Percy the dragon and the disappearing supper

A little bit of context: this is a story for children that I made up for Barney while he was sitting in the bath. It’s a bit random, because I was making it up as I went along, and the ending’s a bit sudden, because bathtime was over and I couldn’t concentrate on story and towelling down simultaneously. I’ve tried to keep as close to the original vocal version as possible in this write-up. Barney enjoyed it, anyway.

Once upon a time there was a dragon called Percy. He lived on the top of a very tall mountain. Not right on the very top where the rocks are all pointy and sharp, but a little bit further down in a cave that was dug a long long long time ago.

Like most dragons, Percy was friendlier than you’d expect. He spent most of his days fast asleep in his cave, only leaving it at night to hunt for food.

Because of course dragons have to eat like everyone else, and their favourite food is ornitranks.

Now you might be saying “There’s no such thing as an ornitrank!”, which is almost as silly as saying there’s no such thing as a dragon. Of course there are ornitranks – otherwise what would all the dragons eat? See? Silly.

You don’t know about ornitranks because you never see them. Like dragons, ornitranks only come out at night. They are nasty, bad-tempered, spiny creatures, a little bit bigger than a pig. They snort around in hedges and bushes looking for hedgehogs and bushhogs to eat. They are noisy and smelly and probably the most unpleasant animal around. But they are food for dragons, which just goes to show that everything’s here for a reason.

On the night of this story, Percy woke up at teatime (that’s your teatime, which is the same as his breakfast time) and yawned and stretched his wings. He had a good scratch, then wandered out to the front of his cave to watch the sun going down. He smiled a big dragon smile and decided to go straight out looking for ornitranks for his tea.

So off he flew, over the mountains and down to the valley. It was getting dark quickly, and he knew that the ornitranks would be coming out of their smelly underground dens, hungry for hogs. He licked his lips as he swooped down.

But there were no ornitranks around. Puzzled, he flew right up to the other end of the valley; but there were none there either. Percy flew up and down the valley, and all over all the mountains, for an hour or more but he couldn’t see a single ornitrank.

Something was wrong, but he had no idea what. He decided the only thing to do was to ask for help, so he swooped down to the village and landed in the square.

It was quiet in the street. There were one or two lights on in one or two houses, but by far the loudest and noisiest place was the village pub on the corner. All the lights were on there, and Percy could smell all the people crammed inside having fun. He plucked up his courage and, using his smallest claw on his smallest front foot (about the size of a tree), he tapped gently on the pub’s door.

The door fell down flat – bang! – and after a second a few puzzled faces peered around the doorframe. All of them looked at the door, looked at the dust, and stared out into the night. And all of them slowly realised that a dragon was standing there, waiting to gobble them up. They screamed and disappeared back inside the pub.

Percy sighed. He didn’t wait for them to come back, but turned around and with just a couple of swoops of his wings, hopped to the other end of the village.

He landed in a quiet little lane with just a few houses on it. Only one house had a light on in the window, so he carefully approached and knocked on the door.

The door fell down flat – crash! – and after a second a little boy’s face appeared around the doorframe. The little boy was called Barney, and he wasn’t very big or very old, but he wasn’t afraid of dragons.

“He – hello?” he said. “Can I help you?”

Percy smiled.

“YES PLEASE,” he roared, and the porch above what was left of Barney’s door was blown away by the force of his voice. He didn’t mean to roar – it’s just that, being a huge dragon, it’s hard to whisper.

Barney brushed bits of brick and wood off his head, and asked Percy what was wrong.

“I’M HUNGRY, AND -“

Barney ducked as the chimney pots came crashing down around him, and interrupted.

“Please could you try and whisper more quietly?” he asked. “It’s just that my mum and dad will be cross if they think I’ve knocked half the house down.”

Percy nodded and whispered as softly as he could.

“I’m hungry, and I’ve been looking for ornitranks, and I can’t find any of them. Not a single one. And that’s just strange.”

Barney’s eyes went wide.

“Ornitranks! Well, no wonder you can’t find any!” he said. “The farmers rounded them all up last night. Every single one in the valley, and every single one from the mountains too. They’ve put them all together in the big barn at the far end of the village.”

Percy was astonished. Why did the farmers want the ornitranks?

