A Crown of Dragons Read online

  “I like the idea of the dragon scale. Fascinating creatures, dragons. They pop up all the time in my line of work.”

  “I thought you taught languages?”

  “That’s right, I do. There are quite a few dragons in Greek mythology. You’ve probably heard of the hydra? Nasty, serpentlike creature. Whack its head off and two more grow back. Charming, eh?”

  “Gross,” I said.

  He smiled like a man who’d cracked the code to a safe. At last, he had gotten me talking. “My favorite legend is the story of Prometheus. It’s not about dragons per se, but I’ve always thought there was a link to them. Do you know about Prometheus?”

  I shook my head.

  “He was a Titan who stole fire from Mount Olympus and gave it to man, angering Zeus — the king of the gods — in the process. I’ve always thought that ‘fire,’ in that sense, had more to do with spiritual empowerment than the flames you’d use to boil a pot of water. In dragon mythology, fire is given to them by their creator. But it’s more than just a weapon for frazzling knights; it’s a dragon’s spark of life and the source of their powers. Imagine if the Greek texts had been misinterpreted and Prometheus had given men the power of dragons?” He took a hand off the wheel and made a circling movement. “That would be some combination, wouldn’t it?”

  “LOOK OUT!” I screamed.

  He had turned his head at a vital moment and missed whatever was hurtling toward us. It bounced off the windshield with a loud thwap! Harvey braked. I jumped straight out. Twenty yards behind the car, a black shape lay in the middle of the road.

  “No!” I screamed, and went running to it. It was a crow — mangled and bloodied, a wing fluttering like a grounded kite. Its neck was broken, its head turned out. I trembled as I knelt beside it. Please, I was praying. Please, don’t let it be …

  Just then, another vehicle pulled up beside me. A window slid down.

  “Michael?”

  I looked up. Dennis.

  He unclipped his seat belt and quickly got out. “What’s going on?”

  “He hit a crow,” I said.

  He looked up and down the road. “Who did?”

  “H —” I began to say his name, but the BMW wasn’t there.

  Just my bike, lying at the side of the road, and my notebook blowing open in the breeze.

  Dennis found a rag in the back of his van and moved the crow onto the shoulder. It wasn’t Freya; it was one of the males. It brought a tear to my eye all the same. Dennis ran a hand along my arm and said, “It happens, chum. I hit a fox last year, nearly broke my heart. They just run into the road and there’s nothing you can do. Birds are even worse, they fly across you so fast.”

  “It didn’t,” I said.

  “Didn’t what?”

  “Fly across. It came down from above.” As if it was dead before we struck it.

  Dennis changed the subject. “This is your bike, then?” He picked it up off the road. “You know you’ve got a flat?”

  “What? Oh — yeah.”

  “Not your night, is it? Good thing you’re almost home.”

  I looked along the lane. We were less than thirty yards from our drive. Harvey had done as he’d promised and set me down out of sight of the house. But how had he gotten the bike out of the car and unfolded it so fast? And why hadn’t he hung around to check on the crow?

  Dennis wheeled the bike over. “I’ll take a look when I’ve got the van unloaded.”

  “Unloaded?”

  “Wood and plasterboard for your ceiling. I was passing this way, so I thought I’d drop off some tools and materials. You can give me a hand, if you want?”

  “Will it be heavy?” He was built like Agent Mulrooney, with strong, firm arms. I was like a jellyfish by comparison.

  He smiled. “Not between the two of us. Hopefully, I’ll be doing the job later this week.” Another car flashed by. “Be safe now. See you in a minute.”

  He jumped into the van and drove to the house.

  Mom’s mood improved at seeing him. And when after fifteen minutes of lugging stuff upstairs we went out into the garden to look at my bike, she practically melted with appreciation. He was doing exactly what Dad would have done, not trying to fix the flat but teaching me how to do it myself.

  For all that, it confused him a little.

  “It’s a strange one,” he muttered after we’d both felt around the tire for a leak. “It’s just literally lost pressure. Yet the valve looks good and the rims are barely tarnished. Got a pump?”

