Bentwhistle the Dragon Box

by Paul Cude

  Pulling out his phone, Peter flipped it open and looked up the number for Burns and Haybell solicitors which he'd already pre-programmed in. Eventually he got through to Mr Burns, informing him that the house had been emptied apart from all the large furniture which would be gone within a day. The solicitor told Peter that he would have to come into the office to complete some forms and arrange for the funds from the sale of Mark's effects to go to the hospital, which would all but complete the entire process. Peter agreed to go in just before five o'clock that afternoon.

  Entering the offices of Burns and Haybell at exactly ten to five, Mr Burns met him and escorted him through to his office. Peter handed over two newly cut sets of keys and all the relevant paper work that he had. Mr Burns checked that everything was in order and asked for a couple of signatures from Peter, to which he duly obliged. Once it was completed he got up to leave, but Mr Burns ushered him back into his chair.

  "There's one last thing that I have to do," said the solicitor, walking over to a large, dark coloured wooden cabinet in the corner of the room. Much to Peter's surprise, it turned out to be a safe, and once sure that he'd obscured Peter's view, Mr Burns entered the digital pass code, before the tiniest of 'clicks' opened the door. Pulling out a small package, Mr Burns closed the safe door, before returning to his seat opposite Peter.

  On the table he carefully placed a small wooden jewellery box. Peter wondered what was going on. The solicitor looked across the desk at Peter and said,

  "The last request in Mr Hiscock's will was that you should take possession of this item after completing all the deeds as executor." With that, he pushed the small wooden box across the shiny surface of the table towards Peter. As Peter picked up the box, Mr Burns stood up and offered out his hand.

  "Our business here is complete, Mr Bentwhistle. Do have a lovely weekend."

  After shaking Mr Burns’ hand, Peter left the offices and walked back to where he had parked his car, more than a little intrigued as to what Mark had left him. On getting into the car, he slid the key effortlessly into the ignition before hesitating. With an unbridled curiosity burning inside him, he was unable to resist any longer. Making sure nobody could see, he opened up the wooden box in his lap. His eyes grew wide with surprise. Inside was an intricate silver chain with a tiny, sparkling trident hanging from it.

  He stared in wonder as he held the trident up in the palm of his hand. Although it was made of some kind of metal, the colour it gave off was purple. Not only that, but it kind of... pulsated. He'd never seen or heard of anything quite like it.

  After a few more minutes of gazing longingly at it, he drove home, where he spent the rest of the evening thinking about the necklace. A quick search of the internet came up blank. It was a mystery, and one that intrigued him like nothing had for some time. In fact he was so taken with the necklace that by the end of the evening he'd decided to wear it, even though he'd never before felt the need for jewellery of any sort. To be honest, as a dragon, it was all a bit of a burden, because necklaces and rings would either drop off or be destroyed during the change from human to dragon and vice versa. There was something about this necklace though. He felt he should be wearing it and could almost feel the power radiating from it. With it fast approaching midnight, and his newly gained trinket firmly around his neck, he sloped off to bed hoping to get as much sleep as possible in preparation for his meeting with Councillor Rosebloom the very next day.

  Rising much later than usual, Peter spent most of the day doing household chores that he'd put off during the week, a sense of nervousness steadily building as the day moved on. It was unusual to be summoned to see any of the councillors and he had to wonder why his presence had been requested. Eventually it was time to leave and so he did, allowing more than enough time to reach London, and the council building.

  As usual, the monorail was its efficient self, departing exactly on time. Instead of alighting at the normal stop to go and see Tank at the Mantra Emporium, he continued on to Buckingham station. As the name implies, the station itself is located almost directly beneath Buckingham Palace. He'd never been to this part of London before and was surprised at the difference in architecture between here and the area in which Tank and Gee Tee worked. Here the buildings all seemed relatively new, as well as spacious and... decadent. In contrast, the area where the Mantra Emporium was located was a spider's web of cramped passageways and narrow bridges, with the buildings all being single or double storey at most, and at best being described as run down, unlike the wide, clean polished streets that Peter now found himself walking down in the direction of the council building.

