Rain & Fire Read online

  For Professor Robert Jahn, Brenda Dunne —

  Hug and Hum

  (Nice to know we’re not the only scribblers in the

  Margins of Reality …)

  … and with grateful thanks to all the crew in LR, BX,

  and NJ: You know who you are — wom!

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Welcome

  Preface

  Chapter 1: The Dawn of Dragons

  Chapter 2: From Small Acorns …

  Chapter 3: … To Grand Dragons

  Chapter 4: Who’s Who: The Characters

  Chapter 5: What’s What: The Glossary

  Chapter 6: Where’s Where: The Settings

  Chapter 7: Myths and Legends

  Chapter 8: The Light and the Dark

  Chapter 9: Whistlers, Wastrels, and Woebegones

  Chapter 10: Online

  Chapter 11: All Fired Up

  A Q&A with Chris d’Lacey

  About the Author

  Also by Chris d’Lacey

  Copyright

  Stories float around like snowflakes, don’t they? They settle on the ears of anyone who’ll listen.

  — Zanna (from Fire Star)

  Hello, and a warm welcome to you all. Hrrr!

  Packed within these covers is a huge amount of information about Chris d’Lacey, his life as an author, and his fantasy series, the Last Dragon Chronicles. As his wife and business partner, I can assure you that what you discover herein is accurate and authentic, and much of it is material that you will not be able to find elsewhere — but this is no dry academic textbook to be pored over in some dark and dusty tower. This is a book that can be read from start to finish, like any other, but equally it can be opened at random — for wherever you dip in, you will find snippets of information to hold your attention, anecdotes to make you laugh, or background history to share with your friends.

  This, then, is the inside story of the Last Dragon Chronicles, including:

  The Fire Within

  Icefire

  Fire Star

  The Fire Eternal

  Dark Fire

  Fire World

  The Fire Ascending

  Jay d’Lacey, Brixham, 2012

  Imagine you are a young man, twenty years old and just starting out on a journey of independence. You want to leave home to go to college and earn a degree in … let’s say Geography. You apply to a number of schools and you’re happily accepted by a small college with a decent reputation.

  Then having found your place of learning you need to arrange some accommodation. There are no dormitories at the college itself, so you need to apply to one of the halls of residence nearby. However, because you’ve been slow to read the paperwork (or more likely misplaced it), all the halls are full. Lectures begin in a few days’ time. You need to find somewhere else to stay — and fast.

  So waving good-bye to your hometown, Blackburn, you hop onto a train and head southeast. Where you’re going is a fair old distance away. You’ll probably fall asleep with your nose against the window and snore, to the annoyance of everyone in the train car. Fortunately, you’re in no danger of missing your stop because the train ends in Boston, where you have to change. Time for a sandwich and a cup of coffee while you wait on a short, fairly isolated platform for your connection into the suburbs.

  The train that arrives is nothing like the express that brought you this far. It’s a little dingy (inside and out). It rattles. The train cars move like a broken concertina. The people in the cars talk with a different accent from yours and none of them seem to be in any kind of hurry. The same could be said of the train itself. It stops every few minutes at stations that are becoming ever more rural. The busy streets of Boston have given way to green fields, low stone walls, and trees. It’s autumn, so the leaves are turning russet and brown, but most of them are clinging to their branches for now. You see churches, parks, the occasional stretch of water. Narrower roads. Old-fashioned telephone booths. People wobbling around on bicycles. The houses are redbrick, clustered into rows. One of these is going to be your destination.

  When the train finally pulls in, the only person to get off is you. Slinging your one bag over your shoulder, out through the turnstile you go.

  From a grubby little man at a newsstand on Main Street, you buy the afternoon edition of the Scrubbley Evening Echo. You flip to the pages listing places to rent. What you see there doesn’t look good. Everywhere is incredibly expensive. The paltry wad of bills you’ve stashed in your wallet is now cowering somewhere deep in your pocket. It would barely fund a week in any of these places. All you would be able to afford to eat would be a can of soup — and you’d have to make it last. Just to make matters worse, a lively autumn breeze lifts the paper from your fingers and carries it down the length of Main Street. It flies into the face of a large black Doberman. The dog doesn’t look pleased. You decide to move on.

  As you stroll up Main Street, you come to an opening between the rows of shops. A civic center of some sort, with a large white building at the far end. Beyond it you can see a huddle of trees. You feel drawn to go and look at them. Powerfully drawn, but you don’t know why. Right beside you is a signpost, complete with blue signs. The big white building turns out to be a library. The trees are the Scrubbley Library Gardens. You stare into the grounds, looking slightly lost. Strangely, you feel as if you’ve only just awoken. As if everything that has gone before simply doesn’t matter. As if nothing even existed before this day.

  “Hello. Are you lost?” A little old lady with a shopping cart is tugging your sleeve.

  “I’m, erm, looking for … tourist information,” you say, noting there’s a blue sign indicating that it’s up Main Street. The old lady points in the opposite direction. But then, old ladies are like that sometimes.

