Paint Your Dragon Tom Holt

by Paint Your Dragon (lit)

  Cuddled in the arms of a warm thermal, the dragon watched it fall and shrugged. He’d been wrong. Compared to his real shape, it was just a toy; fancy dress, a tin overcoat. As it hit the ground and exploded, he flicked his tail like a goldfish, rose and hovered over the swelling mushroom of smoke and fire. Ruddy dangerous, too, he added. One little bump on the ground and they blow up. Shit, I could have been inside that. Doesn’t bear thinking about.

  He throttled back to a slow, exhilarating glide and began an inventory of his new shape. Neat. And gaudy too, which he liked. A little bit more gold wouldn’t have hurt and maybe a few more precious stones here and there; still, what did you expect from something that owed its original genesis to local government? But in terms of function, of efficiency and power-to-weight ratios, he couldn’t fault it. For a moment, he almost wished there were other dragons in the world. He’d have enjoyed giving them the name of his tailor.

  When Bianca arrived on site the next morning, the tarpau­lin was already off and Mike was struggling to fold it; in this wind, a bit like trying to cram the universe into a paper bag. He looked up and gave her a sad smile.

  ‘I asked you to save me the chippings,’ he said. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘That’s all right. Next time.’

  ‘No, sorry as in what the hell are you talking about.’

  Mike frowned. ‘The dragon,’ he said, pointing. ‘You came back last night and scrapped it. Quick work.’

  ‘No I didn’t,’ Bianca said, pointing. ‘It’s still...’ Gone.

  When you’re a dragon, sobering up can be a nasty experience.

  The last of the Polish vodka burned off just as he was attempting a flamboyant triple loop, about seventy thousand feet above sea level, and sixty-nine thousand feet directly above the very pointy tips of some mountains. At that point, something nudged him in the ribs, gave him an unpleasant leer, and said, ‘Hi, remember me?’ It was Gravity.

  Fortunately, he had sufficient height and enough of a breeze to glide quite comfortably down onto a flat green stretch in the middle of the large human settlement he was presently overflying. As he made his approach, he noticed that his chosen landing strip was dotted with humans, all dressed in white and staring up at him, while around the edges of the field, crammed onto rows of wooden benches, were several thousand other humans, also staring. The dragon was puzzled for a moment. He didn’t have a fly, so it couldn’t be undone. Hadn’t they ever seen a dragon before?

  Having felt for the wind, he put his wings back, stretched out his legs, turned into the breeze and dropped lightly down onto the turf, landing as delicately as a cat jumping up onto a cluttered mantelpiece. The white men had all run away, he observed, and the spectators — he assumed that was what they were doing; either that or they were some kind of jury — were trying to do the same, although they were finding it hard because they were all trying to do it at the same time. Some blue men were walking towards him with the slow, measured tread of people who feel they aren’t being paid enough to die. He wished there was something he could do to put them at their ease. He was, however, a realist; the only thing he’d ever managed to do that helped human beings relax was to go away, and unless he could get to a gallon or so of strong drink, that wasn’t among the available options.

  Or maybe it was. The green area was divided from the rows of benches by a thin wall of painted boards, with words on them; National Westminster Bank, Equity and Law and — he recognised that one — Bell’s Whisky. That, if he wasn’t mistaken, was one of the brands of fuel he’d taken on board at the pub. If they had its name written up on a hoarding, perhaps they had some about the place. It would do no harm to ask.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  At once, the blue men stopped dead in their tracks, and began talking frantically to little rectangular boxes pinned to the collars of their coats. This puzzled the dragon at first, until he worked out that the boxes were some sort of pet, that his rather loud, booming voice had frightened them, and the blue men were comforting them with soothing words. The dragon rebuked himself for being inconsiderate and lowered his voice a little.

  ‘Hello,’ he repeated. ‘I wonder if you could help me. Have you got any Bell’s Whisky?’

  Perhaps the little boxes didn’t approve of whisky, because they needed even more calming down this time. Painfully aware that tact had never been his strong point, the dragon modulated his voice into a sort of low, syrupy hum, and beckoned to the nearest of the blue men.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he cooed. The blue man stared, until the dragon was afraid his eyeballs would fall out of his head, assured his pet box that it was all right really, and took a few nervous steps forward. The dragon considered a friendly smile, but thought better of it. His friendly smiles, it had to be admitted, did rather tend to resemble an ivory-hunter’s discount warehouse. It’d probably frighten the poor little box out of its wits.

