It was then that I decided that I’d follow their trail and find out where they were all returning to.
3
The Castle
The trail led me to a mound, with what looked like a castle on top of it. Back in South Wales, we had a castle nearby on top of a hill. But while the one back home was in ruins, with stones that had crumbled apart hundreds of years ago and no one living there save for the occasional badger and hedgehog, this castle was teeming with life.
It wasn’t ruined for a start, and had these tall towers, six of them, in fact, that rose up into the fluffy grey clouds, vanishing behind them. Those flying creatures wheeled around the towers and, once I was close enough, I saw them to be massive flying lizards with long necks and tails. They were like nothing I’d seen before, really, not even on the television.
Some beasts were red, some yellow, some green, some purple, some black, and some white. They flew in these brilliant aerobatic patterns that I could swear would put a swallow to shame. They dived through the clouds, almost touching the castle walls with their claws, before sharply veering upwards in the air.
It was then, watching from a slight rise with a cooling breeze passing through my fur, that I saw humans were riding these things. They carried long staffs across their backs, with crystals just like the ones Astravar used to collect, affixed onto the top of them. Sometimes, they took their short swords out of the sheaths at their hips, raised them up in the air, and swooped down with them. Other times, one of them would lift the staff off of their back, point it at the ground, and bathe the earth in brilliant displays of lightning, fire, and ice.
I’d never seen anything that could do that. I mean, back in South Wales, they had blocky machines that could create ice and blocky machines that could create fire. But they had to be closed to do so, and these staffs were creating brilliant effects all by themselves. I had to be dreaming.
I also found the behaviour of these people incredibly strange, even for humans. I mean, if you wanted to fly a creature like that, I would think you’d use it to get food. But they didn’t seem to be trying to kill anything, but just attacking the ground and making pretty patterns on it. They brought nothing back from their hunts, not even a mouse.
None of it made any sense.
I tried to ignore them, as I realised a place with so many people in it would also likely have a kitchen with lots of food. In fact, I could smell the aroma of some smoked fish coming from somewhere within.
I sprinted towards the castle. The grass shortened as I approached, and I passed a stable with horses grazing outside. A scruffy-looking man was outside with the horses, tossing hay to one side of the wooden fence with a pitchfork. He had a strand of straw in his mouth, with smelly smoke rising from the tip.
The man glanced at me as I passed and uttered something. Not being human, of course, I didn’t understand. I imagined he said something like, “Not seen too many of you fellows lately. We need a good mouser in the kitchens.” But I have no evidence to suggest whether or not that is true.
For all I know, he could have accused me of being one of the demon incarnations that Astravar had summoned up from his portals. Although the man didn’t seem afraid of me or anything like that.
I passed over an open drawbridge, and I stopped before I stepped underneath the portcullis. There was water in the moat, and I hadn’t drunk a drop all day. I lowered myself down the bank – steep for humans but not for cats – and I lapped up several mouthfuls of the freshest water I’d tasted for months. It had a tint of rose in it and was strangely warm.
Several moments later, thoroughly hydrated, I found my way into the castle proper. There were people in there, hundreds of them. Some of them were sitting on a stone wall eating apples. Others, in pairs, sparred with each other with wooden swords – for who knows what reason. A man stood in the centre of the sword-wielders, shouting out at the top of his voice in a punctuated rhythm.
He was loud, and so I didn’t want to go anywhere near him. Instead, I passed through the courtyard and pushed my way through a heavy looking door which was only slightly ajar. The corridors were cold and dusty, but I could smell my goal. The aroma of food was more intense than a chicken roast fresh out of the oven.
There was fish, there was chicken, there was pork, there was beef, and I swear I even caught the whiff of rosemary. I entered the kitchen, ducking between the feet of men and women scurrying around. I found a rather stout looking woman stirring something in a pot over a fire. I mewled at her, purring deep within my chest, and she turned and looked at me. Her expression suddenly turned to one of disdain, and she shouted out something at me.
She kicked me, and I shrieked back at her, and swiped with my paw, ripping through the fabric of her trousers. She shouted out at me again, and lurched at me with the spoon, dripping hot specks of a yellow mustardy sauce. But I darted away before she could hit me, finding my way between tangled feet and under the table.
I couldn’t find any scraps of food on the floor, so I scurried out of the kitchens, and around the castle, looking out for a plate of something, sniffing around as I did. I stopped to spray a few times, of course, to let other cats know that a Bengal was now interested in this territory.
Soon enough, I found another door, with some steps leading up a thin spiral staircase. I followed this upward and took the next room out, to find another straight and dusty corridor. Along the left-side edges of it, the stone peeled away into massive chambers. I turned into the first one, and I found a massive deer's carcass half-eaten on the floor, set in front of an opening, looking out towards the mountains in the distance. The brown roasted meat emitted this amazing smoky scent that drew me towards it like a magnet draws iron filings.
I was so hungry I didn’t even bother to check what else might be in the room. I sprinted over to the meat, tore an enormous chunk off one of its ribs and started chewing it apart on the floor.
