Dragon Gold

by Shoo Rayner

  Harri cut a thick slice of fresh bread and smothered it with Nutella. He poured himself a glass of milk and settled down behind the counter in the shop. Dylan dropped down from the window and eased himself onto Harri’s lap, seeking a bit of attention.

  ‘I shouldn’t be long. See you in a minute.’ The bell tinkled as his mum slammed the door and hurried down the street.

  Harri was used to working in the shop. He’d been doing little jobs for his mum for as long as he could remember – packing mail orders, stocking the shelves, sweeping up and keeping the place clean and tidy. These days he did all the computer stuff for her. She hadn’t got a clue. The business would fall to bits if he didn’t keep the website going for her.

  He looked around the shop. It was all he’d ever known. He and his mum lived upstairs. His dad had left when he was only two weeks old – gone off travelling around the world. He’d gone to ‘find himself’, his mum would mutter through gritted teeth. Then she’d joke, ‘He couldn’t find himself in a mirror! He was a loser through and through.’

  Harri had a picture of his dad, smiling in front of an Inca temple in Peru. He’d sent it to Harri on his fifth birthday. Not even his grandparents had heard from him since.

  Harri hoped he was like his mum, hard-working, resilient and practical. But when she talked about his dad like that, he worried that some of his dad’s useless blood was in him. Was Harri going to grow up and be a loser too? He was never going to be a winner while Ryan and his dad were around, that was for sure.

  Harri took one of the models of the red Welsh dragons off the shelf and started sketching it. It was one of their bestselling items. Harri knew all the shop’s sales statistics. He had to keep his mum’s accounts and spreadsheets up to date on the computer. She had no idea about modern technology. Her phone still had a small grey screen and played that antique diddy-dum-dum-dum ringtone!

  Tourists came to St Gertrude’s because of the Holy Well. They bought the little red dragons as souvenirs of their visit. Apparently, St Gertrude had tripped and bashed her head against a rock. Water had sprung out of the rock, mending her broken head instantly and, if you believed all the stories, it cured her of everything else too, from smallpox to housemaid’s knee!

  The story was different every time it was told, but it brought the tourists to the town. They drank the water that still poured from a lion’s head that had been fixed onto St Gertrude’s Rock. The water had been tested. It was incredibly pure and sweet. It was warm too, so it steamed in the winter months.

  A small fridge display unit by the door of the shop was full of cold plastic bottles of St Gertrude’s Water. It was another bestseller. They even sent bottles of it worldwide to people who hoped it would cure them of strange diseases.

  Harri was lost in his drawing. It was always like that when he drew. That’s why he loved drawing so much. Once he’d started, it was like he’d fallen into another world, a world he created as he went along. If he wanted a castle over there, he would draw it. If he wanted a cool new iPhone, he would draw it too.

  Wouldn’t it be amazing if the things he drew actually came to life? He often thought that. Lost in a world of drawing, you could imagine anything you liked.

  Now he was drawing a dragon – a red Welsh dragon – just like the one Mr Davies had told them about this morning in school. Just like the one he’d been trying to draw all afternoon. It was much easier to get the details right with the model in front of him. Mr Davies’ Eisteddfod challenge rang in his head.

  He checked the school website. There it was on his class page.

  Next Year’s Eisteddfod Challenge:

  There will be a bag of Dragon Gold for anyone who can make a dragon fly for more than ten seconds at the school Eisteddfod on St David’s Day, the first of March next year.

  Harri turned the dragon model and started drawing it from a different angle. How could he make a dragon fly? What would he need? Helium balloons? Hot air? Electric motors and propellers? As he drew and sketched the ideas that came to him, he began to resolve that this time – and he really meant it – he was going to win that bag of Dragon Gold!

  He knew the Dragon Gold was probably only going to be one of those bags of chocolate money (a Christmas bestseller in the shop) but this time … this time he was going to beat Ryan and his dad. This time was going to be different!

  Chapter Four

  ‘Hello, my dear! That’s a lovely drawing. Are you looking after the shop?’

