Dragon Skin, page 10
Her mother raised her eyes from the phone and stared at Pip, as though she was going to say something. Something really important.
Maybe: I know you have a dragon.
Maybe: Let’s run away, Pip. I know I’ve said it before, but I really want to now. You’re right, we’ll take the car. We’ll go while he’s at work.
Maybe—
There was a knock at the door.
‘Bit early in the morning on a Sunday,’ said her mum.
Pip was frozen. What if it were the authorities? Maybe Laura Denning told her mother and her mother has phoned the council stray animals department. Or the police.
If it was the police she’d have to run fast. That was one thing she was good at; she won all her races at school. She’d run to the wardrobe. Dragon into backpack. Down the back stairs, over the back fence.
‘Quick, before it wakes Matt,’ hissed Mum.
‘Okay, okay,’ whispered Pip. She took a breath and opened the front door.
IT WAS ONLY LAURA.
‘Hi Laura,’ said Mum, smiling. ‘You’re early.’
‘Couldn’t sleep,’ said Laura with a weak smile. She was pale, worried-looking although her hair was elaborately braided. She was wearing a yellow shirt festooned with glitter love hearts and the words ‘I BELIEVE IN UNICORNS’ but her face was different; there were dark crescents beneath her eyes.
‘Have you told someone?’ said Pip, when they were in her bedroom.
‘No,’ said Laura. ‘I’ve just been thinking. All night.’
Pip couldn’t smell Laura today. That sudden and strange power seemed to have evaporated. She could still sense that something was wrong though. Pip opened the wardrobe door and Little Fella was waiting for them, golden-eyed. Laura made a noise, a sigh, an almost moan.
‘Come on, Little Fella,’ Pip said, scooping him up in the hoodie nest. She sat on the bed and Laura began to mush Weet-Bix without even being asked. The worried look faded a little on her face. Little Fella gobbled and gulped down two bowls in quick succession.
‘I brought this,’ said Laura, taking a little pink blanket, a doll’s blanket, from her mauve backpack.
‘Thanks,’ said Pip, trying to hide her disdain.
Through Laura’s left braid there was a purple ribbon threaded. Beneath the yellow ‘I BELIEVE IN UNICORNS’ T-shirt, there was a white denim skirt and to complete the outfit she was wearing glitter flats. It was totally impractical dress for dragon care. But Pip noticed something else about her. She had some words on her tongue and she wasn’t saying them.
‘Spit it out,’ said Pip.
The worried expression returned to Laura’s face. Worried was not a normal expression for Laura. Laura could look pouty, petulant at times, if she didn’t get her own way at school, through to supremely self-confident, self-assured and smug.
‘Um,’ said Laura and her face crumpled a little before she quickly composed herself.
‘I did warn you,’ said Pip, feeling her way around Laura’s unsaid words. ‘I mean, you can’t not know it once you know it.’
‘It’s not that,’ said Laura, quickly. Tears welled in her blue eyes. She blinked them away. Softer, ‘It’s not that.’
‘What then?’
‘It’s just … I keep thinking. I keep feeling.’
‘Feeling what?’
‘A song.’
She said it so powerfully that some of those tears shook loose and a little snot too from her nose. She made a noise, like she was going to wail or cry, but she did neither. Her face flushed and a storm of blotches appeared with the effort of her trying to stop the tears.
Pip was surprised by how strong Laura actually was, fighting the urge of that song.
And to tell the truth, she was jealous. Because she thought it was only her with the singing. She thought it was Little Fella’s connection with her. Apparently, he made anyone who came in contact with him want to sing those songs that they’d forgotten about. It wasn’t a burning jealousy; she let it go as quickly as it came. She felt a sudden wave of pity for Laura who was fighting it and then she returned to begrudging admiration.
‘Laura,’ she said.
Laura was staring at the window, intent on ignoring Little Fella, who was looking backwards and forwards between them, waiting for his Weet-Bix.
‘What?’
‘You shouldn’t fight it.’
A sob then. A real big gulpy snotty sob.
