The Last Dragon Chronicles: The Fire Ascending (48 page)

They turn to the screen again.

We see the interior of Wayward

Crescent, specifically the Dragons’ Den. Zanna has picked up a bronze-colouredegg, claiming she can feel somethingmoving inside it. David snaps at her toput it down, saying Liz, his landlady, willgo mad if she comes homes and findsanything out of place. Little does heknow the alarmed face of Gruffen isalready watching from a shelf in thebackground. Zanna refuses. Experienceslike these are what she was put on this Earth for, she says. They argue, but shewon’t give up the egg. Despite thebickering, the romantic tension betweenthem is obvious. Then the doorbell

sounds. David and Zanna freeze. Gruffen is   seen   to   gulp.   David   hurries

downstairs,   certain   that   Liz   has

forgotten her keys. Zanna follows. All the way, the bickering continues. David yanks the door open. There is Gwilanna. Stern and scary. On the suitcase beside her sits the potions dragon, Gretel. David says, dumbly, “You’re not Liz.” Gwilanna replies, “No, boy, I’m not. Trick or treat …?”

The clip ends. The audience applaud.

“She
 
is
 
scary, isn’t she?” James opensup. He means Gwilanna, of course, playedto perfection by the
 
grande dame
 
ofcinema, Helena Meeren.

“Almost as scary as the real thing, Dadreckons.”

“Tell me about this,” says James. He undoes one button of his suit, feeling, perhaps, that he has gained a little more

intimacy with his charming guest. He leans forward again, focusing the intrigue of the entire studio onto Angel’s eyes. “Is it true that Gwilanna is based on your Great Aunt Sibyl?”

Angel nods. “The whole family is more or less written as they are.”

“But the books were intended for you?”

“Kind of. I gave Dad the idea, but his ultimate motivation was to give his brother, Joseph Henry, a life.”

James takes this in and immediately adopts a more sombre tone. “I want to tread softly here because this is quite tragic, isn’t it?”

“I don’t mind talking about it,” Angel replies.

James nods. He puts his notes aside.

“Correct me if I’ve got this wrong, but your grandmother, Elizabeth, the one who made these beautiful dragons, died giving birth to a stillborn son who would have

been named Joseph, right?”

“Joseph Henry, yes.” Angel picks it up from here. “It’s just one of those awful tragedies that families suffer from time to time. I don’t think any of us ever got over it. Dad dealt with it the best way a writer knows how: in words and stories. He told

me once that when Grandma first found

out she might die, she held his hand and told him a dark fire had entered her.”

There are heartfelt sighs from parts of theaudience. “He never forgot it. The losswas very hard for him.”

“He was adopted, wasn’t he?”

“Mmm, when he was twelve, which is why he made himself a ‘lodger’ in the books, though when he wrote some of the timeline changes he became their son, just to satisfy that need in him. Liz and Arthur adored him and treated him as their own.

But if there was one thing Dad reallywanted them to have, it was a ‘proper’son.”

Again, the audience make their empathyclear. The camera picks out Zanna, who isclose to tears.

“That’s very moving,” says James. And he means it. Not wishing to dwell on the subject   too   long   he   moves   the conversation sideways a little. “And Lucy,

your   aunt.   There’s   some… mystery

surrounding her as well, isn’t there?”

“Only that we don’t know who her

father is. Grandma would never talk about

it. She had Lucy young, long before she married Arthur. We suspect that Great Aunt Sibyl knew the truth, but she took it with her to the grave. If asked, she always claimed that Lucy was hatched by a dragon.”

The audience are relieved to stutter

with laughter.

“Yeah, but she was
 
how
 
old then… ?”

“Oh, pretty wrinkled.”

“So she was… ?” James twists a finger next to his temple. He whistles, like a meerkat popping up and down a tunnel.

“Well, you
 
say
 
that… ” Angel opens her hands.

“Come on, she was barmy!” James is

riding a mischievous wave. But he’s confident he has enough of her trust to be allowed to say something this outrageous. “She was as potty as him.” He points at Gadzooks.

“But she said it with such conviction,

Nathan. I think that rubbed off on all of

us.”

“So Gwilanna – if I may call Aunt Sibyl that – believed in dragons?”

“Oh, totally.” Angel slides her hands to the front of her knees. “She encouraged Grandma to make the clay models.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes. And the idea that the universe was made by a dragon came from Aunt Sibyl, too.”

James grins. He’s pleased she’s brought

this up. “And your grandfather famously quoted this.” He turns to the audience. “I should explain, for those who don’t know, that Angel’s grandfather is the outspoken theoretical physicist Arthur Merriman who once said, if I remember rightly, we know so little about the exact moment of

the Big Bang that the idea of a dragon creating the universe isn’t that farfetched.”

“We come from a world of fire,” says Angel, cleverly quoting her father’s text.

But James wins the round with another

quip, “No wonder he never won the Nobel

Prize.”

The   audience   clap,   spurring   thepresenter on. “Can we talk about Prof Merriman? ’Cause he’s
 
great
, isn’t he?”

“Don’t you dare suggest he’s mad,” she

warns.

“As a hatter,” James says from the

corner of his mouth.

Angel scowls.

James protests. “Oh, come on-nn. He’sgot cats called Higgs and Boson! Who intheir right mind names their pets after anundiscovered particle?”

The audience, by their laughter, areclearly with him. But Angel moves hergaze towards the seats as if to threaten James with a no-show from her mother.

He gets the significance and confesseshe’ll behave. “Okay, eccentric. Can wesettle on eccentric?” He takes her silence

as a ‘yes’. “Can I ask you, seriously, about

his work?”

