Becoming a Dragon (9 page)

Crystal laughed to herself, an action which caused a few dragons to stare at her strangely, the sound being rather odd.
Right, that's something not to do
, she remarked.
Have you ever laughed as a dragon?

I'd avoid doing so
, Jenna replied.
How strange it is to see everyone like this.

It is, isn't it? Do you still fancy Arthur now that he is a dragon?

Please, Crystal. We all look the same. I couldn't tell if I'm looking at boy or girl dragons at the moment.

But that wasn't quite right. Crystal found that as a dragon, her vision was sharper, and the subtle differences between each of them were more apparent. Sexes weren't really distinguishable as such, but identifying individual dragons was actually quite easy and it didn't take long to work out who was who, especially as their thoughts sounded exactly the same as their voices. Crystal felt two familiar eyes rest on her.

Hello, Crystal,
said John.
Are you nervous about flying?

No,
she replied irritably, glaring at him. Just as he was as a human, as a dragon he was unnaturally still.
Why would I be?

You shouldn't be
, he replied.
This will be easy for you.

Thank you, John, but I don't need any encouragement,
she told him coldly. 
I'm not worried at all.

She turned around to face Jenna again, hoping John would get the message. Professor Stone's voice echoed in all their heads, signalling the start of the lesson.

Now, class, watch, and learn…

The second week of school began with a cancellation, as one of their teachers were ill, so they started the day with some free time. If John had hoped that his flying skills that had so impressed the class had won him their friendship, then that hope was dashed very quickly. It was only minor stuff, but the bullying had already started; feet suddenly sticking out to trip him, things thrown at the back of his head and other such trivial annoyances, but Crystal knew that it would only get worse. The teacher assigned to babysit them seemed oblivious to it, so Crystal decided to pay no attention to it either, and spent the lesson talking to Jenna.

Their second lesson of the day was biology, which was in the adjacent tower to theirs, taken by Professor Hedley, a quiet teacher that was reportedly very popular with his class. It was during this lesson that Crystal learnt to hate Kal, the haughty boy from Furnace who she had met at her party. He had a family who were important in the military
—
something they had in common
—
but Kal had clearly already taken just as much a dislike to her as she had to John.

"Sir, I have a question." Kal had his hand in the air and was sneering at John.

"What is it, Kal?" the professor asked.

"What would happen if races were to interbreed?"

The professor paused, and before he answered, Daisy spoke up. "That is forbidden, Professor. No Red Dragon is allowed to take a husband or wife from another race and it has never happened."

Kal laughed derisively. "If you say so," he retorted sarcastically, "but I'm not talking about marriage. I'm talking about breeding. I hope we don't have to explain the difference to the princess. What would happen, sir?"

The professor glanced at Crystal briefly, pausing before answering. She had no idea why, but the professor was clearly uncomfortable with answering this question.

"What would the baby be, sir?" Kal asked again, pushing the point. "If, for example, Daisy here, was unfortunate enough to be captured by the Blue Dragons, and one of them decided to take her as their, um, wife," he said, pausing to sneer at Daisy, "what would her children be? Blue Dragons, Red Dragons, or something else?"

"Something tells me you know the answer to this one, Kal," John commented. "Or at least you think you do."

"Think I do?" Kal replied irritably. "I know what I know. But I want to have the professor's view. What would happen, sir?"

The professor blushed, glancing at Crystal, then John.

"Would you mind if I were to answer this one, sir?" John asked.

The professor shook his head. "I'll answer this. It's simple, Kal; the baby would be a Blue Dragon. The baby is always the same type of dragon as the father."

"That can't be right," Daisy objected. "We take parts from each parent. My tail, it's distinctive, and is from my mother's side. Arthur has the same tail. And when I'm human, I have my mother's nose. Surely we would be a mixture of blue and red?"

The professor shook his head. "It's not possible. You are either one or the other. There are no mixes."

"So the red part of you just disappears?" Crystal asked. "There are no traces of your mother?"

Kal latched onto this quickly, seeming delighted that she had asked the question. "Oh there can be traces. Not while you are a dragon, but as a human, yes. Maybe not in the first generation, but it shows up sometimes in grandchildren, or even several generations later, doesn't it, sir?"

