Gruffen (5 page)

The moon rose over Wayward Crescent. From his windowside perch, Gruffen watched eagerly, missing not a rustle in the branches of the trees. Stars winked. Clouds and hours went drifting by. The night fell into silence, barring the distant hoot of an owl.

Then out of the black sky came a small shape. The bat! To Gruffen’s delight it darted twice around the globe of the street lamp then zipped back and forth in front of the window without ever once looking like it might crash into it. It was moving so swiftly that to anyone on the ground, it must have looked just like a flying rubber ball. But Gruffen was able to quicken his vision and see that the bat had wonderful if really quite delicate wings. To you or I they would have looked like a kite stretched over thin wooden poles, but Gruffen could see that the bat had arms and fingers like a human. Like a mammal, in fact! When Lucy woke up, he would tell her that.

But for now, his mission was to find out more. He needed to know what the bat was doing here. He felt it was his duty, as a good guard dragon, to warn it not to stray too close to Henry Bacon’s house. So he flew upwards to the open part of the window and launched himself into the night.

Almost immediately the bat came to join him. It whipped around his head so many times that Gruffen felt quite dizzy at first. The bat was also trying to speak to him. It had a high-pitched squeaky voice, far above the husky tones of dragontongue. Every shrill little peep made Gruffen’s ear scales sing. He tried to speak back, but the bat chittered in fear and flew further away, perhaps a little wary of the throaty growls. Gruffen adjusted his voice scales a little, until out of his mouth came a thin little Hrrr that the bat did seem to understand.

“What are you?” it asked, flying closer again.

“A dragon,” hurred Gruffen.

“A driggon?” said the bat, whizzing past. “I don’t think I’ve met one of those before.”

Gruffen cast his voice higher and repeated his words. It wasn’t easy. The effort was making his tail point shake.

“Oh, a dragon!” said the bat. “I’ve heard of them! My name’s Hattie. What’s yours?”

Gruffen said his name and blew a quick smoke ring for her.

Hattie whizzed through it. “You can fly,” she said, which seemed a bit obvious as Gruffen was as high as the gutters of the roofs. But he hurred and gyrated his wings a little, just to show that he wasn’t held up by strings.

Hattie seemed pleased. “I like flying,” she said. “Can you do this?” She dived towards the tree and performed a spectacular loop around a branch.

“I don’t think so,” Gruffen said warily, thinking back to his crash with the wardrobe. Trees, he was sure, would be equally as hard.

Hattie zoomed overhead and did an aeroplane dive. “I can teach you,” she said, “if you know how to echo.”

Hrrr? went Gruffen. He didn’t understand.

“Echo,” she said. “I go ‘ping’ at things and they ping back. I listen to the pings and they tell me where I should and shouldn’t fly. Do you want to try it?”

Gruffen shook his head. “In my opinion,” he said, “pinging would be better suited to a listening dragon” – of which he wasn’t one. He flapped his wings and tilted back. “Why are you here? Are you lost?” he asked.

“No,” said Hattie. “I’m just waiting to get in.”

“In where?” asked Gruffen.

“To my roost,” she said. “Do you have a roost?”

Gruffen thought about this. “I’ve got a window,” he said. “I can get into that.”

“Umm, that doesn’t sound right,” said Hattie. “Shall I show you my roost? It’s just along here.” And without another ping, she fluttered off up the Crescent, with Gruffen close behind.

Very soon, they came to a house with a framework of scaffolding poles outside. The top poles were reaching as high as the roof. It was on one of these that Hattie set down. Gruffen landed with an untidy wobble. The pole was slightly rusted, which made gripping its rounded surface easier. And this turned out to be very important, for no sooner had Hattie put her feet on the pole than she fell back, hanging from it upside-down!

Gruffen gulped, held tight, and did the same. Surprisingly, it was quite a pleasant experience – once he’d got over the feeling that all his clay was rushing to his head.

“That’s where I go in,” said Hattie. “Under there.” She pointed a wing at the eaves, the place where the roof slates ended.

Gruffen looked across. He couldn’t see an entrance, but Hattie was very small and could squeeze into most places easily, he thought. Which made him wonder why she was stuck outside at all. What was stopping her from going in? “How long do you have to wait?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Hattie. She pointed to a long white strip of plastic which ran all the way across the front of the house just behind the gutter. “I can’t get in, because the people who mended the hole in the roof put that there. I’ve been waiting out here for days.”

