Pure Dead Brilliant (9 page)

The Illegitimate Dragon

I
t had long been Damp's habit to greet each new day with a song to her pajamas. The infant had only recently discovered that she could undo the snaps on her nightwear with one sharp tug, and since then it had been her pleasure to strip herself of both pj's and diaper and hurl these over the bars of her crib. This was invariably accompanied by an enthusiastic rendition of “There Was a Princess Long Ago,” punctuated by gales of infant mirth as each layer of clothing sailed out of Damp's crib and onto the nursery floor.

Damp had just reached the verse where she was describing the princess's accommodation:

and she lived in a big high towel,
big high towel,
big high—

THUD
. . . and Mrs. McLachlan woke to the sound of Damp's diaper landing wetly on the floor. This morning there was also a heavy slapping from the other side of the nursery door, accompanied by a determined scratching, as if something were attempting to claw its way in.

“NESTOR!” roared the nanny. “Stop that at
once
. You know you're not allowed up here. . . .”

Silence from behind the nursery door. Mrs. McLachlan groaned as she hoisted herself out of bed. This was becoming all too wearisome, she decided, padding across the floorboards to open the door and ascertain whether the baby dragon had obeyed her dictates. He hadn't, but pity moved Mrs. McLachlan to step aside and allow the little beast access to the warmth of the nursery. Nestor crept across the floor and curled up in a woebegone ball at the foot of Damp's crib, with his head pillowed on her discarded pajamas.

“This is
ridiculous,
” muttered the nanny, pulling a purple woollen dressing gown around herself and carrying Damp off to the bathroom. Moments later, with Damp washed and dressed, Mrs. McLachlan shepherded both infants downstairs for breakfast.

The kitchen table bore witness to the hasty satisfaction of several appetites: cereal bowls lay abandoned, an almost empty milk bottle sat unhygienically on the warming plate of the range, an empty glass coffeepot floated in the scum of last night's dirty dishwater, and the butter was pockmarked with specks of charred toast. The door to the kitchen garden was ajar, and from outside Mrs. McLachlan could hear the distant groans and shrieks that indicated the morning yoga class was in session. As she washed cereal bowls, the nanny noted with
disgust that Ffup was outside, practicing yoga with no thought for her infant's welfare.

“Selfish beast,” she muttered, crashing crockery onto the draining board with uncharacteristic force. Ever since Nestor had hatched at StregaSchloss last Hogmanay, Mrs. McLachlan had hoped that Ffup would knuckle down to the responsibilities of single parenthood and attempt to raise her baby son in a manner befitting a dragon. Regrettably, this had not been the case. . . . While there was no doubt that Ffup adored her child, it was also true that she worshiped herself in equal measure; the teenage dragon spent many more hours preening her wings, painting her talons, improving her waistline, and gazing in the mirror than she spent nurturing Nestor. Moreover, Mrs. McLachlan thought, as she stirred a pot of porridge at the range, it was perfectly obvious that Nestor was never going to grow up to be a pedigree dragon. The Strega-Borgias appeared to be united in a conspiracy of silence on the subject of who, exactly, Nestor's absent father might have been, but one look at the baby—with his redundant wings (too small), deep blue scales (should
really
have been muddy green), occasional lack of fire-breathing ability (even as an infant, he should have been lighting candles with one hiccup), and—most significantly of all—his vast, overgrown tail that the family all affected to ignore . . . well,
really
! Mrs. McLachlan dropped a large pinch of salt in the porridge pot and snorted loudly.

As she decanted the steaming oats into three bowls and sat down to have breakfast with Damp and Nestor, she was suddenly struck by a distant memory from countless decades ago, long before she became nanny to the Strega-Borgias. . . .

. . . a vast, frozen loch, across which she fled with a group of women, all escaping some nameless horror. The turning year brought the coldest winter in living memory. The ice that formed a skin over every loch in Scotland had been measured in finger-widths at Hallows Eve—hand-spans by midwinter—and by Candlemas, no spade or pick could penetrate the iron-hard cover on every body of water from Roxburgh to Sutherland. Without fish to supplement their meager winter diet, whole communities of loch-dwellers found themselves facing starvation. Far from celebrating Candlemas, the hitherto God-fearing congregations plundered their churches and
ate
the candles. Rumors abounded of desecrated graves, gutted crypts, and other horrors too hideous to mention. In the perceived absence of divine mercy, the lochside people turned to old religions and darker practices.

The fugitive women had sought shelter in a tiny hamlet on the shores of a frozen loch. Huts and houses huddled next to a sheet of ice beneath which, it was rumored, swam enough fish to feed the entire population of Scotland for centuries to come. In gratitude for the hospitality shown to her by the people of the hamlet, Flora McLachlan had resolved to rescue them from starvation. At first light she had slipped away from the press of sleeping bodies huddled round the ashy fire and walked out onto the ice. . . .

