First American edition published in 2016 by Carolrhoda Books
Text copyright © Julian Sedgwick, 2013
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Hodder Children’s Books, a division of Hachette Children’s Books, an Hatchette UK company
Cover illustration by Patricia Moffett
Cover illustration copyright © 2016 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.
All US rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.
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Map and skull © Laura Westlund/Independent Picture Service.
Main body text set in Bembo Std 12.5/17.
Typeface provided by Monotype Typography.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Cataloging-in-Publication Data for The Black Dragon is on file at the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4677-7567-0 (trade hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4677-9555-5 (EB pdf)
Manufactured in the United States of America
1 – BP – 12/31/15
eISBN: 978-1-46779-555-5 (pdf)
eISBN: 978-1-51240-847-8 (ePub)
eISBN: 978-1-51240-846-1 (mobi)
FOR JOE AND WILL.
OF COURSE.
1
HOW TO SURVIVE
Danny Woo opens his eyes.
The left one is electric green, the right a deep, chestnut brown. Intense and brooding, they gaze out into the October morning.
“Hey, Woo! You going to show us your stupid card trick or what?”
Danny groans inwardly as Jamie G. leans over him. “Now?”
“Got time, Freaky. Unless you’re scared of missing the bell.”
Danny shakes his head and takes the magician’s deck from his jeans pocket. Heartbeat thickening, he shuffles the cards and cuts. It must work, he thinks. He must get it right—or face more rubbish from Jamie and his mates. He remembers this very same pack sliding through Dad’s practiced fingers. Hard to believe. Concentrate, Danny.
He draws a breath, steadies his hands as the others gather to watch. The raucous noise of the changing rooms ebbs away to an expectant hush.
“OK. Pick a card,” he says, fanning the deck, holding them out face down, and—yes—the timing of the “force” is perfect. As if drawn by a magnet, Jamie plucks out the king of spades as planned. Good.
“Look at it,” Danny says. “All of you take a look.”
That gives him the vital half-second he needs to get the rubber band in place, tucked behind the deck.
“Put it back. Wherever you want.” Except that’s not true. It must be in just the right place.
Jamie shoves the card back, trying to throw him, but Danny gets his little finger in place—a perfectly disguised “pinky break”—and snicks the elastic band around the corner of the king. He tightens the deck. Maybe it hasn’t quite caught? No going back now.
“Think about your card. Say its name over and over in your head.” He holds the pack at arm’s length, eyes burning into their backs, then snaps his little finger toward him, hidden from the others. But the band slips, and instead of jumping, the king does no more than jut up a fraction, before stopping dead.
Danny pulls it from the deck, putting on a brave face as he shows his audience. “King of spades, right?”
“Uh huh.” Jamie curls his lip, trying not to look impressed. “You got it. Now show it to me again, Freaky.”
“No,” Danny says, thinking of what Dad would say. Never repeat. Never explain . . .
“Then I’ll show you my own trick, Woo,” Jamie says. He snatches the deck and hurls it into the air. “Fifty-flipping-two-card pick-up! Catch!”
The others laugh as Danny scrabbles to retrieve the cards from the changing room floor. He can smell disinfectant on the tiles, sterile and cold. He’s been boarding at Ballstone for over a year, but still the place gives him the creeps. So different from the Mysterium and its heady aroma of wet grass, dry ice, burning paraffin, thunderclap smoke, greasepaint—the vital, living scent of the big top when you unrolled it at a new venue. But that’s all gone. And he’s got to get used to that.
He picks the cards up one by one, counting them to make sure they’re all there.
And now he’s late for the next class.
Danny runs after the others, needing to make up time or face another mind-numbing detention. His slim form darts across the main courtyard, overtaking Jamie and the rest. He glances at his watch—only a fraction past ten thirty. Should be OK.
The rooks are calling darkly overhead, flapping away at their nests in the elm trees. Danny’s fingers reach for the door . . .
And then the explosion rocks the building to its foundations.
It flashes on Danny’s face, whites out his vision.
The blast wave follows a split second later, thumping down the corridor, blowing out the doors, sending him sprawling across the tarmac. He knows how to fall and roll, but there’s no time to prepare. His face strikes the tarmac hard and he flops over twice, before lying there stunned, listening as the explosion dies away in a long, drawn-out growl.
Stars dance in his head. The air is full of smoke and the stench of smoldering electricity—and it feels like all the breath has been sucked from his lungs.
In his mouth there’s the iron tang of blood, and when he reaches up to check, his fingertips come away red. Sitting up, his mind blank for a moment, he tries to work out what has happened. It takes a minute or so to remember where he is. Who he is! He sees Jamie and the others staggering around looking equally dazed.
Paper from the notice boards floats down around them like oversized, charred snowflakes. One sheet, half crisped, brushes his cheek—and instinctively he reaches up to catch it. Instead of carrying the school’s logo and usual heading, it’s almost blank. In the middle of what’s left is a small diagram of sorts: a neat grid of black dots, seven rows by seven columns. One of them—second row down on the left-hand side—is circled in red pen.
The dots swim in his vision, eyes watering.
