Paint Your Dragon

by Tom Holt

  ‘Good and Evil.’

  ‘Yeah. Them.’ George yawned, stretched and kicked his shoes off. ‘All a bit academic, really. I mean, what it all boils down to is, you see a dragon, say, wandering about on your patch, you scrag it, job done. What more d’you need to know, for Chrissakes? I mean, it’s not exactly brain-bending stuff. Not like your angels dancing on the head of a pin - to which, in case you ever wondered, the answer is six, unless they’re doing the valeta, in which case eight. I don’t see what you’re making all this fuss about.’

  Chardonay shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’m not right for this line of work after all. When I joined, I thought there’d be something, you know, non-controversial I could do, like keeping the books, doing budget forecasts, working out cost-efficiency ratios and calculating depreciation of fixed assets on a straight-line basis. Killing people ...’

  George treated him to a look of contemptuous pity.

  ‘Wouldn’t do if we were all the same, son. I mean, if we were then the likes of me couldn’t kick shit out of the likes of you, for starters. Here,’ he added irritably, ‘this isn’t proper champagne, it’s that naff Italian stuff. When that dozy parson gets back, I’ve a good mind to pour the rest of it down his trousers. One thing I can’t stand, it’s blasphemy.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Grapes,’ said Mike, smiling. ‘Flowers. Womens’ magazines. I know you hate them all like the plague, so I’m building up an environment you’ll be desperate to leave. That way, you’ll get well faster.’

  Bianca tried to rub her eyes, but found she couldn‘t, because her arm was cocooned in plaster and hanging by a wire from a frame above her head. ‘I’m in hospital, right?’ she said.

  ‘Huh.’ Mike scowled. ‘Someone must have told you.’

  ‘How did I get here?’

  ‘You got blown up,’ Mike replied through a mouthful of grape-pulp. ‘Along, I’m very sorry to have to tell you, with your statue. Note the singular, by the way. There’s bits of marble dragon scattered about as far as Henley-in-Arden, but no Saint George. They’re saying it’s the animal rights lot.’

  Suddenly there was something solid and awkward in Bianca’s throat; possibly a bit of dragon shrapnel. ‘The statue’s - gone, then?’

  Mike nodded. ‘All the king’s horses are reported to have packed it in as a lost cause,’ he replied. ‘All the king’s men are still at it, but only because they’re paid hourly. If it’s any consolation, you’re in all the papers and there’s a guy from Celebrity Squares in the waiting room right now.’

  What with the plaster and the wires, Bianca couldn’t sink back into the pillows with a hollow groan, so she did the next best thing and swore eloquently. Mike agreed that it was a pity.

  ‘A pity? They murdered the - my statue, and you say it’s a pity?’

  ‘These things happen. Is there anything else you’re particularly allergic to that I can bring in? I seem to remember you can’t stand chrysanthemums, but they’d sold out at the kiosk, so I got daffs instead.’

  ‘Mike.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘I thought you’d say that,’ Mike said, and left.

  The dragon looked down, then back over his shoulder. Cautiously, he spread his wings and folded them again. Finally, he breathed out the tiniest, finest plume of flame he could manage, so as not to incinerate the extremely plush office he was apparently sitting in.

  ‘All present and correct,’ Chubby said. ‘Actually, in all the panic we knocked off a toe, but we put it back on with Araldite as soon as we got here and it seems to have taken okay. Grateful?’

  The dragon nodded. ‘Extremely,’ he said. ‘I had the distinct impression I was dying. I was in this restaurant, and then I was in the square again, inside the statue. I thought—’

  ‘They tried to blow you up,’ Chubby replied. ‘I got there just as a fat bloke with a moustache tripped over his feet and fell on the plunger. A sixth of a second later and all you’d have been fit for would have been lining the bottom of goldfish bowls.’

  The dragon narrowed his eyes. ‘So what happened?’ he said. ‘What did you do?’