Near the shore the wind had scoured rutted circles in the ice, but farther out all was still, save her breath rising in misty clouds above her head. Faced with the impossibility of breaking the ice herself, she resolved to awaken the Sleeper, even though she would, in all probability, perish in the attempt. But how to make the creature rise from a sleep of several centuries past? Should she weave a spell of warmer waters, fish-full salty southern seas, to melt the frozen skies of the Sleeper's underwater world? Murmur a lullaby of rocking rivers to bear the lonely beast in its tidal ebb and flow? Tempt him awake with tales of the mackerel mountain and the herring hill that rims the salmon stream? Cruel to wake this creature, who slept to heal a broken heart, who created the loch from tears, and who closed his eyes believing that this world held no love for him—the Sleeper, whose kin had long crumbled to dust. Flora knew, even as she whispered the words that would awaken him, that with his dawning consciousness would come the knowledge of all that he had lost and all the loneliness to come. . . . She almost faltered in her resolve, but beneath her feet, from fathoms below, came a faint cry like a rabbit in a snare. Slipping on the ice, Flora began to run, her frozen feet betraying her as she skidded and stumbled toward the far-off shore. Behind her, the cry rose to a desolate keening that hurt the ears of all who heard. The sound rose in pitch as, with a deafening crack, dark lines zigzagged across the ice. Still the sound of some creature in mortal agony grew and swelled to fill the air. The ice suddenly fractured along the cracks and Flora leapt from floe to floe, trying to find her way back to solid ground.

Only once did she turn back to look, to catch a glimpse of that lonely, awful shape—mouth agape, as it howled its outrage at a world that had broken its centuries of mindless, forgetful slumber for no better reason than the survival of a handful of loch-dwellers with a desperate need for fish.

A handful of loch-dwellers, thought Mrs. McLachlan as she raised a spoonful of porridge to her mouth, whose idea of grateful thanks to their savior was to attempt to burn her at the stake for witchcraft. . . .

“HOT, HOT BURRRRNY
!
” wailed Damp, hurling her porridge spoon across the breakfast table. Beside her, Nestor's mouth dropped open in a howl of outrage at the singular
lack
of hot, hot burrrny in his bowl. Abruptly hauled back to
the present, Mrs. McLachlan found herself giving silent thanks for the good fortune that had brought her here to StregaSchloss, where being accused of practicing witchcraft was a sincere compliment. . . .

Time Out

O
n her way downstairs for breakfast, Pandora paused outside her parents' bedroom, crossing her fingers in the hope that they had settled their differences over the vexed question of the houseguests, and were even now sitting up in bed, planning the day ahead and admiring the view through their bedroom window over coffee and croissants. A wail and a crash from behind their door told a different story. Signor Strega-Borgia, unpredictable of temperament and with a fondness for yelling matched only by a habit of hurling china around to underline his point, was in full operatic flow. Approaching footsteps and an increase in volume signaled to Pandora that he was about to storm through the door in front of her, and if she didn't want to be accused of eavesdropping, she'd better make herself scarce.

She fled down the corridor, leaping over several pairs of pointy lace-up boots that had been placed outside bedroom doors by a few of the more demanding houseguests on the mistaken assumption that Latch would attend to their polishing. Reaching the nursery, Pandora slipped behind its open door and hid, chewing her fingernails as she heard her father stamp past, muttering to himself in unintelligible Italian. Pandora slumped on the floor beside Mrs. McLachlan's bed and laid her head wearily on the quilt. Downstairs the front door slammed shut and footsteps crunched across the rose-quartz drive. Minutes later, Pandora heard the car starting up and correctly deduced that Signor Strega-Borgia was off to inflict his bad mood on the nearby village of Auchenlochtermuchty. The sound of running water and clanking plumbing meant that Signora Strega-Borgia had taken refuge in the shower. Not for the first time, Pandora wished her parents would get a grip on themselves and stop fighting. Their battles were always about such stupid things, and this latest skirmish over the appearance of rodent droppings in the coffee was just so childish and immature that Pandora would have felt embarrassed for them had it not been for her own current war with her sibling. . . . She debated whether to go and wake Titus and put Tarantella's plan into action by bringing him breakfast in bed. Brilliant plan, Pan, she congratulated herself, checking the bedside clock to make sure that it wasn't too early to rouse the slug-a-bed. The digital display read 20:02, which by Pandora's calculations was about twelve hours fast, since she had a rough idea of the time from the light filtering in from outside, the amount of birdsong audible from the garden, and the sound of activity coming from downst—

The alarm clock vanished. Pandora blinked, and there it was, back again, still reading 20:02. She hardly had time to draw a breath before it vanished again.

