The Boy Who Dreamed of Dragons Read online

  Puff. Spark. Twinkle. Puff. Spark. Twinkle. Repeat. Until my eyelids began to droop.

  And this time my dreams were sweet. I was with Zing, being carried on Flicker’s tail, laughing as he sent us rocketing into the air, spiralling upwards and diving down, only to catch us up again. We crossed paths mid-air like juggling balls. And then finally he brought us back to Grandad’s garden. And with one last gentle tilt of his tail he sent the pair of us rolling into deep soft grass, Zing tumbling into my lap.

  When I woke up I felt warm. I pulled back the covers and stared down at the source of this toastiness. There curled up next to me was Zing, fast asleep. For the first time he had wriggled his way in and tucked himself beside me. His huge wings lay across me, the silver threads only faintly visible now as they rose and fell with my tummy.

  Not wanting to disturb the sleeping dragon, I inched my way out of bed. It was early but I could hear Lolli singing away in her room. As well as the mug Zing had sent flying, I saw that he’d also made a complete mess of the bundle of photos I’d brought back from Grandad’s. They’d been scattered across the floor. I started gathering them up, relieved that at least he hadn’t shredded them for his nest. Most of them were photos of Elvi’s garden, when the dragons were finally growing. But one caught my eye. It was a photo of Elvi herself, standing by the dragon-fruit tree. She was cradling something in her arms. And it wasn’t a dragon. It was a baby.

  I turned the photo over and saw her scribbly writing: ‘Sweet Rosa, 1979’.

  I stared at the little baby, and then at Elvi. We’d always thought Elvi had been on her own growing dragons. But looking at this photo, it was clear we hadn’t known the whole story. I tucked the photo into my pocket. I couldn’t wait to show the others.

  I scooped up Zing and crept along the corridor to Lolli’s room.

  ‘Don’t get him excited,’ I warned. ‘I’m just clearing up the last mess he made.’

  She nodded dutifully.

  Back in my room I dashed around putting things to rights and checking for any hidden poos. There were none, thank goodness. Zing still hadn’t eaten anything I’d offered him, but I assumed he must be finding food of some sort. Then I spent a fiddly half-hour reattaching scales to my dragon costume and adding some last-minute cardboard-cone spines to the body.

  When I headed back to Lolli’s room, I found her bouncing round the bathroom, her hair sticking up and out at all angles. She giggled when she saw me, and then she flung out her arm and cried out: ‘Powee!’

  ‘You OK, Lollibob?’ I grinned, my eyes darting about to check Zing was still in her room and not on the loose.

  ‘Lolli got superpower!’ she cried. ‘Lolli zappy powee power.’

  And she pointed her finger at the lampshade, as if something might blast from the end of it.

  I joined in and zapped the light too.

  ‘Zapow!’ I cried.

  She stopped and looked a bit cross. ‘There’s not nuffink in your finger,’ she said. ‘Only Lolli finger got the zap.’

  She looked at me again and added, ‘But you can pretend if you like.’

  I was about to say that I needed to go and check on Zing, when I saw it wasn’t a doll or a teddy in the baby carrier she had strapped to her. Along with Stefan, the still-bandaged wooden spoon, I could see the silver tip of Zing’s tail peeking out.

  ‘Has he been OK?’ I asked, pointing to the little dragon.

  ‘Zing got a bit over-’cited,’ she said quietly. She rested a hand protectively on him and then bit her lip. ‘He’s probably sorry.’

  I quickly headed for her room. There was paint all over her carpet. Lolli had obviously done her best to clear it up, but having failed to make it disappear she’d opted to spread it vaguely into the shape of a dragon instead.

  Luckily Mum and Dad didn’t seem to notice the mess Zing was making around the house. They’d been far too busy planning their next video, lining up which animals Dad could safely record, and dealing with the family of terrapins, the tarantula and the bearded lizard Mum had volunteered to look after for one of our neighbours. They were so busy, in fact, that they’d actually forgotten to cook the bolognaise part of our spaghetti bolognaise tea the previous evening. So it was just spaghetti. Ketchup spaghetti in mine and Lolli’s case.

