Paint Your Dragon Tom Holt

by Paint Your Dragon (lit)

  Nevertheless, here he was, and giving anything less than his best shot was unthinkable. The one area he knew he could improve matters was in industrial relations, which was why he was here. Either that, or he’d had a really wild time in a former life and put it, as it were, on his Access card.

  Suddenly he was uncomfortably aware that he was being

  looked at. Somewhere in the fourth row something snig­gered. Stray phrases like he’s well in there and after hours in the stationery cupboard were scurrying about in the thick atmosphere of the bus like mice in a derelict cheese warehouse. A huge, bald demon in row five caught his eye, winked and made a very peculiar gesture with three claws and an elbow. All in all, Chardonay reckoned, he was rapidly inclining towards the Past Life theory; in which case, it was bitterly unfair that he couldn’t even remember what it was he’d got up to.

  By his calculations it was ninety-six hours from Hell to Nashville and so far they’d been on the road for twenty minutes. And, like he’d said, this was fun. Having sketched out a course of entertainment for the inventor of the concept of fun that would have seriously impressed his superiors, Chardonay squirmed rootlike into his seat, scrabbled himself a makeshift cocoon of papers and settled down to enjoy his holiday.

  A flask of coffee, a ham and lettuce sandwich, a camera, the latest Ruth Rendell, a folding stool, a baseball bat — and thou.

  Thou in this instance being a big marble statue of a dragon. This time, Bianca had vowed, if the sucker moves so much as a millimetre, I’ll have him. It’s just a question of staying awake and being patient.

  As for Saint George, she reflected as she scattered crumbs among the pigeons, best to suspend disbelief, on full pay, at least until she saw what happened with the other statue. Once she’d had an opportunity to examine the evidence she’d gathered so far in the light of what she could learn from Mr Scaly over there, she could make a fully informed, rational choice between the two alternative expla­nations. And, if the vote eventually went the way of a big, peaceful house in the country and clothes with the sleeves laced up the back, then at least she’d have the altruistic satisfaction of knowing that she, not the entire galaxy, had suddenly gone barking mad.

  She’d just got to the bit in her book where the second spanner turns up in the glove compartment of the original suspect’s Reliant Robin when a tiny spasm of movement caught her eye. A tiny flick of the tail? She wasn’t sure. So, though her heart was pinging away like a sewing machine and some funny bastard had apparently put gelatine in her breath, she stayed as still as rush-hour traffic and waited.

  The next time, it was an eyelid. Then a little twitch of a nostril. That settled it; the blasted thing was asleep.

  She stood up, packed up her things, folded the stool and gripped the baseball bat. It broke after the fourth blow, but didn’t die in vain.

  ‘Urg,’ said the dragon. ‘Wassamatter?’

  ‘Wake up!’

  ‘Is it that time already?’ The dragon opened both eyes. He could see a young human female standing beside him, her head level with his eye. In her hand, a broken club. Did she look somehow familiar?

  Probably not. Over the years he’d come across a fair number of similar specimens, but that was all a very long time ago now; and besides, the very circumstances under which he tended to meet princesses made it highly improb­able that he’d ever meet the same one twice. The same went for amazons, viragos, heroines and lady knights. The aggressive expression and the fact she’d just hit him with some sort of weapon suggested that this one belonged to category two; in any event, it didn’t really matter a toss. He breathed in...

  ... And remembered that he was all out of lighter fuel. Sod. That left jaws and claws; or else just ignore her until

  she went away, like his mother had always told him to do if he was ever accosted by strange women. And yes, he realised, this one certainly was strange.

  ‘Bastard!’ she snapped.

  The dragon raised his eyebrows. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.

  ‘You’re alive, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ The dragon regarded the broken club, and then the female. ‘But don’t be too hard on yourself,’ he said. ‘You did your best, I’m sure.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. You’ve been moving around, haven’t you?’

  Oh come on, urged his rational mind, eat the silly mare and have done with it. But he didn’t; and not only for fear of raging indigestion. He had an uncanny feeling that this peculiar human...

  ‘Mummy?’

  ‘Get stuffed,’ the female replied furiously. ‘And if you were thinking of making any remarks about chips off the old block, don’t.’

