Gruffen (3 page)

“Hello,” Liz said in dragontongue – a forgotten language that you and I would probably not understand, but any young dragon would.

“Gurrr,” went the dragon.

“Is he growling?” asked Lucy.

“More like hiccoughs,” said her mum. “He’s just trying to find his spark.”

“Gurrr-urr,” went the dragon again. By now he had spotted the dragons on the shelves and his eyes had grown even wider still. He was either quite shocked or quite excited, but at that stage it was difficult to tell.

“What shall we call him?” Lucy whispered, anxiously biting her lip.

Liz tilted her head. “He’s going to be a house dragon,” she said. “Neither yours nor mine. So we’ll let him decide. We’ll call him by the first word he speaks.” She tickled the youngster under his chin. That seemed to do the trick. Half a second later, the dragon sneezed and made a sound that was like a cross between a grizzly bear growling and a dog huffing.

“Gurrr-uffen,” he went.

“Gruffen,” shouted Lucy, clapping her hands. “His name is Gruffen.”

Liz smiled and ran her hand down the dragon’s spine. “Hello, Gruffen. Welcome to the Dragons’ Den.”

Gruffen wrinkled his snout the way dragons often do. Above his eyes were two curved ridges, a little like eyebrows. Like eyebrows, they suddenly came together in a frown.

“He looks confused,” said Lucy. “Say hello again.”

Liz bent close to Gruffen’s ear and said, “I’m Elizabeth, and this is Lucy.”

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t necessary for Liz to introduce them, for the new dragon had what is known as dragon ‘auma’. In other words he could share thoughts with the other clay dragons around him, all of whom knew Liz and Lucy, of course. But Liz did it because it seemed proper and courteous, and dragons, even young ones, appreciate good manners.

Gruffen, however, still seemed puzzled. He flicked his tail and looked down at his feet. His ears pricked up when he saw his book.

“Ah,” said Liz, “I think we’re about to find out what that’s for.”

Gruffen stepped off it and picked it up. It was an old-fashioned leather-bound book, in two bold shades of cream and brown. Etched in gold letters along the spine was its title, which Gruffen read aloud (in dragontongue).

“Book of Dragon Procedures?” Lucy translated. “Why does he need one of those?”

Liz hummed in thought. “Well, he is very young. He won’t have much… experience, I suppose. Maybe it was asking a lot of the ice to send us a friendly guard dragon.”

“Friendly?” sighed Lucy. “Mum, he’s supposed to fight off monsters!”

They looked at Gruffen again. Still frowning, he turned his book over and blew dust off the closed and ancient-looking leaves.

When he opened it, Lucy was quick to see that it seemed to be some kind of dictionary, with sections marked out in alphabetical order. Gruffen flipped through the pages, A, B, C, until he stopped at D and the heading: Den, The Dragons’.

Lucy joined him and read the page aloud. “Dragons’ Den: birthplace, sanctuary, home. To be guarded always, especially from persons not believing in dragons.”

“Gosh,” said Liz, “that’s impressive.”

“Look up ‘monsters’,” said Lucy.

Hrrr? went Gruffen, who had no experience of monsters, of course.

“M,” said Lucy impatiently. “Muh.”

Gruffen turned to the section marked by the letter ‘M’. There was nothing there yet.

Lucy threw up her hands. “How’s he going to protect me if he doesn’t know what to do?”

Hrrr? went Gruffen, obviously anxious that he’d failed before he’d even started. He flipped through his book to the letter ‘G’. Surprisingly, there was an entry for himself. In dragontongue he muttered, “Gruffen: guard dragon. Tasks: to watch and learn and boldly protect.”

“There you have it,” said Liz. “That’s the key. When you go to bed tonight, he’ll be there to watch and learn. He needs to know what he’s fighting before he can be a true guardian, doesn’t he?”

“I suppose so,” said Lucy, though she didn’t seem convinced.

Gruffen hurred bravely and snapped his book shut. A pother of dust came out of the leaves, sending him into a sneezing fit.

Lucy rolled her eyes and walked away.

She could foresee another sleepless night ahead.

For the remainder of that day, Gruffen followed Liz and Lucy around the house. There was much to see and learn. He particularly liked the kitchen with its view of the garden and he was fascinated by the spare room next to it, which was full of interesting bits of clutter. But on the whole there seemed to be nothing much to guard. The house was at peace, so were the dragons, so for the most part were Liz and Lucy. At midday, there was one quick moment of excitement when some things called envelopes fell through a rectangular-shaped hole in the door. Gruffen immediately jumped on the envelopes and spiked the biggest with his tail to be sure it wouldn’t cause any trouble.

