Read The Fire Within (The Last Dragon Chro) Online

Authors: Chris D'Lacey

Tags: #Action & Adventure, #General, #Juvenile Fiction

The Fire Within (The Last Dragon Chro) (8 page)

BOOK: The Fire Within (The Last Dragon Chro)
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S
QUIRREL IN THE
H
OUSE
 

C
ome on!” yelled David, bounding up the garden. “We’ve got to get him out before he does any damage!”

Lucy squealed: “What if Bonnington gets him?”

“What if
he
gets
Bonnington,
more like it?”

Oddly enough, at that very moment, Bonnington was lapping water from his dish. He was so absorbed in his afternoon drink that he didn’t see the squirrel run into the kitchen, jump up on the table, hop along the counters, sniff at the fruit bowl, scramble down the ironing board, and whizz off up the hall. But a few seconds later when David skidded in, tipping over a chair, spilling a box of cornflakes, standing in the litter box, and kicking
Chunky Chunks
across the kitchen
floor, the big brown tabby did the sensible thing. He slinked into his box and stayed put.

“Have you got him?” panted Lucy, winging around the door.

“Up here!” came a yell from somewhere near the stairs.

Lucy rushed through, in time to see the squirrel come scampering down the banister. “Hhh!” she gasped as he leapt onto a lampshade, swung for a moment, dropped to the carpet, and bolted through her legs.

“Your room!” she cried. “He went into your room!”

David flashed past her and flung the door open wide. “Are you sure?” Everything seemed remarkably still.

“There,” Lucy whispered, pointing to the bookshelves.

On the third shelf up sat the bushy-tailed intruder. He was eating a chocolate bar with nuts.

David reached for an empty cardboard box. “Shut the door. I’m going to grab him.”

Lucy looked doubtful. “He’s pretty quick.”

The tenant tapped the side of his nose. “I’ll teach him to steal my chocolate.” He got onto his toes and stalked across the room.

The squirrel wasn’t impressed. At the first hint of cardboard moving toward it, it skipped off the bookshelf, bounced sure-footed off a gooseneck lamp, sped across the mantelpiece (launching the space shuttle into unexpected flight), and hopped calmly onto the desk. David pursued it, slamming the box against the chimney wall, but always a bounce behind. Twice he missed it, three times, four. Then he reached the alcove space — and disaster.

“Waar!” he cried, tumbling forward and ending up in a crumpled heap on the floor.

The squirrel chewed the corner of David’s mouse pad, then leapt onto the windowsill and paused by Gadzooks.

“Look!” cried Lucy.

David dragged the cardboard box off his head.

The squirrel was sniffing at Gadzooks. And it was surely a trick of the afternoon light but … did the
dragon just
wink
at the squirrel? David batted the box away. The sudden clatter made the squirrel leap around. It flagged its tail, chirruped at Gadzooks, smiled at Lucy, and shot out of the window.

Lucy sprinted across the room and watched the squirrel depart across the lawn. “Don’t forget about Conker!” she shouted.

“Aw,” groaned David. “Thank goodness that’s over.”

But it wasn’t, not quite.

By the door, a foot was tap-tap-tapping.

David and Lucy looked around.

“OK,” said Liz, with her arms tightly folded, “which of you would like to start?”

A V
ERY
S
PECIAL
P
RESENT
 

G
et away from that door,” Liz said brusquely. “I told you twice. Don’t make me say it again.”

Lucy stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “What’s he doing?” she said with a sniff.

“Typing, from the sound of it.”

“I know,” she complained. “It’s
all
he does now.” She flopped back against the tenant’s door in a huff.

“He’s working,” said Liz, taking the cake from the fridge, “which is what you’re supposed to be doing, remember? Come on, give me a hand with the table.”

Lucy moped into the kitchen. She gripped the end of the kitchen table while her mom pulled out the extending piece. “Tablecloth,” said Liz. “The pretty one, please.”

Lucy yanked it out of a drawer. “It’s your fault for being so hard on him.”