  ‘You talking to me?’ said the blue man, in a rather quavery voice.

  ‘Yes,’ replied the dragon. ‘Bell’s Whisky. Is there any?’

  ‘What you want whisky for?’

  Softly, softly is all very well, but the dragon was begin­ning to get impatient. ‘I’ll give you three guesses,’ he replied. ‘Look, either you have or you haven’t, it’s not exactly a grey area.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the blue man replied. ‘I’m a policeman, not a bartender.’

  ‘I see. Would you know if you were a bartender?’

  ‘I suppose so. Why?’

  The dragon sighed. If it had had a fuel gauge, it would be well into the red zone by now, but even so the flames that inadvertently ensued were four feet long and hot enough to melt titanium. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, observing that the police­man had gone ever such a funny colour, ‘you’d be terribly sweet and go and fetch me a bartender, so that we can get this point cleared up once and for all.’

  ‘Um. Yes. Right.’

  ‘Thank you ever so much.’

  ‘Um. Don’t mention it.’

  ‘Hope the flames didn’t frighten your box.’

  The blue man backed away, turned and ran; and for a long time, the dragon sat quietly where he was, conserving his energy and watching the pigeons waddling about on the grass. The whole area was empty by now, except for two or three of the blue men, huddled behind benches at the very back. It dawned on the dragon that something was going on. He frowned. It was, he felt, a bit much. Back in the old days, the humans hadn’t made this much fuss when he dropped in on cities demanding princesses to go, hold the onions.

  You’d think, he reiterated to himself, they’d never seen a dragon before.

  Hey!

  Maybe they hadn’t seen a dragon before.

  Anything’s possible. Perhaps, in this strange and rather down-at-heel century, dragons had become scarce. If this was a remote, out-of-the-way district (his exceptional eyes, scanning generally for a clue, picked out the name Old Trafford written on a board, but it didn’t mean anything to him) then it was conceivable that he was the first dragon they’d ever set eyes on. Reviewed in that light, the behav­iour of the humans made some sort of sense. Rewind that and let’s think it through logically.

  Assume they’ve never actually seen a dragon. They will, nevertheless, have heard of dragons; everybody has. And, facing facts, he wasn’t so naive as to imagine that what they’d heard was necessarily accurate. Humans, he knew, are funny buggers, delighting in the morbid and the sensational, eclectic in their selection of what to remember and what conveniently to forget. Quite likely, that was the case when it came to the popular image of dragons. If he knew humans, they’d ignore the ninety-nine per cent of its time a dragon spends aimlessly flying, basking in the high-level sunlight, chivvying rainclouds to where they’re needed most and persuading winds to behave themselves. More likely than not, the perverse creatures would focus on the five per cent or less of its life a dragon spends at ground level, ridding the world of unwanted and troublesome armour fetishists and saving kings the trouble of fi
nding husbands for superfluous younger daughters.

  In which case ...

  Damn.

  What a time, the dragon reflected ruefully, to run out of gas. Because any minute now, some macho nerd on a white charger is going to come galloping up through the gate with an overgrown cocktail stick under his arm, hell-bent on prodding me in the ribs. Normally, of course, this wouldn’t pose any sort of problem; one sneeze, and all that’s left is some fine grey ash and a pool of slowly cooling molten iron.

  Without fuel, however, he was going to have to rely on teeth and fingernails, which was a pest because it was ever so easy to crack a molar on those silly iron hats they insisted on wearing, and if dragons really are scarce, chances are there’s precious few competent serpentine dentists within convenient waddling distance.

  What I need, muttered the dragon to himself, is a good stiff drink of kerosene. He turned his head slowly from side to side, dilated his nostrils and sniffed. Over there ...

  At the back of the enclosure some tall iron gates swung open and four strange green vehicles rolled through. They were big, made of iron and fitted with long iron ribbons under their wheels — socks? go-anywhere doormats? — and when the dragon pricked up his exceptional ears, he heard a blue man by the gate shout to a colleague that it was going to be all right, the tanks were here now.

  Tanks.