“To make soup,” shrugged Barney.

“Soup? What, to eat? But that’s mad! MAD!” he roared, and a window fell out of its frame to one side of the ruined front door of Barney’s house. Barney cringed a bit and made a “please be quiet” look with his eyes.

“What’s so mad about it?” he asked. Quietly.

“Well ornitranks are magical creatures,” said Percy. “They’re fine for dragons to eat, but humans can’t eat them. If a human eats even the tiniest bit of ornitrank, they’ll die.”

Barney gulped.

“They were going to have a soup party,” he said. “Tonight. In the village pub.”

Percy jumped, and the whole lane shook.

“There’s no time to lose! Quick Barney, jump on my back! We have to stop them serving that soup!”

Barney scrambled up on to Percy’s back. The dragon swished his huge wings and they were up, up, up in the sky. The village disappeared below them, swallowed up by the endless darkness of the valley. Only a few lights twinkled – mainly from inside the village pub.

“HOLD ON TIGHT!” yelled Percy as he pulled into a dive, plunging headfirst towards the ground at top speed. Barney clutched on to some of Percy’s long neck hairs, his eyes shut tight. At the last possibly moment, Percy pulled up and swung out his wings, and they glided to a smooth landing outside the pub.

The door was still lying flat, and from inside Percy and Barney caught the smell of hot, fresh soup.

Percy lay his head down flat on the ground, just outside the door, and he and Barney yelled at the top of their voices: “DON’T EAT THE SOUP!”

The pub’s walls collapsed outwards with an enormous crunch. All the tiles flew off the roof and landed in a field. Every single person in the crowded pub froze – many of them holding spoonfuls of steaming soup up to their mouths. Dust slowly settled over everything and everyone. Then someone said: “There’s a dragon there.”

They ran. Everyone dropped their soup bowls and legged it, disappearing through the gaps where the walls used to be, screaming at the tops of their voices, “Help! A dragon! Help!”. A massive urn, holding gallons of soup, got knocked over and sticky ornitrank soup glooped out across the floor, sliding out between the piles of rubble and disappearing down the drains in the village square.

Barney sat on top of Percy and smiled.

“Well done Percy! We’ve done it!”

“Not quite,” said Percy, and flapped his wings again. Barney just got a glimpse of the remains of the empty pub collapsing upon themselves as they swooped up into the sky again, across the village, and down towards the barn. Percy landed outside it and Barney jumped down. He ran to the gate and pulled it open – and had to leap out of the way as a thousand angry ornitranks stampeded out, leaping the fences and disappearing off into the valley.

Barney climbed down and stood in front of Percy as they watched the last of the ornitranks disappear into the dark.

“Now you’ll have plenty of ornitranks to eat,” said Barney.

“Yes,” said Percy. “Just as long as the people here don’t start dreaming about ornitrank soup again. You’ll spread the word, won’t you? Warn everyone that ornitranks are poisonous for people?”

Barney nodded, and shook hands with the tip of Percy’s smallest claw. Then with a swoosh, Percy soared into the air and flew back to the far end of the valley, far away from the village, to start his hunt for ornitranks. It was going to be a long night, and he was very hungry.

>At the Sunflower cafe

>

Helen sat outside the Sunflower cafe, on one of those pavement chairs made of chrome steel. On the chrome steel table in front of her was a strong coffee and a small chocolate stick, half-eaten. It was too chilly to be sitting outside, if she was honest with herself, but the temptation to be a posing note-writer was too strong.

In her hands she held one of the small black notesbooks, purchased just ten minutes previously in the expensive stationers’ shop a little further down the road; and a good quality ballpoint pen.

She held the pen over the blank first page of the notebook, and wondered what on earth she should write.

The reason those posing people looked so cool, she realised, was that their black notebooks were roughened after months of posing on outdoor pavement cafe chairs. Each page in their notebooks was a mess of tightly kerned black characters with a very rare doodled illustration; the pages were slightly curled with use and the notebooks capable of being laid flat without closing themselves shut like insect wings.

Helen recalls:

“I must have looked like a bit of an idiot, rather than some arty farty poseur. I say with my pen over than notebook for 20 minutes or more and couldn’t think of anything to write. In the end I had to give up so I could drink the coffee before it went cold.”

