Lily and the Shining Dragons (17 page)

The Indian club-waving had disintegrated into a knot of unruly boys, staring at the something lying at their feet. Then it resolved itself into a slow procession, carrying a still figure past the girls and on into the house. The figure was Peter. Lily knew it almost as soon as she saw them pick him up.

‘A fit,’ Mr Fanshawe told Miss Merganser as he came past. ‘An outbreak of his magic, clearly. The stupid boy is resisting us.’

Lily swallowed miserably as she watched the boys carry Peter inside. He was greyish pale, and one hand swung limply down from the old rug they’d used as a makeshift stretcher. He wasn’t resisting! He didn’t have any magic to resist with!

She turned to whisper to Georgie, but her sister wasn’t looking at her. She was standing with Sarah, and the two of them were shaking their heads sadly, their lips pursed.

Lily nearly snarled. How could Georgie put on that stupid disapproving face? She
knew
Peter. She knew it wasn’t an outbreak of magic. It was the cocoa, or the bluebottle spells, or both.

Peter wasn’t at breakfast, but he appeared in lessons, marched into the schoolroom by Mr Fanshawe, with no more colour in his face than before. He sat slumped before his desk, gazing unseeingly at his hands, which lay slackly on the wood in front of him.

At the end of the class he didn’t move, even when the other boys shoved past him. He was like a huge doll, slumping over a little further as his sawdust stuffing sagged.

‘Peter!’ Lily didn’t care any more if the other girls saw her talking to him. ‘Peter!’ She tried to make him understand, but he wasn’t even looking at her. And if he didn’t look, he couldn’t hear. There was nothing. It was as if he were locked away inside.

‘Leave him alone,’ Miss Merganser snapped. She did look faintly concerned about the state of Peter, Lily thought. But not nearly as much as she should. He was only an orphan, of course. A foundling. He had no parents who might make a fuss. ‘What are you teasing him for? Nasty, unprincipled girl! Get out of my sight!’ She hauled Peter up, and he trailed loosely from her hands, only just standing.

Lily fled, but not to the grounds after the others. Instead she raced up the stairs to the room with the overmantel. This time, she wasn’t just going to sit and stroke the marble dragon, and hope that he came back. It was too urgent for that. She didn’t care how old he was, or how rare, or if she was being rude. She needed him now. She didn’t know enough about magic to help Peter, and even if the dragon had been asleep for the last three hundred years, he was a legendary, mythical creature. Dripping with magic. Surely he could tell her what to do.

Henrietta was asleep on the pink velvet chair, and she woke with a start as Lily flung open the door.

‘What is it?’ she snapped, jumping up. ‘Have you done something dreadful?’

‘No!’ Lily was too worried even to protest. ‘It’s Peter. I don’t know what it is. Too much more of the cocoa, or maybe they tried to make him tell them about Mama. Whatever it was – it’s like he’s broken. He just isn’t there any more. I don’t know what to do, and I’m sure they don’t either. We need the dragon.’

‘What makes you think he’d want to help?’ Henrietta sniffed.

Lily shrugged. ‘He said it was my magic that helped him wake up. He might be grateful. And if not, perhaps he’ll do it on a promise. I’ll bind my magic to him, or something like that. A year’s service, in exchange for getting us all away from here. He said magic was delicious. He must want more of it.’

Henrietta nodded doubtfully. ‘And how are we summoning him?’ she enquired, leaping down from the chair to stand in front of the marble dragon.

Lily sighed. ‘I haven’t worked that part out yet,’ she admitted.

‘Flattery,’ Henrietta suggested. ‘It always works on me.’

‘What,
O Great Dragon, we beg that you help us
?’ Lily wrinkled her nose.

‘Exactly. Keep going. And perhaps kneel down, don’t you think? And the right voice, Lily. You’re begging, remember.’

Lily knelt in front of the carving, holding out her cupped hands. She felt stupid, but she had a feeling Henrietta was right. The dragon had seemed a very formal creature.

‘Great Dragon, we beg that you help us. We are in need of your mighty strength, and…’ She rolled her eyes at Henrietta for inspiration.

‘Awesome claws.’

Lily scowled. ‘And your awesome claws.’

‘Shining scales.’

‘Oh, come on, Henrietta, that’s just silly…’ Lily turned back to complain, and her voice died away.

