Page 14 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

She clapped her hands over her ears. His long, slit-like pupil was a yawning crack, the colour such a deep, velvet black, it could swallow her whole. She opened her mouth to scream, something along the lines of: Get back, save yourselves, oh god he’s awake, we’re all going to die! But when she looked around for backup, she let out a mangled squeal. There was no one. Not like there was no one – they’d just disappeared behind the trees or something. This was – there was actually no one. The ground, the trees, Cliff and Zuzka, Sora and Irma, all those fluttering butterfly nurses . . . all gone. There was just a soup of misty violet smoke, her and . . . Lucky.

Oh fuck.

Lucky was examining her. ‘ARE YOU OK, LITTLE STINK?’

‘I’m fine!’ It was an instinctive reply, and yet completely incorrect. ‘But, um . . . maybe . . .’ She winced, tentatively taking her hands off her ears. ‘Could you stop shouting?’

Lucky blinked at her in surprise.

She batted at the mist curling around her ankles and scrambled to her feet. On her wrist were the tattooed words DO NOT RUN, the three-word foundation of her zookeeper training. Do. Not. Run. She and Zuzka had decided to get the tattoos when Frida had officially become a zookeeper and was awarded her baseball cap. She’d needed it multiple times since then, but never quite as much as now. Maybe the motto needed a tweak: Do not run, unless a dragon is shouting at you, and you appear to be floating in mid-air. In which case feel free to run as fast and as far as you can.

‘You don’t look fine,’ the dragon chirped in such a careful stage whisper, she might have laughed if she hadn’t been so terrified. She’d always imagined a dragon would sound deep and booming like a mountain on legs. But his words seemed to fall into her skull, echoing with the exultant chirps of an enthusiastic baby bird.

‘Uh,’ she said tentatively, figuring if she was going to tell the truth to anyone, it might as well be a baby dragon. ‘I guess you’re right. I’m not fine, am I?’ Although strangely, for the first time since last night, it felt as if her head had cleared.

He giggled – a sound like a canary being tickled. Then he crossed his huge, muscular paws and clumsily craned his thick neck to scrutinize her, as if measuring how exactly not fine she was. His pale golden beard trembled, and threads of drool dribbled into the mist. His face was a bit like a rectangular box, it was so flat and stumpy, but the ribbons of minute scales across his forehead were like diamonds. And his long blue tongue lolled between his teeth in his excitement. He felt so real, but he couldn’t be. There was no way. She remembered that the lightning last night had felt real, too. As if to affirm this fact to the universe, she whispered,

‘You’re not real.’

He snapped his mouth shut and looked affronted. ‘Of course I’m real! Aren’t you?’

‘Right now, truthfully?’ she exclaimed, watching as his scaled eyelids lowered in confusion. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

He seemed to accept this in a philosophical fashion, albeit reluctantly. ‘Well, it’s hard to tell sometimes, I suppose.’

She nodded rapidly. But looking up into his painfully hopeful face, she amended, ‘I guess we could assume we’re both real, for now.’

Instantly, his eyes lit up. ‘Oh yes, that is a good idea!’

She beamed at him; she couldn’t help it. His eyelashes glimmered a thousand golds. Then she furrowed her brow. ‘But, if we are real, do you know how we’re talking to each other?’ Dragons didn’t really have proper vocal cords.

‘OH YES! Dragons don’t often speak to humans; you are right little stink.’ He drew closer, the smoky haze tufting out of his nostrils making her eyes water. ‘But you’re special. My dada said I had to speak to you.’

‘To me?’ she squeaked, looking helplessly at him through the mist. ‘Your dada?’

His head bobbed earnestly. ‘Yes. He promised you’d find me. I had to make the lightning storm first, and then he said you’d come. And here you are! So I did a good job, I think. It’s all working out exactly as it’s supposed to.’ He beamed proudly, his scraggly, drool-covered whiskers trembling.

It was hard to think. ‘The lightning?’ she stammered, inching back a touch.

‘Yes! It hit you, I know it did. I felt it.’

‘You . . . made that lightning? It was real?’

‘Yes, yes!’ He looked delighted. When she didn’t say anything, couldn’t say anything, just stood there in total shock, his face fell. ‘It wasn’t beautiful?’

Her throat was dry at the memory of a purple fork of fire streaking across the sky. It took every ounce of courage not to flee. ‘It was very beautiful,’ she squeaked, but beneath her breastbone a knot of terror swirled. ‘Why?’ she gasped, the only question she could think to ask.

He sank back on his haunches, his boxy snout furrowed. ‘Well, because Dada told me to. I did worry your head would explode.’ He started sniffing her dramatically, his cracked nostrils almost knocking her over. ‘How does it feel? It’s so exciting.’

Her fear melted then, all at once, as she reached up in wonder to touch one of the wisps of his beard. It felt like sticky sheep’s wool.

He purred, rubbing against her hand. ‘Dada said I needed to make you into a very special little stink, with my special dragon fire. Dragons are linguists, you know.’ He puffed out his chest proudly. ‘And now you are too. You’re a tiny little bit dragon. Isn’t that lovely? I’d turn everyone into dragons if I could, but Dada said I’m not allowed. Only you. It took ever so much magic.’

Frida knew she was staring, her fingers frozen in the knots of his beard, the word he’d just said reverberating through her. Magic. Nobody used that word anymore. It was – it just wasn’t said. It sent a thrill down her spine, like hearing something ancient and forbidden spoken aloud. Somewhere, she sensed her brain unfurling like a flower, and tiny shivers spiderwalked down her arms.

Suddenly, Lucky pulled away from her, and his face crumpled. ‘But he was so sad when he told me what I had to do.’

She blinked up at him. ‘Your dada?’