DarkIsle, page 11
“Well!” said Shona, insulted and upset. She had never been called an “it” before. “I’ve never come across anyone as rude as you in my life. What’s wrong with dragons? Why are you so against us?”
“Health and safety reasons,” said the fisherman. “Fire regulations. You can’t have a fire-breathing creature on board a boat, it’s not safe.”
“What if we told you she can’t breathe fire?” said Bertie.
He gave Aldiss a shove as a warning. The little rat, who was the most truthful of creatures, had opened his mouth to say he was sure she did breathe fire, but thought better of it when he saw the warning look on Bertie ’s face.
“All dragons can breathe fire,” replied Kyle. “It’s what they do.” He swung his feet off the bunk and leapt down to the deck. As he searched for his boots, the three friends tried to persuade him.
“Not me,” lied Shona. “I’m of the breed that can’t do it. I can’t even fly. Look.” And she turned round so he could see she didn’t have any wings.
He nodded and Shona went on. “And look at me trying to breathe fire.” She pretended to huff and puff and no smoke or sparks came out.
He nodded again.
“I’m perfectly safe,” she tried to assure him. “I don’t even bite.” She grinned, showing two rows of perfectly vicious-looking teeth. Kyle recoiled in fright.
“And she’s fully house-trained,” offered Aldiss.
Shona shot the rat another look. “Yes, thank you, Aldiss,” she said through gritted teeth. “I assure you, fisherman, that I will not cause you or your boat any danger. I only want to get to Murst.” She looked at the man hopefully and gave him her most appealing look. “Will you allow me to stay on your boat? Please? It’s very important.”
The man thought for a moment and then shook his head again.
“No, I won’t do it,” he said as he pulled a boot on.
“But we need her,” insisted Bertie, looking very worried. “It’s getting lighter and it’s essential we set sail as soon as possible. No one else knows the way to Murst.”
“No, I’m sorry. I can’t,” replied the fisherman.
Shona frowned. “Well,” she said. “You leave me no other choice!” She roared. The man backed away from her, eyes wide with fear.
“Wh-what are you going to do to me?” he stuttered. “What are you going to do to the boat?” He backed against a wall and could go no further.
Shona grinned. She licked her lips and stepped over so her face was directly in front of his. He recoiled from the rank smell of her dragon breath.
“Shona!” warned Bertie, who was scared she was going to do something rash.
“I,” she bellowed to the shaking Kyle, “I am going to get your father!”
She smiled her fiendish dragon smile, which looked a bit gargoyle-ish, and turned to walk away from him.
“My father?” said Kyle, puzzled. “What do you want with my father?”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m not planning to eat him or anything,” she said. “I’m going to get him here and get him to take me to Murst,” she added triumphantly. “Now, where’s your phone?” She walked out of the cabin.
“You can’t do that!” exclaimed Kyle. He followed her out. “You can’t!”
“I can get your father to do anything I want,” she replied, climbing up the stepladders to the bridge. “He owes me!”
“He owes you?” Now Kyle really was confused. How could his father owe a dragon anything? What had she done for him?
“Didn’t your father tell you, when you were a little human,” said Shona, “about a great storm that shipwrecked him on a strange dark isle off the west coast?”
Then Kyle remembered. His father had told him something. What was it again? His father had been in his boat far out at sea. The wind and the waves had picked up, the boat had capsized and his limp body had been washed up on the shore. He’d been close to death when he was found. The inhabitants of the island had nursed him back to health, and he was particularly fond of one of them. A girl called . . .
“Shona? You’re Shona?” he asked in astonishment. “You’re the one who saved my father’s life?”
“The very one,” she replied with a smile as she climbed up onto the bridge. It was quite small and her tail hung out of the door.
“Of course, it must be forty years ago. I was only a young dragonlet when I found him lying on the sand. At first, I thought he was dead, but I soon brought him round. Nice man, your dad,” she said wistfully, then added, “Pity his son isn’t more like him.”