“What?” she gasped as it reappeared, its palindromic numerals still visible on its face. Pandora sat up and reached out to touch it as it disappeared once more, reappearing one heartbeat later, reassuringly solid under her fingertips. However, the time remained unchanged and Pandora watched and waited to see what would happen when the numerals advanced to 20:03. The clock blinked in and out of existence for several minutes, but according to its own mysterious internal reckoning, time stood still.

Wondering if it was broken, Pandora picked it up and turned it over in her hands. For such a small artifact it was ridiculously heavy, and being made of metal, it felt cool to the touch. On the rear of the clock were two small knobs: one was pretty obviously the
ON/OFF
switch. But the function of the other knob was less clear, since the only clues to what it did were two opposing arrows and letters embossed into the metal thus:

P < > F

Wondering what language was being used, Pandora assumed that this must be the knob to turn in order to reset the display on the clock face. At first the knob resisted any attempt to turn it, until Pandora pulled it toward her, whereupon with a small click it rotated easily under her fingers as the display ran backward. Reaching 08:02, Pandora clicked the knob back into place and immediately wished she hadn't bothered.

The floor underneath her vanished and the walls of StregaSchloss fell away. Still reflexively clutching the clock, Pandora found herself spinning sickeningly in midair. No sooner had she registered this fact than she crash-landed on something hard and extremely unfriendly to human flesh.

“AOWWWW!” she wailed, trying to work out which bit of her hurt most. Attempting not to move too much, she looked around and found that she was inside what appeared to be a gigantic pit made from twigs and branches. Overhead she could see daylight through a filigree of leaves, but all around and underneath her were mud, dirt, and woven twigs. It was not unlike being at the bottom of a vast hedge. Pandora stood up carefully, tucked the clock in the back pocket of her jeans, and looked around properly. The floor at her feet was littered with bones—and when she caught sight of the hedge-pit's one inhabitant, an egg the size of a rugby ball, she realized that not only was she in all probability unwelcome, but she was also trespassing.

It's a
nest,
she thought, gazing in horror at the egg, and whatever laid
that
isn't going to be too thrilled to find me here when it gets home. The nest was far too well constructed to allow her to force an escape through its walls or floor, so Pandora began to climb up and out, hanging on to the twigs and branches and wedging her feet into the mud and dirt that had been used as a primitive form of insulation. Bark and dirt rained down on her head as she scrabbled for handholds, and jamming her feet into the walls caused a continual fall of debris to patter down onto the floor of the nest and its sole occupant. After what felt like a lifetime, Pandora pulled herself over the rim of the nest and, dreading what she was about to see, peered over the edge.

“Whaaaat?” she groaned, stunned by the bizarre familiarity of the view below her. There was Lochnagargoyle up ahead, and there behind her were the peaks of Bengormless. “But . . . but—” squeaked Pandora, clinging to the dusty rim of the nest—but what on earth was she doing six hundred feet above ground, perched in what appeared to be an ancient Scots pine—and where had StregaSchloss gone?

Steeling herself to look down, she saw a thin spiral of smoke coiling up from the floor of what appeared to be virgin forest. Gone too were the gardens, the meadow, the icehouse, and the road to Auchenlochtermuchty. Below lay an almost unbroken canopy of leafy green, dotted here and there with little patches of dun-colored earth. It was as if StregaSchloss had never existed. Pandora trembled as she clung to the nest, her thoughts in disarray, but with a vague fear beginning to take shape in a corner of her mind. This isn't exactly a nest, she thought, watching the smoke drift up from below; the correct name for what I'm currently gate-crashing is a “roost.” A dragon's roost, she reminded herself, trying not to scream. She peered again at the source of the smoke, leaning out over the edge in order to obtain a better view down through the treetops. On the forest floor were two figures; the smaller of the two reassuringly human, the other, with its telltale wings and spiny tail, unmistakably a dragon. Despite the Strega-Borgias' long and happy association with dragon-kind, the presence of gnawed bones on the floor of the roost tended to indicate that this particular dragon might not regard eating humans as a breach of etiquette.

