The Secret Dragon

by Ed Clarke

  Mari laughed nervously. She had no idea what to say. Another awkward moment passed between them all.

  ‘Well,’ said Dr Griff, finally breaking the silence. ‘It’s been really fun to meet you, but, you know, the Cenozoic Era is coming to an end and –’

  Nita nudged Griff, a little harder than was necessary. ‘Ha! That was a little geology joke there. I tell you what …’ He pulled a business card out of his pocket. ‘In case you remember what you came to see me about …’

  And with that he turned and disappeared back into the auditorium.

  Nita gave Mari a sympathetic smile. ‘You wouldn’t be the first to freeze up like a fossil in front of him. Don’t be afraid to email though, OK?’

  Mari watched Nita follow Griff into the hall, stuck his card in her pocket and dropped her head in defeat. She had come all the way here only to mess everything up.

  Suddenly Mari felt the box behind her back twitch. As if a tiny body had moved … She whipped it round, praying she hadn’t imagined it.

  ‘I know you don’t understand me, Pterodraco jonathani,’ she whispered, ‘but … please be alive.’

  As if in answer, the gwiber let out an almost imperceptible breath.

  ‘Thank you! Thank you!’ said Mari, desperately trying to work out what to do.

  She looked down at the untouched sponge. Was the dragon just dehydrated?

  Mari squeezed the sponge gently so that the liquid within kissed the dragon’s lips, but the gwiber turned its head away with such distaste, she might as well have been trying to feed it acid. She tried once more, but the dragon just turned its head the other way before letting it flop down again.

  Mari stared at the limp creature, completely frozen with fear. ‘Don’t die now,’ she begged. ‘I’m talking to you, and I’m telling you: please don’t die.’

  She looked around for any kind of help, but none was at hand. The hallway was empty apart from a table laid out for tea and coffee. She hurried over. Was there anything here that might help? Tea bags, little pots of milk, small sachets of sugar …

  Wait – baby animals drank milk, didn’t they? And this was a newly hatched dragon. It was worth a try. Mari plucked a pot from the basket and ripped off the foil lid. She gently held it to the dragon’s lips.

  ‘Come on,’ she urged. ‘Try this.’

  Finally, eyes still closed, the dragon’s tiny tongue flashed out to taste the milk. And then again. Slowly its eyes opened and its head began to turn, until it was lapping like a kitten.

  Mari blew out a breath in relief. She reached out to stroke the animal’s scaly head. It was so small, so vulnerable, and so dependent on her.

  The gwiber, however, was more concerned with drinking. It made short work of the milk in the pot, so Mari grabbed hold of another. But no sooner had she opened it than the dragon had finished it. She picked up another, marvelling at how something with such a tiny body could absorb all that liquid. Just how long had it been entombed in that stone? A hundred years? More? Mari was trying to calculate how many dinners it might have lost in its incredible hibernation when it suddenly stopped drinking, as if it had been filled right to the top and couldn’t hold even one drop more.

  It stretched out its neck, opened its jaws as wide as they would go, and let out a wheezy belch. Mari’s nose twitched, and she shrank back in disgust – the tiny dragon’s breath smelled of thousand-year-old eggs.

  ‘Well, I guess you’re OK now,’ she said. ‘Come on. We need to get home.’

  Mari carefully replaced the lid on the ice-cream container, sealing the dragon back inside, and slipped it into her bag. A clock on the wall nearby read 14:20. If she was going to get home without arousing her mum’s suspicions, she would have to run for the train back.

  She took off down the hall, bag swinging, feet pounding. In the lift, she thought she could hear some tiny knocking sounds coming from her bag, but she didn’t have time to investigate. She was out of the lift, past the well-dressed man, who still didn’t look up from his laptop but droned, ‘Do come again,’ as Mari whisked out through the revolving door and on to the street.

  As she approached the station, though, she realized that something was poking her in the back.

  ‘Ow!’ she cried as she put her return ticket through the barrier.

  A man wearing a fluorescent jacket gave her an odd sideways glance. ‘What’s in the bag, miss?’ he asked suspiciously.

  She grimaced back at him. ‘Just my homework.’

