The Gift of Charms (10 page)

A
s the evening of Red Seventh Moon arrived Yoshiko’s nerves grew. Ketu and Kiara were up early and had been preparing the food all day for the evening of festivities, and their family cave was full of red flowers to take to the Burial Ground.

It was customary on Red Seventh Moon for younger dragons to fly ahead of their elders, and Yoshiko tried to keep his shaking wings steady as he took to the skies thickened with dragon families heading the same way.

Yoshiko looked down to see torches blazing around the Burial Ground. The Council had gathered on a vast stone platform that had been assembled the previous week.

At their head was Kinga. His red scales shone in the
firelight and he was waving greetings to the hundreds of approaching dragons carrying bunch upon bunch of flowers.

Yoshiko settled towards the outer edges of the clustering dragons and turned to see Kiara and Ketu land behind him.

‘Shall we have some toffee nuts?’ asked Ketu, pointing with his wing towards a Bushki dragon selling the sweet nuts.

‘No, thanks,’ replied Yoshiko.

‘All the excitement of your first Red Seventh Moon, eh? Shall we get a little closer to the Council then?’ he added. ‘Kinga is about to begin speaking.’

They shuffled through the crowd, and a loud noise sounded out above them.

Standing on his haunches Kinga was blowing a note through a curved golden horn.

‘Welcome, dragons of Dragor!’ he then announced. ‘All you younglings will be thrilled as our celebrations begin in this the seventh month of our year.’

There were cheers and shouts from the younger dragons.

Suddenly a croaky voice shouted from the midst of the crowd.

‘Kinga! I have something of grave importance to tell you all,’ called the voice. ‘Do not be so fast to celebrate!’

A ripple of shock echoed through the crowd.

‘A curse has lived amongst us dragons for many years. It is time that the truth is exposed. I know that to speak of a dragon bearing a curse is at the heart of Dragor’s fears, but it all must be told.’

There were gasps of horror from the crowd.

The clans began looking at each other in mistrust.

A little circle was opening up in the centre of the crowd. Yoshiko raised himself on his haunches, so he could peer at who was speaking.

It was Yula, the Nephan Hudrah.

Kinga tried to hide his shock as he took charge of the proceedings.

‘What do you have to say, Yula?’ he asked.

‘I did wrong. I kept information hidden out of uncertainty,’ she declared.

The dragons stood aside as she began to make her dramatic walk through the crowd to the centre of the Council. She reached Kinga, and bowed her head respectfully.

‘Over a decade ago a dragon was born from an egg
that had been talked about throughout the whole land,’ she said, her voice husky. ‘Surely many of you here must remember a certain pair of elders and many rumours about a strange shell?’

Whispers started in the crowd.

‘I made a dreadful mistake,’ continued Yula. ‘I tried to take the hatchling away before it could do harm to Dragor, but I was persuaded not to act by the father.’ She pointed accusingly at Ketu. ‘My instincts told me that one day Ketu and Kiara’s son would bring a curse to Dragor, and as time passed I doubted my past decision not to take him in the black wicker basket. So I followed his elder and him to the Burial Ground where I finally found the evidence of his strange egg as proof to give to you.’ From inside her cloak Yula pulled out a bundle of cloth, which she held aloft triumphantly.

‘See here,’ she said. ‘I have the pieces of the shell which Kiara and Ketu have hidden from you all. Look where their youngling Yoshiko came from!’

She opened the bundle to let the shining fragments of shell fall on to the ground. As the shell dropped, the glittering colours shone, and the dragons saw them in all their glory. But the dragons nearest to the shell
pieces moved away for fear of touching them. Screeches went up from the crowd as they looked at it.

‘Destruction could be ahead for all of Dragor!’ shouted an Alana. ‘If Surion’s red egg brought battles and bloodshed to dragons, then this multi-coloured shell must be worse!’