"What traces?" Crystal asked. Kal smiled smugly and sat back ignoring her question.

The professor glared at Kal, his anger clear. "Occasionally, the child, or the grandchild, has the hair colour of the mother. So in this case, the baby might have red or it might have blue hair. It can miss many generations, apparently."

The class was silent for a moment. Clearly only Kal, John and the teacher knew the answer to this question.

"So if a child was born with blond hair…?" Crystal asked weakly.

The professor looked at her sadly. "Then at some point, maybe a long time ago in her family's past, one of her female ancestors was not a Red Dragon."

"In other words, her ancestry is not pure," Kal added. "Probably descended from the bastard offspring of a captive slave, shared by a bunch of prison guards."

Crystal blushed bright red, both angry and embarrassed. Everyone in the room was staring at her, and she wished that the ground would swallow her up. She rose to her feet slowly, before running out of the room and slamming the door behind her. She carried on running, through the school and out of the front gate.

Back in the classroom, for a moment, no one said a word. John looked at the door, wondering if he should run after Crystal, or whether that would make things worse. Suddenly, Seth jumped to his feet and kicked Kal in the chest, knocking him off his chair.

"Take that back!" Seth shouted, his fists clenched as if ready to fight him.

Kal sprang to hit feet quickly, almost snarling at Seth. He was a couple of inches taller than Seth and was clearly a lot stronger than him. He raised his fists, ready to fight him. John decided to intervene and calmly walked between the two of them.

"The insult was meant for me more than Crystal, Seth," he said, calmly regarding Kal. "But if you're worried about her, perhaps you should go after her instead of fighting this ignorant fool."

"There will be no fighting!" the professor shouted, finally responding to the situation. Seth glared at John, but ran out of the room after Crystal.

John turned back to Kal. "You really think that's the only explanation, don't you, Kal?"

"It
is
the only explanation, John," Kal spat. "You two are probably related. I expect your great grandmother was the entertainment for the whole army." There were quite a few laughs in the class.

John shook his head and laughed. "You're an even greater fool than I thought. Which dragon races have blond hair, Kal? Answer me that. Not the Blue or Green Dragons, which wiped out most of your family when they ineptly lost Greytower."

The rest of the class had no idea what John was talking about, referring to a passage of history that was rarely referred to, when the great city of Greytower was lost by Kal's ancestors, but this statement clearly enraged Kal. "How dare you!" Kal screamed, launching himself at John. John merely pushed a chair forwards with his feet, which Kal tripped over, landing sprawled on the floor. John walked calmly towards the window and continued talking.

"No, not the Blue or the Green Dragons, and neither the Rhino Dragons, who have dark brown hair. Even the Sandy Dragons didn't have the golden hair that Crystal and I do, theirs was more like dirty sand. Yellow, I grant you, but quite different to ours. Theirs is more like straw than gold."

"What's your point, half and half?" Kal snarled, pulling himself off the floor. "There are other dragon races."

"Everyone return to your seats!" the professor shouted.

John ignored him and continued. "Yes, there are other races, but in our 1000 years of recorded history, we haven't seen a single dragon race where they have blonde hair, have we, Kal? Suggesting it's our great grandmother is a bit of a stretch, isn't it?"

Kal paused. "So what? So it's your great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother. Still makes you, makes you…"

"I think you're a bit short of greats there, Kal. I guess maths isn't your strong point, and if it were from twenty or thirty generations ago, chances are that we're all related to her. How do you know that your blood is so pure? Warrior family like yours, I expect that your ancestors were fond of entertaining themselves with their prisoners. Perhaps one was your great grandmother."

Kal tried to lunge at him again, but this time, the professor grabbed hold of him. "Sit down!" the professor shouted. "This stops now. I will not have any more fighting."

Kal shook him off and picked up his seat. "I won't forget this, John," he growled menacingly. John shrugged and returned to his seat.

"What did you mean, John?" Arthur asked.

"Sorry?" John asked.

"You said that Kal thinks that was the only explanation. Even if it happened a long time ago, it's still the same explanation, surely."

