The Dragon Kepeer and Other Stories

by Lynne Roberts

and Emily had three glorious days playing with their tiny dragons and were impatient for the weekend when they could devote more time to them.

  ‘I’ve called mine Sylvia,’ Krista said fondly, as she watched her dragon lolloping up the dollshouse stairs before it collapsed on a doll’s bed.

  ‘Mine’s Lemon Drop,’ beamed Emily, crumbling a biscuit for her greedy little dragon. ‘Just think, tomorrow we can have all day with them. What do you reckon we take them out into the garden and see if we can teach them to fly.’

  ‘Great idea,’ enthused Krista. ‘I can hardly wait.’

  Their plans were doomed to disappointment, as Saturday was wet. It rained steadily and Ethan muttered to himself as he flopped onto the couch.

  ‘You’re surely not watching television again? Why don’t you read a good book and improve your mind,’ his father said with a frown.

  ‘Don’t want to read. There’s nothing to do.’

  ‘Krista doesn’t have any problem finding something to do. She’s playing quietly in her room,’ his father said pointedly.

  ‘Okay, okay, I get the hint.’ Ethan sighed and stamped out of the living room. He burst into Krista’s room where she and Emily were playing with the dragon on the floor.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Ethan stopped and watched in shock as the dragons chased their tails on the rug. ‘Where, how…’ he croaked.

  ‘They come alive when they get wet,’ Krista told him. ‘Ours have been alive practically all week now.’

  Ethan yelped and ran to his room. Grabbing his dragon from the chest of drawers he rushed to the bathroom and held it under the tap.

  ‘How long will it take?’ he asked Krista anxiously.

  She shrugged. ‘A couple of hours, I think. Isn’t that right Emily?’

  Her friend nodded in agreement.

  ‘Wait until I tell the guys,’ yelled Ethan, and ran for the phone.

  As the children agreed later, the next three weeks were the most fun that any of them could remember. Nearly everyone in Herberton had at least one dragon and some families were lucky enough to have two. Not all the Crunchy-Munchies boxes had contained dragons. And some of the dragons refused to come alive. No amount of wetting them made any difference and they quickly lost any charm they might have had for their owners.

  The little dragons really were enchanting. They obligingly slept in dollshouses, chocolate boxes, margarine containers and in the case of Murphy Brown, in an old bird’s nest. There were dragon beauty competitions among the girls and dragon races among the boys. Some of the boys tried to make the dragons fight but this didn’t work. The dragons merely yawned, covering their mouths politely with extended claws, and turned their backs on each other.

  Three weeks passed quickly. The children had managed to keep the dragons secret from their parents, although this wasn’t always easy as Krista and Ethan discovered. Mrs Ambrose complained about the obstacle course of blocks that covered most of Ethan’s bedroom floor and which he assured her had to stay there.

  ‘It’s for an important experiment I’m doing. It’s a project.’

  His mother sighed and continued vacuuming, wondering why there seemed to be so many crumbs around the house.

  But one morning the trouble started. It began with Krista’s dragon. Krista had scooped it out of the dollshouse where it had fed contentedly on a slice of cheese, and bundled it into her pocket as she set off for school. Halfway through her science lesson there was a sudden burning smell and Emily gave a squawk of dismay.

  ‘There’s smoke coming from your pocket, Krista!’

  ‘What’s that?’ Asked Ms Clarion. ‘Krista Ambrose! What have you got in your pocket? Is it a cigarette?’

  ‘No, Ms Clarion,’ stammered Krista, quickly pulling out her dragon and stuffing it into her desk.

  ‘Come here,’ commanded Ms Clarion.

  Viewing Krista’s still smouldering pocket, she gave her a lecture on the dangers of cigarettes then sent her off to the headmaster’s office in disgrace.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll look after Sylvia,’ Emily whispered, as Krista cast her a despairing look on her way out the door.

  But worse was to come. A cloud of smoke from Krista’s desk led to Ms Clarion evacuating the classroom.

  ‘That silly girl must have had a box of matches. She’d dropped one in her desk and now it's on fire,’ she told the caretaker crossly, as he answered her summons.

  Emily stood guiltily with her dragon in one pocket and Krista’s dragon in the other. She felt a sudden warmth and quickly pulled Krista’s dragon out and dropped it into the bushes behind her. She beat at her own pocket, which was fortunately only slightly singed.

