A Crown of Dragons

by Chris D'Lacey

  I shook my head. “It’ll be all right. Can I take the laptop in?”

  “Yes, but not now. Your dinner’s almost ready.”

  Typical. There I was on the brink of what might be an amazing discovery, only to be thwarted by a plate of fish sticks.

  Still, an agent had to eat.

  After the meal, the relocation started. Mom changed into some old clothes and together we emptied my wardrobe and drawers. She moved some nonessential clothing into her room but stacked the everyday items like socks and T-shirts on the sofa in the study, telling me to keep it all neat. Um … “We’ll leave the desk clear for you to work on,” she said. “We could bring your computer down if you like, though I wouldn’t trust that keyboard. It was pretty thick with dust.”

  “I’ll just use the laptop,” I said. You could fold a laptop in under a second. Very useful for keeping nosy sisters at bay.

  Finally came the air bed. We inflated it using the pump that came with it. Mom made me lie down on it to check that it was okay. “It won’t be for long,” she said, noting my faraway expression.

  But I wasn’t thinking about the inconvenience. I said, “Weird to think that the last person who slept on the air bed was one of Josie’s friends.” That “friend” had actually been Freya, disguised as a girl called Devon Winters. A clever ruse to keep her close to me during my last mission — when she could still be a girl.

  “Well, I’m sure you won’t catch anything,” Mom said snarkily.

  No? I felt my neck, where there was still a scar made by Freya’s crow claws. That made me think about the archaeologist Hartland, and that strange incident with the Tree of Life picture. I really had to talk to Klimt about that.

  “Right, you’ll need some bedding,” Mom said. “There’s a spare duvet and pillows in the linen closet.”

  “I’ll get them!” I sat up as if I’d been struck by a bolt of lightning.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “The linen closet is a complete mystery to you. The only time you’ve ever looked in there is on that Easter egg hunt we did once.”

  When the chocolate had melted on the towels. Yeah.

  I jumped up and walked past her. “I’ll get my own bedding. You’ll only bring a duvet cover with roses on it or something.”

  “Fine,” she said, throwing up her hands. “Honestly, the older you get, the more I struggle to figure you out.”

  “That’s ’cause boys are super intelligent, Mom.”

  “Of course. Silly me. I was forgetting that. Make sure you bring a single, okay?”

  “Single what?”

  “Single duvet, Michael.”

  I raised my shoulders. “I’m only gonna need one.”

  She ticked the air. “And the point goes to Mrs. Malone.”

  Duh?

  I went for the stuff. I brought the folder down with it, wrapped in the duvet. Before Mom came in to make up the air bed, I slipped the folder into the desk drawer.

  And then I waited — until they had both gone to bed. I gave Mom another half hour to nod off, then grabbed the laptop from the front room and started it up on Dad’s desk. I put the DVD in the slot. Some sort of media software opened a window in the center of the screen, and a file started to auto play. The picture resolution and the sound were both shaky, as if someone had used a cell phone to secretly record the images I was seeing. And what images. Dad, slumped in a high-backed chair, his face lightly bearded, eyes closed.

  “Where are you?” a voice asked him. A voice I recognized. Liam Nolan, Dad’s old doctor. A man who had shady connections to UNICORNE.

  Dad rolled his head to one side. He looked hypnotized — or drugged.

  “Where are you?” Nolan asked again gently.

  “Mountains …” Dad murmured, but it wasn’t his voice. He sounded young, like a boy. And his accent was strange.

  “What do you see?” asked Nolan.

  Dad suddenly opened his eyes. They were huge and staring, as if he’d seen something wild in the distance. “Pa!” he yelled. “Pa, they’re comin’!”

  “Ask him what’s coming,” said a deeper, gruffer voice. The Bulldog, I was sure of it. So they weren’t in Nolan’s offices, more likely on the UNICORNE craft.

  Dad started breathing fast. For some reason, he stared all along his left arm. I thought I saw his skin turning green and scaly. And then he said the weirdest thing I’d ever heard, in a voice so low it made the speakers shudder. “Galan aug scieth …”

  He put his head forward and roared.

