The Bone Dragon (4 page)

And, as I told Amy and Paul when they begged me to give it another try, why would I want to talk to people who don’t know the first thing about what to say? Because they didn’t just get it wrong. They got it as wrong as people can get it.

So Amy and Paul let it go in the sense that they didn’t make me go back, but they keep bringing it up . . . Only they haven’t since the operation. And now I think I know why: they know I like Ms Winters and they know Ms Winters works with a victim support charity because she ran last year’s school charity fair to raise money for it. So they’ve asked Ms Winters to work on getting me to
talk
in between helping me with my schoolwork. I wasn’t sure before, but I am now. The question about the staples was just too . . . focused somehow.

‘Amy mentioned earlier that it’s the anniversary of your . . . of Fiona’s death soon,’ Ms Winters says then.

I heave a sigh and slump back into the cushions, turning my gaze to the window.

‘Would it be so terrible to talk to me a little?’ Ms Winters asks gently. ‘It would make Amy and Paul feel better if they knew you were talking to someone, even if it’s just the odd ten minutes between the two of us.’

I roll my head to look at her and see a little knowing smile on her face . . . And I realise that she hasn’t been trying to be subtle at all: she knew she wasn’t going to fool me, and maybe she didn’t want to. I reach up to twist a strand of hair about my finger and then shove it in my mouth to chew on as I consider this. She just sits there, giving me that warm little smile. Not saying anything. Not saying how I can trust her and it’ll all be our little secret, or how I ‘need to get things out’ . . . And I find myself taking the hair back out of my mouth and saying, somewhat grudgingly, ‘Amy wants me to go to the cemetery.’

‘Yes, she told me,’ Ms Winters says. ‘She said you’ve decided not to go.’

‘I said I’d think about it,’ I snap: if she wants to
talk
then she’ll just have to deal with it if it makes me angry. ‘I never said I wanted to go. I didn’t even remember, you know. Amy and Paul are the ones who are worked up about it. When Amy first told me that Fiona had died, she made this whole fuss: you know, getting me to sit down first . . . all that stupid sort of thing.’ Ms Winters just waits for me to go on, but I don’t want to talk about the way Amy flinched when I said I was glad.

‘Do you think you might want to go next year?’ Ms Winters suggests.

This time I just shrug: a slow backward roll of my left shoulder. Free of the staples, there is just a dull burn creeping across my side and up under my arm. An ache rather than pain: something to remind me to be careful a while yet. But it’s not that feeling of underlying wrongness I lived with for so long: there’s no echo of broken bones grating and shifting, rough edges sliding over and under. It’s strange to be free of it.

‘It might be a good idea. And, you know, you don’t have to go on the anniversary if you don’t want to. Perhaps it would be better to just see if the mood catches you one day. It’s only a few miles, after all.’

I let my gaze drift to the window and hum noncommittally.

‘Are you worried about running into your . . . into Fiona’s parents?’

‘No.’

Ms Winters is back to pulling on that loose thread just under the arm of her chair: tugging at it fitfully, winding it around her finger, smoothing it up against the fabric as if it will melt back into the weave.

‘I just don’t see why I should.
I
don’t owe
her
anything.’

‘That’s not the only reason to visit a grave, Evie,’ Ms Winters says softly. ‘None of us are suggesting that you go for her sake. I’m just saying that it might be . . . helpful. For you.’ She is about to go on, but then she starts, draws her hand away from the arm of the chair, staring at the broken blue thread. Her fingers part. The thread drifts to the floor.

‘How’s seeing a bit of rock and some grass going to help?’

‘Maybe it won’t. It’s just worth giving some thought to.’

But I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to find out what the stone says. Whether they
dared
to use
those
words – the usual epitaph, the standard inscription. She wasn’t beloved. Not beloved at all. For a second, I feel my fingers scrabble in the grooves of the letters, catching in the plinth of the ‘M’, in the belly-curve of the ‘O’, in the bar of the ‘T’. My nails tear into splinters as I claw at smooth stone.

I snap my eyes closed, toss my head to the side and the image vanishes. But still my thumbs pincer to meet my middle fingers, nail sliding under nail. But there is no dirt, no blood, no fragments of marble dust to dislodge. My fingers are clean and whole. I curl them into my palm and watch my knuckles whiten.

‘Amy and I went on a walk the other day, to celebrate the staples coming out,’ I say cheerfully.

Ms Winters lets me: allows me to change the subject, change the mood. Even though she knows that I know she’s not fooled, she’s smart enough not to call me on it.

‘We went down the towpath and fed the swans. There’s a black one there, you know, with red eyes. And this houseboat came along and the swan swam after it making this noise just like the dinosaurs in
Jurassic Park.
There were two little girls on the boat and they went running up to the front, screaming. When it came over to us, Amy threw all the bread in the water in one go, then we went up to the lock and sat there for a while and looked at the clouds.’

Ms Winters rocks her left foot over on to its side, rubs her toes against the foot of the armchair without seeming to realise she’s doing it.

‘I used to watch the clouds when I climbed outside to sit on the roof at Fiona’s parents’ house when . . . And I made up stories about them. But my favourite one was about Roger, and he was a fish who swam in the sky. But he was my friend and he would always stop over the house and talk to me on the way to visit his Auntie Mabel, who was a bird who lived in the water. And he used to tell me all sorts of things, because he was a very nice, polite fish . . .’

‘Did he ever ask why you were up on the roof?’