  ‘Your homework normally bounce around, does it?’ asked the man, coming over to see what was what.

  Mari took the bag off her shoulders. Something was clearly thumping against the sides, making it jerk left and right. And though she knew that this something was a tiny dragon which must have escaped from its temporary home, she had no intention of letting the station official find out.

  ‘Oh, that?’ she said. ‘It’s a … science experiment. It’s quite … volatile.’

  ‘I’m not sure if you should be taking it on public transport, in that case,’ he said, backing off a little.

  ‘It’s perfectly safe,’ Mari replied, before adding in her most serious voice, ‘in the right hands.’

  The man didn’t look happy, but before he could say anything else, an irritated old lady starting rapping him with the handle of her walking stick.

  ‘Young man,’ she said, ‘this gobbly machine has swallowed my ticket!’

  Mari took her chance and ran off down the corridor to her platform. It wasn’t until she’d found the most tucked-away seat on the train that she dared investigate further. Her bag was still jerking from side to side as she put it down on the window seat.

  ‘Calm down,’ she hissed, looking around to make sure no one else could hear. It was fortunate that there were only a couple of other people in the carriage, as the gwiber wouldn’t stop thwacking to and fro, and the bag was shuffling itself off the edge of the seat. Mari only just managed to catch it before it dropped on to the floor.

  ‘OK, OK,’ she growled. ‘What’s the matter?’

  She knew she had to open the bag to find out what was going on. Very cautiously she pulled down the two zips at the top until there was a gap big enough to see inside. She peered in to see the dragon crouched at the bottom. It looked up at her, its big green eyes radiating innocence.

  ‘Will you make up your mind?’ she said sternly. ‘One minute you’re half dead and the next you’re thrashing around like a sheepdog with an itch.’ The dragon swished its tail from side to side like a cat getting ready to pounce. ‘This is one science experiment that needs to go back in its box.’

  She reached in and grabbed the container with one hand, swirling her other hand round to try and catch hold of the gwiber. It wasn’t as easy as she’d hoped. It ducked and weaved and slipped between her fingers, refusing to be captured.

  ‘That milk’s given you a little too much oomph,’ said Mari, both hands now engaged in a vigorous dance with the reptile inside the backpack. ‘I’m just glad you can’t use those wings properly yet.’

  ‘Tickets from Cardiff!’

  ‘Really?’ muttered Mari, flustered. ‘Now?’

  A ticket inspector was making his way down the aisle. Mari let go of the container and tried to pull her ticket out of her pocket with one hand, while the other kept wrestling with the dragon.

  ‘Here you are,’ she said, brandishing her ticket at the inspector with the best smile she could muster.

  ‘You’re a bit young to be out without your parents, aren’t you?’ came the reply.

  ‘Dad’s dead,’ said Mari abruptly, employing her favourite tactic for shutting down a conversation.

  ‘Oh,’ said the inspector, punching her ticket. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  As he turned to leave, Mari felt the dragon suddenly shoot up her arm and out of the bag. She spun round to see it perched on the luggage rack above her head.

  ‘Oh, so now you can fly,’ she said, quickly checking that the inspe
ctor hadn’t seen.

  He was halfway down the carriage now, his back to Mari, speaking to a surly-looking teenage boy who was refusing to take off his headphones.

  ‘Come back down this minute,’ she hissed, reaching up to grab the dragon. But it seemed to have no desire to go back into the dark backpack. It sprang from the rack above her and opened its wings to sail on to the one on the opposite side of the carriage. She dived towards it, but it flew straight back the other way. As soon as Mari made a move, it immediately went in the opposite direction, seeming to enjoy the new game.

  ‘Oh, come on.’

  Mari desperately looked up and down the carriage to make sure that they were still unobserved. The inspector had moved further along. The surly boy was bashing at a game on his phone.

  ‘OK, you need to come to me now,’ she said, beckoning gently with one hand and trying to keep her temper. ‘I bet Mary Anning never had this trouble,’ she added under her breath.

  Mari moved very slowly towards the gwiber, and for once it didn’t fly off. She was almost touching it when –

  ‘You want coffee? You want tea?’

  Mari froze, before spinning round and dropping into her seat. A smiling, dreadlocked man pushing a drinks trolley had just appeared through the door from the next carriage.