‘Well, some great change is ahead, that I fear,’ said Yula. ‘I have more to tell because I have watched this hatchling as he has grown. I always sensed something was wrong with him and over the years I have seen him for what he is.’

She pointed an accusing finger through the dragons directly at Yoshiko. ‘He changes colour!’

As all the clans turned to look towards him, Yoshiko felt the fizzing sensation through his whole body return more powerfully than ever. He fought with every part of his body as it rose furiously.

The dragons backed away from Yoshiko as though he was diseased, forming a large circle around him. A rainbow of all seven colours washed up and down his scales so quickly that Yoshiko could not control it, and then his scales began to turn purple rising from his ankles up to his waist. He closed his eyes, trying not to panic, and finally sent the colour back down
through his body before he finally settled back to Nephan red.

Then there a mass of confusion, as the dragons began wondering what they had seen.

Suddenly another voice went up.

‘It’s true,’ Gandar shouted over the dragons. ‘I have seen it too. My son and I, we both know he changes colour. It happened when we were at the Nephan clan Flying Rock when he was just a hatchling. He turned Alana purple.’

‘There is more,’ continued Yula. ‘This strange dragon often flies to Cattlewick Cave where he is forbidden. I do not know for what reason. But there can be no good in it. No dragons may go to that part of Dragor.’

This was too much for the assembled dragons, and the Alanas started shouting loudly: ‘The dragon is cursed. The dragon is cursed.’

A great roar went up and everyone was suddenly silent. Kinga had blown his horn.

‘Come forward, Yoshiko,’ he said, gesturing to the platform.

With every nerve trembling Yoshiko made the slow walk through the dragons. Slowly he approached Kinga and as he did he felt a twinge under his wing.
He reached for the callstone that he had been hiding there and held it tightly in his claws.

YEEAAAAAA
.

Suddenly the air was filled with the strangest noise.

YEEAAAAAAA
.

It grew louder, and seemed to come from all around.

Yoshiko felt the noise vibrate through his whole body and a swirl of glittering white sparkles landed like snow everywhere.

The Ageless Ones appeared in front of him.

Yoshiko’s jaw dropped open to see the twins outside of the marketplace.

‘Heal Dragor. Delivering of the charms.’

The dragonesses spoke in harmony.

‘You must complete your destiny, Yoshiko,’ they said.

Yoshiko noticed that the eerie
yeeeaaa
sound had quietened all of the dragons. Charms. He turned the word around in his mind. Guya had told him about stones that he felt was his mission to return to the dragons, but what were charms?

‘The charms will restore strength to the clans,’ continued one of the twins. ‘Dragons are not like any other creatures. They need stones found in the rocks of the earth.’

They were briefly silent as if remembering something sad, and then carried on in unison. ‘Dragons of Dragor have grieved in spirit for many years. Now the time has come, Yoshiko. We have waited many years for a dragon to be able to go to the outside world,’ said the dragonesses.

As they spoke Yoshiko realised that all the other dragons around him were standing absolutely motionless. They were frozen.

‘We have halted time, Yoshiko,’ said the Ageless Ones, as if reading his mind. ‘Time now stands still, just like time has been still for both us twins. We have not aged so we could live on to help you. All so that you might return the stones.’

Their voices grew fainter.

‘Even our magic was once stronger,’ they continued. ‘The energy has faded in the whole of Dragor and we can only halt time for a few days. It is all the time you have Yoshiko. If the dragons awaken and discover you have broken their Commandment you will be in the gravest trouble. You must hurry now.’

They bowed to him and then slowly faded from view.

‘Wait!’ called Yoshiko. But the twins had vanished.

W
ith his talons shaking Yoshiko took out the parchment scroll.

‘Head for the Burial Ground,’ he muttered to himself, remembering Guya’s words.

Yoshiko’s eyes dropped down to the map. At the moment it was meaningless, just different dots forming shapes and patterns that meant nothing.

He gulped nervously. Then he spread his wings and took to the air.