She hunted about for the radio, found it and tried to switch it on, but had no idea what she was doing. She looked at Kyle standing behind her, openmouthed and looking like he was trying to catch flies.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I always thought you were . . .”
“Human?” she suggested. “We made your father promise he wouldn’t tell anyone about us. Could you imagine if he’d gone back to the mainland and told people there was a secret island out there beyond the horizon, with talking dragons living on it? He ’d have been locked up, or if they had believed him, they’d have tried to find the island, to catch us or kill us or put us in their zoos. Now, how do you switch this on? I really would like to speak to Hector.”
She flicked a few switches and the radio crackled a little, but remained resolutely silent. Kyle sighed and flicked the switches back to their original positions.
“You can’t speak to Dad,” he said softly.
“And why not?” asked Shona sharply. “Why can’t I speak to him? I demand to speak to your father!”
“You’ll have a hard time,” replied Kyle. “He died four years ago.”
Shona slumped back on her haunches. “Hector is dead?” she said. She had forgotten that humans didn’t live as long as dragons. Tears brimmed in her big yellow eyes.
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” she said, a teardrop running down her scaly face.
Kyle nodded in agreement and pulled an oily rag from his pocket for her to use as a handkerchief. The man and dragon shared a moment of remembrance before Bertie and Aldiss interrupted them. The dodo and rat had heard everything.
“Shona,” said Bertie. “I’m sorry to be a nuisance, I know you’ve just been given sad news, but time is of the essence. If Kyle won’t take us, we must find another way to get there.”
Shona wiped a tear from her eye and sniffed. She got up.
“You’re right,” she said. “We must go.” Without looking back at Kyle she strode out of the bridge and joined her friends on the deck.
“Wait!” Kyle called after her. “Wait! I’ll take you!”
“You will?” cried Shona, delighted. “But I thought you wouldn’t have a dragon on the boat!”
“That was before I found out you were house-trained!” He chuckled.
On another boat far out to sea, Morag was hiding. She had heard loud heavy footsteps near her cabin door and, in a panic, had squeezed down the side of the bunk and pulled the covers over her head. Henry was very scathing about her choice of hiding place.
“Oh, they’ll never find you in here!” he said sarcastically.
“Do you think so?” she asked, teeth chattering from fear.
“Of course they’ll find you!” he snapped. “Silly girl. This is the first place they’ll look!”
Clump, clump, clump. Silence. The footsteps stopped outside the cabin door. Morag pulled the covers tighter around her head and closed her eyes. She could hear someone jingling what sounded like a bunch of keys on a chain. A key went into a lock and turned with a loud scratching noise. The metal handle of the door was rattled and the door pushed open. It whined noisily. Clump, clump, clump. The footsteps came inside the cabin. She held her breath. Her heart beat loudly in her chest. It thumped so hard she felt it was going to leap out of her throat. She was shaking and clasped Henry tightly.
The footsteps moved closer and closer to where they were hiding. Closer and closer, and louder and louder. And then they stopped. The covers were grabbed from Morag’s head and yanked away. Someone peered intently into her startled face.
“Ah, there you are!” said a very elderly giantess. “What are you doing down there?” she asked kindly. “Come on, up you get, on your feet.”
She put out a hand for Morag and, not knowing what else to do, the girl took it. She hadn’t expected the footsteps to belong to an old lady. She’d expected a big beefy man or a monster or she didn’t know what, but not this. The tall old lady was surprisingly strong and swiftly pulled the shocked girl to her feet.
“Now, you sit down and I’ll bring the tray in,” she told her. With a lazy wave of her hand, she indicated for Morag to sit on one of the bunks, but the girl was too stunned to move. The last few hours were beginning to get to her. She felt like she wanted to run away and hide and never come back, but of course she couldn’t do that because she was now a prisoner on this boat.
“Sit down!” the old lady said again sharply. “Do as you’re told, deary, and you and me will get on just fine. Don’t do as you’re told and you and me will have a falling-out, and we don’t want that. Do you understand me?”
Morag nodded dumbly.