  I nodded and went to the garage to fetch it.

  Mom perched herself on a low stone bench. I heard her say, “This is so good of you, Dennis.”

  “Anytime. Bikes are my passion. Them and my little girl, of course.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Four.”

  “Oh, how lovely. They’re gorgeous at that age. Are you planning to have more?”

  I saw Dennis shake his head. “Me and Mel’s mother, we’re not together anymore.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to —”

  “It’s all right,” he laughed. “You couldn’t know.”

  I stepped back into the garden. “Here’s the pump.”

  “I’ll go and put the kettle on,” said Mom.

  Dennis held up a hand. “Not for me, thanks. I can’t hang around. I’m meeting a friend tonight.”

  “Oh, well, maybe next time,” Mom said quietly. Was it me, or was there a hint of disappointment on her face?

  He nodded and smiled. “What are you doing this weekend?”

  “The … weekend?” That threw her. She touched her fingers to the nape of her neck.

  “It’s just that Melody will be at her mom’s on Saturday, so I thought I might come and fix your ceiling then — save you taking a day off work.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Mom. “For a moment …”

  For a moment WHAT, Mother? For a moment, you thought we were all going for a picnic on Begworth Tor? Honestly. Harvey. Dennis. Make up your mind!

  “Yes,” she said, flushing slightly. “That would be helpful. Thank you very much.”

  “Right, I’ll see you bright and early on Saturday, then.” He jumped up, dusting his hands together.

  “What about this?” I held out the pump.

  “Attach it to the tire, blow air in,” he said. He laughed and swept a hand across my hair. “Give it a go. We’ll check it on Saturday.”

  The next morning, Harvey turned up at eight, as promised. I was on time for once and Josie was the one holding everyone up — though that probably had something to do with the fact that I’d hidden one of her school socks under the bed so I could get time alone with Harvey.

  “How’s the bike?” he asked. He was leaning against the car, sifting gravel with the point of one shoe.

  “Why did you leave so quickly last night?”

  He raised his shoulders, enough to make the arms of his jacket wrinkle. He was wearing the same one as yesterday, with a lighter combination of slacks and sweater. “You seemed to know the man who stopped. If I’d hung around, he would have known I’d given you a lift and that might have gotten back to your mother. I was trying to be discreet. Who was that man?”

  A devil on my shoulder wanted to say, A rival for my mother’s affections, Harvey, but all that came out was a tame “He’s fixing my bedroom ceiling.”

  “Ah, the great water catastrophe.”

  In the background, I heard Mom shouting, “Oh, get a pair of socks out of the laundry basket for now. We’ll figure it out tonight. Come on, Harvey’s waiting.”

  “Trouble?” he asked.

  “No more than usual.”

  He smiled thinly. “By the way, I wanted to ask you something. Galan aug scieth.”

  For a second, the world moved in slow motion again, not unlike that moment by the graveyard. “W-what did you say?”

  “Galan aug scieth. It was scribbled on your notebook. I saw it when I picked it up last night. I meant to ask yo
u about it, but that crow distracted me. It looks like a Celtic language, possibly a variant of Welsh. I was wondering how you came across it.”

  “I … I saw it in a book.”

  “A book about dragons?”

  I nodded faintly. “Do you know what it means?”

  “No, but I can make an approximate translation. Galan is an ancient word meaning ‘dragon.’ But I assume you knew that? This is research for your story, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said, too breathless to think about deflecting him.

  He glanced toward the house. No sign of Mom and Josie. “Translating words out of context is never wise, but in the roughest sense galan means ‘dragon’ and aug means ‘joined to.’ Scieth is the tricky one. The nearest I can get to that is ‘one I see’ or ‘the one before me.’ It rather depends who’s speaking the phrase. If it was the dragon, for instance, it might use galan the way you’d use boy to describe yourself as ‘I.’ In that example, the word aug could also be read as become. So if I was attempting a general translation, I would write —”

  Annoyingly, Mom came out before he could finish. “Sorry, Harvey. Silly kerfuffle over socks.”

