The Origami Dragon And Other Tales (10 page)

The old lady
noticed my brother staring at the little creatures, and smiled.

“Them? So you
can see them, can you dear? Only those of a magical persuasion can
see such things. My niece can’t, poor thing. My husband made them,
years ago. Most of them, anyway.”

She poured out
three cups of tea, one of which she put on the floor for the dog.
The cups were solid gold. Each cup was in a saucer carved from a
single enormous pearl. The old lady put a packet of biscuits on the
table, and my brother took one. He was too distracted by the living
origami to notice that he was drinking out of a thousand dollars’
worth of teacup.

“The meals on
wheels people are so good, they always bring me biscuits when they
drop the food off. They always say how my husband was good to them,
so…” she carried on, but my brother was too distracted to
listen.

You see, the
woman’s husband had been a magician of some talent in his time, and
had taken an occasional interest in origami over the years. When he
retired he had begun to mix his hobby with his profession,
experimenting with paper enchantments of all kinds. Over the years,
he had made the horde of paper swans, lions, horses, gorillas and
dinosaurs which now lived and played around the living room
furniture. The lady called to the animals, and a couple came and
wandered around her ankles as if looking for food.

My brother
reached down again, and the animals scrambled to get away from him.
One of the smaller dinosaurs tripped over, falling on to its side.
My brother picked it up gently and placed it on the long table at
the centre of the room. The small creature panicked and ran away
along the table. My brother reached out to catch it, but a screech
from above him made him look up.

“That’s
not
one of my husband’s animals,” the old lady said
unhappily.

Her husband had
only shown one person, his nephew, how to make living origami. It
had ended so badly that the elderly magician had hidden his
notebooks away and stolen an hour of his nephew’s memories to stop
the knowledge being spread around. The only remaining evidence from
that day was a colossal, mean red dragon that still haunted the
house. It was this dragon that my brother had heard, and he ducked
as he saw it flying straight at his head, paper fire in its mouth
and madness in its eyes. My brother threw his hands above his head
to protect himself as it roared past.

The dragon’s
body was made from thick red paper patterned with jagged swirls of
silver. Its head and talons were bright and golden paper, and its
eyes were glowing and angry green. It was as long as a man’s arm,
but agile in the air. The dragon descended with a loud screech and
swooped on to the small dinosaur, knocking it off its balance and
on to its side. The dinosaur didn’t stand a chance; the dragon tore
its prey into tiny ribbons of coloured paper, ripping and tearing
with obvious delight. My brother raced to stop the attack, but he
was too slow and too late to save the little dinosaur.

The dragon
burst into the air with a roar and clap of wings, circling above my
brother’s head and taunting him as he jumped up to grab at it. It
teased my brother until he stopped jumping and started looking for
something to throw.

“It can’t be
caught, dear,” said the old woman, concerned at my brother’s
antics.

The old dog
waddled up and sat watching my brother fume. It shared his hatred
of the red dragon, which made a habit of biting the poor dog’s
tail. The dog sat down, wagged its tail and watched my brother with
interest.

“I’m not
planning on
catching
it,” he said angrily.

He pulled his
remote controlled chopper out of his jacket pocket and readied it
for flight. The red dragon was circling above his head, screaming
down taunts at him and doing loops of victory. It squawked in
surprise as the chopper raced into the air, keen for aerial combat.
The chopper swept towards the red paper dragon, but the beast was
faster than the machine. The dragon dropped into an elegant spiral,
brushing past my brother’s head and then back into the air. My
brother spun the chopper back towards the dragon and prepared to
charge it, but when the dragon saw what the machine was doing, it
opened its golden mouth and blew out a perfect paper fireball that
hit the chopper and exploded into real flames.

My brother
watched in disbelief as his chopper fell to the ground with a sad
crash of molten plastic and broken pieces.

“I can still
fix-” he began.

