“There’s an invisible dragon in the garage,” Tapas said.
He looked in the mirror and tried again. “There is an invisible dragon in the garage.”
He shook his head and sighed. It was no
good. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t make it so anyone would believe him.
Besides, the mirror was very dusty, so he couldn’t see himself very well. He
considered dusting it, and decided not to. If he dusted it once, his mother
might expect him to dust it every day.
“There’s an invisible dragon,” he said, “in the garage.”
Worse than ever. He glanced over his
shoulder towards the door, suddenly worried that someone might look in. But
there wasn’t anyone home, except him. And except the dragon, of course.
He tried to imagine what would happen if he
went to his mother and told her about the dragon. He could imagine her fat face
crunching in a scowl. “Topshe,” she’d say, “you’ve got too much time on your
hands. Go sit down and study, right now, and study out loud so I know you’re
studying.”
No, it wouldn’t do to tell his mother. And
if he tried to tell his father, he knew exactly what would happen. His father
would nod and peer myopically at Tapas. “Tell your mother,” he’d say, and go
back to hiding behind his newspaper.
And he couldn’t tell his friends, of course, because he didn’t
have any. His mother didn’t approve of friends. “Dirty, nasty boys,” she always
said, “teaching each other bad words and destroying things. You stay home and
study.”
Maybe he could go to the police? He could
just imagine his short, fat figure standing before a policeman, telling him
about the dragon in the garage. He could imagine the policeman laughing.
So, no, there was nobody to tell, even if
he could think of a plausible way of telling it. And there was still the dragon
in the garage. He amended that to himself. There was still the invisible dragon
in the garage.
He supposed he ought to make sure it wasn’t
a figment of his imagination, he decided. Reluctantly, because he was uneasily
aware that he was a timorous boy, he went downstairs and to the garage. It was
a small garage, and didn’t need to be large, because all it had to contain by
way of vehicles was his father’s old Bajaj scooter, which his father hardly
used anymore, and the bicycle he’d been given by an uncle for his birthday last
year but never ridden. He’d never ridden the bicycle because his mother said it
was dangerous.
“You’ll fall down and break your arms and
legs,” she would say each time he brought the subject up. “Your uncle should
never have given you such a thing. The idea!”
So there was no bicycling for Tapas. To be
perfectly honest, he was more relieved than anything at his mother’s
opposition, because he had no idea how to balance on a bicycle and had no great
appetite to find out.
Still, the bicycle sat in the garage,
mocking him each time he saw it, with its rust spots spreading on the chain and
its growing festoon of cobwebs. He disliked going into the garage because of
it. And now, there was the dragon as well.
He was a timid boy, but some things
couldn’t be helped.
He entered the garage cautiously, squeezing
past the scooter. The back of the garage was filled with boxes of old junk, so
it wasn’t just dark and confined but filled with clutter, and he wondered just
where the dragon found space for itself.
He accidentally knocked over a box of old
newspapers. Dust rose in a cloud, and he sneezed.
“Bless you,” the dragon said.
Tapas jumped. He’d known it was there, but
he still jumped, as anybody would if they heard a disembodied voice at their
shoulder, even if they were not a fat, timid, Bunglee boy who couldn’t even
ride a bike.
“Oh, yes,” the dragon said. “I’m very much
here. I haven’t gone away, and you didn’t imagine me.”
Tapas whirled about, searching. For an
instant, in the corner of his eye, he’d thought he’d glimpsed something – a
rainbow glitter on a scale, perhaps. But there was nothing.
“So,” said the dragon conversationally,
“did you try to tell anyone about me?”
“No,” Tapas said bitterly. “Whom would I
tell? And what would I say?”
“Nobody would believe you?”
“Of course they wouldn’t.” Tapas sat down
on the pile of newspapers he’d toppled, because it was less uncomfortable than
standing squeezed between the scooter and the wall, his head bent beneath a
shelf loaded with rusting hammers and hacksaw blades. “I see their point
though. Who’d ever believe a dragon could be in a garage, and in Bunglistan of all places? Shouldn’t you be in a
castle or something, someplace in Europe, and a thousand years ago?”
“Why,” the dragon asked pleasantly, “should
I fit myself to your preconceived notions, seeing especially as you didn’t even
know dragons even existed until this morning?”
