The Bone Dragon Read online

  ‘Well, we could have a look and see,’ Uncle Ben says, undaunted. ‘I’m sure we can come up with something.’

  Scales are really difficult: they’re so fiddly. I keep making little holes in my finger with the weird tool that Uncle Ben is letting me borrow. It looks a bit like one of the things the dentist has so I haven’t asked Uncle Ben about it: I figure it’s better not to know what it’s normally used for.

  Amy was really angry with Uncle Ben when he gave it to me. But he talked her around. He usually does, though this time he did it by telling her the tool was brand new and hadn’t gone near any dead people yet, so he wasn’t as successful as usual: Amy keeps on coming in from the kitchen, hands coated in flour from the biscuits she is making, to check on me. She’s going to have to hoover soon or it’ll get ground into the carpet.

  I’ve been working on scales all day – it’s nearly five o’clock now – and I’ve still only done the dragon’s tail. The tail is so cool. It’s got a point almost like the spades suit in playing cards and a whole line of ridges that go all the way up the dragon’s back. Only little ones of course, but the bone isn’t as smooth as I’d expected. I suppose that’s because it was too broken to mend in the first place. But I’d rather not think too much about that. I think about the dragon instead.

  Yesterday, Ms Winters brought over the book with the picture of the Chinese dragon, even though it’s still the holidays. She and Amy pretended that she’d just come to drop it off, but I knew they were up to something even before Ms Winters directed the conversation to the fact that I’m going to miss the first three weeks of autumn term.

  She’s offered to come over one evening a week to make sure I don’t get behind. And that’s great because she’s far and away my favourite teacher, but somehow I can’t help feeling that there’s something more to the whole thing. For now though, I’m busy with the dragon.

  After Uncle Ben and I got the bone dried out, he did the first bit of the carving. Well, to be honest Uncle Ben did all the real work making the shape of the dragon. We couldn’t really make it curly in the end. But Uncle Ben did sort of manage to carve little feet into it. And because the bone is thicker at one point, he made it so it looks like the dragon is curled over on itself there. And it does curve a little bit anyway, just with how the bone curves naturally.

  And when I’ve finished the scales and made the eyes and everything – Uncle Ben says they should be slitty eyes because dragons are like snakes or cats – it’s going to be beautiful. It only makes me wish even more that it was real.

  I keep catching myself about to pray that it will turn into a real dragon. But I don’t. I won’t. I’m never going to pray for anything again.

  Amy comes out of the kitchen to check on me for the twenty-seventh time. ‘How’s it going?’ she asks, wiping wet-clean hands on her apron.

  I sigh – carefully. I’m getting used to the staples now. ‘Slowly.’

  ‘Why don’t you have a little break? It might be nice to go and listen to some music in bed for a while.’

  What Amy really means is that she wants me to have a nap. But it’s nice that she doesn’t tell me to do it.

  I yawn reflexively. She smiles and I grin, putting the tool and the dragon down on the table, then starting to push myself up. I’ve only got as far as throwing the quilt off my legs before Amy is there, her anxious hovering reminding me to go slowly: push myself up with my right arm, swing my legs down to the ground, move to the edge of the couch, push myself to my feet, staying bent at the waist until I am standing. Amy gathers up the quilt.

  ‘Can you bring the dragon for me?’ I ask. ‘I don’t need the tool. I just want to take the dragon up with me,’ I add before Amy can suggest – only a suggestion – that I’m meant to be going up to have a rest.

  ‘How are the fingers?’ She hovers behind me, quilt over one arm, dragon safely ensconced in the pot in her left hand. Her right is outstretched, almost touching my elbow as I shuffle towards the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘It’s not any worse than sticking a needle in myself in one of Mrs Poole’s awful textiles projects “to explore the applied aspects of Art”,’ I say, rolling my eyes. It’s impossible to truly dislike Mrs Poole, but I wish she wouldn’t make us sew. I mean, I get that it’s a useful skill and that she’s trying to slip it into class so that we all know how to fix a button at least. The fault in her thinking is that some people just aren’t destined to sew.

  ‘Do be careful, darling,’ Amy says. ‘It’s better than cutting your fingers open, but try not to treat yourself like a pincushion if at all possible.’

