Goldenscale

Wednesday 15 March

33

Nick drove her to school, stopping close to the front gate. He leaned over and kissed her forehead. ‘Here’s your taxi money. I can’t make it in to pick you up this evening.’

‘I’ll walk, then.’

‘No you won’t. Not until things are sorted out.’

‘Yeah, right. Like that’s possible. What about the police? You wanted me to report Len.’

‘Speak to Mr Flack about it. He’ll sort things out. Len’s still missing, by the way.’

Nick grasped her arm and gave her a solemn look. ‘If there’s anything else wrong, you’d let us know … wouldn’t you?’

‘Yeah …’ Beth said, ‘but there isn’t. Just normal stuff, and you can’t help me with that.’ Her father released her arm.

‘I’m alright, Dad,’ she said.’

After science, Beth did as her father directed, and raised the matter of Len with Flack. Bizarrely, Flack made a point of ignoring her, deflecting all her questions with the same suggestion: to go see the principal and stop bothering him. She didn’t know which tack to take. She raised her voice. ‘How am I supposed to sort out Len?’ she asked.

‘Ask the principal,’ he said. ‘Your problem is not my problem. I’ve got some essays to mark.’ While he talked he kept one hand in his jacket pocket, fist bunched as if holding something.

‘You’re not much bloody use,’ said Beth, in an attempt to get some kind of reaction, but Mr Flack gave her a look of such indifference that she went away.

Why on earth would he behave like that? She stood in a deserted section of corridor shaking her head slowly. Mr Flack was one of Len’s nemeses at school, and surely wanted to have him expelled or punished.

You’re being a fool, she thought. This is about the scale, not Len. He was holding it while we were talking. It has an effect on him. I did the wrong thing in telling him anything. Now he’s going to blunder around looking for answers.

Beth shuddered and hurried away to class.

Geography was up next and after making a late entrance, Beth sat with Sarah.

‘What happened last night?’ Beth whispered.

‘Last night?’

‘At your place. You know, about Len.’

‘I didn’t go home, Beth. Aunt Emma put me up.’ She turned her head away.

Beth coloured with embarrassment.

‘Sarah— ’

‘Girls!’ said Mrs Honeycutt. Heads swivelled like clowns at a sideshow. ‘I don’t think it’s about the third world this time, is it? Conversations are for lunchtime. Outside!’

They stood uncomfortably in the corridor. Two police officers — a young woman and an overweight older man — walked past, leather belts, holsters and shoes creaking.

Sarah became very pale. ‘They’ve reported Len. The school.’ She didn’t say ‘because of your bike,’ but Beth felt guilty all the same. Silence grew again.

When the class finally ended, Sarah walked off, arms tightly folded.

‘He’s your brother,’ Beth said in a whisper, ‘don’t blame me.’

Recovered after several days of illness, Mrs Speck finally made it to Maths class, clutching a multicoloured handkerchief and sneezing constantly.

‘Well enough to spread the disease,’ said Beth, disgusted.

‘Ib been sick,’ Speck said, sniffing thickly. ‘Lebs do integrals today, children.’

Her whiteboard scrawls were less legible than ever.

‘The cops came to talk to Len,’ said Jo, ‘but he left before lunch.’

‘I know. Sarah hates me,’ said Beth. ‘Or something close to that.’

‘She’ll get over it. We’ll invite her to She’s all Over at the City Twin. Hear it’s only moderately crappy.’

‘Oh, that’ll work!’ Beth hissed. ‘Len’ll probably come along and attack all three of us at once.’

‘Quiet, girlbs,’ said Speck, half hidden behind foggy glasses, ‘you’re far too noiby.’

During lunch, sitting on a grassy rise on the south side of the school, Jo seemed on the verge of saying something.

‘You’re gloomier than I am,’ said Beth.

‘I’ve got something to ask you.’

‘Sure …’

‘If Mum has to go to Fiji after all … would you be willing to come over for a few nights? Until Uncle Niladri can come up from Sydney, anyway. Otherwise I’ll be on my own and if I am, Mum probably won’t go.’

Beth hesitated a fatal moment, and Jo’s hesitant smile vanished. ‘Not if it’s too much trouble, Beth.’