Tapas had nothing to reply to that. He
couldn’t even glare at the dragon, since it was invisible, so he glared at the
bicycle. There was a large spider hanging on a line from the handlebars.
“There’s a spider,” he said. “You’d better
go, or it might bite you. Spider bites are poisonous.”
The dragon chuckled, with a noise like
rustling autumn leaves. “According to you, I’m supposed to live in caves and
dungeons, right? And those are full
of spiders, aren’t they?”
“My father will be coming home soon,” Tapas
said. “When he finds you here, he’s going to throw you out.”
The dragon laughed outright this time. “How’s
he going to know I’m here if I don’t show myself? And how would he go about
throwing me out, I’d like to know.”
Tapas stopped trying to scare the dragon
into leaving. “Why did you talk to me, anyway?”
He could almost feel the dragon shrug, the
heaving of invisible wings. “You looked a sorry mess. I suppose I felt a moment
of compassion. Always been soft that way, I have.”
Tapas couldn’t decide whether to be
gratified or offended. “Where did you come from?” he asked.
“Now that’s
a secret,” the dragon said. “I could
tell you that I was a prisoner in the warlock’s secret basement, and that I
escaped, and that I’m hanging around here till the coast is clear. But if I
told you that I’d have to kill you, you see.”
Tapas couldn’t make out if the creature was
joking. “What warlock?” he asked at last.
“The warlock from the Inner Dark.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, he’s a great and evil sorcerer. All
full of evil magic from his pointy shoes to his pointy hat. ‘Course, he’s a
modern mage, so he doesn’t have
pointy shoes or a pointy hat, but you get the idea. Always assuming he exists,
of course, but, as I said, I couldn’t tell you if he did.”
“Because then you’d have to kill me.”
“Because then I’d have to kill you,” the
dragon agreed cheerfully. It seemed to be speaking directly above Tapas’ right
shoulder, but he couldn’t see anything there when he looked, except grime on
the underside of the shelf. “I don’t like killing people, even if they are fat little boys who’re scared of
their bicycles.”
“I bet you can’t even kill anything
anyway,” Tapas replied, stung. “I bet it’s all a boast.”
“If you bet, you lose,” the dragon said.
“Look at that piece of paper over there.”
Tapas looked at the piece of paper. It lay,
a crumpled ball, on the floor next to the bicycle’s rear tyre. As he watched,
it twitched, straightened out slightly, and then fell to pieces.
“There you are,” the dragon said. “Burnt,
as advertised, by my Super Dragon Breath.”
“It didn’t burn,” Tapas objected.
“Cold fire,” the dragon explained. “Go
ahead and check the paper. It won’t burn you...now.”
Tapas picked up a fragment of the paper. It
was hard, like plastic, and cold, like ice in the fridge his mother had nagged
his father into buying two years ago. When he pressed it in his fingers it fell
to powder.
Tapas looked at it and at the other pieces
on the floor. Then he looked at the bicycle tyre, the rubber of which was
fissured and ripped. “Hey,” he objected, “you’ve gone and destroyed the tyre
too.”
“Sorry,” the dragon said, not sounding
sorry at all. “But then you never rode the bicycle anyway.”
“If you can kill anything you want,” Tapas
objected, “why don’t you simply kill this...warlock?”
“Because – if he existed – he’d be proof against it, of course,” the dragon
said. “Luckily, for you that is, he doesn’t.”
“So you’re going to stay here until...”
“...the warlock, who of course doesn’t
exist, gets tired of looking for me and gets diverted to something else.
Shouldn’t be long, just a matter of twenty or thirty years.”
Tapas gulped. “Twenty or thirty years?”
“Might be only ten. Or even five. But it’s
bound to happen, sooner or later.”
“You mean, it would’ve been bound to
happen, if the warlock existed – but he doesn’t.”
“That’s right,” said the dragon cheerfully.
“Isn’t that your mother coming home? I recognise the cement mixer voice.”
“I’ve got to go,” Tapas said hurriedly.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be here,” the dragon told him. “You
can absolutely depend on that.”