Then, there came a clear voice in my head. I’d never heard such a language before, but I understood it as clear as bowl-water. It was as if a human was speaking inside my mind, and I could put meaning to every single word.
“What in the Seventh Dimension do you think you are doing, youngling?”
But that voice couldn’t have belonged to anything, surely. I was starving and clearly hearing things.
“You dare ignore a creature of magic… Look behind you, you fool.” I felt a sudden searing sensation of heat passing over my head, and a jet of flame hit the wall right in front of me.
I shivered, and then I turned around and shrieked out of shock, as hackles thrust out of my arched back. I looked right into a massive yellow eye, set into a red reptilian head which must have been around five times the size of me, if not more.
“Finally,” the voice said. It sounded like a female human, yet still low-pitched at that. “Now, I’m starting to see some well-deserved respect.”
4
An Unexpected Find
I didn’t know how to react to the beast that had somehow just spoken to me in my head. Up close, it was like a creature out of nightmares I’d never imagined possible. It looked even more terrifying than the demon cheetah I’d imagined Astravar might have sent hunting me.
The only lizard-like creatures I’d seen before were the newts and salamanders back in my former owners’ garden back home. I would chase them through the grass sometimes, never really intending to kill them – they didn’t look particularly appetizing, and so I’d release them and let them scurry back into the water, and then I’d go back to chasing butterflies instead.
But I’d seen crocodiles on television, with their macabre grins and ability to lurch out at people from the water. This beast was like a crocodile, except worse. She had sharp teeth along the side of her mouth, eyes that glowed bright yellow like miniature suns, huge front-loaded nostrils that didn’t just steam but smoked, a breath that stank like rotting meat, and this strange fire burning at the back of her throat whenever she opened her mouth.
> Not to mention her sheer enormity. My first thought upon seeing her was that she must have had enough of the deer and now wanted to eat me for dinner. What I didn’t consider at the time was that she would probably hate eating me for the same reason I hated eating mice.
I backed up all the way to the drop and looked down at the landscape below. I was far too high up to jump down without injuring myself – even with my ability to land on all fours.
“Oh, come on, I can’t surely be that scary,” the creature said, again inside my mind. “I’m only a Ruby, after all.”
But what was I meant to say back? I mean, normally I shouldn’t understand another species’ language. Yet, here I was hearing her in my head as if she was now part of my train of thought. I hissed back at her, looking for a way to dart back out the door. But she had blocked off any chance of escape.
“You know, cats aren’t usually allowed outside their cattery,” she said, and she raised one of her massive brows. She was hairless and had these harsh red scales that seemed to converge towards her eyes. “Sometimes, the humans let them out in the kitchens. But no one in their right mind would enter a dragon’s chambers. So how, might I ask, did you end up here? Or is this your first time visiting Dragonsbond academy? Perhaps you’re a stray from outside.”
I arched my back even higher than I thought possible, and hissed again at the creature, baring my teeth. In hindsight, I don’t know how I was expecting to scare her. But then the fact I hadn’t eaten for days meant I was a little grumpy and wasn’t thinking straight.
“I’ve never known your kind to be so unfriendly. Don’t you speak at all? I’ve given you the honour of having access to my mind, and I thought you’d at least say something.”
Well, I’d never spoken to any creature that wasn’t a cat before. But surely it was just the case of putting one word after the other in my mind. I tried it.
“What are you?” I asked. Really, given the circumstances, she couldn’t expect me to be a creature of many words.
The massive lizard tossed her head forward and let out a massive roar that almost sent me stumbling off the wall. “What am I? How dare you suggest you’ve never heard of a dragon.”
“A what?” Come to think of it, I think they had called the Maine Coon ‘Dragon’ on television, funny as humans were with names.
“A dragon… you know, fearsome creatures who knights used to hunt down with lances and swords. Or at least they did until the warlocks rose to power and became both ours and the humans’ arch enemies.”
I opened my eyes wide at the creature. For a moment, I didn’t feel threatened but rather utterly confused.
“Are you really telling me you’ve never heard of a dragon? You don’t have nightmares of us in the night? You don’t tremble when you see us, the fiercest of all the creatures known to man?”
“I… Are you like a hippopotamus?” Word had it from the two Savannah cats in my old neighbourhood, that these were the fiercest of all the creatures. The two cats had never seen a hippopotamus, of course. Such creatures didn’t roam the wilds of South Wales. But their ancestors had passed down the wisdom to fear the hippopotamus, monsters of the mud with razor sharp buck teeth.
The dragon creature bellowed out again, and this time a little heat came out with the roar, making me think it might finally cook me as it had probably done the venison. “How dare you compare me to a hippo – a hippa – sorry, what was that word, again?”
“A hippopotamus,” I replied.
“How dare you compare me to a hippopotamus.”
“Do you even know what a hippopotamus is?”
She raised one of her massive eyebrows, and steam puffed out of her nose. “No… Enlighten me.”
I explained to her exactly what the Savannah cats had told me. As I did, I kept glancing over at the ground below, wondering if I could survive the leap, because this insult would probably be the straw that broke the dragon’s temper. Now, she would likely tear me to shreds.
