There's a Dragon in my Dinner! Page 5

  “Oh, Toby still thinks I’m some kind of toy,” said Pan, rolling his eyes. “The more I tell him I’m not, the more impressed he is about how advanced I am. He’s tied me to this chair until he can figure out how to switch me off. As my mum used to say, he’s not the sharpest claw on the dragon.”

  Min caught Jayden as he fell over.

  “That’s a d-d-dragon,” said Jayden.

  “Mini-Dragon,” corrected Min.

  “Right, right,” said Jayden cautiously.

  “You must be Jayden,” said Pan. “Nice to finally meet you.”

  Jayden’s mouth opened and closed a few times before he managed to squeak out, “You, too.”

  “Where is he, Pan?” I said, raising my voice. “Where’s Toby?”

  “Getting something to eat I think,” said Pan. “He likes to eat.”

  “Like a polar bear likes ice,” said Jayden, steadying himself.

  “When did Toby dragon-nap you?” asked Min.

  “This morning,” said Pan. “Just after Eric’s dad had left. I was up all night working on new football tactics, you see—”

  “Pan, they worked!” I said, interrupting. “The Kippers won! Dad thought I wrote the tactics and he gave me my scooter.”

  Pan didn’t seem particularly surprised. “Of course they won, Mini-Dragons are excellent at football management.”

  “But how?” I said.

  “I learned how to speak perfect English inside a box of beansprouts on a ship across the ocean. Learning how to get eleven men to put a small ball inside a giant net wasn’t that hard. Anyway, I must have fallen asleep before I had the chance to put the notes in your dad’s bag. I woke up to the sound of the door opening and I had to sprint out after him. He was almost in his car when I caught up and managed to sneak them in his bag. Then when I was strolling back to the house a huge grubby hand swooped down and grabbed me. The next thing I know I’m here being shouted at to ‘do something cool. And make it fiery’.”

  “I was worried you’d run away,” I said.

  Pan looked confused. “Why?”

  “Because of what I said last night. I’m really sorry, Pan.”

  Pan looked at Jayden. “Is he always this daft?”

  A wide-eyed Jayden looked around as if he couldn’t believe a dragon was speaking to him. “Um … yeah, pretty much,” he said, finally.

  “What?” I said.

  “I’m hardly going to run away because we had one row, am I?” said Pan. “We’re friends, remember. Maybe it’s different for humans, but Mini-Dragons fall out with their friends all the time. But it doesn’t matter because we know it’ll be forgotten about the next day.”

  “No, humans are pretty much the same,” said Min.

  “Totally,” agreed Jayden.

  “So you’re not mad?” I said.

  “Nope,” said Pan.

  “Well, for the record, I am sorry,” I said.

  “Apology accepted,” said Pan. “Oh, and Eric?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Would you mind untying me?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said.

  After a couple of seconds of wrestling with the knot, the string tying Pan to the chair fell to the floor and he sprang free … only to be snatched out of the air by Toby who had charged into the room like a bull who had just heard there was a sale on red rags across the street.

  “How did you lot get in here?” he demanded, his face ready to explode.

  “Your mum let us in,” said Min.

  Toby growled. “Well, get out!”

  “Give him back, Toby,” I said.

  Toby laughed. “You always talk about it like it’s real.”

  “I’ve told you already—” began Pan, but before he could finish, Toby stuck a sock in his mouth.

  “That should shut it up for a minute,” said Toby. “Seriously, where’s the ‘off’ switch?”

  “I said ‘give him back’,” I repeated.

  “Why should I?” said Toby. “I found him on the street. Finders keepers.”

  “So you’re just planning on keeping him in your toy museum?” asked Min, looking around at all the unopened toys that lined Toby’s shelves.

  “Those are my collectables,” said Toby, beaming with pride. “Mum and Dad always buy me two of every toy – one to play with and one to sell to dumb toy collectors when I’m older for loads of money. And, yeah, he’s staying here – ‘COS HE’S MINE!”

