Jonah and the Last Great Dragon (9 page)

As Jonah moved towards the door, the Home Secretary took him by the arm.

‘Do you mind if I come with you?’ he said. ‘I can carry the hose; it will be a bit heavy for you.’ He bent closer to Jonah’s ear. ‘I need to talk to you.’ Then in a jovial voice he announced loudly that he was going to help Jonah give Ffyrnig a drink.

A woman MP patted the Minister on the back, joking that the dragon would probably leave him alone. ‘He’ll find you a bit tough to swallow!’

Laughing, the Home Secretary led Jonah towards the door, making sure that others did not follow them downstairs. ‘No, no, he might get bad-tempered if too many people are around him. We don’t want a nasty incident.’

Colonel Cooper was standing by the door, talking with the other SAS officer, and as Jonah walked towards the soldiers, he saw the Colonel look sharply at the Home Secretary and give a slight nod. Then he peeled smoothly away and left the room. When Jonah and the Home Secretary came down the stairs, he was waiting for them in the entrance hall.

‘Jonah,’ said the Home Secretary urgently, ‘the Colonel and I need to hear more about the icedrakes. I know that, upstairs, I seemed to be pouring cold water on your idea, but that was just to stop a premature discussion. Before the whole committee takes too long to thrash out a plan that just can’t work (because none of us understand dragons),
someone needs to discuss the situation with you and – well – with the Great Dragon. Then we – you, the Colonel and I – can come back fast with a workable plan.’

The Colonel looked grave. ‘Time is running out,’ he said. ‘If we make another failed attempt to exterminate the Night Creatures, they will take over. They are moving further and further out towards the London suburbs. Next thing, they will be spreading across the country. We need the chance to find out as much as we can about the icedrakes and assess our chances of success. Then we can present the PM with a good, workable plan. And we need to do it fast.’

Jonah privately thought that the real priority was to give the dragon something to drink, followed pretty quickly by something to eat, or he might take it into his head to find his own meal. He wasn’t at all sure that he could control Ffyrnig, if the dragon lost his temper.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said hastily. ‘We’ll go and talk to Ffyrnig but he really ought to have a drink first.’

They hurried out of the front door and Jonah dashed towards Ffyrnig’s head. As the dragon heard his running feet, he swung his head round and glared.

‘You took your time,’ he said testily. ‘I’m parched. I said I needed to cool down for a
little
while, not for hours! Now, my insides are scorching and I am seriously overheating. Look!’

He lifted his head and huffed a great breath, and a tongue of flame shot upwards. The Home Secretary jumped with shock. Ffyrnig rolled a sideways glance at Jonah, to see what effect his display was having.

‘Stop it!’ Jonah put on a bored voice. ‘Just breathe gently. The water is coming now. Look.’

A gardener was unrolling a hosepipe from behind the hedge on the right side of the building but, when he reached the edge of the road, he looked uncertainly at the
dragon. It was obvious he did not want to go any nearer.

‘I’ll go and ask him to turn on the water,’ said the Colonel. He strode towards the gardener, who looked relieved, handed him the hose-reel and backed away. While he waited for the water to come through, the Home Secretary was abstractedly gazing at the dragon. Suddenly a great jet of water spurted out of the hose, which almost writhed out of the Colonel’s grasp. As the Minister scurried to help, water sprayed over Ffyrnig’s face and shoulders, and into his eyes. As the cold water poured over his heated scales, clouds of steam rolled over Jonah and the two men. For a moment, the Colonel could hardly see what he was doing but, squinting through the fog, he directed the hose at the gutter, to stop Ffyrnig getting drenched. The dragon roared with annoyance and the Home Secretary stepped back in alarm. Ffyrnig raked his front claws on the road with a terrible scraping noise.

‘What a waste!’ he grumbled to Jonah. ‘Tell him to aim it at my mouth.’ He narrowed his eyes at the Colonel. ‘Call him a soldier! Hah! Wouldn’t trust
him
with a sword!’

Jonah peered through the clouds of steam. ‘Can you aim it at his mouth, Colonel,’ he called, and then, to the dragon, ‘OK, you can stop moaning. The water is coming now. Raise a leg when you want it turned off.’