  I opened Lolli’s window, and as we headed downstairs for breakfast, Zing darted out. Later, on the way to school, I spotted him zipping from treetop to treetop, keeping his sapphire eye on me.

  After all the extra work I’d put in on my dragon costume, I was pretty pleased with the overall effect. And I was looking forward to roaring my way through the school gates. Sadly, by the time I got to school, I’d lost most of the spines and quite a few of the scales.

  I looked around the playground and saw that Aura was already there in her costume. A crowd of excited children had gathered around her, the superhero squad among them. My shoulders sagged as I noticed she’d added more colour to it by fashioning an even longer tail, that she’d attached to her hand with string so she could swish it back and forth. I wished I’d thought of that. My own tail trailing behind me had already been stepped on about three times and was looking limp and flattened.

  I ground to a halt. A small Year One boy squinted up at me, looking puzzled.

  ‘Are you a robot?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m a dragon,’ I said flatly.

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘That’s a dragon.’ And he pointed at Aura. ‘I think you’re a robot.’

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ I said.

  He shrugged. ‘Bye-bye, robot.’

  I shuffled into class past the rest of my classmates, who’d mostly decided to come as unicorns and had stuck a range of pointy things to their heads, with varying success. The only non-unicorns were Ted who’d come as a Cyclops, Kat and Kai as Medusa and a merman and Liam as a pretty impressive-looking Poseidon. Oh and the Minotaur in the corner, who I think was Mahid, though it was hard to tell under the papier mâché head.

  Miss Jelinski gave a round of applause as we settled into our seats.

  ‘Well done on your costumes, everyone,’ she said. ‘I can see that you have all made tremendous efforts. Right, before we carry on writing our own legends, since I wasn’t here earlier in the week to greet her properly I thought we’d spend a little time getting to know our newest member of the class. Aura, would you like to come and tell us a little bit about yourself? And indeed your costume. It really is wonderful and we’d love to hear all about it – and you.’

  Aura bounded out to the front of the class, grinning. She reminded me of Tigger out of Winnie-the-Pooh. And maybe a bit of Zing too, especially when her bounding nearly sent Miss Jelinski’s mug of water flying. You could almost feel the buzz coming off her as she stood there.

  ‘I’m Aura,’ she said. Then she added, with an elaborate wave of her hand, ‘But you can call me Queen of the Dragons.’

  I think Miss Jelinski might have underestimated how much Aura had to tell us about herself – and about dragons. She certainly liked to show off what she knew. So it was almost morning break by the time we were ready to get on with our writing.

  When the bell went and the rest of the class bundled outside, I managed to signal to the superhero squad to wait. I was eager to seize my chance and show them the photo of Elvi I’d found, but then Aura came running back into class, clutching a bag.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘I’ve got this awesome dragon ring. Do you want to see it?’

  She stretched out her hand and showed us the silver ring, a dragon coiling round her index finger.

  ‘That really is awesome,’ said Liam.

  ‘And that’s not all,’ she said excitedly. ‘I’ve brought loads of dragon stuff to show you.’

  We crowded round as she started rummaging in her rucksack, pulling things out and handing them to us. There was a pen with a dragon wrapped around the end, a pencil case covered in dragon scales, a really cool dragon pendant necklace and a leather-st
yle notebook which had a little dragon as the clasp, its claw sealing any secrets written inside.

  ‘These things are so cool,’ Kai said.

  And he was right, they really were.

  ‘I know all there is to know about dragons,’ Aura said proudly. ‘I have the best dragon book at home; it tells you everything about them. Go on, ask me anything.’

  We all looked at each other, not quite knowing what to say.

  ‘Try me, go on.’

  But before any of us could reply, Mrs Muddleton, our head teacher, appeared in the doorway and started shepherding us out to the playground.

  ‘If only she knew, hey?’ Kai whispered to me, as Kat linked arms with Aura and hurried her along.

  ‘Aura’s certainly read a lot of books about dragons,’ Ted said at home time.