“We can’t have squirrels running riot in the house.”

“It was only some cat litter on the
floor.”

Liz took the tablecloth and flicked it out. “And a secret trap. And plants uprooted all over the rock garden. Not to mention that unspeakable business with Bonnington. He’s lucky he got off as lightly as he did. If he were your age, he’d have been sent to his room for a week.”

“Mom, he’s
been
in his room for a week!”

“Well, at least it kept you both out of mischief, didn’t it?”

Lucy sighed and pushed a finger back and forth across the counter. “Didn’t you
know
he was setting the trap?” She glanced past her mother to a pretty little dragon perched on top of the microwave oven. It had ears like seashells and eyes like moons.

Liz opened a cabinet and took out some dishes. “It doesn’t matter what I know. What’s done is done. Put these out — with dessert spoons, please.”

Lucy took the dishes and plunked them down haphazardly around the table. Bonnington, sitting statuesquely on a stool, winced with every place that was “set.” “I bet he forgot my story,” Lucy grumbled. “He promised he’d read me one for my birthday.”

“Lucy, he’s twenty years old,” Liz said. “He doesn’t want to be pestered by a ten-year-old child.”

“Eleven,” Lucy said, indignantly. “I’m nearly grown-up.”

“Well, act like it then,” her mother trumped her. “Learn a little patience. You never know what might be around the corner.”

At that moment, David’s door creaked open and the tenant strolled buoyantly into the kitchen. “Party time,” he smiled, trying to scoop a smidgen of frosting off the cake. Liz smacked his knuckles with a wooden spoon. “Ow,” said the tenant, and tousled Lucy’s hair. “How’s the birthday girl?”

“There aren’t enough spoons,” Lucy said haughtily. “I’m going to get some more from the front.” She waltzed out with a mighty sniff.

Liz and David exchanged a little eyebrow traffic.

“A little frosty there,” he said.

“Hmm,” said Liz, glancing down the hall. “This story you’re typing had better be worth it. She genuinely thinks you gave her the brush-off.”

David let out a sneaky laugh. “Just keep her wondering for now. She’ll be gobsmacked when she knows what I’ve really been doing. It might not be the greatest story in the world, but it’s the thought that counts — I hope.”

“She’ll be thrilled,” said Liz, reaching into the fridge. “Will you finish it today? I can’t wait to hear it.”

David shook his head. “Done the beginning and some of the middle, but I haven’t even thought about the ending yet.” He took a grape from a bowl of fruit salad and popped it into the corner of his mouth. “I’ll ask Gadzooks when it’s closer to the time. He’s very good for inspiration, your dragon.”


Your
dragon,” Liz said, shaking a gelatin ring out of its mold. “Whatever magic he brings belongs to you.”

Meow,
went Bonnington, treading his paws.

David threw him a cat treat. Bonnington batted it across the kitchen, then dropped to the floor in hot pursuit. “Writing the story does feel a little magical. Sometimes I get so lost in the plot I find myself forgetting which parts are imagined and which are the parts that have actually happened.”

“Or which parts have gone under the dishwasher,” Liz sighed. She frowned as Bonnington tried, unsuccessfully, to squeeze his pink nose under the machine.

“It’s a little like being on a mystery tour,” said David, rescuing the treat with the blade of a knife. He washed off the fluff and returned it to Bonnington. “You sort of know you’re going somewhere but you can’t be sure where until you arrive. Does that make sense?”

“Very literary,” said Liz. “Tell me, will the story have a happy ending?”

David shrugged and snitched another grape. “Like I said, haven’t thought about it yet. Why? Is Lucy easily upset?”

Liz ran her hands down the front of her apron. “To be honest, I wasn’t really thinking of Lucy.”

David gave her an inquisitive look.

“Me,” she said, flushing gently. “I get teary at the slightest thing. Last year we watched
Bambi
for Lucy’s birthday. I was crying from start to finish. Very embarrassing.”

“Mom, which spoons?” a snappy voice called.