Under the diagram someone has written “1030.” The numbers are heavily done, pressed down into the paper.
Nothing else.
He looks at it for a moment, but, like so much in his life right now, it makes no sense at all. Absent-mindedly, he folds the paper and shoves it in his back pocket.
Through the smoke he can see the rooks wheeling overhead, shaken from the trees by the explosion. They cackle and caw, ragged black crosses against the sky.
2
HOW TO BE FULLY ALIVE
By a fluke, the main corridor was empty when the explosion hit, and so there are no major casualties—just nasty cuts and bruises from flying debris, and a few students suffering from shock. They sit around the courtyard, dazed, wrapped in reflective blankets, while the emergency services put up yellow tape and walkie-talkies crackle the air with static.
Danny is assessed by a paramedic. She asks if he banged his head, and gets him to follow her finger with his eyes, before shining a torch deep into them.
“Pupils dilating fine. Nice colors!” she adds with a smile. “You get them from Mum and Dad? One from each?”
Danny does his best to smile back, but as the medic dresses the cut, she notices that his eyes don’t join in. The rest of t
he face is almost frozen.
“You OK now? Sure?”
“Yes. Thanks.”
“Well, take it easy, young man. Watch out for shock.”
“What does it feel like?”
“Like you’re locked up tight. Can’t get moving.”
He nods. But isn’t that what he’s been feeling each and every day this last year and a half?
Classes are suspended until further notice and Danny retreats to the sanctuary of the room that—thankfully—he has to himself. He flops on the bed and stares at the cracks in the ceiling. A few minutes earlier and . . . No, it doesn’t bear thinking about. He shakes his head to clear the thought.
But there’s more to cope with than that. The acrid smell of the explosion, the cold weather, the arrival of the emergency services are all conspiring to remind him of that terrible day twenty long months ago: snow falling steadily from the Berlin sky, shock tearing his insides as the policeman pulled him away from the charred, broken remains of their circus trailer. The ambulance unloading stretchers for Mum and Dad. Or what was left of them.
He shudders. Tries to push the thoughts back down and lock them away again. Like normal.
But this time it’s different.
The memories refuse to lie down again. And vaguely he’s aware that the blast has shaken something loose. Agitation rises up in waves—as if waking him from a long but fitful night’s sleep. The feeling keeps growing: an impulse to get moving, to be doing something. Unable to rest, he starts to pace the room like Dad used to do when struggling to perfect an escape, eager to eat his dinner and get back to the practice ring.
“Woo!” Jamie breezes in without knocking, throwing himself down in an armchair. The knowing smirk has been temporarily knocked from the corners of his mouth.
“Did you hear? It was a gas leak, and now there’s no heating. Old Kircher’s shutting down early for the half-term break!”
“What are you doing in my room? What do you want?”
Jamie ignores the question. “If I hadn’t chucked your stupid cards . . .” He lets the thought hang for a moment. “I saved your life, Woo! You could thank me.”
“Yep. Thanks.”
“Were you scared?”
“Not really.” And strangely enough that’s the truth, Danny thinks.
“I nearly crapped myself !”
The smirk’s coming back as Jamie’s eyes rove the room. They latch onto a framed photo on Danny’s desk. It shows a powerfully built dwarf standing beside an oversized cannon. He’s dressed in an astronaut outfit, his head shaved close and muscles bulging through his silver spacesuit. Tucked under his arm is a helmet marked with a big red Z.
Danny follows Jamie’s gaze and sees his eleven- year-old self standing in the picture beside the dwarf—smiling, looking relaxed. Only a year and a half ago, but it seems like a hundred. Even the little quiff in his short dark hair looks perkier there.
“And who’s this little freak you’re with?”
“Major Zamora. Our strongman,” Danny says, biting back anger. “That’s his old human cannonball act—Captain Solaris.”
“Bet they fired him,” Jamie says, laughing at his own joke.
As if no one’s ever told that one before! How to explain to an idiot like Jamie Gunn? How to say just how important Zamora has been: lifelong friend, confidant, godfather . . . all rolled into one. Danny has missed Zamora almost as much as Mum and Dad. And it’s been ages. The one chance he had to see the major again had been on a tour of Zamora’s latest outfit—Circo Micro—but being up close to the circus world again had felt too raw.
“He’s what? A midget?” Jamie says.
“A dwarf. Midget’s rude.”
“So your circus was all freak shows, animal cruelty?”
“No! Never heard of Archaos? Cirque du Soleil?”
“Nah.”
“That’s ‘new circus.’ Just like us. Scary, arty. Edgy stuff. No animals—”
“Circus is just for kids,” Jamie says with a snort.
“And what did your folks do, then?”
“Amazing things . . .”
Danny’s still lost in the photo. You can just see part of his old trailer home in the background, and the memories come bubbling up—both good and bad. How to describe the wild beauty of the Mysterium and its band of misfits, loners, dreamers? Jamie Gunn won’t understand, so no point trying to explain. You had to see it to believe it.
“Gotta go, Freaky,” Gunn says, getting up to leave. “What’re you going to do with the extra holiday then?”
“Just going to be at Aunt Laura’s, I guess.”
