Dragon Skin, page 6
I saw.
‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ Pip sang in that other language, although she knew that’s what the song said. ‘We’ll never see Laura Denning again.’
Outside her window, the sun was slipping and the galahs were flooding across the sky towards the creek and the tears dried on her cheeks. She left him there on her bed, sleeping.
She found her mother sitting on the back steps, staring at her withered roses. Pip’s rosebush was called Double Delight and her mum’s was called Piccadilly. She’d planted them years before and Pip could remember when she was small, those roses filling vases and teacups. Now the bushes were brown, skeletal, only the tiniest hint of green in the petals. Clinging to life.
‘Let me feel your head again,’ her mother said.
Pip sat down beside her.
‘Still hot,’ said her mum. ‘Have you been crying?’
‘A bit,’ said Pip. ‘Not much.’
Her eyes must have been puffy.
‘Sorry,’ said her mum. She put her arm around Pip.
‘You don’t have to be sorry,’ said Pip. ‘What are you sorry for?’
‘Stuff,’ said her mum.
Pip shook her head. She really wanted to tell her mother. She really wanted to say, Look, I have a dragon in my wardrobe. I’m saving it. It scratched me and I think it’s changing me. I don’t know how but not in a bad way, so I don’t want you to worry.
‘I’m ringing Mum in a minute,’ said her mother. ‘See if we can maybe go there.’
‘For the holidays?’
‘Yes … maybe for longer,’ said her mum. She whispered the last part. As though just saying it, he’d hear her. Even though he was ages away, down a hole, underground.
They weren’t allowed to ring Pip’s grandmother if Matt was there. He said she was a ‘crazy’ woman. A menace. A meddler. Really, she wasn’t. Pip knew it and she knew her mum knew it.
Pip stared at the sky and thought of the dragon who’d lost her baby.
‘What do you think?’ said her mum.
Once they’d been planning a holiday to her grandmother’s house, but Matt had talked Pip’s mum out of it. He’d said she mustn’t care that much about him if she’d just up and leave for a holiday like that. If she looked at snorkelling holidays at the Great Barrier Reef, he’d say they’d go one day except they had other more important things to pay off first. Like his four-wheel drive.
And the time they had gone, when her mum said she was leaving Matt, he’d come and got them back. He’d driven all night through the desert and across the Great Dividing Range and parked outside Pip’s grandmother’s house in Townsville and begged her mum to come back. And everything that had been good had been undone in a matter of minutes.
‘I think you should ring her,’ said Pip.
Pip’s grandmother kept joeys in pillowcases and possums in boxes. Pip felt a rush of excitement, imagining what her grandmother would think of Little Fella.
She checked herself just as quickly. It was better not to get too excited. They’d been going before then never gone.
‘Okay,’ said her mum. ‘I’ll come check on you later.’
‘You don’t need to,’ said Pip. ‘The pills are working, I think. Will you really ring?’
‘Yes,’ whispered her mum. ‘Soon.’
Inside, the pantry door was open. The arrowroots sitting right there. She took a packet. In the junk drawer Pip found sticky tape, paddle-pop sticks, rubber bands. Her grandmother would have much better creature-saving medical supplies.
She closed her bedroom door and her hand throbbed, although her skin was cold. She took Little Fella from the wardrobe and pushed him a little way beneath the blanket then climbed in beside him, shivering.
‘I’ll fix your wings,’ she promised. She knew she would. Like a tide. Like a river running. Like the moon rising. ‘But first we need to sleep.’
She listened for Mika’s voice in her head, her eyes closed. There was only silence.
Please don’t go yet, she said to him.
‘IT’S AN OASIS‚’ MIKA SAID WHEN HE FIRST saw the waterhole, which made Pip laugh because it wasn’t. It was just a small pond filled with dark water that always remained after the river ran. It never dried up. It was only a couple of metres wide, surrounded by grass that had more colour than any of the other grasses in the area, and that was it.
It wasn’t an oasis. It wasn’t shady. The sun could burn the hair right off your head if you sat there in the middle of the day. One side of the waterhole was raised into a small hillock and there was a fallen silvery log, washed smooth by countless seasons of the rivers running, that served as a seat. The top of the water was hot to touch, cool beneath. It was her place.
That first day at the waterhole Mika raised his hand and closed his eyes. It was the first time she’d seen him do that. He announced that he suspected a bunyip lived in its depths.
‘What even is a bunyip?’ she’d asked.
‘A scary creature that lives in outback waterholes,’ he replied.
She knew that. She wanted details. She took her school shoes off and slipped her feet through the top layer of hot water and into the cool. Her legs were sepia-coloured through the water. A brown hawk circled lazily, high above in the sky.
‘Gee, I hope I don’t get eaten,’ she said and smiled at him.
He didn’t take his shoes off but sat on the small bank beside her.
‘They have very sharp teeth,’ he said.
‘It must like me, it’s never bitten.’
‘Have you ever swum in there? Can you touch the bottom?’
‘Not game,’ said Pip. She wasn’t embarrassed to admit it. ‘They reckon it has no bottom. My mum said that. Some waterholes are like that, especially if they never dry up.’