  ‘Doctor Frankenstein, I presume?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You must be the stonemason.’

  ‘Sculptress.

  ‘Ah.’ Difficult, by any criteria, to know what to say in these circumstances. ‘Good job you did on the tail.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘My tail,’ the dragon replied. ‘If anything, an improve­ment on the original. Now if you’d been able to consult me beforehand, there’s quite a few little design mods you could have worked in. But for a solo effort, not bad at all.

  Thank you.

  For some reason she could never account for, the simple thank you had a remarkable effect on Bianca. The best explanation she could ever come up with was that it was the first time one of her statues had ever thanked her, and it made a refreshing change. A good review is a good review, after all; although on reflection, it’d probably not be a good idea to quote it in the catalogue of her next exhibition. ‘You’re welcome,’ she heard herself saying, although that was undoubtedly mere conditioned reflex.

  ‘Nice claws, too. You probably didn’t know this, but I used to have the most appalling rheumatism in the nearside front. Much better now.’

  ‘Just a moment.’ Bianca took a deep breath, and he could almost hear an audible click as she got a grip on herself. ‘Just who the hell are you?’ she demanded. ‘And what are you doing inside my statue?’

  The dragon shrugged with all four shoulders. ‘What you’re basically asking is, am I bespoke or off the peg? Answer, I’m not quite sure.’

  Bianca just looked blank. The dragon marshalled vocabulary.

  ‘In other words,’ he said, ‘am I some sort of wandering spirit who’s kibbutzing in your statue just because it was the first vacant lot I came to, or is there some sort of grand design going on here? As to that,’ he lied, ‘your guess is as good as mine. Facts: I was a disembodied dragon, and now I’m embodied. Very nicely, too, though if I do have one tiny criticism, it’s that you were just a fraction over-ambitious with the wingspan. If you’d done your equations a tad more carefully, you’d have cut the overall area back by about thirty square inches. In fact, you might well be able to sort that out for me when you’ve next got a minute.’

  ‘Quite,’ Bianca replied grimly. ‘Or I might just take a bloody great big sledgehammer and turn you into a skipful of gravel. You were going to blow on me!’

  ‘True,’ the dragon nodded. ‘But be fair, you started it, hitting me over the head like that. You may not know this,

  but I have very bad race-memories about being hit by humans. The fact that you’re standing there and not slipping nicely down my great intestine ought to suggest to you that I’m prepared to be civilised about all this. It’d be nice if you were the same.’

  ‘Of all the—’ That click again, as Bianca guillotined the sentence. Ah, muttered the dragon to himself, I like a girl with spirit. Methylated for choice, but a simple ethane marinade will do. ‘I’ve just,’ she went on, ‘been talking to Saint George. Ring any bells?’

  ‘You’ve been talking to the saints, huh? If they urged you to drive the English out of Aquitaine, watch your step. Young girls can come to harm that way.’

  ‘My statue,’ Bianca replied, cold as a holiday in Wales, ‘of Saint George. Your other half.’

  The dragon shuddered. ‘
I’d find another way of puffing that if I were you.’

  ‘Your better half, then.’

  The dragon growled, revealing a row of huge, sharp teeth that Bianca hadn’t had anything to do with. ‘Let me give you a word of advice,’ he said. ‘When making jokes to dragons, why did the chicken cross the road is fairly safe; likewise when is a door not a door. Beyond that, tread very carefully. Okay?’

  ‘Dragon,’ Bianca said. ‘Am I going mad?’

  ‘Why ask me, I’m not a doctor. You seem reasonably well-balanced to me, except for your habit of bashing people when they’re trying to get some sleep. But I put that down to some repressed childhood trauma or other.'

  Bianca looked thoughtful. ‘You see,’ she went on, ‘this makes two statues I’ve had conversations with in twenty-four hours. And before that, I honestly thought that huge slabs of masonry under my direct control were playing musical plinths while my back was turned. It’d make me feel a whole lot better if I knew it was only me going barmy and not the universe.’

  The dragon considered the point for a moment. ‘What we need,’ he said, ‘is an objective test; you know, see if anybody else can hear me, that sort of thing.’

  Bianca shook her head. ‘Not necessarily,’ she replied. ‘I could easily be imagining that too.’

