The Dragon's Eye (9 page)

Mademoiselle Gamay and Emery left, and Dr. Drake, who I supposed must be a Dragonologist First Class, asked Billy to show us the “signs” of the Dragonological Apprentices. There were three of these, and they were the means by which one dragonologist could recognise another in secret. The first sign was a gesture — a fist held loosely at one's side while the index finger pointed to the ground. It could be made without drawing attention to oneself and symbolised the fact that dragonologists have sworn to conserve and protect all dragons even were there to be only one single dragon left. The second was a call for assistance — the hands were crossed and raised over the head in fists. This sign was easy to see from a distance, and dragonologists were duty-bound to answer such a call if they ever saw it. Finally, there were the words. Billy explained that there was an ancient dragon riddle that was used as a password. Dr. Drake asked him and Darcy to demonstrate it to us.

Billy smiled. He and Darcy stood up and went to the front of the class.

“When a dragon flies . . . ?” he asked.

“He seeks it with his eyes,” said Darcy.

“When a dragon roars . . . ?” asked Billy.

“He holds it in his claws,” concluded Darcy.

“You see,” said Dr. Drake. “It is quite simple. This is the password, but it is only the first part of the riddle. The rest of it goes like this:

“Now, I wonder: Can any of you new apprentices guess the answer to that riddle?”

I thought about it. But it wasn't a very difficult riddle. I soon had the answer, and so did Beatrice and Alicia. Our hands shot up.

“What is it?” asked Dr. Drake.

“Treasure!” we chorused, smiling.

After lunch, classes in dragonology began in earnest. Dr. Drake went to the blackboard and drew a diagram showing how dragons breathed fire.

“Today,” he said, “we are going to begin our lessons by remembering that dragons can be very dangerous. They can breathe fire, after all.”

Dr. Drake then gave us a brief lesson on fire breathing. Apparently, some dragonologists believed the theory that dragons produce helium gas or methane, which they then ignite with a spark. In fact, as Dr. Drake pointed out, they actually spray out a fine mist of venom that has evolved so as to be flammable. They light the spray with a spark produced by knocking together a piece of rock, known as iron pyrites, and a piece of flint. They even carry these around with them in a special pouch in their mouths that has actually evolved for the purpose over millions of years.

“Some dragons must travel a great distance to find the necessary rocks to produce the spark,” said Dr. Drake. “But fire breathing is just one of the ways in which dragons can be dangerous. To counter this danger, the experienced dragonologist must remember five simple words beginning with
F.
They are known as the Five
F
's of Dragonology.”

And he wrote the following words on the blackboard:
Fieldwork, Foresight, Forwardness, Frankness,
and
Fatalities.
He underlined the last word three times before turning back to us.

“Can you tell me about fieldwork, Beatrice? You have been doing some with the knucker.”

“Does it mean studying dragons in the wild?” asked Beatrice.

“Well, it's a
bit
more complicated,” said Billy.

“Why is that?” asked Dr. Drake.

“Well, you need a record book, and you need to remember the other four
F
's,” said Billy. “And it's best by far to study dragons in their natural environments.”

“Well, yes, but I think Beatrice was on the right track, don't you?” said Dr. Drake. “And what about foresight, Darcy?”

“Proper training and preparation are absolutely essential,” said Darcy.

“Forwardness, Alicia?”

“That's something to do with being brave, isn't it?” asked Alicia.

“Oh, come on!” said Billy. “I told you: ‘The student must be both daring and truly courageous.'”

“Frankness, Daniel?” said Dr. Drake, raising his eyebrow a little.

“Er, a dragonologist must be frank?” I said.

“Indeed,” said Dr. Drake. “Which means?”

“He must tell the truth?”

“Quite,” said Dr. Drake. “A dragonologist must report honestly what he sees at all times. And as for fatalities, unless these are avoided, I'm afraid you won't make much progress at all. There is one particular danger, however, that is often forgotten. We studied it last year. Can either of you, Billy or Darcy, tell these other children what it is?”

They both looked blank.

“While a dragonologist must never underestimate the dangers of suffering from bites, burns, slashes from claws, death by constriction . . .”

“Oh,” said Darcy. “Hypnosis.”

“Can you remember what kinds of dragon can hypnotise people?”

“Only the larger, more intelligent kind,” said Billy. “And they can only hypnotise people who are intelligent themselves. So the girls will be all right,” he added with a smirk.

Alicia shuffled in her chair as though she often had to put up with this sort of thing. Beatrice looked as though she was going to say something but decided against it. Dr. Drake looked at Billy archly.

“I dare say that a dragon could hypnotise nearly everyone in this room if he chose to,” he said.

“Could the knucker —?” began Beatrice, but she was cut off by a tremendous thud that made the whole building shake. We all stood up at once. It sounded as though someone — or something — was trying to smash the wall down.

“Look!” said Alicia. A huge dragon's head appeared at one of the windows. From the size of its head, I guessed that the creature would make the knucker look tiny and would positively dwarf Scorcher. When it saw us, its head started moving against the window as though it were hopping up and down in excitement.

“Jamal's gotten out again,” cried Darcy.

“How on earth?” exclaimed Dr. Drake.

We crowded over to one of the other windows and looked out to see Emery and Mademoiselle Gamay trying to deal with a dragon that stood at least twelve feet high. He had two enormous wings at the front and two huge back legs, but no front legs at all.

“Jamal's come to say hello,” said Billy with a laugh.

Meanwhile Mademoiselle Gamay was trying to attract the beast's attention with the remains of the roast beef we had eaten for lunch, while Emery held out a large bowl full of glass beads.

“Can't we go and see him?” asked Billy.

