The Dragon Kepeer and Other Stories

by Lynne Roberts

Claire. ‘I want to stay in bed.’

  ‘Oh, if you must,’ her mother sighed. ‘But you really ought to be getting up. You need sunshine and exercise, not to be lazing around in bed all morning. At least open the window to let in a bit of fresh air.’ She pulled back the curtains as she spoke and glanced out the window. ‘Oh my goodness,’ she gasped. ‘There’s a big hole underneath your window.’

  ‘It’s a surprise,’ said Marcus, as he appeared in the doorway. He yawned and ran a hand though his tousled hair.

  ‘We thought we’d make a fishpond,’ said Claire in sudden inspiration.

  ‘A fishpond! What a lovely idea,’ said Mrs Pierce with pleasure, as Marcus gave Claire an admiring glance and a thumbs up sign for her quick thinking. ‘We could plant a few flowers around the edge. I’m sure Mrs Ainsworth would say…’

  ‘No. No flowers,’ said Marcus firmly. ‘Just rocks. They look so much better. Don’t you agree, Claire?’

  ‘Definitely,’ nodded Claire. ‘And they’ll be a whole heap safer too,’ she added under her breath, as she rolled over and went back to sleep.

  The Breakfast Dragons

  ‘Hey, look at this. There’s a dragon in here!’ Ethan reached into the cereal box and pulled out a small blue creature.

  ‘Whatever will they think of next? I guess it’s one more way to sell their products,’ grumbled his father, who wasn’t at his best first thing in the morning.

  ‘It’s not fair. How come Ethan gets the dragon?’ Krista complained.

  ‘I was first one to breakfast,’ Ethan pointed out. ‘If you hadn’t spent so long getting dressed you would have got it.

  ‘I had to brush my hair,’ said Krista sulkily. ‘Is there another box, Mum?’

  Mrs Ambrose sighed. ‘Please, Krista, no fights at the breakfast table. As a matter of fact there is another box but we are not opening it until this one is finished.’

  ‘But we’ve only just started it,’ protested Krista. ‘And Ethan got the toy out of it first. It’s not fair!’

  ‘That will do,’ growled her father, as Ethan shot Krista a triumphant look and put the dragon beside his plate.

  ‘It’s really lifelike,’ he said annoyingly. ‘It’s got tiny wings and everything.’

  ‘Can I have a look?’

  Krista reached across the table as Ethan promptly put the dragon in his pocket. ‘Later,’ he said smugly. ‘Now eat up your breakfast like a good girl.’

  Krista gave him a look of loathing and began to eat her cereal. ‘Actually, this is really nice,’ she said in surprise.

  ‘Probably full of sugar,’ grunted Mr Ambrose. ‘And don’t talk with your mouth full.’

  ‘They did say it was healthy,’ his wife assured him. ‘It’s a new promotion and they were selling two for the price of one. Are you sure that’s not a dinosaur, Ethan? The salesman said it would be very educational.’

  ‘No, it’s a dragon all right, not a dinosaur,’ Ethan assured her.

  ‘Crunchy-Munchies,’ read Mr Ambrose. ‘A delightful breakfast cereal with added minerals and vitamins. Guaranteed to bring you pleasure. Pleasure! How ridiculous. How can a breakfast cereal bring pleasure?’

  ‘I’m fairly pleased already,’ Ethan said, pouring himself another plateful of Crunchy-Munchies.

  Mr Ambrose viewed his son’s overflowing bowl with disgust. ‘At this rate one box will only last a day.’

  Krista cheered up at this and hurriedly filled her bowl as well before her mother put the nearly empty packet away in the pantry.

  After breakfast Ethan finally relented and allowed Krista to hold the little dragon.

  ‘Gosh, it does look real,’ she exclaimed. ‘It even fells real; sort of soft and scaly.’

  ‘It’s a new type of plastic,’ explained her brother kindly, without any idea of whether this was true or not. ‘Here, give it back. I’m taking it to school with me to show the guys.’ For some reason he felt a fierce pride in his model and wanted to carry it with him. Krista handed it back reluctantly, smitten with a sudden longing to keep it.

  Ethan’s friends on the school bus duly admired the little dragon, and Krista lost no time in telling her friends about it.

  ‘What’s so special about a plastic dragon?’ Emily wanted to know.

  ‘I don’t know, but once you see it you’ll really want one for yourself. We’ve got another box and I’m having the next one.’

  Model dragons became the overnight craze. The Herberton supermarket rapidly sold out of Crunchy-Munchies as the children bombarded their parents with requests or even used their own pocket money to buy a box for themselves. The dragons were all different, as Krista was pleased to discover when she ripped open the new box.

