The Origami Dragon And Other Tales (11 page)

The combatants
were equally matched, and it seemed like the fight was doomed to
end in the total destruction of both dragons. Then the tiny
mockingbird leapt out of my brother’s sleeve and flew like an arrow
straight for the red dragon’s face. The dragon roared and caught
the bird in its mouth. It bit down hard and threw the bird away
with a roar of glee. The distraction was enough for the blue dragon
to gain height on the red, dropping down on to it.

The mockingbird
fell quickly, but my brother managed to catch it gently and tuck it
safely in his pocket. The two dragons were not so lucky, both
shooting past my brother and plummeting towards the ground. The
blue dragon managed to pull up at the last minute, skimming across
the ground and back into the air. The red dragon wasn’t so lucky,
hitting the ground with a soft thud.

The last thing
you need to know about my brother is that he believes in justice.
There was a bully in his school, a huge boy who loved to torment
his classmates. The bully was charming to adults, and his parents
were generous donors to the school, so the teachers left him alone.
He used to steal people’s lunch, eat a bite and throw the rest
away. He would steal kids’ lunch money, and then flush it down the
toilet. He was a jerk, a relentless jerk. One day he tried to steal
a kid’s lunch, and my brother stepped in to stop him. The bully
weighed three times more than my brother, so the physical
confrontation was short, the bully victorious. The bully broke my
brother’s arm (just a mistake, Miss, I promise!) and hurt his
pride. Three days later, during a crowded science class, the
teacher was called out of the room to answer a very important phone
call. When she got back, the bully was no longer in the room. He
was later found chained to the school flagpole, covered in yellow
paint and with a bucket on his head. Twenty kids had been in the
same room as the bully, but apparently no-one had seen anything at
all (really, Miss, would we lie to you?). Even the bully wouldn’t
say what happened, who was responsible, or why. The bully left the
school soon after that to be homeschooled. My brother swore he had
nothing to do with it, but I never did get my bucket back. True
story.

My brother
watched with pride and quiet pleasure as the red dragon hit the
ground and rolled awkwardly. One of its wings was badly bent, and
its head was tattered and torn. It could have ended then, with the
red dragon caught and put in a cage. It could have ended
peacefully, but the paper remembers. The lions and dinosaurs came
out from behind the furniture, the squirrels and unicorns crawled
out from their nooks and crannies. A hundred paper mouths opened, a
hundred paper bodies ran forward. The lions pounced, the unicorns
lowered their horns and the gorillas beat their chests, each eager
for revenge. The red dragon didn’t stand a chance.

And let that be
a lesson to paper dragons everywhere. True story.

Aventur hung
from the cliff face by one hand, his face pressed against the hard,
cold rock.

He swung a
grapple and line with his free hand, throwing them high above his
head. He heard the metal grapple hit rock and gently applied
pressure to the rope. The rope dropped suddenly, and his body
lurched unexpectedly. He barely held on to the rock with the tips
of his fingers. The rope fell passed his head, one loop flicking
him painfully across the ear as it dropped. Aventur always tied the
end of the rope to the ragged strip of old leather that he used as
a belt, and he breathed a sigh of relief as he felt its reassuring
weight against his leg. He pushed himself against the rock and
wedged his toes into tiny cracks to take the force off his hands.
He inhaled deeply and began gathering the rope up again with one
hand for another try.

“Always
upwards, onwards, skywards,” he reminded himself.

He needed the
encouragements, as he had been climbing for a long, long time.
Thankfully he was finally nearing the summit of the mountain that
towered above his home. The wind blew icy cold across his face and
through the many holes in his old clothes. His lips were peeling
and dry.

He ignored the
discomfort, listening for an eagle’s cry. He had heard that eagles
nested in the cliffs and had decided to steal an egg for himself.
He knew his mother wouldn’t approve, but he loved climbing the
mountains, testing himself against the rough stone and freezing
winds. He felt his grapple catch, and this time it took all his
weight. He began pulling himself up the rope, hand over hand. It
was hard work, but he loved it. He reached the top of the rope, so
he stopped to enjoy the view and get his breath back. The green
valley below and the golden skies above were the most beautiful
things he had ever seen in the fifteen short years of his life.