‘That last bit wasn’t me,’ Henrietta whispered. The awesome claws were wrapped round her, and the dragon was eyeing her rather hungrily. He was much clearer this time. And bigger. Big and clear enough for Lily to see that his claws were each about Henrietta’s own height. She was sitting in the middle of them, trying not to twitch.

‘I do have shining scales,’ the dragon told Lily.

‘I know,’ she whispered. The room was filled with their strange pearly light.

‘Why did you call me?’

‘I’m sorry…’ Lily began.

‘Oh, you need not be sorry. Your call seems to help me make the leap back. Most helpful. I am real enough to be hungry now, but I take it you still want the small dog?’

‘I do,’ Lily agreed hastily. ‘Please. We can try to find you something else.’

The dragon nodded thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps better to wait a little longer anyway. My insides may not be up to it yet.’ He opened his claws, and Henrietta shot out, curling herself into Lily’s lap. ‘What did you want? I could tell you were in great need. Your invocation was quite heartfelt.’ He sounded smug, and Lily realised that Henriettta had been right. Flattery worked.

‘One of our friends has been injured, somehow. He doesn’t have any magic, but the staff here think that he does, and they’re trying to get rid of it. They have spells of their own, awful ones, and they’re using them to make us think magic is wrong. I think they went too far with Peter. We don’t know how to bring him back.’

The dragon nodded his great head, and his dark eyes glittered. ‘Twisting magic inside people’s heads is a dangerous business. He isn’t the only one. I’ll show you.’ He turned, more carefully this time, as he was almost solid, and the furniture rocked as he passed it. He had to ease himself carefully through the door, and as he paced down the passageway, Lily was sure she could see the floorboards sagging under his weight. He was awfully close to being real.

What was going to happen, when there was a real dragon in Fell Hall again? Lily wondered for a moment. She had a feeling he wouldn’t want to stay cooped up under the house.

The dragon led them across the stairwell to the right-hand passage, the one that Lily had avoided, as it looked more inhabited.

‘Someone does live up here then?’ she asked, and then yelped, and stuffed her hands across her mouth, as the dragon disappeared through a solid wooden door, like a ghost.

‘Follow him!’ Henrietta snapped. ‘Pick me up, and follow him!’

Several coils of long, shining tail were still vanishing through the door, the one with the elaborate lock that Lily had tried before. Lily watched it, round-eyed. Then she stretched out a hand, and caught one of the dagger-like spikes. Her fingers seemed to sink into it at first, but then it settled, warm and smooth, not at all as she had expected it to be.

Henrietta whined, and Lily shut her eyes as the dragon pulled them after him through the thick door – which melted and gave like butter, dropping them breathless into a dim, heavily furnished room, where an old lady was sitting by a dying fire, and watching them.

Lily swallowed, and bobbed a curtsey. ‘Good morning,’ she muttered.

The old lady inclined her head politely, as though she couldn’t quite help it, but she said nothing.

‘She does not believe that you are actually here,’ the dragon explained. ‘And she cannot see me. She has no magic in her, at all, and I am not yet real enough for her to see me properly.’

‘Why doesn’t she believe we’re here?’ Lily whispered back. She felt rude whispering in front of the old lady, but at least she thought they were imaginary.

The old lady shook her head, as though trying to shake away a strange dream, and bent down to put more wood on the fire.

‘I have watched what is happening at Fell Hall, since the magic thickened again, and I started to wake up. She has been here a long time, I think. Since before the children came, when I only caught strange glimpses as I dreamed in the caverns below. She thinks that she is mad.’

‘She doesn’t look mad,’ Lily murmured. The old lady was neatly dressed, and wearing a little lace cap. She had clearly been doing embroidery, but had stopped, as her candle had burned down, and the windows were shuttered. The fire was her only light, and the room was too dim to see her stitches, or to read.

‘No. But they tell her she is. Always. And now she believes them.’

‘Who? Miss Merganser?’

‘Yes, and the others before her.’ The dragon coiled himself around the old lady’s chair, staring up at her sadly. The light from his scales burned brighter, and she smiled suddenly, and picked up her embroidery again.

‘She can see your light, then,’ Henrietta pointed out. ‘Are you sure she can’t see you?’ she added, peering at the embroidery. Silvery dragons curled and frolicked all over the fabric, delicately constructed from hundreds and hundreds of tiny stitches.

Lily sighed. It was a pity the old lady thought she was imaginary. She could have helped Lily with her needlework. ‘She must know about dragons, to sew all these,’ she agreed.