*************************************
Tapas
didn’t like school. It wasn’t just that he had no friends. He didn’t even get
bullied, because none of the bullies cared enough about him to take the trouble
of bothering him. That was all fine, just as it was fine that nobody ever asked
him to join in their football games. And the one time he’d played cricket, the
team captain had begged him to go away after the first two overs.
The reason Tapas didn’t like school was the
teachers. He was terrified of them all, and most of all he was terrified of the
mathematics teacher, old Castanets as the boys had nicknamed him from his habit
of clicking his dentures together. Old Castanets was, to all appearances, a
harmless man, elderly, balding, and old-fashioned enough to wear a dhoti
instead of trousers. But he had a gimlet eye behind his thick spectacles, and
his thin lips could curl into sneers so sarcastic that they turned Tapas’ knees
to water.
Today, Old Castanets was in an especially evil
mood, even by his standards. This was a singularly unfortunate coincidence,
because Tapas’ head was so filled with thoughts of the dragon that he hardly
took in anything the teacher was writing on the ancient blackboard. He was
looking down at his exercise book, unseeing, when he realised that the
classroom had fallen completely silent. He looked up quickly, to find Castanets
standing beside his desk, glaring down at him.
“Show me what you’ve written so far,”
Castanets said, so quietly that the clicking of his dentures was louder than
his words. Trembling inside, Tapas presented his blank page. Castanets looked
at it and then at him.
“There’s something very interesting which
you’re thinking about? The new Bollywood movie? A cricket match? Or is it the
political situation?” He paused, his bloodshot eyes glittering. “Well?”
Tapas didn’t say anything.
“I’ll have a word with your parents,” Old
Castanets said through clenched dentures, and turned to stalk back to the
blackboard. “Now, everyone, if we take the square of x and add xy...”
By the time Tapas returned home in the
afternoon, he was a bundle of nerves. There wasn’t a single teacher he hadn’t
fallen afoul of, and then when halfway home from school he’d found he’d left
the science homework back in class and had to go back for it. And when he
reached home, his composure wasn’t helped by finding Old Castanets ensconced in
the living room with his mother.
“Topshe,” his mother yelled. “Your sir has
come. He says you don’t study at all. You get in here.”
Trembling again, Tapas entered. Old
Castanets sat in the best chair, a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits before
him, watching impassively as Tapas’ mother continued to shout.
“You bad boy, is this why we send you to
school, so that you can sit in class and daydream? When I think of how many
times I told you to study, but no, your mind’s always in the clouds. I have a
good mind to sit over you with a stick. I told your father to beat you, but
he’s too soft. I knew you’d get spoiled...”
Old Castanets let her rant on for a while
and then pointedly cleared his throat. The little noise cut Tapas’ mother off
in mid-flow.
“Anyway,” she said, sounding suddenly
deflated, “your sir is kind enough to offer to teach you after school, in his
house. He says he’ll make sure you soon pick up the basics. You thank him now.”
His mouth going dry with fear, Tapas
thanked the old man. He was astonished, too, to find Castanets had made good on
the threat to contact his parents. Nobody had ever imagined the old crank cared
enough about any of his charges to take a personal interest in their progress
or help them on his own time.
Castanets didn’t seem to be gratified by
the thanks. “You’re starting tomorrow,” he said. “You know where my house is?”
“Yes, sir.” It was on the way home from
school, worse luck, so Tapas couldn’t even use the excuse of it being too far
away.
“I’ll see you there, half an hour after
school.” Old Castanets stood to go. “If you or your husband have any
questions,” he said to Tapas’ mother, “feel free to phone and ask.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” she said hastily.
“Won’t you have your tea?”
“No, thanks. I’m not hungry. I’ll see you
tomorrow, boy.”
“See your sir to the gate. Topshe,” Tapas’
mother ordered. “These boys, they’ve forgotten all manners. Why, when I was a
girl...”
Without waiting to hear what had happened
when she was a girl, Old Castanets walked out, forcing Tapas to accompany him
down the stairs. The old teacher peered around myopically on the stairs and
when outside, paused, blinking, in the bright sunshine.
“You be sure to be there on time,” he said.
His mood seemed to have improved to its normal state of foulness. “I don’t
tolerate lateness.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And make sure you finish your homework for
tomorrow. Just because I’m taking extra classes for you doesn’t mean you can
neglect it.” With a final glare, Old Castanets stalked off toward the gate.
