Stormdragons

Chapter 11

Joe plummeted down like a shot bird. His body was out of his control. It twisted and tumbled until he landed with a bone-shaking thump. He lay still for several seconds, dazed and winded, unable to believe he was still alive. Gingerly, expecting to experience agonizing pain from numerous broken bones, he reached out a hand. His fingers groped for the soft sand that must have broken his fall.

But there was no sand. The tips of his fingers curled around hard pads, pads that were arranged in rows like tiles on a roof. He raised his head. He was on some kind of platform but not one that was part of the cliff. It was leathery and large. And it was moving. He lifted his head higher.

A long, scaly neck curved away from him at the end of which swayed a monstrous head. It was a dragon's head with a gnarled, three-metre snout and nostrils the size of car tyres. The mouth was long and crooked. Several yellow fangs protruding from its thick, rubbery lips. The eyes were black; discs of obsidian floating in pools of fire.

Joe was overwhelmed. His joy at being alive turned to terror. He had landed on a monster and was flying through the storm on its back. Paralysed with fear, it took all his willpower and concentration just to keep hold of the leathery scales.

'Don't panic, Joe. Don't panic,' he told himself. He held on for dear life with both hands.

He was lying where the right wing joined the body. When the wing flapped downwards, he could see the sea churning far below and the edge of the cliff from which he'd fallen. It was a perilous position. If the creature rolled, he was done for. A more central place, on the neck or the back would be safer. He would have to move.

Something hard was jabbing into his chest. It was the orb in the saddlebag. He eased it under his stomach where it was less uncomfortable and more secure. Then, he edged forward on his belly until he was behind the dragon's massive, rolling shoulder blades. Then, ever so cautiously, he lifted one leg over the back of the dragon's neck. Now he was in a more natural sitting position. He allowed himself a sigh of relief.

The dragon was flying in a circle, as if around a fixed point, and Joe was amazed at how little turbulence there was, despite the speed. He felt almost safe. Perhaps, he thought to himself, I am at the eye of the storm, the still centre of the raging wind.

Ahead of him, he saw another dragon. It was identical to the one he rode and it, too, was flying in tight circles. Together the two dragons were creating a huge vortex, a column of air that rose like a spinning chimney high into sky.

Looking down through this swirling funnel, Joe had a bird's eye view of Wrecker's Edge. What was happening there sent shivers down his spine. Like small trees being uprooted by a tornado, tiny figures were being sucked up into the cyclone of air. With a heart-piercing stab of grief Joe realised his sister was amongst them. There was another dark shape moving up the column of air, something larger and not human. Joe lost sight of it as the dragons circled higher and higher.

The cliff and the storm fell away with every beat of the dragons' wings. Joe felt faint with lack of oxygen. At what point, he wondered, would he lose consciousness and fall, this time to certain death?

But then, as his vision began to blur and his lungs to ache, a change occurred in the sky. Like a piece of black cloth being ripped at the seams, the night sky was coming apart. A patch of blue appeared. Sunlight spilled out into the darkness. The laws of time and of nature were being torn asunder.

Undaunted, the creatures flew on, up into the circle of blue. The earth disappeared. Joe was surrounded by dazzling sunlight.

Now he could see the dragon in all its glory; long and sleek, with bat-like wings that spanned twenty-metres on either side, and a thick, ridged tail that tapered to an arrow-shaped club at the tip. Joe gazed on the beast with awe. In particular he eyed the long yellow teeth that protruded crocodile-fashion from the sides of its mouth. They were not, Joe decided, the teeth of a vegetarian.