The Boy Who Dreamed of Dragons Read online

  Lolli looked from me to the windowsill. Gripping my arm, she inhaled deeply, closed her eyes and let out a long breath over the row of plant pots. ‘Come on, little dragons, grow!’ she whispered.

  Lying in bed later, I felt as floppy as those seedlings. What if they all died under our care? Of course Maxi could breathe on more fruit and more seedlings might start to grow. But if we couldn’t keep them alive, what then? Our dragon-fruit tree was the only one that grew dragons. That was a lot riding on our one plant. The whole future of the dragons, in fact.

  One of the things I missed most about Flicker not living with me any more was night-times. Not having him tucked up next to me when I slept. When he dreamed happy dreams, his scales would shimmer, a kaleidoscope of turquoise, red, green and silver that coloured my own dreams and left me feeling like I’d just drunk a comforting mug of hot chocolate. I had loved hearing his contented rumble and feeling the warmth from his little body. I really needed that right now. When Dad did his rock-and-roll tuck-in that night, I lay there clutching Lolli’s penguin heat pack, Pengi. And tried to trick myself into believing Flicker was there beside me.

  It didn’t work though. I woke up sweating from a horrible dream where I was desperately digging through gardens full of petal confetti in search of Grandad, and sickly-looking seedlings cried at me and a giant-winged dragon had done an enormous poo all over our house.

  I flung off the covers and looked down at Pengi. It wasn’t his fault. Flicker was a hard act to follow.

  I don’t know about Monday mornings in your house, but in ours they can look a bit like we’re starring in a disaster movie. People running in panic, half dressed, grabbing possessions. Like the world might end if I don’t get to school on time or my sister doesn’t have the right juice box – which, to be fair to my parents, given her capacity for supersonic meltdown, is probably a reasonable assumption.

  But when I came down to breakfast, braced for the usual chaos, I was met by an eerie silence.

  ‘Hello …?’ I called a little nervously, eyeing up the half-eaten toast and contents of Lolli’s bag spread across the table. A gerbil, chewing on one of her pencils, paused to look up at me as I made my way over to the back door.

  I poked my head out and scanned the garden, where I spotted Mum, Dad and Lolli staring up at the roof.

  It just shows what a hyperactive imagination I have that I felt quite so relieved to see them safe and unscathed. In the time it took to cross the kitchen, I’d played out at least six disaster-movie scenes in my head. The last one involving a giant wormhole opening up in our fridge.

  ‘You all right, love?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, my voice sounding like I’d turned gerbil myself. ‘What’s going on? It’s very … quiet for a Monday morning.’

  ‘No telly,’ Lolli said crossly, and she pointed up at the TV aerial, which was looking a bit bent and blacker than usual. I gave her a consoling squeeze. I knew how I felt when I couldn’t watch my favourite TV programmes.

  ‘I think we must have had some kind of power surge,’ Dad said. ‘Fried the electrics.’

  ‘First the TV went bang, and then everything just stopped working,’ Mum added, looking frazzled. On top of the usual Monday frenzy, Mum had her first appearance on the radio scheduled for that afternoon and the nerves were starting to show. She was wearing two different shoes and I also noticed that her clothes were covered in so much hair she looked more yeti than human.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll have it sorted in time to listen,’ Dad said chirpily. ‘And I’ll record it for you two,’ he added, giving a disgruntled Lolli a wink. Lolli scowled even harder. She’d made it pretty clear that as Mum’s veterinary nurse-in-training, she thought she should really be on the show too.

  But when I got home from school later it was Dad who was looking frazzled.

  Having brought back power to the house, he’d decided to make Mum a lemon drizzle cake to ‘celebrate her celebrity’. He was usually a really tidy baker, but today the kitchen looked as if a troop of chimpanzees had thrown a tea party. And by thrown, I mean actually thrown. Everything was covered in a white layer of flour. The six excitable mice that had got loose and the shrieking parakeet probably weren’t helping to calm things down.

  ‘I only popped out to make a quick call,’ Dad said. ‘I think the animals decided to “help”.’