  I’m concentrating too hard to answer as I lift my right foot on to the first step, then draw my left up. Right foot on to the next step, then left, hand on the banister to help with my balance because I seem to be very clumsy since the operation. Uncle Ben says that’s probably still because of the anaesthetic. But the staples don’t help either. At least it’s only another two days until they come out. I can’t wait.

  I have to pause halfway up. Amy waits patiently behind me. Touches my elbow lightly. A couple of years ago, that would have made me jump. But I don’t now. After nearly four years, I can feel it’s Amy. Even that bit of me that sometimes gets scared of silly things that I know aren’t really there knows that it’s Amy. So I don’t jump. I don’t even look back to see for sure. Instead, it’s nice to feel her hand – soft, cool – reminding me that she’s there to help me if I need it.

  When we finally make it to the landing, I shuffle down the hall, hand trailing along the doors of the big cupboard at the head of the stairs, across the wall, the door to the bathroom, the moulding around my bedroom door.

  Reaching the bed, I reverse the procedure from downstairs to get from standing to lying down: turn and sit on the edge of the bed, wiggle backwards, use my right hand for balance as I twist and swing my legs up. Amy fluffs my pillows as I lower myself on to my side and finally turn on to my back. She pulls the quilt up over my legs and puts the pot with the dragon down on the table by the bed, then passes me the remote control for the stereo.

  ‘Call if you need me,’ she says, kissing my hair. ‘I’ll come and find you when it’s time for dinner.’

  She turns and smiles at me from the doorway before she leaves.

  I sigh – carefully, of course – and turn on the stereo. Howl’s Moving Castle is in the machine. I always play audiobooks when I’m in bed: they seem to fill up the silence better than music and stop my thoughts from wandering, in the quiet, to things that I don’t want to think about. When it’s a really bad day, I repeat the words in my head, forcing out the not-real sounds and the not-now voices and the things that aren’t really there, filling my mind up so that they can’t fit: so there’s no room for them and they get tired and go away again. Sometimes I have to play the whole book and then start it over again before that happens.

  But not this afternoon. This afternoon I’ve got the dragon to think about, and I let the story wash over me as I sink into sleep. The room is warm and the sheets are cool. It’s still sunny outside and the dragon is safe on the bedside table.

  I come awake slowly, feeling groggy and confused, hot and stiff. I ball my fists into my eyes and yawn, throwing back the covers with a careless sigh that quickly becomes a grimace. Must remember to be careful with the sighing, with the yawning, with everything, I grouse to myself. I’m tired in that unpleasant, irritable way you get when you sleep somewhere too warm.

  Sighing, I get slowly out of bed, putting the pot with the dragon in my dressing-gown pocket. It’s still sunny outside so I know it can only have been an hour or so, but it’s probably enough to make Amy happy.

  As I shuffle down the hallway, I hear Paul and Uncle Ben’s deep voices murmuring below, and I cheer up as I think about showing Uncle Ben all the scales I’ve done.

  But as I put my foot on the first step I hear Paul say, ‘. . . all afternoon with the lawyer,’ and I stop.

  ‘I can’t believe they’re not
going to take the case forward! You’d think with something like this they’d be pushing like crazy.’

  Amy says something I struggle to catch.

  ‘Yes, I know all that,’ Paul snaps irritably. ‘All this rubbish about how the evidence doesn’t prove it was them. How they wish the system acknowledged the difficulties – was less slanted towards the burden being on the victim to prove the case. I know all that. It just doesn’t make it any less . . .’

  ‘Disgusting.’

  That’s Uncle Ben. And he really does sound disgusted. And angry. And fed up.

  Gripping the banister, I sit – slowly, carefully – down on the stairs, clenching my teeth and pressing my lips together. I know they will tell me about this later. Not right away probably, because of the operation. It probably would have been better not to have heard it now. But I have. So there’s no point going back to my room now: I can’t pretend I don’t know. I curl my fingernails into my palm. It hurts and I’m glad. I try to focus on that instead of the other pain: the sense that my throat has closed up, and the hot-cold feeling like I might be going to cry.