“Not now,” said Dr. Drake. “There will be plenty of time to see Jamal later. But if you watch, you may learn something. I am sure that Emery and Mademoiselle Gamay have got the situation under control.”

It didn't seem like it. The dragon was ignoring both of them. Instead, he was testing the wall with his hind claws and tail, as though he was wondering just what it would take to knock it down. Then he moved back a little and thumped the wall again with his tail. The building shook as though there had been a small earthquake.

“Shouldn't we get outside?” asked Beatrice.

“Not just yet,” said Dr. Drake.

Then a rather red-faced Emery managed to get in front of Jamal, distracting him for a moment by placing the bowl of glass beads in front of him.

Jamal looked briefly at the bowl, tossed his head, and then turned to continue his tail thumping.

Mademoiselle Gamay had given up on the remains of the beef and instead had gone to fetch an old penny-farthing bicycle. Suddenly, Emery dashed forward, snatched back the bowl of glass beads, and hopped onto the bicycle. Wobbling a little, he pedalled off as fast as he could towards the forest.

Jamal, noticing that his gift had been taken away from him, now gave Emery his full attention, letting out a roar as he turned his twelve-foot bulk and half flew half ran after Emery, who was whooping with all his might. Soon, both of them had disappeared amongst the trees.

“He's only a baby,” said Dr. Drake with a smile. “The glass beads trick usually works. But I do wonder how he keeps on getting out.”

“Father's not going to be pleased,” said Billy.

Dr. Drake said that he needed to go off in case Emery needed help recapturing Jamal, and so lessons ended for the day, but not before he set us some homework to do. Beatrice, Alicia, and I had to study the map on the wall and write short descriptions of all the dragons we found. Billy and Darcy were going to help us with names and descriptions of the species of dragons that they knew. Dr. Drake had also handed them sheets of paper with information about two new dragon species they hadn't studied before. I had soon copied the map into my record book and drawn rough sketches of the dragons on it. I thought I could recognise a knucker, which looked like Weasel; a wyvern, like Jamal; and a European dragon, which looked a bit like an adult Scorcher.

“European dragons live amongst mountains or in sea caves,” said Billy. “They grow up to forty-five feet long, breathe fire, and mainly eat cattle, deer, or sheep.”

“I haven't actually seen Scorcher breathe fire,” I said. “Only smoke.”

“That's because he's a baby. It takes them a little while to learn how to do it properly.”

“And what's this dragon?” I asked. It was in Australia.

“It's a marsupial dragon,” said Billy. “I've never seen one, but according to Dr. Drake, they raise one young at a time in a fiery pouch.”

“And they like to box,” I said. I remembered what he had told me about the shady dealer from Shadwell Dock.

Soon I had made a list of names and descriptions of the dragons in my record book, and Billy had gone into a corner to read the sheets that Dr. Drake had given him. Beatrice, meanwhile, had gotten together with Alicia and had raced through the map exercise with Darcy. I listened as she started asking him about the other posters on the walls.

“What's that?” asked Beatrice, pointing to a poster that showed a picture of a hat that had diamonds hanging round the rim.

“That's a Back o' Bourke bush hat,” said Darcy. “They use them in Australia to attract marsupial dragons. You see, Australian cattle drovers sometimes hang corks round their hats to keep the flies away, but dragonologists use fake diamonds instead.”

“What sort of dragon is that?” asked Alicia, going over to Billy and pointing at the sheet he was reading.

Billy immediately swung round so that she couldn't see the sheet.

“It's advanced dragonology,” he said. “I don't expect you girls will get to this level for a while. I'll show Daniel, though. He seems to catch on quite quickly.”

He winked at me, and I was just about to go over and have a look when Beatrice hissed, “Daniel, that's not fair.”

I sighed and sat down again. It did seem a bit unfair.

We went back to the house to find that Dr. Drake and Emery had returned from rounding up Jamal and reinforcing the fence on his compound. They were deep in conversation, and Dr. Drake looked very worried, but they hushed up as soon as we appeared. Emery fetched a leather ball and told us to kick it around between ourselves.

“You'll find out why later,” he said. “But it's going to be fun.”

That evening, when Billy was talking to Dr. Drake, Darcy came and showed me the sheets of paper he and Billy had been given. There were two dragons on it. One looked a bit like an imp with arms, legs and claws and was the sort of thing you might expect to see on the side of an ancient cathedral. It was called a gargouille. The other was a small, nasty-looking creature that seemed more like an evil crow than a dragon. It was a cockatrice.

“Dr. Drake says that cockatrices are very rare, but that they are among the most dangerous of dragons because they can kill their prey merely by breathing on them. They usually live in Mediterranean mountain forests, but I'm sure Dr. Drake mentioned one that lives in England or Wales somewhere. It's called Bog-Crow. He also said that a few of them migrated to North America. He thinks that it might have been the source for the legend of the
Marie Celeste
— all the passengers and crew were killed by cockatrices, but the dragons got away.”

“Let's show Beatrice,” I said.

But when we knocked on the door of the girls' dormitory, there was no reply.

I knocked harder, and a voice shouted back, “Sorry. Closed for Q.T.B.”

“Beatrice,” I hissed. “Do you want to see a cockatrice?”

The door flew open. Inside, the room was already covered with pictures and diagrams of dragons that Beatrice and Alicia had made, and their dragonological record books were open alongside Darwin's
On the Origin of Species.
Beatrice had obviously been teaching Alicia everything she had learned about evolution. Alicia was sitting on the floor beside a large version of the map and some figures of dragons and dragonologists. It seemed as though Beatrice had made up some kind of dragon game.