The Secret Dragon

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  When Ed Clarke isn’t writing for kids, he is a film and television executive and producer, working with writers to make drama for grown-ups. He lives in North London with his wife and two young daughters, who would both desperately like a pet. He realizes they may be disappointed now if they get a rabbit rather than a dragon.

  For Miriam, Rose and Rachel

  Prologue

  It was probably a Saturday or a Sunday when it happened, most likely in early September. But those details weren’t important to Mari. What was important was she remembered very clearly what had happened that day. It was one of those things that changed you forever, made you somehow special, but not in a way you’d ever wish on yourself.

  Mari’s parents had taken her for a picnic on the clifftops at Worm’s Head in Rhossili, an hour’s drive from their farm. When she closed her eyes, she could still feel the soft bluster of the wind baffling off the great bay; it swept round to an island that snaked out into the sea like a giant plesiosaur trying to break free from the rocky cliffs holding it captive. She could still see her little five-year-old fingers engulfed by one of her father’s giant farmer’s hands as they picked their way along the path, the roughness of his work-toughened skin scratching reassuringly against hers.

  They laid out a blanket beneath a solitary beech tree that had somehow fought off the fierce coastal winds to stand proudly alone. Nestled against its trunk, sipping autumn apple juice her father had pressed himself, Mari had never felt happier.

  The storm that blew up behind Worm’s Head took them all unawares. Perhaps her parents thought it would pass as quickly as it came. Perhaps they just didn’t want to let such a magical day be spoiled by the weather. Whatever the reason, they decided to stay sheltered beneath that brave beech tree.

  Except that Mari didn’t stay with them. She couldn’t remember why she had wanted to run out and play in the rain, but she had. And her father had raced after her and gathered her up in his powerful arms just as a fork of lightning found its way down to him from the darkest cloud in the sky.

  Six years later

  Bump, bump, bump.

  Mari’s head banged repeatedly against the window of the beaten-up Land Rover as it bounced through the uneven field. Mari stared straight ahead, oblivious. This wasn’t where she wanted to be.

  Bump, bump, bump.

  Out of the corner of her eye Mari could see her mum, Rhian, trying to think of something to say.

  ‘Might knock some –’

  ‘Sense into me,’ sighed Mari.

  Rhian smiled, but Mari didn’t turn round. They returned to their customary awkward silence. Rain started spattering the windscreen. Rhian engaged the ancient wipers, and they squeaked and creaked the window a smeary kind of clean.

  After what seemed like an age Rhian pulled up in the corner of a field. Mari could see the calf lying on the ground, its breathing rapid and shallow.

  Her mum nodded towards it. ‘Why don’t you go and take a look this time?’

  Mari frowned. That wasn’t how it usually worked. Normally Rhian would go and see to a sick animal, and Mari would only help if help were required.

  ‘But I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘You’re old enough now, Mari,’ said Rhian with an encouraging nod. ‘It would be a help to me.’

  But it wasn’t that simple. Caring for animals was in Rhian’s blood. She had an instinct for it. Mari couldn’t even keep a woodlouse in a matchbox overnight without it expiring. Her father hadn’t been a natural farmer either – he’d been a geologist – but he did have green fingers, creating a kitchen garden behind the farmhouse. Everyone said he and Rhian made the perfect team. And then, after the storm, the team was just Rhian and Mari. And it wasn’t perfect any more. Now her dad’s once beautifully tended garden was a sad, tangled mess, Rhian had to spend all her time in the fields with the cows, and Mari was expected to help. Whether she wanted to or not.

  Against her better judgement, Mari creaked open the rusty Land Rover door and rolled out into the rain. It was coming horizontally off the Bristol Channel and made her squint. She bent down in front of the calf, tentatively holding out a hand to pat its head, trying to stay as far away from it as possible.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ she whispered, trying not to look it directly in the eye.

  The calf let out a strangled moo. She could feel it shivering under her hand.

  ‘I know you can’t communicate verbally,’ she said, ‘but I’m going to guess that you’re cold, and need some kind of shelter for warmth, so let’s get you inside.’

  Gripping the calf’s flanks, Mari tried to raise it up on to its feet, but it bellowed out in pain.

  Rhian was already out of the car and hurrying towards them. ‘Mari, stop!’ she yelled.

  Mari jumped back. ‘What?’

  Rhian held the calf still. ‘It’s got a broken leg. You can’t move it.’

  ‘But how would I know that?’ pleaded Mari.

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s my fault,’ said Rhian, more quietly now. ‘I shouldn’t have asked you.’

  Chastened, Mari climbed back into the vehicle, and watched through the mud-splattered window as Rhian tended to the calf. She found a bag of Haribo in the glove compartment and guiltily started working her way through it. The bag was finished and discarded on the floor by the time the driver’s door opened again.

  ‘I’ll need to get the vet out,’ said Rhian as she turned the key in the ignition and shifted the gears into reverse.

  ‘Is it OK if I …?’ asked Mari, pointing to a sturdy rucksack on the back seat.

  ‘Now?’ asked Rhian. ‘We’ve got that fence to repair in the corner paddock. And bales to stack in the barn.’