‘Wait, I didn’t say anything.’

‘Sarah was going on about you again the other day.’

‘Oh?’

‘She thinks that you don’t give a shit about us anymore.’

Beth opened her mouth to protest. A little knot of anger began to flare within.

‘Nothing matters to you,’ Jo said, ‘except the things you’re interested in.’

‘Shove it, Jo!’ she snarled. ‘You could say that about anyone. I’ve got my own problems! You keep to yourself when it suits you.’

‘Does it suit you now?’

‘Jo, I want to come over. I will. It’s just …  I have to do something every night. I don’t have a choice,’ she said pleadingly.

Her friend’s face changed. ‘Well. I don’t know what it is that you need to do. It must be important, hey? I’ll see you on Monday.’

34

A light rain drifted in from the Jugamai Hills. Autumn was slowly unfurl itself. Beth slowly and disconsolately wandered home, a heavy shopping bag in each hand. She had spent her taxi money on three packets of Glossy Kote Dog Food, an exercise book and waterproof-ink pen. She wished that Len would appear.

‘I would rip your head off,’ she whispered. ‘Damn Len. Damn Jo. Damn the dragon. Damn everyone.’

Nothing was worth losing friends and feeling so confused. She reached the yard and stowed the bags beneath a dripping banksia.

Her parents were in the city, according to a note on the fridge.

‘Probably checking out a new house,’ Sam predicted gloomily. ‘We’ll have to live in some tiny little place when Mum gets the job. Houses cost a lot more in the city, you know.’

Beth slumped into a lounge chair. Maybe we should leave. Get as far away as possible. She felt as though her brain was the floor of a stock market, thoughts screaming and jumping for attention. Stay and finish the thing you have started. You must help those who need it.

She glanced over at Sam, wondering what had slowed the usual drip of observations and insults that he usually produced. Sitting on the lounge room floor, he was building a landscape with plasticine, using blue for mountains and rivers, green for foothills, yellow to represent pasture land, and black for roads and vehicles. The whole affair rested on a thin piece of craftwood and looked about half finished. He had a large map open on the floor.

‘Do you recognise it?’ he asked her.

She looked harder at the model. A town sprawled along a winding river, beneath a series of high plateaux. ‘It’s us,’ she realised, impressed. Every little fold of the Jugamai Hills stood out. Sam pointed to a rise just before the town.

‘Hemming Heights.’

‘Not too shabby,’ she was forced to admit. ‘Is it a school project, then?’

‘Just for me,’ said Sam. He glanced at her. ‘I know something you don’t.’

Beth scowled. ‘Spare me.’

‘Dad says you keep setting off the smoke detector.’

‘Bull.’ She felt sick.

‘I heard them talking last night, after the alarm went off.’ Sam waited, but Beth said nothing. ‘Dad said “where’s there’s fire there must be smoke”.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Must be smoke, Bethy. Think about it.’

They think I smoke?’

‘Dad does, anyway. Yep. Puffing away in the laundry.’

‘I’ve never had a cigarette in my life,’ she said, amazed.

‘Uh. He’s not thinking about cigarettes. Other stuff.’

‘Weed? Oh, God. It gets worse. Dad asked me if I had any problems this morning.’

‘That’d be the one, then. That thirty bucks Mum loaned you? They both think you might have used that.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘Nothing. I didn’t tell them anything. No, I might have said it wasn’t enough to buy much. Not that I would know.’ As he spoke he began to tidy up his model, packing away unused plasticine, putting a cloth over the rest and moving it to a half empty shelf along the far wall.

‘OK,’ Beth said, easing up. ‘Even though there was nothing to tell.’

Sam shook his head slightly. ‘You’re not smoking. I know that. But you have got a secret,’ he said. ‘I can smell it.’

Beth sighed. She wanted to stop thinking. Stop being. Stop doing. ‘Just back off, Sam. For your own good.’ She placed a hand on his arm. ‘Thanks for putting the olds off the trail. I don’t even know what to say.’

‘You only give away the things that don’t really matter to you. I know. I’m selfish, too. It’s in our genes.’

