Dragonsapien (9 page)

Celly
smiled.

Perisa
smiled.

But Perisa’s
smile was a smile of conflicting emotions, Jake
realised.

She was glad to
see that Celly looked so content.

But she was also
incredibly annoyed that it was Jake who made her so
happy.

*

‘Now, Celly,’
Erdwin said tenderly as Hincheley and Mary returned with the
stretcher they’d formed from palm-leaf sheeting and wooden poles,
‘we’re going to lift you on to this stretcher; but if you feel the
slightest pain, anywhere, let us know immediately,
okay?’

Celly nodded,
smiled wanly.

‘You
did
prepare your back before hitting the ground, right?’ Erdwin asked
as the four adults kneeling around her prepared to carefully ease
her onto the stretcher set out by her side.

Celly nodded
again.

Jake wanted to
ask what Erwin meant by ‘preparing her back’ but, as Leon was the
only one who wasn’t busy helping Celly, he decided not to. The
others seemed to be having difficulty with Celly’s massive wings,
unsure how and where to wrap them so that they wouldn’t drag on the
ground, or hang down from the stretcher while it was carried. It
seemed to Jake, too, that the wings were strangely rigid and
unwieldy.

In the end,
Celly’s parents supported the wings, flying alongside the stretcher
as it was swiftly and smoothly borne along by Hincheley and Mary.
Ironically, Jake thought, they all grinned with relief when Celly
returned to her more human form.

‘Good, good,’
Erdwin said ecstatically. ‘With any luck, it was only a temporary
injury; and, hopefully, nothing serious.’

Once again, Jake
was itching to ask why everyone seemed to assume that her
transformation was a sign of recovery. That meant, surely, that
they had assumed something was wrong because she had retained her
dragon form as they had tried to help her?

This time, he
couldn’t hold back from asking. As soon as Celly had been safely
laid on a bed and Erdwin made a few more final checks, he
tentatively approached Perisa.

‘I don’t
understand,’ he whispered to her, ‘why does Celly’s change make you
think she’s going to be all right?’

‘We’re hoping it
means that, yes, she was badly winded, but she hasn’t suffered any
permanent damage,’ Perisa whispered back.

Noticing that
Jake still looked puzzled, she continued, ‘She hadn’t retracted her
wings, yes? And they were too rigid, as if her lungs weren’t
adapting the pressures or the types of gasses to whatever was
needed.’

‘Ah, the
helium
, right? But what about her back? What did Mr Volance
mean when he asked Celly if she strengthened it?’

‘To absorb the
worst of the fall, she’d pump oxygen and other elements the lungs
have extracted from the air into the capillaries of her back;
making it both resilient yet also supple.’

‘So…you’re
saying you think she’s okay?’ Jake asked hopefully.

Perisa nodded, a
tear in her eye.

‘Yes, yes,’ she
said. ‘Although she may need a while to fully recover. It must have
been one heck of a bad fall for her to–’

‘She seems
fine,’ Erdwin pronounced with great satisfaction, having finished
his inspection of Celly. ‘Ideally, Harry should have a look at her
just to make sure, but I think she’ll manage, thankfully, with
little more than a rest.’

As Erdwin
stepped away from the bed, Perisa immediately took his place.
Crouching down beside Celly, she lovingly stroked her hair, spoke
to her quietly, tenderly.

‘You’ll be
better soon, my sweet. You see.’

‘I’ll be fine
mum,’ Celly croaked hoarsely in reply.

‘What happened?’
Perisa asked. ‘Can you remember?’

Celly weakly
moved her head, looking inquisitively at first Leon then
Jake.

‘No, I can’t
remember,’ she said, turning back to Perisa.

‘It doesn’t
matter anyway,’ Perisa reassured her. ‘We know what happened; but I
just wondered if you’d remembered any of it.’

Leon made sure
that no one but Jake saw him smirk triumphantly.

*

‘Sorry
Jake.’

‘Sorry? What do
you have to apologise for? I’m the one who got you into this
mess.’

‘No you didn’t;
it was Leon.’

‘Leon?’ Jake
stared back at Celly curiously. ‘So…are you saying you really
do
remember what happened when we fell?’

‘Sure I
remember; and that’s why I’m sorry. I’m sorry that mum and dad
think it’s your fault that I’m like this, simply because I didn’t
tell them what really happened.’

‘Celly! Why? Why
didn’t you tell them? But you still don’t have to
apologise
,
silly! You saved my life; and risked yours doing it
too.’

Celly chuckled
sourly.

‘Huh, I might
not
have tried to rescue if I’d known how dangerous it was!
I didn’t think I’d make such a mess of it!’

Jake laughed
quietly with her.

It was the first
time that they’d managed to be on their own together since the
accident. They held hands. They kissed now and again, when they
were definitely sure that no one was around, no one was close
enough to hear.

‘So…’ Jake began
unsurely, ‘if you can remember what really happened, how come you
didn’t make sure your mum and dad don’t think I’m evil incarnate
because I got you into trouble?’

‘Because I’m
recovering, right? And the better I get, the more they’ll forget
and forgive.’

‘Forget and
forgive me for something Leon was really responsible for, you mean?
Great, just great!’

Celly laughed.
She clenched his hand tightly.

‘What they
wouldn’t have forgiven you for, Jake, is if Leon had told them he’d
caught us together.’

‘Hah,’ Jake
sighed, understanding what she meant. ‘So why didn’t he tell them
what he’d seen?’

‘Because when I
first came round, when I first caught his eyes; I let him know in
my glare at him that we were making a silent deal.’

‘A deal? You
mean
you
wouldn’t tell if
he
didn’t?’