  Thankfully Mum’s part in the show had gone really well, so she didn’t even notice the cake-splattered kitchen.

  There was a knock on the back door and Ted’s face appeared, his eyes lighting up when he saw Dad preparing to take the lemon drizzle cake out of the oven. Honestly I think he can smell cake the way sharks smell blood, from miles away.

  When we got to my room, I groaned. The door had been left open and some of the animals had clearly decided wrecking the kitchen was just not enough.

  ‘Yikes,’ said Ted. ‘It looks like you had a tornado over for tea.’

  I stared at the books, Lego and pots of pencils that lay scattered across the floor, and my box of comics, which had been completely shredded.

  ‘I think you might need a new wing,’ Ted said, holding up a chewed piece of cardboard. I took it from him and sighed. Our teacher Miss Jelinski had set us all a challenge to make a costume as part of our Myths and Legends topic. And of course I’d chosen a dragon. At least the box I was using as a body was still intact. As I started tidying up, Ted wrinkled his nose and grimaced.

  ‘Something stinks,’ he said.

  He was right.

  ‘Oh no,’ I said, wondering which of the animals had done the smelly deed. ‘Can you help me find it?’

  Ted didn’t look overly enthusiastic.

  ‘Come on, we’ve dealt with worse,’ I said. ‘At least it won’t explode over us.’

  ‘Um … I wouldn’t be too sure of that,’ Ted said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He pointed to my bed and I suddenly saw what he’d seen. There was something just visible under my bed. Something half covered by a comic. Something bright blue. And scaly.

  Gently I lifted the comic. There, curled up and fast asleep, was the little sky-blue dragon, his huge wings folded back and the silver threads along his body only faintly visible now.

  The dragon’s eyes blinked open and, seeing us standing there, he immediately launched himself out from under the bed. With a whoosh he shot past me, making the hair on the back of my head stick out.

  ‘Looks as if I was right about him liking you,’ Ted said with a grin, as the dragon began circling above me.

  Suddenly the wrecked kitchen and the state of my bedroom made a lot more sense. And so did that feeling I’d had by the lake of being watched. I remembered the way my hair had stuck out then too, after a similar whoosh of air.

  ‘I think we’ve just found out who started the snowball fight!’ I said. ‘He must have followed me.’

  Just then the door opened and Lolli skipped in waving her hands – which had socks on. Her new thing was making sock puppets, and these two had large yellow and pink pompoms glued to their foreheads – and they both seemed to have about five eyes.

  She froze when she saw the dragon. I raced across the room, quickly checking the hallway and closing the door behind her.

  ‘Shhhh,’ I urged, jamming my finger to my lips.

  Lolli, after a second of holding her breath in utter excitement, clasped her hand over her mouth to stop herself squealing and then started dancing round the room to jiggle it out instead.

  ‘Lolli,’ I hissed. ‘Calm down.’

  But there was no containing the little whirlwind that is my sister. And all the uncontrollable jiggling had a similar jiggling effect on the dragon who bashed his way around the room.

  Lolli clapped her hands in delight and chased around after him, sock-puppet mouths opening and closing in excitement.

  The dragon sped up even more. I could see the silver threads on his wings growing brighter, spreading down his body.

 
‘Watch out,’ Ted cried, ducking out of the way of the dragon’s flight path.

  I turned back just in time to see him fly up to my lampshade, where his tail flicked against the bulb. For a second there was a brilliant flare of light and then it burst, scattering tiny fragments of glass.

  Ted picked up Lolli and swung her onto my bed out of harm’s way.

  ‘Zing, zing,’ she giggled as the dragon, startled by the shattering sound, zoomed over our heads.

  I grabbed a handful of ash from the tin on my desk and held it out, hoping that this little whirlwind of a dragon might be drawn to it as the others had been. But either he was too revved up to notice it or he just wasn’t interested.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ I cried.

  ‘Follow your advice,’ Ted said. ‘Let’s all get on your bed. If we sit quietly, maybe he’ll calm down.’

  He finally settled on an empty shelf and peered down at the three of us, sitting cross-legged on my bed.

  ‘Now what?’ I whispered.