  Harri nearly fell off the chair. He hadn’t heard anyone come in. An old lady in a long green velvet cloak was leaning over the counter, inspecting his drawing. In her crumpled, pointy hat, she looked just like… No! That was a ridiculous idea. The Happy Witch was a book for little children. This was a real person.

  ‘Er … er … I’m sorry,’ Harri stammered. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

  Harri’s mother was big on customer service. ‘Always greet the customers with a smile when they come through the door of the shop.’ She’d said it a million times, so now Harri always beamed at the customers without thinking. But now he felt a bit awkward, like he’d been caught out doing something naughty.

  ‘Those are very good drawings,’ the old lady said. Her eyes twinkled and her face crinkled into a wide smile. Harri knew she really meant it.

  Dylan dropped down on the floor and curled his tail around the old lady’s legs. ‘Hello, puss!’ Dylan purred so loudly it sounded like someone was digging up the road outside. She reached over and handed Harri a business card.

  The card was printed in glossy ink that stood up from the thick card. Harri felt the expensive raised lettering with his fingertips. The card announced:

  Imelda Spelltravers

  Spells, Potions & Herbal Remedies

  – Magic Consultant –

  ‘Spelltravers?’ Harri questioned as he read the words on the card. ‘You’re not…?’

  ‘The Happy Witch?’ The old lady raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s my niece, Eileen,’ she sighed. ‘She used me as the inspiration for all her books. She never asked me if I minded. I don’t suppose I do, really.’

  ‘She came to our school today,’ Harri said.

  ‘My niece, Eileen, was here today? Well, what a coincidence! She’s so busy and important these days, I never know where she’ll turn up next!’ The old lady laughed.

  ‘I really liked the pictures in the books she showed us. They looked … well … they look just like you,’ Harri explained. ‘That’s why I’m drawing dragons. They were in the pictures too.’

  ‘That’s my great-niece, Jane,’ the old lady said. ‘Yes, she’s a very talented artist and yes, I must admit, the Happy Witch does look like me.’

  Harri told her all about the Eisteddfod challenge, and how he was thinking up ideas for making a dragon fly, when he remembered his customer service training. ‘Can I help you in some way?’

  ‘I was hoping I could help you,’ said the old lady, opening her bag and displaying her wares. ‘I wondered if you might like to sell some of my potions and spells in your shop.

  ‘You’re my last call of the day,’ she explained. ‘No one comes to me for good old-fashioned magic these days, so I’ve started trying to sell my spells and potions in shops, but no one seems very interested in stocking my things at all.’

  Harri picked up a crumbly, green sausage. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘A love potion candle,’ the old lady giggled.

  ‘It doesn’t look very romantic!’ Harri said. ‘Maybe it’s the packaging? If they were pink, or in a nice box with hearts all over it? People seem to like that kind of stuff.’ He showed her their bestselling love potion. The box was covered in shiny, gold, swirly patterns. Through the clear plastic front you could see rose petals and bits of dried strawberry. ‘We sell quite a few of these.’

  The old lady read the ingredients on the back. ‘This isn’t a love potion. This is potpourri! All this will do is make your room smell nice for a while.’

  ‘Peop
le buy it,’ Harri sighed. ‘What’s that?’ He picked up what looked like a chicken egg.

  ‘That … is a magic egg!’ the old lady said proudly.

  ‘It doesn’t look like one.’ Harri examined it closely. ‘Shouldn’t a magic egg be covered in gold or stars?’

  ‘That’s the trouble these days.’ The old lady furrowed her eyebrows. ‘All anyone cares about is how things look. They don’t care if things work or not. Here, give me that and let me show you.’

  She took the egg and began to unscrew it. Harri’s jaw dropped. It was a perfect egg. How was she unscrewing it?

  ‘Do you really want a flying dragon?’ she asked.

  The question took Harri off guard. ‘Well … er … yes. That would be amazing!’

  She took Harri’s drawing and scrunched it up. Then she rolled it around in her fingertips until it was a perfect ball, which she placed in the bottom half of the egg.

  ‘Are you sure you want a flying dragon?’ she asked. ‘They can be quite a handful, you know.’

