Chapter Nine

When Magic Is Blue

Marley grabs my hand and Alona presses against my other side. The three of us cower in front of this intimidating creature as it blocks out the moon and stars before us. The shallows of Loch Ness only reaches the creature’s knees, causing me to wonder what its feet look like.

“Should we run?” asks Marley, his hand squeezing tightly to mine. Alona is trembling but she remains in her human form, defiant despite the obvious fear she is feeling. “What if it breathes fire, in stories they always breathe fire.”

I keep staring up at the dragon. It has deep blue eyes that match its scales and body.

“I wouldn’t trust those stories,” I tell Marley, keeping my eyes glued to the blue reptile. “They say a lot of things that aren’t true.”

I take a step forward, letting go of Marley’s hand and extracting myself from Alona’s grip. They both make noises of protest, but I ignore them. The dragon makes a chuffing sound. A grunt. Yet no fire comes out of its nostrils, only air.

I wade into the water, still too pumped with adrenaline to feel the full sharpness of the icy cold. I reach out a hand to touch its snout. The dragon intuitively flinches away, even gurgling slightly in objection. I still my hand, deciding not to press any closer unless welcomed.

“It pushed me out of the water,” I tell the others. “It came up from the deep.”

“I think,” Alona says slowly, “it’s a she.”

“This is Nessie,” Marley says dazedly, taking a miniscule step forward, too. “We’re actually looking
at Nessie.”

The dragon chuffs once more, at the mention of that name, as if rejecting it. It causes Marley to step back again. I admire her giant wings, noticing that they’re not only blue, but transparent. Almost fragile. The dragon folds them in and roars, moving back out towards the deeper section of the loch.

“Wait,” I call, pushing against the water and following her. “Do you Glamour?”

“I don’t think the possibly fire-breathing dragon speaks English!” Marley rasps.

As if to spite and defy him, the dragon sinks down into the water. I can see the blue scales beneath it but Marley gasps, leaping forward.

“It’s gone,” he cries.

“You can’t see it?” I demand, laughing shrilly at
the realisation.

The dragon can Glamour. It can disguise itself, blend into its surroundings like a water chameleon. That is why no film crew has ever discovered it. The tourists who’ve come, desperate to explore and unmask the monster, have probably sailed their boats right by the dragon, never knowing what was underneath because its Glamour perfectly hid it.

The dragon resurfaces, calmly. I fully believe I can see a glint of satisfaction in her eye.

“The few people who spotted you must have been like me,” I say softly. “That’s why no one really
believes them.”

The dragon doesn’t react. I step closer again, holding up my hands to try and communicate how badly I just want to connect. Peacefully.

“Careful,” Marley says, though he sounds a little more assured.

I approach. “I think you’re magnificent.”

The dragon chuffs once more, though this time it’s a little fainter.

“I’m Ramya, a witch, this is Alona, a Dryad, and that’s my cousin, Marley. A Capricorn.”

“Thanks,” Marley says dully. “But I’m a Sagittarius.”

“We don’t want to hurt you or hunt you or let anyone else see you,” I say. “I swear. But we’ve never seen anything like you.”

The dragon straightens its stature a little. I regard its great wings, thoughtfully.

“You live in the water, but you can fly?”

Part reptile, part mammal, part bird? It doesn’t appear to have gills, so it must hold its breath while under the water. I wonder if the wings are just for display.

As if reading my mind, the dragon stretches its wings and they cast off droplets of water, soaking the three of us. I laugh, thrilled.

“You can fly,” I say to myself, completely enraptured.

The dragon bows its head and lays the wing nearest us down, almost like a smooth, watery set of stairs. I know at once what the huge creature is challenging me to do, and it sets every fibre of my body on fire with excitement.

I step forward again.

“No, Ramya,” groans Marley. “Don’t do something stupid.”

“You know me,” I say to him, my eyes locked into the dragon’s gaze. “Stupid is someone else’s clever.”

I carefully climb onto the dragon’s back, as gently as I can. I shuffle forward once I’m astride its torso to sit up front, where the neck meets the body. There are sharp horns peppered across the scales and I use them as handles, gripping on tight.

“Right, you’ve had a sit,” Marley says, sounding like Mum. “Time to come down.”

Alona bursts out laughing and transforms into a green vine. She tenderly curls around the dragon’s
blue neck, turning herself into a set of reigns. I bark out a laugh of my own and turn to look at Marley.
“You coming?”

“Absolutely not,” he says, snorting in disbelief. “Don’t you dare do it. I’m not explaining to the aunts that you got killed trying to fly a dragon.”