‘I wonder if Gran knows about it,’ he said, frowning. ‘She grew up here.’
He took a yellow torch from his backpack and shone its weak light into the water.
‘I think torches work better at night,’ said Pip, wondering what else he had in that backpack.
‘I know!’ he cried and then, smiling again, he was up looking for something, rushing towards the opposite side of the river where the gums grew.
‘What are you doing?’ she called.
‘We need a stick. A really long stick,’ he called back.
She removed her feet from the water. He was going to need help. He was a city boy, after all. She walked across the dry riverbed, the silt scales cracking in a satisfying way beneath her bare feet.
The tree limb they found required two to carry it and they had to walk a way along the bulldust road that ran on the hill side of the river to find it. When the river had run the stick must have snapped from its mother tree and wedged there between two old silver gums. It was taller than both of them put together and they grunted under the weight of it and the grunting made them laugh so much they had to stop several times. By the time they had it back at the waterhole the sun was already starting its slide.
They positioned it so that they could slip it into the dark water but then Mika stopped. He was doubled over with the exertion.
‘What if we annoy the bunyip?’ he said.
‘I didn’t carry it all this way to not do it,’ said Pip, panting.
They broke the surface of the water and plunged the tree limb down, down into the water. It didn’t stop. Both of them held it and kept pushing and it kept going, the small dark pool swallowing that stick like it had no problems with that at all until all that they had left was their hands holding the tree limb near the surface and still they felt no resistance.
‘Yeah, that’s deep,’ said Mika as they heaved it back out. The surface of the pool wobbled and then returned to reflecting the glowing afternoon sky. They leaned forwards and stared at themselves.
Mika drew a spiral in the water with his fingertip, sighed.
‘Told you so,’ said Pip.
SHE UNRAVELLED THE WINGS AND IN HER dream it was easy. Her fingers were made for it. She unfurled sections with nothing but the tips of her fingers; she stretched them out and smoothed them, barely touching. She sang to those wings, a wing-mending song. She was so glad she remembered that song.
It was her mum calling out that woke her. It was dark.
‘Don’t,’ she heard her say. ‘Don’t.’
‘Do not call me that!’ she heard her mother shout quite clearly.
Then the heavy sound of Matt’s feet.
Sitting bolt upright, Pip listened over the top of her heartbeat. She felt for Little Fella who slept on beside her.
Matt was talking, a low stream of words, a rumble of words, like stones. They were meant to hurt.
‘Don’t!’ her mum cried. Pip flinched and the dragon raised his head in the dark.
A small thud followed by another, louder. Footsteps, the television going on. Loud television. The great roar of race cars exploded down the hallway.
Her door opened and in the dark, she heard her mother’s breathing.
‘Are you okay?’ Pip whispered.
‘Yes,’ said her mother. ‘Everything’s okay. Are you okay?’
‘I’m okay.’
But everything was not okay.
Lights had come on in the street and dogs were barking. The race car engines were screaming. Matt was made completely out of anger. He wore an armour of anger and he had anger blood and he had a heart that was solid anger. He couldn’t be broken. He was made of titanium. Even if he were smashed to pieces, he’d just be hard bits of metal. Everything was not okay.
She hoped it was over.
That he’d fall asleep on the sofa. That he’d fall asleep like an ogre in a fairytale.
That he’d never wake up. No one would ever come and kiss him. There was no potion that could bring him back. She hated that thought and that thought hated her and she couldn’t stop her heart from jack-hammering in her chest.
They needed to go to Townsville to her grandmother and grandfather’s house.
They had to.
She’d hope for it. Even though she’d given up hoping before, she’d start hoping again. She’d hope for it with all her might and, somehow, she’d make it happen like hoping was a magic spell.
She turned on her torch and shone it at Little Fella’s wings. The little dragon opened his eyes in the dark, and Pip saw a tiny flash of amber inside them. A zing. A little lightning strike.
‘Hey,’ she whispered. ‘I knew you wouldn’t have black eyes.’
Her heart slowed gradually.
She had to be careful with the torch; too much movement and maybe Matt would see it flickering under her door. That would be the kind of thing that would make him go off. He’d grab that torch and snap it in two.
She touched Little Fella’s wing gently to see how he would react. He watched her, another little amber zing in his eye. She knew it was the right time. He knew it was the right time. It was the only time.
Only, fixing those wings was nothing like in the dream. It was like unravelling contact paper. Just to make it even more difficult her hand ached and her skin burned and then grew cold. The heat flushed up from her hand, up her arm, into her chest, then receded, leaving her to quiver.
Each wave of heat and she wondered if she was glowing.
Pip, the beacon.
Pip, the lighthouse.
She set up her equipment. The paddle-pop sticks and sticky tape.
‘You’re being so good, Little Fella,’ she whispered.
She didn’t know how long it took her. At some point she was aware that the car race was over, the house in silence, then suddenly, the sound of Matt, bumping off the walls, down the hallway towards the bedroom. Pip froze but there was no more shouting.