“Sure.”

“He   believes   it’s   possible   to ‘imagineer’, doesn’t he? To actually construct or materialise objects from thoughts?”

“Yes, he does.”

“That’s a bit creepy, isn’t it?”

Angel brushes her thigh. “Grandad would say there are lots of unexplained forces in the universe, especially in the quantum world. His team feel they’re close to a breakthrough.”

“Really?”

“Mmm.”

There is a pause. The audience giggle at Nathan’s look of incredulity.

“Seriously,”   says   Angel,   laughingherself.

“You’re winding me up.”

“No. Really. Ask Dad afterwards.”

Now Nathan is hooked again. “Your dad’s involved in this, isn’t he? And so is Anders Bergstrom, I believe, the famous Norwegian…  What is Bergstrom, exactly? I’ve never really understood what he does.”

“Officially, a psychologist. But he’s done a lot of things.”

“Including the North Pole.”

“He gets about, yes.”

“No,” James argues, tapping his desk. “I cycle in Surrey. That’s getting about. The Canadian High Arctic is a whole different ball game. Is he
 
really
 
a polar bear?”

“Probably,” she laughs. “I wouldn’t put

it past him. He’s an interesting guy. One of the most charismatic men I’ve ever met –

present company included, of course.”

James wiggles his tie. A deliberate act of self-effacing vanity.

“Anders is a free-thinking spirit. A very bright and gifted man. He helps Grandad to rationalise his beliefs. He’s the perfect complement to the scientific approach.”

“I’m told he wasn’t in the final book.”

“Who, Bergstrom?”

“Yes. According to Jess, he doesn’t appear in
 
The Fire Ascending
.”

Angel shrugs. “I guess he just wasn’t needed.”

James accepts this at face value. “Let’sgo back to the imagineering thing. There’sbeen a buzz going round the Cloud for

years that your dad is a guinea pig for Prof Merriman’s   research   into   ‘active

consciousness’, which I believe is the basis for imagineering.”

“Well, that’s a bit ‘X-Files’,” Angel says, referring to her father’s favourite television programme in which an FBI agent,   Fox   Mulder,   investigates paranormal events. “When Dad started the books   he   asked   Grandad   Arthur’s

permission to include him as a character. Grandad agreed on two conditions: one that Dad stayed true to his beliefs—”

“Your grandfather’s beliefs?”

“Yes. And two, that he wrote the books organically.”

“Meaning they should come out as they wanted to. Unplanned.”

“Yes. This is why there are some loose ends   or   seemingly   impossible complexities in the stories: they reflect the nature of spontaneous creation, the chaotic universe of a writer’s mind. Whenever

Dad wrote, he wore a small device whichrecorded the pattern of his thoughts andthe synaptic energies involved. I’ve seenthe graphs. They’re particularly spikywhen Dad has moments of genuineinspiration. The auma of the universe ismost empowered when he’s apparentlycreating something out of nothing. If youcan harness that energy, theoretically youcan imagineer.”

“Right.” James sets his shoulders

square.   He   closes   his   eyes   and concentrates. After a second or two he

blows a breath of failure. “No, still can’t produce a clone of your mother.”

Angel rolls her eyes. The audience appreciate the joke, all the same. James, all teeth and schoolboy smiles, tosses his hair off his forehead again. “What?”

“Mum is so going to tear you down.”

James says, “I’ll look forward to that. So where does he come in?” He nods at

Gadzooks.

“Well, he’s a dragon. He’s in perfect harmony with the universe. He helps Dad when he’s stuck.”

“I love that,” says James, curling a titter around his words. “That you talk about him as if he’s real.”

“To the family, he is. Grandma felt the

urge to create him because Dad was

always scribbling stories. All through the novels, he used Gadzooks in the same way ‘David Rain’ does. When he was stuck, he talked to Zookie. In his mind’s eye he’d see him write on his pad and that would kick-start his imagination again.”

James leans forward to point something out. “In his mind,” he says quietly.

“It’s a perfectly valid tool,” says Angel. “I know writers who talk to trees to help them through a mental block.”

“Yeah, but the tree doesn’t talk back!”

“How do you know?” she counters, laughing.

“Because… ” But James is flummoxed

now. He merely points at Gadzooks and

says assuredly, “They’re a myth.”

Angel smiles in silence. But she isn’t

done yet. “Grandad’s got a nice take on myths. Do you want to hear it?”

“Is it quick? I could debate this with you all night, but we have other guests and I want to show another clip from the movie.”

“Real quick,” she says. “Arthur would argue that what we call myths are events that happened in their own timeline. But if the timeline changes, an etheric trace of those events is left behind – and that

becomes the basis of a memory, or a

legend.”

“Didn’t understand a word of that.”

“Play it back later.”

“I will.”

“Slowly.”

“Thank   you-uu.”   His   laughter

acknowledges a point on her score card. “Let’s see another piece of the movie, shall we?”

The audience clap their approval.

“This is from the beginning of the filmwhen Bergstrom talks to the polar bear. My daughter says this isn’t in the book?”

“No. Dad has always acknowledgedthat it would be difficult to film the books

individually because they don’t lend themselves to discrete movies. So he and

Rod, who wrote the screenplay with him,cherry-picked parts from later in theseries, particularly
 
Dark Fire
, to helpexplain the overall plot.”

“This is Rod Duncan?”

“Yes.”

James gives an approving nod. “I am

such a big fan of his zombie movies.” He glances at Gadzooks and points. “Did he just do the zombie thing? I swear I saw him hold up his paws and sway.”