  Turning a corner between two rather tall structures, he let out a gasp at what lay before him. He'd thought that the other buildings were new, outrageously large and self-indulgent, but what stood before him now was something else altogether. Of course he'd seen it on the front of the telepathic papers a few times, but in all honesty had paid it scant attention, what with it seeming so far away from everything else in his life. But here and now, it oozed magnificence in a way that just didn't come across in the pictures from the papers. At least thirty storeys high, it might have even been more, given that for the first time he couldn't see where the roof of the cavern started.

  'Remarkable,' he thought. The height, however, was not the most amazing aspect of the building. Dragon buildings (whether homes or workplaces) are generally made out of stone, carved into rock, or very occasionally made from the remains of spectacular lava formations. He knew from the papers that this building was special, but this was not what he'd expected at all. As well as being tall, the building was a litany of curves, with not a right angle in sight, the construction seamless. No join, no gaps, nothing. He couldn't even take a guess at the material used in its construction. He'd never seen anything like it. Part of him wanted to call it metal, as it had that underlying look, but he knew it couldn't possibly be, with its incredible reflective properties gleaming with an ever changing oil slick of colours. If you continued to look for too long, it almost looked as though it was moving. Unreal.

  Stomping his tail on the path in admiration, he continued on the walkway towards the main entrance. Just when he thought it couldn't get anymore surreal, he stumbled across two gurgling pools of lava on either side of the main steps that led to the official entrance. Both pools were made from the same material as the building, and most dragons either slowed or stopped when passing the pools, gazing contently in quiet contemplation into the steaming, writhing, hot mass.

  Ignoring his body's need to stop at the lava pools, he passed through the giant arch denoting the entrance to the building, noticing two hulking great dragon guards stationed off to either side, hidden from sight by a row of gigantic pillars. His body's need to stop at the pools had now been replaced by the irrepressible urge to run. Run as far and as fast he could, just to get away from those guards. They were the most ferocious and frightening dragons he'd ever seen, and from the colours adorning the shining pikes that they carried, he knew they were part of the King's Guard. He stumbled on, unable to look directly at the dragons, feeling more than a bit guilty, although why, even he didn't know, much in the same way totally innocent humans feel guilty around a policeman in uniform.

  Weirdly, the lobby of the council building was much the same inside as it was outside. Every part of the building had that metallic sheen to it, emphasised to a point by the highly polished floors. It felt very space age, and almost a bit too much for Peter who was much more comfortable in traditional dragon surroundings.

  Or so he thought. It struck him that he thought Gee Tee was stuck in his ways for only letting dragons in their solitus form enter his shop, when here he was himself wishing that the very modern building he was standing in was much more low tech. Smiling to himself, he realised that he had much more in common with the master mantra maker than he cared to admit, although he certainly wouldn't be telling the old dragon as much.

  Tearing himself away from thoughts of
his friends, he turned his attention to the row upon row of touch screen LCDs that occupied the lobby. Wandering up to the nearest, he scrolled through the display, brought up a map of the building and found that the office he was looking for was about as far away as you could get from where he now stood, the furthest corner of the twenty ninth floor to be precise.

  Instantly his eidetic memory remembered the route. It was then that he noticed a button at the bottom of the screen marked 'route planner'. Pressing the button, the screen asked him for the office number, which he duly entered. Suddenly a huge green illuminated arrow appeared on the floor in front of him. Bemused, he took a step forward onto the arrow. Another arrow appeared in front of him again. Shaking his head, he took another step forward. Again another arrow, and again, and again. He followed them all the way to his destination, taking a very different route to the one his eidetic memory would have guided him along. Arriving outside Hitch Rosebloom's office, he took a seat in one of the silver, oversized dragon chairs that adorned the corridor.

