Downside Up

by Richard Scrimger

  Long poles, a cross piece, chains. A swing set? Yes. One of those backyard things. Kids in commercials play on them and get their pants dirty, but Mom doesn’t mind because she has the right kind of laundry soap. You know.

  The swing set broke apart when it hit the ground. One of the frame poles bounced high in the air, turned over and stuck in the ground like a javelin way down the hill.

  Why were swing sets falling from the sky?

  Oh, wait.

  Yes, there was a dragon overhead. For some reason she’d dropped the swing set she was carrying, and now she was coming after it. She landed below us with a thump and clatter.

  Izzy and I held onto Dad. Her hair swung wildly as she looked around for a way out.

  “What do we do now?” she whispered.

  The dragon was directly below us, in the middle of the gully. If we kept going, we’d run into her. But if we tried to climb out of the gully, the dragon would catch us—maybe me and Izzy, certainly Dad, who couldn’t jump as far as us.

  “Sit and wait,” I said. “Maybe she’ll fly off.”

  “What if she doesn’t?”

  Why do people ask questions like that? What if this or that happens or this other thing doesn’t happen? You can always think of ways to go wrong. If life was easy everybody would be healthy, full and rich. And smiling more.

  “I don’t know,” I said to Izzy. “We’ll try something else I guess.”

  We waited. Dad made a step to keep going, but we held him back. He was going to say something to me, then he closed his mouth.

  The dragon was having trouble picking up the dropped swing set. She didn’t maneuver very well on the slope. She sort of hopped and clutched awkwardly.

  A little dragon, this one. The moonlight glinted off her silver scales.

  She grabbed the glider part of the swing set in one forefoot and tried to take off. She flapped a couple of times, lost her balance and settled back. I couldn’t see clearly under her body. Her wings blocked the light. But I made a guess.

  “Let’s climb the gully and go around,” I said. “This dragon won’t fly after us.”

  “What?”

  “I said we’d do something else if she didn’t fly away, right? This is something else. I’ve seen the dragon before,” I said. “That’s Stumbler.”

  I explained quickly about seeing the dragon in High Park and Freddie freeing her. “She’s lame in one foot—that’s why she dropped the swing set. And now I think her foot is stuck again,” I said. “So we can climb up this gully and go around her.”

  “You and—Freddie?” Dad said.

  “Yeah.”

  —

  Above the gully was a bumpy ridge of uneven ground. The footing was terrible and we went slowly, not wanting to slip. Stumbler was on our right and a little below us. She was still trying to take off. From this angle, I could see that my guess was correct—her twisted forefoot was stuck somehow.

  We made it past Stumbler. For a few seconds, it seemed like we were going to make it all the way down to the shelter of the trees. And then—well, and then it didn’t seem like that anymore.

  I told you the moon was fullish, right? It floated way up there, right overhead, like a creamy balloon. I hung onto my dad’s arm, feeling a bit chilly, worrying about getting to the highway and finding a lift, but otherwise pretty good. And then. And then. And then I took a glance up at the fullish moon. And outlined against it, as clear and unmistakable as ET’s bicycle, was a dragon.

  “Freeze!” I whispered, squeezing Dad’s arm.

  She was so close and so big she blocked out half the moon.

  “It’s coming for us, isn’t it?” whispered Izzy.

  “Yeah.”

  She had to be our old dragon. The one who’d carried us here, who’d chased us into to our mouse hole. Wherever she’d flown off to, she was back.

  “It’ll see us soon, won’t it?”

  “Maybe. If we move.”

  “But we have to move. We have to get away. So it’ll see us.”

  “Yeah.”

  Izzy wasn’t scared. I saw her check downhill, shake her head. The trees were far away. It’d take us ten minutes to reach them. Too long. How could we…what could we….

  I didn’t know what to do. The big dragon was high overhead, circling, watching. Izzy stared uphill and off to the side. There was the gulley, and in the gulley was Stumbler, the little dragon with her broken foot caught on something.

  “I wonder,” whispered Izzy.

  “What?”

  She nodded. “Let’s try it.”