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Kai. ‘She even out-facted you there, Ted. Who knew that when people first discovered dinosaur bones they thought they belonged to dragons!’

  ‘I don’t know all the facts,’ Ted said a bit sulkily.

  ‘Neither does Aura,’ I pointed out, aware that Ted was looking a bit like a deflated balloon. ‘I mean, however much you read about them in books, she doesn’t really know about dragons, does she?’

  ‘Maybe we should fill her in then,’ said Liam. ‘We could show her exactly what dragons are like.’

  Kat smiled and looked as if she might be about to agree with him.

  ‘No way,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s meant to be a secret. Our secret. We can’t be blurting it out.’

  You know how, looking back, sometimes you say things that later on you wish you could forget you’d said? That was one I’d want to forget I said pretty soon.

  On the way home from school we promised each other that first thing on Saturday we’d start the search for Arturo’s missing letters. Once I’d shown them the photograph of Elvi with her baby, I think everyone realised there was a lot we still didn’t know.

  I’d been full of hope for the seedlings after meeting Chouko. But her advice about putting holes in the pots and sprinkling them with worm poo wasn’t working. Two more of the seedlings had died and a couple of others were looking floppy, their leaves shrivelled and brown. It felt more important than ever to find out if Arturo had anything else to tell us.

  On Saturday morning, while I waited for the superhero squad to arrive, Lolli jumped at the chance to use my arms and legs for bandage practice – until Mum came in and saw quite how much toilet roll we’d used.

  As she bundled Lolli off to her swimming lesson, I once again tried to perk up the seedlings.

  I remembered how Grandad’s neighbour, Jim, had played music to his plants, encouraging them to grow. I had no idea if it would actually work, but I figured I had to try everything.

  ‘I reckon you might be doing more harm than good there,’ Ted said as he came into my room. I quickly stopped my pitiful strumming of ‘Three Blind Mice’ on my ukulele.

  He smiled and added, ‘Still no luck with the seedlings then?’

  I shook my head. ‘We lost two more,’ I said sadly.

  ‘Well, let’s hope we’re right about there being more to find out from Arturo,’ he said.

  ‘Where are the others?’ I asked, looking past him.

  ‘Liam had to help in the allotment and Kat and Kai sent an SOS saying they’ve been ordered to clear out their bedrooms for the big move. So it’s just us.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, trying not to feel disappointed. ‘We’d better go then.’

  By the time we got to Nana and Grandad’s I’d convinced myself we were moments away from another great discovery. I couldn’t wait to get into the shed and start looking. But thanks to Ted’s stomach, not before we’d eaten some much-needed provisions.

  ‘Your nana really does make the best jam tarts,’ Ted said, one hand reaching into Grandad’s goodies tin as the other stuffed a third tart into his mouth.

  I nodded and licked the last of the gooseberry jam off my fingers.

  I’d given up offering titbits to Zing – whatever he was finding to eat, it wasn’t anything I’d offered him. He had perched on Grandad’s radio and I was glad that for once he wasn’t crashing into or breaking anything.

  ‘Shall we have a look then?’ I said. ‘I’ve got a good feeling about this. Just keep an eye out for warrior spiders,’ I shuddered, as I remembered the beast I’d found guarding the hiding place the first time.

  Ted, who was even less happy about coming face to face with creepy-crawlies, leaped up onto Grandad’s stool.

  ‘The view’s better from up here,’ he said sheepishly.

  I moved aside the boxes covering the floorboard with the metal ring and then ducked back down. The space where the tin with the notebooks had been hidden wasn’t huge, but this time I was determined to check thoroughly that I hadn’t missed something. I lifted the board and reached my hand in, groping around, my fingernails scratching at the soil.

  Zing flew down and joined me, whacking me in the face with one of his wings as he did.

  ‘Any luck?’ Ted said, peering down.

  ‘No, nothing,’ I said.

  I began to clear more space under the counter, keen to see if there could be another secret hidey-hole. I thought we’d found something when Ted jumped off the stool shrieking, but it turned out a butterfly had just fluttered past his hair.