  “I haven’t lost it,” Josie growled.

  “Shut up and get into the car,” Mom warned her. “You as well, please, Michael.”

  Harvey opened the door for me.

  I looked into his eyes. They were dancing with crazy flecks of gold. “I am become you,” he whispered. “More literally, I am you and you are me. If we assume that you is a man, then in the context of your story, the phrase would describe the melding together of your father and a dragon. Powerful imagery, Michael. Imagine the consequences if it were true? Your father, a modern Prometheus. That would make him some kind of god, wouldn’t it? You’d better get into the car now. We don’t want you to be late for school.”

  It stayed with me all day long, that phrase. I am become you.

  I

  Am

  Become

  You.

  Was it possible, I asked myself, for humans to not only channel past lives but to recall being something nonhuman? My grandma used to say, “Ooh, if I ever came back, I’d be a cat. Warm laps, free meals, and no rent. What a life.”

  I’d always thought she was loopy.

  Now I wasn’t so sure.

  Something else bugged me all day long, too. My French notebook. The words galan aug scieth were scribbled on the back, just as Harvey had said — but weirdly, I couldn’t remember doing it. The letters were haphazard and strangely formed, just as if I’d laid my head on my desk, gripped the pen upright, and carved the words out in a subconscious daze.

  And that wasn’t the end of the weirdness that day.

  At lunch, when I went to see Freya, the trees were filled with crows.

  “Sit,” she rasped. No warmth this time.

  I sat. Warily. “Is this about last night?”

  “What happened?” she caarked.

  “I don’t know. Harvey was driving normally. The bird just … hit.”

  Ark!

  She didn’t believe it. Others echoed her call.

  I twisted on the stump and looked up into the branches. A host of harsh brown eyes looked back. “Honestly, it just whacked the windshield. Harvey had no chance. It fell right out of the sky.”

  “No,” she said. “Raik was watching.”

  She gestured at a brute who was often at her wing. He had a strong purple sheen and claws that looked capable of strangling a goat.

  Ark! Aarraak-a-ka! he said, too fast for me to understand.

  “He says Kij was confused, deliberately targeted.”

  “Kij?”

  “The crow that died.”

  “Targeted?”

  “Drawn down from the sky.”

  “How?”

  “We don’t know. The flock has gathered to hear your words. To find out what you know. To decide.”

  “Is this a trial?” I glanced at Raik and the crows behind him.

  Arrrk, he went, quietly puffing his breast.

  “Kij was watching over you, Michael. They will blame you for his death unless you can convince them of your innocence.”

  And then what? “You told me once that your crows would never hurt me.”

  “No — but we could desert you,” she croaked. “That might be worse. Tell me exactly what happened last night. Even the smallest thing may be of value.”

  “But there’s nothing to — No, wait, there is something. Harvey was talking about men having the power of dragons. He moved his hand like this” — I circled mine the way he had — “and then it happened — the bang.”

  I finished the sentence, shaking. If this was going where I thought it was, it would mean that Harvey was what UNICORNE called a Talen — a human with supernatural abilities. That would explain a lot of things — the GPS talking; the hazy jolt of time in the parking lot; the flat tire, even. He’d moved his hand in the style of a magician. What if that’s what he was, a weaver of spells? And Mom had taken a fancy to him. How long before they started dating? How long before he got into the house?

  I jumped up. “It must have been Harvey. You need to keep tracking him. I need to know where he goes, what he does.”

  She tipped her head.

  “Freya, you know I wouldn’t betray the crows.”

  She exchanged a terse ark! with Raik. “Very well, we believe you. But why would Harvey kill Kij? What does he have to gain by that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it was a warning. He knows you’re watching him. He was aware of a crow in the graveyard.”

  She turned her head as another bird approached. Ark! it cried, causing a confused bustle as it landed. Freya spoke with it a moment, then looked at me again. “Cil’s flock has been tracking Hart and his sons.”

  The TV man. I’d forgotten about him. “And?”