“There are only a few good ones!” Liz bellowed in reply. She took off her apron. “Better go and help.”

She blew a little kiss to the dragon on the fridge and puttered off down the hall.

David turned and looked thoughtfully at Bonnington. “She’s doing it again, isn’t she?” he whispered. “She doesn’t mean
herself
at all. She’s trying to tell me I shouldn’t upset the dragons.”

A-row,
went Bonnington, whose only concern was another treat.

David scooped up a glob of frosting and dabbed a smidgen on Bonnington’s nose. “Rule number
ninety-seven, Bonners. You shouldn’t ever make a dragon cry.” He smiled and let the cat lick his fingers. “Your humans are totally weird,” he said.

Despite her moodiness earlier in the day, Lucy enjoyed her birthday party. As her friends trooped in one by one, she took great pride in introducing them to David. For the moment, it seemed, the rift was healed.

There was lots of food and games and presents. Christopher Jefferson, the boy who Lucy sat next to at school, brought her a book called
Martin’s Mice,
which he claimed he’d read a hundred times
at least.
Beverley Sherbon gave her a bunny rabbit backpack and a plastic lobster with luminescent eyes. Samantha Healey gave her a jigsaw puzzle in a tin and some sparkling tubes of glitter paint. Lucy dabbed it on her arms and face (her mom said she looked like a piece of tinsel).

David, of course, had not forgotten her. He made a royal show of presenting Liz’s daughter with a “Lucy”
hat he’d found in a thrift shop. It had a green velvet bow with deep blue sequins. It was far too big, and kept slipping down over its namesake’s eyes. But Lucy wore it all day long and bluntly refused to take it off.

The last presents she opened were the ones from her mom. When she unwrapped the little camera she jumped with joy and gave Liz a huge hug. Then she took pictures of
everything:
her friends spilling food and pulling faces; David in a party hat with Pixy Stix up his nose; Bonnington on the counter, finishing off the cake; her mom shooing Bonnington down. At five, when everyone was saying good-bye, Lucy was as happy as she’d ever been.

That was when the tenant winked at Liz and quietly slipped away to his room.

“Lucy,” said Liz, recognizing the signal, “go and wash your face and hands now, all right?”

Lucy adjusted her Lucy hat and skipped upstairs without any argument.

She returned to find David and Liz in the living room. They were sitting at opposite ends of the sofa.

Lucy plunked herself down between them. It was then that she noticed a chair in the bay. It was facing the sofa, all trimmed with balloons and paper chains. Lucy looked at her mom. “Why does that chair have decorations on it?”

“I don’t know,” said Liz. “You’d better go and see.”

Lucy hurried over. A note was lying on the seat. “
STORYTELLER’S CHAIR
,” she read out loud.

David stood up and walked across the room.

Lucy’s face lit up with delight. “Are you going to tell me a story?”

David took a sheaf of papers off the footstool. “No, I’m going to read you one.”

Liz patted a cushion. “Lucy, over here.”

Lucy sprinted over and bounced into place. David sat in the storyteller’s chair.

“This is David’s special present,” said Liz. “You shouldn’t interrupt until the end of a chapter.”

“But doesn’t he have a book?”

“Yes, he does,” said David, shuffling the papers. “I typed one myself.”

Lucy’s mouth fell open in shock. “You
wrote
me a story?”

David nodded. “This is just the first few chapters, unfortunately. You’ll probably have to wait until Christmas for the rest. Would you like to see what it’s called?”

Lucy gave an ecstatic nod. David turned the manuscript around and showed her.

SNIGGER and the NUTBEAST
a squirrel story

 

for Lucy Pennykettle
(age 11 today)

 
 

“Sit back, be good and listen,” said Liz.

Lucy sat back, as tame as one of Martin’s mice. But she couldn’t resist whispering, “What’s a nutbeast?”

“Ah,” said the tenant, “you’ll have to wait and see.”

And with that he turned the page and started to read.

BOOK: The Fire Within (The Last Dragon Chro)
6.33Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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