“Well, have fun, woncha?”
Jamie being nice? Just another bit of weirdness to add to the day.
Phone calls are made to announce the closure, and Danny goes to wait for Aunt Laura in the common room. For some reason he can’t fathom, the windows there are barred. Keeping people out—or in? Through them he can see the mud-locked games pitches, and, beyond them, the high wall that circles the school cutting into the mist.
Still he can’t settle, and impatiently he goes to stand on the front steps. Maybe it’s just the adrenalin rush from the explosion punching through his system. Maybe. But there’s something deeper there now, pushing him toward action, movement. Come on, Laura. Get a move on.
And then suddenly she’s powering up the driveway, her old car chewing up the gravel. He watches as Laura brakes hard, sliding the car between an ambulance and a smart Jag, missing both by a whisker.
She jumps out, takes in the column of smoke drifting heavenward from the back of the school, and, mouth dropping open in concern, comes striding across the fire hoses. Without thought for any embarrassment she might cause, she throws her arms hard around him. She takes her role as guardian seriously, and puts every ounce of strength into the hug.
“Danny! Are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” he says, wriggling free.
“So what’s this bandage?”
She breaks off, holding his shoulders, appraising him at arm’s length. For an investigative journalist—a fearless one at that, who takes everything in her stride—she suddenly seems knocked off balance. Even the short stint in prison didn’t do that to her.
“God! A minute earlier and—”
“I’m OK,” he says. “I just want to get going.”
“Well, I’ve got a thing or two to say to your blasted headmaster first. What’s his name again?”
“Mr. Kircher.”
“Kircher. Right! You go and pack your stuff.”
“Aunt Laura—” he calls after her, but it’s no use. She’s marching through the front doors to tackle the headmaster.
“Kircher, a word or two, if you please. No, I haven’t got time to wait! You’re lucky we don’t pursue a negligence claim. How’d you like that in the papers to make you choke on your bleeding cornflakes!”
No contest.
Danny watches her go as Kircher takes a defensive step backward. This is more like the usual Aunt Laura—a box of fireworks, ready to take on anyone, anything.
He heads to pack, mulling things over as he goes. Maybe I should get out the posters of Mum and Dad from under the bed when I come back, he thinks. Put them up. Maybe it would help. But then people like Jamie would just mock them. And maybe it’s still too painful.
They can stay where they are, rolled up—protected and safe—in their cardboard tubes: Mum strolling on the wire, under the very highest point of the Mysterium’s midnight-blue “hemisphere,” tossing firecrackers to the ground far below, the poster emblazoned with the words:
LILY WOO IN THE
WONDER CHAMBER
And the beautiful painted one of Dad at the end of his burning rope, bound in the straitjacket, flames chewing his ankles as he turns to smile at the audience, oblivious of the danger. It says:
THE GREAT HARRY WHITE
HE CAN ESCAPE FROM ANYTHING!
Except it wasn’t true, was it?
Danny sets about putt
ing cards, magic books, home clothes into his old circus trunk. It’s the same dark blue as their old big top, and proudly carries the single word MYSTERIUM.
Underneath that is the logo: a pure-white skull gazing out of the darkness, surrounded by pale-blue and red butterflies. Dad had said it was a kind of vanitas—an image that contained at once both death and fragile life, to remind you how everything changes, is transient. And one day gone forever.
“A whisker away from nothingness, Danny.”
“So why do we have it on our logo?”
“Because that’s what it’s all about. Being fully alive! By not forgetting that we’re lucky to be here at all!”
Danny runs his finger over the golden letters now. Everything is changing. All the time. Maybe it would have been better to have parents who commuted to work and nagged you about homework and did normal things and expected you to do the same.
He sighs. Maybe.
From the bottom drawer of his desk, he takes Dad’s thick notebook and lays it on the clothes. It’s just smaller than a regular sheet of paper in size, and stuffed with working notes, drawings, newspaper clippings, photos, diagrams, and lists. On the cover, in strong capitals:
THE MYSTERIUM
ESCAPE BOOK SECRETS
Danny shuts the lid and snaps the padlock shut. The sides of the trunk are covered in stickers, listing the places he’s seen: Rome, Athens, Budapest, Bordeaux, Lisbon, Paris, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Munich, and on and on—one tour after another. There, tucked among them, the last one he stuck to the side: Berlin.
No more stickers after that.
“Ready then, Danny boy?” Laura says brightly, popping her head in the door. “Let’s move it! And I’ve got a surprise for you.”
3
HOW TO GET AN UPGRADE FOR FREE
But on the drive back to Cambridge, Laura falls silent. Danny knows she’s thinking something through by the way she tilts her head slightly one way, then another—clearly weighing up options. She accelerates to overtake a string of trucks and glances back at him.
“So, what’s this surprise?” he asks.
“Well. I was thinking. How about a change of scene? Take your mind off things? I’m up to here with research for my Hong Kong story.” She forces a smile, and sweeps the blonde hair from her eyes. “Thought I might fly out earlier than I meant to and . . . And, well, perhaps take you with me? God knows if school will reopen on time. I doubt it very much.”
The Black Dragon Page 1
