Page 37 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

The power in the cavern flared, and Fireheart and all sixteen of the storm monkeys disappeared with a smoky pop.

The cavern was plunged into darkness, and Frida was all alone again. It might have crushed her, and for a moment it did. A moment, however, was all she allowed, before she straightened her shoulders and pulled out her phone to switch on the torch. She only had 4 per cent battery, but she hoped it would be enough to get her back down the cliff. As she ran, it seemed desert stars still twinkled every time she blinked.

‘Just give him a poke!’ she repeated, laughing in despair as she passed under the fence, the red-hot metal cool now. How much time had passed? She didn’t know. It was night, probably. She didn’t dare think about how much time she’d lost, here, at the library, being chased by the Nuckelavee.

Silly Friduska. Why didn’t you think of just poking the sleeping baby dragon?

Grace was well and truly deceased, but Frida had expected as much. There was only so much Nuckelavee any one buggy could cope with. With an apologetic pat on her dash, Frida pocketed the last energy bar and drained Antony’s water bottle, before continuing on foot. She refused to allow herself to miss the electric peels of the monkeys. The quickest route back to Forest, and Dragon’s Deep, was a thirty-minute walk. With Fireheart’s mission lit like a fire in her bones, she did it in fifteen. As she’d seen from up on the cliff, the electricity was patchy, many of the spotlights within the enclosures, and the warm Narnia-style lamps along the roads, out of action. Thankfully, the last remaining juice of her phone held out and although she twitched at every shadow, the sense of sleep hung heavily in the musky loam-filled air. She saw no more sign of hellish sea demons, nor homicidal box trees. Even the wood seemed to have settled, as if it had finally decided that it had done enough work for the day, and it, too, was ready for a well-deserved nap.

It was . . . eerie.

Taking barely a second to catch her breath, the beep sounding on the security panel (thankfully this area of the LEZ seemed to still be online), she was just stepping into the rabbit-warren of corridors leading to Dragon’s Deep when she heard a deep muffled roar that set her teeth on edge. Goosebumps rose, all along her arms. Maybe she wouldn’t have to poke him, after all. Gathering herself, she lunged into a sprint.

‘Lucky,’ she breathed. ‘I’m coming.’

He was pacing back and forth when she burst onto the brightly lit tarmac of his management area. His belly was like a blazing hot forge. The wards were a discordant hum coming from the glass between them, drowning out his cries. She was already pressing a thumb to the security panel, the one that would get her inside the glass, when Lucky reared up on his hind legs, golden eyes rolling in his head. He chirped and roared, chirped and roared. The uptilted spotlights gilded the sides of his violet scales, which seemed to ripple like flames.

‘I’m coming, love!’ she cried, terrified. Had something happened to him?

Finally, the panel gave a beep and she was through, pulling open the first heavy gate and then the second. The moment she passed beneath, the now familiar vice-like pain tightened around her skull. She tried to shake it off, that brutal maul-like pressure stabbing behind her eyes, as the muggy green jungle enveloped her.

He howled, in pure misery, ‘I’M SO HUNGRY! SO HUNGRY! SO, SO HUUUUUUNGRY!’

She only had a moment to feel blinding relief before he went on.

‘You said you’d come back, you said you wouldn’t leave. You promised.’

Mortification slammed into her.

His molten irises swirled with a thousand different hot, accusing yellows.

‘I am so, so sorry. I thought you were asleep!’ But then she put her head in her hands. She couldn’t imagine how he must have felt. Abandoned. ‘I bet you’ve been really lonely.’

For a second, Lucky seemed to waver between wanting to tear her limb from limb and wanting to burst into tears. Pretty much all the foliage had been crushed beneath the rapid flaring of his wings, and a number of the palm trees were starting to smoulder dangerously. Baby dragons had about as much ability to emotionally regulate as a teakettle, and Frida didn’t have a team of firefighters on hand. But as if he’d heard her, a look of alarm came over his face, and he started blowing gusts of icy steam over the palm leaves. When everything had stopped smoking, he sat down with a ground-shaking thud and sank into a position of utter dejection.

‘I’m so sad. I don’t have any friends,’ he whimpered, followed by a litany of chirps that ended with little hiccups of dismay. ‘I . . .’ He hiccupped again. ‘I thought you were my friend.’

‘I am!’ she cried, distraught. Then she did the only thing she could think of. ‘Look, I’ll get you some food, ok? Right now.’

He gazed at her under long, golden eyelashes. ‘You will?’

‘Dragon butler to the rescue!’ she cried, already rushing away through the tunnel. Any zookeeper worth their salt knew they’d never be able to get a baby dragon to do anything on an empty stomach. The frill around his neck fluttered, all the purples of the rainbow, and his forked tail began to jiggle.

In no time at all, she’d lugged almost an entire cow, frozen appendage by gory appendage, back inside. Lucky watched her, askance. Only when the meat lay in a pile in the centre of the crater that he’d made a nest out of, did he deign to sniff the nearest piece.

She nodded, gesturing enthusiastically. ‘Go on, it’s for you.’

Although he looked distressed at first, when she picked up a bone and mimed gnawing on it, he soon got the knack. As he ate, Frida retreated to a far corner and sat in a pile of gladioli petals, trying not to think about the blood of the cow seeping into her uniform. She’d once helped Sora conduct a study on how well the zoo’s cows, crickets, earwigs and other edible critters were cared for. Ultimately, they were not cared for all that well at all. And as she sat there in the mud, covered in blood, the symphony of cracking bones in her ears, she couldn’t help but feel like one of those bones was lodged in her own throat.

It was hard to stay there, silent.

‘Lucky?’ she asked tentatively, when she could wait no longer.

Lucky startled. He dropped the final leg bone and tried to cover it with one oversized paw, as if ashamed to have been caught eating.

‘No, it’s ok, Lucky.’ She tried to smile. ‘It’s yours. You can finish it.’

‘I am full,’ he pronounced plainly.