  Ted shrugged.

  ‘Perhaps if I open the window, he’ll fly out,’ I suggested.

  I slid off the bed and very slowly edged my way towards the window. The dragon tilted his head to watch me. I pushed the window as wide as it would go and looked hopefully at him. He didn’t move.

  ‘Maybe Zing’s hungry,’ Lolli whispered.

  ‘Zing?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s all zingy,’ she said happily.

  Having calmed down now, she too slid off the bed and tippy-toed her way towards the door.

  ‘Can you go with her?’ I asked Ted. ‘I’d better stay with him.’

  ‘With Zing,’ Lolli said sternly.

  ‘It looks like someone’s got a name,’ said Ted.

  I smiled. Then, keeping one eye firmly on the dragon so he didn’t dart through the door after them, I nodded at Lolli.

  ‘Right – with Zing,’ I said.

  While they were gone, Zing and I watched each other. Every so often the little silver point on his tail would flash. And he would scratch his claws along the plastic shelf. But at least he stayed where he was.

  Just as I was deciding I should go and look for Ted and Lolli, the door opened and they came in, arms full of food. Though I also noticed Ted was licking his lips.

  ‘We didn’t know what to bring,’ Ted said.

  ‘So we brunged Zing a bit of everything,’ Lolli said proudly.

  First off I decided to offer him some broccoli, Flicker’s favourite. He fluttered down and stared at the green vegetable. To be honest he looked about as impressed as I do when Mum puts broccoli on my plate.

  So next I served up one of Flicker’s favourite treats, salt-and-vinegar crisps. He took a sniff and bashed the packet with his tail, smashing the contents to smithereens.

  After that we tried: cheese, a biscuit, an apple, bread, one of Grandad’s caramel toffees, a pot of yoghurt, a kipper, a jam tart, a ham sandwich and a piece of Dad’s liquorice. He wasn’t keen on any of these. And he proceeded to swipe his tail at each offering. He perked up when Lolli offered him the soggy remains of a squeezed-out lemon from the lemon drizzle cake. But in the end he was far more interested in my remote-control car and Lolli’s talking Batman.

  I peeled a kipper, which had been flung like a Frisbee by the dragon’s tail, off the wall. I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain to Mum the bizarre picnic lunch laid out in my room. I didn’t think she’d believe we’d really craved jam kippers.

  ‘Let’s give it a rest,’ I said. ‘He can’t be that hungry. Maybe I should try shooing him towards the window.’

  ‘I dunno,’ Ted said doubtfully. ‘It’s wide open and he hasn’t flown out.’

  At this Zing flew down from my desk and hopped his way under my bed, back where we’d found him earlier. We knelt down and peered in at him.

  ‘He’s got half my wardrobe under there,’ I said, pointing to the pile of jumpers and the bobble hat.

  ‘And most of your socks, by the looks of it,’ Ted laughed.

  Lolli grinned. ‘He builded a nest.’ And we watched as Zing wriggled down into the comfy hollow and started wrestling my clothes into some sort of order around him.

  ‘Definitely looks like he’s made a home for himself,’ Ted agreed. ‘Look, if he doesn’t want to go, you might upset him by trying to boot him out. And I’m not sure your room could take that!’

  ‘You’re not saying I should let him stay?’

  ‘Maybe, just for a bit. Until he’s ready to leave. I’m sure he’ll head off soon enough. You should make the most of it while he’s here.’

  Given the devastation Zing had already caused, I wasn’t sure this was a good idea. Who knew what he’d get up to while I was sleeping, when I couldn’t keep an eye on him? But in the end I decided Ted might be right about not upsetting him by trying to shoo him outside. Zing had curled up in his nest under my bed and seemed peaceful enough for now, but I left the window wide open, as an escape route, in case it turned out he didn’t want to stay after all.

  The next day I woke up roasting hot. I’d gone to sleep under my quilt, with an extra blanket and tucked up with a toasty Pengi. All to shield myself against the cold air from the window I’d left open. I leaned over the edge of the bed and peered underneath. There was no sign of Zing.