  ‘Krista’s dragon can breathe out fire!’

  The message passed rapidly around the school and the students viewed their own dragons with a mixture of alarm in the girls and excited anticipation in the boys. By the end of the next week all the dragons were breathing fire and the children were panicking. A number of them had been severely told off by their parents for playing with matches and it was getting harder and harder to prevent the dragons from burning everything they touched.

  The trouble finally came to a head with Chloe Wellington. Chloe had got one of the ‘dud’ dragons and had watched the others enviously as they played with their live ones. She had been prevented from telling on them by the girls taking turns to lend her their dragons but now suddenly she was deluged with them.

  ‘I don’t want them,’ she wailed. ‘They burn.’

  ‘But they’re really fun. All you need to do is keep them in a tin with holes in for the smoke to come out.’

  ‘They’re no fun anymore.’ Chloe stuck out her bottom lip and refused all offers.

  The other girls were getting harassed by this time. It was almost with relief that they heard the news that Chloe Wellington had ‘told’ on them. The parents were all horrified and disgusted. At least, the mothers were disgusted. The fathers used them for a while to light fires, but that novelty soon palled, as it became obvious that along with their fire raising talents, the dragons had grown aggressive. They snapped at unwary fingers and snarled at each other. Three of them made a concerted effort to hunt and kill Sam Harrison’s pet guinea pig, which had been rather neglected since the onset of the dragons. It was generally agreed that the dragons would have to go.

  There followed a sad time as sobbing children bid farewell to their former pets while their parents tried in vain to dispose of them.

  They tried flushing them down the toilet, much like dead goldfish. The dragons held on grimly to the side of the toilet then climbed out enraged and looking for battle.

  They tried drowning them in buckets but that only led to a lot of sliced and bleeding fingers and scalded hands in water that had suddenly soared to boiling point.

  The parents had a meeting to discuss what to do,

  ‘My Emily’s one burned a hole in the living room carpet,’ her mother complained.

  ‘That’s nothing. Our Rosie’s dragon got out of its box in the shed and set fire to a sack. That spread to the lawnmower, which exploded, and darn near burnt down the entire place. If I hadn’t been hosing the garden at the time, there would have been a catastrophe.’

  ‘What happened to the dragon?’

  ‘Oh it was fine,’ Mr Plantain said bitterly. ‘Showed up for its tea right on time, looking very chirpy.’

  ‘I rang the manufacturers and asked them where the dragons came from,’ Mr Matthews announced. ‘Unfortunately they came from a factory somewhere in China. But there won’t be any more because the factory burnt down.’

  There was a brief silence at this.

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Drowning them doesn’t work.’

  ‘They’re tough little beggars. I took to one with the back of the spade but it simply got up and walked away,’ Mr Seddon put in. ‘gave me a filthy look, too. I’ve bought two extra fire extinguishers, just in case!’

  ‘I’ve got a suggest
ion,’ Sally Baker’s father put in. he had been sitting quietly listening to all the complaints and he decided he had found the solution. ‘There’s a small rocky island just out of the harbour where I go fishing from time to time. It’s rather barren and nothing lives there but seabirds. How about if we take all the dragons and leave them on the island? It’s too far for them to swim back from and they can’t fly, thank goodness.’

  The other parents were very enthusiastic about this idea and Mr Baker agreed to take the dragons in his boat.

  ‘As long as at least three men come with me and the dragons are secured in a flameproof box.

  ‘I’ll go,’ offered Mr Ambrose, who had always fancied a boat trip around the harbour.

  Another two fathers also volunteered and the next day saw them roaring over the waves to come to rest beside a small rocky island. Mr Ambrose drew the short straw and was elected to let the dragons out of the box. Gingerly he opened the lid and stepped back rapidly as a cloud of angry dragons billowed out in a wreath of smoke.

  ‘Oh no! They’ve learned to fly,’ gasped Mr Seddon. ‘Quick, get in the boat, Alan.

  As Mr Ambrose scrambled back on board, the men were all thankful to see that the dragons’ wings were too small to carry them any distance.

  ‘What do you suppose they will eat?’ Mr Plantain wondered.

  Mr Seddon grinned. ‘With a bit of luck, each other! Otherwise I guess there are a few birds’ eggs around.’

  ‘So that’s that,’ sighed Mr Baker in relief. ‘Now maybe we will have some peace at last.’

  Life returned to normal