  ‘Picky cow, aren’t you? How do you know that non-speaking statues and immobile monuments aren’t just a figment of your diseased brain? Maybe you just kid yourself that nobody else can hear us, either. Come on, we could play this game for hours.’

  Bianca shook her head to see if that would clear it. The conversation was getting a bit too similar to the sort of thing you overhear in pubs frequented by first-year students around half past ten at night. ‘Your other — Saint George told me a story all about a place called Albion that was full of dragons, and people on horses killing them all off. Does that make any sense to you?’

  The dragon laughed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Didn’t make any sense at the time, either. But yes, the story is true.’ He sighed, and looked round. ‘You want to hear it?’

  Bianca nodded.

  ‘Fair enough.’ He shook himself and stepped out of the statue; a dark, thickset, bearded man in his late twenties, fairly commonplace and unremarkable except for his croc­odile shoes and longer than average fingernails. ‘Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you all about it.’

  Father Priscian Kelly was just about to lock up and go home when the west door opened and a man shuffled in, looked round for the confessionals and plonked himself down in one. A customer, sighed Father Kelly, just when I thought I’d be home in time for The Bill.

  Nevertheless, work’s work. He kitted himself out, drew the curtain and slid back the hatch. Silence.

  ‘Don’t want to hurry you, son,’ he said, ‘but—’

  A fist, large as a grapefruit and very hairy, punched through the wire grille and entwined its fingers in the vestments nearest Father Kelly’s throat. ‘Listen, mate,’ growled a voice, ‘you gotta help me, kapisch?’

  ‘Son—’

  ‘Don’t you flaming well son me,’ the voice interrupted, ‘or I’ll have you court-martialled for giving lip to a superior officer. Know who I am?’

  Father Kelly admitted his ignorance. At once the confes­sional began to glow with a deep amber light.

  ‘God!’

  ‘No,’ George replied, ‘but getting warmer. The fluores­cent bobble-hat’s supposed to be a hint.’

  Nearly blinded by the radiance of the halo, Father Kelly turned his head away, until the pressure of the twisted cloth at his throat checked him. ‘You’re a saint,’ he gasped. ‘A real saint, here in my—’

  ‘Shut your row,’ replied George. ‘Now listen. I need a place to hide out for a few days, some grub and a few pieces of kit. Plus, you keep absolutely shtum, not a word to anybody. You got that?’ Father Kelly nodded. ‘And money,’ George added. ‘And later on, maybe a false passport and a good plastic surgeon. Okay?’

  ‘Thy will be ... What for, exactly?’

  ‘What for?’ George exploded. ‘What for? You question­ing a direct order, sunshine? Well?’

  Father Kelly tried to shake his head, but there wasn’t enough room in his collar. ‘No, not at all, your Grace,’ he spluttered. ‘Just seemed a little bit—’

  ‘You,’ George snarled, tightening his grip, ‘can keep your bloody stupid opinions to yourself, got it? Never heard the like in all me born days. I mean, when the Big Fella said Let there be light, He didn’t get pillocks like you asking Him what He wanted it for. Now stop pratting around and get on with it, or you’re gonna spend the next thousand years whitewashing stars. Do I make myself clear?’

  Father Kelly nodded, and the hand released him; the halo, too, went out. ‘Wait there,’ snarled the voice, and as the priest flopped back against the confessional wall, George slipped out, looked carefully up and down the nave and opened the main door a crack.

  ‘All clear,’ he said. ‘Come on, move it. Nobody been round asking questions, I suppose?’

  Father Kelly tried to remember. There had been young Darren Flynn, who’d popped in with a query about the doctrine of transubstantiation, but he guessed the saint didn’t mean that sort of thing. ‘Not as I recall,’ he replied.

  ‘Nobody hanging round casing the gaff? Big green bastard, scales, wings, tail?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘That’s all right, then. Now then, we’re out of here.’

  An hour or so later, back at the priest’s lodgings, when the distinguished visitor had finished off the last of the stout and the whisky and sunk into a noisy sleep in the armchair, Father Kelly sat in profound thought, studying the list of requirements the guest had dictated earlier. Most of them, Father Kelly acknowledged, wouldn’t be a problem, and, as the Monsignor had quite rightly pointed out, what he wanted with them was nobody’s business but his own. True, also, that as a priest he was duty bound to assist a superior officer to the full extent of his abilities and resources.