She puffed out a second plume of smoke from her nostrils, this one much thicker than the first. It hit me right in the face. I coughed, then I sneezed, and I prepared myself to jump. But instead, the dragon made some strange low-pitched noise. After a moment, I recognised this as laughter.
“Is that what you think dragons do? We wallow about in the mud all day? I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in over fifty years.”
“Then what do you do?” I asked.
She shook her head. “You know, you’ve been quite entertaining, and I hear that you cats have quite good balance. Why don’t I take you on a little ride?”
The dragon lowered her head to the ground, and then the arch of her back followed. This was the first time I saw the spikes running along her back. They followed two thin rows on either side of her spine, curling out and then back in as if part of a second ribcage. But fortunately, they were so close together, it didn’t look like I’d tumble out from between them.
“What are you doing?” I asked. She’d gone from wanting to eat me to now deciding to go to sleep in front of me.
“I’ve only just come of age as a dragon,” she continued, “and I’ve reached the time of my life where I’m due to choose a rider. But these spikes present a problem. With them, I can’t hold a saddle. They’re such a nuisance to the humans, that they’ve threatened to cut them off. But I’m proud of my spikes and I don’t want to have them cut off. Now, maybe, you could be a solution.”
“What the whiskers are you talking about?” I asked.
“Just hop on my back, and we’ll go for a little ride. If it goes well, maybe I’ll let you have a little venison for supper.”
Now that was an offer I couldn’t refuse. I looked over at the carcass, the delicious smoky scent of it wafting into my nostrils. “Let me have a bite first. Then I’ll consider.”
“You drive a hard bargain,” the dragon replied. “So let it be. But only a bite, unless your tail wants to see the end of my flames.”
I cautiously approached the deer, eyeing the dragon on the way. It seemed to pose no threat, so I took hold of a bite of the roast in my teeth and sequestered it away to the other end of the room.
After I’d eaten it from the floor, I decided that maybe this dragon creature wouldn’t be so bad after all. So I did what she said. I leaped over her nose, landed on her forehead, and then I nestled myself between the spikes on her back.
Suddenly, the ground lurched underneath me, although this ground wasn’t composed of earth but dragon flesh. But her spikes held me firmly in place, as she walked me over to the edge.
Presently, the dragon unfurled her massive wings, sending up a massive gust of wind around me. Then, I almost tumbled backwards down the corridor between her two rows of spikes, but I found my footing before I rolled off onto the floor.
“Keep steady,” the dragon said.
“Of course I’m steady. I’m a cat,” I replied.
“We shall see,” the dragon replied, and before I knew it, the skin underneath me spasmed in a sickening way that made me want to vomit. Presently, her feet lifted off the ground, and she carried me up into the sky.
5
Decisions
I had never seen the ground beneath me so far away. It was so distant it looked unreal, as if it was part of a painted floor, so flat that I could just leap on to it. Fortunately, other parts of my body told me that this wasn’t a good idea. My balance centre told me to stay nestled safely in the corridor between the dragon’s rows of spikes. Then, there was the noise of the wind whooshing around me, creating an intense chill that cut right through my short fur coat.
Part of me wished I hadn’t leapt on this massive creature’s back. I thought that within a minute, or perhaps even thirty seconds, I’d be a pancake on the grasslands below. Perhaps that was how dragons liked to eat cats – break all their bones first to tenderise the meat a little.
I also didn’t like the way the dragon sent me tumbling between her spikes with every sudden sharp manoeuv
re. Cats are made to stay on their feet, not to be flung around like a hamster that had just fallen unconscious on its wheel.
After a while, she stopped whirling around so much, and I felt sick. I tried to find some balance, but with each step I was incredibly dizzy. I tried to jump up on the dragon’s head to at least get a good view of the horizon. But the wind roared even louder up there, and the way the ground moved below just didn’t look right. That feeling in the back of my head told me to stay well away from the edges. So, I retreated down the dragon’s neck and cowered within her corridor of spikes.
“My name is Salanraja,” the dragon said after a while, “and I’m a creature born of magic.”
“You say some strange things,” I replied. “Can’t we have a conversation about food?”
“Not until you’ve told me your name.”
I tried to swallow down the nausea and vertigo spinning inside my head and put some word to thought. “My name’s Ben,” I said.
“What a mundane name.”
“You wouldn’t be able to pronounce my actual name.”
“And you wouldn’t be able to pronounce my magical name either, and I wouldn’t give it to you before a thousand suns had burned. But, for your common name, you could at least have thought of something with a little appeal. Perhaps you have another name?”
“Don’t tell me you want to start calling me Bengie too…”
“Bengie…” Salanraja paused for a moment. “That at least is passable.”
“But I hate that name.”
“It’s far better than Ben,” Salanraja said.
I hissed at the dragon, and I tried to dig my claws into her back, but its skin was far too leathery between the scales to even injure her. I don’t think she noticed, to be honest, which was probably fortunate for me. “I didn’t pick my name,” I said after a moment.
A Cat's Guide to Bonding with Dragons Page 2