‘Huh huh,’ Celly
agreed.

‘He’s sick, you
know that? He could have killed me, if you hadn’t saved
me.’

‘He wasn’t
thinking straight; he’s sick, but not in the way you
mean.’

‘Wow, if someone
decides to kill someone just because they’re not thinking straight,
that’s pretty sick in my book! I take it you mean some sort of
illness, though? The way he was stumbling when you first met?
What’s wrong with him?’

‘As I said, he’s
really sick. Love sickness.’

‘Love sickness?
You kidding me, Celly? Sure, some people can get pretty love sick –
moping around, staying in bed, off their food, all that sort of
thing – but that doesn’t mean you’re suddenly
homicidal!’

‘We’re
dragons
, remember? When we meet someone, you can decide in
an instant that she or he’s your mate for life. Think of when
someone’s sort of thunderstruck by love at first sight, then
combine it with your idea of the soul mate you’re destined to spend
your whole life together with.’

‘Mate for life?
And you’re saying that…that your
Leon’s
?’

‘No no,’ Celly
said urgently, detecting the anxiety and hurt in Jake’s voice. ‘But
yeah; I might have been if you hadn’t sort of happened
along.’

‘Ahhh, you make
it all sound oh so
romantic
!’

‘It’s hard to be
romantic when you’re laid flat out on an aching back, struggling to
breathe. You should try it yourself sometime.’

‘Okay, okay;
that’s true. Still – you sound pretty sure of yourself. That is, if
you’re saying what I think you’re saying; that Leon’s fallen for
you big time!’

‘All, right I
get where you’re going; that I’m sounding pretty big headed, right?
But look, as I said, it’s different with dragons. See, whereas it
was just so frustrating trying to figure out if you fancied me or
not–’

‘I’ve fancied
you for
ages
, dopey!’ Jake said light-heartedly. ‘Why do you
think I was always calling on you?’

‘Ah, so
that’s
it, is it?
That’s
how one human knows if
another fancies them! And there’s me, thinking you just needed
someone to slaughter when playing those bloody computer
games!’

‘Well, that as
well
of course. But I was hoping, you know, one of us would
sort of naturally get around to saying
something
that would
let the other know it was okay to ask them out.’

‘Yeah, yeah; I
know. Complicated, isn’t it? No one wanting to make the first move
in case they get humiliated with a “no”. So, instead, we just hang
around, hoping we get some kind of sign that says we’ve both got
the hots for each other, right?’

‘Right; but you
said “we”. Did I hear that right?’

‘Well, in
human
form, I’m just as lost as any other human in trying to
figure out if anyone fancies me or not. You’ve got so few signs to
show it, you know that? But now dragons, well; wow, you can’t miss
it. All that glittering, that glow, coming off our
skins.’

‘Wait a minute;
you’re
always
glistening, always glowing!’

‘Think of the
way your body language can give away what you’re thinking, if
anyone’s clever enough to read it. Or the way a peacock can
suddenly put on this ultra-amazing display, or a song bird sing
more brilliantly than ever before.’

‘So you’re
saying you
deliberately
set out to attract Leon?’

‘No, you didn’t
let me
finish
, right? I was going to add that all of those
signs are going to be misread by someone who’s
looking
for
the sign they
want
to see. And young dragons, just like any
teenager, have got all these raging hormones running around wild
and untamed inside them.’

Reaching out,
Celly grasped Jake’s hand.

‘If I hadn’t
found you, I’d probably have fallen for Leon just as badly as he’s
fallen for me. All that sparkling skin; it’s like an irresistible
siren call to us, if we’re still unattached and seeking a mate.
There are stories of our less-evolved ancestors flying off towards
the Northern Lights, endlessly searching for their true
love.’

‘Hah, of course;
the treasure hoard!
That’s
why there’s all those tales of
dragons guarding piles of treasure!’

‘Okay, but let’s
remember here, shall we, that I said our
less
-
evolved
ancestors? We’ve moved on a bit since then, thank you, just as you
have from your banana loving ancestors.’

‘And what’s
wrong with bananas?’

‘Nothing; but
that doesn’t mean you’d spend your life sitting on a pile of them,
does it? And while we’re on these myths, I’d like to debunk this
idea you humans have that some poor girl was tied to a post for a
dragon to eat.’

‘Hmn, so you
mean they didn’t bother with a post? They just used to surround her
with a pile of more edible bananas?’

‘If
I
had
a banana, I’d quite like to squash it in your smug face. The word
damsel
used
to mean a
child
, not this ridiculously
helpless maiden we see in all these pictures. The cries of the
frightened child would draw the dragon out, as dragons will try and
protect the young of
any
species – not
eat
them!’

‘Glad to hear
it; I’d hate to think we were in some sort of black-widow
relationship here.’

He smiled. He
lent forward, kissed her.

As they pulled
apart, Celly contentedly licked her lips.

‘Although, come
to think of it,’ she said, ‘I
could
eat
you
up.’

‘With or without
the squashed banana?’

*

‘Someone else is
coming,’ Celly said, shading her eyes from the sun’s glare as she
directed Jakes gaze up to a flash of ruby red in the
sky.

They had taken a
short walk along the beach, one of many they took each day as Celly
gradually regained her strength. In front of everyone else, Celly
pretended to be far weaker than she actually was, giving her an
excuse to either lean on or at least stand close to
Jake.

Leon would glare
hatefully at them both when he saw them together like this. The
others merely frowned in puzzlement now and again, as if they were
trying to work out why Celly was spending so much time with Jake
rather than Leon.

Was she trying
to make Leon jealous?

Was she playing
hard to get?

Was she still a
little bit befuddled after her fall?