Dragon's Green

by Scarlett Thomas

  ‘What happened?’ Effie asked.

  ‘I just couldn’t . . .’ began Wolf.

  Effie thrust the spectacles back at Maximilian. ‘Here,’ she said.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Maximilian. ‘How did you . . .?’

  ‘He said you robbed him at knifepoint,’ said Lexy. ‘He said—’

  ‘He said he was going to call the police,’ said Raven. ‘But I think he was just bluffing. But then he said all this stuff about knife crime and . . .’

  Wolf was shaking his head. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ he said. ‘I knew he was lying. I knew he’d already shut us in a cave with three live tarantulas. I still couldn’t actually . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry about that now,’ said Effie. ‘But if we don’t stop him soon, I think time might change and you might end up back in the cave with the tarantulas.’

  In fact, Effie didn’t know what would happen if Levar got the book and prevented her from being the Last Reader of Dragon’s Green. Shouldn’t time already have changed? Hadn’t Cosmo said that time was wise? But there was no sense in standing around thinking.

  ‘We need to get to my house before Levar does,’ she said. ‘We’d better run for it.’

  But when they got to the next corner, Carl was there waiting for them in his car.

  ‘Got any more of that fizzy pink water?’ he asked Lexy.

  ‘If you can get us to Effie’s house before Leonard Levar gets there,’ she replied, ‘you can have all the fizzy pink water you want.’

  The children all piled into Carl’s car, and he sped away.

  ‘Go as quick as you can,’ said Wolf. ‘We’ve got to stop this guy.’

  Effie gave directions and tried to explain what was now happening, while Maximilian used the spectacles to try to work out what was wrong with Wolf’s sword, although he suspected the problem was with Wolf himself. Maximilian seemed to have generated quite a large amount of M-currency from somewhere, enough to enable him to use the spectacles for a very long time. Raven slowly chanted a simple spell for slowing down Leonard Levar, and Lexy added a crushed moonberry to a tonic for Effie’s recovery in case she had to fight him.

  Soon they were going past the old village green, next to the abandoned pub by the bus stop. And there, skulking in the shadows, creeping along almost invisibly, his ancient body jerking like a fragile zombie, was Leonard Levar.

  ‘There!’ said Effie, spotting him. ‘Stop the car.’

  Effie, Wolf, Raven and Lexy all got out.

  ‘I’ll carry on to your house with Carl,’ said Maximilian. ‘I’ll deal with the book. It needs to be destroyed completely, presumably?’

  ‘How do you know . . .?’ Effie began. ‘Oh, never mind. Thank you. Here’s my key. My house is number thirty-five.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The book’s . . .’ Suddenly Effie didn’t want to say where the book was in front of Carl. Just in case. ‘It’s . . .’ She searched her mind quickly for something she could use for a clue that only Maximilian would know. ‘It’s being guarded by the thing that Cronus likes to eat.’

  Maximilian nodded. ‘OK. And here’s Wolf’s sword.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Effie took it. ‘You’re a true friend.’

  Maximilian sighed. ‘I wish I always had been. Good luck.’

  Effie didn’t have time to wonder what on earth Maximilian meant. She ran towards Levar. Wolf did the same. Lexy and Raven were still working their magic, so they followed more slowly.

  Effie threw Wolf’s sword for him to catch and it immediately crackled and hissed as it grew to full size.

  ‘Stop,’ Effie said to Levar, running in front of him.

  ‘Oh, you again,’ he said, turning around. There was Wolf. ‘And I see you’ve brought the boy coward with you.’

  ‘I am not a coward,’ said Wolf, raising his sword.

  ‘Be careful with that,’ said Levar. ‘You might hurt yourself. These boons, you never know exactly what they will do. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I just need to . . .’

  Levar started trying to run across the green. He was about as fast as any unfit 350-year-old was likely to be, but he seemed determined not to let this stop him as he staggered on towards the old boarded-up inn. He managed about ten steps. Then he tripped and fell to the ground.

  ‘Muggers!’ he cried weakly. ‘Thieves! Hooligans!’ He seemed to be trying to reach in his pocket for something. ‘Help!’ he called. ‘Someone save me from these vicious young thugs!’