This is ridiculous, Pandora thought. It's just not possible to be in the nursery one moment and in the blink of an eye to find myself . . . She closed her eyes and opened them again. Wide. Blinked twice and then, reaching carefully behind her, pulled Mrs. McLachlan's alarm clock out of her back pocket. There it is, she told herself, and . . . there it isn't. The time was still 08:02, but in one of those flashes of understanding when whole new synaptic pathways open up and one's brain undergoes a crash and rapid reboot, Pandora understood. It's not two minutes past eight, you numpty, she thought, it's eight hundred and two, as in the
year,
not the
time,
and to get back home, all you have to do is reset the numbers. . . . A shadow fell over her and, looking up, Pandora realized that time was about to run out. She pulled out the knob on the back of the clock and began frantically turning it clockwise. A blast of hot air singed her eyelashes as she looked up into the eyes of the builder of the roost and, in all probability, the mother of the egg.

“NOT
ANOTHER
YIN!” it roared, affording Pandora a memorable view of rows of lethal yellow teeth, behind which waved a set of fireproof tonsils. “Youse wee pests must've been breeding like
bunnies,
” it observed, adding, “I thought I'd got rid of youse dwarves years ago.” The dragon shut its mouth with a clash and glared down at Pandora, its massive wings slowly folding behind its back with a leathery creak. Hissing clouds of steam came from its nostrils as it reached up with one taloned leg to claw at something behind its head—the vast diamond stud in its ear catching the sun and sending a cascade of reflections dancing around the roost.

“Must be time for a snack,” it remarked, patting its distended belly. “Me, I like mah toast well done, can't abide it
raw,
” and reaching out to grab Pandora, it demonstrated the ease with which it intended to grill her.

Without a moment's hesitation, Pandora hammered the knob home. In a blaze of fire she spun through the air until, with a jarring crash, she landed on cold, unforgiving stone. Opening her eyes, the first thing she saw was the alarm clock, which read 16:50. . . . Groaning, she stood up and realized where she was. This is
StregaSchloss,
she thought. This is my home hundreds of years before I was born. For some unaccountable reason this realization made her feel achingly lonely. I miss my
family,
she thought, stifling a moan—and trying not to make a sound in case something worse than dragons awaited her. It's like they're
dead,
she thought, or like
I
am. Officially, I don't exist. Awash with self-pity, she gazed around. It was indeed StregaSchloss, but a very different StregaSchloss to the one so familiar to her that she could have sleepwalked round it. The first thing she noticed was the lack of light. The reason for this soon became apparent: the windows had shrunk down to narrow little slits glazed with panes of glass of such bottle-bottom thickness as to allow little light to pass through. In the fireplace a half-charred tree trunk had replaced the more familiar oil-filled radiator that routinely warmed the nursery, and on the floor in front of the fireplace an all-too-real bearskin had been substituted for the rag rug that two generations of Strega-Borgias had admired while having their diapers changed.

The walls were unpainted rough-hewn stone, and the door to the corridor was a substantial chunk of iron-studded raw timber, still oozing sap. The sound of loud voices and heavy footsteps came from nearby, causing Pandora to cast around for somewhere to hide. Unhelpfully, the room was almost empty, save for a large table upon which sat a globe—remarkable only for its wildly inaccurate depiction of all major landmasses—several rolls of paper tied with ribbon and sealed with wax, and a small metal box.

The door rattled as someone on the other side thrust a key into the lock. Snatching up the alarm clock, Pandora positioned herself behind the door and, squinting in the gloom, began to reset the time. The door swung open and the voices were now distinct. Three men, Pandora guessed, praying that they wouldn't shut the door and discover her cowering behind it, armed with nothing more than a clock. To her relief, she might as well have been invisible for all the attention they paid her. The focus of their intentions was the metal box on the table.

“The key, Malvolio,” one of the men said, obscuring Pandora's view of the table.

“I have it here,” said another voice, presumably Malvolio's. “Do you take me for a simpleton?”

“Use it then, the barbarians are upon us,” said a third voice, gruff and urgent in its delivery. There came a pause, and Pandora bent her head to peer at the numerals on the clock, looking up as the first man spoke, his voice filled with wonder.

“It is as foretold in the prophecy . . . the Pericola d'Illum-inem . . .” His voice trailed off, replaced by Malvolio's, who murmured, “Some call it the Dragon's Bane, others from across the water tell it as Man's Desire—”

“Yes, yes, a thousand pretty names,” interrupted the gruff voice, obviously unimpressed by his companions' knowledge. “How came you by this—this
jewel,
Malvolio?”

“My grandmother traded it with the dragon-kind.”

Sneaking a glimpse from behind the door, Pandora saw the three men silhouetted round a source of light far stronger than the feeble rays that shone through the window. She noted irreverently that the men, dressed for battle, were thus wearing enough metal to qualify them for inclusion in a dragon's larder under “canned goods.”

“
Traded
it?” laughed the gruff voice, scorn dripping from every syllable. “Pray tell, what could that toothless hag possibly possess to trade for such a treasure?”