Rain & Fire

by Chris d'Lacey

  The anatomy of a Pennykettle dragon

  Chris had just finished college and was working in his dad’s pub, the White Horse, while sorting out what he wanted to do with his life when a friend persuaded him to move to London. The friend promised to find Chris somewhere to live and, taking up the offer, Chris soon found himself on a fast train down to the capital, followed by a slower one out to the suburbs, and ultimately knocking on the door of his new landlady in Bromley, Kent. Not at all unlike David Rain, in fact, although there were no “children, cats, or dragons” involved in Chris’s case. He settled in quite readily and got on well with the family with whom he was lodging.

  Making new friends, though, he thought would be quite tricky, as he was still unemployed. He regularly went into the center of the town, usually on foot due to a lack of money and a desire to get to know the area, which was entirely new to him. The outskirts of Bromley are quite leafy, but the town itself much less so, with one notable exception: the Churchill Library Gardens. Chris discovered the library quite early on — one of his favorite things to do was to take a book out and wander through the public gardens alongside until he found a sunny spot, whereupon he would sit on a wall next to a path overlooking a large stand of trees. Once settled, book in one hand, sandwich in the other, he would while away the day until it was time to go back to his digs.

  One day, as he was doing exactly that, a squirrel suddenly turned up on the path nearby. It sat up on its hind legs, twitched its nose and tail (which Chris took to mean “Anything for me, please?”), and waited patiently. Being a generous sort of guy, but having only a small corner of sandwich left, he offered the squirrel that. The squirrel took it with great glee, twiddled it around in its paws a few times, and popped it into its mouth. Yum. But no — categorically not “yum” at all — as fast as the sandwich went in, out it came again. It was at this point that Chris discovered that squirrels can look totally disgusted. Off it went, shaking its head and spitting puh, puh, puhhh, every few steps. Rather taken aback by this vehement display of ingratitude, Chris was forced to the conclusion that squirrels are not terribly eager for cheese and pickle sandwiches.

  Thinking no more of the incident, he shrugged his shoulders and turned his attention back to his book. Eventually, this being October, it got a little chilly. Home time. Chris mostly took the same route back to his home — it was the shortest and therefore the quickest way — but for whatever reason, on this day he found himself veering from the usual path and taking one in a slightly different direction. Such a small deviation, such a tiny decision, and yet, unbeknown to Chris, the wheels of the Universe had turned and a step was taken toward his destiny.

  This new way happened to take Chris past a large oak tree. It had shed its abundant crop of acorns all over the sidewalk and far into the road. Chris was unaware of this until a car, coming too fast around the bend, sprayed him like a pellet gun with the acorns that had caught under its tires. Jolted out of his reverie, the bright idea suddenly came to him. This is what squirrels like to eat. Acorns, not cheese and pickle sandwiches …

  The next day, he returned to the spot under the oak and gathered up every acorn he could find. Then, laden with two large brown paper bags full of squirrel delight, he retraced his steps to the library gardens and settled down in the same place as the day before. He didn’t have long to wait. Within minutes, the same squirrel appeared on the path by his side. Chris was sure of it. Perhaps it was just the play of shadows on its face in the autumn sunshine, but it definitely seemed to wink at him in a knowing way. Slightly disturbed by this, but determined to make up for his sandwich mistake, he tentatively offered up an acorn. The squirrel took one open-eyed look, made a fast grab for it, and guzzled it on the spot. Success!

  The squirrel thought so, too. It sat wide-eyed and waiting. Chris obliged with another nut. This time the creature twitched it in its paws as before, but then ran across the pathway and between some railings, burying the acorn in the loose soil to be found there. That done, it immediately came back for “thirds.” Once more Chris obliged. The squirrel ran up a nearby tree and deposited the acorn somewhere within a hole in one of the branches, promptly returning for another go, obviously thinking all its Christmases must have come at once. However, when it reached Chris this time, a second squirrel was being fed a nut. Then a third, a fourth, a fifth arrived … until within a very short space of time there were no less than seventeen squirrels all feasting and scrabbling around Chris’s feet. Some of the tamer ones even plucked up enough courage to run up his legs and perch on his lap, the bravest of all sticking its furry little head right into his coat pocket. He’d certainly made a lot of new friends — and much quicker than he’d expected!

