There's a Dragon in my Stocking

by Tom Nicoll

  “Looks great,” said Dad as he came through from the living room. “Guess what—”

  Before he could finish, Mum cut him off. “Eric, you’re never going to believe it,” she said excitedly. “Your friend is coming for dinner!”

  Dad looked a bit deflated. “How did you…? I was going to tell him.”

  Mum looked confused. “Tell him? How did you know?”

  “I just got off the phone—” he said.

  “You just got off the phone?” interrupted Mum. “But I was just speaking to them…”

  I couldn’t take much more of this. “Who’s coming for dinner?” I asked.

  “Min!” said Mum.

  “Jayden!” said Dad.

  There was silence as Mum and Dad stared at each other.

  “They’re both coming?” I said, grinning.

  Mum and Dad nodded. “Min’s flight got cancelled,” explained Mum. “And since they haven’t got anything in for dinner, Min’s mum asked if we had room for three more.”

  “Same for Jayden and his family,” said Dad. “The entire airport is shut down, apparently. I guess we could phone back and cancel…”

  “Of course we can’t,” said Mum. “Turn people away at Christmas?”

  “Right,” said Dad, stroking his beard. “Well, that’s twelve I’ll be cooking for. Should be fine, I suppose. We do normally end up eating turkey for days afterwards, anyway.”

  “Yes!” I said. I couldn’t believe I’d get to spend Christmas with my friends and not have to eat turkey sandwiches every day for the next week. Tucking into my breakfast, I tried not to think too hard about the Mini-Dragons upstairs and all the extra people I had to keep them hidden from. As long as they stayed in my room, everything should be OK.

  After breakfast I helped Mum clear up while Dad started on the Christmas dinner.

  “Better get the turkey on,” said Dad. “Glad I did all the preparation last night. This is the year, Maya.”

  “You say that every Christmas,” sighed Mum.

  “But this year I’m definitely going to cook a Christmas dinner that my dad won’t be able to find fault with,” he said. “I’ve been researching and planning for months. This year I’m finally going to serve – THE ULTIMATE CHRISTMAS DINNER.”

  “I can’t wait,” said Mum, with an encouraging smile.

  I left my parents to it and headed back upstairs. I was relieved to find that all three Mini-Dragons were still there. Pan was showing his parents our copy of the Encyclopaedia Dragonica. It was open on a page about Mini-Dragon Christmases. I took a look:

  I was about to read some more when I froze.

  “Oh no,” I whispered. A horrible thought had occurred to me.

  “What’s a Ding-Dong?” asked Mrs Long.

  I didn’t answer. Instead I rushed back downstairs. Mum and Dad were standing in the hall, looking just as horrified as I was.

  “No,” I said. “Please no.”

  “It … it … might be Jayden,” said Dad. “Or Min…”

  It could be… Or it could just be my grandparents. But I couldn’t shake the terrible feeling that it wasn’t. And it was obvious my parents felt the same.

  “You did say the entire airport was shut down,” said Mum. “That means…”

  Dad walked slowly towards the door and opened it.

  It was just as we’d feared.

  “Monty!” bellowed Frank Bloom. “They only went and cancelled our flight! Looks like we’re going to have to spend Christmas with you.”

  “Well, aren’t you going to invite us in?” said Mr Bloom. “It’s freezing out here.”

  “Oh, of course, come in,” said Dad.

  While it was no longer snowing, I couldn’t get over how much had already fallen. It must have been at least half a metre deep. Even so, it was hard to believe that Toby and his dad could be cold in their matching sheepskin coats. And if Mrs Bloom was cold, she didn’t show any sign of it as she tapped away furiously on her phone.

  Mr Bloom headed straight into the living room and slumped down on our sofa.

  “Absolute disgrace, that airport,” he said. “I’ll be speaking to my lawyers about this.”

  “It’s not the airport’s fault it snowed, Frank,” said Mum. “No one was expecting so much to fall so quickly.”

  Mr Bloom let out an exaggerated laugh. “Snow? Is that why you think they’re closed?”

