The Bone Dragon (14 page)

I nod vaguely.

‘But, you know, while I think it’s a good idea about the washing-up liquid, you might want to save it for the summer. And perhaps for a time when Sonny comes over to your house. I’m afraid I can’t condone it as a good tactic for school.’

I shrug. ‘Even Mrs Henderson can’t do much more than give me detention though, can she? I mean, it
is
only soap after all.’

Ms Winters smiles. ‘All I will say on that subject,’ she says firmly, ‘is that, on balance, especially knowing teenage boys, a little soap might just do Sonny Rawlins a world of good.’

I grin.

Phee, Lynne and I kick our way through the leaves between the science block and the Portakabins, arms linked. We spent the weekend watching what felt like thousands of episodes of a whole set of different soap operas, and Lynne and Phee are still gushing over which of the boy actors is the cutest overall, who has the best butt and who is most snoggable. I can’t honestly dredge up a clear memory of any of them, but it doesn’t really matter: I just keep pretending to change sides on the debate about who should be in the Top Five to keep them arguing. What’s important to me is that we’ve got something in common again to talk about.

Lynne jerks us to a stop as we round the corner by the gym. Jenny is standing with Sonny Rawlins and Fred. They’re all holding cigarettes.

Before I can tug the other two away, Phee marches over. ‘You said you were quitting, Jenny. What are you doing letting these two morons get you started again?’

‘Hey, she’s the one begging fags off us,’ Fred retorts. ‘Maybe she just likes it.’

‘What would a stuck-up swot like you know who’s never even tried one?’ Sonny Rawlins sneers. ‘Come on, I dare you.’

‘Like I care. Why would I want to try something that can give me cancer?’ Phee asks. ‘Come on, Jenny . . .’

‘You scared you’re gonna die from one little puff?’ Fred taunts.

‘Well, delicate little Evie might,’ Sonny Rawlins adds with a snort. ‘Poor baby.’

‘OK,’ I say. ‘Give me one then.’

‘Evie, don’t be stupid,’ Phee says, pulling at my arm. ‘Why would you let him talk you into anything this dumb?’

I shrug. ‘One isn’t going to do me any harm and then I can sneer at him all I like and what’ll he be able to say to that?’ When we went to live with her parents, Fiona soon picked up her mother’s pack-a-day habit. I stole one once, on one of those days when my hands were shaking, just like Fiona’s sometimes did, and I couldn’t stop crying. It didn’t help then, but I am pretty sure that I can at least take a few puffs now without puking, perhaps without even coughing, and won’t that just show Sonny Rawlins.

Jenny shuffles awkwardly on the spot, taking a last drag of her cigarette, then she grinds the butt into the mud, mumbles something under her breath and hurries away.

Phee turns her glare from me to Lynne. ‘Thanks for the help,’ she says.

Lynne raises her hands with a shrug. ‘So I want to see Evie get one over on the little git. So sue me.’

‘Well?’ I say, raising an eyebrow as I hold out a hand.

Sonny Rawlins glares at me while Fred fumbles in his pocket for the packet and reluctantly holds it out to me.

‘Yeah, you can give me one too,’ Lynne says staunchly.

‘Jesus,’ Fred says. ‘Why don’t you just take the whole pack while you’re at it?’

It is Sonny Rawlins who takes out a lighter. He flicks it on, twisting it so that the flame catches my thumb instead of the cigarette.

I jerk my hand away, dropping the unlit cigarette.

‘God, you’re such a jerk,’ Lynne says, snatching the lighter away from him.

Phee gives him a solid shove to the shoulder that pushes him back a pace before he lunges forwards, shouting in her face. ‘You want to try that again, bitch?’

‘What on earth is going on here?’ someone asks.

Already crouched over the fallen cigarette, I snatch it from the mud and palm it, then stuff my hands in my pockets as I stand. I needn’t have bothered with the subterfuge: Mrs Poole’s attention is fixed on the boys, her hand outstretched as Fred slouches forward to hand her the cigarette packet.

‘We were trying to explain to the boys about how it’s probably the smoking that’s stunted their physical and mental development,’ I say, ‘and how they shouldn’t be encouraging other people to end up the same way.’

‘A perfectly reasonable concern for your classmates’ health,’ Mrs Poole says tartly. ‘One that, however tactlessly worded,’ here she turns her glare briefly on me, ‘does not merit violence or swearing in return.’ She looks pointedly down at the butt Sonny Rawlins tried to grind into the mud when she came round the corner. Mumbling under his breath, he picks it up and pushes it into the cigarette packet proffered to receive it.

‘Well, you know how it is. Boys our age, with their hormones running wild, trying to show off to impress the girls,’ Lynne says airily. ‘I don’t suppose they can help it, poor dears.’

‘Though it’s a shame they didn’t think about how
un
impressive the smoking’s made their growth. I mean, the three of us are nearly taller than Sonny Rawlins now,’ I add, smiling sweetly.

Mrs Poole, who has said as much about the results of smoking before, gives me a hard look.

Lynne, Phee and I assume bland expressions.

‘Mockery is rarely effective in encouraging people to address their difficulties. And taunting people never makes for attractive behaviour, whatever the provocation,’ Mrs Poole says, looking pointedly at me.

Then suddenly her expression softens, and I can see that’s the end of it: whatever else she was going to say – would have said if it were anyone else – has been washed away by pity. Irritation sparks for a moment, then fades; I may not like being pitied but if it’s actually going to do me some good by getting me – and, by extension, Phee and Lynne – out of trouble, it’s worth putting up with.