  At this point a woman pushing a baby buggy came along the path, holding the hand of a young girl of four or five. They stopped to watch the scene before them. The young girl pointed and in a piping little voice said, “Ooh, look, Mummy. It’s the squiwwel man.” And so it turned out to be, but many more years were to pass before the world at large became aware of that fact.

  Ten years later, Chris was working as a lab technician at Leicester University Medical School and, being an enthusiastic songwriter, was writing and recording in his spare time. However, with full-time employment, there wasn’t much of that available. Looking to find a less energy-intensive way of expressing his creativity, he decided to drop the music temporarily and focus on just the words. Writing, he thought. How difficult can that be? Ha! Famous last words, almost. His office waste-basket (and the surrounding area) quickly filled up with scrunched-up bits of paper. Failed attempts at a science fiction short story. Failed attempts at short, long, middling, any kinds of story. Frustration reigned. But Chris is nothing if not persistent. He decided as a final try to write a cutesy little tale as a Christmas present for me. Romantic soul, eh?

  For a previous Christmas present, Chris had bought me a polar bear stuffed animal, which he’d put outside in the backyard, leaving him with one paw raised against the back door, as if he were knocking. Chris’s story was to be something very simple: how Boley the polar bear had arrived in our backyard from the North Pole. Easy.

  Christmas present extraordinaire

  But no, not easy. Chris had barely gotten two paragraphs written when he realized that he knew nothing about polar bears except that they are white and live at the North Pole. Wrong on both counts, actually — their hair is hollow, and is more of a cream color because of it; and they live right across the Arctic ice cap — except at the Pole. Oh, well. A trip to the local library was called for. Mission achieved, Chris returned home with a book called The World of the Polar Bear, by Thor Larsen, intending to cherry-pick a few interesting snippets to dot around the cutesy little tale. He began writing. And writing. And writing. The tale took two and a half years to complete. All 250,000 words of it. Six hundred pages; longhand.

  I remember this very well; I typed it.

  This little tale, if nothing else, taught Chris the craft of writing. It was ultimately named White Fire, and parts of it were used in the dragon books, as if written by David Rain, who also writes a book called White Fire. It should be stressed, however, that the two books are not the same. David’s is an ecological plea to save polar bears and the planet; Chris’s goes much further than that, being a grand saga involving the Inuit people, white men (researchers, hunters, etc.) from the south, and great dynasties of polar bears. It has never seen the light of day and remains dormant in a desk drawer, awaiting — who knows what?

  “White fire” is a metaphor for spirituality, and this first book sowed the seed for the dragon books. It was written partly at home, early mornings and late evenings, and partly during Chris’s tea breaks at the university. It was written longhand because (believe it or not) this was still in an age when computers were few and far between. Chris’s whole department at the university had only one, for instance. He eventually “graduated” to using this machine, but until that time, his trusty pen and pad were his
tools of the trade. It became a standing joke among his colleagues that Chris wouldn’t be going to the break room with them, he would be “writing his bestselling novel, ha-ha.”

  One day, one such colleague walked into the room where the computer was housed and said, “Still writing about polar bears? Can’t you write about anything else?”

  Chris stopped, left a blank line, and began, “It was a beautiful autumn morning in the library gardens …”

  To this day, he does not know why he did this — or where it came from. He refers to it as his “Tolkien moment.” (Apparently J. R. R. Tolkien, a professor at the time he wrote The Hobbit, and grading exam papers, came upon a blank sheet of paper within the pile. It is alleged that he, for no apparent reason, wrote: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” Of such moments careers are made.)