Launching high into the sky, Yoshiko swooped over the Great Waters.

Keep calm, he told himself as he remembered
Guya’s advice. When you pass the last mountain top look east.

He repeated the advice.

Then another feeling swelled inside of him – the excitement of being where no other dragon had been for years.

Taking a deep breath Yoshiko wheeled and flew straight up, steeper than he had ever flown. As he gained height the realisation hit him that he was about to break one of the sacred Commandments of Goadah – NEVER FLY ABOVE SURION MOUNTAIN.

Yoshiko flew higher and higher. The smoke from the Fire Which Must Never Go Out burned at his eyes and he coughed. He grew colder and shivered beneath his scales, but his wings flapped strongly. He reached the peak of the mountain – and his heart leapt. His wings skimmed the top of the rocks as he flew up and over it.

No longer did the smoke from the Fire Which Must Never Go Out fog the air. Here the night was fresh and new. He could see a hundred lights in the sky. He held open the map and looked up. The lights matched marks on the paper, and he found he could easily follow them, and so he flew onwards. Leaning to the right he tracked the stars for a while until he began to fly over a vast
ocean with the light of the full moon reflecting from it as though it could have been early dawn.

Yoshiko followed the line of water in wonder. The Great Waters in Dragor were huge. But nothing compared to this. The water stretched as far as he could see into the distance.

Suddenly the blue expanse beneath him rippled, and a huge tail splashed out of the water.

He flew lower to see more closely. It splashed out again and thumped back into the ocean, sending up a great spray all over him.

A great grey shape suddenly rose up out of the water, and Yoshiko saw that the sea creature had what looked like a single dark eye in its forehead, from which it spurted up a huge fountain of sea water that tickled his belly. He realised that it wasn’t an eye at all but a blowhole – and whatever large fish it was actually had two friendly-looking eyes on either side of its head that were looking at him.

Then he remembered the whale from Ma’am Sancy’s lesson – the lonely whale who had flung small fish to the Alana clan as she sought their company. This must be one of those creatures. He had met a whale!

It had sunk back down now, out of sight, and
Yoshiko scanned the waters, but the creature seemed to have vanished.

Then he felt another jet of water hit his tail as the whale surfaced again.

The whale flipped and rolled in the water, and then swam along under him, ducking down and surfacing all the while.

With it swimming beneath him, Yoshiko felt calmer about the journey ahead, and for many hours he flew with the whale alongside him.

Then, finally, on the distant horizon he saw land in sight and the whale made a bellowing noise as if it sensed something approaching. It gave a final roll in the water, and disappeared back beneath the waves.

The sky above became suddenly darker. The moon dimmed and the stars disappeared.

Guya had told him that the sky would always be full of twinkling stars, which he could use with his star map to find the stones, but now he could see nothing and had no guidance.

The air grew colder, and Yoshiko felt a wind gathering and swirling the ocean.

Then, from out of nowhere, a bolt of electricity
speared the sky, lighting up the dark clouds and the ocean beneath.

Another fork of lightning crackled over the clouds, accompanied by a booming sound, which shook Yoshiko physically.

Drops of water began to fall on his body. Within a minute rain was hammering hard over every inch of his scales like a thousand bullets. The wind swirled high around him, and with a great crash, a line of lightning came within a few feet of his muzzle as the storm closed in fully around him.

He continued on through even darker cloud while the thunder rang in his ears like deep church bells, making his head pound. Flapping his wings he flew higher, hoping to get above the clouds. Instead they grew thicker, and the lightning came in bigger flashes like fire-blasts.

Yoshiko corrected himself again and again, trying to dodge the crackles of electricity.

A huge thick bolt of power snapped towards him, zig-zagging in the sky.

Yoshiko made a complete roll, missing being struck by inches.

It’s just like the lava pools in the Trail Mountains,
he thought, there must be a pattern to the way the lightning moves.