Ffyrnig lifted his head and opened his enormous mouth. Very accurately, the Colonel directed an arc of water at his tongue, while the Home Secretary stood sturdily behind him, taking the weight of the hose. The dragon’s long red neck rippled as the water streamed down his throat, and he shut his eyes with pleasure. Eventually, he raised his foreleg and closed his mouth, squirming with delight as the water streamed over his hot back. Jonah ran to ask the gardener to turn off the tap. Suddenly, as he was coming back, there was a scream and then voices yelling in alarm.
Jonah ran out onto the pavement and stopped dead.

High above his head, the Colonel, hanging from Ffyrnig’s mouth, was being swung from side to side. The police were edging up the road towards the firedrake’s head, their faces upturned towards the helpless officer.

‘Ffyrnig, no!’ bawled Jonah, running towards the dragon. ‘Bring him down. Please! Do it now, Ffyrnig! And be careful!’

The dragon inclined his head slowly to gaze down at Jonah and the Home Secretary, who were tensely staring up at the dangling officer.

‘Just pray he doesn’t have a heart attack,’ muttered the MP.

Pray Ffyrnig doesn’t drop him
, Jonah thought. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the two SAS troopers, carrying what looked like a tarpaulin, were running up the street with more policemen. He turned to meet them

‘Do you think you can make him set the Colonel down gently?’ asked Andy. ‘In case you can’t, we’ll hold the tarpaulin beneath him and try to break his fall.’

‘I can’t
make
him do anything!’ He was searching for words to explain the tie that seemed to bind Ffyrnig and the other dragons. ‘He – erm – kind of cooperates, if you see what I mean.’

He took a deep breath and tried to make his voice sound confident and in command.

‘Ffyrnig,’ he called. ‘I’d really, really like you to put the Colonel on the ground. And please be careful.’

With exaggerated care, Ffyrnig lowered the officer and placed him on the pavement. Jonah felt appalled and embarrassed. He wished everyone had not made such a fuss about him being a Dragoneer. After Ffyrnig’s prank it felt ridiculous to claim that he could control the Great Dragon, and he wondered what he could possibly say to
Colonel Cooper, who was sitting on the kerb, rubbing his side.

The Home Secretary bent over the Colonel, a hand on his shoulder. ‘Are you all right? Has he injured you?’

The Colonel looked up, and to Jonah’s astonishment, began to grin.

‘No, the cheeky beggar! He’s hasn’t done any damage, except to my uniform. Just look at this. Saliva all over it! Do you think the cleaners will get it out?’ He winced as he hauled himself to his feet, but laughed at the expressions on everyone’s faces. ‘One of his teeth really dug into my side. Don’t look so worried. I’m fine, really. You know, I felt like a teddy bear in a toyshop. I’m never going to live this down, am I?’ He waved cheerily at the windows above him and people waved back. But nobody shouted; they were too scared of provoking the dragon.

Jonah went to stand in front of Ffyrnig.

‘Just answer me why,’ he said angrily.

The dragon half closed his eyes and looked at the boy in amusement.

‘Just my mischief. I get a little playful when I’m hungry.’

‘But you could have dropped him! You might have injured him – and he’s a very important man! What on earth got into you?’

‘Well, it’s more what
didn’t
get into me – I’m starving! And, anyway, I like him.’ Ffyrnig looked thoughtfully at Colonel Cooper. ‘He reminds me of myself.’

‘What?’ Jonah was incredulous. How could an SAS officer, even if he was an important one, possibly have anything in common with the Last Great Dragon of Wales?

‘Yes, really,’ Ffyrnig was serious now. ‘Your Colonel and I are somewhat alike. For a start, we’re both fighters. He wouldn’t show he was afraid, you know, when I grabbed him. I believe he is the kind of man who grabs problems by
the throat and shakes them, like a terrier with a rat.’

‘Or,’ replied Jonah drily, ‘like a firedrake with a soldier.’

‘Well, exactly,’ said Ffyrnig tranquilly.

The Colonel and the Home Secretary approached cautiously. Jonah looked round.

‘What is Ffyrnig saying?’ asked the Colonel.

‘Well, actually, that he – er – likes you,’ said Jonah. ‘He liked the way you didn’t panic when he caught you.’

The two men were beginning to laugh.

Jonah grinned. ‘I don’t think he would have hurt you,’ he said, as the gates were opened to admit a large Sainsbury’s van. It stopped as soon as it had driven into Downing Street, and two men in white coats, who were clearly nervous, got out of the cab and went around to the back. With the policemen’s help, they loaded large joints of meat onto two trolleys and began to wheel them up the pavement, keeping as far away as they could from the huge red body that took up most of the road. When they were a few yards from Ffyrnig, they hesitated. The Colonel waved them on, but the men didn’t want to go any nearer. The policemen took over and pushed the trolleys to where Jonah, Colonel Cooper and the Home Secretary were standing.