  He smiled at Mari. ‘I got nice shortbread biscuits …’ he offered in a warm Caribbean accent.

  Mari fixed a grin on her face and shook her head, praying that he would keep going. Unfortunately he was the talkative type.

  ‘I got them little cans of fizzy cola …’

  Behind the steward, Mari could see the dragon eyeing something on the trolley. Her eyes opened wide as she spotted a wicker basket full of milk pots sitting next to the flasks of tea and coffee.

  ‘How much for some, er, milk?’ asked Mari, pointing at the basket.

  ‘Oh, those you can have for free,’ said the man. ‘You just help yourself.’

  Keeping one eye on the gwiber, Mari grabbed a huge handful and stuffed them into her backpack. ‘Thank you.’ She nodded to him.

  ‘Thirsty girl,’ he half whistled to himself as he moved off.

  The dragon arrowed down from its perch, missing the man’s departing dreadlocks by centimetres, and diving straight into Mari’s backpack. As quickly as she could, she ripped the top off one of the pots and popped it into the ice-cream tub. The dragon followed, and she whipped the lid back on. This time, she kept the box on her lap, holding the top firmly down between her hands.

  ‘You, Pterodraco jonathani,’ she announced, ‘are trouble.’

  When Mari finally made it back to the farm, she raced straight up to her bedroom. She checked that the door was firmly closed, as well as the window, before letting the dragon out of its box. It flopped on to her desk, looking a little dazed. She switched on her desk lamp so that it could bask in the warmth.

  ‘I’m sorry about all the to-ing and fro-ing. It’s all part of a plan,’ she explained. ‘I promise.’

  The gwiber looked at Mari out of the corner of one eye as she pulled out Dr Griff’s business card.

  ‘Dr Griff will help us, I know he will.’

  A knock on her bedroom door made her jump.

  ‘Mari, can I have a quick word?’

  It was Rhian.

  ‘Don’t come in!’ Mari blurted.

  In a flash, she had shoved the dragon back into the ice-cream container, thrown open her wardrobe and stuffed it inside before slamming the doors firmly shut. She dashed over to her bedroom door and pulled it wide open.

  ‘What are you up to in there?’ asked Rhian.

  ‘N-nothing,’ said Mari, not at all convincingly.

  Rhian raised an eyebrow, but clearly had other things on her mind. Mari almost didn’t recognize her mum. Gone were the usual muddy jeans and baggy wool jumper, and in their place was a stylish black dress that Mari couldn’t remember ever seeing before. Instead of being scrunched into a messy topknot, Rhian’s freshly dried hair was softly skimming her shoulders.

  In all the day’s excitement, Mari had forgotten about her mum’s date. She felt her face harden. ‘I thought you were just going to The Lighthouse,’ she said.

  ‘Is it too much?’ Rhian asked anxiously. ‘He’ll be here any minute.’

  As much as Mari hated the idea of her mum going out with a man who wasn’t Mari’s father, she could tell that she was nervous.

  ‘No,’ admitted Mari, reaching out to hold her mum’s arm for a second. ‘You look … nice.’

  Her mum seemed to relax at her touch. ‘Thanks, love,’ she said.

  Mari managed a little smile in return.

  ‘Oh,’ said Rhian, suddenly remembering something. ‘I meant to tell you before: Gareth – he’s the vet – is a single parent too, and he didn’t want to leave his son on his own tonight, so I told him to bring him over – you could keep each other company while we’re out.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Mari couldn’t believe her mother had thought this was a good idea. ‘I’m babysitting?’

  ‘He’s not that young,’ replied Rhian. ‘Pretty much the same age as you. It might be fun.’

  Mari doubted that intensely. Now she was going to have to spend an awkward evening with a boy she didn’t know while her mother went out with a man who wasn’t Mari’s father, all the while trying to hide the fact that there was a dragon in her wardrobe.

  ‘Okayyyy,’ she said, not really meaning it.

  ‘Great.’ Rhian smiled. ‘Thanks, love.’

  Outside, they could hear the sound of a car crunching up the track to the farm.

