Chapter Twenty
Frida heard a smoky voice cutting through the certainty of imminent death.
‘Alright, that’s enough now coral eater. You’ve had your fun.’
A couple of heartbeats more and the Nuckelavee’s teeth would have been around Frida’s neck.
But at the sound of that throaty voice, he froze.
They all froze. As one, Frida, the Jellies, and the Nuckelavee turned to look to their left, mouths hanging open in what might have been farcical, if anyone else had been there to witness it.
Anyone, that is, apart from the wrinkled terracotta miracle, waiting quite impatiently on the other side of the gigantic fence.
Frida had spent her entire life, all two and a bit decades of it, dreaming about that miracle. ‘Fireheart?’ she whispered.
‘What did I tell you?’ the old dragon snapped at the Nuckelavee, ignoring Frida entirely. Her voice was that of someone who’d spent their whole long life smoking twenty packets a day. ‘Find the silly girl, bring her here. Don’t eat her, I said. Don’t.’
The demonic sea creature gave a low repentant whine.
Frida choked in disbelief. Fireheart swung her great head around, her inky indigo eyes half blind with cataracts, yet sharp enough to feel like a wire wool brush was scouring Frida’s soul.
‘You!’ the dragon snapped. ‘Stop swaying, azizam, dear. It would be most tiresome if you fainted. It would waste so much time.’ Her smoker’s cough rattled.
‘And our supply is woefully limited. So come now, hmm, extract yourself from that contraption. Let’s go. ’
Frida’s jaw dropped. ‘Me?’ she squeaked.
Fireheart’s scales rippled as she swung her wrinkled snout back to pierce the Nuckelavee with a devastating scowl. ‘You – move back, give her some room.’
He’d deflated to the size of a pony. Frida blinked incredulously at the once colossal beast. To be fair, Frida wanted to shrink too.
The storm monkeys in her lap trembled like plucked strings as the Nuckelavee beat a hasty retreat, almost tripping over his clip-clopping hooves in his haste.
His protrusion trembled as he hissed a string of incoherent grievances miserably to himself.
But as he disappeared into the shadows, Frida gave a yelp.
‘Where’s he going?’
Fireheart leaned back on her haunches, whipping her tail. ‘The coral eater?’
‘Yes!’ Frida suddenly thought of her friends spread out around the zoo like anchovies on a pizza, ready to be picked off one by one. ‘The Nuckelavee,’ she said under her breath, his very name filling her with fear.
Fireheart huffed out a puff of irritable steam. ‘That’s not his name.’
Frida blinked in surprise.
‘You speak a human name,’ she elaborated, her bark as sharp as her red talons.
‘It is not his, and all he wants is to go home! You fear him? Admittedly, he was a bit overzealous.’ Fireheart’s belly seemed to sizzle, as if this was greatly amusing to her.
‘I asked him to bring you here, because he’s a good tracker when he’s not in a mood, and you have to admit it was rather funny.
’ She chuckled, but seeing Frida’s face, leached entirely of colour, the old dragon gave a sigh which sounded exactly like an eyeroll.
‘Don’t look at me like that, girl. He will just go and pool somewhere quietly now until it’s time. ’
‘Time for . . . what?’ Frida managed to ask.
Fireheart didn’t answer. She just gave Frida a look, scathing and indecipherable, her eyes glowing red.
Unlike Lucky, who was more of an overgrown London bus, Fireheart was a sinuous cat-shaped beast the size of a Lamborghini.
She had a frail whiskered snout, slender tail and sharp bony paws.
It was said she’d come originally from the Ottoman Empire – now Syria.
Her scales were a network of scars, and her wings had been half-sawn off by hunters before being rescued by the LEZ.
She carried them tucked into her body as if they still pained her, the angular lines marring what must have once been a flowing silhouette.
Her wrinkled, weather-beaten body was the colour of baked bricks, except in her belly, where the fire burned scarlet.