  “Well, that’s what Eric’s friends’ parents told us,” said Mum. “Speaking of which—”

  “Yes, that’s what they’re telling the public,” interrupted Mr Bloom, giving the side of his nose a little tap. “But I happen to know a few of the pilots personally and the truth is it has nothing to do with the snow.”

  “So what happened, then?” asked Dad.

  “Gremlins,” said Mr Bloom matter-of-factly.

  “Gremlins?” I repeated.

  Mr Bloom nodded. “Little green creatures… Apparently, some of the passengers on a flight last night claim to have seen one walking along the plane’s wing. A couple of the cabin crew and a copilot claim they saw it, too. Nutters the lot of them, obviously, but that seems to be enough these days to shut down an airport, trigger a full-scale investigation and completely ruin our Christmas!”

  My mouth had suddenly gone very dry. I knew exactly which flight they were talking about.

  “Oh, I am sorry,” said Mum. “That’s awful. But, er … so Eric’s friends—”

  “It’s so good of you to take us in,” Mr Bloom interrupted again. “Obviously we’d rather be in the Big Apple but Toby was so excited when I told him he’d get to spend Christmas with his best friend.”

  “Who? Oh, you mean Eric,” said Dad.

  Toby, who had been uncharacteristically quiet up till now, didn’t look very happy. In fact, he looked like he was about to cry. “This is the worst Christmas ever,” he muttered. “Not a single present.”

  “Now, Toby,” said Mr Bloom. “You do have presents. But we had them sent to the hotel, didn’t we?”

  “Yeah, but what about the ones from Santa?” he yelled. “I asked him for dragon toys like the one Eric has.”

  “I hope he had better luck finding them than we did,” said Mr Bloom, throwing a slightly resentful glance in my direction. “Now don’t worry, Toby. He’ll have delivered them there, too,” he continued. “Santa’s a busy man – you can hardly expect him to be checking for flight delays. And they’re saying the airport will reopen tomorrow, so you’ll only have to wait till then.”

  This didn’t seem to console Toby, who threw himself into his mum’s arms.

  “And Margery’s excited, too,” continued Mr Bloom, trying his best to ignore his blubbing son. “Didn’t stop talking all the way back from the airport about how good it would be to spend Christmas with her favourite neighbours. Right, Margery?”

  There was an awkward silence as everyone looked at Mrs Bloom, who was patting Toby on the back with one hand and swiping her phone with the other. Eventually she looked up, gave a little nod and returned to her messages.

  I could see Mum and Dad staring at each other. They were having one of those silent conversations they sometimes have. Usually these are so I wouldn’t know what’s going on but I was getting quite good at translating them. This was what I could pick up:

  Mum: We can’t let them stay, we’ve already got a full house.

  Dad: I know… But who’s going to be the one to kick them out?

  Mum: He’s your friend…

  Dad: He’s not!

  Mum: He seems to think he is.

  Dad: Well, he’s not.

  Mum: I’m not telling them.

  Dad: Neither am I.

  Mum: So I guess they’re staying then.

  Dad: I guess…

  Mum: Did you tidy away all the pumpkins?

  OK, so I might have misread that last bit.

  “Of course you’re welcome to stay,” said Dad.

  “Brilliant!” shouted Mr Bloom as Toby’s wails got ev
en louder. Frank put his feet on the coffee table and switched on the TV. “Ah, Christmas telly, you can’t beat it. Oh that’s right, I forgot how rubbish your TV is compared to ours. That’s a shame, the Queen’s meant to be doing her speech in 3D this year… Never mind. What time’s dinner, Monty?”

  “Er…” began Dad, but he was cut off as a familiar sound rang out.

  Before anyone had even got up, we could hear the front door open and seconds later a tall, grey-haired man bounded into the room, dressed like he had just come from climbing Mount Everest. A smaller, rather weary-looking woman trailed after him.

  “MERRY CHRISTMAS!” bellowed the old man.

  “Merry Christmas, Grandad!” I said, throwing my arms round him.

  “Oh, Eric, you get bigger every time I see you,” said my gran, barging her husband out of the way and squeezing me tight. “You’ll be the size of your grandad soon – though hopefully not as big a pain.” She whispered this last part, giving me a wink. Then she shoved a parcel into my arms. “Here you go!”