  'Not as comfy as the ones in Gee Tee's workshop,' he told himself, wondering just how long he'd have to wait to be seen.

  Unlike the waiting area in, say, a dentist’s or doctor’s surgery on the surface, there were no books or magazines to peruse because nearly all dragons had access to papers and other reading materials via their telepathic abilities. Peter thought about accessing the latest edition of the Daily Telepath, but with the clock on the wall reading 5.22pm he decided against it, especially as his nerves had started showing over the last few minutes. All sorts of thoughts were currently running through his head as to why he'd been summoned here, and none of them were good. Was it because he was spending too much time in his human form? He knew they kept an eye on that, for fear of young dragons getting addicted to it. Rumours around the nursery ring would have young dragons believe it can go so badly wrong that those in question are unable to use their powers to revert back to their dragon forms, with a Council based specialist unit on standby at all times, ready to forcibly change dragons back using unique and varied mantras. Much time had passed since anyone was reported to have needed these services, or so rumour had it, mainly due nowadays to the Council’s diligence in that particular area.

  He shuddered at the very thought of that. More likely it was some of Richie's antics that had been stumbled upon and he would be grilled about her arm wrestling rugby players, or the incident with the gang of youths who tried to relieve her of her phone one dark night in the car park of the sports club, who all coincidentally ended up in hospital with multiple broken bones each, or heaven forbid the day she took on three of the biggest, most obnoxious rugby players in the world at 'tug of war' and singlehandedly, in front of a huge crowd, beat them hands down. Or, of course, the dreaded dalliances. On no, not that. Anything but that.

  'Please don't let me be quizzed about Richie's actions,' he thought, trying hard to focus on something else, without much success. Without knowing it, he began to finger the mysterious trident that hung around his neck. On transforming earlier, he'd forgotten he'd had it on in his human guise. It was only once he'd changed that he'd realised. Unbelievably, to him anyway, was the fact that the trident had changed with his bodily shape, now hanging around his prehistoric neck that was ten times the size of his usual human guise. Impressed and amazed didn't really cover it. Although he didn't know anything about the trinket, it was already as magical an item as it could be to him.

  Wishing it to be 5.30 just so that the ordeal could be over, the clock on the wall told him he had a few minutes left to wait. Not helping was the fact that he was letting off a lot of steam, so much so that he wouldn't have been out of place at a redeveloped railway or a kettle testing facility, and was a sure giveaway of the nerves that he felt. It was everywhere, and try as he might to regulate his temperature, it did little to affect the plumes spewing out of his nose and the top of his head. He was getting very strange looks from passersby. It was then that another thought occurred to him.

  'Please tell me they haven't found out about the incident with the neighbour's cat,' he thought, dejectedly. About a month ago he'd been out in his garden, just tidying up, you know... cutting the grass, a little bit of planting, that sort of thing, when he'd discovered a large area of lawn right at the back was covered in massive amounts of cat poo. Not a particularly keen gardener, he did however like to keep the house and garden looking neat and tidy. So he was quite appalled to see the mess all over his lawn, and even more disappointed to have to move it all so that he could mow the grass. Over the next few days he had kept a close eye on the state of the lawn and discovered that the cat belonging to the people two doors away was coming into his garden, doing its business, and then returning home. This was happening at all times of the day and night, and it made no apparent difference when Peter ran out into the garden to shoo the cat away. In the end, he went round to the house the cat belonged to and explained the situation to the people there, expecting them to be sympathetic to his cause. But they just laughed and said cats will be cats, before slamming the door shut in his face. Not much made him angry, but as he walked away from there, he was absolutely fuming, and had decided, very un-Peter-like, that he would do something about it. Later that night, after dark, he crept silently out into the garden. Adjacent to the lawn was a small wooden construct that held all the different recycling boxes, until every couple of weeks it was time to put them out for the refuse people to collect. The recycling, as it happened, had been collected that morning, freeing up about enough space for someone to hide inside. So, cloaked in stealth, he slid inside, left the wooden door slightly ajar, and switched on what can only be described as his dragon night vision. He didn't have to wait long. Slinking its way through a small gap in the fence at the bottom of his garden, the cat sauntered its way across the path and onto the lawn, not six feet from where he was hiding. The cat was facing the opposite direction, as it started to do its business.