  Was she crazy? Was she for real? Who knows? But there was something about her that Harri liked and trusted.

  ‘Yes!’ he whispered.

  The old lady gently placed the two halves of the egg together. Harri watched in amazement as the egg twisted and screwed itself back together. The

  egg made an almost inaudible sigh and, for a moment, it seemed to glow. Harri thought he saw the shadow of a tiny dragon projected on the surface of the egg from the inside.

  ‘Take great care of this.’ The old lady winked at Harri. ‘Put it somewhere warm and safe. It’ll probably take about a week.’

  Harri held the egg in his hand. Now it had weight and felt solid, like an egg. It was warm and you couldn’t see a join anywhere. How could that be? You can’t just unscrew an egg and screw it back again!

  ‘Thanks!’ said Harri. He wanted to help her somehow. ‘Look, I don’t know when my mum will get back. How about if you leave some of your things as samples and we can see if anyone wants to buy them?’

  ‘Really?’ The old lady grinned. ‘That would be wonderful. I’ll come back in a few weeks and see how you are getting on. Oh! And you take care of that dragon, mind.’

  * * *

  Anyone watching in the street would have said that the old lady in the long green velvet cloak did a little dance down the street when she came out of Merlin’s Cave. But no one was watching and no one saw her. Not even Harri’s mum, rushing back from the bank where the manager had seen her and asked her in for a quick chat about her overdraft.

  She was far too busy wondering how the shop could make more money to notice the old lady, who was almost invisible anyway.

  ‘Oh no! The flight’s been delayed an hour,’ Ryan’s dad grumbled, as they checked the departure screens at the airport.

  ‘More time for shopping in the Duty Free!’ Ryan’s mum smiled, as she disappeared in the direction of the perfume counter.

  Ryan’s dad shrugged his shoulders and looked forlornly at his son. Then his face brightened. ‘So what were you saying about the school Eisteddfod?’

  ‘We have to make a dragon fly,’ said Ryan.

  ‘A dragonfly? What’s that all about?’

  ‘No! A dragon that flies,’ Ryan laughed. ‘I don’t know … Mr Davies put it on the class website page.’

  Ryan’s dad pulled an iPad out of his backpack. In moments he had the page up on the screen and was reading aloud.

  ‘There will be a bag of Dragon Gold for anyone who can make a dragon fly for more than ten seconds at the school Eisteddfod on St David’s Day, the first of March next year.’

  He thought for a second. ‘Dragon Gold. I wonder what that is? Do you think it’s real gold? Do you think it’s worth something?’

  But his mind was already turning over. He’d got the bug. It was a competition and he was determined to win it … or rather, he was determined that Ryan would win it.

  ‘Anyone who can make a dragon fly for more than ten seconds…’ he mused. ‘It doesn’t say what kind of dragon, does it? It can be any kind of dragon. What do you think, Ryan?’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose so.’ Ryan was distracted by an enormous display of M&Ms in the Duty Free. Ryan was easily distracted by chocolate. He sauntered over to see if he could persuade his mum to add some to her shopping basket.

  Ryan’s dad typed ‘Flying Dragon’ into his iPad and waited to see what the search engine came up with.

  ‘Wow! That is so cool.’ He whistled through his teeth. On the screen, among drawings of dragons and photos of lizards, was a picture of the Chinese J-20 Mighty Dragon Stealth Fighter Aircraft.

  It’s a dragon and it flies! He smiled to himself.

  Ryan’s mum returned with two, bulging shopping bags. ‘You look like the cat that got the cream.’

  ‘Ryan’s going to win the school Eisteddfod challenge on St David’s Day,’ he said triumphantly. ‘I’ve got it all sorted.’

  Ryan’s mum gave her son a long-suffering look. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘have an M&M.’

  * * *

  ‘What is this?!’ Harri’s mum held one of the old lady’s green sausage-shaped love-potion candles. Her nose wrinkled in disgust.

  Harry told her how he’d said they’d try and sell the old lady’s stuff.

