Where Do Dragons Go?

A Willerby Story

It was a pathetic, miserable thing, cowering in a rag-stuffed shoebox on the floorboards beneath a radiator in the living room.

Its eyes were dull, scales only just beginning to harden from infant-green to russet brown and its tightly folded wings were far too small and underdeveloped for it to fly.

Sammy had found it all alone, ignored by the other dragons, rain-soaked and huddled beneath a bush.

He brought ir home wrapped tightly in his jumper.

Sally did not think much for its chances and couldn’t help but feel it’d have been best if Sammy hadn’t found it.

If it had been left where it was nature would have taken its course by now.

But that was moot.

For better or worse, the little abandoned dragon was their responsibility.

“He’ll be devastated if it dies,” Dan had said to her the night before after Sammy was asleep. “He wanted to put it in his bed tonight, you know.”

Sally nodded. “Yeah, course he did. And yeah, he’s going to find this very hard. But death is part of life, right? We can’t hide that from him. We’ll keep it safe and warm and tell him we did the best for it we were able to and sometimes that’s all that’s possible. I hope it’s gone tomorrow though – it’ll be easier if this isn’t dragged out.”

“I wonder if it’s a boy or a girl?” Dan said. “I’ve no idea how to tell.”

“Me neither,” said Sally. David and Mauve might know but I don’t think it’s worth bothering them about.”

“Sammy says it’s a girl,” Dan said. “He’s calling her Moana.”

“Predictable but fine. Moana it is then,” said Sally.

The next morning Sammy bounced into their room before first light.

“She’s awake! She’s moving around in her box!” he shouted from the door.

“Coffee,” said Sally blearily to Dan.

“Coffee even before dragons?”

“Coffee especially before dragons.”

…

She did look better.

Settled back on her haunches and pressed against the side of the shoebox, the tiny dark claws of her front feet curled over and pinching into its cardboard sides, Moana was peering around the living room with her pointed head and making urgent, keening calls.

“I think she wants breakfast,” Sammy said, dancing round Dan as he boiled the kettle and then filled the cafetiere, “do you think she likes cornflakes or porridge or maybe a banana?”

“To be honest, Sam,” Dan said. “I don’t know what dragons eat. But she’s got sharp claws and teeth which means she’s probably a predator. What are predators? You learned this at school. Remember? The opposite to herbivores?”

“Carnivore!” Sammy said. “She likes meat?”

“Well done, yes, probably”, said Dan. “Let’s try her with a bit of bacon. Can you get a slice out of the fridge and put it on a plate? She’s pretty small so I’ll cut it up for her.”

Moana ate the first rasher in one mouthful, using her long black tongue to scoop up all the slices at once. Then she stood up on her back legs, fluttered her wings and began calling even more loudly.

By the time Sally was up in her dressing gown and onto her second cup of coffee the little dragon had wolfed the whole packet, two raw eggs and had washed it all down with a glass of milk.

Her stomach bulging like a full sack, she put Sammy into a fit of hysterical giggles with a huge belch, then curled up and went to sleep.

“I don’t think she’s going to die,” Dan said to Sally.

“Good grief,” Sally said. “Have we ended up with a pet dragon? We’ll have to tell David and Maude about it now, if only to find out how to look after one. We can hardly look it up in Beckworth library. I’ll send them a message and see if they can come over for elevenses.”

 …

“She’s too small for this late in the year,” David said over his cup of tea. “It’s not long before they’ll leave the village. They’re never here past mid-September.”

“Where do dragons go?” Sally asked.

David shrugged. “I don’t know, but the ones that fledge here don’t ever come back.” He flicked through a notebook. “Hugo, from a hundred or so years back was interested in them. He watched them and noted down their colourings and never found one the same from year-to-year. He thought they must go elsewhere to grow to full size and that very few of them came back to our world at all.”

“And that’s a bloody good thing, “Maude said. “God help us all if they made this home!”

“How big do they get?” Dan asked.

“According to what Hugo thought about sightings in other places, huge,” said David. “Big enough to eat whole cows, and..” she flashed a look at Sammy who was dangling ham over Moana’s snapping teeth, “sometimes other things. Clever too once they learn their words. I don’t know how far to trust old Hugo – he had very odd things to say about ogres and trolls – but he says dragons turn into right old tricksters and riddlers.”

“What should we do with her?” Sally said.