  ‘Mine’s a pink one,’ she squeaked in excitement. ‘Isn’t it sweet? It’s got little silver claws and a silver tip on its tail.

  ‘I like mine best,’ said Ethan, stroking his blue and gold dragon.

  Mr Ambrose peered over his newspaper. ‘What a lot of fuss about a plastic animal,’ he snorted.

  ‘Now Alan, that’s hardly fair. We still have a box of plastic animals that you collected when you were a boy.’

  ‘That was different.’ Mr Ambrose went a little pink and hurriedly buried his face in the newspaper.

  ‘Can I see your one?’ Ethan stretched his hand out to pick up the pink dragon at the same time as Krista reached for it protectively. In the ensuing scuffle Krista’s glass of milk fell over with a crash and soaked everything in front of her.

  ‘You idiot! Why can’t you be more careful? You’ve got my poor dragon all wet.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ said her mother briskly. ‘There’s milk all over the table. I’ll get a cloth.’ She sighed in resignation. Her children seemed to knock at least one thing over at every meal. ‘At least it didn’t go onto the floor this time,’ she said thankfully.

  ‘Sorry,’ mumbled Ethan as he grabbed his schoolbag.

  Krista wiped the dragon and wrapped it in a clean handkerchief. She quickly put it into her pocket as she ran after Ethan to catch the school bus.

  Krista was quietly copying out the Maths problems from the board when she felt a sharp jab in her thigh.

  ‘Ouch!’ she said in surprise. The jab came again, making her jump.

  Emily looked up from the next desk. ‘What is it?’ she whispered.

  ‘Ow! There’s something sticking into me,’ Krista hissed back, then bent her head to her work as Ms Clarion the teacher looked in her direction.

  The jabbing continued as Krista shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘Maybe the dragon has fallen out of the handkerchief,’ she thought. She put her hand into her pocket and felt something move. Krista went rigid with fright.

  ‘Maybe it’s a mouse, or a weta or a spider!’ the thoughts flitted rapidly across her mind and she went pale.

  ‘Are you all right, Krista?’ Ms Clarion asked her.

  ‘I need to get some fresh air,’ Krista blurted out, and scrambled out of her chair.

  She ran to the girls’ washroom and quickly unzipped her pinafore. Holding it out over a washbasin she shook it vigorously. There was a clatter as the little dragon tumbled out. Krista kept shaking her pinafore.

  ‘I felt something move. I know I did,’ she whispered frantically.

  There was a sudden scrabbling sound and Krista looked down in astonishment to see the model dragon was moving. She shook her head in disbelief as the little dragon tried to climb the steep slippery sides of the basin. Putting on her pinafore she gingerly reached into the basin and held out her hand. The dragon trustingly hopped onto it and curled into a ball on her palm where it appeared to fall asleep. Krista was amazed. She stroked it gently with the tip of her finger and felt the little dragon’s sides moving in and out as it breathed.

  ‘Wow! No one is going to believe this,’ she gasped. She wrapped the dragon up in her handkerchief, careful to leave room for it to breathe as she put it back into her pocket.

  Krista could hardly wait unti
l lunchtime to show Emily her dragon. Emily was enchanted.

  ‘It’s so cute. Look, it’s opening its eyes. Ooh, isn’t it sweet?’

  The little dragon fluttered long lashes over glinting violet eyes and rubbed her back lovingly against Krista’s hand. Krista offered it a piece of her sandwich. It looked doubtfully at the bread but ate a tiny piece of salami with evident enjoyment.

  ‘Why hasn’t mine come alive,’ Emily frowned, taking out her own pale yellow dragon. ‘It’s the same as yours, only a different colour. What did you do to your one?’

  Krista thought back to the morning. ‘It got wet all over with milk,’ she said slowly.’ Perhaps that was what did it.’

  ‘Great. Let’s find some milk,’ said Amy determinedly. She spent the next ten minutes asking all the children she saw what they had in their drink bottles.

  ‘It’s hopeless. They’ve all got juice or water,’ she said in disgust.

  ‘Maybe water would work?’

  ‘Let’s try it.’

  Emily eagerly poured the contents of her water bottle over her dragon then wiped it dry on a corner of her pinafore. The girls watched it intently but the yellow dragon lay still.

  ‘It didn’t work,’ cried Emily in disappointment.

  ‘I guess it needs milk after all. Or maybe it takes a while to work. Mine didn’t come alive until nearly lunchtime.’

  To Amy’s delight, her dragon started moving in her pocket just as school finished for the day. ‘Let’s not tell anyone,’ she whispered to Krista.’ It can be our secret.’

  Krista nodded. She had already planned to tidy up her old dollshouse for the dragon and had no intention of letting Ethan in on it.

  Krista