  The Tourist Information Center is a yellow stone building at the intersection of roads leading out of town. Perhaps they can provide you with a list of places known for student accommodation. Well, they might if they were open. It’s Wednesday afternoon. Half-day closing. Your shoulders sag. This adventure is not going well.

  Sighing, you sit down on the steps of the closed TIC with your bag upon your knees and your chin upon your bag. People pass. They look at you. They smile. They wonder, perhaps, if you should have a cap for donations by your feet and a wire-haired dog on a blanket beside you. The thought of hanging a sign around your neck saying GOOD HOME WANTED does pass through your mind, just as a post office van pulls up nearby. Idly, you watch the postman unlock the mailbox and scoop the cascading letters into a sack. He locks the mailbox up again and throws the sack of letters into the van. Then he roars off into the countryside.

  That’s when you see that he’s missed a letter. It’s in the gutter at the foot of the mailbox, in danger of being run over by dozens of car tires. So, hauling your bag onto your shoulder once more, you step into the road and pick up the letter. This will be your token good deed for the day. Tink. Back into the mailbox it goes. Bye-bye, letter. Have a nice journey. You shrug and turn around. This random act of kindness has left you standing outside another newsstand. Nothing special about that, you think. But in the newstand is a board full of flyers. Right away, your eye is drawn to this:

  Sixty dollars a week. That’s more like it. But wait a moment, you have to write? You do have some writing things in your bag, but you don’t have time to mail a letter, catch a train home, and wait for a reply. But the Universe hasn’t brought you this far for nothing. Already, an idea is brewing in your mind.

  You go to the newsstand and ask for directions. Wayward Crescent, the man says, is about a mile away, just off the main Scrubbley road. Turn right, after Calhoun’s General Sto
re. Fifteen minutes, at a brisk walk.

  Smiling, you open your bag. You find a bench and spread a writing pad over your knee.

  4 Thoushall Road

  Blackburn, MA

  Mrs. Elizabeth Pennykettle

  42 Wayward Crescent

  Scrubbley, Massachusetts

  Dear Mrs. Pennykettle,

  Help! I am desperately in need of somewhere to stay. Next week, I am due to start a Geography course at Scrubbley College, and I haven’t been able to find any

  I am scrupulously clean and as tidy as anyone of my age (20) can be. My hobby is reading, which is generally pretty quiet. I get along very well with children, and I love cats.

  Yours sincerely,

  Mr. David Rain

  P.S. I’m afraid I haven’t seen any dragons around lately. I hope this isn’t a problem.

  That last part. The bit about dragons. That was weird. Better dragons than spiders, though. Or mice. Or eggplants.

  You’re wasting time. Away you go. At a brisk pace. Brisker than brisk. You’re out of breath by the time you reach Calhoun’s, but this is partly due to excitement now.

  The Crescent is quiet. A sleepy little backwater, lined with mature trees. The sound of birds and lawn mowers is in the air. Number 42 is close to one end. It’s perfect. The ideal suburban residence. Bit of a hike from Scrubbley College, but let’s face it, you need the exercise.

  You tiptoe down the driveway, up to the door. You push your letter through the slot, making sure the flap rattles. Then you step aside quickly so you can’t be seen.

  “I’ll get it,” cries a woman’s voice.

  Mrs. Pennykettle, presumably. You knock your fists together. They’re home. Success!

  There’s a pause. You hear the sound of ripping. She’s opening the envelope, reading the letter now. How long would it take? Thirty seconds? Forty? You give it fifty, with elephants in between. Then you present yourself at the door. You take a deep breath and aim your finger at the bell … and almost poke your would-be landlady in the eye.

  Because she’s opened the door already.

  “Oh,” you say. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

  She looks at you carefully, but before she speaks she glances at a small green dragon sculpture that’s sitting on a shelf just inside the door. “Mmm,” she says, as if the dragon might have whispered something important. Then she relaxes and says, “Hello, David.”

  “Erm, hello,” you mutter. You want to blink, but it’s hard to take your eyes off this amazing woman. She’s not classically beautiful, but she is stunning. Piercing green eyes and a mane of red hair, as if plucked from at least three lions. She doesn’t seem at all fazed by what you’ve done. But how did she know to open the door?

  “Would you like to come in?”

  “It’s about the room,” you say, rather awkwardly. You feel that you ought to explain yourself, at least.

  She smiles and says, “I know. I got your letter.” She waggles it and once again looks at the dragon.

  Is that thing frowning, you wonder?

  “Please,” she says, opening the door a little wider. So you step into the hall. And the first thing you notice are the dragons in the window recess, halfway up the stairs. There’s another one peeking through the banister rails. And another on the potted fern you’ve just brushed past. Little clay sculptures. All over the place. And all of them are looking at you.

  Behind you, the front door closes softly. And you may think this is where the journey ends, but the truth is it’s really only just beginning. An incredible journey of love and legends, adventure and magick. In a voice like a wind from another world, Mrs. Pennykettle says from behind your back, “Welcome to Wayward Crescent, David. We’ve been expecting you….”