  And then something wriggled against my feet and I realised why I was quite so toasty. There, curled up on the very end of my bed, was the little blue dragon. He lifted his head and stared at me, his sapphire eye sparkling, his white eye a swirling cloud. Feeling the warmth of him against my feet reminded me again how much I missed having Flicker tucked up next to me.

  ‘Up-getting time, Tomas,’ Dad called loudly from the other side of the door, borrowing the phrase Lolli used to say when she was smaller.

  Zing twisted round and I yelped as his tail zapped my toe with its pointy end. Flicker had never done that!

  The next minute, a deafening blast of music blared out from the room below. It was quickly turned down as Dad reset the volume, but had been alarming enough to startle Zing into a panic. He immediately launched up into the air on a collision course with my solar-system mobile. Earth spun out of orbit and careered into the black hole behind my desk. And then the sun exploded as Zing’s tail sent it flying. Goodbye, solar system!

  As I got dressed I kept one eye on Zing.

  ‘I’m going to school,’ I declared.

  Zing, who had been taking a keen interest in my radio alarm clock, flapped up and started circling my head.

  ‘I’m going to leave the window open,’ I said. ‘For you,’ I added to make things clear.

  Zing fluttered over to the windowsill and bobbed his head as he stared out at the garden. But he didn’t fly off.

  I walked over to the door, pulled it open and stepped out into the hall. Looking back, I whispered, ‘Please don’t wreck my room while I’m out.’

  As I walked out through the gates after school I wondered if I would go home to utter devastation, my room a shredded claw-scratched disaster zone. Or maybe I wouldn’t even have a home. I hadn’t seen Zing breathe fire yet, but Flicker had taken his time to start emitting the blue flames he was capable of. Who knew what Zing would one day unleash. As I pictured the smouldering remains of my house, I started running.

  I let out a ragged sigh and slowed down as I came round the corner. The house was at least still standing and there were no firemen lining the pavement or smoke billowing from my bedroom window.

  Upstairs, I actually found everything just as I’d left it. And no sign of Zing. Not even under my bed. Surprising me, my stomach did a little half-flutter of disappointment as I made my way to the open window and stared out.

  It seemed Zing had left after all.

  As I turned my gaze away from the sky and back to the windowsill in front of me, I saw that Zing had left some pretty deep scratches in it. I moved a couple of the seedlings further along to hide them, and noticed that another one of them had fallen and was l
ying limply on the soil in the pot.

  The first few times I’d visited the botanic garden with the superhero squad we’d found lots of the tiny dragon-fruit shoots, but recently we’d come back with just one or two. I began picturing lone seedlings being unwittingly trampled on.

  With Zing gone and the rest of the superhero squad busy for the afternoon, I decided it was time for another trip.

  When I got to the entrance of the botanic garden, I showed my pass to the girl in the little hut. Not that she even noticed. She had her head in a book called Stories of Botanical Exploration and was chewing intently on the end of a pencil.

  I made my way along the path, past the ornamental pond with its stepping stones and towards the lawn with the big glasshouses.

  The dragon-fruit tree was right at the other end, and the quickest way to get to it was by walking straight down the corridor, past the vines and colourful orchids that grew along the walls. But you could also enter the hot and steamy rainforest room and walk through there to reach the slightly cooler area where the dragon-fruit tree grew.

  I always went the long way. Wandering through there made me feel like Elvi and Arturo venturing into the rainforest. They were the ones who’d found the Hidden Dragon City in Mexico and discovered the last two active dragon-fruit seeds in an ancient temple, hidden in the jungle. Elvi had lived in Nana and Grandad’s house before them and Arturo had given Elvi one of the seeds to take back with her, so that there would be hope in two places, he said. The seed he kept never grew, but Elvi’s did. And she had cared for it in her garden – and for the dragons.

  And now here I was, searching for more seeds.

  Machete in hand – well, the bit of branch I’d picked up on the way in – I set off, keeping my eyes peeled for scorpions and snakes and jungle jaguars. Soon I’d spotted five new species of insect, tracked an ocelot, narrowly avoided being eaten by a python and followed a troop of spider monkeys.