Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [26]
The day we heard about the dragon, he was in the yard with us, bouncing from foot to foot in the cold. Mr. Fledge’s man and Dan Rymer had been in the office all morning, hard in talks about something momentous. They’d sent him out so they could be private.
“Something’s afoot,” he kept saying importantly, affecting to know more than he did. There were kiss curls on his forehead, and his eyes were bright. His breath hung on the air. They called him in when Fledge’s man left, and ten minutes later he came running back out.
“I’m going to sea! With Dan! We’re going to catch a dragon! And we’ll be rich!”
“There are no dragons,” Cobbe said.
But Tim babbled on about how Dan knew a man who knew a man, who saw one walking out of a forest on an island east of the Java Sea. How Mr. Fledge, who always wanted what no one else had, what no one else had ever had, was now determined to be the first person in the civilised world ever to own a dragon. A ship was leaving in three weeks’ time and Tim would be on it, right-hand man to the big hunter, sailing east and still further east till they’d rounded the globe.
“He’s gone off his rocker,” Cobbe said, pointing to the side of his head. “That’s what it is.”
I pictured a big flying monster that flaps its wings slowly like a heron, breathes out fire, fights heroes, sits on a hoard of treasure or eats a girl. Very big nostrils, round, the sort you could crawl up like a Bermondsey sewer.
I was the one who was good with animals, everyone knew that. Why wasn’t I going?
“I don’t think much of your chances,” I said, “not with the fire.”
“What fire?”
“They breathe fire.”
“Don’t be stupid. That’s only in storybooks. Don’t believe me, do you? Come on.” He was mad, beaming with delight, pulling me along into the office where Dan Rymer and Mr. Jamrach were drinking brandy in a thick smog of smoke.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” Tim said. “Tell him.”
He went behind his desk and leaned back horizontally in his chair with his long legs stretched out across the desk and his fingers knotted behind his head.
“It’s true,” Jamrach said. “Fortunately Mr. Fledge has more money than sense.” He and Dan burst out laughing.
“A dragon?”
“A dragon of sorts.” Dan doodled on a scrap of paper. “If it exists. Certainly the natives believe it does. The Ora. There have always been rumours. I talked to a man on Sumba once who said his grandfather had been eaten by one. And there was a whaleman once, an islander. He had a tale. There are lots of tales.” He showed me what he’d drawn. It looked like a crocodile with long legs.
“It’s not a dragon if it hasn’t got wings,” I said, “not a real dragon.”
Dan shrugged.
“We’ll be gone three years,” said Tim rapturously.
“Two or three,” said Dan. “Depends.”
“On what?” I asked. He shrugged again.
Mr. Fledge owned a whale ship called the Lysander. It had sailed out of Hull and was this moment loading at the old Greenland Dock. They’d join the whaling crew on the voyage and take care of wildlife—should there be any—on the way home. “Bring back a dragon,” Fledge’s man said, “and you’ll never have to work again.”
I let Tim crow for a few days then went down to the Greenland Dock. The Lysander was a very old vessel, one of the last of its kind, I should say, and it was looking for crew. I signed. Mr. Jamrach knew well he could get another boy for the yard.
“You need me for the animals,” I said when I told Dan I was going. “I’m better than him.”
He leaned his head back and squinted into the white smoke trickling up his face, and said, “Oh well, I