‘Now,’ Mrs Poole says, her voice matter-of-fact once more, ‘I’d better not see you girls near any cigarettes again or I’ll start to think it wasn’t just the boys here smoking. As it is, I think you’d better go and spend the rest of your break elsewhere.’

‘Sorry, Mrs Poole,’ we mumble, trying our best to look humble and repentant.

She rolls her eyes, but turns her attention back to the boys. ‘And now we shall have a few words about appropriate language,’ she tells them, ‘before we go and see Mrs Henderson. Which we will be doing,’ she adds, raising her voice over their protests of unfair treatment, ‘since this is far from the first time the two of
you
have been caught smoking.’

Phee, Lynne and I exchange grins as we hurry away to the girls’ loos, though we make sure to get out of earshot before breaking into giggles.

‘They’re so going to get you for that, Evie!’ Lynne gasps.

‘Me? Why me?’

‘I just backed you up. You’re the one they’re going to want to get even with.’

‘Great.’

Phee grins and tucks her arm through mine. ‘But it was
so
worth it.’

‘Depends how they get even,’ I say ruefully.

Lynne links arms with me on the other side and, for now, the ribs allow it. ‘Still worth it.’

The garden table is slick underfoot and treacherous. Even the rough flagstones of the patio feel smooth. I keep to the path because the grass is so thickly frosted, every blade sharp-coated with ice, that there is no hope my tracks would vanish by morning.

The berberis is an armoury of silver-green weapons. The acer a marvel of white over red, stepped limbs dripping tiny crystals. The skeleton of the tree glows in the frozen night air as if displaying its soul to the heavens. Beneath, a plant with wide, awkward leaves – probably a weed – looks like folds of lace over silk.

The hoar frost is so thick that the world glows, though the moon is only a thin crescent. Just as deep snowfalls draw in the light and cast it back out tenfold, the frost brings even the deep shadows into half-light. But unlike the snow the frost has robbed everything of colour. No late-falling orange pyracantha berries peek out of the fur of ice. The winter pansies are ghostly, hinting only faintly of mauve where, earlier today, they were imperial purple: a wine-dark colour thick and heavy enough to drown in. Now everything is shaded in grey and silver and white. But with it the world sparkles. As I walk, diamond-flashes catch off the newly strange plants in the beds, curled over in furious rigour from the cold. The nude tree branches glimmer with the sharp sheen of sheet metal.

The cold prickles and scratches at my face, catches in my throat and chest. My ribs have been aching since the afternoon, the way they always do when the temperature is falling and there is water in the air. Rain, snow or frost: it makes no difference. The damaged bones herald it earlier and surer than any forecast.

But the frosted fens are too beautiful for me to dwell on the pain. The river is dark and free between the banks. The orange glow of a distant streetlight bleeds poison into the night.

And then we are in the fields and the whole world is alight, shimmering. Everything solid has turned to crystal. Even the mud of the path and the black late-autumn mulch of leaves is purified, rarefied. I crouch to look at the delicate filigree of a crystallised fern.

The last tall-standing grasses are planted sword blades. I lift my finger to trace a knife-sharp edge. The ice stings my fingertip and then suddenly there is a little circle of gold in the midst of the grey and silver as a tiny droplet of water rolls downwards.

The Dragon and I don’t speak as we examine ice-furred bramble-leaves cloaking barbed-wire vines. Tiny mirrors of ice crack, splintering into wicked shards beneath my feet.

In all the nights we have walked, this is the one that the Dragon belongs to. Or which belongs to the Dragon. This enchantment of ice and crystal. Of glowing things and strangeness. As if time has frozen, and all the magic beneath the everyday world of mud and slow water is finally revealed, uncloaked beneath the cold light of the stars.

The Dragon is suddenly rigid: muscles locked with intent. It takes me longer to see it: something ghostly approaching across the fields. The Dragon tracks its progress, turning its head in so smooth and controlled a motion that it seems half-fixed into carved bone once more. But then its tail starts to twitch back and forth and, for a moment, I wonder if it is going to leap into the air and fell the approaching creature.

This is not the type of prey I hunt
, the Dragon tells me.

I realise what it is just as it swoops into a dive, thick legs extended, claws outstretched. The owl draws the mouse in and sails away. In my palm, the Dragon purrs with the thrill of power and the delight of dominion over this wide, strange world of ice. And I thrill with it for in my palm I hold all the power that anyone could ever need: power that is bound to me not by blood, but by bone.

My eyes ache with the cold, but I try not to blink as I stare around, trying to fix the vision of the hoar-frosted fens in my mind and, with it, this terrifying and wonderful feeling that I will never be helpless again.

I shall make sure of it
, the Dragon says. And then we are silent.

We go back the long way tonight, pressing footsteps like bruises into the frost-brittle grass of the golf course until finally we turn on to the blackly glittering footpath by the graveyard wall.

A sudden raucous laugh sends me darting into the shadow of the dry-stone wall. The moss prickles sharply against my fingers as I fumble for purchase to hold myself tight into the lee of the darkness. More laughter. Shouts. A beam of torchlight spears into the branches of the yew tree above me, then dances away.

Someone starts singing in the graveyard. Other voices join in. But it’s not a song to the beauty of the ice. It’s barely a song at all. More like a roar of anger. Of mindless defiance and ready cruelty. A song for drunken men to yell to the streetlights as they stagger home.

I feel a rush of anger, cold and sharp as the ice. Adam is buried somewhere beyond this wall. Adam and Aunt Minnie and Grandad Peter and Nanna Florrie. And there are drunken men shouting and laughing in that place of sadness. I peer over the wall, see dim shapes moving and staggering over the uneven ground.