Because poor Laura never knew anything but stuff: purple ribbons and hula hoops and apps that dressed up kittens and pony club and light-up sneakers and squishy makeovers onYouTube and how to make pink glitter slime and now, now, she had a forgotten song inside her that was dark and deep and she was looking at a dragon with golden eyes.
When Laura sang it was different. It was like Laura was a true dragon singer. That’s the only title for it, Pip thought: a True Dragon Singer. If there were any small crumbs of jealousy leftover, they were blown away with leaf blower force, because Laura’s singing was meant to be. Laura sang the truth.
Her first note was long and beautiful and she seemed so shocked by it that tears just fell out of her eyes. The shock passed quickly though, because there was another note coming from deeper down and she needed to let it come up to the surface. Laura’s song was sweet and sad. It wasn’t growly and guttural and full of gritty hums like Pip’s. Laura’s notes were clear. You could almost hear the sky in them. Other places. The tilting earth.
Little Fella, his belly full of Weet-Bix, gazed at Laura. He shuddered slightly, a yes, and climbed into Pip’s lap. Laura wiggled forwards, so that their knees were touching, still singing. Pip could smell her up close like that; a toothpaste and clean clothes smell but her song-words, they were different. They were made of stone and steep places and storms.
Laura touched Little Fella. She hovered her hands over him. She touched his dark scales, the tufts of papery stuff on his back, and then her attention turned to his paddle-popped and sticky-taped wings. She folded out one wing gently and sang. Her notes undulated, up and down, like the wind.
Pip cried. Or at least she must have because when Laura had finished and the song had dried up, the way those songs did, her cheeks were wet.
‘You’re good at that,’ said Pip, after a while.
Little Fella was asleep in her lap. His wings looked the same but Pip knew they were stronger. ‘Good’ wasn’t the right word though, she knew that, even as she said it. She shrugged, shook her head. Kids were ‘good’ at drawing and weaving friendship bracelets and running cross-country. This couldn’t be more different. Laura seemed much calmer now. Her eyes were puffy from crying but she smiled.
‘You know what I mean,’ Pip said. ‘You’re a proper Dragon Singer or something.’
‘Yeah,’ Laura said, accepting that role without any of her usual boastfulness.
They sat there quietly watching him. Matt still slept. Pip’s mother drank coffee in the sunshine staring at the green shoots on her roses. Mika was silent in her head, like he knew this wasn’t his place to say anything.
Like he knew Pip had a friend in this.
A real live friend.
A friend who could help her save that dragon and send it home.
Pip’s hand ached suddenly, a new sharp ache, and her skin tightened from her fingertips to her shoulder and then across her chest.
‘You know,’ said Pip, softly and so very sadly, ‘we can’t keep him forever.’
‘I KNOW A HILL‚’ SHE’D TOLD MIKA AFTER those first few months, almost like she was talking about an old friend. Of all her places it was the hardest for her to share so she’d saved it to last.
There was a road that ran right past her hill. It led to the cemetery and the dump. When she stepped off that road and threw her bike into the gully though, she always felt far away from anywhere. And, in a way that she couldn’t explain in words, she always felt that hill was waiting for her.
It was hummock grass and spinifex spotted, filled with spiny crooked places. Parts of that hill leaned at unnatural angles; it folded in on itself in pleats. It provided ledges on the desert side for viewing the vastness of things and ledges on the town side for viewing the huge dark mine, the smelters and stacks gushing sulphur fumes up into the cloudless blue sky. It offered up worn paths that led to nowhere but sheer drops.
When she thought she’d explored it all, she’d find something else: a stand of jagged edged stone, folded into the mountain’s side; a silver tree, its heart eaten out and replaced with a chamber of termites’ scribblings; a tiny blood-red sapling trying to grow itself out of a crack in a rock.
Yet all that time it had kept the cave a secret from her.
Kept it for the right time. Until Mika was there.