There’s a thirty year old in his head, Beth thought. ‘If I was as clever as you,’ she said, ‘you’d never even know I had any secrets.’

‘Finished tidying up.’ he said. ‘I’m going to bed.’ He placed his index finger and middle finger below his eyes, then pointed both fingers at her. ‘Watching you,’ he said. His bedroom door closed quietly a few moments later.

Beth waited a very long time until she was sure that Sam had to be asleep.

35

Tonight, the dragon sounded much sharper. Last night’s food was gone.

‘I have more.’ Beth dumped the bags on the floor. ‘As much as I could carry, anyway. I guess you’re so big — I mean, you really have to be, and I have no idea how this could be of any use. Wouldn’t you need tonnes of the stuff? Not just a bag. Maybe I’m not being all that helpful.’

‘The world has changed, hasn’t it?’ said the dragon. ‘More than any other time I’ve reawakened. There are so many of you now. So little space left for everything else. I’ve been listening to those devices you have upstairs.’

‘The radio? And the television? The television’s not just sound, you know. They have moving pictures.’

‘No matter. You all talk — talk all the time. Just to hear a voice. Not to be lonely, to know that the world is full of people.’

‘There’s a girl at school who spends half her life in front of it. The television.’

The dragon laughed, a great gust of hot air. At least, I think that was a laugh. Or was it some expression of disgust?

‘Once, humans walked everywhere. Or rode horses. Now the engines go everywhere — I feel their hum.’

‘We fly, too. And go into space.’

‘Your machines burn, yet are not afire. The air is full of their smell. Repulsive. Much I do not understand.’

I can’t explain everything to him.

‘What is science, Beth? I keep hearing the word on the talking machines. It seems important. A new religion?’

‘Not quite. A way of looking at the world, I suppose. No, it’s more than that.’

She thought hard about her answer. Science at her school was a tedious wander through textbooks dog-eared by many readers. On the other hand, she had read a fair number of popular science books.

‘It’s sort of an investigation, where you don’t make any unfounded assumptions. Scientists come up with ideas about the world, and test them.’

He needs a genius to fill him in on the modern world, not someone who draws pictures instead of listening in class.

‘Look,’ Beth said, ‘I’m not going to be much help on this sort of thing. I’ll bring you some books, if you like, and read them to you. Maybe some of it will be useful. Better than listening to television.’

‘Well,’ he rumbled, ‘come and read to me — that will bring back memories.’ He sounds pleased.

She felt uncomfortable at craving his approval. ‘Dragon. I want something in return.’

‘Nothing to offer, down here.’

‘I want your story.’

‘Too many faces, Beth,’ he whispered, barely audible, ‘too many sorrows. I must go now, sleep opens her wings.’

‘But you come from somewhere,’ she implored. ‘You did things, you must remember them. You weren’t born down in this hole, you were up the world. All those legends about you and your kind.’

‘I’m just an animal who can talk,’ whispered the dragon. ‘Why would a human be interested?’

‘You’re the most interesting thing I’ve ever seen — or found. And when you’ve woken up and gone, I don’t want to have questions I forgot to ask. Maybe I can help you. This world might not be a good place for you.’

‘Yet I must sleep. Let me consider …’ said the dragon, voice tailing off into a long declining hiss.

I’ll ask you again,’ Beth warned, but he failed to reply. She was a little amazed at her own boldness. Until tonight, she had felt constrained, thoughts bottled up inside her head. What would he do when he won free? She hadn’t really considered how strange the world was going to be for the dragon. Finding food was hard enough, but where was he going to go? There were people everywhere. By helping him escape, was she engineering his destruction?

‘Goodnight,’ she called back down the stairs. One does not say goodnight to a freaking dragon. Leaving the cellar, the certainty she felt down slowly dissipated. Isn’t all of reality like that? An event becomes history, history becomes myth. The dragon was real once and now he’s turned into a story that no-one believes. When they see he still lives, they’ll need to kill him again to protect their myth. ‘Where’s this coming from?’ she asked herself.

Her door was slightly ajar, and she was sure she had left it closed. Sam! For a moment she was angry enough to consider barging into his room, but his light was off and it was late. He was probably just trying to bait her.