  There was never nothing to do on the farm. And it always needed doing yesterday.

  ‘While it’s still light?’ begged Mari.

  ‘Do you really have to, love?’

  Mari slumped back. She knew her plans were going to have to wait. Just like they always did.

  But for once Rhian sighed and relented. ‘I suppose the bales can wait till Saturday. But stay away from the cliffs in case there’s a rockfall. It’s more dangerous when it’s been raining, and –’

  ‘Watch the tides. Yes, I know all this, Mum.’

  Mari jumped out eagerly before her mum changed her mind. She slammed the door behind her, slung the bag over her shoulder and nodded an apology to the calf.

  A spring now back in her step, Mari hiked across the field towards a gate. Climbing over it, she paused for a moment to take in the view. The rain was easing off now and the sun was breaking through the heavy clouds, throwing shafts of light down on to the Glamorgan coast, across the Channel and on to the Somerset hills beyond. Off to her right, a pristine white lighthouse seemed spot-lit on the clifftop. She smiled to herself and jumped down, making her way along a hedgerow towards the cliff path.

  Before long she was down on the beach. She breathed deeply as the sea breez
e gently pushed her hair back from her face. This was Mari in her element. She swung her rucksack down on to the rocks, pulled it wide open and gazed lovingly inside.

  ‘Hello again, my friends,’ she said.

  One by one, she lifted out the contents: a large hammer, a chisel, a brush. And, last but not least, a white hard hat and a pair of clear safety glasses.

  ‘Let’s get to work.’

  Mari loved this coastline at any time of day, but the ‘magic hour’ of dusk was her favourite. The sun bathed the limestone cliffs in a warm orange light, and if it was clear enough you could see the great glowing ball drop straight into the narrow patch of sea where it divided Devon from the Pembrokeshire coast. This was when her father used to bring her down to the beach when she was little.

  She remembered him telling her stories about the layers of rock and how they were formed, and about the great sea creatures that had swum in the waters beneath their feet, millions of years ago. At least, Mari had assumed they were just stories – until the day they found a fossil on the beach that proved what he was saying was true.

  That fossil was now her most prized possession. It was an Anningella, a scallop shell named after one of the most famous fossil hunters in history, Mary Anning. Her dad had told Mari that when Mary was alive, in the nineteenth century, no one believed her stories either. And not just because giant sea monsters seemed very unlikely, but because she was a woman, and in those days the idea of a woman being a scientist and making important discoveries was seen as ridiculous. And then he had held Mari by the shoulders and said, ‘Don’t let anyone stop you being who you want to be.’

  Mari had never forgotten her father’s words and, as she walked along the beach with her fossil-hunting kit, she knew she never would. However much her mum needed her to be someone else, she was going to be the person she wanted to be. She wasn’t in the least bit interested in cows. She was going to be a palaeontologist. A scientist, like her dad. The layered cliffs of the Glamorgan Heritage Coast were like the leaves of a giant history book, just waiting for her to turn the pages. Who knew what ancient creatures might be found between the layers of limestone and shale?

  Mari leaped effortlessly from boulder to boulder along the stony beach. She spotted a fresh rockfall just ahead. The cliff where the rock had cleaved away was a bright yellowy orange shining out between the weatherworn strata on either side. The tumbled rocks lay beneath in a great sloping pile. It was like a pirate giant had emptied out her mammoth treasure chest, leaving Mari to hunt out all the jewels. It didn’t take long before her eye caught a curving shape cutting across one of the rocks. It was segmented, and looked a little like a snail shell.

  Snakestone! Her father would have laughed – because that’s what people used to think they were: serpents that had been turned to stone. But Mari knew better. The fact was far more interesting than the fiction. It was the petrified remains of an ammonite, an extinct sea creature that had lived over 65 million years ago.

  Mari patted her hard hat to make sure it was secure, and pushed her protective glasses up the bridge of her nose. Then she knelt down and got to work with her hammer and chisel, chipping away the rock around the ancient animal. The sun was setting gloriously behind her, but Mari wasn’t interested in such an everyday occurrence. In the palm of her hand she was holding an ammonite, the first human ever to hold it. A jolt of excitement shot through her. She imagined herself rocketing back like a time-travelling explorer to the moment when the creature first fell to the seabed, with ichthyosaurs snapping at prehistoric fish above.

  ‘Nice rock,’ said a voice somewhere above her.

  Mari jumped up in shock. A boy of about her age was sitting higher up the rockfall, staring down at her. She hadn’t seen him before. He had a dark complexion, a shock of long, fizzing curls, and a fringe that kept blowing into his face.

  ‘Pretty here, isn’t it?’ he continued, looking out at the sunset.

  Mari raised her hand and pointed at the rocks he was perched on. ‘You shouldn’t be sitting up there,’ she said. ‘It’s dangerous when it’s been raining. It erodes the cliffs. Causes rocks to fall.’

  ‘Like these?’ He pointed down to the rocks he was sitting on.

  She nodded.

  ‘That why …?’ He patted his head, indicating her hard hat.

  She nodded again.