“Well, sit down, then, and I’ll get you your tray.”
Without taking her eyes off the old woman, Morag sat down on the nearest bunk. She suddenly felt very tired and very upset and wanted to cry, but she held back the tears.
The old lady clumped out of the cabin and came back seconds later with a huge tray bearing a steaming hot bowl of porridge, a plate of buttered toast, a glass of orange juice and a giant mug of hot milky tea. She put the tray on the bunk next to Morag.
“Now get this down you, you’ve got a long way to go yet,” muttered the old lady as she turned her back to Morag and walked to the door.
“Wait!” said Morag. “Don’t go yet. Where am I? What am I doing here?”
The old lady turned round and smiled.
“Don’t you know, deary?” she said pleasantly. Morag shook her head. “Ah well, that’s not for me to say, then. You’ll find out soon enough.”
“But you’re holding me prisoner against my will!” Morag cried. She stood up, and as she did so, her knee nudged the tray, sending the mug of tea rocking, spilling some of its hot contents. The old lady tutted, but did nothing to clean it up.
“Best get that down you before you lose any more,” she chuckled.
“Where am I?” insisted Morag. “I demand to know.”
“ ‘Demand,’ is it?” the old lady said with a chuckle. “You’d best get rid of that attitude, deary. He doesn’t like his maidservants having attitudes, you know. Of course, that all depends if he chooses you in the first place. He might not like you.”
“Who won’t like me? What are you talking about?” Morag wanted to know. The woman was talking in riddles.
The old lady looked at her as if she were weighing her up.
“Of course, there’s no reason why he won’t like you, you’ve got all the right attributes. Young, strong, pretty. You never know, when you’re old enough you might be lucky enough to be chosen as his fourth wife. I hear he’s looking for another,” she said.
“Who is? Who are you talking about?” Morag took a step toward the old lady. She had intended to grab her and shake the information out of her, but the old lady was too quick. She stepped out of the cabin and slammed and locked the door before Morag realized what was happening.
“Eat up, deary,” the old woman called from the other side of the cabin door. “We don’t want you losing any more weight. You’re skinny enough. He doesn’t like them skinny, you know. You eat up and keep your strength up, you’ll need it.”
Cackling loudly to herself, the old lady walked away. Morag counted the footsteps as they walked along the corridor and went up the stairs.
“Oh, that was well played,” said Henry. “You really got a lot of information out of her.”
“Oh, be quiet, Henry!” said Morag crossly. She sat down on the bunk again and took up a piece of toast. Now she really was frightened. Who was this mysterious “he”? And, from what the old lady had said, was she to become a maidservant to this man? Or worse, his new wife?
Although she didn’t know who she was going to or where she was being taken, Morag shuddered. For the first time in her life, she wished she were back at home with Jermy and Moira.
High on the hill overlooking the harbor, two lanky, hairy creatures that stank very badly were watching the dragon, the rat and the dodo on the fishing boat. In their high-pitched voices, the creatures, Klapp demons, chattered to each other about what to do next. They knew that what they were witnessing—a dragon, a rat and a dodo getting on a fishing boat and probably heading for Murst—might be important to their master, but, equally, they knew that when he went to Marnoch Mor on business, Devlish didn’t like to be disturbed.
“I think we should tell him,” said the larger Klapp demon, whose name was Tanktop (Klapp demons almost always had peculiar names—it was a tradition amongst their people to name their offspring after things from human catalogs. Tanktop had brothers and sisters called Skirt, Blouse, Stocking, Soft Leather Glove and Court Shoe). “Keep ourselves right. If this turns out to be really important and we don’t tell him, he’ll probably kill us.”
“I’m not sure,” said the other Klapp demon, whose name was Percolator. “Remember what happened to Kettle!”
They both shuddered. Kettle had been a rather small, particularly sneaky Klapp demon who had risen up through the ranks to become a general in Devlish’s Klapp demon army.
One day, Kettle had discovered something he felt Devlish, who was away at the Witches’, Warlocks’ and Wizards’ Convention in Marnoch Mor, should know. So, traveling under cars, he made his way to Marnoch Mor to his master.