The dragon shrugged, and the candelabra in the ceiling swung wildly to and fro. ‘She can sense me somehow, I think. But that only makes the poor creature even more certain that she is deranged.’ He laid his muzzle on the arm of the old lady’s chair, and stared at her fiercely, as though he were willing her to see him. But she only blinked, and carried on sewing.

‘This is stupid,’ Henrietta snapped, and she jumped on to the old lady’s lap, and knocked the basket of embroidery silks on to the floor. Then she looked up at her slyly, as if daring the old lady to call her imaginary.

‘You really are a dog,’ the old lady murmured, reaching out a thin, papery-skinned hand, as if she would like to stroke Henrietta.

‘She won’t bite,’ Lily promised.

‘I might.’ But Henrietta wagged her tail as she said it.

‘A talking dog…’

Lily had expected the old lady to recoil in horror, but she smiled, and rubbed Henrietta’s ears. ‘I haven’t met anyone like you in a long while. Perhaps you won’t like this, but you remind me of a most beautiful and superior cat that I knew long ago.’

Henrietta sniffed disgustedly. ‘Some cats are adequate company, I suppose.’

‘I really do remember him…’ the old lady murmured anxiously.

Lily glanced at the dragon doubtfully. How was she supposed to reassure someone that they weren’t mad?

But Henrietta seemed to have taken a fancy to the old lady, despite her fondness for cats. ‘Personally, I don’t see why you would want to, but I’m sure you’re right. Why are you here?’

‘Oh… Because I disagreed with my family. My mind began to fail. I had to be shut away. I forget things, too. I can hardly remember who I am, some days…’

Lily frowned. ‘What did you disagree with them about?’

‘Magic.’ The old lady sighed. ‘I rather liked it, you see. I still do,’ she added with a touch of defiance.

‘And your family sent you away just because of that?’ Lily asked indignantly. ‘Couldn’t you have just been quiet about it? That’s what we did, my sister and me. We were caught, but only because we were betrayed. And if you weren’t even
doing
any magic…’

‘That wasn’t good enough,’ the old lady sighed. ‘I wouldn’t renounce it publicly, that was the problem. A symptom of my madness, I think.’ But she was frowning now.

‘You really don’t seem very mad,’ Lily told her.

‘I’ve been so confused,’ she whispered. ‘Strange visions and voices. I have
felt
mad. But these last few weeks, things have been so much clearer. Although,’ she dipped her head, shamefaced. ‘I do still keep seeing the dragons, so stupid of me. When of course they can’t possibly be there.’

‘Me,’ the dragon murmured. ‘She has felt me, when I came to see her. It’s clearing her mind.’

Lily was just about to ask him what he meant, when the old lady sat up suddenly straighter, gazing worriedly at Lily. ‘You’re real, then,’ she murmured. ‘You are! Dear child, you are in such danger. You should go. Fell Hall does terrible things to children like you. And the poor dog. Please get away from here!’

‘What sort of things?’ Lily asked, wondering how often Miss Merganser or the others came up to this room, and almost hearing footsteps.

‘It hasn’t happened for a while. I had wondered if all the strong children had gone – if it had worked, if they had managed to breed the magic out. But not quite yet. It’s those dreadful bottled spells. When they fight against strong magic like yours, it has the most terrible effect. They bring the children up here sometimes, afterwards, to the rooms on either side of mine. They need somewhere to keep them, I suppose, though there are other rooms, hidden all round the house, I think. They can’t manage to be with the others any more, poor little things. Although they’re never here for long. They forget how to be alive, I think. They’re so silent – the floorboards never creak. They bring them food, but I never hear them eating, or pouring water. Nothing.’

It sounded horribly like what had happened to Peter, Lily thought, flinching. That strange blank look on his face. But he didn’t have any magic for the spell to fight against, Lily told herself. That couldn’t be what they’d done to him. Peter had just had too much of the doctored cocoa. He would come back.

‘What did you mean, when you said you were clearing her mind?’ she asked, glancing up at the dragon, but then she gasped. He was fading again, the silvery-white light dimming, and they were on the wrong side of a locked door. ‘Wait!’ she called, but he was already gone, only a few glimmering specks floating in the air to show where he had been.

The old lady’s eyes suddenly sharpened anxiously, and she stood up stiffly, her embroidery falling unnoticed to the floor. ‘They cannot find you here!’ she told Lily. ‘You’ll have to hide, perhaps you can slip out when the maid brings me food. They mustn’t see you!’