Goldenscale

Thursday 23 March

58

In the morning, Beth packed her swimsuit, anticipating another hot day. Never a particularly sociable student, the previous evening’s outing to the waterhole had made an impression on her. Perhaps things would change during her later years at high school, a bigger circle of friends, parties, boys … Or perhaps Jo and Sarah were her friends for the duration, and in not trusting them with the dragon, she’d betrayed their friendship. Yeah, and why would they have believed me anyway?

My real problem, she thought, is that I don’t completely believe that any of what is happening is real. That I am in the throes of a delusion. But what about the scales and the tooth? What about the hole in the cellar, and Graydon and Flack?

Perhaps she was able to pass her own madness on to others.

Life seemed to fall into partitions: to go to school, and appear relatively normal, then to dabble with ideas and actions which contradicted all reason — worlds where walls spoke, and issued forth fumes that smelled of things she would never encounter.

A warm breeze followed her to school, birds riding it from telephone line to rooftop. During the day, the dragon’s just an idea. When night falls, the idea fades and he becomes real.

She met Jo a block away from school. Jo seemed happy enough, invoking Hanford’s name at least three times in five minutes.

‘What’s up with your brother?’ Jo asked, finally changing the subject.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look,’ Jo said, pointing.

The lad in question was trudging past on his way to school.

‘He’s usually atomic powered, Bee. It’s like someone took out the reactor.’

‘Closer than you think,’ said Beth. ‘He’s not very happy with our parents at the moment. Mum thinks the house is unsafe. So they’re talking about selling it.’

‘And leaving Goolgoorook?’

‘Something like that. Or maybe just moving somewhere else in town.’

‘He’ll adapt,’ said Jo. ‘Smart kids do.’

Beth wasn’t sure. Undoubtedly, Sam was smart, but his was a strange kind of intelligence, often focused on things that interested few other children — tropical beetles, the surface of Mars, insects in amber, carpets from Central Asia. Once or twice she’d wondered whether he might be autistic, having read that autistic kids were often very good looking. But gradually Sam formed friendships with a few of the quicker kids in his year and developed his ongoing feud with his big sister — and he began to seem a lot more normal. Now, brat of the century that he was, he needed her help. Yet all she had done so far was to ignore him.

Ms Davis stopped them as they passed the chemistry labs in B Block.

‘Oh, Beth. My quest endeth. Did that brother of yours hand the book on to you?’

‘What book, Miss?’

‘The book about dragons you had on reserve. Funny, wasn’t it?’

‘What was funny? I think I’m missing something.’

‘That you reserved it, and it was Sam who had it out before you.’

Beth shook her head. ‘He didn’t tell me that. I didn’t know the primary kids could borrow from our library.’

‘All on the same database, Beth. I told him to hand it on to you when he finished. And to return all his other overdues. He’s been obsessed with mythical creatures lately.’ She sighed. ‘He’s such an advanced reader — I wish we had more like him to cater to.’

‘Weird,’ said Jo as Ms Davis strode away. ‘Sam gets personal service.’

‘Um,’ said Beth, distracted.

A moment later, Sarah appeared. ‘I’ve been looking for you two.’

Beth looked around for escape, then guiltily realised what she was doing. Jo stood and looked levelly at Sarah, expression neutral.

Sarah raised a hand, and Beth involuntarily flinched. ‘If you’re going to hit me, just do it.’

‘Hit you? Jeez. What’ve you been smoking?’ There was a scrap of paper in Sarah’s hand, much folded and tattered. ‘I got your note, Beth. Read it twice.’ She returned it to her pocket and laughed. ‘Life’s too short.’

‘I thought you must have thrown it away …’

‘No. Almost. I had a good think about it instead. While I was playing a game of tennis.’

‘As you do,’ said Jo.

Sarah nodded at Jo. ‘Sorry about all the crap, guys.’

‘Don’t,’ said Beth. ‘an exciting week, it was. People say things.’

‘Yep.’

‘We can’t pick our own family, can we?’

Beth glanced at Jo. She smiled and shrugged. ‘No. That’s the shame of it.’

The first period bell sounded, and Jo shouldered her bag. ‘Off, then. See you at lunch, crew.’

Sarah watched her go, then turned to Beth.

‘Let’s be a bit late to class. Come outside — we’ll talk down by the front gate.’

They walked between flower beds and over prickle-infested grass. As they moved around, Beth tried to recall what she had wanted to ask Sam — something that had disturbed her, but the moment swept these memory queries away.

‘Let me guess, Beth. Jo thought I hated you and her because of Len. Well, it wasn’t like that,’ she said. ‘When Len smashed up your house, I was ashamed. I knew he had it in for you, but I didn’t do anything. I thought you despised me. Or that you should. Wasn’t everything my fault, in some weird way?’