  ‘What about the …?’ He pointed to his eyes with two fingers.

  Mari took off her safety glasses self-consciously and folded them up. ‘For stray chips,’ she said, half under her breath.

  The boy smirked. ‘Stray chips,’ he repeated to himself with a smile.

  Mari wasn’t sure whether he was teasing her or not. She knew that most people at school thought she was a weird science kid. Ffion in her class refused to sit next to her because she said she was afraid ‘Mari might do experiments on her’.

  To be fair, Mari had put quite some time into thinking what kind of experiment she would do on Ffion, given the chance, but nothing suitably stomach-churning had yet occurred to her.

  ‘You wouldn’t like one in your eye,’ said Mari.

  ‘Sounds nasty,’ he said, flipping back his fringe. ‘Thanks for the tip.’

  The boy sounded sincere. Mari wondered if she’d misjudged him. Why was it so hard to work other people out? This was why she was better off without friends. She didn’t understand how the being-popular thing worked. It seemed to be based on doing what everyone else did and liking what everyone else liked, and then being nasty about anyone who didn’t do or like the same things. But Mari knew what she liked – and she knew it was different from everyone else.

  ‘What are you doing down there anyway?’ asked the boy.

  Mari decided to cut to the chase. ‘I’m a palaeontologist,’ she announced.

  ‘Nice,’ replied the boy. ‘I’m a Methodist.’

  Now Mari really didn’t know if he was joking.

  ‘It’s a scientist who studies fossils.’

  ‘You don’t say …’ The boy smiled as he stood up to leave. ‘I prefer animals that still have a heartbeat myself.’

  He took a step forward and slipped slightly, setting off a mini-landslide that narrowly missed Mari’s feet. He held his hand up in apology. ‘Do you have any more of those?’ he said, nodding towards her hard hat.

  ‘Not sure I’ve got any the right size,’ said Mari. ‘You’ve got a lot of hair.’

  ‘Well, you’re not wrong there,’ the boy chuckled, turning to make his way back up the beach. Mari wasn’t sure whether he was laughing with her or at her again.

  She watched him disappear up over the clifftop before casting her eyes down at the rocks he’d caused to slide to her feet. One looked different from the rest as it lay there, illuminated by the setting sun – it seemed to have a redder hue. A crack had opened up down the middle, and she knew that all it would take was one blow from her chisel to cleave it in two. Mari couldn’t resist. This was the fossil hunter’s lucky dip. What would be inside? Ninety-nine times, nothing; one time, something.

  The boy was instantly forgotten. She knelt down beside the stone, fitted the end of her chisel into the crack and rested her hammer on it for a moment – partly to prepare for the blow, partly to savour the anticipation. Then she raised the hammer and brought it down on top of the chisel with one swift, accurate crack. The rock fell apart so easily it almost seemed relieved. Mari lifted her safety glasses to get a better look at what had been revealed.

  This was not one of the nothingy ninety-nine times. This was most definitely a something.

  Coiled inside one half of the rock was a tiny, dusty reptilian shape. It couldn’t have been more than ten centimetres long, and looked a bit like a crested newt with an elongated tail, but it certainly wasn’t one of those. For a start, it only had two legs at the back, which were more like an eagle’s claws than a newt’s padded feet. And secondly, and most strikingly, it had two folded-up wings sprouting from its shoulder blades.

  Mari’s
mind ran through the possibilities. An archaeopteryx? A pterodactyl? But it was too small for either of those. It was unlike any fossil she’d ever seen; unlike any animal she’d ever seen, alive or dead.

  She cleaned off the dust carefully with her brush, and gently lifted it out of the rock to rest in her palm. It certainly didn’t feel as heavy as a normal fossil. She took it down to the sea to wash it, and as she sluiced the last of the dust off its body it gleamed a deep ruby red. She could see all its tiny individual scales shining in the evening light. What was it? Mari was still completely stumped.

  She held the fossil up to the day’s last light and marvelled at its delicacy. As the sun was sucked beneath the watery horizon, its light seemed to flash a brilliant green for just a second before disappearing from view. And, as it did so, the tiny creature’s tail uncoiled very slowly across Mari’s skin, as lightly as the graze of an uncurling fern.

  Mari swallowed hard. Whatever this animal was, it certainly wasn’t a fossil. This wasn’t a creature that was alive 200 million years ago.

  It was alive right now.

  Mari had to stop herself trembling. She brought her left hand round to cup her right and hold it still. Every nerve in her body was tingling with the electric excitement of discovery.

  The clouds on the horizon were uplit by a blaze of pink and orange, and it cast a warm glow across the creature’s crimson body. Mari had already noticed the talons on its two legs, but now that the seawater had washed the dust away she could make out the crest on its head, which sparkled in the dying light, reflecting back colours like a prism.

  The creature languidly swished its tail from side to side, luxuriating in the warm evening air. Mari reached out a shaking hand to stroke it, and the tail coiled itself around her outstretched finger. But it wasn’t like a snake squeezing its prey; it was more an expression of affection. So Mari wasn’t scared. In any case, she was far too in awe of what she was witnessing to be afraid.