  ‘That must be them,’ said Rhian apprehensively. ‘Try to be polite, Mari. And please try and talk about something other than fossils. Not everyone likes fossils, cariad.’

  But before Mari could protest, she caught a glimpse through the window of the vehicle pulling up. Her stomach lurched.

  The car outside was a bright yellow estate.

  And getting out of the front passenger seat was Dylan.

  ‘We could watch some TV?’ said Mari finally, after a silence that felt like it had lasted since the Cretaceous period.

  She and Dylan had squeezed themselves into opposite ends of their inconveniently small sofa.

  ‘Don’t think there’s anything on,’ he said.

  If Mari had felt embarrassed in her hard hat when she first met Dylan on the beach, this evening was a whole lot worse. Too many of her secrets were already exposed.

  ‘Is it long since, you know, your dad …?’ Dylan’s question tailed off.

  ‘Not really long enough for my mum to be dating,’ replied Mari.

  Another awkward silence. Mari considered asking about Dylan’s mum, but didn’t know how to.

  ‘Can I use your bathroom?’ he asked at last.

  ‘Upstairs on the right,’ replied Mari, glad to have something to say.

  Dylan rocked himself off the sofa and made his way out of the room. Mari’s relief was short-lived as she remembered what other secret she was keeping upstairs.

  ‘Do you want a drink of something?’ she shouted up the stairs, trying to sound calm.

  ‘Sure, thanks,’ came the reply.

  Mari knew that it would look odd to follow him up, so she busied herself by hunting around in the kitchen for something decent enough to offer a guest. She relaxed when she heard the toilet flush, but started to get nervous again when the sound wasn’t followed by footsteps coming down. She shovelled some ice into a glass of supermarket cola, hoping that Dylan wouldn’t notice the difference, and hurried upstairs.

  ‘You shouldn’t be in here,’ she snapped as she rounded the corner into her bedroom.

  ‘Sorry, the door was open,’ said Dylan. ‘I saw the pictures on the walls. They’re good.’

  Mari calmed down a little when she saw that he was only looking at her fossil sketches. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Mum says other people don’t like fossils.’

  ‘Not true,’ said Dylan, examining a drawing of an amm
onite more closely. ‘I just wish the creatures were still alive.’

  Mari laughed nervously.

  ‘So this is what you were doing on the beach …’

  She nodded. ‘Finding, not drawing.’

  Dylan opened his mouth to say something else but, before he could, from the wardrobe came an unmistakable scratching sound.

  ‘I brought you this,’ Mari said loudly, thrusting the cola into his hands.

  The scratching turned into thudding. Mari wished she had put something heavy on top of the ice-cream tub to keep the lid on.

  ‘Can you hear that?’ said Dylan, taking the drink.

  ‘You hear all kinds of creaks in old houses.’ Mari smiled innocently. ‘Would you like a slice of lemon with that?’

  ‘No. Thanks. There’s definitely something in your wardrobe, though,’ Dylan insisted. He started towards it.

  ‘It’s probably my hamster,’ Mari said quickly.

  ‘You keep a hamster in the wardrobe?’

  ‘It’s … nocturnal,’ she said, as if that explained everything. She slid round him to bar the way. ‘And it doesn’t like people.’

  Dylan narrowed his eyes. Then he smiled. ‘You’re a terrible liar. What’s really in there?’

  ‘I didn’t like to say,’ she said defensively. ‘I don’t want to freak you out.’

  ‘My dad’s a vet. I’ve seen all kinds of weird pets.’

  Mari looked him squarely in the eye, weighing up her next move carefully. ‘It’s rats,’ she blurted. ‘We’ve got rats.’

  Dylan took a step back, grimacing slightly. ‘Oh.’

  Mari warmed to her theme, pleased to have finally found something that seemed to put him off. ‘It’s a bit embarrassing, but they get everywhere. If we don’t keep the doors firmly closed.’ She grabbed a large fossil off a shelf and leaned it up against the wardrobe. ‘There, just to be sure.’ She laughed nervously and pulled Dylan out of the room. ‘You won’t hear them downstairs.’

  Dylan cast a concerned glance behind him as he was dragged back down to the sofa. ‘How do you sleep?’ he asked. ‘With those things … scratching.’