‘Sainsbury’s butchery say they hope they have done the right thing,’ the policeman called Denis said to Jonah. ‘They cut up the carcasses. Thought it would be more hygienic than having him rip them up, with blood and guts all over the road in front of the PM’s house. Shall we put the joints on the road in front of him?’

Ffyrnig rumbled and Jonah laughed.

‘He says it would be
more hygienic
if it didn’t touch the road at all!’

Denis gaped. ‘Can he understand me?’

‘Well, not
what
you say, exactly. It’s more that he picks up
people’s body language. Would you mind throwing the pieces of meat up to him? It’s what he seems to want.’

With a big smile of pure pleasure Denis threw a huge joint of beef up to Ffyrnig, who caught it easily. The policeman waited while the dragon chewed it, and then carefully swung another into the air.

The young policeman looked on in approval, saying to the Colonel. ‘Good old Denis. That’s PC Kelly, sir. Years of playing cricket for Sunbury. You can tell, can’t you?’

Andy and Fred had wandered up to join them, and now feeding Ffyrnig developed into a game, as the policemen and the troopers took it in turns to throw large legs and haunches of pork and beef for Ffyrnig to catch. They were all laughing and Ffyrnig was enjoying it as much as anyone. Jonah turned to smile up at the Colonel and caught sight of the Prime Minister at the upstairs window. While everyone around him was laughing, the PM looked strained and grave. Jonah swallowed hard. For the last few minutes, he had been so amused by the dragon’s antics, he had pushed the Night Creatures and the burning buildings to the back of his mind. But all the while that he had been standing in Downing Street, the demons were swarming over Westminster and getting ready to paralyse the towns and cities of Britain. People could be dying while he was wasting time. He turned to the Home Secretary and the Colonel.

‘Should we talk to Ffyrnig now?’

‘Yes, if he’s ready,’ said the Home Secretary. He asked the police to move away so that he and the Colonel could talk to Jonah and the dragon in private. The Colonel asked Jonah to repeat what he had told the Prime Minister about the icedrakes, and in his incisive way, began to elicit the information they needed.

‘Does Ffyrnig know that an icedrake’s breath is really
cold enough to kill a Night Creature?’

Ffyrnig assured Jonah that the ice-dragons could generate enough power to freeze the Devil’s servants. It would take him, with Jonah on his back, about three days, he thought, to reach the icedrakes’ homelands.

‘With me on your back!’

Jonah relayed this to the Minister and the Colonel, and exchanged dubious looks with the two men. They were all thinking about the Prime Minister’s declaration:
I cannot
,
and I will not, give permission for this child to try again
.

Wouldn’t it be better, Jonah asked, if the nine dragons flew to the Arctic on their own? Surely, Ffyrnig and the others were more than capable of persuading the icedrakes. But the dragon shook his great head. For one thing, he said, they were running out of time. The angels needed help fast, if the creatures from the Underworld were not to overthrow the United Kingdom. None of the other dragons, not even Mordiford and Deerhurst, who were the largest, could manage the journey without having to stop at least once to eat and rest for some hours. Only he, the Great Dragon, could fly there without food or rest. And once they reached the Arctic, of course, they had actually to find the icedrakes. That might not be easy in a vast blue and white world of ice and snow and meltwater.

‘And
the icedrakes will see me as their enemy, Jonah. They are unlikely to show themselves just because I call to them. They probably wouldn’t believe me if I went alone. They are bound to ask why they should be concerned with troubles in the lands of their enemies? You
must
come with me, if they are to be persuaded to come to Britain’s aid.’ Ffyrnig looked earnestly at Jonah. ‘They will come only because you ask them. They will come at your bidding and yours alone. Only a Dragoneer can bend the will of the drakes.’

Jonah turned doubtfully to the Minister and repeated what Ffyrnig had said. ‘I’m going to have to go. Please, you must persuade the Prime Minister to change his mind!’

The Home Secretary bit his lip. ‘He’ll never allow this. If the SAS could go too, it would be different. But I can’t see the PM agreeing to send a young boy into the Arctic alone. Well, honestly, Colonel, do you?’