Camelot (3 page)

‘Roarin' thumbs.'

‘What?'

‘Thumbs. If we had thumbs,' said Spikeweed, ‘we would be the ones in charge. It'd be us in that castle, not stuck here in these caves in this horrible bleak valley surrounded by even more horrible bleak mountains where even the grass won't grow.'

‘Yeah, yeah,' said his wife, Primrose, who had heard it all a thousand times before.

‘Stands to reason, doesn't it?' Spikeweed continued. ‘I mean, we're a hundred times stronger than humans. We're much bigger and ancienter. We're better looking and we have enormous brains. And answer me this – out of dragons and humans, only one species can breathe fire. Who's that then? For goodness sake, how can you breathe fire and not be in charge? I'll tell you how. Roarin' thumbs. It's all down to the roarin' opposable digit.'

‘Do you need to swear so much?' asked Primrose.

‘Of course I do,' said Spikeweed. ‘It's one of the
things dragons do better than any other species. No, it isn't, is it? Even roarin' humans swear more than we do.

‘And,' he added, ‘on top of all that, they can't even roarin' fly. Chuck a human off a castle wall and what do they do, soar away with the grace of an eagle? I don't think so. More like soar away with the grace of a lump of mud.'

‘Yes, yes,' said Primrose. ‘We all know. There's no justice in the world.'

‘Too right,' Spikeweed whinged. ‘Too right.'

‘But no one ever said there was,' said Primrose. ‘There was no promise of fair play. You can't get your money back.'

‘Oh yes, rub it in, why don't you?' said Spikeweed. ‘You try picking up small gold coins when you haven't got thumbs.'

He then proceeded to shout the fourteen-thousand-and-fifty-seven swear words that every dragon learns as soon as they hatch. It made him feel a bit better to know that even though humans swore a lot more than dragons, they didn't have nearly so many bad words to use.

‘Why don't we make ourselves false thumbs?' said their son, Bloat.

‘Because, stupid, to do that would require a manual dexterity that we lack because we haven't got thumbs,' said Spikeweed. ‘I'm going outside to burn a puppy.'

‘It's your own stupid fault there's no grass, you know,' Primrose shouted after him. ‘If you didn't keep burning everything we'd have lovely green trees and soft grass and flowers and butterflies and all that sort of stuff, everywhere, not just charcoal-covered rocks.'

‘I hate butterflies,' Spikeweed muttered as he left.

Spikeweed was the King of the Dragons. He was to dragons what Arthur was to humans except he wasn't vain, spoilt or stupid like Arthur.
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Also, unlike Arthur, who was often happy in the same way a stupid bouncy labrador puppy is happy, Spikeweed was in a bad mood every minute of every day, awake
or asleep. It wasn't always about thumbs, though it usually was about not being in charge.

He came from a long line of dragon kings, a line that went back far further than Arthur's. But now Spikeweed, his wife, Primrose, their son, Bloat, and their other child, whose name they kept forgetting, were the last of the line of pure-bred royal dragons. There were plenty of other dragons dotted around the world, but none of them had the proper original vintage royal dragon blood. They were just your common or garden peasant dragons, even those jumped-up Italian dragons who called themselves Counts and the rubbish German dragons who called themselves Barons. Compared to Spikeweed and his family, all the others were just big flying lizards.

When Spikeweed's son, Bloat, got married in the future, his wife would not have proper pure royal dragon blood and the world of dragons would probably, maybe, perhaps decay into a world of democracy.

‘One dragon, one vote,' moaned Spikeweed. ‘It doesn't bear thinking about.'

The dragons' days of glory were long behind
them. They had reached their peak when they had shared the world with dinosaurs. Soon sorted them out, hadn't they? As Spikeweed had already pointed out, only one species could breathe fire. The smell of burnt dinosaur that had filled the air for nearly a hundred years had proved that. Archeologists mistakenly thought that the dinosaurs had become extinct because of a giant meteorite crashing into the planet. That was how they explained the thin layer of burnt stuff they kept discovering whenever they dug up old fossils. But no, Spikeweed's ancestors had been the bringers of fire, not some hot rock falling out of the sky.