‘Come,’ Fireheart said dourly.
Then the old dragon whipped around with a speed Frida didn’t think she possessed.
In one sharp burst, a lance of flame belted out of the dragon’s throat and seared into the fence.
Frida screamed, her hands flying to protect the monkeys, and they squealed, half of them almost squashed between her chest and Grace’s wheel.
When she lifted her head, there was a gigantic, smouldering hole in the fence.
‘It is best you come to terms with this: the world as you know it is gone,’ Fireheart said shortly, coughing up a blob of smoky charred phlegm and spitting it between her claws.
Frida felt herself blanch.
‘The wards,’ she whispered, blinking up at the gleamingly metallic, impenetrable fencing that Fireheart had just combusted like it was butter and she was a blow torch. Frida had known the infrastructure was failing in Ocean, but to see it here, now, terrifyingly real . . .
‘Yes, azizam.’
Frida’s remaining composure fractured. All the questions and desperation of the last hours tumbled out of her in an inarticulate mess.
She almost swooned at the relief of finally having someone to ask who didn’t speak in snores or monkey poetry or blood-drenched sea spray.
And not just anyone. But Fireheart. One of the oldest dragons alive.
‘Do you know what’s happening?’ she gasped out franticly. ‘Are you going to kill me?’
Fireheart eyed her with filmy distaste. ‘Well, that would be predictable, wouldn’t it?’ She inspected one of her red claws. ‘I would hate to be predictable. I just want to talk to you, that’s all, dear.’
‘To me?’ Frida whispered. ‘Why?’ I wanted to see you. Dozy had said that, and Lucky too. Why the fuck did all these creatures want to talk to her, let alone the greatest creature in the history of greatness.
A burst of aggravated inky smoke plumed from Fireheart’s nostrils.
Despite this, all the monkeys, even loyal Jellybean, launched themselves as one out of Grace and tumbled, squeaking happily, through the hole in the fence.
Seemingly unconcerned about the dragon’s irascible temper, they began skittering over Fireheart, covering her like a blanket of electric fluffballs.
Frida watched, as Keanu started doing a slip ‘n’ slide down her tail.
‘As I said,’ Fireheart muttered, eyeing Keanu with stalwart disinterest. ‘We do not have time. You must come with me now. I need to show you something.’
Frida did not move, however, from Grace’s front seat.
She wasn’t sure if she could move.
She had to know, her body trembling with the memory of purple lightning. Suddenly, it was all she could see. ‘What did Lucky do to me?’ she whispered.
Fireheart made a noise, a wheeze so heavy it seemed to come from the very bones of the rock beneath her. ‘I forget how tiresome humans can be. Me, me, me. Always me.’
Frida swung back, stung. But Fireheart was already moving towards the dark craggy mountains that loomed in the depths of her enclosure. ‘We don’t have time. Hurry, azizam. Let us get this over with.’ She swished her long tail and sent sand and smoke up in clouds.
‘Ree!’ Jellybean peeped, beckoning to her.
Frida watched, helpless, as he did a backflip, and then started to scurry after Fireheart, leaping like a spinning firework. All she could see was the reassuring gleam of his yellow eyes and the flash of his tiny storms, until he was lost amongst the others.
Behind Frida lay her friends, asleep on the ground.
A fairy too unconscious to answer any of her questions.
The Nuckelavee, creeping through the shadows.
She closed her eyes, her mind a tangle of dragon smoke, monkey thunder, briny sea spray, trees coming alive, and Apocalypse Scenarios 12 through 99.
Maybe this was the end of the world. Maybe Fireheart did want to bring her to her cave and eat her but as Frida gazed at the smouldering hole in the fence, she realised that if she stayed here, she’d never know.
An invitation.
I want to talk to you.
Frida could wait here for the Nuckelavee or some other horror to claim her, or she could walk through this fence, to see what Fireheart had to say.
In the end, it wasn’t really a choice at all.