He was
interrupted when the remains of the chopper exploded into a puff of
orange smoke. It was clear that there was nothing that even he
could do, except maybe give the poor thing a decent burial.

Another thing
about my brother is that he doesn’t take well to defeat. He plays
every video game on its hardest setting, and finishes every level
and bonus level regardless of how long it takes him. This means
that he has only finished about five games in his whole life, but
he had played them to death. My brother narrowed his eyes; the red
origami dragon was a challenge that could not be ignored.

So he gathered
up the larger bits of his chopper and placed them in his pocket,
and then he sat down on the couch.

“Right,” he
said.

My brother had
found himself in a house beset with magic, fighting an enemy made
from coloured paper for the peace of mind of an old woman and her
dog. What does a normal person do when faced with such an unusual
situation? What would
you
do? Call a friend, a priest, a
scientist? Film it for YouTube? Run, and don’t stop until you are
safely at home under your bedcovers? You won’t be astounded that my
brother did none of these.

“I can make an
origami dragon of my own,” he said to the old lady.

She tutted to
herself and wandered off to find a plastic bag for what was left of
the paper dinosaur.

“I can do it,”
he said to the dog, which seemed to believe him and barked
encouragement.

My brother
spent the rest of the day listening to the old lady tell stories
about her husband. Eventually she thanked him for listening, and
told him that she was going to take a nap. My brother said he would
show himself out, but left the door unlocked and walked back into
the house as soon as he knew the old lady was asleep. He walked
into the living room and found the dog waiting for him.

“Lead on, good
hound!” he said, and the dog lead him to a pile of dusty books
lying on a low shelf.

It pointed at
the books with its nose, sneezing to emphasise its point. My
brother looked though the books until he found a couple that looked
right, thanked the dog and walked home to study.

You might ask
how origami can be magic, but I say that even
ordinary
origami is magic. You take an unassuming piece of paper, fold it
like this and that and then again and squash this and pull
that
, fold a beak into the neck and, look, you have a swan.
Or you keep going, cutting and folding and folding and pulling
until you have a dragon: amazing! It’s a dragon! How did that
happen? A dragon, made from folding a piece of paper! How is that
even possible? My brother says that bringing the thing to life is
pretty easy compared to folding it properly. You take the model,
singing gently to it, and fold it through itself and into a tiny
ball of blue energy and then pull it apart again. Voila, the animal
lives!

It isn’t quite
that simple, of course. The trick is in what paper you use, and
what is written on the paper. My brother started with some easy
incarnations, written in blue ink on white paper. His first attempt
was a swan that flew out the window and disappeared forever. After
that, he was a lot more careful. He worked for a month before he
was ready, writing and folding every day and late into the night.
One day he went down to the shops, bought a thin sheet of green
paper, a thick sheet of blue paper, a sheet of sharp silver paper
and a whole bunch of calligraphy pens. Then he locked himself in
his room and went to work.

It took him
three long days just for the writing. He showed it to me when he
was done. The patterns were beautiful, long strings of words
written in a long-dead language that branched chaotically across
the paper. The words made sentences, and the sentences made a
story, but to this day my brother won’t tell me what the story was
about. I can tell you that the words and patterns changed each time
I blinked. It took him seven straight hours to fold the origami
model, using knives and scissors, rulers and a glass of water. He
gave the dragon silver claws and silver teeth to fight with, and a
silver tail to be proud of. It was a beautiful creature, but it
wasn’t the only thing he made that night.

You see, the
thing about my brother is that he is cunning. Once I gave him a
hug, and at the same time stuck a ‘kick me!’ sign on his back. He
was young and gullible then, so the sign stayed on his back for a
whole hour before he noticed it. I knew he would try for revenge,
so I waited to see what he would do. Sure enough, the next day I
checked my back in the mirror and saw a sign that said ‘kick me
quick!’. I laughed at my brother’s simple strategy, pulled the sign
off and put my jacket on. But, like I said, my brother is cunning.
The first sign was a diversion: there was a second sign hidden on
the inside of my jacket and prepared with double-sided tape so that
it would stick to my shirt inside the jacket. I went to school and
told all my friends about my silly young brother who tried to stick
a sign on my back, oblivious to the sign in my jacket. The day
warmed up, and I took the jacket off to reveal the sign that was
now stuck to my shirt. I spent the rest of the day wondering what
my friends were laughing at. True story.