On arrival, Devlish, who had been booed off stage at the convention, was in a stinking mood. He demanded to know why Kettle had disturbed him, and when the quaking demon gave him the information, he told Kettle it was irrelevant and turned him into a large bale of hay that was promptly eaten by the Shire horses tethered to Devlish’s carriage (there are no cars in Marnoch Mor and everyone gets around by horse and cart or by walking).
“Nevertheless,” said Tanktop, “I’m sure he might want to know about this. That boat is heading in the direction of Murst.”
“We don’t know that for certain,” said Percolator.
Tanktop held a set of small binoculars up to his eyes. He nodded sagely.
“They’re definitely heading for Murst,” he said. “I can feel it in my bones. That dragon’s going home, make no mistake about that.”
“What shall we do?” asked Percolator.
“We are doing nothing,” replied Tanktop. “You are going to go to Marnoch Mor to tell Devlish and I am going back to Murst. I want to see what that dragon, bird and rat are up to.”
Percolator began to shake.
“Please, Tanktop, don’t make me go tell Devlish. I don’t want to end up being eaten by horses. Please, Tank-top,” he pleaded. “I’ll do anything else, but not that. He’ll kill me.”
Tanktop grinned, showing off a set of small, sharp and very yellow teeth. He put a long hairy arm around his Klapp demon comrade.
“Don’t worry, Percolator,” he said softly. “You won’t feel a thing.”
“Oooh, Tanktop!” the other demon sobbed. “Please don’t send me. Please!”
Tanktop sighed.
“Just do it,” he said. He lifted the binoculars again. “You must go and tell him. It’s important.”
“But—”
“That’s an order!” barked Tanktop. He growled at his companion, baring his second pair of teeth, set, as they are with all Klapp demons, at the back of the mouth.
Percolator recoiled. He knew he had no choice. Tanktop was a senior officer in the Klapp demon Secret Police and he must do as he ordered. With a small sigh, he turned away from his superior and began to walk in the very ungainly, typically Klapp demonish manner down the hill.
“And hurry up!” shouted Tanktop after him. “Devlish needs to know about this immediately!”
Without turning back, the Klapp demon nodded and upped his pace. He began to run down the hill to the roadside where he would hide until a car or a truck went by. With a heart so heavy it felt like there was a large stone in it, Percolator reached the roadside and found a suitable hiding place. This is probably the last time I’ll do this, he thought miserably, for Devlish will kill me as soon as look at me.
As he waited for a vehicle to pass, he deliberately did not look back up the hill to Tanktop. If he had, he would have seen Tanktop scuttle from his vantage point and run down the hill toward the harbor. There, Tanktop crept up to the row of fishing boats to which Sea Kelpie was tethered and made his way along the row of boats until he reached Kyle’s. He boarded the little vessel silently and hid himself in a large vat used to store fish on trips out to sea. It was a perfect hiding place for a Klapp demon. No one would detect his kind’s distinctive stench over the equally horrible smell of rotting fish.
11
Morag spent the entire day locked up in the cabin, her only companion the sarcastic and bad-tempered medallion. She occasionally saw the old lady, but only when she brought her food. Despite her pleas to learn more about her destination, the giantess would not tell her anything, and Morag became even more fearful about where she was being taken—and why. The hours passed as she lay on her bunk, her stomach churning with terror about what lay ahead. Eventually the droning hum of the engine and the gentle rocking of the boat encouraged her to drift off to sleep.
Morag slept without interruption. She hadn’t realized how utterly exhausted she was, and despite the strangeness of the last few days and her fears, she didn’t dream at all.
“Wake up, girl,” a gruff voice said suddenly. “Come on, it’s time to go.”
She slowly opened her eyes. Standing before her, shifting from foot to foot, was a giant dark-haired boy dressed in armor. He wore a rusting metal helmet and held a battle-axe in one hand. He looked a little older than her, but was as tall as a grown human man and just as broad.