  In a moment, Effie and Wolf were standing over him. Lexy and Raven had almost caught up with them. Wolf raised his sword. Effie had the athame ready. But neither of them felt quite right about striking such a feeble old man who was already on the ground. Who should do it first? Wolf felt that Effie ought to, really. It had been her grandfather after all, and . . . Effie felt that Wolf’s sword was bigger, and also that it was probably his turn to do something brave.

  While they hesitated, Leonard Levar finally got out of his pocket the thing he was looking for. It was a pinkish-whitish seashell.

  ‘Blast you!’ he cried, tossing it to the ground in front of Effie and Wolf.

  When it landed it acted like quite a different sort of shell and exploded with a loud crack. Both children fell to the ground. Then everything began to shake, slowly at first and then more violently. It was like the worldquake all over again. The earth beneath the children moved this way and that, becoming loose and precarious until – whoosh – it started to blow up all around them like a sandstorm. Or, more accurately, an earthstorm.

  Anyone who has been in one knows that there are few things more horrible than an earthstorm. Soon, the air was full of everything that had been shaken from the ground: worms, gnarled roots, mice, caterpillars, slugs, maggots, ants’ nests, the bones of long-dead animals and other strange things that lurk between this world and the one below. All of these were momentarily suspended in the air while the soil they had been in separated itself first into little clumps, and then into tiny pieces, all the time flying higher and higher. Then everything began swirling around and around, as if the whole world were being stirred by some uncanny force.

  Wolf got up slowly. What was happening? The air smelled like damp sheds and old socks as the earth’s innards circled around him. Insects and spiders, dead and alive, were gathering in his hair. Larger things were creeping up his sleeves and inside his socks. Wolf felt tiny sharp feet crawling up and down his back and his chest. He felt the soft wetness of worms trying to get into his ears and up his nose. Something had started gnawing on his elbow. Small skeletons of all sorts were reassembling and running at him before then exploding back into fragments again. In front of him now dangled a root that looked a bit like a boiled head. And another one that looked a lot like his uncle.

  It had become darker and darker. Wolf was now completely alone in an expanding cloud of dust and dried mud and dead skin and creepers and tendrils and every underground horror you can imagine. And then something like an earthstorm started happening in Wolf’s own soul.

  Suddenly all his deepest and most painful memories were being unearthed, and flickering scenes from his life were forming around him. Wolf’s father was hitting his mother and then she was leaving for ever, and then his father was doing it all over again with someone else and then he was leaving for ever. Then there was a blur, and Wolf’s uncle was creeping up behind him, and then Wolf was beaten and left cold, afraid and hungry, and then locked in a cupboard, and then he was standing there, as he always did, while his so-called friends cornered one of the ‘gifted’ children, emptied the unlucky child’s schoolbag into the river and then laughed.

  While Wolf staggered around, lost in this world of darkness, shame and fear, with centipedes trying to get in his eyes and beetles wriggling down his neck, Effie was still lying on the ground not responding to anything. Bits of earth were now falling on her from the sky. The earthstorm was getting bigger.

  ‘This is so unfair!’ Lexy shouted at Levar.
‘They could have killed you just then, but they felt sorry for you.’

  But Levar didn’t respond. While Lexy shook bits of soil from her hair and gave Effie a tonic, he staggered away towards the old inn. What did he want there?

  ‘I’ll go after him,’ said Raven.

  ‘What will you do?’ said Lexy.

  ‘I don’t know. Try to stop him somehow. You need to break the earthstorm spell. It’s earth magic, so you should be able to stop it with water or fire. Air will make it worse.’

  But there was no water anywhere close by. And Lexy had no matches or any other way of starting a fire. Perhaps Raven could do some kind of spell? But she had gone.

  ‘HELP!’ shouted Wolf. ‘Make this stop. Please.’

  Lexy tried to think of some way to help him. Of course! She had a tonic left. It was intended to increase M-currency, but, like all tonics, it was mainly water. She pulled the little cork out of the vial and hurled it towards Wolf. She could hardly see him now in the dense cloud of dank earth and creatures. After a moment, there was a large belch of dead autumn leaves and black beetles. And then . . . The earthstorm was expanding. All of a sudden it looked as if it might engulf Lexy and Effie. Lexy cursed herself. How stupid. There had been M-currency in that tonic. She’d just fed more magic to the storm.