His heart hammering with fear, Tapas
watched him go.
*******************************
“Hey!”
It was an hour later. After yelling at him
for as long as her voice could hold out, his mother had gone out to a gossip
session with her friends, ordering him to sit with his books and not move a
muscle until she came back. Tapas had waited fifteen minutes after her
departure, and come quickly down, to see if the dragon was still in the garage.
“Hey!” the voice called again.
Tapas’ head jerked. He turned quickly, and
almost guiltily, to look over his shoulder, at the low wall which separated his
parents’ house from the neighbour’s. A grinning female face was looking at him
over the wall.
“Can I come over?” the girl asked. Without
waiting for an answer, she hoisted herself quickly to the top and jumped
lightly down on Tapas’ side. “That’s better,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Tapas. But,” he added, “my mother calls me
Topshe.”
“You must hate that,” the girl said, with a
quick grin. She was about Tapas’ age and height, but slim and with wiry
strength in her brown arms. Her hair was cut short, almost like a boy’s, and
she was dressed in a sleeveless T-shirt and denim shorts. She even had a
wristwatch. In other words, she was the absolute antithesis of the “good girls”
Tapas’ mother talked about.
Of course, it didn’t matter whether she was
“good” or “bad”, Tapas’ mother would have an apoplectic fit if she caught him
talking to any girl, ever. Good boys
never, ever, even noticed the existence of the other sex, or they would be
“spoiled”. Tapas had actually never before spoken to any girl who wasn’t a
member of the extended family, and none had ever spoken to him.
“Your mother shouts a lot, doesn’t she?”
the girl said. “I can hear her clear over in my bedroom.”
It wasn’t a statement Tapas could honestly
refute, so he didn’t try. “You live there?” he asked, pointing over her
shoulder at the neighbour’s. A new family had moved in last week, he’d heard,
though he hadn’t seen anything of them and hadn’t had the curiosity to try and
find out. “What’s your name?”
“Bornali,” she told him, giggling. “Awful,
right? But you can call me Bee.”
“Bee,” Tapas repeated awkwardly. He
wondered how to talk to her. “Nice to meet you,” he said.
“You too.” She looked quickly toward the
house. “Won’t your mum be angry if I’m here?”
“She’s not home, won’t be for a couple of
hours. And my father always comes back late from work...” Tapas hesitated. “As
late as he can.”
Bee nodded, quickly. “I’ve been wanting to
talk to you. I see you each day, and you seem such a serious boy. Don’t you have any friends?”
Tapas blushed. “She doesn’t want me to have any friends.”
There was no question who he meant. Bee
nodded again. “Anyway,” she said hurriedly, “I came to see you for a specific
reason. Is there something wrong with your garage?”
“Wrong with the garage?” Tapas’ heart,
which had just settled, began racing once more. “Why do you ask?”
Bee looked a little embarrassed. “Well...it
isn’t any of my business, not really. But I was looking out of my window a
while back – I can see your garage door from it – and it seemed like there was something in the opening. I mean, I
could see the scooter inside and all – but in front of it, there was something,
moving, but I couldn’t see it, not really. It’s like the way air shimmers on a
hot day, you know? Only not quite like that, because it seemed to have a shape. If I believed in ghosts I’d have
said it was a ghost or something.” She laughed quickly, and began turning away.
“Anyway, I’m just being stupid. I’ll go back now, shall I?”
“No, no.” The thought of her leaving
suddenly seemed unbearable to Tapas. “Wait. Sit down here and I’ll tell you about
it. Only please understand that I’m not making it up.”
“What are you talking about?” Frowning
prettily, she sat on the step beside him. “You mean there is something in the
garage?”
“Yes. It’s an invisible dragon.” Tapas
spoke quickly, so that she didn’t get a chance to interrupt. “He’s really
there, can talk and everything. One can even see him, almost, sometimes. And he
breathes cold fire.” He rushed on, telling her of what the dragon had said
about hiding from the warlock, and how he’d freeze-burned the paper.
She took it better than he’d expected. “And
he’s in there now?” she asked, when he finally paused from lack of breath.
“Yes. If you don’t believe me, we can go
and look.”
“Well, of course, I believe you. But we’ll
go and look, too. I wouldn’t pass up this chance for the world. Why, it’s like Eragon.”