  Yes, right, said the dragon to himself, tanks, I remember now. Big metal vessels used for the storage of liquids. At long last, here comes the Bell’s Whisky. And there was me thinking they were out to get me.

  Chapter 2

  I can’t,’ Bianca protested, ‘just have disappeared.’

  Mike shrugged and made a pantomime of patting his pockets and poking about in Bianca’s toolbag. ‘Bee, love, it’s a tad on the big side to have rolled away and fallen down a grating somewhere. Of course it’s flaming well dis­appeared. Obviously, someone’s pinched it.’

  ‘Pinched a fifteen-foot-long statue of a dragon? Kids, maybe? Bored housewife who didn’t know what came over her? Don’t be so bloody stupid. It’d take a whole day just to saw it off the plinth.’

  ‘True.’ Mike peered down at the stone beneath Saint George’s charger’s hooves. ‘And no saw marks, either. In fact, no marks of any kind. You know, this is downright peculiar.’

  ‘Peculiar.’ Bianca closed her mouth, which had fallen open. ‘Mike, if ever Mars challenges us to an under­statement match, I’m going to nominate you for team captain. What the hell am I going to do?’

  Mike scratched his head. ‘You could start by telling

  somebody. The police. Birmingham City Council. Kawa­guchiya Integrated...’

  He met Bianca’s eye. Comparable meetings include that between Napoleon and Wellington at Waterloo and the encounter between Mohammed Ali’s solar plexus and Joe Frazier’s fist back in 1974. ‘Quite,’ he said. ‘I see what you mean. This is going to be a problem, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you think,’ Mike suggested, after a moment’s con­sideration, ‘that you could, sort of, talk your way out of this? I mean, it’s your blasted statue. Convince ‘em that there never was a dragon to begin with. Sort of, Saint George and the implied dragon. Saint George, just practising? Saint George and Imaginary Friend?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Maybe not. Or could you lose the armour, fiddle around with the sword a bit and rename it The Polo Player?’

  ‘Mike.’

  ‘Okay, okay, I’m just bouncing a few ideas here. Here, why not just call it Study for Saint George and the...’

  Bianca closed her eyes and massaged them with the heel of her hand. ‘What I can’t imagine,’ she said, ‘is what the hell can have happened to it. I mean, dragons don’t just get up and walk away. Just to move something that size you’d need cranes, flat-bodied trucks, hydraulics, all that stuff. Believe me,’ she added, ‘I know. When I delivered that cameo group of Mother and Child in Macclesfield last year, they had to close off fifteen streets.’

  They stood for a few seconds longer, staring at the absence — a distinctly dragon-shaped absence, but an absence nevertheless. Compared to how Bianca was feeling about vacuums, Nature was honorary treasurer of their fan club.

  ‘Well,’ said Bianca at last, ‘there’s no point standing here like trainee lamp-posts. Help me cover the dratted thing up, what’s left of it, and I’ll get on to the wholesalers for some more white Carrera. I only hope they can match the grain.

  Mike nodded. ‘What about him?’ he added, jerking a thumb at Saint George. ‘Want me to put a padlock on him or something?’

  Bianca gave him the last in a succession of withering looks; if the Americans had had looks like that in 1972, the Viet Cong would never have stood a chance. ‘Get real,’ she sighed. ‘Who the hell is going to steal a statue?’

  Chug, chug, chug; an elderly coach, the sort of vehicle that can still call itself a charabanc and get away with it, burbles slowly and cheerfully like a relaxed bumble-bee along a winding Oxfordshire lane.

  On either side of the road, Cotswold sheep, as self-consciously picturesque as the most highly paid super-model, ruminate and regurgitate in timeless serenity. Thatched cottages, tile-roofed golden-stone farmhouses, evocatively falling-down old barns and the last surviving old-fashioned telephone boxes in Albion are the only footprints left here by the long march of Humanity; and if these works of his hand were all you had to go by, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Man wasn’t a bad old stick after all. For this is the rural Thames Valley, the land that Time forgot, scenery pickled in formaldehyde. If England was Dorian Grey, this would be the watercolour landscape he keeps in his attic.

  Inevitably and on schedule, there to the left of the coach is a village cricket match, and the big, red-faced man toiling up to the crease is, ineluctably, the village blacksmith. For a slice of living palaeontology, forget Jurassic Park and come to North Oxon.