  'Perfect,' he thought. Silently moving the door open to create a slightly bigger gap, Peter drew in a deep breath, and concentrated with all of his dragon ability. Now it's not impossible for a dragon to breathe fire whilst in human form, but it's very, very difficult. It's also frowned upon by most other dragons, and in particular, the dragon Council. At the nursery ring, the young dragons were taught it was never appropriate to do such a thing because it was deemed there would never be a situation where a dragon would need to do it. Even so, the youngsters practised it anyway. As the pleasurable sensation of the warmth tickled its way up his throat, he'd long since decided he couldn't give a stuff about being frowned upon. Opening his mouth and tilting his head slightly to get the right angle around the door, he focused with all his will and let rip with a searing stream of crackling fire that caught the cat right on its tail. Although relatively narrow, the stream of flame was unbelievably hot, with the cat's tail disintegrating at the point of contact. So accurate was the flame, that it didn't even singe a single blade of the freshly mown grass. The piercing howl of terror from the cocky cat was something that to this day, still brought a smile to Peter's face even though he knew it shouldn't. On the plus side, his garden had been poo-free since that very day, and the cat now gets mistaken for a Manx cat, much to the disappointment of its owners, so he'd heard.

  'Oh God, please don't let that be the reason I'm here,' he thought, folding his wings over his steaming head in shame. As the clock struck the half hour, he unfolded his wings and sat up straight. Right on cue the door to Rosebloom's office opened, with a booming voice inside announcing,

  "Please come in Bentwhistle."

  He stood up and, after a deep breath, walked on through into the office. The councillor offered a chair, which Peter duly sat down in. Instead of getting straight down to it, Rosebloom continued rifling through a pile of papers on his desk, adding to Peter's already nervous state. The young dragon tried to distract himself by concentrating on something else. It was then that he took a good look at the councillor
for the very first time. Surprisingly small by dragon standards, his colouring was nothing special - light green all over, except for a big white mark that resembled a blooming rose across his stomach.

  'Ah... must be where he got his name from,' he thought, his nerves having fully retreated to the back of his mind. The councillor's head though, was something to behold. A huge long swathe of black hair flowed down past his neck, the pony tail it was tied into zigzagging throughout the protruding scales on his back. Peter had never seen anything like it. As if that wasn't strange enough, glittering red jewel piercings ran in two lines up either side of his nose, until they met a pair of darkened, space age, wrap around glasses. It looked for all intents and purposes like he was trying to emulate all of the famous laminium ball players, all at once. It was most disconcerting, and just looked... WRONG! Caught up in the moment, Peter could feel his body temperature start to rise, just when he'd thought he'd got it under control, as he realised the self styled, hip and trendy councillor was glaring over the top of his glasses in his direction.

  "Everything alright Bentwhistle?" the councillor enquired.

  "Ummm... sure... yep... everything's fine."

  "You do know why you're here, don't you... Bentwhistle?" asked Rosebloom, scratching his scaly jaw line.

  "Well," replied Peter nervously, "...not exactly."

  The councillor slammed down the papers he'd been sifting through, and stared intently at Peter.

  "I would have thought it was obvious... youngster."

  Peter sat there under the intense scrutiny of the councillor, imagining that a giant crevice had opened up and swallowed him whole, and that he was now tumbling off into oblivion. It almost seemed a kinder fate. Unfortunately he was still glued to the chair, with Rosebloom sitting opposite, waiting for some kind of response.