He fought on, darting and diving, responding to the warning signs that came before a lightning bolt. The clouds to his left buzzed and crackled, and a spurt of white fire shot towards him. He pulled his wings in tight to his body and let himself free-fall, with the lightning arching over his head. Up ahead another cloud buzzed and sparked, and again Yoshiko was ready for it.

He turned gracefully, allowing the lightning to snake past him, ducking and rolling to perfect timing. Then a great gust of wind buffeted him and he was thrust towards another bolt of electricity. Yoshiko dug into his reserves of strength, tipping away from it. The electricity shot past, scorching the tip of his ear, and he yelped in pain.

Just as he thought he could go no further, the rain lessened, and the sky suddenly brightened. Yoshiko saw land and a sandy cove up ahead, and flapped towards it.

He landed on the wet sand that cushioned his whole body while he caught his breath and let the soft sand run through his talons. A sudden pain in his ear reminded him of the injury from the lightning. He touched the
side of his head and winced, feeling the scales on his ear that were scorched badly.

He was now desperately thirsty, and looked around for a source of water. He scanned the horizon for a stream or spring but could see nothing. At the back of the beach there was a row of tall trees that he noticed, with bright green tops and large green fruit clustered beneath.

Yoshiko stumbled gratefully towards the trees, leaning up against the trunk of the nearest and nudging down several heavy fruit with his nose.

They fell with a thud on the white sand of the beach, and Yoshiko tore off the green and brown outer husks and prised open the tough inner shells.

To his delight, they were filled with a water-like liquid. But better than any water that he had ever tasted, being slightly sweet and slightly tangy, while the insides also had a delicious sort of flesh, which he could tear out in strips.

After four of the tasty fruit Yoshiko felt refreshed. He sat for a moment looking at the white beach and assessed his options. The sun was starting to rise above the horizon. The map of the stars was of no use to him during the daytime and he had instructions from Guya
that he should sleep during the day away from the sun and any humans.

He felt overwhelmed with tiredness, and made his way to a cave that lay at the back of the beach. The sound of the ocean waves lapping in the distance made his mind relax. The storm had blown far out to sea now, and the water was blue as far as his eye could see. Yoshiko let the first rays of the rising morning sun warm his scales.

Before he knew it his eyelids had begun to droop and he felt himself drifting off to sleep.

Yoshiko awoke with a sudden panic. He had slept all day, the sun was starting to set and he knew he must resume his journey.

He flew all night again, this time in still weather. On and on he went, over many lands with huge mountains like those in Dragor with their dark, vast silhouettes reflecting in the moonlight. He flew over more and more water and then hit more land. According to the map of stars he was now over the island where the human who had befriended Guya lived.

A few more hours passed and dawn was now arriving, a large cross on the scroll marked his destination. Yoshiko passed over a large river as he entered a town. Many lights shone, lighting up rows and rows of stone buildings and small streets.

He finally landed on a dusty track where he could hide himself behind some trees. Sunrise was approaching fast and Yoshiko’s heart was beating loud as the thoughts ran through his mind. What if the human is not here? What if I am captured?

And yet it somehow felt as though Dragor had been a dream and this strange enchanting new land was the only reality he had known.

Yoshiko scanned the distance, looking for the house that Guya had described.

He took one final look up at the stars, sending up a little wish that they might help him.

Then he heard a voice.

‘The stars are amazing, aren’t they?’

Yoshiko opened and shut his mouth, not knowing what to say. The voice was just the same as the low tone of a male dragon, and very friendly. He looked around him and then he saw his first ever human.

‘Are you the keeper of the stones?’ The words shot out.

‘Yes, I am,’ the human said, smiling and laughing a little, ‘and you are a youngling dragon. A Nephan if I am not mistaken. I know this of course from your red colour.’

‘I am Yoshiko of the Nephan clan,’ said Yoshiko formally. ‘I have come to find the keeper of the stones.’

