‘What am I going to do, Flicker?’ I whispered.
I stared out, willing the fog to clear inside my head as well as out there in the garden.
‘We need something to help us. What is it that dragons love?’
Flicker started wriggling frantically. I looked down and he sent out a spray of sparks that shook me out of my daydream. He rubbed his head along the back of my hand. I smiled.
‘It’d be easier if the others were like you. You’re no bother. But they’re all getting to be more of a handful. I just wish I could think of something. I feel like everyone’s relying on me to come up with a brilliant idea.’
Flicker nudged my hand, then launched up into the air. He circled above me, sending sparks raining down, then began zipping back and forth across the room. Something seemed to have got him riled up and I wondered if one of the ferrets had sneaked back in. But the door was still shut. Then he moved from sparks to blasting out fiery breaths that would have rivalled Sunny’s. He dived down and incinerated the crumpled pieces of paper from my maths homework.
‘Hey, stop that,’ I hissed.
But he ignored me and simply grabbed another ball of paper in his claws. He swung it up and I watched it ignite under another fiery breath. This time he flicked his tail through the debris, scattering ash into the air. It drifted down onto me. I batted it away crossly and scooped up the remaining balls of paper, shoving them into a drawer out of his reach. But Flicker just set to work on one of my comics, shredding strips off it and blasting them to ash.
What on earth was he doing? Maybe I’d been wrong about Flicker being less trouble than the others after all!
‘Enough already,’ I sighed.
He landed on my bookshelf and I scooped him up.
‘Can we just go to sleep?’ I said. ‘Maybe it’ll be like Dad says and my brain will come up with the answer while I dream.’
Flicker’s scales shimmered bright red as I curled up in bed and tucked him in next to me. I really hoped Dad was right. I drifted off to sleep with Flicker’s eyes twinkling up at me.
In my dream I was flying. High up in the clouds through a purple sky. Green and turquoise light swept in brilliant waves all around me. Below were mountains, rock and snow and ice. I spotted waterfalls and crystal blue lagoons and cracks in the ground where fire boiled and bubbled below the surface. I swooped low, skimming over geysers with their jets of water bursting out and traced the curve of glaciers that creaked and sighed in their ancient voices. On and on I flew, until I saw the looming shape of a volcano. And I knew this was the place I had been seeking.
The air was full of ash. And when I reached it, I circled above the crater, faster and faster. In a dizzying dance.
I opened my eyes and flung off the covers as if the heat of the volcano was real. Next to me Flicker was pulsing red and orange. A fiery glow in the darkness of my room.
When I crawled into the Dragons’ Den the next day I found the others toasting a towering stack of crumpets.
‘Brain food,’ said Ted, grinning and licking golden syrup off his fingers.
Kai tossed me one that Sunny had just turned a lovely golden brown.
‘So, my best ideas definitely need syrup. How about you? Do you think better with syrup or chocolate sauce with sprinkles?’
‘I think this might be a syrupy-chocolate-sprinkles-with-extra-squirty-cream kind of problem,’ I said.
‘You’ve not had any luck either with the training then?’ asked Kat.
I shook my head. ‘Sorry.’
For a few minutes we let the crumpets do their work, but no amount of syrup seemed to help. So I decided to fill them in on seeing Liam outside Grandad’s.
‘He looked a right mess,’ I said. ‘There’s definitely something weird going on with him.’
‘Maybe it’s something he ate,’ said Ted. ‘Mum won’t let me eat blue sweets because she reckons they make me go all hyper.’
‘Maybe he’s got a part-time job as a scarecrow,’ Kai suggested.
‘Or he’s doing a sponsored limp for charity,’ said Kat.
‘Whatever’s going on, you can bet it’s going to mean trouble,’ I said.
Now that the crumpets and treats had been demolished the dragons were getting fidgety. Crystal kept icing Dodger’s claws to the branches he perched on and blasting icicles that rained down on him. He, in turn, was getting more reckless with fiery breaths to melt it all. It had always been a bit of a squash in the den, and more so since the dragons had arrived. But with ice and fire in there too now, things were getting a bit hair-raising. I sighed as I stamped on another smouldering twig.