‘I’m not being a smartarse,’ said Beth, ‘but I thought it might be something like that.’

Sarah nodded. ‘When you’re inside something, you can’t really see it for what it is.’

They reached the far end of the schoolyard and turned back.

I feel guilty too, Beth thought, even though I’m not. The truth was that the dragon had distracted her from her other problems, and that, at the moment, she was more concerned for a monster than her friends.

‘Jack Netcher suggested Len go and stay at Ooralloo for a month,’ said Sarah. ‘He’s already there, in fact. If he stays, all charges will be dropped. And he can go back to school.’

‘God,’ said Beth, nonplussed. ‘That’s mad. Why would they want him up there?’

‘Flack said it’s like the martial arts moves — you know, where you use your opponent’s strength against them. It’s going to be pretty intense for Len. All that non-white skin.’

‘Jo’s going to love that,’ Beth said, seeing the humour of it. ‘I wish it was a reality show.’

‘Maybe they’ll initiate him,’ Sarah suggested. ‘Without anaesthetic.’

Beth smiled. As they turned back, she saw Sam — on the loose during school hours! — sidling towards her, hiding himself behind the shrubs that lined A Block. He raised his hand, then saw she was with Sarah. Before she could return his wave, he darted back behind a bush and vanished. Beth shook her head. Does he want some money? she wondered.

59

During study period and on her own for a while, Beth gave in to an inner prompting and dragged Dragons in History from her bag. She began to read.

A previous reader had underlined many passages in pencil, scribbling accompanying notes in the margin in an irregular childish scrawl. Obviously Ms Davis had not gotten to leafing through the book recently. Beth tried to read the scrawls, but a letter or two aside, they were basically illegible. Between pages 172 and 173, she discovered a loose sheet of sketching paper. Beth picked it up, inspected it closely. Nothing. She turned it over. She took in a beautifully drawn sketch stretching from one side of the scrap of paper to the other. There, coiled, scaled and clawed and convincingly sinuous, was a sleeping dragon.

The dragon was not a direct copy of any illustrated in the book. Rather, it took the eyes of the Wyvern, the snout of the Guivre, the thick legs of the Heraldic dragon and mixed them together. The result was inspired — perfect. Without any doubt, or any rational reason for her certainty, she knew this form belonged to the voice in the cellar. It is him. Her mouth went dry. She forced herself to keep thinking.

This is right, Beth scribbled in her notepad. Everything is in proportion, all the parts look like they have a use. She could visualise the creature flying, leaping and sleeping. Her neck prickled. Someone else knows more about the dragon than I do.

Another cryptic scribble marked the base of the illustration, in the same hand as the annotations scattered through the book. She traced the mark with her finger, trying to riddle out letters. This time she was determined to make a full translation.

An eight? B? No, she realised, it’s an S. Followed by … A zero? If so, maybe the S really is an eight. That would make it 80. No. The second mark has to be an O. SO. So what? No, it’s really S dot O dot. S.O. Like initials — the artist’s signature.

Initials. Had to be.

She closed one eye and rubbed at the other.

S.J.O. Samuel Julius Ormonde.

‘Holy crap,’ she whispered.

60

Sam was nowhere to be found on the school grounds, and she gave up looking when she saw Flack regarding her from the other side of the quadrangle. Beth considered running out the school gates, but hesitated.

She passed through the afternoon’s remaining two classes in a strange kind of daze.

Computer Skills was the last lesson of the day and probably the most useless of the week, which was saying something. When Ms Gare let them out early, Beth departed the school grounds at great speed without waiting for Jo or Sarah. Gradually she calmed as she warmed up. She had to think things through and come up with a plan. To give herself time for this, she walked the long way home, turning east on Golf Links Road, then north across the Goolgoorook Golf Course.

I haven’t been this way for a while.

Hemming Heights looked quite different from this angle. The hill on which the suburb perched rose steeply from Circular Avenue to her house, then fell away, rose again, finally declined more gradually to the west. Two hills, really, one smaller one on top of the other.

Exercise wasn’t really helping; her mind remained muddled. The dragon wanted her to help defend him, but from which direction would danger arrive? Via Mr Flack and his conjectures, or Dr Graydon’s fibre-optic camera? Or something completely unexpected? And strangest of all: where did Sam fit in?

She walked up the drive and let herself in the front door.

‘Anyone home? Hello?’

She ended up in the lounge.

Abbie glanced up from her paper. She looked tired.

‘Hi Mum. Sam?’

‘At Ken’s place for the night. Keen to go, of course. Last minute thing. Your father’s at a farewell dinner. Can’t remember who for.’

‘Oh. Thanks.’

