Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [66]
It took all of us to carry it. We’d been out for two days, but for part of that time we’d backtracked. It took us a day to reach the ship, going downhill all the way. The animal struggled nearly all the way, only falling quiet from exhaustion from time to time just long enough to get the strength back to kick a leg, twitch a few muscles, clatter its jaws, jerk like a landed fish, flop and gape and shudder.
Dan walked alongside me and told me how me and him were going to put the dragon in the cage. We had to go in quick while it was in a daze, he said, and take the ropes off the head and tail. The one round its middle would stay for the time being.
“Here’s what I think, Jaf,” he said. “I think we put him in head first, then I go in and take his head while you get the tail. Think you can do that?”
“Have a go,” I said.
“Listen,” he said, “the tail’s no less dangerous than the head, fact it’s probably worse, it’s got a life of its own and no intelligence. Think of it like a big pulse that might throb at any second. All the power’s in the tail. Get in and out fast, and be ready for anything. Don’t take chances.”
“Sure,” I said.
That tail in an enclosed space, I was thinking. But Dan would be in there first holding its head (the teeth, the jaws that snap) and everyone would be standing by. And I was the one who was good with animals. I felt like laughing. Dan said we weren’t too far from the shore now, though God knows how he knew. The dragon was giving up, just hanging there with no more than the odd kick now and then. It was starting to get dark, but there was a big moon, thank God; and thank God no other beasts came near, no scorpions ran, no snakes hissed and bit unseen in the grass. It was dark when we arrived. The Malays went ahead with flares and we followed them out from the tree line and saw a moonlit bay, faces in the flickering light madly grinning and staring, everyone running to greet us, all lit up orange against the black. A big fire burned down by the sea.
Captain Proctor came running, his face fat and pink and eager.
“My God!” he was crying over and over. “My God!”
Samson ran after him, but stopped short and put his head down when he saw the dragon, and began to bark. Proctor grabbed his collar, muzzling him with one hand. “I’ll tie this one,” he said breathlessly, hauling him away.
Getting the dragon in the cage was easy. It was exhausted. Gabriel, open mouthed, wide eyed and very serious, lifted the bars high and we pushed the thing in. It was my turn now. Me and Dan. We went in to remove the rope. Dan took the head, I the tail. I didn’t think. I seized it, loosed the knot and slid the rope smoothly, pulled it away and was out of the cage, Dan after me a second later. Gabriel dropped the bars, Yan and Simon shot the bolts.
A deep, roaring cheer went up. The dragon shot all of its limbs out at once as if stabbed, raised its head blindly and went wild again, a renewed frenzy so punishing and despairing that it struck us all dumb. If you could have seen that monster flickering in the firelight, beating itself senseless against the sides of its cage. I prayed to God Joe Harper’s work held good. But the cage was solid, timber and steel, and the dragon was weaker by now of course. Even so, it continued a good half an hour with its writhing and lashing and hissing, till at last it fell into an agonised, drooling stasis, slit eyed, flat on its belly with four fat, stumpy legs and long tail spreadeagled. Twenty cruel talons flexed and clenched with a rapid unconscious innocence, like the hands of a baby screaming with colic.
t was my time now. Tim’s part was done. I was the boy who was good with animals. I was to accompany the dragon at all times