David and Maude looked at each other.

“Absolutely no idea,” said Maude, passing a foolscap folder over to Sally. “As far as we can tell this has never happened before. We’ve pulled together everything we have on dragons, mostly Hugo stuff, and we’ll leave it with you. Maybe it’ll be helpful.”

…

Moana turned out to be easy to look after because she always knew what she wanted.

For the first week this was mainly food, which she was in constant search for whenever she wasn’t sleeping.

She called incessantly for it – whole packs of bacon, mince and sausages, boxes and boxes of eggs and two-litre cartons of whole milk she drank in a sitting.

Within a day she was skittering around the house, her claws clicking on the hard floors as she followed whoever she thought would fetch her food quickest.

There were things she turned her nose up at – she took one sniff of a can of Donny’s dogfood that Dan tried her on and went straight to the fridge where she began wailing at the top of her voice so indignantly that Sally burst out laughing.   

Within a few days Moana had worked out how to open the fridge.

Sally discovered this early one morning when she opened it to find it emptied of all its meat, right down to cured sausage and even the mostly full expensive tub of Brussels pate she’d opened for a late TV supper the night before.

She found all the cartons, licked completely clean, stacked neatly beside the beanbag in the living room Moana had made her bed and was asleep on.

For something with such huge appetite Moana was fastidiously clean. Even her droppings – rounded thumb-sized pellets that looked and smelled like charcoal – were always deposited in the same corner of the downstairs toilet where they were easy to sweep up and throw away. They looked far too small given how much she was taking in but given how hot she was to the touch, Dan and Sally presumed much of what she ate was being quite literally burned up inside her.

And she grew and grew.

A day after Sammy brought her home, she was too big for the shoebox.

Three days later and she was as big as a large cat and the size of a labrador by the end of the week.

One night, after spending the day before scratching and itching, she shed her skin, leaving a rustling dry cast on the bathroom floor to reveal a new coat of bright crimson scales tipped with green at her muzzle and feet.

After that her growth slowed and her appetite was less voracious. She slept less too and became more curious about the house and its inhabitants.

While she was sociable with everyone – apart from Donny who she viewed with wary suspicion - she was most attached to Sammy and sought him out wherever he was.

Their games were simple – Moana would snatch a toy from Sammy who would chase her through the house until she relented and tossed it back, prompting him to run away with squeals of delight with the dragon flapping after him in a whir of wings.

She would have slept in his room and even in his bed if she’d been allowed to, but Sally wasn’t comfortable with it and despite the protests of both dragon and child insisted Moana was confined to the downstairs rooms at night.

Moana tolerated this but each morning, as soon as the doors were open and she was able, she made a beeline to his room where she greeted him with joyous, babbling calls and flapping wings.

As the week turned into a fortnight Dan began to worry about what would be next.

All the other village dragons were now in the air, calling to each other as they soared higher and higher and taking only short rest breaks balanced on the tops of trees and on telegraph poles. 

While Sammy was at one of his last summer cap days Dan coaxed her out into the garden with a chicken leg and then held it above her so when she stretched for it, she’d see the others above her.

The other dragons interested Moana but seemed to depress her too.

She sat on her haunches watching them swoop and glide for a few minutes then, ignoring the chicken, shuffled back into the house, climbed the stairs and curled up outside Sammy’s room where she stayed until he returned.

Dan and Sally tried again the next day with the same result, and when they tried the day after that Moana wouldn’t even leave the house. Instead, she shuffled to an upstairs window and gazed out of it, unfurling and furling her wings reflexively until she heard the front door open and tumbled her way down the stairs to welcome Sammy home.

“She’s stopped eating,” Sally said to Dan as they washed up and loaded the washing machine, three weeks or so after Sammy had found her.

“I think all the dragons have,” Dan replied. “I’ve been watching them, and they aren’t hunting now – they just fly up as high as they can then come back to settle and rest on a perch. Like they’re practising for something.”

“I think they’re getting ready to go away,” Sally said, moving to the patio doors and looking out of them up into the late August sunset.

“Yeah,” said Dan. “I think so too.”

After that the whole family tried to get Moana into the sky.

Sammy was able to coax her outside and even persuaded her to clamber to the top of his plastic slide, but she looked miserable the whole time she was there.