They discovered it after days of exploring and doing dangerous things. Things she wouldn’t have done without a partner. Picking their way down into the pleats and crouching in the dark, shaded spaces before climbing back out again. The cave was there waiting on the desert side beneath a path that led to the side of the hill. Mika lay down and she’d held his legs so he could shuffle forwards as far as possible to see what was below.
‘There’s rock but it’s got good foot places, apart from this first bit. There’s a ledge down there.’
‘How far down?’
‘A couple of metres.’
A couple of metres didn’t seem much. Not on that hill with the huge blue dome of the sky above them. She’d gone over first, because she was good at rock climbing. She said it and Mika didn’t disagree because he wasn’t the sort of boy who thought boys were better at everything than girls. He stayed on his belly, ready to give her his hand if she got stuck.
It was true the hill gave no help for the first part. It deliberately wanted to keep that ledge hidden. She climbed backwards over the edge and had to stretch her leg a long way down to find the first place for her foot, but once her foot was there, it was easier. Mika’s hand grew farther away. It was a reckless idea. One slip. One fall in the wrong direction and there was nothing …
It was terrifyingly exciting.
She could see the ledge now and the cave that had been hidden by the overhang.
‘There’s a cave!’ she cried before jumping the last metre to the ground.
It took longer for Mika, that first time, but she coaxed him.
‘To the right,’ she said, of the first stage, ‘and reach down.’
‘I’m not Mr Stretch,’ he said, laughing nervously and his laughing made her laugh, him hanging there like that, gripping onto nothing but stone.
‘You have to stretch,’ she said.
When he’d jumped the last metre, they’d both stood there mesmerised by the place. They crept in under the rock overhang and touched their hands to the ceiling. Sat on the packed earth floor, barely breathing.
‘I don’t know how we’re going to get back up,’ said Mika breathlessly. She could tell he was scared.
‘It’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘Think of it as stretching in the opposite direction.’
That day, in the cave, the whole complicated human world disappeared. There was only the view of the desert, red-hilled, speckled-yellow, shimmering with heat.
‘It’s kind of like a secret place, like your tunnel in your old house,’ she said and the words sounded loud and unnecessary in that place.
‘Yeah,’ he said, unusually quiet for Mika. He drew a spiral in the red dirt and Pip watched his finger.
She waited for a story but it didn’t come; he simply stared out at the desert. They sat side by side not speaking, and the silence felt good.
‘I feel like I’m sitting in the hill’s mouth,’ said Mika at last.
‘What?’ she said.
Mika laughed softly. ‘That’s what it feels like.’
Pip giggled.
‘Hope it’s not hungry,’ she said.
That day they found a black shard of stone, shiny and smooth, and it was the first of the stones she’d take home. He’d picked it up after they’d climbed back up from the cave reluctantly, him behind her, following each of her footholds.
‘You can almost see your reflection in it,’ he said, holding it to his face then handing it to her. ‘I think it’s a meteor. I bet a million dollars it’s a meteor.’
‘It’s cool,’ she said. ‘We should show it to someone.’
‘Maybe,’ he said.
When she went to give it back to him, he put up his hand.
‘You keep it,’ he said.
‘You found it,’ said Pip.
They’d found so much that day. Pip felt full with all they’d found: the stone, silence, a whole secret cave.
‘I want you to have it,’ he said.
SOMETIMES WHEN MATT WOKE ON SUNDAY mornings it was like a bear waking up from hibernation. As though all that loud television and all those beer cans were months ago. He made a snuffling noise first and then a grunting noise. Then he grunted and snuffled together. He got up and, as he got up, he roared. He slammed the toilet door and the house shook. He fumbled around in the bathroom, coughing and spitting. He ran the tap hard so that it screeched in protest.
Sometimes. Mostly. Nearly always.
Pip hoped it wasn’t this morning. They sat, Laura and her, knees touching with the sleeping Little Fella between them. The songs were dried up and the tears were gone. Laura was looking at him with fascination. He was curled tight as an ammonite, his head deep inside his tail, which was plump now, deep black, shimmering with the deepest blue.