  Chubby shrugged modestly and folded his hands in his lap. ‘A sixth of a second can be a very long time,’ he said, ‘especially if you boost another twelve hours into it using a state-of-the-art Kawaguchiya Heavy Industries Temporal Jack.’ He grinned. ‘At $3,000,000 per hour plus hire of plant and equipment, you owe me plenty, but we’ll sort that out later. Anyway, during that time we winched your statue up off the deck and into the cargo bay of the big Sikorsky, substituted a big chunk of solid marble, and legged it. That way, when the fireworks started, there were plenty of bits of flying rock to make them think they’d succeeded. To them, of course, the sixth of a second lasted a sixth of a second, thanks to the KHI jack and a quick whip round with the soldering iron. Neat, yes?’

  ‘Rather. I’m impressed. It was very good thinking.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Chubby, ‘well. Some of us don’t go all to pieces at the first sign of trouble. And now, here you are, safe and sound. And, I sincerely hope, desperately anxious to try and repay the colossal debt of gratitude, ditto money, you now owe me. Correct?’

  The dragon nodded. ‘You said something about a job.’

  ‘Ah yes. Two jobs, really. Both of them right up your alley. Can I get you a drink, by the way? I’ve got four-star, diesel, aviation fuel or ethanol, and I think there’s a drop of turps left over from the Christmas party.’

  The dragon asked for a large ethanol, straight, no cherry. ‘Two jobs,’ he repeated. ‘Connected?’

  ‘Sort of,’ Chubby replied. ‘One, I want you to fry me some devils. Two, I - Don’t touch that!’

  He was too late. The dragon, a born fidget, had let his claws drift across the keyboard of the obsolete old PCW The screen started to glow.

  ‘Sorry,’ the dragon said. ‘Oh look, it’s gone all green.’

  Your wish is my - Well, hello, Fred.

  The dragon blinked. ‘Nosher?’

  Fred, mate, it’s great to see you again. Nice outfit.

  ‘Likewise.’ The dragon grinned, and only just managed to restrain a sigh of pleasure that would have melted the side off the building. ‘It’s been a long time, Nosher. What, three thousand years?’

  Easily that. How’ve you been keeping?

  ‘Well,’ the dragon replied, ‘most of the time I’ve been dead, though I’m better now. And yourself?’

  Chubby, his eyes round as tennis balls, could contain himself no longer. ‘Nosher?’ he demanded. ‘Your name is Nosher?’

  Zagranosz. And this is my old friend Fredegundar. We go way back.

  ‘I trust,’ said Chubby bitterly, ‘that none of this great-to-see-you-heard-from-Betsy-lately stuff’s going on my account. I mean, I don’t mind soul-destroying work, but college reunions—’

  On the house. He worries, you know.

  The dragon nodded. ‘Weird sort of a bloke,’ he agreed, ‘although he did just save me from getting blown up. And now he wants me to go torching demons.’

  Ah.

  The dragon blinked. ‘You know about this?’

  Well, yes. Of course, I never guessed the dragon’d turn out to be you.

  Confused, and feeling as left out as an empty milk bottle, Chubby finished off the dragon’s ethanol and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. ‘You guys,’ he said. ‘It’s no good, I’ve got to know. Where do you two know each other from?’

  The dragon turned his head and smiled.

  ‘Sunday school,’ he said.

  Drop a pebble in the sea off Brighton and the ripples will eventually reach California. Likewise, blow up a statue in Birmingham and you risk starting a revolution.

  A lot depends, of course, on the quality of the statue, because only the very best statues have the potential to be squatted in by unquiet spirits. The word unquiet, by the way, has been chosen with great care.

  The sound waves tr
avelled fastest, of course; followed by the shock of air suddenly and violently displaced, in turn hotly pursued by microscopic fragments of dust and debris. The sound and the air dissipated themselves soon enough, but the dust floated on, carried on the winds far over the English Channel, south-east across France and down into Italy. Most of it fell by the wayside, to be whisked away by conscientious housewives or ploughed under; but one stray particle happened to drift into the great and glorious Academy Gallery in the city of Florence, where they keep possibly the most famous statue in the world - Michaelangelo’s David.