The most famous joke in dragon society
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went like this:

There were two other endings to this joke:

and:

Then creatures with thumbs had evolved and that had been the beginning of the end. Thumbs meant they could make things and most of the things early humans had made had pointy ends. Pointy ends are made to be stuck into creatures without thumbs and, dragons being very large examples of creatures without thumbs, they had lots and lots of pointy things stuck in them until they were nearly extinct. Thumbs also gave humans something to suck when they felt frightened about being cornered by dragons when they didn't have a pointy stick with them.

‘Maybe it's because we can't read,' said Primrose, who realised she was becoming as miserable and pathetic as her husband. ‘Maybe there's an instruction book on how to be in charge and if we could read it,
then we could take over. Though of course if there was a book, we wouldn't be able to read it, because we couldn't turn the pages. We could read the cover, I suppose, except dragons can't read. It's not fair. I mean, we're huge and magnificent. We should be happy, not depressed. Your father's right. Roarin' thumbs.'

‘I wonder,' said Bloat, ‘whether if we wait long enough, we'll evolve thumbs.'

‘I doubt it,' said the other child, whose name they kept forgetting. ‘And by then all the other species would have probably died out so if we made pointy things, we'd be the only ones left to stick them into.'

‘Depressing, isn't it?' said Bloat.

‘Oh, you remembered at last.'

‘Remembered what?'

‘My name.'

‘Did I?'

‘Yes.'

‘Remind me again?' said Bloat.

‘Depressyng. It's Depressyng.'

‘I know, but what's your name? I've forgotten it again.'

‘Depressyng,' said Depressyng.

‘Right. I think I'll go and help Dad scorch a few rocks,' said Bloat.

Primrose went to the back of the cave where Spikeweed's grandmother, Gorella, was sleeping. It was more like hibernating than sleeping. All the ancient dragon ever did was lie curled up on her bed of dead thistles, snore and endlessly wet herself. Once or twice a day she woke up and talked to things on the wall that weren't there. And once or twice a week, she limped and shuffled out of the cave into the afternoon sunshine to bask on a rock.

If there wasn't much to keep an old dragon occupied, there was even less for a young dragon to do. Damsels to capture and make distressed were few and far between, which meant there were very few knights looking for a fight. When the dragons had discovered the old tunnel under the moat that led into the sewers below Camelot, it had looked as if it might open up all sorts of possibilities to finally overthrow the humans, but the castle was protected by dozens of Anti-Dragon Spells, so all they could do was blow bubbles up the drains into the lavatories.

‘Not much of a career for a young dragon, is it?' said Bloat to Depressyng as they puffed out their cheeks for a really big breath. ‘When I nod my head, we'll both blow together. I'm fed up with making bubbles. Let's see if we can get a bit more action.'

‘It could be worse,' said Depressyng. ‘At least it's the King we're bubbling at.'

From far above them came a scream followed by a curse as King Arthur was blasted off the toilet. He was thrown upward so violently that he hit the ceiling. His crown embedded itself in the plaster before crashing down in a shower of plaster all over him. He was angrier than anyone could remember and ordered the Master at Arms to drop a large bomb down the toilet.

‘Incoming!' shouted Depressyng and the two young dragons ran back down the tunnel as the bomb exploded behind them.

The bomb was not a good idea. It landed in the main sewer and exploded. Big bombs in narrow tunnels have only one outcome. The entire sewer collapsed in on itself, blocking every single toilet and drain in Camelot.

Of course, no one realised for a few days. They just kept flushing, pulling out the bath plugs and pouring things away down the sinks that were too disgusting to eat or drink,
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just like normal. When they finally realised that the drains were blocked, it took a while to work out why and that made it worse. No one was going to dare blame the King.

‘What is that awful smell?' he demanded. ‘Everyone must have a bath immediately.'

‘But, your majesty, the drains…' Merlin began.

‘IMMEDIATELY!'

‘But…'

‘And then they must have another bath.'