  ‘It looks like a rancid frankfurter,’ she sneered. ‘No one will ever buy that. And…’ She sniffed the candle. ‘Eew! It stinks! Put it out the back. We don’t sell rubbish like that. Whoever she is, she can take it away when she comes back. If it was up to me I’d put it straight in the bin.’

  Harri put the box on the worktop in the back of the shop. He picked up the egg and turned it around in his fingers. His mum hadn’t met the old lady. Harri liked her and trusted her. He ran up the stairs and quietly opened the airing cupboard next to his bedroom.

  ‘Put it somewhere warm, she said,’ Harri whispered, as he made a nest from a hand towel. He put the egg in the nest and hid them both behind the hot water cylinder.

  ‘You’ll be warm and safe here,’ Harri said, then he thought he saw the egg glow again, like it did when the old lady sealed it up. It couldn’t be a real dragon’s egg. Could it?

  * * *

  ‘It’s going to be fantastique!’ Ryan’s dad always spoke with a terrible french accent when they were on holiday. He’d learned quite a bit of French since they’d bought their cottage in France. Their neighbours loved their crazy ‘Gallois’ from next door and encouraged his efforts to learn the language.

  ‘C’est formidable!’ he enthused, as he showed Ryan his plans. He’d bought pencils and a big drawing pad at the hypermarché and had spent most of half-term working out how he and Ryan were going to build their J-20 Mighty Dragon.

  He explained how they’d have to make it out of balsa wood to keep the whole thing as light as possible, and build powerful fan motors in the body of the aircraft. ‘I reckon with a bit of fuse wire and a remote control switch we could even turn those miniature firework rockets you can get into heat-seeking missiles.’

  ‘Wuh-muh-nuh,’ Ryan nodded and munched the last of his duty free M&Ms. He’d rather be taking out assassins or mining for stuff on his game console.

  His dad glowed with satisfaction as he studied the plans. ‘It’s going to be incroyable! I can’t wait to get started.’

  * * *

  The Red and White Dragon flags fluttered in the breeze. Two armies faced each other in a dank, misty valley.

  ‘Cha-a-a-a-rge!’ Mr Davies stabbed the air with his sword. Forty hairy, bearded, valiant Welshmen followed him and threw themselves into battle against the evil, invading Saxon army. Mr Davies was having a wonderful half-term!

  The trouble with running a shop is that you never get a break. Half-term and the holidays are the busiest times, especially in a tourist town like St Gertrude’s.

  ‘“What shall we do this half-term?” a million families ask themselves.’ Harri was feeling a little sarcastic. ‘“Oh!” they say. “Let’s have a gre
at day out, tasting the water and staring into the Holy Well in St Gertrude’s! We can eat St Gertrude’s Pies for lunch and buy a little red dragon for a souvenir before we go home again!”’

  ‘Don’t knock the tourists.’ Harri’s mum scowled. ‘They pay the bills. I just wish we could sell a bit more and make a little more profit to keep the bank manager happy.’

  Harri had spent most of the week helping around the shop or playing video games. He’d also been looking stuff up on the internet and had even gone over the road to the library, in search of more information about dragons.The trouble with dragons was that people just made stuff up. Since dragons didn’t really exist, they wrote whatever they liked about them. Most of it was complete fantasy. There were hundreds of websites about dragons. Some people had very definite ideas about them and got quite angry if anyone contradicted them.

  The library had a couple of books and, with the book he’d borrowed from school as well, Harri spent several hours snuggled up on the sofa with Dylan, learning everything he could about the history of dragons.

  ‘Are we doing anything on Sunday?’ Harri asked.

  ‘You know Sundays are the busiest day,’ Mum sighed. ‘Especially at half-term.’

  ‘How about Monday?’ Harri looked bored and dejected. His mother felt quite sorry for him.

  ‘Aren’t you back to school on Monday?’

  ‘No, don’t you remember? It’s a training day for the teachers. We have an extra day off.’

  ‘Oh, Mondays after half-term are always a waste of time,’ said Mum. ‘Okay, let’s have a day away from the shop. What would you like to do?’

  ‘Can we go to Dinas Emrys?’ Harri pleaded. ‘Merlin lived there. It’s where the Welsh Dragon comes from too. It’s not far away.’