‘Well, Yoshiko,’ said the human. ‘Find me you have. You may call me the keeper of the stones if you wish, but I would prefer that you called me Gopal. That is how I am known to my friends in this country.’

Yoshiko felt a rush of relief. ‘Guya told me I should find you here.’ But he couldn’t help himself from staring at Gopal’s strange shape.

‘Come. Follow me. Guya told me a dragon would come to me one day.’

‘How did you know I would come tonight?’

‘The same way that Guya must have known to send you,’ said Gopal. ‘Come quickly before people wake and see you.’

Gopal began to walk down a pebbly drive. Yoshiko went slowly after him, glad of the chance to stare at the retreating figure that moved on two long limbs, which hardly looked like they could hold him up. Then there was the matter of the human’s scales. They
were so fine that they were invisible to the eye and he looked fragile as if the slightest talon scratch would cut deeply. Gopal had cloths, as Guya described, fitted over most of his scales. On his head was a patch of thin greying fur, which Yoshiko assumed had grown to keep his head warm.

‘Is this your cave … errr, I mean what Guya said is called a house?’ asked Yoshiko with hesitancy.

The human laughed again.

‘It is my equivalent of cave, my house, yes.’

He beckoned Yoshiko to follow.

‘Guya taught me much,’ added Gopal, ‘but I have learned even more from my many travels. I have been to the homeland of each and every dragon clan after Guya explained them to me.’

‘Guya told me that you know about stones in different colours. The same colours as our dragon clans,’ Yoshiko said.

Gopal nodded. ‘Stones. Yes. Since meeting Guya I have been collecting the stones.’

They passed an extremely large door to the side of the house. It had been made especially tall and wide, and Yoshiko could see that another wooden building had been extended from the bricks at the back into the
garden. At the very top were glass windows allowing the sunlight to shine through.

As they approached Yoshiko had a calming feeling.

It was as if all of his nerves were melting away, and the nearer to the hut they came the more relaxed he felt.

Gopal took out a large key and fitted it into a padlock that held shut a large gated entrance. It turned easily.

The gate opened and light flooded out.

Yoshiko gasped.

The wooden building was hung with thousands of glittering stones.

Once they were inside Gopal lit a candle, and the incredible colours spilled forth even brighter.

Every shade of the rainbow was represented, and Yoshiko felt his eyes grow wide as he saw them.

‘I call the building the House of Halos,’ Gopal sighed. ‘I have always felt as if I am surrounded by great forces, like the crowns of angels when I am in here. My hobby is to craft things, out of metalwork or anything I can get my hands on that inspires me, and I feel the energy here feeds my creation.’ Gopal reached up and pulled down a red stone. ‘The dragons
of old times loved these precious stones that you see. They treasured them.’ He passed the deep red stone to Yoshiko, who took it slowly.

Warmth seemed to pulse from it.

Gopal let out a long breath as if wondering how to explain. Then he sat down and gestured for Yoshiko to do likewise.

‘Most people in the lands outside of Dragor do not believe in magic,’ he began. ‘They live their lives chasing money. It is what they think is the most valuable thing. During the great battle between the humans and the dragons so much was lost. It pains my heart to even think about it.’

Gopal continued, ‘I have travelled through my life and seen the caves where all the dragon clans first lived across the world far and wide. In the back of the dragon caves their stones formed naturally from the minerals of the rocks.’ Gopal pointed upwards to further illustrate the array of coloured stones.

‘The earth is old, and holds deep within her great power. And each of your clans needs the stones of its homeland to have their own full power.’

Yoshiko gazed up at the hanging stones, taking in the truth of Guya’s words.

‘Can’t we just go back to our original mountains?’ asked Yoshiko. Gopal shook his head.

‘These places became ruled by humans even before the Battle of Surion. The dragons were kicked out of their caves, captured and made slaves, and most humans would fear dragons too much to let them return if they met them again. But there is a solution,’ he said.

‘What is that?’ asked Yoshiko.