A paper dragon
has no chance against such a mind as that.

The next time
my brother visited the old lady he took his origami creatures with
him. The old lady was happy to see him, as always, and the dog
barked in greeting.

“Look what I
made,” he said, showing the old woman.

“Very pretty,”
the old lady said, and went off to make tea.

My brother put
the origami dragon on the table and spoke softly to it. It flapped
its wings slowly, eager for battle. The remaining paper animals
peered cautiously out from behind the furniture, wondering what the
fuss was about. My brother’s dragon breathed blue flames into the
air, and the dinosaurs disappeared again.

The blue dragon
roared a challenge, shaking the old lady’s pictures in their glass
frames and echoing around the house. The blue dragon took to the
air, roaring again, calling out for its red adversary, keen for a
fight. It circled above my brother’s head, a deadly paper predator
with silver claws and cold blue eyes.

The red dragon
refused to come out of hiding.

“He knows you
want to fight him dear, and he won’t come out. My husband tried
something similar once, but the red dragon is a coward and knows
every good hiding place in this house.”

My brother
shook his head patiently. He had planned for this. He pulled a
second model out of his pocket and sat it in the palm of his hand.
It was a tiny green mockingbird the size of his thumb, with ruby
red eyes and a tiny yellow beak. He breathed gently on to it, and
its wings opened. He smiled down at his creation, and it pecked his
finger rudely. It took off into the air, circled around his head
and landed in the old woman’s hair. She smiled as it nested in her
hair and brushed it gently aside.

“You know what
to do!” my brother whispered to it, and it took off at speed
through the house, taunting and calling out to the red dragon.

“You too, my
beautiful blue dragon,” he said, and the blue dragon flew up to the
chandelier above them.

The little
green bird landed on a paper gorilla and whispered in its ear. The
gorilla pointed with one long arm, and the mockingbird took off
again. The origami models knew where the dragon hid, but they would
never go near him for fear of being attacked. My brother had made
the mockingbird to be brave, and it was determined to find the red
dragon. My brother also made the bird to be rude, and its taunts
made the red-and-gold dragon angry. The dragon leapt out from
behind a vase in the library, screeching and roaring as it tried to
catch the little mockingbird. The little bird was agile enough to
dodge the attack, and fast enough to stay just in front of the
dragon as it made its way back to my brother. It flew as fast as it
could, teasing the red dragon continuously as they raced through
the air. The red dragon bit down on the air in frustration, always
just a second behind the bird.

They entered
the main hall, and the red dragon roared in anger as it saw my
brother.

“Now!” yelled
my brother, shutting one of the room’s three doors.

The dog shut
the second one, and the two bravest paper dinosaurs slammed the
last door shut.

The mockingbird
flew straight up my brother’s sleeve and into safety. The blue
dragon dropped from the ceiling and towards the red dragon. The red
dragon blew a paper fireball immediately, but it bounced off the
blue dragon’s paper skin without bursting into fire. The red tried
again, and this time the blue answered with a fireball of its own.
The two paper fireballs met in mid-air and exploded into streamers
of yellow ribbons. The two dragons circled, charged, backed off,
circled again. The two beasts seemed equally matched, and each time
they clashed both would tear at each other, ripping off tiny pieces
of paper that floated down to the watchers below.

Everyone and
everything in the room watched the fight, transfixed on the
outcome. The old lady, her dog, and my brother stood side by side
with their faces turned towards the air. The origami animals waited
in their hiding places, too cautious to emerge completely.