  ‘And that useless woman from Family Services! You’d think that if any case were possible, this would be it. I mean, what more evidence can there be than the operation and the doctor’s testimony? At least Dr Barstow was willing to write a statement about the operation, not like that stinking little weasel . . .’

  ‘Sh, Paul. Evie’s asleep,’ Amy interrupts.

  Paul gives a sigh I can hear even from the stairs. ‘I can’t believe that cow had the nerve to say that it’s complicated by the fact that all this has come out so late in the day. As if we were such terrible parents that we didn’t ever take Evie to the doctor, even before we knew about all this! And why Social Services didn’t give her a proper medical check-up when that pitiful excuse for a mother abandoned her I’ll never know. How could no one have noticed she was walking around with her ribcage in pieces?’

  ‘Paul!’ But this time Amy isn’t telling him off. She just doesn’t want him to say that: doesn’t want him to say any more. She doesn’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear it either. I feel the tears from her voice in my throat.

  I miss what they say next as I close my eyes. Clenching my hand around the pot with the dragon in it, I try to think about that and nothing else, try to breathe around the pain of holding myself stiff so I don’t break.

  ‘. . . important thing is that Evie is getting the help she needs now. You should both be proud that she finally trusted someone enough to tell them about her . . . injuries.’

  ‘And it only took three years,’ Paul says, his voice full of teeth.

  Then no one says anything for a long time.

  There’s nothing to say. I didn’t tell them sooner. The case is over before it started. The only thing next is the staples coming out and going back to school and the world going on. Because it always does. Even when it shouldn’t possibly be able to because no one should have to keep on living when it’s beyond unbearable. But the world doesn’t care about that. And somehow hearts don’t stop, even though it isn’t possible they should keep on beating. And people don’t just stop breathing. Instead they find out there are infinite places beyond unbearable.

  My teeth ache. My throat aches. And my fingers are cold, though my face is hot. I close my eyes and force the pain down. Holding on to the pot with the dragon, I swallow and breathe, and swallow and breathe. Sooner or later, I’ll have to open my eyes and see that the world is just the same. There is no stopping, no refusing to let time go on. It will anyway.

  I keep my teeth clenched as I pull myself up on the banister, right-handed, curling my body over against the pull of the staples, against skin that can’t stretch and the deeper ache of wrongness underneath, in the place where my rib was.

  ‘You’d think, sooner or later, there would be a limit to unfairness,’ Paul says suddenly and I freeze, still hunched over. ‘I don’t want to have to tell Evie that there isn’t any fair for her.’

  ‘I don’t want to tell her we’ve failed.’ Amy’s voice doesn’t sound like that. Like everything has been stripped out of it.

  ‘Then maybe we should ask her . . .’

  ‘Paul.’ The word snaps out like the click of teeth, sharp as a bite.

  ‘Now that’s a tone I’ve not heard for a while,’ says Uncle Ben, offering just the right mix of coaxing and teasing and curiosity to carry them past the moment. But Amy doesn’t answer his kindness with fondness, nor Paul with his usual good humour.

  I straighten in the silence.

  ‘So what shouldn’t Paul ask Evie?’ Uncle Ben’s voice is light, but there’s something hard and heavy under the words: a demand I’d never understood until I came to live with Paul and Amy. But I recognise it now: that rare thing you can only bring out with family. A refusal to be denied that can’t be rejected because there’s too much history and future between you. So whatever question you ask, if you ask it that way – and only once in a very rare while – you’ll get an answer.

  ‘Paul . . . Paul thinks we should hire someone to deal with them.’

  ‘No,’ interrupts Paul, even more anger and frustration in his voice than before. ‘I think we should offer Evie the option . . .’

  ‘Which is even worse than just doing it,’ Amy hisses. ‘As if Evie needs to have that decision thrust on her!’

  ‘So not another lawyer, I take it. A detective?’ Uncle Ben asks.

  There’s an angry pause, then Amy says, ‘Someone who could make them go away.’

  ‘Just “go away”, huh?’ says Uncle Ben. But something ugly in his voice tears anything musing and playful from the words.

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting that,’ Amy says. Her voice is still empty. The words have no inflection.

  ‘I was.’