  “What’s that about?” chimed said colleague.

  “I think it’s about squirrels,” Chris replied, mystified.

  Exit colleague, guffawing to all within earshot, “You won’t believe this! He’s writing about squirrels now!” Gales of laughter ensued.

  By then, however, Chris was beginning to appreciate the importance of such inspirational moments and he followed up the idea. The story poured out in a phenomenal rush. He decided to take a break from White Fire when he realized that, at this speed, he could probably write the squirrel story as my Christmas present instead as, clearly, the polar bear one would not be finished in time.

  Knowing nothing about this intended gift I snoozed on unawares while Chris got up extra early in the mornings, trogged across the local park to the university, wrote another chapter of the book, returned home, brought me a cup of tea (still with his outdoor coat on — I assumed he was just off to the lab, rather than returning from it), had breakfast, and then went back to work for the normal start of the day. Bless him, he kept this up for over two months. And I got my story.

  The inspiration for its setting was the Churchill Library Gardens in Bromley. Chris had always retrospectively felt guilty for gathering up all the acorns by the roadside on his way home that far-off day, as he later realized that although he had been helping the squirrels in the gardens, he had almost certainly also been depriving those around the tree of their own “harvest.” He therefore wrote the story line the reverse way around — the acorns were stolen from the library gardens to be “donated” elsewhere, in fact to trap and subsequently aid an injured squirrel named Conker. Quite an ethical guy, then, after all.

  The library gardens, Scrubbley — or should that be Bromley?

  The story (entitled The Adventures of Snigger the Squirrel) begins with Snigger and the rest of the library gardens’ squirrels waking up one morning expecting to find a huge nutfall, as it has been very windy the night before. However, upon reaching the clearing where the abundance of acorns should have been, it is obvious that something terrible has happened because there is not a sign of a single nut anywhere….

  “But where are they all?” said Snigger, astonished to find that the ground was not carpeted with the fruit of the tree, as in previous years.

  A female squirrel, Cherrylea, replied, “There was a nutfall. There was. I saw it…. Last night, the eve of nutfall, I lay tossing and turning in my drey, too excited by the prospect of the forthcoming harvest to sleep. I’m sure many of you were the same way.” Several heads nodded in support. Cherrylea continued: “As you know, my drey overlooks the clearing. For much of the night I could hear the wind whistling through the branches, wrapping itself around them and shaking the acorns clear. Down they came like raindrops on the pond, plopping into the leaf-fall below in such numbers that I was tempted to leave the drey right then and begin the harvest by the beam of the lamplight that shines through the dark hours…. But knowing that would be unfair to those of you who drey over the hill, I resisted all such temptation.”

  Cherrylea swallowed hard, her mouth dry with fear, her tail twitching nervously. “I did leave my drey last night,” she began, “but I only went as far as the old stump tree,” she added loudly, referring to a large sycamore that had had several branches sawn in half some years before to prevent them crashing through the windows of the library building. “I was so excited. I knew there would be nuts everywhere. Everywhere!” she said, opening out her short front legs and doing a little turn to indicate the extent of the fall. “I was about to run back to my drey when suddenly a great dark shadow spread all across the ground where we are now standing.” The squirrels looked nervously about them, some moved closer to their friends. “I was very frightened…. The last thing I remember before fleeing to my drey was seeing a horrid black beast scuffling about among the leaves … collecting up our nutfall.”

  The “horrid black beast,” or rather nutbeast, that Cherrylea refers to is, of course, a man, dressed in a long black coat … and this is the first appearance of the character who, much later, became David Rain, the hero of the Last Dragon Chronicles.

  Over the next few years, Chris finished White Fire, and then found he could turn his hand to other genres and other lengths of story at will. He wrote short stories for adults and had some reasonable success, being published regularly in small-press magazines, and receiving excellent feedback from the writing competitions he entered, but few prizes.