  Imagine that there’s a wee video camera mounted on the back of this dust particle - impossible, of course; even the latest twelfth-generation salt-grain-sized Kawaguchiya Optical Industries P7640 would be far too big and heavy - and you’re watching the city come into focus as the particle begins its unhurried descent. Now we’re directly over the Piazzale Michelangiolo, where the coaches park for a good gawp and an ice lolly; we can see the khaki majesty of the river Arno, the Ponte Vecchio with its bareback shops, the grim tower of the Bargello, the egg-headed Duomo. Here is the square horseshoe of the Academy. Here is an open window, saving us 4,000 lire entrance fee. And here is the statue.

  It stands at the end of a gallery, in an alcove shaped like half an Easter egg. No miniature, this; twelve feet from curly hair to imperious toe, leaning slightly backwards, weight on his right foot, one hand by his side and the other holding what looks uncommonly like a sock over his left shoulder. There are those who’ll tell you his head and hands are too big, out of proportion to the rest of him; that his hair looks like an old woolly mop head, fallen on the unsuspecting youth from a great height. Be that as it may, the consensus of civilised opinion holds that you are in the presence of transcendent genius, so be told.

  The grain of dust flittered casually down and settled on David’s nose.

  He sneezed.

  ‘Nngr,’ he mumbled, the way you do after a real corker of a sneeze. Absent-mindedly, he moved to wipe his nose with the thing that looks like a sock and found he couldn’t. Shit, he thought, my arm’s stuck.

  Also, he observed, horrified, there’s a whole gaggle of people over there staring at me and I haven’t got any clothes on.

  Not a happy state of affairs for a well-brought-up twelve-footer who can’t move. My God, he asked himself, how long have I been here like this? I can’t remember. In fact, I can’t remember anything. I must have been in a terrible accident, which left me completely paralysed and amnesiac. Oh God!

  Except, the train of thought chuntered on, blowing its whistle and slowing down while a cow crossed the line, if I’d just had a terrible accident, surely I’d be in a hospital with nurses and lots of bits of tube sticking out of me, rather than standing in this very public place, stark naked. So just what is going on here?

  ‘Hello,’ said the grain of dust.

  It spoke quietly, in statue language. Don’t, by the way, rush out and try and buy the Linguaphone tape because there isn’t one, not even in HMV And even if there was, a twelve-year-old child would be a hundred and six before he’d got as far as What are you called? My name is John, because statue language takes a long time to learn and almost as long to say.

  ‘Hello,’ David replied, puzzled. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘On the end of your nose. There’s ever such a good view from up here.’

  David felt his nose begin to itch again. ‘Okay. What are you?’

  ‘I’m a bit of dust from Birmingham. It’s nicer here than Birmingham. What’s your name?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ David confessed. ‘I don’t think I know anything before you landed on my nose. It was you, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Sorry about that. I just sort of drifted, if you know what I mean.’

  How the hell, David wondered, can you itch if you’re immobile? ‘Look,’ he said, ‘can you tell me what’s going on? For a start, why can’t I move?’

  ‘You’re a statue.’

  ‘Don’t be thick, statues are dead. I mean, not alive. Inanimate.’

  ‘Oh are they, now? Well, I’ve got news for you, buster. Not only are some statues alive, they also walk about and talk and do all sorts of things. I guess,’ the dust mused, ‘it’s all a matter of casting off crippling social stereotypes and unlocking your full potential.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because,’ the dust replied smugly, ‘I’ve seen it, that’s why. Where I’ve just come from, there was this enormous big statue of a dragon. Alive as anything, it was. Until they blew it up, of course.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘With dynamite, or something. Well, they tried to, anyway. At the last moment someone swapped me for it, me as I was, that is. I was bigger then.’

  If David had had skin, it’d have goosepimpled. ‘They blew up a statue because it was alive?’ he demanded nervously.

  ‘I suppose so. Can’t see why else they’d want to do a thing like that, can you? I mean, statues aren’t cheap, you don’t just go around blasting them to smithereens because you quite fancy turning the vegetable patch into a rockery.’

  ‘Good God.’ David glanced out of the corner of his eye at the knot of people at the end of the gallery. They were quite definitely staring at him. Had they guessed? ‘This is terrible. I must get out of here at once.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  ‘I can’t. My bits don’t work. Oh Christ, there’s a guy over there with some sort of box, do you think...?’

  ‘The other statue seemed to manage okay. You can’t be doing it right.’