Helen looked out at the business people rushing past. The rush hour had not officially begun, but there are always a a few people who leave early and walk hurridly down to the mainline stations to catch the earlier, less packed, commuter trains to suburbia.

It felt odd to be sitting outside the Sunflower cafe at this time of day. For years, Helen had popped in two or three mornings a week to buy coffee and a filled roll for her breakfast. She knew the staff very well in the mornings, but when she’d turned up this afternoon their faces had not registered hers for a while; it was almost a minute before they realised she was one of their morning regulars, then switched on their smiles. Helen felt uncomfortable.

Not as uncomfortable as she’d felt the morning she’d come in here, already late for work, ordered a coffee and bacon butty, and endured an uncomfortable 10 minutes talking to Big Alan. He was just as embarrassed as her, but neither of them were brave enough to say aloud: “I don’t want to have to talk to you; please go away.”

If she’d been able to pretend she’d not seen him, she would have. But it had been a busy morning, wet outside, and the cafe was humming with people and chat. As Helen turned away from the counter, one of the smiley staff, trying to help, had said, loud enough for the whole cafe to hear: “There’s one last seat left over there, love.”

And as Helen had turned towards it, and seen it, she’d locked eyes with Big Alan, who’d been sitting opposite, forking sausage and eggs into his mouth. For just a second their eyes held a conversation:

“Please, don’t sit here.”

“I don’t want to sit there.”

“Let’s pretend we’ve not seen eachother.”

“Let’s.”

But that’s not how you behave, even in a city like London where people care little for anyone but their closest friends, and work relationships are the delicate string that holds fabric together; no, even in London, when you make eye contact your boss in a cafe, you fake a smile and go and sit with him.

Neither of them bothered to mention the time, since they were both late. But Big Alan waved his fork at her in greeting, then started eating faster.

Helen slid into the gap between the wooden bench and the formica tabletop, wincing as her knees brushed past Big Alan’s knees. She tried to angle her legs sideways to avoid any further physical contact. Consequently she sat twisted and uncomfortable for the length of their talk.

Big Alan asked her about progress on some major projects he thought she was working on. She opened her mouth to correct him on some things; such-and-such project was completed two weeks ago, and she’d emailed him telling him so; so-and-so client had complained about the materials supplied and threatened to go elsewhere; income was down because there’d been a rash of resignations, which left fewer people to do the actual work; but closed it again because there was no point telling him this stuff just for the sake of having something to say. Instead, she remarked on the rainy weather, then asked him how his work was progressing.

He gave her a brief, curious look, then the words flooded from him.

“No-one understands what my job is all about, Helen,” he said. A mouthful of sausage, and he continued: “Most of the time, it’s just about making people happy. I have the management in New York and Tokyo to keep happy, and you wouldn’t believe how mad they get when we” — he waved his fork, seemingly indicating the whole of London — “don’t live up to the financials.”

Chew, swallow, eat.

“Financials which have been set by those same bastards. People. People in New York and Tokyo. Numbers on spreadsheets that we have to meet.

“So then I come back here and try to make the staff here happy too. Try to make them feel like they can live up to those numbers.”

Helen wondered if simply deleting the offending spreadsheets would solve the problem, removing the insistent numbers and therefore the pressure.

Big Alan slurped tea from a mug. He shifted in his seat and Helen was forced to angle her legs further away to avoid being touched again. She shivered, and bit into her butty.

(Look down on this scene from above, and you can see Helen’s body almost at right angles to the table. She looks withdrawn, almost nervous. A balding patch can be seen on Big Alan’s crown, something most of his staff haven’t seen because he towers over them.)

His breakfast finished, Big Alan got up quickly and slid out from his seat. He didn’t look at Helen’s face.

“See you at the office,” he muttered and waddled out.

At the Sunflower cafe

Helen sat outside the Sunflower cafe, on one of those pavement chairs made of chrome steel. On the chrome steel table in front of her was a strong coffee and a small chocolate stick, half-eaten. It was too chilly to be sitting outside, if she was honest with herself, but the temptation to be a posing note-writer was too strong.

In her hands she held one of the small black notesbooks, purchased just ten minutes previously in the expensive stationers’ shop a little further down the road; and a good quality ballpoint pen.

