Paint Your Dragon Read online

  The dragons, referring to the Siege of Jerusalem, the Sack of Constantinople and a thousand years of dynastic marriages, said, Look who’s talking. But rarely twice.

  And then there was only one dragon left; the biggest and fiercest of them all, twice the size and three times the firepower of anything the knights had come up against. He had seen his race eradicated, the corpses of his kin heaped up beside the white men’s newly built roads and carted off to Camelot Fried Dragon bars the length and breadth of Albion. He had also learned that he and his kind were the Bad Guys, which puzzled him quite a bit initially but eventually came to make some sort of sense. After all, if dragons were the Good Guys, then these people wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to wipe them out. Would they?

  Well, said the dragon to himself. If the cap fits, and so forth.

  In the event, wearing the cap was fun.

  ‘I see,’ Bianca said. ‘So that’s why you weren’t particularly keen to meet the dragon. Figures.’

  ‘It had to be done,’ George growled defensively. ‘Out of that rough and ready cradle, a mighty nation sprang to life. Civilisations, like grapevines, grow best when mulched with blood. You can’t make an omelette ...’

  Bianca’s brow furrowed. ‘You’ve made your point,’ she said. ‘But you haven’t explained what you’re doing in my statue. Or,’ she added savagely, ‘why you keep moving the blasted thing about.’

  ‘I’m coming to that.’ George paused and licked his lips. ‘All this explaining,’ he went on, ‘isn’t half making me thirsty. You couldn’t just give us a glass of water, could you?’

  Bianca nodded silently and went to the kitchen. As soon as her back was turned, George, who had been quietly fraying the ropes against an aesthetically necessary sharp edge on the statue’s shin, gave a sharp tug.

  Of Sir Galahad it is told that his strength was as the strength of ten because his heart was pure. George’s heart had approximately the same purity quotient as a pint of Thames water, but he did press-ups instead. The rope snapped.

  ‘Hey!’ Bianca dropped the glass and came running, but George was already on his feet and heading for the door. When she tried to stop him, he nutted her with a plaster-of-Paris study for Truth Inspiring The Telecommunications Industry, clattered down the stairs and legged it.

  ‘Finally,’ said the Demon Chardonay (ironic cheers and cries of ‘Good!’) ‘let’s all remember, this is a holiday. We’re supposed to be enjoying ourselves. Okay?’

  At that moment the coach rolled over a pothole, jolting it so forcefully that Chardonay, who was standing up, nutted himself on the roof, thereby demonstrating to his fellow passengers that, even in Hell, there is justice.

  ‘Pillock,’ muttered the Demon Prodsnap under his breath. ‘What’d he have to come for, anyway?’

  On his left the Demon Slitgrind grunted agreement. ‘I think Management shouldn’t be allowed on outings,’ he said. ‘Ruins it for the rest of us. I mean, fat chance we’ve got of having a good time with one of them miserable buggers breathing down our necks. If I’d known I wouldn’t have bothered coming.’

  Although in his heart Prodsnap reciprocated these sentiments, he was beginning to wish he hadn’t raised the subject, because if one thing could be guaranteed to lay a big fat oilslick over the whole weekend, it would have to be listening to Slitgrind’s opinions.

  ‘I mean to say,’ Slitgrind went on, ‘least they could do would be to have different coaches for Management and us, bloody cheapskates. Wouldn’t be surprised if they’d done it deliberately, just to spoil it.’

  There are, appropriately, more opinions in Hell than anywhere else in the cosmos; and most of them, sooner or later, belonged to Slitgrind. Innumerable and diverse - contradictory even - though they were, in the long run they eventually boiled down into a single, multi-purpose, one-size-fits-all opinion; namely that the Universe was an upside-down pyramid of horseshit, with Slitgrind pinned down under the apex.

  ‘Oh well,’ replied Prodsnap, trying to sound positive (it came as easily to him as smiling to a bomb, but he did his best), ‘never mind. Still better than work, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Depends,’ Slitgrind said. ‘I mean, with frigging Management along, don’t suppose it’ll be any different from work. Wouldn’t be at all surprised if...’