  “They have nothing suspicious to report.” She tightened her claws. “Go carefully, Michael. Raik’s flock will be close. We will keep tracking Harvey — and the other man.”

  “Dennis? Why would you want to track Dennis? He wouldn’t kill Kij. He moved the body off the road.”

  “He was there,” she grated. “That makes him a suspect.”

  I shook my head. “No, not Dennis.”

  The school bell rang.

  Freya gave a call. The trees emptied of crows.

  I hitched up my schoolbag.

  Trial over.

  For now.

  Dennis turned up on Saturday morning, as chipper as ever. He was wearing a pair of combat trousers covered in paint and work stains. Hanging out of one pocket was a level and a couple of screwdrivers. In another, I could see the flat rectangle of his cell phone. He looked a sight, but he had that just-got-out-of-the-shower smell about him and his hair was thick and clean. Mom gave him a smile to die for. Cleanliness was high on her list of qualities in the male species. And if you took away the fuzzy beard, even I could see that Dennis was handsome. Josie, who clearly had a bit of a crush on him, said she liked his T-shirt: a picture of a flying saucer with the words I WANT TO BELIEVE printed underneath. He teased her by saying she could have it for ten dollars. She screwed up her nose and politely declined. He smiled and put a cordless drill on the stairs. “Gonna help?”

  “Can’t, I’ve got drama class,” she said.

  Dennis laughed. “I meant your brother.”

  I was standing just inside Dad’s study, trying to decide what to do, how to play this.

  Josie said, “Hmph, you can shut him in the attic and leave him if you like.”

  “Ouch,” said Dennis. “Sibling wars. Caught in the crossfire. Not good.”

  Mom had overheard all this. She sent Josie away, adding, “Michael help with manual labor? You’ll be lucky.”

  She nearly fainted when I said, “Yes.” I couldn’t bring myself to believe that Dennis had done anything to harm Kij, but I wouldn’t find out by avoiding him.

  “How’s the bike?” he asked as we entered my bedr
oom. The very same words that Harvey had used. That unnerved me slightly and made me think, What if they’re working together? I tried not to gulp.

  “Tire’s good.”

  “Ridden on it yet?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “But the pressure’s stable?”

  “Um.”

  “Curiouser and curiouser. Give it a spin before I go and we’ll check it again. No rush. I’ll be here for a while. Grab the other end of this, will you?” He handed me a dust sheet, which we spread out on the floor. He arranged the stepladders in the middle of the room and climbed the first three steps. “All right, let’s get cracking. First thing, find your joists.” He grinned and buzzed his drill. In one quick move, he drilled a hole into the ceiling, locating wood behind the plaster. “The joists are usually about eighteen inches apart,” he muttered. He moved the drill and made another hole, again hitting wood. “There. Spot-on.” He smiled down. “You all right? You look like a cat left out in the rain. Still upset about that crow?”

  “A bit.”

  He nodded and pencil-marked the holes he’d made. “Pass me the measure, will you?”

  I pulled a tape off the top of his tool kit. As I handed it to him, his phone made a sound. “Text?” I said.

  He stretched the tape across the shortest width of ceiling. “No, it’s telling me it needs recharging. Meant to do it last night, but forgot.” He skittered down the ladders. “All right, here’s the plan. What we’re going to do is create a framework of battens to attach the plasterboard to. Basically a lot of cutting and drilling. You don’t have to stay. It’s pretty tedious stuff. I’ll be fine on my own. I’m the one getting paid for this, remember? Go and ride your bike.”

  “It’s all right, I’ll stay.”

  He shrugged. “As you like.” He picked up a length of wood and measured it.

  As he reached behind his ear for a pencil, I said, “Do you really believe?”

  He looked up. “In what?”

  I pointed at his T-shirt.

  “Aliens? I want to.” He unwrapped the cable on a circular saw. “All those billions of planets out there, you’ve got to believe there’s life among them somewhere. Creepy, though, the thought of an alien invasion. I s’pose I’m a bit like you with your dragons; you love the idea of them, but you wouldn’t want them terrorizing Holton Byford. Think what it would do to the tourist trade.”