  ‘This shed makes me jumpy,’ he said.

  ‘You’re not the only one,’ I replied, watching Zing fly frantically along the wall.

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything else in here,’ I said at last with a sigh. I sat back on my heels, brushing the cobwebs off my arms. ‘And I think we should probably get out before Zing starts bashing into stuff.’

  Ted didn’t need persuading. He was out the door in a flash, as was Zing, who immediately began dive-bombing a heap of compost piled up next to the side of the shed, burrowing into it and flinging clods everywhere.

  ‘Maybe Elvi had other hiding places,’ Ted suggested, still looking himself over for any creepy-crawlies who might have hitched a ride.

  ‘Up to the house then, I guess,’ I replied.

  ‘Actually, Tomas, I did say I’d go and help Liam,’ Ted said, looking at his watch.

  I felt my body do the sag and slump, like a ball that’s had all the air kicked out of it.

  ‘You should come too,’ he added. ‘In between the digging, we usually have a laugh. The snacks aren’t up to your nana’s standards, but I’ve still got a stash of sherbet and Liam’s mum always gives us a massive bag of crisps to share.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I promised I’d stay and help out here once I was done hunting.’

  I watched Ted as he headed up the garden path. He turned when he reached the house and gave me a final wave before disappearing.

  ‘Looks like it’s just you and me then,’ I said, glancing over at Zing. But with his head half buried in the compost heap he couldn’t even hear me.

  On Monday we went into school, only to discover Miss Jelinski was off sick. A long week with Mr Firth loomed like a thunderous black cloud over our heads. On top of that, another three seedlings had died. But I couldn’t share my worries with the superhero squad because Ted kept going off with Liam on special missions to grow food for their dragons, and the twins were busy getting ready for their move. And then there was Aura, popping up all the time, so even when I did have the superhero squad all together, we were never on our own.

  For someone small, she took up quite a lot of space. Apart from flinging her arms about whenever she spoke, her voice always ended up being the loudest in our little group. None of the others seemed to mind. Kat had taken charge of Aura – as much as anyone could take charge of her – as soon as she’d arrived. They’d hit it off immediately and now always sat together.

  I still couldn’t believe that the superhero squad hadn’t met Zing! But I could never predict when he would be around. He was always disappearing and then reappearing somewhere else. And with Aura t
agging along with us after school, it was too risky anyway.

  On Friday morning I woke up feeling as if a monstrous slug had slept on me, squishing me flat. Not even the fact that it was the last day before half-term could unsquish me. I peeled myself off the bed and dragged myself into school.

  At first my spirits rose as I saw the superhero squad huddled in the corner of the playground, for once minus Aura. But then I heard what they were saying.

  ‘You tell him,’ said Liam.

  ‘No, you tell him,’ Ted hissed.

  ‘It’ll be better coming from you.’

  ‘It was Kat who did it – she should tell him,’ Kai said.

  They all turned to look at Kat, and then noticed that she was no longer looking at them. She was looking at me.

  ‘Tell me what?’ I asked, eyes darting between the four of them.

  For a moment everyone looked at everyone else and no one said anything.

  Then Kat elbowed Kai and said, ‘I wouldn’t have had to do anything if you and Liam hadn’t been too busy trying to beat each other in that race to notice what was going on.’

  ‘What was going on?’ I hissed. ‘And what race?’

  This last question made the whole superhero squad shuffle uncomfortably.

  Eventually Ted filled me in.

  ‘Our dragons came back last night.’

  ‘Hang on. What? They came back?’ I said. My stomach did an Olympics-worthy backflip as the inevitable question popped into my head. Then why hadn’t Flicker come?

  ‘Er … yeah.’ Ted looked awkward as he watched my stricken face. ‘We thought perhaps you and Flicker were off somewhere. You know, on your own.’

  I shook my head and Ted went quiet. I immediately thought of Zing, curled up next to me in my bed. And my heart suddenly felt like it was being squeezed. What if Flicker had turned up and seen the little dragon with me and felt left out? Maybe he thought I didn’t need him any more. So he’d flown away.