  Oh yes, muttered Prodsnap’s soul, it’ll be different from work all right. At work, I torture other people. ‘Oh look,’ he said, pointing out of the window. ‘I can see a cow.’

  ‘That’s not a cow, you daft git, that’s a bull-headed fiend goring impenitent usurers. That’s another thing, they get uniform allowance, but we ...’

  Prodsnap closed his eyes. Another difference, he noted; the guests have all done something to deserve it. What did I ever do, for crying out loud?

  At the front of the coach Chardonay, knees smothered in maps, tickets, bits of miscellaneous paper and other props on loan from the Travel Agents’ Department, had dropped his red ball-point. This was bad news; he was using the red pen to mark emergency itinerary B (second fallback option in the event of missing the Styx ferry and the 11.35 helicopter service to Limbo Central) on contingency map 2. Scrabbling for it under the seats, he found himself inadvertently brushing against the slender, hairy ankles of the Demon Snorkfrod. Embarrassing.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, blushing bright grey. ‘Sorry.’

  Not that there were many shapelier hooves in all the Nine Circles. One-time Helliday Inn cocktail waitress, former centrefold in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, twice Playghoul of the Month in Hell and Efficiency magazine, Snorkfrod was just the sort of ghastly apparition any green-blooded demon would want to’ see jumping out of a coffin at his birthday party. It was just... Well, whenever he saw her, the phrase ‘rough as guts’ did inevitably spring to Chardonay’s mind. And (not that he’d had an infinity of experience in these matters) the way she stared at him sometimes was ...

  ‘Hello,’ Snorkfrod replied, looking down and smiling like a crescent-shaped escalator. ‘Lost something?’

  ‘My red biro.’

  ‘Don’t think you’ll find it there, pet. But you’re welcome to look.’

  After a split second’s thought, Chardonay decided the safest course would be to say nothing at all and get the Shopfloor out of there as quickly as possible. Which he did.

  Recovering his seat - as he sat down, he heard something go snap under his left hoof; no point even bothering to look - Chardonay reflected, not for the first time, that maybe he wasn’t really best suited in this line of work, or indeed this whole sector. It was, he knew, a viewpoint shared by many.

  The polite term, he understood, was upsiders; talented high-fliers headhunted (so to speak) from outside at the time of the Management buy-out; new brooms; fresh pairs, or trios, of eyes. As an experiment it hadn’t entirely worked. True, it had shaken things up; the bad old days of jobs for the fiends and living men’s hooves were gone for ever, and next year there was a one in three chance they’d get the balance sheet to live up to its name for the first time ever. On the other hand, the inertia of any really huge corporation is so great that it takes more than a few college kids with stars in their eyes and Gucci designer horns to change anything that really matters. And as far as he personally was concerned - well, he never thought he’d ever hear himself saying this - maybe law school would have been a better bet after all.

  Nevertheless, here he was, and giving anything less than his best shot was unthinkable. The one area he knew he could improve matters was in industrial relations, which was why he was here. Either that, or he’d had a really wild time in a former life and put it, as it were, on his Access card.

  Suddenly he was uncomfortably aware that he was being looked at. Somewhere in the fourth row something sniggered. Stray phrases like he’s well in there and after hours in the stationery cupboard were scurrying about in the thick atmosphere of the bus like mice in a derelict cheese warehouse. A huge, bald demon in row five caught his eye, winked and made a very peculi
ar gesture with three claws and an elbow. All in all, Chardonay reckoned, he was rapidly inclining towards the Past Life theory; in which case, it was bitterly unfair that he couldn’t even remember what it was he’d got up to.

  By his calculations it was ninety-six hours from Hell to Nashville and so far they’d been on the road for twenty minutes. And, like he’d said, this was fun. Having sketched out a course of entertainment for the inventor of the concept of fun that would have seriously impressed his superiors, Chardonay squirmed rootlike into his seat, scrabbled himself a makeshift cocoon of papers and settled down to enjoy his holiday.