  There the film ended, with Dad’s face twisted like some kind of demon’s.

  And fire emerging from his left hand.

  I must have watched it forty or fifty times. Especially the last few seconds. I tried to freeze it or run the end in slow motion, but the software wouldn’t allow it. None of this made any sense. I’d seen Dad’s body, in a tank of fluid. I hadn’t paid close attention to details, but I didn’t remember that his hand was disfigured or that there was anything wrong with his arm. Maybe the octopus creatures, the Mleptra, had cured his injuries? Or maybe I was mistaken about the fire? The longer I looked at the film, the less convinced I was of what I’d seen. The final images were scratchy, and someone had knocked a light across the camera as people rushed forward to restrain Dad. Maybe it was nothing but a flare of light? How could a man make fire in his hand?

  Then again, how could a snake breathe fire from its jaws?

  I googled the phrase he’d used. Galan aug scieth. I tried every translation tool the Internet could offer. No language software recognized those words. And who had Dad been shouting to? Who was Pa? When I ran those sequences again, he didn’t seem to be talking to anyone in the room. He was looking way above their heads, as if he was seeing something in the sky. It reminded me of the time we’d run up Begworth Tor together to get the best view of an aerial display team called the Green Arrows. I was first to the top. I’d seen the lead plane and shouted back: Come on, Dad! Quick! I can see them! I can see them! All the time my eyes were trained forward and up. So what was Dad seeing if it wasn’t planes? Only one answer came to mind.

  Dragons.

  Mom found me in the morning, slumped over the laptop. I’d fallen asleep at the desk.

  “Oh, Michael!” she huffed, shaking me awake. “What have you been doing all night?”

  The film! If she saw it, she’d totally freak out. Fortunately, the screen was blank. The laptop had gone into hibernation.

  “Sorry. I was trying to catch up with homework.”

  That took the edge off a little. “Well, go and take a shower. You’ve been in those sweaty old clothes all night. I’m not having you sent home from school because no one will sit near you.”

  And she left me to it.

  I moved to eject the DVD, then had an idea. Quickly, I grabbed my cell, made a wireless connection to the laptop, and downloaded the movie onto my phone. Then I put the DVD back inside the file folder and hid both among Dad’s stack of old vinyl albums. You could have hidden nuclear alarm codes there; no one ever messed with those albums.

  School that day was even more of a blur. I got another warning, in chemistry this time, for letting a flask of copper sulphate boil dry. I couldn’t help it. I just couldn’t concentrate on my classes. All sorts of problems were nagging at me now, especially that DVD. When exactly was it put into the attic? At first I thought it might have been before Dad went on his mission to New Mexico. But his appearance told me that couldn’t be right. In all the years I’d known him, he’d never grown facial hair. So the Day 4 film was shot after he was brought home from New Mexico, during that murky window of time between the moment he was rescued and the point when his body had been put into the tank. What exactly had happened then? How had Dad gone from a normal human being to a specimen suspended in a very big jar? Klimt had talked about quarantine, but Dad must have been active for a while when he returned, and yet he’d been declared as missing. Why? This still didn’t answer the DVD question, or the bigger que
stion that accompanied it. Never mind when the disk was put into the attic. WHO was responsible for putting it there?

  I could think of only two possibilities. Top of the list was the UNICORNE agent Mulrooney. He was well trained in covert activities. Not long ago, Klimt had sent him to break into the house to plant a false note (allegedly from Dad) for me to find — a lure to take me to Liam Nolan, who they suspected of leaking information to a journalist called Candy Streetham. Liam Nolan. Again. It wasn’t inconceivable that Mulrooney had gone into the attic and planted the DVD at the same time he’d left the note — but why? Why would Klimt instruct him to do that? And when did Klimt expect me to find it? Now? A year later? Twenty years later? It didn’t make sense. And despite the break-in, I trusted Mulrooney. Yes, he was a dedicated UNICORNE agent. But he had a heart. He cared about me. Unlike his fickle comrade, Chantelle, who seemed to be as changeable as the wind. Her heart, I was sure, was chiseled from ice.

