Читать книгу Jack Pepper - Sarah Lean, Sarah Lean - Страница 8

“I’m all right,” Ruby said, before Sid could ask.

Sid dug his toes in to stop, leaped from his swing and ran over. Ruby rolled on to her back in the deep sand.

“Dragon stalled,” she said.

She brushed the grains from her palms, wiped down her clothes and shook out her hair.

Sid collected his football. He watched Ruby as he punched his ball to the ground, bounce-bouncing it.

Ruby squinted, pointing at the cloud, liking the way her raised arm felt wobbly and giddy. Her smile faded as the dragon cloud bloomed, collapsed, dispersed and began to look like a baby in a cot, which reminded her of what had happened that morning.

“What would you do if you met a dragon?” Sid asked.

“Train it to fly, like we said.”

“But that’s in the game. I mean for real.”

Ruby closed her eyes. Her imagination stretched, widened, began to eat her up. There was a dragon at home. A newborn dragon. Hatched, wrinkled, fierce and foul-smelling. Shrieking and demanding, cluttering up the arms of the mother dragon, making his sister feel left out. But she kept this to herself.

“It feels real,” Ruby said, opening her eyes.

Sid squinted at her. Ruby was in her own world. He liked to go there with her though.

“You need to learn to balance,” he said, “so when the dragon turns, you turn with it.”

He helped her up off the ground and pulled her over to the see-saw. They climbed on, shuffled until the plank hovered, balanced in mid-air, their weight equal. Sid waited for Ruby to push the game further, like she usually did. But Ruby was quiet.

“If you really had a dragon, everyone would want to see it,” Sid said.

Ruby pictured the dragon in a cage. She imagined everyone looking at it. In awe. In amazement. Their pride. Their joy. But how it roared and rattled the bars at her.

She wanted to say something to the baby dragon. But she couldn’t find words it would understand. She didn’t even know what those words were. She imagined the unspoken sounds in her chest, like dragon’s breath. A swirling, hurtling ball of furious green flame. She let it out.

“Aaargh!” she yelled.

The searing sound hurtled across the park. It singed the football goalposts and stirred the trees over at the far side of the park, scorching everything the flames touched.

Sid clamped his hands over his ears. But the image of the baby dragon wouldn’t leave Ruby. The creature ignored her yell and curled its retractable claws tighter. Ruby swung her leg over the see-saw handle, ready to jump again.

Sid let go of his ears to hold on to the see-saw because it tipped now that Ruby had moved. Ruby jumped. The end thumped down on the rubber tarmac and jolted Sid.

“Why were you shouting?” he asked.

“To see if the dragon could hear me.”