  “Thanks, Gran,” I said, tearing open the paper. Of course I knew what it was. A hand-knitted jumper, same as ever. The quality varied from year to year. Some years they were all right. Others they were beyond horrible. This year she had gone for green with a picture of…

  “A dragon!” I said, breaking into a smile. “Thanks, I love it.”

  The rest of my family got jumpers, too. Posy’s had a snowman on it, Dad’s had a football and Mum had what was meant to be a person doing a yoga pose.

  “Your mum told us that you’ve been mad about dragons lately,” said Gran. “So I thought… George, what are you doing?”

  As I slipped the jumper on over my shirt, I saw Grandad in the corner of the room, half hidden by our tree. “Just checking out their decorations,” he replied. “Same tree again, eh, Monty? We upgraded ours – went with the SuperFir 3000. Which Christmas Tree? magazine voted it best tree on the market.”

  At that, Toby looked up, rubbing his eyes. “Yeah, last year,” he said, a trace of that familiar Toby smirk beginning to appear as he peeled himself out of his mum’s arms. “This year everyone knows that no tree beats the Evergreen X-MA5.”

  Grandad’s mouth opened and closed a few times but nothing came out. Gran and Dad were struggling not to laugh.

  “Who are these people?” asked Grandad, a little bluntly.

  “These are our neighbours,” said Mum. “They’re going to be joining us for dinner.”

  Mr Bloom stood up and extended his hand to Grandad. “Monty Bloom. Pleasure to meet you.”

  “Course it is,” said Grandad. “Ha, just kidding, good to meet you… Say, you wouldn’t be the same Bloom that beat my son in a camping competition?”

  “Sure would,” said Mr Bloom. “And I’ve got the tooth mark in my bum to prove it. Want to see?”

  “Er… No, that’s OK,” muttered Grandad, backing off a little. “Anyway, why’s he looking so miserable?” he said, pointing at Toby. “Has no one told him it’s Christmas?”

  Mum quickly filled Grandad in on why the Blooms were here.

  “Best thing that’s happened to you all year,” declared Grandad. “Nothing beats Christmas with the Crisps. I mean, you will have to put up with my son’s cooking…”

  Mr Bloom and Toby gave a little chuckle, much to the annoyance of my dad.

  “But on the plus side,” continued Grandad, “we play tons of games. Sometimes I even let other people win. What do you say? Who’s up for a game of Moneyopoly?”

  “What’s Moneyopoly?” asked Toby.

  Grandad looked at Toby as if he had just asked what Christmas was. “You’ve never played Moneyopoly? Don’t you play games?”

  “Yeah, I play games,” said Toby. “All the time. But I’ve never heard of that one. Is it one of those olden-times games that comes on cartridges instead of discs?”

  “It comes on a board,” Grandad said. “You roll the dice. You have little pieces you move around. You buy streets and hotels and you get money for winning beauty contests.”

  Toby leaned over to his dad. “What’s he talking about?” he whispered.

  Frank let out a huge laugh but, before he could answer, he was cut off by that familiar sound.

  With the arrival of Jayden and Min’s families, our living room was more than a little cramped. Mum had quickly armed everyone with a mince pie and a sherry (fizzy drinks for the kids). Posy, meanwhile, was enjoying serving everyone imaginary drinks from her new tea set.

  I was trying to finish my lemonade as quickly as I could so I could take Jayden and Min to meet our other house guests.

  “It’s so nice of you to have us all,” said Jayden’s mum.

  “Not a problem, Laila,” said Dad.

  “Bit snug though, isn’t it?” said Min’s dad. “Maybe us three should go back to the restaurant.”

  “Don’t be silly, Han,” said Mum. “I mean, it’ll be a bit of a squeeze for dinner, but it’ll be fine.”

  “That’s a lot of people to cook for, son,” said Grandad. “You want me to take over? I used to cook for three hundred men every night in the army.”

  Gran rolled her eyes. “That figure goes up every year,” she muttered.

  “No, thank you,” said Dad, through gritted teeth. “I’ll manage.”