  There was only one other suspect: the man who’d fixed the TV antenna. Years ago, I remembered Dad messing about up there, redirecting cables — into his study of all places — so we could have a spare TV. Maybe the antenna man had wanted to “check” the cables? A quick word with Mom would soon establish whether he’d been in the attic or not. But if that was right, who was he? And how did he get the film? And why would he leave it in such a strange place? And who was he working for? And —?

  “Hey, Malone, you loser! Kick the ball back!”

  It was lunchtime, and I was on the playing fields.

  “Look at him,” I heard someone mutter. “He’s like that … daffodils guy that Hambleton’s always going on about.”

  “What?”

  “You know. That poet. Wandering around on his own, like a cloud.”

  “You’re mental. Malone, KICK the BALL back!”

  I looked up to see Ryan Garvey pointing at a soccer ball that had rolled to my feet. Without giving it much thought, I swung my foot and punted the ball to him. That was the intention, anyway. The ball sliced to my right and sailed over some railings, into a locked compound by the school kitchens, home to a bunch of large dumpsters.

  “Oh, no!” the soccer players sighed.

  “Right, get him!” said Garvey.

  They came for me like a pack of dogs.

  “I’ll get it! I’ll get the ball!” I protested.

  “Yeah, minus your pants,” someone said.

  Within seconds, they had me off the ground, my waist unbuttoned and my zipper undone. I was facing the worst humiliation ever, when two fierce cries broke up the laughter.

  Ark! Ark!

  The gang dropped me in an instant. Everyone shrank away, covering their faces. I stood up, grabbing my waistband, and saw two crows circling overhead. A third crow landed on my shoulder.

  “In trouble again?” it rasped in crowspeak.

  “Freya,” I whispered. I couldn’t help but smile.

  “I trust you missed me, Michael?”

  So much.

  And while the soccer players looked on openmouthed, I rezipped my pants and walked away with my best friend in tow.

  Just so I wouldn’t look totally weird, I said “tree stump” to Freya and jolted my arm. She flew off, wheeling out of sight beyond the trees at the far side of the soccer field. By the time I’d gotten there and sat on a stump where a companion tree had once stood (and where, poignantly, she and I had first talked), she had worked her way through the branches and was perched above me, just out of sight.

  “Can I speak normally?” I whispered.

  She made a sound like a nail being scraped through grit. My ability to speak in the crow tongue was patchy. Most crow-to-crow talk was a mixture of rasps and tail flicks and posturing, but because Freya had once been human, she could still recognize everything I said to her. She preferred me to speak as she did — ark! — but when time was short, it was easier and quicker just to let me ramble.

  “Got a lot to tell you.”

  Ark! Then say it.

  So I told her everything, picking up from the moment she and I had parted at the end of my last mission, the “debriefing” session with Klimt, and everything I now knew about my father.

  “He’s alive?” she grated.

  “If you can call it that. They’ve got him preserved in a tank of fluid. He’s in a kind of coma. His body’s okay but his mind’s … not there. Klimt says the Mleptra are keeping Dad going — but he says Dad’s getting weaker as well. So they’re stepping things up. They say I’m ready for this thing they call The Mexico Phenomenon.”

  Ark!

  That seemed to annoy her.

  “I know you think it’s crazy, but they say I can bring Dad back. I have to try it, Freya.”

  “Film,” she caarked. “Show me.”

  I took out my phone and ran the clip. She tipped her head as she watched it, the images flickering in the curve of her eye.

  “Do you know what he’s saying? Galan aug scieth?”

  She opened her beak and repeated the phrase. Ark! she grated after a while. No.

  I clamped my head. “What did they do to him, Freya? He looks more or less normal on the DVD. How did he get from that chair to the tank?”

  “They know.”

  “Who, Klimt and the Bulldog? Of course they —”

  “The one who placed the disk. They know.”

  “But I don’t know who that is.”

  The first bell rang for the end of lunch.

  “We will watch,” said Freya. “The crows will watch.”