  I took a long, deep breath. I didn’t want it to come to this.

  “Wait there,” I said, leaving the room.

  I returned a minute later carrying my birthday present.

  “What’s that for?” asked Toby.

  “A trade,” I said. “The dragon for the scooter.”

  Pan shook his head but I smiled at him. He was worth more than a scooter.

  “You idiot, Crispo,” said Toby. “I already have three scooters. What would I want with another one?”

  “You have three,” I said, “but there are four in the set. And this is the one you don’t have. I would have thought a collector like you would want the whole set.”

  Toby stroked his chin, considering it. Then he smirked. “You really are dumb. I’ll just make my parents buy it. I don’t need yours.”

  I felt like someone had just let the air out of me. I had been sure Toby would go for my offer.

  “Er … but you won’t find one like this in the shops,” said Jayden.

  “Eh?” grunted Toby.

  “Yeah…” said Min. “This one has been modified.”

  “That’s right,” said Jayden. “It’s souped up, amped up, beefed up. Goes like a Chinese rocket.”

  “You’re lying,” said Toby, but his face suggested he wasn’t so sure.

  “It’s dragon-powered,” added Min. “One of a kind.”

  Toby glanced at Pan at the mention of the word “dragon”. I smiled as I watched his face twitching as he struggled to decide.

  “But if you don’t want it…” I said, walking towards the door.

  “Wait!” shouted Toby. “I didn’t say I didn’t want it. Let me think.” Toby looked longingly at the scooter, then at Pan, then back to the scooter. I took another step towards the door, then heard a huge sigh.

  “Fine,” muttered Toby. “It’s a deal. Probably saved me a fortune anyway, all that talking it does is bound to drain the batteries.”

  “What happened to the sock Toby gagged you with?” asked Jayden as we left Toby’s house.

  Pan shrugged before letting out a little belch.

  “You’ve got a bit of wool in your teeth,” laughed Min.

  Pan was giddy with excitement as we made our way back to my garden. When we arrived, he let out a tiny gasp as he took it all in. It was just a standard birthday party – balloons, banners and presents – but then I remembered that he had never seen anything like it before. And then I realized that pretty much everything was like that for Pan. He had grown up in a cave, then been shipped across the world on a boat before being delivered to my house in a plastic container. And now he was with me, couped up in my bedroom. His life had been one box after another.

  I decided that it was time to open the box and let him see the world. I had no idea how yet, but I would figure it out. It would be hard, but I had help now.

  Maybe I could bring him to school…

  “Eric, where have you been?” asked Mum, appearing out of nowhere. “What is that?”

  She was staring at Pan, who stood motionless on the ground.

  “Oh, that’s my present to Eric,” said Jayden, giving me a wink. “Pretty cool, huh, Mrs Crisp?”

  Mum didn’t seem so sure. “It looks … sharp.”

  “Not for a nine year old,” said Min.

  Mum thought about it for a moment, before nodding. “You’re right. It’s a lovely present. Right, must go, I think they’re about to start a game of Limbo over there without me. Ha! They’re in my backyard now.”

  “Nice one, you guys,” I said afte
r she had gone. “And great work on the freezing, Pan.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’ve been practising all week.”

  Min let out a sigh. “It’s great having Pan back and all … but I can’t believe that horrible Toby gets to keep your scooter. It’s not very fair.”

  “Yeah, especially with all those awesome modifications,” said Pan.

  The three of us looked at each other and laughed. “That was just a fib,” I said. “It doesn’t have any modifications.”

  “Yes, it does,” said Pan. “I made them.”

  We stopped laughing.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Well, the other day I found the scooter in the cupboard under the stairs.”

  “What were you doing in there?” I asked.

  “Hiding from Pusskin,” said Pan.

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway, I saw it and thought, I bet I could make that go faster.”

  “Faster?” I repeated.

  Pan nodded. “It was easy. Mini-Dragons are excellent at scooter tinkering.”

  “Is that true?” Jayden whispered in my ear.