  The words are so soft I can’t make out whether it is Uncle Ben or Paul who says them.

  There is nothing for a while.

  ‘Even if you did – Evie’s thoughts on the matter aside,’ Uncle Ben starts, then stops. ‘She wouldn’t be any better off with one or both of you in prison, and I’m . . . not a brave enough man.’

  I love him for that, even as my eyes burn, burn, burn. I take the dragon-pot out of my pocket, pass it into my left hand and press it into the middle of my chest while I climb back up the stairs. I try to think about the dragon but I have to stop. I can’t bear to imagine having a part of me that’s as powerful as a dragon right now because a dragon would be powerful: it would be more powerful than any of them – the lawyers, the courts, Fiona’s parents . . . But there’s no dragon. And even with Amy and Paul and Uncle Ben, Fiona’s parents are still invincible.

  I fix my eyes on the handles of the big cupboard at the head of the stairs and fill the ringing spaces in my head with chanting – ‘blank, blank, blank’ – so I can’t hear anything else. I think about the wardrobe part at the bottom of the cupboard where Amy keeps extra coats and board games and blankets, balls of wool and knitting needles, a box of buttons and different coloured threads. And when I’ve listed all the things I can think of there, I think about the top of the cupboard – two long, deep shelves – where Amy keeps old clothes I’ve grown out of, and old school reports and pictures and, right at the back, Adam’s things: baby clothes, school exercise books, and the paperwork for the gravestone.

  By the time I’ve finished my list, I’ve worked myself back into bed and under the covers and the stereo is hissing and whirring to life. I will myself into the words, forming them with my lips, echoing them in my head. Keeping the voices out.

  ‘She got six of them out right away. With this special little tool. It came all wrapped up in its own little bag thing. Like it was just for me. I wonder if they reuse them or what they do with them afterwards. But it had blue handles. It was just like pliers. Very small pliers. And she pushed it under the staples and they just sort of came out. But not the last two. One end came up and then the other end just wouldn’t somehow.’

 
Something like a flinch passes over Ms Winters’s face. Barely a ripple. ‘Did it hurt?’ she prompts, knowing it did. Getting me to admit it.

  ‘A bit. Sort of. Well . . . Sort of. Mostly it just felt odd. Strange. Anyway, she kept twisting and twisting the one end round and round but the rest just wouldn’t come out. So eventually she got up and she said, “I’ll just go and get the pliers . . . I mean the forceps.” But of course she really meant pliers. And they weren’t small at all.’

  This time Ms Winters lets herself show sympathy, drawing her lips back and sucking air through her teeth. But I can tell this is intended to encourage me to keep talking, not to indicate she’d rather not hear any more, because then she asks, ‘And did she get it out with the . . . pliers?’

  ‘Eventually. It took a while. She kept twisting it one way and then the other and then it sort of levered out eventually. And that did sort of hurt. A bit,’ I say. And it did. But not as much as I’d expected. Really it was just a little bit gross-weird. Mostly it wasn’t hurt, just that tingly sick feeling you get when you know something is wrong and your body doesn’t like it. ‘Anyway, they’re out now and I can breathe and I can move and I can take a shower by myself. And Dr Barstow says I can go back to school in a few weeks.’

  ‘Are you looking forward to that now that you know you won’t be behind?’

  ‘Mostly.’ I shrug. It won’t be the same, starting three weeks late. Lynne and Phee said they’d saved me a desk, but it won’t be the same as being there to pick together. They came over last weekend to visit, but everything we tried to talk about ended up taking us on to things I hadn’t done and hadn’t seen and couldn’t understand. All the new things I wasn’t part of. All the new ways I’d be different.

  Ms Winters lets the silence sit between us. You’d think she’d know better by now. I finger the pot that holds the dragon and don’t bite: I know exactly what she’s up to.

  Amy and Paul have wanted me to see a counsellor for ages now, but I’m not trying that again. I went to two different people and they were both awful. And stupid. But mostly awful. I had four hour-long sessions with each of them and I spent the whole time staring at the wall, reciting poetry in my head so I didn’t have to hear any of the things they were saying. Because they shouldn’t have been saying those things. No one should ever say those sorts of things.