“What’s Eragon?”
“It’s a fantasy novel about a boy and a
dragon. Don’t you read fantasy?”
“I don’t read anything except the school
textbooks. She doesn’t like me
reading story-books.”
“Um. Well, we’d better go and visit the
dragon, before your mum gets home.” Without waiting for his answer, Bee jumped
to her feet and walked towards the garage. Tapas, suddenly reluctant, was left
with no alternative but to follow.
The dragon was waiting for them just inside
the garage door. Tapas could feel it, coiling in the air, and could imagine its
great eyes, studying the girl. “Who’s this you’ve brought?” it asked.
“I’m Bee,” the girl introduced herself,
which showed Tapas that she, too, had heard the dragon. Nor had she screamed
and run as he’d half expected – as he
had almost done when it had first spoken to him that morning. “I’m Tapas’ new
neighbour – and his friend.”
Tapas’ heart gave a glad leap at the last
word. “She saw you at the garage door,” he explained. “I mean, not you, but –“
“The disturbance in the air. I understand.
I got careless a little.” The dragon coughed delicately. “I take it you didn’t
mention me to anyone else –“
“No,” Tapas said indignantly. “What do you
take me for?”
“That’s all right then,” the dragon said
smoothly. “I’ve got to be careful, see.” They felt it move away a little, to
the back of the garage. “I’ve been looking in this junk here. Fascinating
stuff. Some of it might actually be quite valuable.”
“My mother will be back soon,” Tapas said.
“I’ll have to go.”
“I’d better be going too,” Bee added. “My
parents are pretty easy-going, but I don’t want any awkward questions. Will you
be here tomorrow afternoon? I’ll come over if you are.”
“Of course –“ Tapas began. Then,
remembering, his heart sank. “No, I forgot. I have mathematics tuition.”
“You two go off,” the dragon said. “I’ll be
fine.”
“What will you eat?” Tapas asked. “Should I
sneak something from the kitchen, or –“
“That’s no problem,” the dragon assured
him. “We dragons don’t eat, whatever you might have heard. We absorb energy
from cosmic rays.”
Tapas had only the vaguest idea what a
cosmic ray might be, but it sounded comfortingly scientific. “Bye for now,
then.”
The dragon laughed lightly. “Good night,
kids. Sleep tight, because the mosquitoes are sure to bite.”
********************************
Something
woke Tapas. He lay on his bed in the dark room, staring up at the ceiling. And,
after a moment, it came again.
At first he thought it was hail, striking
the windowsill, but there was no sound of rain, and a pale moon shone dimly
through the curtains. Then the sound came again, and he realised what it was.
Somebody was tossing gravel at the window.
Quickly, trying to make as little noise as
possible, he got out of bed and stumbled to the window and drew back the
curtains. After the gloom of the bedroom, the moonlight outside was so bright
it hurt his eyes. So it was a moment before he saw Bee standing below and
gesturing urgently.
Carefully, he opened the window, and leaned
out. “What...?”
Grimacing, Bee put a finger to her lips and
waved at him to come down. She certainly looked very excited about something.
There was no light in the corridor, but the
reassuring noise of twin snoring from his parents’ room covered his clumsy
stumble down the stairs. He opened the door and hurried to where Bee waited.
“What’s going on?” he whispered.
She was in a loose T shirt over pyjama
bottoms and bare feet – she must have come here straight from bed. She put her mouth almost to his ear. “There’s
someone in the garage.”
“You mean besides the dr-“
“Quiet, damn it!” She pulled at his arm. “I
couldn’t sleep with the excitement of the dragon. So I went to the window to
see if I could get another glimpse of it. Instead, I saw someone enter the
garage.”
“Enter the garage? But the gate’s locked.”
“How should I know how he got in? Maybe he
climbed over the wall or something. But I saw him going in, right enough. And
then there was a weird red light, very dim. I knew something very strange was
going on, so I came to call you.”
For the first time, Tapas looked at the
garage. Its door was open, as always, and at first he thought it was dark as
usual in the moonlight. But as he opened his mouth to tell Bee that she must
have been imagining things, he noticed a very, very faint red pulsing, like a
scarlet stain in the air.
“You see it?” Bee asked.