  “Well … to be fair, he does tend to be excellent at a lot of things. So I guess it probably is true.”

  The next moment, there was a loud bang. Everyone turned to watch as a round-looking boy soared through the air on an electric scooter before crashing into an apple tree on the other side of the street.

  I remembered a warning from the Encyclopaedia Dragonica:

  …this can lead to them becoming overconfident in their abilities, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

  This might be the sort of thing they were talking about.

  “Oh my,” said Min, looking stunned.

  “I know,” said Jayden. “Poor Toby.”

  “No, not that. I just realized, I was the one who delivered Pan to Eric. In the beansprouts!”

  “Really?” I said. “That’s your concern right now?”

  As people rushed to help Toby, the four of us quietly headed to the buffet table. Eventually my scooter would be returned to me and a confused Toby would be sent for a lie-down as he babbled about tiny talking dragons… But for now, I saw no reason to let a perfectly good birthday go to waste.

  I remembered another note of caution from the Encyclopaedia Dragonica:

  Mini-Dragons DO NOT make good pets.

  No, I thought, but they did make interesting friends.

  Hello, reader – Pan here! Now that you’ve finished hearing about how I came to live with Eric, you might be feeling a bit hungry from reading about all that mouth-watering food mentioned in the story. Well, never fear … because this is your lucky day! As I’m sure you’re aware, Mini-Dragons are excellent cooks so I thought it might be nice, as a thank-you for reading my story, to pass along a few of my favourite recipes. Eric insisted on including one, too, but between you and me it’s pretty disgusting, so I won’t blame you if you want to give that one a miss. What can I do. He’s my friend. Anyway,

  There’s a dragon in my backpack. This is what I’ve been reminding myself of all day.

  Q. Why is there a dragon in my backpack?

  A. Because I’m too nice, that’s why!

  And because he’s right, it’s not fair that he has to stay in my bedroom all day.

  Q. Why is there a dragon living in my bedroom?

  A. Oh right, yeah, sorry, I should explain…

  The dragon isn’t one of those full-sized, princess-stealing, knight-guzzling dragons that you’ve probably heard of. For one thing, I’d never fit one of those in my bag. No, he’s a Mini-Dragon. Which means he looks exactly like one of those other dragons – same green scaly skin, leathery wings, fiery breath, sharp teeth and claws – except that he’s about fifteen centimetres tall and can talk. Oh, can he talk!

  His name is Pan, and since he came to live with me he spends most of his days playing video games, reading comics and watching TV. Which sounds like a perfect life to me, but for some reason he finds it boring. He’s been begging me to let him come to school for ages and last night I finally gave in, on the condition that he keeps quiet and stay out of sight in my bag.

  Surprisingly, today’s actually been going well. Aside from the odd whisper from Pan, asking me to repeat something he’s missed or helpfully providing me with the answer to a sum or ten, he’s kept his word. And it’s almost home time now so I can probably stop worrying. I mean, realistically, there’s almost no chance at all of something going wrong now.

  “Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!!!”

  Almost no chance.

  That woman screaming who looks a bit like a yeti is Miss Biggs, our teacher. She thinks she’s just seen a rat run across the classroom.

  She hasn’t.

  She’s just seen a Mini-Dragon run across the classroom.

  Although completely different, I can see why she might confuse the two. If you had just caught sight a tiny creature darting across the room, you’d probably think rat before you thought Mini-Dragon. To be honest you’d probably never think Mini-Dragon.

  Unless you happen to be me. In which case you always think Mini-Dragon.

  Copyright

  STRIPES PUBLISHING

  An imprint of Little Tiger Press

  1 The Coda Centre, 189 Munster Road,

  London SW6 6AW

  First published as an ebook by Stripes Publishing in 2016

  Text copyright © Tom Nicoll, 2016

  Illustrations copyright © Sarah Horne, 2016

  Author photograph © Kaye Nicoll, 2016

  ISBN: 978–1–84715–744–7

  The rights of Tom Nicoll and Sarah Horne to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any forms, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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