"One explanation," John replied. "There are others. They're just not widely known."

"Like what?" Arthur asked. "I can't think of any."

John frowned. "If you read our histories, as I have done, you'll notice a distinct lack of our people being born with any colour other than red, or blonde. Yet, we've had plenty of other neighbours, but no record of blue, or green, or black, or brown, or sandy yellow, or the hair colour of any of our former neighbours. We know that a Red father and a Blue mother will give a Red child, as it has happened, although a very long time ago, and it happened with many of our neighbours, until King Cornelius the wise banned having relations with prisoners. Why don't any of their descendants appear, and blonde children do appear? Children with blue hair were only seen if their mothers, grandmothers or great grandmothers were Blue Dragons. It's clearly very different for people like Crystal and me. Why do you think that is?"

"I don't know," Arthur replied impatiently. "Aren't you going to tell us?"

John looked at the professor. "You're not, are you, sir? You don't know the answer to that question. But you've noticed this as well, haven't you?"

The professor glared at him, but was also keen to know the answer. "Just answer his question, John and that will be the end of this discussion. I'm in half a mind to put the whole class in detention."

John paused. "The answer to that question is not in our history books. I doubt there is a Red Dragon alive who knows the answer."

"Then why ask the question?" the Professor exclaimed in frustration. "You're just wasting our time."

"Not really; not asking the question, sir, is why no one knows the answer. I'm just trying to get everyone to think about it. How is that a waste of time?"

The Professor had no answer, and lost patience with the discussion and brought everyone's attention back to his lesson.

After the lesson, John dashed out of the room quickly, hoping to avoid any further questions.  As he did, he bumped into Seth.

"Have you seen Crystal?" he asked breathlessly. "I can't find her anywhere in the school."

"No, of course I haven't," John replied. "The lesson has just finished. I've only just left the room."

"Well, I've looked everywhere. I don't know where she went."

John paused. "And, why are you telling me?"

Seth shrugged awkwardly. "I thought you might help me find her. She told me that you follow her sometimes. You might know where she is."

"Yes, but you seem to be forgetting that she doesn't really like me. I don't think my coming with you is a good idea."

Daisy suddenly appeared from around a corner. "Hi, John. I'm glad I found you. I have a few questions about what you said."

John groaned inwardly, having resolved to try and avoid her in order to save her from becoming as unpopular as he was. "Sorry, Daisy, not now. Seth needs my help to find Crystal. I think she's pretty upset. Come on, Seth, this way."

"Hey, you changed your tune," Seth called after him as they ran down the corridor towards the entrance to the courtyard outside. "I thought you didn't think this was a good idea."

"Did I?" John replied. "Well, that doesn't matter now. I just had an idea about where she might be." John ran across the courtyard to a tower, and entered and ran up the stairs. Seth was too far behind to respond. The tower was not particularly high, but Seth was wheezing by the time he caught up with John.

"You alright there, Seth?" John asked casually, as Seth leaned on the wall for support, and gasped for air. Seth nodded, but couldn't respond. "There was me thinking that I was the one that was out of shape. Get your breath back; then follow me. I'll circle to get some height."

Before Seth could answer, John leapt from the tower, transforming in mid-air. He had barely fallen a metre before he had fully transformed, his outstretched wings catching the up-draught. He circled the tower, gaining altitude, glancing back to where Seth was transforming at the top of the tower, before taking off to follow him. He was over one hundred metres away, but could hear Seth's voice clearly in his head.

You didn't mention flying,
Seth objected, clearly unsure about his own ability.

Our eyes are more sensitive like this, and we can move more quickly. I saw you in class; you seem to know what you're doing already. Besides, I think I know where she will be, and it's a long walk or a very short flight. Follow me.

John veered south, and beat his wings twice to gain speed before settling into a fast glide. Seth was falling behind, but he wouldn't get lost, as he would be able to see John even when he was a long way ahead. He headed straight towards Crystal's home, and then straight past it, flying above the fields behind her house. Way below him, he could see her hurrying along a path towards the stream. Her stream, the one he had spotted her lying beside on the first day he saw her.