  “Right you are,” said Grandad, sounding doubtful. “More people means more money for me in Moneyopoly!” He went over to our toy chest and lifted out a box. “Who’s up for a game?”

  Toby shot up his hand. Min and Jayden were about to raise theirs, too, when I grabbed them and quickly led them out of the room. “Come with me,” I said.

  “Hang on,” said Min. “We’ll get your presents.”

  “Er… No, leave them,” I said. “Pan wants to open them later. I’ve got something to show you, though.”

  “Is it your new scooter?” asked Jayden as we slipped up the stairs. “Cos I already know about that. Your mum asked me which one to get. You’ve no idea how hard it was to keep it a surprise.”

  “Thanks, I love it. But it’s not about my scooter,” I said, opening my bedroom door to reveal three Mini-Dragons perched on the windowsill, looking out at the back garden. I breathed a sigh of relief that they were actually still in my room where I’d left them.

  Min let out an excited squeal, before quickly clamping her hands over her mouth.

  “Mrs Long, Mr Long,” said Jayden, rushing over to greet them.

  “When did you get here? How did you get here?” said Min.

  As Pan’s parents retold the story of their trip, it was clear from the looks they were giving me that Min and Jayden had both realized that the reason they weren’t away on holiday was because of our Mini-Dragon visitors. Of course Mr Bloom had told them his gremlin theory, too.

  “What are you doing up there?” I asked Pan’s parents, changing the subject.

  Mrs Long let out a sigh. “What, so now we can’t even look out of the window?”

  “Er … no,” I said quietly. “I was just wondering what you were looking at.”

  “Oh,” she replied, sounding slightly sheepish. “We were just looking at all the snow. I’m sorry, dear, I didn’t mean to snap. I think it’s being cooped up inside that’s doing it.”

  “You only just got here,” I said.

  “The three of us were talking about how nice it would be to get out there,” said Pan’s dad. “It reminds me of the snow we get in the mountains back home. Right, Pan?”

  “Yeah,” agreed Pan. “Except you guys never let me go out in it.”

  “That’s because you used to make too much noise and set off avalanches,” said his mum.

  Pan gazed outside longingly. “Well, there’s not much chance of that happening here.”

  “Let’s do it,” said Jayden. “We can build snowdragons.”

  All three Mini-Dragons’ faces lit up.

  “I don’t know…” I said. “It’s a bit risky. We’d have to get them downstairs and then someone
might see them.”

  I looked to Min. She was normally the most sensible of all of us, so I was sure she’d agree with me.

  “Actually,” she said, “Pan’s parents can fly out of the window. And Pan can sort of fly now, too, so they could just give him a hand with his landing, couldn’t they? And there’s so much snow, they could easily hide if anyone comes out.”

  Everyone stared at me hopefully.

  What was I going to say? It was Christmas, after all.

  “I’ll get my wellies,” I said.

  I had to admit, bringing the dragons outside was a great idea. First we built a little snow wall to conceal the parts of the garden visible from the kitchen window. Then we spent the next hour:

  • Building snowmen.

  • Building snowdragons. (We used old gardening gloves for wings and twigs for claws.)

  • Making snow angels. (The Mini-Dragons had the advantage here with their wings.)

  • Building Mini-Dragon igloos. (These didn’t take very long.)

  And, of course:

  • Having snowball fights.

  As it turns out, Mini-Dragons are excellent at these. Well, maybe not the throwing part – their snowballs are tiny. But being so quick and small, they’re virtually impossible to hit. And even if you do happen to come close, they can just melt the snow in mid-air with their fire breath.

  Min, Jayden and I were just about to call it a draw with Pan and his parents when three large snowballs whacked us in the back of our heads.

  “OWWWWW!” the three of us cried.

  “Ha ha!” cackled a voice from behind. It was Grandad. “Bullseye!” he shouted.

  “Quick, hide,” I whispered. But the Mini-Dragons didn’t need me to tell them, diving inside their tiny igloos.

  Rubbing the back of my head, I turned round to see Grandad, closely followed by a grinning Toby and his dad.

  “You should have told us you wanted a snowball fight,” said Grandad, pulling down his snow goggles.

  “You were busy with your game,” I said.