  —

  Yeah, she thought of it. I’m the one telling the story, so you might think I’d be the one with all the cool ideas. But this one was Izzy’s.

  —

  “Let’s try what?” I asked.

  “You said you knew that little dragon back there?”

  “Yeah. Freddie helped her in High Park, like I said. Her foot was stuck—like now—and he freed it.”

  “Would it—would she remember that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Why?”

  “Well, I was wondering if we could—if all of us could fit on its back. Would that work? A dragon could get us out of here fast. Do you think it—she would go where we wanted? Would she go back to High Park?”

  —

  The short answer was no. Stumbler would go where she wanted to go. But she’d have trouble dropping us if we were on her back. And she might think I was Freddie and remember me. That’d be cool, eh? What was that story about the guy who took the thorn out of the lion’s paw? Like that.

  And no other option looked as good. We only had a few minutes.

  “I think it’s a great idea, Izzy. Want to try? ’Cause I’m willing if you are.”

  She nodded.

  So we walked back uphill. Dad wanted to know what was going on. We didn’t tell him. “We’re going to find a way home,” said Izzy.

  We looked down at little Stumbler. She was in the gully and we stood on a flat rock just above her. A jump of a few feet, that was all.

  Her wings flapped. She strained. I could feel the tension coming off her. It was like I could read her mind. She reminded me of Casey, that time he got his head caught between the railings of the front porch. He knew he’d done something stupid and was so upset at himself that he made it harder for me to help him.

  Stumbler breathed a weak stream of fire. Maybe because she was saving her strength, or because she was young and small. Whatever, it barely got past her snout. If the big black dragon was a flamethrower, Stumbler was more like a barbecue lighter.

  “I’ll go down there,” I said to Izzy. “See if she remembers me—I look just like Freddie. Meanwhile, you and Dad jump onto her back. It’s not far. I’ll release her foot so she can fly, then I’ll jump on myself.”

  Izzy nodded, but Dad wore that puzzled expression I was getting used to.

  “No one rides a dragon,” he said. “No one ever has.”

  “We’re going to,” said Izzy.

  “No.”

  His calm started to get to me.

  “Do you want to die—to be taken by the dragon?” I said. “Do you want all of us to be taken?”

  “It’s not our decision.”

  “Yes it is!”

  Dad blinked and took a step back. He wasn’t used to me yelling at him. I guess Freddie never did.

  I didn’t care.

  “There’s lots we can’t control,” I said. “Bad things happen. Accidents, luck, whatever—these things are not our decision. But we can decide what we do about the bad luck, about the accidents. We can’t stop the dragon coming after us. But we can decide to get away.”

  “No one escapes.”

  “We can try. You can always try.”

  Silence. I saw a flash of fire way overhead. Had the big dragon seen us? Was she coming for us?

  “Fred’s right, Dad,” said Izzy. “We came a long way to save you, Daddy, and we’re going to do it.”

 
; “Let me get down there first,” I said. “Then you jump.”

  I jumped into the gully and faced the little dragon. I remembered Freddie’s approach. I talked to her.

  “Hi there,” I said. “Remember me? We met in the park a few weeks ago. You were stuck. I helped you then. I can help you now. Your leg’s caught again, eh?”

  The dragon blinked. Her eyes had the same diamond pupils as the big dragon’s. I walked toward her slowly, trying for that calm that gives confidence. Doctor calm. A step. Another.

  I kept my voice conversational. “Okay, Izzy. Now.”

  I didn’t see her jump. I was watching the dragon. Stumbler gave a start and flapped her wings.

  “Good girl,” I told her. “Good for you, Stumbler. You on, Izzy?”

  I tried to pitch my voice the same way, but I couldn’t disguise the extra urgency.

  “Yeah,” she said, and then, louder, “Come on, Daddy. Jump. I’ll catch you.”

  I looked up. There was Izzy with her hands out, and there was Dad above her, shaking his head.

  “No.”

  —

  Wow. I had not seen this crisis coming. I didn’t know what to do. I tried to keep the dragon calm.