Sammy flapped his arms at her and pointed up at other dragons in the sky, but while Moana did flap her wings back at him her efforts were half-hearted, and she didn’t so much as glance up.

As soon as she was allowed back in the house she crept to her beanbag and curled into a ball with her pointed head resting on her haunches and her tail tucked beneath her.

“I think it must be awful for her,” said Sally. “While she’s inside the house with us she feels like she’s one of us, but out there maybe she feels like a dragon that sort of isn’t a dragon. At least not a dragon like the other dragons. She must notice how much smaller she is than them too.”

“She is safe here though, with us.” Dan said. “I suppose as much as she belongs anywhere, she belongs here.”

Sally shook her head. “She doesn’t belong here. She never has. She’s a dragon. Dragons are supposed to be more than safe. They’re supposed to be terrible and fierce and magnificent, even cruel. Being safe isn’t what dragons are for.”

“She’ll get too big for us anyway,” said Dan, trying to lighten the mood. “We’ll never be able to afford all the food she’d need. Imagine the supermarket bill!”

Sally shook her head again. “Dan, she’s stopped eating. I don’t think she’ll get any bigger if she stays. Last night I read a bit more of the notes we borrowed from David and Mauve. Hugo says the few dragons that don’t make it away in September linger on for a few weeks then just die. I think she’s going to die. I’m sorry – I like her a lot – but it would have been better if Sammy had never found her. I can’t face thinking about how he’ll take it.”

“We’ll keep trying,” Dan said.

“I don’t know whether we should if it makes her so miserable,” said Sally. “Maybe it’s kindest just to keep her comfortable and look after her.” She sighed. “I don’t know what’s best.”

…

The next day Dan bought a brightly coloured unicorn helium balloon from the supermarket and showed it to Moana when he got home after he’d unpacked the bags. She was curious, reaching up and patting for it as Dan jerked the string so the balloon bounced around just beyond her reach. He led her outside into the garden and onto the lawn where he let the string play out a little further so she couldn’t get close to it without reaching right up.

To begin with she sat sulkily on the grass staring grumpily at Dan, but when she saw he would not relent and lower the balloon she pulled herself up onto her hind legs and onto the tips of her claws. Then she worked out by flapping her wings she could keep her balance for longer and began to take little skips, teetering on her claws when she landed before hopping into the air again.

Before she had a chance to grew bored with the game Dan took her back inside the house leaving the balloon in the middle of the lawn where Moana could see it tugging at its string in the wind from the window.

It wasn’t much but it was a start

For the next week or so, whenever the rest of the family were out of the house, Dan played with Moana with the balloon. Soon she was taking bigger jumps that lasted longer and then took to hanging a few feet off the ground without really realising that was what she was doing. As she grew more confident in the air Dan began to let out the string to get her up further until she was comfortable hovering at head height.

“Oh well done, Dan,” Sally said when he showed her. Then she paused and looked up.  “But the others – she’s still so much smaller than they are. And I just can’t believe she’s going to get anywhere close to them in time.”

“Sal, she might,” Dan snapped, suddenly cross. “We have to hope she might. I’m going to keep trying.”

After a week’s more work Moana was flying as high as the string would go. Dan detached the reel from an old beach kite, spent half an hour untangling it and then tied it to the balloon. That day Moana progressed more than she had in the previous fortnight and by the time Sammy was back from school and Sally from work she was above the house.

“Go dragon, go Moana!” Shouted Sammy, bouncing on his toes as he waved up at her. “Fly higher! Fly higher! I know you can do it!”

The next day was Saturday and everyone in the house slept in. Exhausted from her efforts the day before and having eaten and drunk nothing Moana was still asleep when Sammy was watching his morning cartoons and Dan, post a morning run, made a breakfast of eggs on toast for him and Sally.

“The other dragons are all on their perches just looking up at the sky,” he said. “Go and have a look. They’re hardly moving.”

“I’ve already been out to look,” Sally said. “Hugo’s notes say that means they’ll all go this evening -at sunset.”

As the minutes and then hours went by it became windier and windier. By mid-morning the trees were rustling.

By lunch their branches were swaying and the first of the detached autumn leaves were eddying around in a freshening breeze like green-gold confetti.

There were dragons everywhere, scarlet, purple, red and green, some clustered together on the points of the village rooves and on the sturdier uppermost branches of the tallest trees, some on their own on top of telegraph poles.

