Dragon Skin, page 1
‘I’m in love with this book. Dragon Skin is surprising, beautiful, unique. The characters are wonderfully drawn – tough but vulnerable, hurt but hopeful, damaged but strong. They’ve lodged themselves in my heart forever.’
KATRINA NANNESTAD
‘Dragon Skin is a book to make us believe in mysterious
openings and infinite possibilities. It reminds us that love
is what we need to save things.’
EDWINA WYATT
‘I loved this story. It’s a delicate, heartwarming tale of friendship, healing and hope.’
BREN MACDIBBLE
‘Dragon Skin explores what it really means to love, to nurture and to let go. This book will make your heart burst with courage and hope.’
LEANNE HALL
ALSO BY KAREN FOXLEE
Lenny’s Book of Everything
Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy
A Most Magical Girl
First published by Allen & Unwin in 2021
Copyright © Text, Karen Foxlee 2021
Copyright © Illustrations, Dale Newman 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Email: info@allenandunwin.com
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
ISBN 978 1 76052 610 8
eISBN 978 1 76106 289 6
For teaching resources, explore www.allenandunwin.com/resources/for-teachers
Cover and text design by Hannah Janzen
Cover and internal images: (stars) © Midnight Grim/Creative Market
Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia
For my sister Ruth
CONTENTS
ACT I
ACT II
ACT III
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
SHE DIDN’T WANT TO GO HOME AND THAT’S why she found it. If she’d gone home through the newly dark roads, washing her feet in streetlight pools, she would have found her mother in the kitchen making dinner looking scared. Matt would have come home and the screen door would have slammed hard and his tool bag would have crashed down on the kitchen bench. They would have flinched, her mother and her, waiting, but everything would have been normal.
She was the kind of girl who liked to dig with a stick in the dirt though. She liked to upturn things, searching for treasure: rocks, old bottles and silvery wine cask bladders, toothbrushes, coins, the carcasses of handbags. These strange things were swept up and snagged at the riverbend and left to dry once the water was gone. A wallet emptied out and brittle. Parts of a saddle. A belt buckle with the insignia of the silver mine.
She knew all the creek’s white rock, all its blond grass and bleached trees. She knew the sun going down, the galahs screeching, rising and settling, rising and settling in the trees. She sat with her feet dipped in the waterhole and watched the night approach. The waterhole was a small deep pool of water that never dried up. It remained there even after the river flooded and then dried out to its normal self; a skin of stones and silt cracked into a million scales.
Mika always said, Whatever you do Pip, take your feet out at night because that’s when the bunyip comes out.
She drew her feet out and sat in the dusk. Her stomach whined. Mika was a long time ago. Mika was months and months and months ago. The lights came on in the houses behind the trees. She felt the warm air against her wet legs. She waited for the part when the last ray of sun hit the creek stones, a brief moment when the whole riverbed shone and then was swallowed up by shadow. She promised herself she’d go home after that.
Only it was in that moment that she found it.
It didn’t look like much at first, a scrap of something, fabric maybe, a snakeskin twisted around a stick perhaps, but that last wave of light caught it directly, shone it up bright, a burst of pinks and golds and greens, a small fire. Then was gone.
‘Hey,’ she said to herself and to the brand-new night. She was up, striding towards the spot just metres away, with her digging stick. ‘Hey,’ she said, softer, because she knew. She knew exactly what it was.
Later, she’d think about it over and over. When they were leaving and knew they’d never go back home again. When she’d grown that other skin. She knew what it was before she stood up. Even before she saw it shining there. She’d always known it.
SHE KEPT ITS SMALL HUSK OF A BODY CLOSE to her chest as she walked home through the streets. She made a cradle with her T-shirt and nursed it there. It was the size of a small kitten, hairless, a little lump for its belly and legs curled beneath. There was a tangle of something on its back, like fishing net. It was half-dead. Almost dead. It made a sound as she nursed it, a dry leaf sound, a dying sound. ‘It’ll be okay, Little Fella,’ she said to it. ‘It’ll be okay.’
Her house was three streets from the creek and her feet could have walked her there by themselves. All the houses were the same, each and every one. Mining company houses with pale corrugated skins, six cement stumps and one small patio. Each house she passed, the outdoor air conditioners shuddered and hummed to themselves. Some evenings that’s all you could hear; air conditioners thrumming and out on the highway the road trains coming in from the desert sounding their horns.
She passed the Lees’ house, keeping her head down and the thing wrapped up in her shirt. Mrs Lee, watering her buffalo grass in the dark, saw her though.
‘What are you doing out so late again, Pip?’
‘Nothing,’ said Pip.
Mrs Lee raised the hose and sprayed water after Pip’s feet. ‘Hope you’re not stealing Mrs Watson’s pawpaws again?’ she called, laughing. Pip was already running, turning the corner to home.
Pip wanted to stop, to look again at its dark withered shape, but she didn’t. When she’d glanced at it beneath the first streetlight home, her heart had swelled and it had been a sorrowful rushing inflation. She needed to help it soon or it would die.