‘We should go,’ Pip said. Her ears were tuned to her mother and Matt’s bedroom, listening for any sound.
‘Where?’
‘I know a cave,’ said Pip.
‘A cave?’ Laura said and Pip could almost see her picturing it, dark and foul-smelling, dripping.
‘It’s a nice cave,’ said Pip quickly.
‘Okay.’
Pip placed the pink doll’s blanket in her backpack and lowered the sleeping Little Fella onto it, then put the backpack on. It felt natural, that action, the weight of him. A dragon on her back, sleeping. She should probably have a role too, the way Laura was a True Dragon Singer, but she didn’t know what hers should be. Dragon Carrier? That wasn’t right. Dragon Saver? No. Dragon Carer? Weird. Dragon Keeper. Definitely not right, because she knew he couldn’t be kept, although that last name made the breath catch in her throat.
‘Umm, you can’t go in your pyjamas,’ giggled Laura.
And suddenly they were just Pip and Laura, two very different girls from Grade Five.
‘I knew that,’ Pip laughed.
She put the backpack down and slipped out of her pyjama shorts and shirt while Laura turned her back. She put on her old shorts and a green T-shirt and then slipped her feet into her grubby old Dunlop sneakers. She grabbed her hair into a rough ponytail without brushing it.
‘Do you want me to braid that?’ offered Laura.
Pip made a face.
‘Seriously, it’s pretty bad,’ said Laura.
Pip shrugged. She sat back on the bed and waited.
‘Brush?’ asked Laura.
‘Oh yeah, it’s somewhere here,’ said Pip. She opened the rock drawer by accident, closed it just as quickly.
Laura eyed the brush she was handed with distaste, but she went to work. She brushed, divided, started to weave.
‘Do you have any ribbon?’
‘Um, no,’ said Pip.
Laura sighed.
Life without ribbons, Pip could almost hear her thinking. What would that possibly be like? The skin on her left arm tightened, creaked, released. She hadn’t told Laura about that yet.
‘There,’ said Laura when she was done. ‘That’s so perfect. Sometimes dirty hair helps with braiding.’
‘Oh,’ said Pip, examining herself in the wardrobe mirror. Her head was so ridiculously neat it made her grimace.
‘Don’t you like it?’
‘I like it,’ said Pip.
She had the backpack on again when they heard Matt roar. It stopped Laura’s smile. He roared Pip’s mother’s name: ‘MEL!’ It was wet and throaty and it made the walls shake.
‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ said Pip.
In the kitchen Laura unzipped her backpack and Pip threw in supplies: more Weet-Bix, arrowroot biscuits, muesli bars. She had almost completely depleted the pantry’s supplies. They ran out the front door, past her mum, who was sitting on the stairs in the morning sun, ignoring the roar.
‘Hey,’ she said as they rushed past and picked up their bikes. ‘Nice hair.’
‘I did it,’ said Laura.
‘Were you both singing before? It was beautiful.’
‘Yeah, we were writing a song together, weren’t we Pip?’ lied Laura. Pip was proud of her – this lie sounded much more believable than the last one.
‘We’ll be back much later,’ said Pip.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Just Laura’s house and maybe for a ride.’
Her mother seemed about to ask for more details but there was another roar from inside.
‘MEL!’
Pip’s mum flinched, stood up, smiled.
‘Well, you look like two peas in a pod,’ she said and walked inside and Pip and Laura were pedalling, away, as fast as they could into the sunlight.
MRS JARVINEN HAD SAID MIKA AND PIP were two peas in a pod. Cut from the same cloth. Tarred with the same brush. Birds of a feather that flocked together.
‘Are you sure you’re not related?’ she asked them.
That amused Mika no end. ‘Imagine,’ he said. ‘Maybe we are. Maybe way back, like so far back, we share some DNA. My mum did DNA at uni. She knew all about it. Pip, it would explain why I got on with you from the beginning. Have you got a family tree, Nan?’
‘No, no time for family trees,’ said Mrs Jarvinen.