  David tried again; still nothing. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘if you’re so clever, how do you do this movement stuff? I assumed it just sort of happened when you wanted it to.’

  ‘Search me,’ replied the dust particle. ‘I think it’s something to do with the central nervous system. You got one of those?’

  ‘How should I know? You think I’ve got a zip somewhere I can undo and take a peek? Besides, even if I did I wouldn’t be able to use it.’

  A gang of humans, all women, led by a big loud-voiced specimen with an umbrella, were walking down the gallery towards him. This is it, he told himself, the lynch mob. Well, having my entire life flash before my eyes isn’t going to be a problem, because the ruddy thing’s only lasted about two minutes. On the other hand, there’s not much of it I’d really want to see twice.

  ‘All right,’ said the dust particle. ‘Try falling over.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look down. Feel giddy. You’re losing your balance. You’re teetering. You’re going to fall. Look out!’

  The statue staggered, clutched at thin air, wobbled backwards and forwards for a split second and fell off its plinth with a crash. If people had been staring before, it was peanuts compared to the way they were staring now.

  ‘Hell’s teeth,’ groaned the statue. ‘I banged my head.’

  ‘Worked, though, didn’t it? Come on.’

  Without knowing how, or what it was he’d done to bring it about, David found himself scrambling to his feet, jelly-legged as a newborn calf. He remembered something, scooped up the thing that looked like a sock, and held it with both hands over his groin.

  ‘Which way?’ he hissed. ‘Quick!’

  But there was no reply. He must, he realised, have displaced the speck of dust, his only friend and guide in this terrible, unfamiliar, murderous world. He whimpered and began to back away until the wall stopped him. At the first touch of something cold on his bare shoulder-blades he squealed like a scalded pig, jumped in the air and dropped the sock. Then he grabbed it again and looked for an exit.

  There wasn’t one. The only way out was through, or over, the lynch mob. Just as he was toying with the idea of crouching down behind the plinth and hoping they’d overlook him, a vagrant thought hit him and exploded in his brain like a rocket.

  Hey, he said to himself. I’m bigger than them.

  Six floors below, in the gallery’s engine room, a breathless guard burst
in through the door marked VIETATO INTRARI PERICOLO DI MORTI and slithered to a halt in front of a broad mahogany desk.

  ‘Chief ! Chief!’ he panted. ‘It’s the David, it’s come to frigging life!’

  Behind the desk, a large, stocky man with very hairy arms stubbed out a cigarette.

  ‘Oh balls,’ he sighed. ‘Not another one.’

  ‘Honestly, Chief, straight up, I saw it with my own - What do you mean, another one?’

  The Chief stood up and unlocked a steel cabinet behind him. ‘You haven’t been here long, have you, son?’

  ‘Six months, Chief. You mean to say it’s—?’

  ‘On average,’ the Chief replied, opening the cabinet door, ‘once every five years or so. Lately though, there’s been a poxy epidemic. Here, catch hold of this.’

  Into the guard’s quivering hands the Chief pressed a big tranquilliser gun and a bandolier of darts. For his part, he chose a slide-action Mossberg twelve-gauge, a pocketful of armour-piercing slugs and a geologist’s hammer. Finally, a tin hat each, goggles and a torch.

  ‘The David, you say?’

  ‘Yes, Chief.’

  ‘Fuck. It’s always the thoroughbreds. Anonymous figure of unknown man, late fifteenth-century Venetian school, never get a whisper out of them. Right, let’s go.’

  The Chief walked so fast that the guard was hard pressed to keep up with him. ‘What we gonna do, Chief?’ he gasped.

  ‘Well.’ The Chief shrugged. ‘Sometimes, a couple of sleepy-darts knock’em out cold, and then all we have to do is drill out their brains and fill up with quick-drying resin. Other times,’ he added grimly, jacking a round into the breech of the shotgun, ‘we have to get a bit more serious.’

  ‘Serious?’

  The Chief nodded. ‘How d’you think the Venus de Milo got that way, son? Resisting arrest? Had a bad fall in her cell? Act your age.’

  When they got to the gallery, it had already been roped off and the doors were shut. Two-way radios crackled and white-faced guards stepped back to let the Chief through.

  ‘Any movement?’ he demanded.