  Chris d’Lacey, Autumn 2012

  Chris recently found an article on the Internet stating that if you compared the history of Earth with a calendar year, then the first cell of anything that could be called “life” did not appear until midsummer. Plants followed in August, then the various animals in the next few months. Dinosaurs arrived at the winter solstice, around December 21, and died out by the day after Christmas, the 26. Humans didn’t appear until early evening of the 31, and true civilization not until four minutes to midnight. Allegedly, many living species became extinct “daily” — Including dragons, he thought, in a blinding flash of inspiration.

  Now, I don’t know about you, but to him that is a very exciting concept. Not that dragons died out, of course, but that they might actually have existed in the first place on this wonderful blue planet of ours. Imagine seeing a group of them (a flock? a wing? a flame?) soaring and swooping overhead in the warmth of the sun. Or beating their huge majestic wings against a fierce Arctic gale. Would you be scared silly or would you be exhilarated? Would you rush outside to stare in wonder at the spectacle, or would you cower indoors, too terrified to even peek through the window? Or would you be so used to seeing them around that you would just accept their presence and go about your normal day without paying them much attention? These are some of the questions that Chris wanted to find his own answers to when he wrote the Last Dragon Chronicles.

  He is often asked whether he believes that dragons did exist on this world, and he usually replies, “I’d like to.” He is in very good company. From doing some background reading, I found that while relatively few people do believe in their one-time existence, a large majority, just like Chris, would like to. What can it be about dragons that fires (sorry!) the imagination so strongly? Especially since, overall, they have had pretty lousy press.

  Think of most dragon legends and myths; it seems like nine times out of ten they feature dragons as the bad guys — fire-breathing monsters who would have you for dinner as soon as look at you. Personally, I reckon all this was a ploy to keep knights in shining armor in work. What else could they do, after all, apart from rescue helpless damsels in distress? No damsels, no job. To be fair, there are some cultures around the world that do revere dragons and think them admirable creatures, and definitely believe that they were real. China is the most notable example, Vietnam another, and, much closer to Chris’s home, Wales has its own red dragon.

  But love them or loathe them, they do seem to pop up in so many countries’ legends that you have to think that there is something in it. “No smoke without fire” comes to mind — a highly appropriate phrase, in the circumstances.

  Perhaps there is a common folk memory or group recall from way back, or maybe it is all simply wishful thinking, that we feel that there somehow just “ought” to be dragons, to fulfill some unacknowledged and unconscious need in us all. Or, to stretch the imagination a little further, could it be that they did (still do?) exist, but on some other world, and that there was a bleed-through or crossover to this one in the dim and distant past, mentally and emotionally, if not physically? Whichever way, belief in dragons does seem to be “hardwired into the human consciousness.” I don’t know who came up with that phrase, but I think it sums it all up beautifully.

  Although there is this huge fascination with dragons, Chris himself, when asked, always used to say that he wasn’t particularly smitten with them in his early years; he never gave them much thought. However, on closer questioning for this book, I discovered that one of his all-time favorite books from childhood is The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien. And guess who one of the main characters is? Smaug, a classic “bad” dragon who sits on his pile of stolen treasure and roars vengeance on anyone who dares to intrude upon him. The edition that we have even has Smaug defending his ill-gotten gains on the cover. A subtle influence there, perhaps, after all.

  Chris’s current take on dragons is that they are noble beasts, worthy of respect and awe, spiritual guardians of the planet and servants and defenders of Gaia, Mother Earth. But Chris does not limit himself to one type of dragon; in the Last Dragon Chronicles, there are two very different sorts — one large, one small; both benevolent. The first, as you might expect, are the relatively trad
itional “real” dragons; full-sized, immensely powerful, fire-breathing, and truly awesome. But they are birthed from eggs by parthenogenesis….

  The second type is more unusual still. They are about eight to ten inches tall and made from clay by one of the main characters, a potter named Elizabeth Pennykettle. She sometimes uses something called “icefire” in the process, which makes them into “special” dragons, that is, those that can come alive. All the dragons speak variants of a language called dragontongue, as do Liz and her daughter, Lucy, as well as the odd polar bear or two. (Yes, that’s right, polar bears. I’ll come to those a bit later.) These small dragons are to be found all around the Pennykettles’ home, from the entrance hall to the Dragons’ Den, where they are created.

  David Rain, the hero of the series, even uses the Pennykettles’ bathroom, which has a small “puffler” dragon named Gloria sitting on the toilet tank in front of him. She’s there to “puffle” a pleasant rose scent when necessary. David does have the grace to turn her to face the wall — but whether to spare her blushes or his own, who can say?

  Each of the special clay dragons that Liz creates has a particular talent or ability. There is a wishing dragon, a guard dragon (who is rather young and inexperienced and therefore always needing to check his manual for the correct procedure), a natural healing dragon, and many more. But the one you most need to know about is Gadzooks. Zookie, as he is also known, is made especially for David as a housewarming gift when he comes to lodge in the Pennykettle household, and he is an inspirational writing dragon. Gadzooks helps David get unstuck when faced with any problem — particularly writer’s block. This is just as well, as David, like Chris, eventually becomes a writer….