‘Are you feeling well?’ Abbie asked, folding the paper and putting it aside. ‘Tell me if you need to. About anything.’

‘Do you have the Dankowitzes’ number?’

‘Whiteboard. Next to the fridge. Why do you ask?’

‘Just in case I need to find something,’

‘Sam’s been taking some of my stuff.’

‘Maybe things are falling down the side of your bed.’

‘He’s a different person for you, Mum.’ And a different person for everyone else as well, perhaps.

She moved through the house, wondering why it felt so alien, as if she was visiting it for the first time. The cellar door now had two padlocks, the second even bulkier than the first. She hoped the dragon would be up to opening both of them for her.

Abbie found her gazing along the corridor to Sam’s room. Beth had reached a kind of impasse. She didn’t know what she was doing or what to think or which action to take next.

‘Your father found this in the cellar this morning,’ Abbie said, proffering a tattered notebook.

‘That’s mine!’ exclaimed Beth, scandalised, grabbing it.

‘Before you go berko, Beth, I haven’t looked inside it. Didn’t even crack a single page. I wouldn’t make that mistake twice!’ She stood with hands on hips. ‘I don’t know why you go down there, young lady. Perhaps I don’t care.’

‘But … ?’

‘But you can’t do it anymore. Doctor’s orders.’

‘Graydon?’

‘He says the gases down there might be dangerous. Very dangerous, he said.’

Beth puffed out a gust of air, her shoulders dropping.

Nick arrived home at eleven, talking a little too loudly, his voice waking Beth from a doze. She sat up, and took a sip of water from a glass by her bed.

He’s had a beer, she thought and almost smiled. One glass and he was half sloshed.

‘Would you believe,’ Nick said, voice carrying clearly, ’Jim Risdon — from ’cross the road …  funny old bloke …’

‘Yes?’

‘ … is worried about his property values? He’s heard about our tremors. Says we should do something about it. Do something for the sake of the neighborhood — that’s what he said.’

Abbie made a disgusted sound. ‘Greedy. Christ, he’ll probably background people who come to check out the property. Not good.’
‘Damned property parasites,’ said Nick. Real estate agents and their tactics were among his pet dislikes.

They moved away, voices tailing into inaudibility.

Beth lay still in bed. She felt lonely. Eventually she got up, put on her shoes and took the dragon’s scales from their hiding place. They were much warmer now. She slipped them into her jeans pocket.

At the foot of the stairs, Beth paused and wished Henry was there to surprise her. At that moment, she knew she should have told him everything.

One padlock was already open but the other lock had disappeared. Stooping, she saw it on the floor, bar bent back like a green twig. ‘Damn.’ She went on.

Stairs number three and seven were buckled, and looked as if they might soon collapse. The floor of the cellar was worse, concrete humped up in waves, fragments canted at random angles. A light coating of cement dust lay over everything. crackling, sharp electrical stench.

‘Oh my God. This is not supposed to happen today.’ How could she have presumed to understand something powerful enough to do this?

‘Beth—’

She jumped, skin prickling. I should have stayed frightened. Instead, I let him lull me, with his scents. Fool.

‘Scales are hot. Hotter all the time,’ she said, balancing both of them on her fingertips. Everything was baking down here — heat was pouring from the hole in great shimmering waves. Beth knelt and let the scales rest on the floor.

‘The warmth will take me from this cold place, Beth. Away from the long death of sleep. I burn my own flesh to rise.’

Beth felt sweat trickle down her spine and her legs prickled. ‘How did you bend the padlock? Why?’

‘Dragons know metal, think the way it thinks.’

He’d only bothered to answer the first part of her question. ‘I can ask Dr Graydon,’ she said, trying to wrench her mind back towards independence. ‘Maybe he can explain it. Magnetism or something … quantum mechanics, maybe …’

At the mention of Graydon’s name, the floor began to shake. Instinct and fear told her to move away to the side — quickly. Two steps and a sprawling leap over an undulating segment of the floor took her back to the foot of the staircase.

Searing air poured from the hole, fiery and desert dry. A cloud of opaque, lung-searing particles obscured the whole room. Beth coughed as if her lungs were being scoured by a coarse bristle brush. Her feet were bolted down, eyes watering and heart hammering hard enough to shake her whole body.

‘What’re you doing? You promised to wait—’

‘No, Beth. I was wrong to promise you that. There can be no Gray-don. Never again. I do not want to kill. Do what you have to. Keep him away. You are able to fit me into your world, but he is fixed, blind to me — he cannot be allowed to continue. People destroy what they cannot accommodate. This is my warning, not a threat.’

Beth staggered, ears ringing.

I can’t hold my head up. The room is turning, I think. My skin is full of sand.

Silently, dry lips parted and eyes closed, she slid towards the floor.