‘It’ll be okay Little Fella,’ she whispered, opening the metal front gate as quietly as she could. She needed a plan yet a plan evaded her. There was no plan for someone home late carrying a nearly dead dragon.
‘Pippa,’ shouted her mother. ‘Don’t you try to sneak past me!’
She must have heard Pip’s footsteps in the hallway, even though Pip had tiptoed. Pip ran the last steps to her room and pulled a hoodie from a drawer and made a little nest for the creature on a shelf in her wardrobe.
‘Pippa!’ This time it was even louder.
‘I’m coming,’ said Pip. One last glance at the thing lying curled there. ‘Ouch,’ she said because her heart had done that thing again. That big thing. An aching swell like a kicked toe grown fat. Could kids have heart attacks the way old people did? She shut the wardrobe as her mother appeared at her bedroom door.
‘Ouch?’ said her mum, looking at Pip standing there holding her heart. ‘What? Are you hurt?’
‘No,’ said Pip.
‘Where’ve you been?’ Softer, her eyes moving to Pip’s dirty legs, the scratches over her shins, and then up to her tear-streaked face. ‘Creek again? Seriously, Pip. You know we’ve talked about this.’
‘Sorry,’ said Pip.
‘It’s a school night.’
‘I know, but school is nearly finished.’
‘It’s so late. It’s dark for god’s sake. You’re ten.’
‘I was just sitting there,’ said Pip. ‘I forgot time.’
That wasn’t true. She never forgot time. She knew every single moment of time at the creek at dusk. The shadowy stripes of the silver box trees falling down into the lap of stones. The sun dipping down to wink behind the bent branch of a ghost gum, the number of rises and falls it took for the galahs to go to sleep.
‘I promise,’ Pip said, not even sure what she was promising.
‘He’s not coming back,’ said her mum. ‘He is not coming back.’
‘I know that,’ Pip whispered.
Pip took the embrace her mother offered; a sweaty, gym pants, gardening-smell hug. She must have been trying to save her dying roses again. The angry moment had passed. Her mother could never stay angry for long.
‘It’ll be all right,’ said her mother. ‘It’s okay to be sad. Don’t hang out there at night. Okay? Hanging out in the dark doesn’t change anything. Quickly, shower. I’ve made spaghetti.’
‘Okay,’ said Pip.
At the dining room table, Pip twirled her spaghetti.
‘It was hot,’ said her mum, sitting opposite, ‘about an hour ago.’
‘I’m not complaining,’ said Pip.
She was wondering if the dragon was still alive in the little hoodie nest. It had been after the world’s fastest shower. She’d peeked into the wardrobe and seen its little belly rising and falling, heard its ever so small rasping breath. The sorrowful swelling in her chest almost lifted her off the ground. She was wondering how to save a dragon.
Stay calm Pip, Mika said quietly in her head. Keep your nerve. Eat your spaghetti and think. What do you need to save a dragon?
Relief made her sink back into her chair. She was always so glad when he spoke to her. Just when she thought he’d gone for good, there he was.
Remember that time we saved Ursa? Mika said. Remember?
Kittens are different to dragons, she silently answered him.
‘Eat up,’ said Mum. ‘Look you’re hardly even touching your dinner and it’s so late and Matt will be home soon if you don’t hurry and what will he say if he sees you still sitting here eating dinner and not in bed?’
It was a rhetorical question. Pip needn’t have answered. Matt liked Pip in her room with the light off and the door closed so he could have her mum all to himself. He didn’t like any competition. Competition made him angry.
‘He’ll go off his brain.’
That was the wrong answer. There was the glimmer of tears in her mum’s eyes.
‘Eat up, okay?’ she said.
Pip, you are going to need medical supplies and food, Mika said. Sugary food. Sugar helps sick things.
‘I’m going as fast as I can,’ Pip said to her mother. ‘I mean, spaghetti is the least fast-eating food there is.’
Her mother laughed.
‘God, what am I going to do with you?’ she said.
‘Don’t know.’ Pip smiled back, mouth full of spaghetti. But she was thinking about the dragon in her wardrobe.
THE THING WITH DRAGONS WAS THAT NO ONE expected to find one. No one in the world would be ready for such a thing. There was no section in the library between Pet Care and Gardening called Dragon Care. Pip looked at her mother who was looking at her phone. Pip would have told her if it was in the before time. She would have told her and her mother would have listened the way she used to listen. Not like now, like she could only half-hear. Like she had a song in her head or a puzzle she was trying to solve.
She would have stopped whatever she was doing and come to help.
Her mother smiled a half-smile as she scrolled.
One-minute quiz what’s your body type five fail-safe recipes seven-day meal prep for weight loss see the great barrier reef five best workouts to blast belly fat does he really love you online oracle fifty-day declutter your life challenge summer dresses to suit your body shape common problems with roses, why are my roses dying?
‘I better have a shower,’ her mother said, still staring into the screen. ‘You get ready for bed.’