  “Hey, girl,” I said. I was almost close enough to touch her now. Her body was low to the ground—I hoped I wouldn’t have to crawl under her to free her leg.

  My next step I hit my foot against something metallic. The hubcap I’d brought back from the car to show Dad. It must have rolled down here. I bent to pick it up. I don’t know why—it was something to hold.

  I could feel Stumbler’s frustration and fear. Just like Casey with his head stuck. He’d almost pulled his ears off, trying to get free. Stumbler wanted to fly away so bad she could taste it.

  “What are you doing?” called Dad. “Stop that! I don’t—”

  I looked up quickly. Izzy—my amazing sister—was not going to leave Dad behind. She’d leaped back onto the ledge beside Dad. Now she pushed him! That’s right—pushed him into space. Dad landed on the dragon’s back and clung instinctively to the nearer wing. Izzy jumped after him.

  I almost cheered.

  Stumbler startled again, lifting herself right off the ground—except for the one trapped leg. She flapped like a hurricane, then came down again. My sister and dad hung on tight.

  Stumbler turned her attention to me. Again, she reminded me of Casey. When I’d reached to help him out of the railing, he’d snapped at me. Same thing happened now. I was trying to help Stumbler get free, but this isn’t like that story about the lion. She breathed her fire right at me—a pretty good shot too. I threw up my arm as a reflex. The hubcap acted like a shield, deflecting the flame.

  “Easy!” I said to her. “Easy, girl.”

  I dropped the hubcap, which was now amazingly hot. How did those knights fight dragons without cooking themselves?

  Remember the swing pole that bounced and stuck in the ground? I ran over and pulled it out. When Stumbler had raised herself up, I saw that her weak left forefoot was caught in one end of the swing set, and the other end was wedged into a crack on the gully floor. That’s how she was trapped.

  I held the pole under my arm and poked at Stumbler’s foot. On my second try I got the metal brace out of the hole in the ground, the way you get stuff out from between your teeth with a toothpick. The little dragon took a shuffle step and sensed she was free.

  “Good girl!” I said to her, and then in the same tone, “Get ready, Izzy.”

  I thought I’d have a minute while Stumbler tried to pick up the swing set. Wasn’t she supposed to drop that in the volcano? But she was so desperate to take off that she ignored the swings. Carrying Dad and Izzy, she needed a couple of hops and some mighty flapping, and then she was off the ground. Without me.

  “FRED!”

  I had never—have never—heard my sister’s voice sound like that. I hope I never hear it again.

  I ran after the dragon and jumped as high as I could, higher than I’d ever gone playing basketball. If I’d been jumping at my house, I’d have got up to my bedroom window. I was behind Stumbler and on her left side. I felt a thwack on the side of my head—the kind of sudden blow that makes you see stars. She’d lashed me with her tail. I reached out without thinking and locked my hands around one of the triangular spiky things that stuck up. I shinnied around like her tail was a tree branch. Now I was sitting up, riding it where it joined her body. I faced forward. Dad was right there, hanging onto Izzy, staring back at me with his mouth open.

  I reached out with one hand. He grabbed it and pulled me forward onto the dragon’s back.

  “Thanks, Dad,” I said.

  I grabbed hold of one wing where it popped out of her shoulder. Izzy and Dad were sharing the other one. My head rang like a bell.

  “That was close,” Izzy said.

  Dad looked from one to the other of us.

  “Who are you guys?” he asked.

  Did that whack on the head mix something up in my brain? Maybe. Because for a while after that moment—after I landed on the dragon’s tail and Dad pulled me to safety—my memory got a little out of hand. It flashed and popped and went out. Time seemed to move differently, the way it is in a dream, or when you go crazy. Yeah, like what’s his name in Dr. Nussbaum’s office, with the frogs in the toilet tank. That guy. Crazy. Maybe that’s what happened to me for a bit.

  This is a warning, in case you’re wondering how come the story starts to make even less sense than it did.

  —

  Not a lot of noise on a dragon. No clanking or grinding. Just the great wings, pumping. The wind made a whooshing noise in my ears, like blowing across the top of a pop bottle.