“Yes...” Tapas wanted to go back up to bed.
He wanted nothing more than to go back up to bed and pretend this was a dream.
“What is it?”
“We’d better go find out, hadn’t we?” Still
holding his arm, Bee began walking towards the garage. Tapas didn’t have a
choice but to follow.
At the door of the garage, they paused,
craning their necks cautiously to peer round the edge.
On the back of an upturned packing box, a
tiny candle burned, throwing the dim red light. A man was silhouetted against
it, and for an absurd moment it looked as though he had wings and was trying to
fly. Then Tapas realised that his upper body was, despite the warmth of the
night, wrapped in a shawl, and he was raising and lowering his arms
rhythmically. And with that realisation came another.
He knew the man in the garage. It was his mathematics teacher. It was Old
Castanets.
It was the warlock. The warlock from the
Inner Dark.
Now, suddenly, everything fell into place. Old
Castanets’ exceptionally bad mood in class earlier; the escape of the dragon would
have sent him into a fury. And then, when he’d seen Tapas’ preoccupation, he
must have realised something was wrong – so he’d made up an excuse to visit his
house. And once there, his mood had improved dramatically; of course, he’d
sensed the dragon, known exactly where it was hiding. And tonight, when
everyone slept, he’d come back for it.
No wonder he’d managed to cross the locked
gate, Tapas thought. To a warlock, all things were easy.
He was still wondering what to do when the
air beyond Old Castanets seemed to solidify and the dragon became visible...
If he’d not already become dry-throated
with fear, Tapas might have gasped with terror and awe. He had never even
imagined the dragon was like this.
It was power and beauty, it was the night
come alive, it was the essence of the gulfs between the galaxies brought to
terrible, splendid life. It reared from the floor of the garage till its head
touched the roof, its immense claws holding it high. Its great wings twitched,
making the candle flicker slightly. It was as of air turned diamonds, the red
light reflecting and gleaming inside its crystalline body. Its gigantic head
arched, antennae whipping, nostrils flared. It opened its mouth and roared, but
the noise was like a whisper, barely audible.
“Come,” said Castanets. Reaching inside his
shawl, he brought out a plain earthen pot and set it down beside the candle.
“Inside.”
The great dragon shook its head, left and
right, so violently that the air inside the garage seemed to shudder. “No,” it
said, its voice faint as a breath. “I won’t go.”
“You have no choice,” Castanets said. His
arms rose and fell, faster and in more intricate motions, and suddenly the
dragon began to shrink. Swiftly, so swiftly that the eye could barely follow,
it was a diminishing sparkle, collapsing into the pot. Castanets reached out to
pick up the pot, but paused suddenly. Slowly, he turned his head, until the
round discs of his spectacles were staring at Tapas.
“I know you’re there,” he said. “Come
here.”
Tapas’ legs seemed to obey of their own
volition. He found himself stepping forward, past the scooter and the bicycle,
until he stood before the old man.
“So,” Old Castanets said. His dentures no
longer clicked, and Tapas realised he looked slightly different, younger and
stronger. “Spying, were you?”
Tapas said nothing.
“I’m disappointed in you,” Old Castanets
said. “You really had to screw this up at the last, didn’t you? It’s always
like this with you, Tapas. If there’s a mistake to make, however unlikely,
you’ll make it.”
“Please,” Tapas whispered. “Let the dragon
go.”
Old Castanets laughed. “Not likely,” he
said. “Not after I went to all this trouble to track it down. Besides, it’s
useful to me. But you aren’t.” He
cocked his head, like a terrier, and looked at Tapas with his red-gleaming
spectacles. “What shall I do with you? I’ll have to think. But for the moment,
you’ll come with me.”
“I
can’t,” Tapas said. “My parents...”
“Who cares about them? Stupid people. Even more stupid than you.” Old Castanets
stood up, and reached out a hand. It seemed much larger than a hand ought to
be, and the nails were long and curved, like talons. “Come along.”
“He’s not going anywhere,” Bee said. Silent
on her bare feet, she strode into the garage, raising her own hand. The stone
in it flew straight and hard, and smashed into the earthen pot. “Nor is the
dragon.”
“No –“ Old Castanets began. “You can’t...”