She held the pen over the blank first page of the notebook, and wondered what on earth she should write.

The reason those posing people looked so cool, she realised, was that their black notebooks were roughened after months of posing on outdoor pavement cafe chairs. Each page in their notebooks was a mess of tightly kerned black characters with a very rare doodled illustration; the pages were slightly curled with use and the notebooks capable of being laid flat without closing themselves shut like insect wings.

Helen recalls:

“I must have looked like a bit of an idiot, rather than some arty farty poseur. I say with my pen over than notebook for 20 minutes or more and couldn’t think of anything to write. In the end I had to give up so I could drink the coffee before it went cold.”

Helen looked out at the business people rushing past. The rush hour had not officially begun, but there are always a a few people who leave early and walk hurridly down to the mainline stations to catch the earlier, less packed, commuter trains to suburbia.

It felt odd to be sitting outside the Sunflower cafe at this time of day. For years, Helen had popped in two or three mornings a week to buy coffee and a filled roll for her breakfast. She knew the staff very well in the mornings, but when she’d turned up this afternoon their faces had not registered hers for a while; it was almost a minute before they realised she was one of their morning regulars, then switched on their smiles. Helen felt uncomfortable.

Not as uncomfortable as she’d felt the morning she’d come in here, already late for work, ordered a coffee and bacon butty, and endured an uncomfortable 10 minutes talking to Big Alan. He was just as embarrassed as her, but neither of them were brave enough to say aloud: “I don’t want to have to talk to you; please go away.”

If she’d been able to pretend she’d not seen him, she would have. But it had been a busy morning, wet outside, and the cafe was humming with people and chat. As Helen turned away from the counter, one of the smiley staff, trying to help, had said, loud enough for the whole cafe to hear: “There’s one last seat left over there, love.”

And as Helen had turned towards it, and seen it, she’d locked eyes with Big Alan, who’d been sitting opposite, forking sausage and eggs into his mouth. For just a second their eyes held a conversation:

“Please, don’t sit here.”

“I don’t want to sit there.”

“Let’s pretend we’ve not seen eachother.”

“Let’s.”

But that’s not how you behave, even in a city like London where people care little for anyone but their closest friends, and work relationships are the delicate string that holds fabric together; no, even in London, when you make eye contact your boss in a cafe, you fake a smile and go and sit with him.

Neither of them bothered to mention the time, since they were both late. But Big Alan waved his fork at her in greeting, then started eating faster.

Helen slid into the gap between the wooden bench and the formica tabletop, wincing as her knees brushed past Big Alan’s knees. She tried to angle her legs sideways to avoid any further physical contact. Consequently she sat twisted and uncomfortable for the length of their talk.

Big Alan asked her about progress on some major projects he thought she was working on. She opened her mouth to correct him on some things; such-and-such project was completed two weeks ago, and she’d emailed him telling him so; so-and-so client had complained about the materials supplied and threatened to go elsewhere; income was down because there’d been a rash of resignations, which left fewer people to do the actual work; but closed it again because there was no point telling him this stuff just for the sake of having something to say. Instead, she remarked on the rainy weather, then asked him how his work was progressing.

He gave her a brief, curious look, then the words flooded from him.

“No-one understands what my job is all about, Helen,” he said. A mouthful of sausage, and he continued: “Most of the time, it’s just about making people happy. I have the management in New York and Tokyo to keep happy, and you wouldn’t believe how mad they get when we” — he waved his fork, seemingly indicating the whole of London — “don’t live up to the financials.”

Chew, swallow, eat.

“Financials which have been set by those same bastards. People. People in New York and Tokyo. Numbers on spreadsheets that we have to meet.

“So then I come back here and try to make the staff here happy too. Try to make them feel like they can live up to those numbers.”

Helen wondered if simply deleting the offending spreadsheets would solve the problem, removing the insistent numbers and therefore the pressure.

Big Alan slurped tea from a mug. He shifted in his seat and Helen was forced to angle her legs further away to avoid being touched again. She shivered, and bit into her butty.

(Look down on this scene from above, and you can see Helen’s body almost at right angles to the table. She looks withdrawn, almost nervous. A balding patch can be seen on Big Alan’s crown, something most of his staff haven’t seen because he towers over them.)