  Izzy sat cross-legged. I knelt. I can’t sit cross-legged. I don’t bend well. Mom goes to yoga and one time she tried to teach me some of the moves. Izzy laughed so hard I thought she was going to be sick.

  I couldn’t tell where we were going, but it didn’t seem to be toward the volcano. There were a couple of headlights below and off to the right. The highway.

  We flew in a lazy circle. Not very high off the ground. “Which way is Toronto?” Izzy asked.

  “Don’t know,” I said.

  The moon was on our left. A few lights flickered a long way away in that direction. Ahead of us I saw a flat dark surface that was probably a lake. I saw hills, trees. I looked behind us—

  Oh.

  Oh, yeah. Forgot about her.

  —

  The dragon. The big black one. How could I forget? Mind you, I forgot about Dad for the longest time, and if I can do that, I can forget about anything. Just lock it away in my memory and forget the combination.

  —

  So yeah, I’d forgotten all about the big black dragon, and here she was, still a ways behind but coming after us, like a police car with the lights flashing in our rearview mirror.

  Little Stumbler realized this the same time I did. She swooped low and began to fly fast and straight.

  —

  Fear. Not mine—the dragon’s. I could feel it through my knees, through my hand that gripped the little dragon’s wing joint. Stumbler knew she was in big trouble. That’s why she flew so fast.

  Stumbler the dragon was talking to me? Yes. Sort of. Somehow—some weird how—I understood her and I knew what she was feeling. It’s like my brain started to free float after I got clonked on the head, and I was picking up Stumbler’s signals. I told you the story would start to get even weirder, right?

  And the reason I totally believed Stumbler’s fear was because the same thing had happened to me.

  When I got my first two-wheeler, Mom made me promise to wear my bright yellow helmet every time. Every time? Every time. Every single time? Yes, every single time. Except that my helmet made me look dorky. One day when Mom went shopping, I rode bareheaded. Dad drove home early and honked when he saw me helmetless—a loud, angry blast. And, without thinking, without looking back, I rode off as fast as I could.

  Tha
t’s what Stumbler was doing. She’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t be doing, and she was in trouble. I felt that strongly—she wasn’t mad, she was scared. She panicked, flapping her wings as hard as I’d pedaled my blue racer on that long-ago afternoon.

  We passed a lake, a forest, a couple of barns. A highway threaded through the landscape. The cowboy moon rode across the sky. Izzy sat forward, legs wrapped around the dragon’s neck. Dad had one arm locked around a pumping wing joint. I was on my stomach, hanging on to a foreleg.

  “So you’re not Freddie,” said Dad. “Not Izzy.”

  He nodded, absorbing the idea, working with it.

  The dragon wings beat silently.

  “But you are here for me,” he went on. “You came because I’m your father. You’re mine and I’m yours. Right, Puddin’?”

  Izzy’s eyes were shining.

  —

  Pinpoints of light ahead and to the right. Not very many, not very far away. A town coming up.

  I could see the big dragon clearly now, wings pumping, tail lashing, fire shooting forward. She could have caught us by now but preferred to coast above and behind us. Maybe she didn’t have a plan—or maybe she was trying to wear Stumbler out. The little dragon was tiring. Wing pump, pause, pause, pump, pump, pump. Fatigue was getting stronger than fear.

  Again, I knew this feeling. My helmetless bike escapade led me around the block, pulling away from Dad as I roared down Sorauren Avenue and along Galley, then slowing as I climbed Roncesvalles and turned up onto Garden, gasping, sucking breaths, forcing my feet down onto the pedals, knowing Dad was gaining every second but caring less and less, nearly resigned to the inevitable, more tired than scared.

  —

  “So what happened when I disappeared from your world?” Dad asked. “Come to think of it, what happens if there are no dragons? Where do the bodies go? Where does everything go?”

  Izzy told him about getting his remains delivered to the funeral place.

  “Remains?” said Dad.

  “From the accident site. You know, bones and ashes and stuff.”

  “Ew. Remains.”

  Of course, I thought, down here there were no remains. Everything ended up in a volcano. Still, I was curious.