  And here is the village, and here is the village green, and

  here are the ducks. The coach pulls up, wheezing humor­ously, and the passengers spill out; fifteen elderly ladies with flasks and sandwiches, deck chairs and knitting. It’s all so sweet you could use it to flavour tea.

  Thirty seconds later, a black transit van with tinted windows purrs noiselessly up and parks at the back of the green. The doors do not open. It lurks.

  The old ladies have laid out their tartan rugs and, after much comical by-play and merry laughter, put up their deck chairs. The sun is shining. Tea flows. Sandwiches are eaten.

  Time is, of course, not a constant. Science would have you believe that it potters along at a fixed, unalterable speed, never accelerating, never slowing down; rather like a milk float. Big joke. Time has a gearbox; it can dawdle and it can race. This, in turn, can result in absolute chaos.

  Supply and demand, twin pillars of the cosmos, apply to all things, and Time is no exception. In some places, such as this sleepy and idyllic village, they scarcely use any of the stuff. In Los Angeles, Tokyo and the City of London, where Time is Money, they burn it off at a furious rate. And, try as they might to wring every last drop of value out of each passing second, their officially allotted ration is pitifully inadequate.

  Sceptical? Here’s concrete evidence. Think how much time twenty pence buys you in a car park in Chipping Norton and the equivalent figure in Central London. Where there is supply and demand, wherever there are unfulfilled shortages, there are always entrepreneurs ready and willing to step in and sort things out. There are no exceptions to this rule. The black market in Time is probably the biggest growth area in the whole of the unofficial economy. It’s also the most antisocial, which is why it’s such a closely guarded secret.

  The sandwiches have been eaten. Jam tarts appear. Someone produces, as if from thin air, a wind-up gramo­phone.

  Something truly horrible is about to happen.

  It works like this. Time proverbially flies when you’re enjoying yourself; or, put rather more scientifically, pleas­ure
electrolyses Time. The mere act of a human being unreservedly enjoying himself acts as a catalyst, speeding up the decay of raw Time in the atmosphere. In the same way, misery, suffering and having to go to work impede the decay of Time, causing a massive build-up of the stuff. In primitive rural communities, for example, where peasants grind out lives of bleak, hopeless toil, Time seems to stand still, until the very stones of the cottages and turf of the fields are marinaded in the stuff.

  To drill for Time, therefore, find a spot where countless generations of wretched serfs have had to get up at half-past five every morning to milk bad-tempered cows. Having located the spot, shout, ‘There’s Time in them thar hills!’ and assemble your drilling rig. This will consist of between seven and twenty happy souls who are blessed with the rare ability thoroughly to enjoy themselves, unselfconsciously and without stint.

  Research has shown that little old ladies on outings do this best, with thirsty male Australians coming in a close second. Combine the little old ladies with the idyllic unspoilt village and stand well back, because you’ve just unleashed a chain reaction that makes nuclear fission seem wimpish in comparison. And be warned; it’s not a pretty sight.

  Inside the black transit, a small machine begins to run. Someone chuckles unpleasantly, mutters, ‘Time, gentle­men, please,’ and throws a switch.

  For the first thirty seconds, nothing much happens; nothing visible, anyway. The first perceptible changes are to the buildings. Thatch moults, dry stone walls collapse, oak beams sag. Entropy, acting as fast as the soluble aspirin of your dreams, is tearing the place apart as the surplus Time is leeched out of the fabric. Then, because Nature abhors a vacuum, raw present rushes in to take the place of the fossilised past, in the same way as a worked-out gravel pit floods with water. Thatch is replaced with tile, stone with brick and breeze-block. Barns fade away, and are replaced by barn conversions, complete with upper-middle-class occupants and a brace of Porsches in the driveway. Sud­denly there’s a development of ninety-six executive retire­ment homes in the old orchard behind the village green. A business park springs mushroom-like out of the ground where a minute ago there were only cows. Cars sprout up beside the highway like newly sown dragons’ teeth. The handpumps in the public bar turn seamlessly into plastic boxes, and three racks of videos parthenogenetically appear in the window of the post office. We warned you; this is not a sight for the squeamish. It’s enough to make Stephen King sleep with the light on for a week.