The air inside the garage seemed to roil
and twist. From the shards of the shattered pot rose the dragon, glittering,
rearing. It spread its wings wide, and they spanned the garage and were still not
fully open. It stretched its legs, and its claws were like pillars rising from
the floor. It threw back its head and roared, the antennae whipping like live
snakes around its awesome head.
Throwing himself forward, Old Castanets
began raising his arms to make his passes.
“The candle,” the dragon shouted. “Blow out his candle, boy!”
It was probably the fastest Tapas had ever
moved. He hurled himself towards the flickering flame, reaching out to take the
candle, to hold it up and blow it out. Instead, clumsy as ever, he hit it with
his hand and knocked it over.
With the slightest sputter and a wisp of
smoke, the candle went out.
Old Castanets changed. In the moonlight
that leaked through the doorway, they saw him change, melt like flowing wax,
his limbs pulling back into his body, his torso hunching grotesquely, and
falling in on itself. In a moment, he was no more than a puddle of shadow on
the floor. A moment longer, and he was gone.
There was a long, long moment of silence.
“We did it,” Bee said at last. “We did it,
didn’t we?”
“Is he dead?” Tapas asked, his heart
hammering. “Did we kill him?”
“No such luck,” the dragon said. “He’s just
beat it. But we defeated him, right enough. And once he’s beaten, he can’t do
anything to us. We’re rid of him.”
“That means – no mathematics extra class
tomorrow?”
“Class?” Bee looked at Tapas.
“He was...is...my maths teacher,” Tapas
admitted. “He was in the house this afternoon, to talk to my mum. That’s how he
must have known that you’re here. I’m sorry, it was all my fault.”
“You couldn’t help it,” the dragon said.
“You can take it that there won’t be any extra class. Nor will he give you a
hard time any longer.”
“And you,” Bee asked the dragon. “What are
you going to do?”
“Well, no point my hanging around here any
longer, is there?” The dragon paused, thinking. The edge of one wing caught the
moonlight, and glimmered faintly. “I don’t want to hang around the world,
though. There are other warlocks, and many of them wouldn’t mind a dragon slave
of their own.”
“Where are you going then?” Tapas asked.
“Up there,” the dragon told him. “To the
stars. That’s where I’ll be safe and free. Besides, there may be other dragons
there.”
“You’re leaving...now?”
“Right away,” the dragon confirmed. The air
at the garage door gleamed faintly with refracted moonlight. “Come out,” it
said. “What are you waiting for?”
Blinking,
Bee and Tapas emerged. In the light of the moon they could faintly distinguish
the outline of the dragon, towering over them. It reared, flapping its titanic
wings.
“I’m leaving now,” it said. “Thanks, kids,
and don’t forget one very important thing. It isn’t what the world thinks of
you that matters, but what you think of yourselves.”
Without a further word, it launched itself
into the air. They saw it one last time, a sparkle of light climbing towards
the stars.
Silently, hand in hand, they watched it go.
******************************
“Topshe,” Tapas’ mother called. “What on earth are you doing?”
Tapas looked up from his work. “I’m
cleaning the bike, mum,” he said patiently.
“Weren’t you supposed to go to your
mathematics sir for extra class? And why are you touching that filthy thing?”
“Well...to answer your first question, he
told me in class today there’s no need for me to get extra coaching. Besides, I
got all the maths answers right today. You can check the book, it’s on my
desk.” He looked down at the bicycle and up at her again. “As for your second
question, the bicycle isn’t filthy any longer. And I’ve cleaned it because I’m
going to take it now to get the rear tyre fixed and the chain oiled. After
that, Bee is going to teach me to ride it. Bee is the new neighbour’s daughter.”
Tapas’ mother opened her mouth to begin
yelling, but the words somehow seemed to freeze on her tongue, so she could
only open and close her jaws, like a fish.
He pushed the bike past her, and paused at
the gate. “And one more thing,” he said pleasantly. “My name is Tapas, all right? Not Topshe. Tapas. It
should be easy enough to pronounce.”
With a smile, he pushed the bicycle into
the street. As he wheeled it by the neighbour’s house, Bee came out. They
hugged briefly, one-armed.
Together, talking earnestly, they pushed
the bicycle down the lane.
Copyright B Purkayastha 2013