  That said, however, where on earth was he going to lay his hands on fifteen kilos of cyanide and a Rapier surface-to-air missile?

  Chapter 5

  ‘Don,’ shouted the joint proprietor of the Copper Kettle, peering through a gap in the net curtains. ‘There’s two coaches just come in.’

  ‘Hellfire,’ replied her husband, switching off the tele­vision and groping for his socks. ‘Two?’

  ‘That’s right. Did you remember to go to the cash and carry?’

  Coach parties were few and far between in Norton St Edgar, not because the ancient Cotswold stone village wasn’t everything an ancient Cotswold stone village should be; it had simpered away twelve centuries in tranquil loveliness. Rumour had it that Norton was where the villagers of Brigadoon went to escape from the relentless pressure of modern life. The only reason it didn’t have a permanent traffic jam of hundred-seater Mercedes buses lining its one immaculate street was that nothing wider than an anorexic Mini could get down the tangle of tiny lanes that connected Norton with the outside world.

  ‘Damn,’ Ron muttered, dragging on his shirt. ‘Knew I’d forgotten something.’

  ‘I’ll have to bake some biscuits,’ muttered his wife. ‘Make yourself useful for once and put the kettle on.’

  The two coaches had drawn up outside. One of them —an elderly contraption, the sort of vehicle that can still call itself a charabanc and get away with it — threw open its doors and disgorged a buzzing crowd of elderly ladies, all knitting bags and hats. The other coach, which had tinted black windows and a poster written in unfamiliar letters in its back window, just sat there like a constipated Jonah’s whale.

  ‘Jason,’ yelled Ron’s wife, ‘take my purse, run down to the shop, see if she’s got any of that jam left. Won’t keep you a moment, ladies,’ she warbled through the serving hatch. ‘Ron, you idle sod, why didn’t you say we’d run out of teabags?’

  Inside the second coach there was an atmosphere of great tension.

/>   ‘We’ll just have to wait till they’ve gone,’ muttered Chardonay helplessly. ‘They’ve probably only just nipped in for a quick cup of—’

  ‘All right for you saying Wait till they’ve gone,’ snarled a frog-headed demon by the name of Clawsnot. ‘There’s some of us in here can’t wait much longer, and that’s all there is to it. You want to explain to the charter company why there’s dirty great holes corroded through the floor of their nearly new coach...’

  Chardonay winced. The imperatives of their current situation were all too familiar to him. Nevertheless.

  ‘Please, all of you, just be patient a little longer,’ he pleaded, trying to ignore the sharp pain in his midriff. ‘Really, you must see that we can’t just go out there, where humans can see us. It’d cause a religious incident, and—’

  ‘There’ll be a bloody incident in here in a minute.’

  ‘Shut your face, Clawsnot,’ snarled a voice from the front

  row, ‘before I pull it off. The rest of you, just cross your legs and keep quiet.’

  That was something else the Demon Snorkfrod had:

  authority. When she told people things, they stayed told. Chardonay breathed a sigh of relief and crossed over to thank his unexpected ally.

  ‘That’s all right, pet,’ she replied, giving him a radiant smile, like sunrise over an ossuary. ‘Ignorant bleeders, got no idea.’

  At that moment, Chardonay had an uncomfortable feeling, as if he’d taken refuge from a ravening hyena in a tree that turned out to contain two hungry lions. ‘Quite,’ he said. ‘Well, I’d getter be getting back to my...

  He looked down. Six graceful, coral-painted claws were pressing meaningfully on his kneecap. ‘No hurry, is there?’ cooed Snorkfrod soothingly.

  Meanwhile, inside the Copper Kettle, the coffee was flowing and twelve plates of fancy biscuits had lasted about as long as a man’s life in the trenches of the Somme. Jason hadn’t returned with the jam yet, but a frenzied search had turned up fourteen jars of Army surplus bramble jelly, which Ron had once bought at an auction. He was having the time of his life (or rather his marriage) reminding his wife of the hard words spoken on that occasion, now thoroughly refuted; and although she wasn’t actually listen­ing, being too busy making scones, that too was probably just as well.