Pip searched through the medicine drawer in the kitchen when she heard the shower turn on. The drawer contained sting cream and bandaids and Ichthammol, which her mother used for drawing out rose thorns. Panadol, asthma puffers and an eye-dropper, which Pip put in her dressing-gown pocket. Mika and her had used that eye-dropper for a baby bird they’d found on the way home from school. They’d kept it in an empty margarine carton and dropped water into its mouth until Pip’s mum had taken it to the vet.
See, there was the bird too, remember that? We’ve got a good track record at saving things.
She found a plastic syringe. A plastic syringe would be perfect! Her grandmother was a wildlife carer in Townsville; she’d seen her use a syringe with a baby possum.
Herbal sleeping tablets, Deep Heat gel, anti-fungal toe cream. Her fingers flicked through the drawer. She took the bandaids. A pair of scissors. Two cups of water, a spoon and the sugar pot. Eye-dropper and syringe aside, none of it really seemed like the type of stuff that could save a dragon.
When her supplies were safely in the top drawer of her bedside table, she stood at her door until the shower stopped.
‘Good night.’
‘Night.’ Her mum kissed Pip on the forehead. ‘You okay?’
‘Yes,’ said Pip, even though she had a dragon to save.
In her bedroom with the night light on and her door closed, she scooped the little thing out of the wardrobe in its hoodie nest. She sat with it in her lap, curled, the way a caterpillar curls itself when something wants to eat it. Its head was much bigger than its body and that head was nestled down inside the circle its body made. Its long tail looped around it. It didn’t have spikes, the way dragons in stories had spikes, but on its back and tail there were small tufts of papery stuff. It had the nubs of two little horns upon its nose. She resisted the urge to touch them even though the urge was strong. It was definitely a baby dragon. Not a lizard. Not a baby croc.
‘I’m not imagining you,’ she whispered to it.
It had three claws on each foot, caked in river dust, and its body was coated all over too, as though it had laid there for a long time.
‘I’m not imagining you, am I?’
It was thin. Its rib cage showed with each tiny breath. Its wings were tangled. At least she thought they were wings: they were dark, delicate, completely in tatters, the way old black garbage bags looked at the dump, stuck to barbed wire fences. They were torn.
She would have to fix those rips but first she’d have to stop it from dying.
She heard her mother’s footsteps in the hall and held her breath.
‘Love you,’ her mother said, then, ‘remember to turn out your night-light too.’
Remember to disappear. Remember to stay quiet. Remember to not exist.
‘I will,’ said Pip. ‘Love you.’
She spooned sugar into a cup and mixed in water.
She sucked up the liquid with a syringe and tentatively placed her finger on the little dragon’s mouth, moved it gently, carefully, trying to find a place to insert the tip. It didn’t move, just took its tiny rasping breaths. Small, sharp teeth by the glow of her night-light and right at the back, a very small gap. She inserted the syringe tip and squirted slowly.
It dribbled out.
She tried again.
The little thing made a gurgling noise.
‘It’s okay, Little Fella,’ she whispered. ‘You have to swallow.’
She swapped to the eye-dropper. She placed her fingers against the snout, prised gently, opening the tiny mouth filled with needle-sharp teeth and a dry thing that could only be its tongue. She squeezed the bulb of the eye-dropper gently and let a single drop of sugary liquid fall into the mouth.
‘Come on, Little Fella.’ Its tiny body convulsed in response to the drop and she saw the rippling of its throat as it swallowed.
She arranged her equipment on her bedside table quickly. Cup of sugary water. Eye-dropper. Tissues for mopping up excess dribble. She kept one hand on mouth-opening duty and one hand for eye-dropper duty. She let the dragon rest after each three drops. Three drops was all it seemed to manage before that rippling swallow weakened and the liquid pooled from the side of its little mouth.
The light from the television in her mother’s room bled under her door. Green, then blue, then white. Her mum would be staring into that light. Rhinestone caftans, knives that never go blunt, steam mops, ab-trainers. The complete crystal healing set. Bach flower oils, the robo-vacuum, holiday clubs. Her mum would gaze into that glow like a princess into a pond, wishing and wishing.
In the pauses between swallows, Pip touched the dragon’s scales with her fingertips. They felt strange but, even stranger, not unfamiliar. She had never touched a dragon before, she was one hundred per cent certain, yet she felt like she had. There was no explaining that. And she was almost certain, suddenly, that Little Fella was a boy. She had no knowledge of how to confirm this, just knew.
‘You’re going to be all right,’ she told him, lying there curled in her lap. ‘Little Fella, that’s your name.’
Little Fella.
She whispered it, again and again. In the darkened room she fed him and whispered to him without stopping for what seemed like hours. Three drops. Rest. Three drops. Rest. Three drops. Rest.
When she heard the screen door slam open and Matt’s tool bag crash down onto the kitchen bench, those sounds barely registered. Even the sound of her mother’s quick, soft footsteps, ready to placate him, seemed to come from a faraway place.
PIP WOKE TO DAWN LIGHT AND THE EYE-dropper still in her hand. The dragon had vomited in the bed beside her. It was a dark spray over the hoodie and part of the pillow. The outside of the dragon might have been dry and shrivelled but the inside of him smelled wild; grassy, sky-filled and tart as grapefruit.