He pulled an
apple from his pockets and began cutting it with a small knife. The
apple was sweet and crunchy; he had stolen it out of his uncle’s
orchard.

“The fruit may
be my uncle’s produce, but its sweetness far outweighs his own,”
Aventur told the wind, throwing it a slice of apple.

Aventur wore
brown pants, scuffed from his long climb, and a dirty white shirt.
His belt was far too large for him, a cast off from an older
cousin. His shoes were second hand too and were an odd pair of
slightly different sizes. His mother was always lecturing him about
his appearance, and his uncle often told him that his filthy
clothes were an embarrassment to the family, but Aventur didn’t
care much for his looks. He enjoyed climbing and stealing too much
to worry about mirrors. A lock of greasy hair fell across his eyes,
and he brushed it away with annoyance. When the hair fell across
his face a second time he used his knife to cut it off, casting the
strands to the wind.

He rubbed his
leg through a hole at his pants and wondered how much further he
would need to climb to reach the eagle nests.

“Not much
further, surely, for even eagles must shudder in these winter
winds,” he said to himself.

He pulled out a
small flute and played a few notes to the mountains and sky. The
wind tore the notes away from him and cast them back down into the
valley. Aventur didn’t mind, for he knew the wind was just jealous
of his skills. Aventur was able to play the flute before he could
walk, and for as long as he could remember he had been able to make
any instrument sing for him. It delighted his mother, but angered
his uncle, who believed that real men liked watching football and
singing rude songs badly.

Aventur was not
fond of his uncle, but he did like the man’s apples. He pulled
another from his pocket and began cutting it into smaller pieces.
When he was done he threw the core back towards the valley,
watching it spin and twist as it fell towards the ground. It flew
free for a moment, and then hit a rocky outcropping, exploding into
fragments and seeds that were blown away by the wind. Aventur’s
whole family worked in his oldest uncle’s orchards. There was work
enough to keep everyone both occupied and fed, even a disobedient
and disfavoured nephew. Aventur had learnt to climb by pulling
apples off the trees, and learnt to lie by avoiding whatever chores
he could. His mother tended her brother’s gardens while the
extended family looked after the trees. It wasn’t a bad life, and
most of Aventur’s wants and needs were met, but Aventur found the
safe life boring. His uncle had yelled at him when he had asked
what lay outside the valley, and his mother had whispered to him to
banish such thoughts from his mind.

However,
Aventur wasn’t one to be easily dissuaded.

“Curiosity is
like the cunning flame, for both are impossible to damp once lit,”
he told himself.

He had begun
climbing the cliffs the very next day. He wanted to get high enough
to see the whole world, or at least something outside of the
valley. He was a talented climber, and an even better liar. He
covered his absences with a web of lies and half-truths spread
amongst his family, but it was far harder to hide the scrapes and
bruises that he collected during climbing from his watchful mother.
He knew she worried about him, but he was young and loved to
climb.

It wasn’t long
before he was spending more time on the mountain than on the
ground. Sometimes he climbed for fun, but more often he was looking
for the mountain’s treasures and secrets. A travelling merchant,
who had stopped to buy apples from the orchard, had told Aventur
that the eagles that nested in the mountains were magical
creatures, and that their eggs were worth a small fortune. Aventur
had set out to find one for himself with a determination that he
had previously only shown for learning music and avoiding work. He
had climbed over every inch of the lower mountain, but had never
yet been high enough to find an eagle’s nest.

“The eagle’s
egg will buy freedom for both mother and I,” he reminded himself
constantly.

His
determination was paying off: he climbed on to a flat rock ledge
and heard the cheep of chicks just above his head. He climbed the
last little cliff quickly, pulling himself on to a smooth stone
shelf that jutted out into the sky. At the base of the shelf,
nestled amongst a few hardy mountain shrubs, stood a large nest
made from twigs and small branches woven elegantly together.

“The sound of
the nest is as expected, but its size eclipses my expectations,” he
whispered to himself.