His breakfast finished, Big Alan got up quickly and slid out from his seat. He didn’t look at Helen’s face.

“See you at the office,” he muttered and waddled out.

>The Biscuit Tree (a story for small children)

>

The biscuit tree grows at the end of our garden, just next to the compost heap.

When we moved in it was only this high, and I could jump right over it if I wanted to, though mummy kept telling me that if I did I’d bang my head on the fence. So I didn’t. But I could’ve.

-

But look at the biscuit tree now! It’s higher than the fence, it’s higher than daddy! It’s higher than Paul-next-door’s big toy dumper truck!

In a few years, I’ll be able to climb up the biscuit tree to play pirates, and I’ll be able to look over the fence into Paul-next-door’s garden.

-

None of my friends at school believe me when I tell them I’ve got a biscuit tree. They say things like

“Don’t be so stupid!”

and

“Durr! You can’t get biscuit trees!”

and once, Sarah Sarah said

“So? I’ve got a biscuit tree too, and it’s bigger than yours.”

But she must be telling fibs, because our biscuit tree is the Only Biscuit Tree in the whole wide world.

-

Some of my friends from school came round for tea. Tommy, Nicky, Sarah Bean and So-so Jo.

Mum made scrambled eggs, baked beans, and potato waffles. We had pink milk as a special treat.

It was warm and sunny so we all sat outside round the garden table.

My friends didn’t talk about the biscuit tree, but they kept looking round the garden trying to find it. I knew they wanted to see it up close.

-

After tea we played hide-and-seek round the house, and it was great fun because So-so Jo hid behind the pipes in the cleaning cupboard, and no-one could find her for ages and ages. Tommy started to get a bit cross so mummy called her to come out.

Nicky said: “Let’s hide in the garden this time! So-so’s on it!”

So-so Jo started counting and we all ran off to hide.

I ran straight to the biscuit tree, but that was a silly thing to do. It’s big now, but not big enough to hide behind.

I didn’t know where to hide next.

-

Just then Paul-next-door poked his head over the fence.

“Need a hiding place?” he said. I said yes. “Climb up then!” he said.

I tried to climb over the fence but there was nothing to put my feet on. My trainers scraped on the wood. Paul-next-door was leaning over as far as he could, trying to grab my arms, but he couldn’t quite reach me.

“Coming, ready or not!” So-so Jo had finished counting. Where could I hide?

-

She came running out the house and saw me straight away, but instead of shouting my name she slowed down and stopped next to me.

“Is this it? The biscuit tree?” she asked. She was looking at the branches.

Tommy and Sarah Bean came out from behind the holly tree. Nicky’s head appeared behind the compost bin. Paul-next-door was still hanging over the fence.

They were all looking at the biscuit tree.

-

I didn’t want to tell them. I wanted it to be my secret, forever.

But I did want to tell them at the same time. I wanted all my friends to know about the biscuit tree.

I couldn’t decide what to say. I went all red.

Now everyone was looking at me.

I opened my mouth:

“It’s -”

-

“It’s time for a biscuit,” said my mum’s voice, right behind me.

She made everyone jump.

Then everyone spoke at once:

“Is this the biscuit tree?”

“Can we have a biscuit? Please?”

“Where are the biscuits? I can’t see any.”

“Can someone help me get down from this fence?”

Mum was smiling.

She told us all to help Paul-next-door to get down. So-so Jo and Tommy made a base, and Nicky and Sarah Bean climbed on top of them, and Paul-next-door reached down and grabbed their hands and -

WALLOP!

everyone fell down in a big pile at the foot of the biscuit tree. We all laughed. Even though Paul-next-door had some bruises and a cut on his knee, he was laughing too.

And when we stopped laughing, Sarah Bean pointed up and said

“Look!”

Hanging from the biscuit tree was a biscuit, attached to a tiny twig that twinkled like a piece of ribbon.

“Biscuits!”

There were 12 little biscuits dangling from a branch, all of them on shiny ribbon-twigs.

-

And before their mummies and daddies came to take them home, Tommy, Nicky, Sarah Bean, So-so Jo, Paul-next-door, and me all sat down and crunched the fresh biscuits from the biscuit tree.