Suddenly Flicker circled the den, his scales shimmering yellow, orange and scarlet. He landed on a branch at the back of the den and stared out across the field on the other side. He hopped from foot to foot and I realised he was going to take off. I reached out to grab him. But it was too late.
He flapped away over the field. Everyone crowded round, pulling back the branches to see more clearly.
‘Where’s he going?’ Kai asked.
But I had no idea. He was all the way across the field already, almost at the lane that led to Grandad’s house. He didn’t look as if he was stopping. But then the next second he dive-bombed the ground.
When he didn’t rise up again my heart stopped. Had he just crashed? I tore back the branches and squeezed my way out of the den, scratching my arms and face. I didn’t care though. Behind me I could hear the others wrestling their way through. But I was away already. I’m not the fastest runner in my class, but at that moment it was like I was flying.
When I got to the other side of the field Flicker wasn’t lying in a crumpled heap on the ground. Thank goodness! He was flickering like a beacon, hopping up and down, scratching at the ground and sending clouds of dust into the air in the process. I ducked as I felt Sunny’s wings brush the top of my head and watched as he, Crystal and Dodger zoomed towards Flicker and what I now realised was the remains of a bonfire. One by one they wriggled and rolled in the ash.
I thought of Flicker taking a dust bath in Grandad’s garden and then burning things in my room. And of the dream, how it had felt like coming home as I flew over the volcano. And now this.
Flicker had been trying to tell me the answer all along!
As Ted, Kat and Kai joined me, breathless and panting, I couldn’t help grinning. Flicker flew over and landed on my shoulder, sprinkling me with ash.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said, laughing. ‘I get it. Finally! Sorry for being so slow.’
The others looked at me like I’d gone batty.
‘Ash,’ I said, pointing to the ground and giving everyone a huge grin. ‘Dragons love ash.’
Although we still didn’t risk taking the dragons back into school, things got a whole lot easier after we found out about the power of ash. The dragons were drawn to it like Ted was to chocolate chips. We assigned clicks and whistles to commands instead of words. And the dragons were a lot quicker to learn than Dexter, Kat and Kai’s terrier pup. They got the hang of picking things up and bringing them back to us in no time and after that the games quickly became more advanced.
Kai started Super-Sticky, where he filled balloons with lemonade, then got Dodger to collect and drop them on command.
Flicker and I raised the challenge after Flicker started making smoke rings and Dodger got the idea to swing the water balloons and release them through the smoky circles. Ten points for making it through the ring, twenty if it then hit its target underneath as well. The target usually being Ted.
‘Leave off,’ he cried, as another balloon burst, soaking him yet again. ‘Anyone’d think I had a bullseye painted on my head.’
‘Now there’s an idea,’ Kai laughed.
When the twins got tired of this target practice they came up with an altogether deadlier game. Which they named ‘Blast Attack’.
Sprinkling a little ash on their wrists, the twins made a clicking sound somewhere at the back of their throats. Im
mediately Crystal and Dodger zipped down from the branches where they had been perched, landed on the twins’ arms and dug their claws into their sleeves. Crystal lowered her head. Then she coiled her tail around Kat’s forearm, her purple scales curling upwards along her sleeve. Dodger did the same on Kai.
The twins took a few paces away from each other, one arm held out in front of them, the other hand resting on their dragon.
‘Ready?’ Kat called.
‘Born ready,’ Kai replied, his eyes locked on his sister’s.
Kai lurched to one side as Kat’s dragon let out an icy blast. Kai pointed his arm at his sister and returned a fiery blast from Dodger. For the next few minutes Ted and I watched an awesome battle of fire and ice, which the dragons appeared to be enjoying as much as the twins. They raised and lowered their heads and flicked the tips of their tails as they unleashed blast after blast.