Maybe hours passed. The sun was already starting to flush against her bedroom door by the time she was finished. Where there were breaks in the rubbery sinew of the wings, she attached the paddle-pop sticks, six in total. Little Fella lay there with those messed-up wings outstretched while she worked. He slept. He woke. She fed him arrowroot biscuit mush. He slept again.
She had to be sure that he could refold the wings with the paddle-pop sticks in place so she had to restart, several times. He let her fold and unfold, occasionally rattling in a disgruntled way. There were tiny tears everywhere in the wings themselves and she covered them over, top and bottom, with sticky tape, hoping they would mend. Sometimes, quite suddenly, she sang softly, and cried tears over him. They were quick songs, though, like little storms. When they’d passed, she felt better for it.
‘There you go, Little Fella,’ she said when she was done. She yawned, admiring her handiwork. He folded up his wings, paddle-pop sticks and all, curled himself tight. Pip curled around him, surrounded by a litter of paddle-pop and sticky tape snippings.
They’d escape. They’d make it to Townsville. Her mother, her, Little Fella.
‘Everything will be okay,’ she whispered.
When the morning came the house was quiet and in the quiet Little Fella’s belly gurgled. Pip carried him quickly to the back door, opened it silently, raced down the steps and placed him in the rose garden.
‘Wow,’ she said, at the smell. ‘That’s bad, Little Fella.’
The next-door neighbour’s dog growled on the chain.
She tiptoed into the kitchen in search of more dragon food. Couscous? Instant rice? She decided against those. Bananas, baked beans, tinned custard. Her hand lingered, the tin disappeared into her dressing gown pocket. The Weet-Bix box.
Turned out he was a little Weet-Bix-eating monster. She mushed up a second bowl in her bedroom and wondered what dragons ate in the wild. Not Weet-Bix and biscuits, that’s for sure. She wondered if he would breathe fire. There hadn’t been any hint of fire yet although that morning he was snuffling a lot and maybe that was what dragons did in preparation. If he started breathing fire that was probably going to be a problem.
He had managed to get his back legs to work. He was able to climb into a sitting position, his little snout nudging her Weet-Bix hand. There were more zings of copper and bronze and amber in his eyes this morning too. They flashed and faded and each time she couldn’t help a little involuntary gasp.
He snuffled and rattled and hissed and mewled for more Weet-Bix.
‘You’re out of control, Little Fella,’ she whispered. ‘You have to be quiet.’
She tried to feed him as quickly as possible. He sat and fell, moved his wobbly back legs and sat again.
In the end she gave him the bowl. He shoved his whole face in, licking and snuffling wildly.
‘Slow down,’ she murmured and he paused to gaze up at her. Two twitches of amber in each eye, and then he was back in the bowl, hoovering up the remainder of the mush.
It was a difficult enough thing to keep a secret sleeping dragon, let alone one that was trying to sit up and snorting into bowls of Weet-Bix. Eventually he grew weary. He nudged closer to her and she scooped him up in his hoodie nest and nursed him.
‘Ouch,’ she said at the expanding pain in her heart.
She never, ever would have expected magic to be so painful.
And exhausting. Her eyelids grew heavy.
It’s okay.
When he was finally sleeping, she placed him in the wardrobe and tiptoed to the kitchen. Her mother was there this time.
‘Were you sneezing before?’ she asked, not glancing up from her phone. She sounded tense. ‘You could have woken him.’
‘No,’ said Pip. ‘I wasn’t sneezing.’
‘I thought I heard you really sneezing,’ said her mum, typing something furiously into the phone. She swore under her breath. ‘Remember to take one of those pills.’
‘Sure. What are you looking at?’
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‘Airfares,’ she said.
‘Okay,’ said Pip, barely audible. Barely breathing. How would she get Little Fella on a plane?
But she knew for a fact her mum didn’t have any money to buy an airfare. Matt had made her stop working at the senior’s centre ages ago once she’d paid off the rest of his four-wheel drive. That was where she had taught exercise classes to older people. He said he didn’t like her going around in gym clothes like that. Pip had wondered what like that meant. Matt said like that a lot. Why did you cook it like that? Why are you looking at me like that? I knew you’d say something like that.
She took a cup from the dish rack and filled it with water, glancing quickly at her mother’s face. She’d obviously been crying.
‘What are you staring at?’ said her mum.
‘Nothing,’ said Pip. ‘Where are we flying?’
‘Away.’ Her mother swiped clear whatever flights she was searching.
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‘Remember what I said about the car?’ said Pip, tentatively. ‘We just take the car.’
Her mother hushed her, shook her head.
‘What did grandma say?’ Pip refused to give up.
Her mother shook her head again, mouthed, He’ll hear.
He wouldn’t, Pip knew it. He was snoring loudly. Yet her mother seemed terrified.
‘My hand’s better,’ Pip half-lied. Anything to make her mother happy, to stop her looking so scared.
She held up her hand. She had removed the bandage in her room and found that there wasn’t even a mark anymore. The deep ache was still there. It came rhythmically, building over minutes, growing and growing until it reached a crescendo before subsiding again. Each time it grew she knew something was happening to her.
A good thing, she was sure. Almost sure. She didn’t feel scared any longer.
