garrett went on – ‘Where to first? Wand and broomstick time or shall we leave that till later?’

  ‘No, not later!’ chorused the children. ‘Now, Uncle Garrett!’

  ‘Oh okay. Follow me, then,’ he replied.

  They walked back out into the street and turned towards the centre of town. As they walked the children were able to get a better look at the shops and were surprised by what they saw. For the most part there were many of the shops they were used to at home – stationery, booksellers, clothes stores, sports stores; but each of the shops had their own special twist which marked them out as magical. The bookseller’s displays were much more interesting than the children had ever seen before. Pages turned of their own accord and scenes from the book burst into view above them. The sports stores had footballs and wizard’s running shoes (wings on their heels!) and protective headgear for games they could not recognise. Just like the books, the displays were moving of their own accord – shoes running, tennis balls juggling and no one in sight. Basketballs and netballs shot through hoops propelled by ghostly figures that changed appearance depending on which ball they used.