It didn’t take long for Ted to join in. Sunny soon got the hang of shooting flames at his opponents, although, having just eaten, his aim and reach was a bit more unpredictable. I was also slightly worried what might happen to Ted’s arm if his dragon let out a fiery fart rather than a belch.
I couldn’t help being a bit envious. Blast Attack didn’t seem to be Flicker’s kind of thing. He didn’t breathe fire as much as the others – or ice for that matter. I wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep up. I watched the others roaring their battle cries as ice met fire and steam filled the air.
Suddenly I felt Flicker’s weight on my arm and winced a little as his claws gripped through my sweatshirt. His tail coiled up my arm and I smiled, feeling the heat of his little body.
A shiver ran along his spines and he pulled his wings back, lowered his head and then unleashed a bright blue flame. It rocketed across the den, the tip of it spreading out in flickering white.
Flicker could breathe fire like the best of them! He also had the most accurate aim by far, and in between blasts he puffed out smoke which confused the others.
A true tactical warrior!
‘I wouldn’t,’ Ted said the next morning as I flopped on his bed.
My hand wavered in front of my mouth, the crumpet I’d just picked up from his desk half in and half out.
‘That one’s Sunny’s.’
‘You mean you’re giving your dragon first dibs over your best mate?’ I asked.
‘It’s not that,’ Ted said hastily. ‘I mean it’s one of Sunny’s specially prepared delicacies.’
I looked at the crumpet in my hand and the treacle dripping from it.
‘Looks OK to me,’ I said.
‘Sure, if you like slug slime on your teatime treat.’
The crumpet shot out of my hand as I hurled it across the room. I screwed up my face.
‘Sunny is a bit of a gourmet,’ Ted said. ‘The other day he brought me marmalade chocolate fingers. They were great. But sometimes his tastes can be a bit of a stretch – like these and the greenfly pancakes. He brings them like little offerings. So you have to be careful what you accept because you’ll hurt his feelings if you spit it out.’
I looked up at Sunny, who was watching me from the top of the wardrobe. I shrugged apologetically and tentatively picked up the slime-smothered crumpet, holding it out for him.
He swooped down and plucked it from my fingers.
‘He’s got quite a collection of slugs now,’ Ted went on. ‘I thought he was eating them, but he just seems to want their slime. Maybe it’s like honey for dragons.’
I gave a shudder and tried not to think about the slug farm developing up on the wardrobe. I had visions of them in hamster wheels, their juice dripping into tiny thimble-sized buckets.
‘So where’s your sunflower?’ I asked. ‘I left mine at home in the end. It’s sort of … well … it’s not what you might call thriving.’
The truth was, the sunflower I’d been growing for the school competition had been sadly neglected. I’d eventually found it this morning under my bed. It hadn’t even grown past the seedling stage. All it needed, Miss Logan had said, was some sun, some water and a little care. Well, it hadn’t got any of those since Flicker had arrived.
‘Mine’s struggling too,’ Ted said.
And he pointed to a blackened plant pot and the shrivelled remains of a sunflower head. ‘It got fire-belched.’
Outside the school gates we met up with Kat and Kai. Kai had a similar story with his sunflower. There had been an exploding poo incident on Dodger’s first day, and the flower had never recovered. Kat however had somehow managed to keep her sunflower safe. And it was enormous. Taller than their dad, who was tottering up the playground with it, the huge yellow flower head nodding above him.
‘It’s brilliant!’ I said. ‘You’re bound to win with this, Kat.’
She smiled and then leaped forward to stop her dad face-smashing the closed door he was about to walk into.
Everyone had been looking after their sunflowers for weeks. And today we were supposed to be planting them along the school wall. At the end of term whichever one had grown the tallest would win the prize. So far Kat’s was the biggest by a mile. Almost as big as the smile she couldn’t stop from spreading across her face.
It would be great to beat Liam at something for once. He always had to be the best at stuff or have the best thing. Even in show-and-tell he’d do the most extravagant yawn to make it clear that whatever was being shown couldn’t impress him. But if I thought Kat’s skyscraper of a sunflower was going to wipe the smug look off Liam’s face, sadly I was wrong. Because just as we were settling down on the carpet, Liam swaggered in. At first I thought he’d messed up. He was empty-handed and I couldn’t help hoping that like me he hadn’t even managed to grow a seedling let alone a flower.