  A flask of coffee, a ham and lettuce sandwich, a camera, the latest Ruth Rendell, a folding stool, a baseball bat - and thou.

  Thou in this instance being a big marble statue of a dragon. This time, Bianca had vowed, if the sucker moves so much as a millimetre, I’ll have him. It’s just a question of staying awake and being patient.

  As for Saint George, she reflected as she scattered crumbs among the pigeons, best to suspend disbelief, on full pay, at least until she saw what happened with the other statue. Once she’d had an opportunity to examine the evidence she’d gathered so far in the light of what she could learn from Mr Scaly over there, she could make a fully informed, rational choice between the two alternative explanations. And, if the vote eventually went the way of a big, peaceful house in the country and clothes with the sleeves laced up the back, then at least she’d have the altruistic satisfaction of knowing that she, not the entire galaxy, had suddenly gone barking mad.

  She’d just got to the bit in her book where the second spanner turns up in the glove compartment of the original suspect’s Reliant Robin when a tiny spasm of movement caught her eye. A tiny flick of the tail? She wasn’t sure. So, though her heart was pinging away like a sewing machine and some funny bastard had apparently put gelatine in her breath, she stayed as still as rush-hour traffic and waited.

  The next time, it was an eyelid. Then a little twitch of a nostril. That settled it; the blasted thing was asleep.

  She stood up, packed up her things, folded the stool and gripped the baseball bat. It broke after the fourth blow, but didn’t die in vain.

  ‘Urg,’ said the dragon. ‘Wassamatter?’

  ‘Wake up!’

  ‘Is it that time already?’ The dragon opened both eyes. He could see a young human female standing beside him, her head level with his eye. In her hand, a broken club. Did she look somehow familiar?

  Probably not. Over the years he’d come across a fair number of similar specimens, but that was all a very long time ago now; and besides, the very circumstances under which he tended to meet princesses made it highly improbable that he’d ever meet the same one twice. The same went for amazons, viragos, heroines and lady knights. The aggressive expression and the fact she’d just hit him with some sort of weapon suggested that this one belonged to category two; in any event, it didn’t really matter a toss. He breathed in ...

  ... And remembered that he was all out of lighter fuel. Sod. That left jaws and claws; or else just ignore her until she went away, like his mother had always told him to do if he was ever accosted by strange women. And yes, he realised, this one certainly was strange.

  ‘Bastard!’ she snapped.

  The dragon raised his eyebrows. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.

  ‘You’re alive, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ The dragon regarded the broken club, and then the female. ‘But don’t be too hard on yourself,’ he said. ‘You did your best, I’m sure.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. You’ve been moving around, haven’t you?’

  Oh come on, urged his rational mind, eat the silly mare and have done with it. But he didn’t; and not only for fear of raging indigestion. He had an uncanny feeling that this peculiar human ...

  ‘Mummy?’

  ‘Get stuffed,’ the female replied furiously. ‘And if you were thinking of making any remarks about chips off the old block, don’t.’

  ‘Doctor Frankenstein, I presume?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You must be the stonemason.’

  ‘Sculptress.’

  ‘Ah.’ Difficult, by any criteria, to know what to say in these circumstances. ‘Good job you did on the tail.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘My tail,’ the dragon replied. ‘If anything, an improvement on the original. Now if you’d been able to consult me beforehand, there’s quite a few little design mods you could have worked in. But for a solo effort, not bad at all. Thank you.’

  For some reason she could never account for, the simple thank you had a remarkable effect on Bianca. The best explanation she could ever come up with was that it was the first time one of her statues had ever thanked her, and it made a refreshing change. A good review is a good review, after all; although on reflection, it’d probably not be a good idea to quote it in the catalogue of her next exhibition. ‘You’re welcome,’ she heard herself saying, although that was undoubtedly mere conditioned reflex.

  ‘Nice claws, too. You probably didn’t know this, but I used to have the most appalling rheumatism in the nearside front. Much better now.’

  ‘Just a moment.’ Bianca- took a deep breath, and he could almost hear an audible click as she got a grip on herself. ‘Just who the hell are you?’ she demanded. ‘And what are you doing inside my statue?’