  Water. Fire. There was no water. There was no fire.

  A fat pink worm started to crawl up Lexy’s arm. The storm was getting closer to her, and also to Effie, who was still passed out on the ground and could do nothing to defend herself. The only way to stop it getting worse would be . . . Water. Fire. Where could they . . .?

  Water. Tears. If only . . .

  ‘Wolf,’ called Lexy. ‘Wolf!’

  From inside the storm, Wolf could hear someone calling his name very faintly. He was reliving a particularly painful memory from his past, in which he’d won a goldfish at a fair. He’d carried it home carefully in its fragile plastic bag, only for his uncle to rip open the bag and flush the fish down the toilet. Wolf had felt . . . Had felt . . .

  ‘Cry,’ said a voice somewhere just outside his head. ‘You have to cry.’

  What? Wolf had never cried in his whole life. Well, except probably when he was a baby. He was a boy, wasn’t he? And you couldn’t cry around someone like Wolf’s uncle. Or Wolf’s friends. Occasionally he had considered crying on his own, but somehow the tears had never come. Instead he had focused on being tough. After all, if you have never cried, you don’t know what is going to happen when you do cry. What if you never stopped? Or what if it became a habit? And then what if someone saw you?

  ‘Cry,’ said the voice again. ‘Only your tears will stop the earthstorm. You have to try to . . .’

  The images swirled around Wolf’s head one more time. His mother. His father. His uncle. And also, faintly, a small girl, leaving the house at the same time as Wolf’s mother. His sister? Wolf had almost forgotten he’d ever had a sister. Why had his mother taken her and not him? Was she still alive? Why hadn’t he tried to find her? Coach Bruce had always said Wolf was weak. He was weak. He was pathetic, and weak, and he’d forgotten his sister and now couldn’t even protect his friends when he had the chance. He’d been given this amazing sword and he couldn’t even use it.

  He was a complete and total loser.

  Then he felt something in his left eye. A single tear. It rolled out slowly. When it came into contact with the worm that was trying to crawl up his nostril, the creature immediately vanished. It was working. Another tear came. And then another. Then Wolf put his head in his hands and finally let all the years of pain come out. He sobbed and sobbed, and, as he did, the earth came down from the sky and everything slowly fell back into its right place.

  34

  By the time Raven caught up with Leonard Levar, he had almost reached the old boarded-up inn. Its white painted exterior was now grey, and Raven could see that the words THE BLACK PIG had faded from black to almost the same grey. It was a grim and depressing place. Except . . .

  As Raven approached the pub, it began to seem strangely beautiful. Was it because it was so old? It had the air of an ancient church or abbey. In the air Raven could smell something like incense and dried flowers. Where was it coming from? Leonard Levar hadn’t looked behind him for a while, so intent was he on whatever it was he was doing. And Raven could see him quite clearly as he pressed his hands to the white brick wall of the pub and stood there shaking slightly and smiling.

  What was he doing? Whatever it was, Raven suddenly wanted to do it, too. The incense, the dried flowers . . . She realised that she wasn’t smelling these things exactly. She was sensing them, but with something beyond her normal five senses. It wasn’t what people call a ‘sixth sense’, which, as everyone knows, is when you can tell there is a ghost in a room, or when you know what your friend is just about to say. The seventh sense is closer to smell than anything else, but it is still very different. It is when you detect the magic in things. It’s when you know that something is full to the brim with M-currency, or lifeforce.

  Stored-up lifeforce usually feels cool and peaceful, like a slab of marble or a timeworn stone wall. It usually smells faintly of sandalwood and roses and peat-smoke and the backs of mirrors. It also smells, although that is still not the right word, of pink lilies and beeswax. It is, in fact, very similar to the sensory experience of being in a very old and atmospheric church (which is where you can always find a small amount of lifeforce, should you ever need it).