But then I saw him looking past us out to the playground. Twenty-five heads turned in unison. And then twenty-one breaths were released in an awed ‘Whoa’ and everyone bundled to the window to stare out. Only the four of us stayed silent, eyes fixed on the colossal towering stalk, its leaves like dinner plates and its huge yellow sunflower head as big as a beach ball.
‘How?’ Kat whimpered.
Liam sauntered up next to her, smugness oozing from him like slug slime onto a crumpet. ‘Well, if you’ve got the know-how, you know how,’ he said. ‘Some of us just have it.’ He looked Kat up and down. ‘And some of us just don’t.’
Poor Kat’s eyes filled up and she pushed past him and hurried out of the classroom.
Ted and I glared at Liam, and then Kai, who probably should have known better, given that Miss Logan was hovering behind, shoved Liam. He stumbled back and knocked into the table. The yell he gave when his leg banged it was louder than anyone expected. Trust Liam to make it look ten times worse than it was.
‘Kai, that’s enough,’ Miss Logan said sharply.
Now you see why we call Liam ‘King of Trouble’. Although after what happened later that week we might have to change that to ‘Emperor of Trouble’.
‘Tomas, are you listening?’
It was teatime and as usual I hadn’t really been listening to my mum at all. I was too busy thinking about Flicker and the other dragons. And watching Lolli finger-painting a face on her plate with meatball sauce. But in the end it’s hard to ignore someone who is waggling a forkful of spaghetti under your nose.
‘Make sure none of your sillier classmates upset the animals on your school trip when you go,’ she said. ‘I’m relying on you to keep an eye on them. The Caldwells’ donkey is a bit of a nervy old thing at the best of times. And maybe you can keep an eye on that poor Liam Sawston. His mum’s ever so worried about him.’
Hang on, what? Poor Liam? Suddenly I was listening.
‘I saw her in the chemist’s earlier. He’s got a nasty burn on his leg. He’d been messing about in their shed and she thinks he must have spilled something on himself.’
I pictured Liam limping the other day and how he had yelled out after banging into the table at school.
‘People can kee
p all sorts of toxic things these days,’ Mum went on. ‘Although she says her husband swears blind he doesn’t use pesticides and all that stuff.’
‘Sounds just like Liam to be messing about with stuff he’s not supposed to,’ I muttered crossly.
Mum looked at me.
‘Oh dear, are you two not getting on any more?’ she asked. ‘That’s a shame.’
I nearly choked on my meatball.
‘What do you mean, “any more”?’ I spluttered. ‘We never got on in the first place.’
Mum smiled. ‘You and he were best buddies back in nursery. The two of you were so sweet together. I’m sure he hasn’t changed that much.’
I stared at her.
‘We were what?’
‘Come on, surely you remember? You were inseparable when you went to the Happy Meadow Centre. I guess when you went off to school and Ted was there, you just forgot all about Liam.’
She reached out and caught one of the ferrets as it launched onto the table and started to make off with one of Lolli’s meatballs. ‘All I can say is I’m glad Grandad’s got the sense to keep his garden organic. I wouldn’t want to think of you messing about with chemicals.’
And then the image of Liam’s monstrous sunflower popped into my head. And it hit me.
Was that how Liam had grown such a huge flower? Had he really used chemicals?
He was as sneaky as that ferret licking his lips as he eyed up another meatball. He was such a cheat.
Mum was wrong. There was no way I had ever been friends with Liam. Just no way.
When I told the others about Liam and the chemicals they were as angry as I’d been. I didn’t tell them what Mum’d said about me and Liam being friends – that really would have horrified them.
‘We need to keep an eye on him. Now we know how he plans to win the sunflower competition, maybe we can stop him,’ I said.
The Boy Who Lived with Dragons Page 4