The nest was
occupied, which meant that the eggs had hatched. This was
disappointing to Aventur, but he was happy to at least have found a
nest. He walked cautiously over to it to see the chicks and check
for an unhatched egg. The nest was a hollow sphere with an entrance
just larger than Aventur’s head. He peered into the dark nest, and
was greeted by a raucous chorus of screams from the chicks. He
could make out what looked to be an unbroken egg deep within the
nest, and so he reached in with one hand to grab it.

A tiny clawed
body dropped from the top of the nest and on to his hand, pecking
him viciously. Aventur yelled with outraged surprise at the attack,
and withdrew his arm. His young attacker was still holding his arm,
digging deeply to pierce his skin and cut his muscle. Aventur
raised his other hand to swipe the creature.

The little ball
of red fur and blue feathers let go of his arm for a second, and
waved its wings clumsily. It began to fall from its perch, and
Aventur caught it with his free hand and raised it up to be level
with his face. He realised that it was no eagle, although the two
animals shared both head and wings.

“Eagles’ wings,
lions’ mane, tigers’ claws, a brave man’s bane!” he said, reciting
a line of poetry that he had been taught as a child.

The baby
griffin hissed at him angrily, pecking his hand with a fearless
ferociousness that was remarkable for its size. Aventur’s hand was
bleeding, but he managed to pull an apple from his pocked and
present it to the small monster. It eyed the fruit uncertainly, and
then began clawing it with obvious enjoyment. Aventur quickly
placed it back into the nest, and withdrew to a safe distance as
pieces of apple pulp were sent flying from within.

“A dragon’s
eyes, a hunter’s soul, the sharpest beak shall take their toll,” he
said, remembering a line from an old song he had once heard.

He rubbed the
trickles of blood that ran down his arm and wondered what to do
next.

A shadow passed
briefly over his body, and he ducked as a pair of huge wings
flapped right above him. A screech of outrage filled the air, a
sound so loud that it hurt Aventur’s ears and made him drop to a
crouch. He realised at once that he had been discovered, and that
he was unwelcome. He backed away from the nest, searching the sky
for the griffin he knew was watching him.

The skies were
empty, but Aventur knew he wasn’t safe. He had reached the very
edge of the rock shelf, and there was nothing behind him now except
blue sky and a long fall. He pulled out his grappling rope and
looked around desperately for something to attach it to. The rocks
were smooth, the sky was empty, and Aventur was beginning to
panic.

He heard the
air move behind him, and threw himself face down on to the rocks.
Only his quick reactions saved him from the griffin’s claws, which
scraped lightly across his back as it swooped over him, landing in
front of the nest and spinning to face him.

The griffin was
holding a black scorpion in its beak. The scorpion was the size of
Aventur’s arm, and squirmed and slashed at the griffin with its
claws and sting. Aventur knew the scorpion’s kind: they were
aggressive and poisonous animals that attacked without warming and
killed without regret. They were a constant threat for both
mountain climbers and the small rodents that lived amongst the
mountain’s shrubs, and Aventur had been chased by them on more than
one occasion.

The scorpion
arched its back and brought its sting around to attack the griffin,
stabbing down furiously. The griffin seemed not to notice its
victim’s struggles. Aventur winced as the scorpion lashed out with
its tail, but the griffin didn’t even flinch.

It met
Aventur’s eyes, and maybe it noticed the admiration in them. It
threw the creature casually over its shoulder and into the nest;
the eager screams of its young showed that they had been expecting
such a meal. Aventur almost felt sorry for the scorpion, but
instead chose to be sorry for himself.

“The scorpion
was a snack, but this boy might be another course in this feast,”
he whispered to himself.

The prospect of
being eaten didn’t scare him as much as he would have expected, so
he stood up slowly to face the griffin. The creature seemed
surprised by this, and tilted its head to one side as if thinking.
It hissed a low, slow, sinister hiss of confusion and anger at
finding an outsider at its nest. It clawed at the rocks with its
paw, scratching deep lines into the rock. Its tail waved from side
to side, and it prepared to pounce.