I shake my head – not letting her win that easily – and smile. ‘Of course not! I told you: he was a very polite fish. He wouldn’t have asked me something like that. And, besides, I was busy listening to his stories about his Auntie Mabel.’ My words get faster: too fast for her to interrupt me without being rude. ‘One time he invited me to go with him to meet her and have tea at her house in the water . . .’

And I stop because I didn’t mean to tell her that. It’s too close to things I’ll never tell anyone.

‘And did you go?’

‘Of course not!’ I say, as indignant as I can manage, to cover the sudden flatness in my voice. ‘I didn’t know how to swim in the sky!’ But I thought about it. Wondered whether it would be worth trying, just to see if I could. Because the alternative was to stay on the roof until I couldn’t stay any longer and I had to go back inside.

But I did stay. And eventually I did go back inside. And I never quite forgave myself for that.

The scales clothe all four legs now and cover the dragon’s back with its ridge of little spikes. I’ve scraped and scraped the tool across the dragon’s tiny feet to make clawed fingers, and scooped around the crest of the skull for the ears: small but long, they lie along the dragon’s neck, tapering to a point. The jaw is square, sharp-angled at the corners and back towards its cheeks. The nostrils curve up into little points in the snout, while the muzzle flares back towards the eyes, set down on to the sides of the face like a cat. That is what the shape of the eyes reminds me of: a cat’s eyes. Like a teardrop with two points, only one tilts downward towards the nose and the other points up towards the ears. If you crossed a cat with a lizard, this is what you would get: every line a study in power and arrogance, beautiful to the point of cruelty.

The dragon sits on my hand, bluish in the moonlight, while the stereo whirrs softly in the background and the wizard Howl surrenders his heart to a falling star to give it new life as a fire demon. I would give my heart to the dragon to bring it to life. I’d give it gladly to be tied so tight to something so wonderful.

My throat closes with longing and, as I swallow, the scar across my side and the bone-ends beneath ache anew with the sense that something is missing: some part of me is gone there, just a few inches below my heart.

Sometimes in the night I rear up from the bed, curling over that gap, trying to protect the place where I’m most vulnerable: more vulnerable than ever now with that hole in the armour of my ribcage where there isn’t even broken bone any more.

I don’t remember the nightmare that jerks me so roughly off my pillows: I never do. In the instant when the pain hits and I jolt awake, my attention goes to bracing my ribs, to registering the pain and the need to be still.

Moonlight is falling on the foot of the bed. The coverlet glows and darkens, glows and darkens. Slowly, so slowly, I shift to my knees, edge forwards until I can see out of the window. The clouds are ragged flecks of darkness fleeing across the sky, but as they pass the moon they blush suddenly with colour – dim blues and greens and yellows – until they almost dissolve into the light. Just for an instant.

From my palm, the dragon watches with me, unblinking.

Then there are no more tatters of clouds. Just the moon, heavy in the hollow sky amid the sharp, cruel points of the stars.

The stereo has hissed to a stop and in the silence the echo of a song surprises me: ‘When you wish upon a star’. For an instant I remember the blue-white fairy moving brilliant across the screen in front of the dim interior of Geppetto’s shop. And Fiona is in the seat on my left and she smiles in the darkness of the cinema as she turns to say something. Her hand is warm and soft around mine. And I know that we went in the middle of the day. Just the two of us. And she laughed and bought me an ice cream and neither of us wanted to go home. The light when we stepped out on to the street was a blow, ripping away the warm safety of the darkness.

I like the idea that it makes no difference who you are when you’re wishing on star. It matters in prayers: it matters who you are and what you are and all sorts of things. If God listens, he listens differently to different people and so it matters. But it doesn’t matter with wishes. And even though I’m old enough to understand that neither wishes nor prayers really come true – things just happen or they don’t – it’s still nice to think that all that matters is me. All that matters is that I wish what I wish.

And so I wish. Even though I know it’s stupid and childish and it won’t make the slightest bit of difference. I wish until my heart aches with fierceness because it’s night-time and it’s dark and no one can see me. So I can wish if I want. There’s nothing at all to stop me. No reason not to because, even if it is just silliness, I want to.

I wish for the dragon to come to life.

I wish until the clouds return, more and more and darker and darker. Until the moon is gone and so are the stars.

Then I click the stereo back on and put the dragon back in its pot on the table by the bed. As I slip towards sleep, I stumble between low stools and workbenches in Geppetto’s shop as things unseen stir the darkness and the dust in the corners.

Then suddenly my body twitches reflexively, starting at a noise by my bed. My eyelids start to lift. My head starts to turn towards the bedside table . . . But the warmth of the quilt drags my eyes closed before they’ve truly opened and I’m back in the workshop, watching a mouse dart among the discarded tools on the old wooden table. As I turn to look out of the diagonal leadlight window panes at the cobbled street beyond, I know the mouse is watching.

I feel his eyes on me.

Mrs Poole stares down at my work, horror morphing into exasperation into something like sympathy. ‘It’s a little ambitious again, Evie. A good idea, but perhaps a little ambitious since you do only have a few weeks.’

I stare down at the pencil case too. It’s nothing like what I imagined. The things I make for Mrs Poole’s textiles projects never are. This is black and plasticky and the little bits of elastic made into loops to hold the pencils and pens in place are all different sizes and heights and most of them are lopsided. I pick up one side and the whole thing flops alarmingly. I can’t imagine what it will look like full of pencils. And I forgot to think about ends – something to stop everything tipping out when I roll it up.