  Of course, people are always popping into churches to borrow a bit of lifeforce, left over from the residue of prayer, but no one had been near this pub for over fifty years. Raven’s senses were almost overcome by the heady stench of raw magic trapped in the walls, in the wood, in the very smallest atoms of this building. And so, like Levar, she reached out and . . .

  The sensation of touching a building imbued with so much lifeforce can be so strong it can knock people unconscious, if they are receptive to it. As a newly epiphanised witch, Raven was extremely receptive to it. And the lifeforce from the old inn was mainly light and life-giving and free, so when it realised that she wanted it, it immediately stopped flowing into Leonard Levar and started flowing into Raven Wilde instead.

  In an instant, Raven realised what Levar had been doing. He’d been trying to top up his M-currency by taking it from this untapped source. All the years of joy and comfort this pub had provided to its patrons meant that there had been quite a bit spilled here and there and it had all added up, and . . .

  ‘WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?’

  Leonard Levar hobbled towards Raven, his eyes black with anger. Raven ignored him. She had never felt as much pleasure and happiness as she was experiencing now, as the huge current of lifeforce flowed into her. For the few more seconds it continued, she had a curious sensation of knowing everything important about life, and love, and especially being a witch, and . . . Then she blacked out.

  Maximilian let himself silently into Effie’s house. It was not difficult to find her bedroom. There was a baby there asleep in a cot, with a toy monster lying on the floor. Maximilian had never had a younger brother or sister. He picked up the monster and put it gently back in the cot. Then he got on with the task in hand.

  Where was the book? There weren’t many hiding places in here. What was it Effie had said? Something about what Cronus liked to eat. Cronuts, thought Maximilian. Those deep-fried flaky doughnuts they used to sell at that stall in the Old Town. Did Cronus eat Cronuts, or something else entirely? While he thought about it, Maximilian searched in and under Effie’s small bed, just in case. Then he opened a wooden chest at the far end of the room. Perhaps the book was here? There were certainly all sorts of other interesting things in the box, including a black book full of a foreign language written in a blue ink that Maximilian felt inexplicably drawn to. But no Dragon’s Green.

  Cronus. Wasn’t he the Greek god who ate his own children?

  In fact, his own babies.

  Maxim
ilian went back over to Luna’s cot. So Effie had been quite clever. Any intruder would have to risk waking the baby to find the book. So how did you avoid waking up a baby? Maximilian had no idea how you even moved one. What if it leaked? And, especially, what if it cried? He asked the spectacles, which helpfully suggested a lavender diffuser, lullabies in a variety of languages, an infant painkiller that caused drowsiness, a cough mixture that did the same, a pink teething ring, a strange concoction made from chamomile and lettuce, and then, finally, an ancient sleep spell. But Maximilian was not a witch or a high-level scholar, and so could not say spells. And according to the spectacles, this one did not work that well anyway.

  Maximilian was a scholar, which meant he knew things. And, if Leonard Levar was to be believed, he was also a mage, which meant . . . What did it mean? He asked the spectacles what a mage could do to put a baby deeply to sleep. Kill it? suggested the spectacles. Without killing it, you idiot, replied Maximilian. The spectacles seemed to go into a huff for a few seconds. Then they just seemed confused. Maximilian found it hard to understand what they were trying to tell him. Still, he looked at Luna and thought about dreams and lullabies and moonlight and a comfortable hollow deep in a dark, dark wood, where . . .

  Then he picked her up. He had never held a baby before. She was surprisingly heavy. He realised that with his mind he had pushed her into a faraway land of deep sleep – nourishing, rather than dangerous, although with a high probability of peculiar dreams. She didn’t stir. Maximilian found a way of holding her with one arm, and with the other he searched her cot. Under her mattress there was a sort of hollow. And there was Dragon’s Green. Maximilian took the book, and put Luna gently back in her cot. He tucked her in and put her toy monster where she could reach it.

  Dragon’s Green. Well. Maximilian’s hand shook as he ran it over the pale green cloth cover. Of course, anyone who found this book could simply open it and read it and . . . Then what would happen?

  Reading the book would not just create a wrench in time, but would mean that the new reader would gain entry to the Otherworld, with its adventures, mysteries and boons. Well, as long as they remembered to destroy the book promptly afterwards.