Chapter Twenty-seven

The TV satellite vans were out in force again, the day the new St Gertrude’s Tower Dragon Experience opened.

Ryan’s dad slumped on the sofa and watched the whole thing on the TV.

‘Why don’t you go into town and join in?’ his wife suggested. She was worried about him. He’d not been the same since she’d got back from China — he was so moody and grumpy. He spent all his time watching TV. ‘It looks like everyone’s having a brilliant time up there?’ She smiled, hopefully.

Her husband curled his lip and grunted quietly. The court had made him pay a huge fine for causing all the trouble at the battle of St Gertrude’s. He didn’t mind that — they could afford it. But he couldn’t get over the fact that Harri had beaten him again, and he’d had his dragon taken away. The law may have spoken, but he wanted justice!

No one would ever truly understand how he felt … there is a special, magical, secret bond between a dragon and its master.

‘Look!’ Ryan’s mum pointed at the screen. ‘There’s Ryan and Harri and Mr Davies, their teacher!’

Mr Davies and the Red Dragons were marching along with their hairy, bearded pals, the White Dragon Saxons. The Carnival Queen and her attendants were dressed up again as St Gertrude and her merry friends, and Harri was going to be guest of honour, cutting the ribbon to officially open the new Dragon Experience.

There were dragons everywhere — on T-shirts, on tea towels, mugs, caps, flags and posters. You could buy dragon cakes, dragon pasties and dragon pizzas, and a special dragon ale was on sale in all the pubs. Dragon pennants zig-zagged across the street.

The mayor made a speech and told everyone about his new History of Dragons book. Signed copies were selling like hot cakes in Merlin’s Lair.

The band played and finally, the TV cameras got to see the dragons.

Harri spent the day showing Tân off to one camera crew after another, answering the same questions over and over. ‘But tell us, Harri,’ they kept asking, ‘where did you really find him? You don’t expect us to believe that magic egg story, do you?’

He told them the truth, again and again, but no one believed him.

When it was all over and everyone had got their stories and told their tales, Harri snuggled down in the straw with Tân. He was exhausted. He could feel Tân’s heart pounding against his soft, scaly skin. Harri talked gentle words of encouragement to Tân and Tân talked back in his strange language of snuffs and squeaks and rumbles.

The dragons were on separate floors in Castle Gertrude to ‘double the experience!’ Tân was kept in a dungeon kind of dragon’s lair with old-fashioned prison bars caging him in. This was going to be his life from now on — gawped at by strangers six days a week, with Mondays off.

Harri was allowed to see Tân for half an hour every day at closing time, to feed him and keep him clean — no one else wanted to go into a dragon’s lair and do the job alone.

It was better than nothing. It was better than losing Tân forever or having him put down, but they were never going to wander free again — running across the hills above the town, chasing rabbits, looking for worms and learning new tricks. Would Tân ever be allowed to fly again?

Suddenly, Tân sat up straight and stared intently through the narrow slit window of his dungeon. His wings quivered and a long, low growl rippled through his body.

‘What is it, Tân?’ Harri followed the dragon’s gaze. Someone was darting about, down by the entrance gates to the castle — someone who was trying not to be recognised by the security cameras, someone with a hood up and a scarf covering half their face.

It wasn’t much of a disguise — Harri recognised Ryan’s dad instantly by his jacket and the way he moved.

Ryan’s dad was stapling a poster to the entrance sign. The poster was mostly black decorated with a white dragon and white lettering that said:

Free the Dragon.

Ryan’s dad stood defiantly before the tower. Harri wasn’t sure if he could see them through the tiny window, but he felt the anger and frustration coming at him like a laser beam.

Harri had never wanted Ryan’s dad as an enemy. They shared something that no one else could ever understand, the secret bond between a dragon and its master. Harri knew that Ryan’s dad would never give up until his dragon was free.

The words of the poster went round and round inside his head, stirring him up like a virus.

Free the Dragon.

Free Tân!

‘I’ll never give up,’ Harri whispered in Tân’s ear. Tân tilted his head. His huge yellow eyes fixed him with a look of purpose and hope. ‘I’ll never give up until we are free!’