Gruffen raised an eye ridge, which made him sway gently. (He tightened his grip and gave his wings a quick flap.) He looked closely at the plastic. It seemed quite fixed, which meant that Hattie might never get in. “Shall I try to burn a hole in it for you?” he asked.

Hattie squeaked gratefully, but seemed a bit concerned. “I don’t think the people would like that,” she said.

The wind blew, rocking Gruffen back and forth. He snorted a leaf off his nose and thought how Henry Bacon might react if he was the owner of this house and its plastic. Maybe Hattie was right. No burning. Not yet. “What happens if you don’t go in?” he asked.

Hattie rustled her wings the way a person might shrug. There was sadness in her voice when she piped up next. “My batlets might die of cold,” she said.

“Batlets?” said Gruffen.

“My babies,” she replied. “They need to be born inside.”

Gruffen frowned hard. This was worse than he’d thought. Bat babies? They would need serious guarding. “You could come and have your batlets in my roof,” he suggested.

“Can I?” squeaked Hattie.

Gruffen blew a puff of smoke. Without looking at his book of procedures he couldn’t be sure he was doing the right thing. It was that word, “die”, which convinced him that he was. But before he could say yes, Hattie was setting off.

“You live near the street lamp, don’t you?” she peeped.

“Yes,” said Gruffen, feeling giddy as he tried to fly upright again.

Hattie was by it in moments. “Is it this house?” she asked.

Gruffen blinked, dizzied by the glow of the lamp.

“This one’s got a hole!” he heard Hattie say.

He looked up in time to see her fly under Henry Bacon’s eaves.

“No!” he shouted and dashed in after her.

The streetlight faded and the blackness of Mr Bacon’s attic consumed him. And then whumph! he flew into something stringy which caught in his wings and stopped them in an instant. Something wooden clattered down out of the rafters, narrowly missing his head. After that, the harder he flapped, the more trapped he became. Soon his feet and his tail became tangled up as well. He fired out a jet of flame, but it disappeared into the depths of the roof space, lighting it briefly, showing his predicament. He was caught.

Caught in a net in Henry Bacon’s roof.

Almost immediately, Gruffen heard a shout from in the room below the attic. He couldn’t hear what words the voice was saying, but he could clearly understand the tone. It was Mr Bacon, sounding surprised. Any moment now, he would be coming up to see what was happening.

“Help!” Gruffen cried out to Hattie.

He heard her come swishing around his head. Amazingly, even in the dark of the roof, she could still fly brilliantly. “I think you need to practise your pinging,” she said. She swooped over him and landed. He could hear her feet scratching on a nearby rafter. At least she was safe. But he wasn’t. What would happen if Mr Bacon saw him in this net, even in his solid state? And Liz was going to be very angry. What could she say that would possibly explain the presence of one of her dragons here?

“You’ve got to get me out,” he panted to Hattie. “The man who lives here doesn’t like dragons.”

“Oh dear,” said Hattie. “I’ll try to bite through the net.” There was a flutter and her feet touched down on his shoulders. Her body felt furry against his scales. “There’s a lot of it,” she said, tugging at the bits around Gruffen’s ears. He heard it ripping and his nerves settled slightly, but not for long.

Suddenly, a column of light appeared as a door flapped back against the joists of the ceiling. Mr Bacon’s head popped up through the hole. “Right, what’s going on here?” he muttered. He shone a torch around the roof. It flashed in Hattie’s eyes and she gave her wings a flap.

“A-ha!” cried Mr Bacon. He was up his ladders like a March hare. “Bacon’s bat catcher! Works a treat!” He fumbled his way across the ceiling, being careful to stand on the firm wooden joists and not the fragile plaster in between. His torch light wobbled around Gruffen’s head. By now the young dragon had worked out a plan. Instead of flaming, if he spread his spark throughout his body scales and simply heated them up, perhaps he could melt the net? He felt sure it would work, but would he have time to do it before Mr Bacon reached this corner?

As it happened, he suddenly found plenty of time. Mr Bacon had stopped in the middle of the ceiling and was doing some kind of dance. This involved balancing on one foot and swinging his torch at an object flapping around his head. As the light sprayed about, Gruffen saw that the object was Hattie. She was dipping and swooping all around Mr Bacon, whose jigging was growing more demented by the moment.