In the distance, backlit by its winking white lights, a whole host of them thronged the mast of the Nevermade call centre.

They were all looking up and almost motionless.

Moana was the only restless dragon in the village. Fitful and distracted she paced the house until mid-afternoon when she perched herself on the ledge of a big window overlooking the lawn where she furled and unfurled her wings while rocking from side to side making soft, keening croons.

“I’m going to take her out with the balloon,” said Dan.

“Yes!”, said Sammy. “Time for flying lessons, Moana!”

Sally and Dan exchanged a troubled look.

As soon as Dan released the unicorn, he could feel the wind tugging and pulling at it.

Moana shot up confidently after it and when it got to chimney height settled on the cottage’s roof where she – like the other dragons – stared up into the sky. Unlike the others who stared only up, she cast regular glances down to the ground where Dan, Sally and Sammy stood on the lawn looking up at her.

The wind strengthened as the sun reddened and sank onto the eastern horizon.

Then all at once all the dragons began to sing together – an eerie unworldly many-pitched harmony that was something between the howl of winter wolves and the cry of seagulls on an evening beach.

“The wind is weird,” said Sally to Dan. “Which way would you way its blowing?”

Dan looked up at the balloon dancing a few feet above Moana and then around at the trees.

“Up,” he said. “It’s blowing up, isn’t it?”

It was as if the sky was reaching down towards the village and trying to suck everything into it – a detritus of loose leaves and litter were streaming up and away into the onrushing night.

As he watched a leaf diminish and then vanish into the sunset, Sally tapped him urgently on the arm.

“Oh look, Dan,” she said. “They’re going now. I just saw two go off the top of the oak next door.”

And then as if they’d heard a signal the sky was full of dragons, their silhouettes vectoring up and away as fast as arrows loosed from drawn bows.

Sammy suddenly realised what was going on.

“Don’t go, Moana,” he called up at her. “You can stay here with us. Come down!”

“She has to go,” said Sally to him. “I’m so sorry, my love, but she has to try to go. Dan – give her more string.”

Dan let out a few feet more and, after just a moment’s pause, their little dragon leapt up, flapped her wings and drew alongside it. Dan let out more and again she moved up to it.

“Daddy what are you doing?” Sammy screamed, jumping at Dan and tugging at his arm. “Get her down!”

“Sammy, she has to go,” Sally shouted back at him, “I’m sorry there isn’t time to explain all this but if she doesn’t she’ll die. Like Tigist did -do you remember that?”

“No, she won’t,” Sammy shouted, crying. “I’ll look after her. I won’t let her be dead.”

“Oh, my love, Sammy,” Sally said. “I know you’d try but this doesn’t work like that. She has to go.”

Dan let out more string – feet after feet of it – and now Moana high above the house, but there wasn’t much string left on the spool.

“Moana go!” He shouted into the roar of the wind as loud as he was able, hoping she could him and would understand what he meant.

Then there was no more string to let out and the silly supermarket unicorn balloon was as high as it could get, and Moana would go no higher.

Fifty feet above them, she was being sucked up by the wind but now seemed to be fighting two instincts, first to keep with the balloon and then twisting herself and folding her wings, diving to get down to where she thought safety was.

Dan looked down at his son leaping up at him as he tried desperately to grab the now empty plastic reel from him and then he looked at Sally who met his eyes unhappily and nodded.

He let go of the string.

“I hate you!” Sammy screamed as Moana tumbled up and away into the night. “I hate you all. I don’t want to live here anymore. I’ll never be your son again.”

…

Sammy wouldn’t speak to Dan that evening and cried his way through the bath Sally tried to settle him with, then cried himself to sleep too.

After he was asleep, on the couch over a whiskey Dan suddenly burst into tears too.

Sally hugged him right.

“He’ll get over it,” she whispered to him, “and one day he’ll understand.”

“I know,” Dan sobbed. “That’s not why. Where do dragons go, Sally? Where is she? She doesn’t know how to be a dragon, not really. How will she cope? She’s somewhere all alone I can’t get to. She won’t understand. How can she? I think you were right. I think Sammy is right. We should have just looked after her here.”

Sally shook him hard. “No, Dan,” she said. “Listen. This time I was wrong, and you were right. Here there was just death left for her. I gave up and you didn’t. Maybe she will die. Maybe she even has already, but you gave her a chance. I love you.”