  The dragon shrugged with all four shoulders. ‘What you’re basically asking is, am I bespoke or off the peg? Answer, I’m not quite sure.’

  Bianca just looked blank. The dragon marshalled vocabulary.

  ‘In other words,’ he said, ‘am I some sort of wandering spirit who’s kibbutzing in your statue just because it was the first vacant lot I came to, or is there some sort of grand design going on here? As to that,’ he lied, ‘your guess is as good as mine. Facts: I was a disembodied dragon, and now I’m embodied. Very nicely, too, though if I do have one tiny criticism, it’s that you were just a fraction over-ambitious with the wingspan. If you’d done your equations a tad more carefully, you’d have cut the overall area back by about thirty square inches. In fact, you might well be able to sort that out for me when you’ve next got a minute.’

  ‘Quite,’ Bianca replied grimly. ‘Or I might just take a bloody great big sledgehammer and turn you into a skipful of gravel. You were going to blow on me!’ .

  ‘True,’ the dragon nodded. ‘But be fair, you started it, hitting me over the head like that. You may not know this, but I have very bad race-memories about being hit by humans. The fact that you’re standing there and not slipping nicely down my great intestine ought to suggest to you that I’m prepared to be civilised about all this. It’d be nice if you were the same.’

  ‘Of all the—’ That click again, as Bianca guillotined the sentence. Ah, muttered the dragon to himself, I like a girl with spirit. Methylated for choice, but a simple ethane marinade will do. ‘I’ve just,’ she went on, ‘been talking to Saint George. Ring any bells?’

  ‘You’ve been talking to the saints, huh? If they urged you to drive the English out of Aquitaine, watch your step. Young girls can come to harm that way.’

  ‘My statue,’ Bianca replied, cold as a holiday in Wales, ‘of Saint George. Your other half.’

  The dragon shuddered. ‘I’d find another way of putting that if I were you.’

  ‘Your better half, then.’

  The dragon growled, revealing a row of huge, sharp teeth that Bianca hadn’t had anything to do with. ‘Let me give you a word of advice,’ he said. ‘When making jokes to dragons, why did the chicken cross the road is fairly safe; likewise when is a door not a door. Beyond that, tread very carefully. Okay?’

  ‘Dragon,’ Bianca said. ‘Am I going mad?’

  ‘Why ask me, I’m not a doctor. You seem reasonably well-balanced to me, except for your habit of bashing people when they’re trying to get some sleep. But I put that down to some repressed childhood trauma or other.’

  Bianca loo
ked thoughtful. ‘You see,’ she went on, ‘this makes two statues I’ve had conversations with in twenty-four hours. And before that, I honestly thought that huge slabs of masonry under my direct control were playing musical plinths while my back was turned. It’d make me feel a whole lot better if I knew it was only me going barmy and not the universe.’

  The dragon considered the point for a moment. ‘What we need,’ he said, ‘is an objective test; you know, see if anybody else can hear me, that sort of thing.’

  Bianca shook her head. ‘Not necessarily,’ she replied. ‘I could easily be imagining that too.’

  ‘Picky cow, aren’t you? How do you know that non-speaking statues and immobile monuments aren’t just a figment of your diseased brain? Maybe you just kid yourself that nobody else can hear us, either. Come on, we could play this game for hours.’

  Bianca shook her head to see if that would clear it. The conversation was getting a bit too similar to the sort of thing you overhear in pubs frequented by first-year students around half past ten at night. ‘Your other - Saint George told me a story all about a place called Albion that was full of dragons, and people on horses killing them all off. Does that make any sense to you?’

  The dragon laughed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Didn’t make any sense at the time, either. But yes, the story is true.’ He sighed, and looked round. ‘You want to hear it?’

  Bianca nodded.

  ‘Fair enough.’ He shook himself and stepped out of the statue; a dark, thickset, bearded man in his late twenties, fairly commonplace and unremarkable except for his crocodile shoes and longer than average fingernails. ‘Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you all about it.’