  “Watch who?”

  “You. The house. Everyone.”

  I nodded. “I’ll find out who the TV repair man was.”

  Ark!

  “Freya?”

  Ark?

  I touched the side of my neck, feeling the scar she’d left me with. “Klimt says they cured me of the crow virus. I can’t transform anymore. I’ll never be able to fly with you again.”

  She gave me one of those broody stares that only a crow knew how to deliver. Then she opened her beak as wide as it would go and let out a cry that rattled my eardrums long after she’d taken off.

  The second bell rang.

  Shoot! I leapt up and sprinted across the playing fields. I burst into Mr. Hambleton’s room two minutes later — two minutes late.

  “Michael,” he said. “And to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?” Kids laughed. Kids way older than me. Oh, no! I’d run to the wrong class!

  By the time I’d made it to the right class — Mr. Greenway’s biology lesson — I was seriously late. “Afternoon detention,” he said without fuss. “The whole of your break time in here, studying. Take your place, please.”

  “Yes, sir,” I sighed, dragging myself to the bench where I sat. On it lay a folded piece of paper. I opened it to find a terrible drawing of my face on a crow’s body. Ryan made an L shape with his hand and stuck it to his forehead. Fair comment. Every time I thought I was getting somewhere with Dad, a zillion other puzzling questions cropped up. I felt like a loser right now.

  Break time followed the lesson. I stayed where I was when everyone else left, waiting to see what Greenway had in store for me. He wasn’t a harsh teacher, so I knew it would be mild. He came over with a textbook.

  “I’m hesitant to believe this, as it came from Garvey’s lips, but he says you picked up a crow on the playing fields?”

  “Sort of.”

  He tutted (at what he thought was my stupidity, I guessed). “You really are an enigma,” he said, as if I’d been discussed at length in the staff room. “Right, well, read and absorb this passage, pages 170 to 175. It will give you plenty of information about the most common types of Corvidae. I’ll be asking questions afterward. So don’t think you can just go to sleep for twenty minutes.”

  He put the book in front of me.

  It was tedious, but I read it. I scored four out of five correct answers to his questions. Satisfied, he told me I could go. But as I picked up my bag, for some reason I
asked, “Sir, do you know anything about dragons?”

  “Not really part of the syllabus, Michael.”

  “They were birds, though, weren’t they — kind of?”

  “Well, if you take the line that dragons are really dinosaurs misinterpreted, then yes, they might be classed as avian. The latest line of research seems to indicate that birds are the closest living relatives of dinosaurs. Odd subject for a Tuesday afternoon.”

  “Do you think they were ever real, sir?”

  He rested his fists on his desk, gorilla-style. “Are you mocking me, Michael?”

  “No, sir. I’m just interested in why people think that dragons might have lived.”

  “Well, that’s more of a psychological question than a biological one, isn’t it? Personally, I lump dragons in with aliens and vampires — not really part of this world and therefore of no great interest, other than in a fictional sense.”

  “What if someone found evidence of them, though?”

  He threw me a searching look.

  “Like, a scale, for instance?”

  He saw I was serious and drew himself up to give a sensible answer. “Well, that would be a strange and unique treasure. But therein lies a major problem.”

  “Sir?”

  “That word unique. How would you prove the authenticity of your ‘evidence’ when there is nothing else to compare it with?”

  The bell rang for the end of break.

  “Off you go,” he said. “In the future, I’d advise you to leave crows alone. You don’t know what diseases they might be carrying. And try not to bump into any dragons, eh?”

  “No, sir. Thanks.” And I dragged myself out of there, none the wiser, but thinking hard about what he’d said.

  I was still thinking about it later that night after Josie had gone to bed and me and Mom were in the front room together. I was remembering what Klimt had said about the scale. We call it dragon because we can find no better word for it. For him, it didn’t matter where the scale had come from. All UNICORNE wanted to know was what it could do, especially when it came into contact with humans. That made me think again about the DVD mystery, prompting me to say to Mom, “You know the man who fixed the TV antenna, did he go into the attic?”