Mum was there too, but she didn’t have one.

She just watched us. She was smiling.

The Biscuit Tree (a story for small children)

The biscuit tree grows at the end of our garden, just next to the compost heap.

When we moved in it was only this high, and I could jump right over it if I wanted to, though mummy kept telling me that if I did I’d bang my head on the fence. So I didn’t. But I could’ve.

-

But look at the biscuit tree now! It’s higher than the fence, it’s higher than daddy! It’s higher than Paul-next-door’s big toy dumper truck!

In a few years, I’ll be able to climb up the biscuit tree to play pirates, and I’ll be able to look over the fence into Paul-next-door’s garden.

-

None of my friends at school believe me when I tell them I’ve got a biscuit tree. They say things like

“Don’t be so stupid!”

and

“Durr! You can’t get biscuit trees!”

and once, Sarah Sarah said

“So? I’ve got a biscuit tree too, and it’s bigger than yours.”

But she must be telling fibs, because our biscuit tree is the Only Biscuit Tree in the whole wide world.

-

Some of my friends from school came round for tea. Tommy, Nicky, Sarah Bean and So-so Jo.

Mum made scrambled eggs, baked beans, and potato waffles. We had pink milk as a special treat.

It was warm and sunny so we all sat outside round the garden table.

My friends didn’t talk about the biscuit tree, but they kept looking round the garden trying to find it. I knew they wanted to see it up close.

-

After tea we played hide-and-seek round the house, and it was great fun because So-so Jo hid behind the pipes in the cleaning cupboard, and no-one could find her for ages and ages. Tommy started to get a bit cross so mummy called her to come out.

Nicky said: “Let’s hide in the garden this time! So-so’s on it!”

So-so Jo started counting and we all ran off to hide.

I ran straight to the biscuit tree, but that was a silly thing to do. It’s big now, but not big enough to hide behind.

I didn’t know where to hide next.

-

Just then Paul-next-door poked his head over the fence.

“Need a hiding place?” he said. I said yes. “Climb up then!” he said.

I tried to climb over the fence but there was nothing to put my feet on. My trainers scraped on the wood. Paul-next-door was leaning over as far as he could, trying to grab my arms, but he couldn’t quite reach me.

“Coming, ready or not!” So-so Jo had finished counting. Where could I hide?

-

She came running out the house and saw me straight away, but instead of shouting my name she slowed down and stopped next to me.

“Is this it? The biscuit tree?” she asked. She was looking at the branches.

Tommy and Sarah Bean came out from behind the holly tree. Nicky’s head appeared behind the compost bin. Paul-next-door was still hanging over the fence.

They were all looking at the biscuit tree.

-

I didn’t want to tell them. I wanted it to be my secret, forever.

But I did want to tell them at the same time. I wanted all my friends to know about the biscuit tree.

I couldn’t decide what to say. I went all red.

Now everyone was looking at me.

I opened my mouth:

“It’s -”

-

“It’s time for a biscuit,” said my mum’s voice, right behind me.

She made everyone jump.

Then everyone spoke at once:

“Is this the biscuit tree?”

“Can we have a biscuit? Please?”

“Where are the biscuits? I can’t see any.”

“Can someone help me get down from this fence?”

Mum was smiling.

She told us all to help Paul-next-door to get down. So-so Jo and Tommy made a base, and Nicky and Sarah Bean climbed on top of them, and Paul-next-door reached down and grabbed their hands and -

WALLOP!

everyone fell down in a big pile at the foot of the biscuit tree. We all laughed. Even though Paul-next-door had some bruises and a cut on his knee, he was laughing too.

And when we stopped laughing, Sarah Bean pointed up and said

“Look!”

Hanging from the biscuit tree was a biscuit, attached to a tiny twig that twinkled like a piece of ribbon.

“Biscuits!”

There were 12 little biscuits dangling from a branch, all of them on shiny ribbon-twigs.

-

And before their mummies and daddies came to take them home, Tommy, Nicky, Sarah Bean, So-so Jo, Paul-next-door, and me all sat down and crunched the fresh biscuits from the biscuit tree.

Mum was there too, but she didn’t have one.

She just watched us. She was smiling.