Lucy, who was coming downstairs at the time, dryly announced, “Mum, Gruffen’s killed a letter.”

Liz forgave the young dragon, of course. She said the hole he’d made in the electricity bill was not important. He was just learning.

She said the same when the telephone rang and Gruffen pounced on the receiver and tried to fly away with it. (He ended up dropping it into a plant pot.)

Then at teatime there was a most dramatic incident when Liz spilt her cup of tea and scalded her fingers. Gruffen flew to the rescue. He roared at the tea and turned it into steam. The kitchen filled with brown-coloured mist and the smoke alarms went off.

“All part of his learning, I suppose,” Lucy grumbled – once her ears had stopped ringing and she could see through the clouds.

For a while after that things were calm. But as the day wore on and it eventually became time for Lucy to go to bed, Gruffen began to tense his claws in readiness for his most important duty: protecting Lucy overnight.

Liz helped her into her pyjamas and told her a bedtime story. Gruffen enjoyed that. It was about a woman called Gwendolen who had lived among some creatures called polar bears. Surprisingly, Gruffen found an entry for them in his book. Bears, polar. Large, furry and white. Guardians of the north. Friends of dragons. Wise to be polite to them at all times. Gruffen decided he liked polar bears. Anything that did a bit of guarding was all right by him.

When the story came to an end, Liz brushed aside Lucy’s fringe and said, “All right, time to sleep now. Gruffen will look after you.”

Lucy looked doubtful. “Are you sure?”

“Oh, yes,” said her mum. And with a brief hurr of dragontongue, she told Gruffen about the “monster” in the shadows.

Gruffen put on his fiercest frown and flew to the post at the end of Lucy’s bed. Balancing carefully, he fixed his gaze on the corner of the room. Outside, the street lamp was already glowing. Liz said goodnight to them both and switched off the bedroom light. Immediately, a cluster of shadows touched the wall. Gruffen gave a start, then settled down into a crouch to watch them.

It was not a windy night, which was good in some ways, but not so good in others. Good because the shadows hardly moved at all, so Lucy wasn’t frightened and fell asleep easily within ten minutes. But bad because Gruffen fell asleep as well. It was hopeless. The harder he stared at the motionless shadows, the drowsier he became. Before long, his eyelids had closed and his head had fallen forwards. Gentle hurring, snoring noises came tumbling out of his nose. His tail twitched gently as he dreamt of polar bears, and ice-white dragons, and—

“Arrgh!”

Lucy’s squeal of terror woke him in an instant. He was so shocked, he toppled sideways off the bedpost. Two flaps of his quick wings righted him again. Outside, in the street, something was beeping. He had no idea what it was, but it was loud enough to wake an nine-year-old girl. It appeared to have woken the monster too, for Lucy was shouting, “Gruffen, it’s here! Do something!”

Gruffen snapped to attention. On the wall, one shadow was zigging and zagging at tremendous speed. Gruffen tried to follow it with his eyes, but there was no clear pattern to its flight and the sudden jerking movements made his neck scales rattle. He looked at Lucy. She was safe beneath her duvet. As far as Gruffen could tell, the shadow monster wasn’t trying to attack her. It just seemed to be content to show off its flying skills. Hrrr! he went, challenging the thing to slow down and show itself. To his surprise (and slight worry) it did! Suddenly, the shadow grew large and wide and the monster spread a pair of spiky wings. It had a head that seemed too tiny for its body and ears that seemed too big for its head! Gruffen dived forward bravely, releasing a jet of fire from his throat. There was a crackling noise and a smell of burning! A long scorch mark appeared in Lucy’s wallpaper.

But still the monster continued to dart.

Gruffen went after it. Although he was young and had much to learn, he had the auma of the other dragons to help him. Flying came naturally. Without thinking, he was able to alter his wing shape, twist his body, balance it with his tail and find speed in the muscles which flapped his wings. Soon he was flying as fast as the monster, copying its movements as though he was a mirror. Lucy said later that when he smelled the charred paper, she had peeked out from under her duvet to watch. Gruffen was zipping about like a firework, she said – right up until the accident happened.