“Marley,” I say calmly, smiling an indulgent smile. “We are not going to die. If we fall off, I will not let you drop. We’ll be fine.”

He does not look reassured in any way. He eyes the dragon with complete distrust.

“Marley,” I cry, laughing giddily. “How many people get to say that they have even seen the Loch Ness… Dragon? Let alone ridden it. Get. On.”

He gives it another moment of thought, and I can see the two sides of his brain warring over it. The sensible, logical side of him doesn’t want the other, quieter part to have any fun or joy. It worries and needles and is constantly afraid for him. It silences the whispers in his head that tell him it is okay to enjoy something, without dress-rehearsing all the ways it can go wrong.

He shakes his head.

I don’t push. I do not tell him he’s being ridiculous or weird or silly. Maybe I would have done, a year ago. Now I know Marley is sort of the bravest person I know. He’s not telling me he thinks this will be too dangerous because he’s scared.

More because he can see multiple endings. To every story, to every task. Marley can see every eventuality, like a clairvoyant.

He doesn’t want to risk things that are important.

I like risk, though. I’m not like Marley. In fact, if I’m honest, it’s the reason there was friction between us when we first met. He is Gifted and Talented – the boy that teachers drag out of History when there’s a school visitor. They like to parade him around as the perfect example, the child and student that we should all aspire to be.

It wasn’t good for people like me, and it wasn’t always good for Marley. Yes, praise must be nice (I wouldn’t really know) but after so much of it, I don’t know if Marley knows who he is without it.

Mum sometimes says, “Why can’t you be more like your cousin?”.

Because I’m neurodivergent. No moulding, no occupational therapy, no tough love or extra help or special education is going to change that. I’m never going to be a neurotypical child.

I was meant to be so much more. That’s why I’m not afraid. Maybe neurotypical children were made for behaviour charts and school reports and following commands but I’m not. I feel out of place in a classroom. I feel wrongly made whenever I’m stood up next to my peers at Sports Day or Open Day.

But I feel very at home on this dragon.

“I’ll be safe, Marley,” I tell him frankly, and as I
say the words, I can feel the dragon start to shift and
move, getting ready for flight. Its shoulders shift, its flank twitches and its feet pull up a little from beneath the water.

I let out a yell as the creature suddenly hurtles into a run, using the vast openness of the loch as a path for launch, spreading its great wings apart like a sail about to catch the wind. I grip on with everything that I have, and the air in my lungs is squashed by the air I choke on as the dragon gains incredible speed.

I know and feel exactly when we are about to take flight. It is a feeling without description, that I now know in my own body. A plane about to lift its wheels off the runway causes a certain faintness in your legs and a hook in your stomach, but it’s nothing compared to flying yourself.

Or flying upon a dragon.

The dragon ascends. I hold on even more tightly. It lifts its feet up into its body and commands its wings with the strength of multiple men rowing a ship. I cannot contain my scream of delight and terror as the dragon flies. It shoots up into the sky with more speed and agility than I could ever have imagined. I always thought dragons would fly like eagles. This dragon flies like a swift.

The scream in my throat turns into a shout of triumph and elation, as we dive and soar through the skies above the loch. When the dragon slows down to a gentle speed over the surface of the water, I take a moment to admire the blue scales.

A stunning blue.

The dragon, as if hearing me, lets out a snort of air and climbs higher once more. I instinctively let go. I swan dive, letting gravity haul me closer to the water. Right as I’m about to hit the cold loch with my nose, I harness. I trust.

I fly. Just like the dragon. I cannot rise as quickly, I cannot soar as high, but I can fly.

I suddenly remember sitting on the bike sheds at school, back in Edinburgh. I remember how nervous Mr Ishmael was, scared I might fall and hurt myself even though I was only five feet above the ground.

If only he could see me now. Soaring with a dragon, a blue dragon, that legends have hinted at yet most people cannot see. A dragon with myth and stories etched into its sapphire scales.

Later, I fill Grandpa’s book with pages and pages on the dragon I call Blue in my head. It reminds me of being in the streets of Edinburgh with Marley, cataloguing the strange and wondrous people we met. It all feels so long ago now, and everything has suddenly become so serious and grown-up. The world seems less populated by adults, now just full of big, frightened children.

Yet a dragon. A dragon that not only feels impossible, but also hopeful. I write down everything
I can about Blue, and I cannot quite believe that she
is real.

I’m a dyspraxic witch with a bad temper and I’m soaring side by side with a blue dragon.

“Like Aunt Leanna said,” I say to nobody. “Blue is rare in nature.”

Right now, there is a little blue in me, too.