  One day, a friend at the local writers’ group that he attended (and still does, nearly thirty years on) gave him a leaflet for a competition to write for children. It was to be a story of 3,000 words, the prize was £2,000 (just over $3,000 US dollars), and the winner and eleven runners-up were to be published in an anthology. Up to this point, Chris had not tried his hand at writing for children at all. He thought he would give it a go. How hard could it be? Very, is the answer to that one. Very, very, very.

  He was back to crumpling paper in frustration, though that was more difficult to do now that he had progressed to using a computer and printer (thus several rain forests’ worth of paper were saved in the d’Lacey household by the advent of modern technology). He continued to struggle with writing (or rather, not writing) this story. He hemmed, he hawed, he pondered, he wailed. The deadline was looming; up popped an idea.

  He had a story called Ice, written for adults, with an environmental theme: the hole in the ozone layer, which was very current at that time. But Chris had never been able to sell it. If he changed it around so that it was told through the eyes of a child, maybe it would work….

  He rewrote the story. He entered the competition. He didn’t win. Or get into the anthology. Ah well, that’s me done with kids’ stuff, he thought, but he read it aloud to his writer friends and one of them suggested he send it to a publisher. He did some research and sent off his manuscript. A while later he received a phone call from a lovely lady saying she would like to buy his story. Knowing no better, he was very pleased, but that’s all. If Chris had known then how incredibly difficult it is to get picked up off what is called the “slush pile” (that is the pile of unsolicited manuscripts sent in by hopeful would-be authors), he might have just decided to stay in bed. Or juggle with his socks.

  Nevertheless, at thirty-nine-and-three-quarters years old, Chris became a published children’s author with A Hole at the Pole, as it was subsequently named. One book does not a children’s author make. However, on the strength of it, Chris managed to get a literary agent, and further children’s books were written — and published. They were all for quite young children, but his agent suggested that he attempt a longer work, a novel, for a slightly older age group.

  Chris suggested she look at Snigger. But “talking animal” books were not in vogue, so that got a thumbs-down. Could he rework it? Turn it around so it was told from the viewpoint of humans? Would that help? Perhaps a character, let’s call him David, could come to lodge with a mom-and-daughter single-parent family? The daughter would be squirrel-crazy and want him to help her save an injured one that was running around in the yard. David would be the “nutbeast” who “steals” the nutfall to attempt to cat
ch — Conker, of course. The rewrite took place. Eventually Chris plucked up enough courage to show his editor the revised squirrel story, now renamed Snigger and the Nutbeast. Overall, she liked the story, but felt it was lacking in certain areas. Among many very good suggestions she offered was that of giving the mother in the story a job. Chris agreed, but was at a loss as to what Mrs. Pennykettle could do. He knew that he wanted it to be somewhat artistic or creative, and done from home. Nothing suggested itself, but there was no rush. The Universe would provide in its own good time.

  The answer came from a cheery lady named Val Chivers. Val, along with her husband, Peter, has become a dear friend over the years, but we didn’t know that on that chilly weekend so long ago. Chris and I had a rare day off, and we decided to go to a local craft fair at a place called Stoughton Farm Park. There were the usual stalls — lavender cushions, wheat bags, jewelry, wooden toys. And then there were dragons. Val’s fabulous and wonderfully inventive clay dragons. They were green, mostly, a few bluer than green. Eight to ten inches tall, gorgeous. We couldn’t take our eyes off them. But in those days we were broke most of the time, and although the dragons weren’t expensive, we couldn’t possibly afford one.

  Val saw us looking longingly and started up a conversation during which we explained our plight. Perhaps she could put one aside for us until we could get enough money together to buy it? Instead, Val pointed us toward a corner of the stall we hadn’t noticed: CASUALTY CORNER.

  Val Chivers creating her amazing dragons

  Here were dragons with slight imperfections — missing toes, chipped spines, streaky glaze. Each for the price of five pounds (about eight US dollars). That we could afford.