Young Writers Society

The Queen was far from pleased.

Not because she was losing, because she wasn’t. Not even close. Pendratis was going like the clappers - fire blasting everywhere, the bite of smoke wafting all the way up the stands, his wings splayed either side of his head like some bird of paradise – and the other dragon was on the run. A minute, two minutes tops, and it would all be over.

But blood was pooling on the concrete, glassy under the spotlights. The other dragon got her teeth on Pendratis’ ankle earlier in the match, ripping back and spraying red everywhere, and he’d been limping since. The Queen wasn’t pleased with that. You could see her face on the screen, all tight and ashen.

“Someone’s looking worried,” Jack shouted, his voice almost lost in the roar of the crowd.

“Oh, please!” I shouted back. “You’d need to bite all four of Pen’s legs clean off before you even had a chance against him!”

“Ooh, bold words. Afraid someone’s going to usurp your beloved Queen?”

“Watch,” I said, pointing. “Watch him. He’s going to be fine.”

I dug my fingernails into my palms, hunching forward. My phone buzzed against my thigh, the screen shining through the fabric of my jeans, but I ignored it. The other dragon threw a wing up to shield her face from a fireball, then howled as it smouldered against the leathery membrane. Rookie mistake. She was panicking. While she staggered and screeched and batted her scorched wing against the air, the muscles in Pendratis’ powerful back legs churned, his chest lowering flat to the ground. His wings stretched.

My phone hummed again. I gritted my teeth.

Like a rock from a catapult, Pendratis sprang. For a moment, there was only the sound of scuffling and howling, the only visible thing a tangled, scurrying mass of black and green limbs. Then everything stopped. The figures grew clear: Pendratis, his teeth hovering around the other dragon’s throat; the other dragon, stock still, eyes a floodlit amber gleam.

The bell sounded. Pendratis took his teeth away from the other dragon’s neck and they stepped away from each other. I leapt up, stamping and cheering with the crowd, and then turned to Jack. He was still lounging in his seat.

“Told you!” I shouted. “Never doubt the Queen.”

Jack sighed theatrically, tearing his betting slip in half. Twenty silvers against Pendratis, 50-1 odds – a complete idiot’s bet.

“Long may she reign,” he said wryly.

I laughed, turning back towards the stadium. The Queen was walking onto the pitch now, barbaric and glorious even from this distance, her fur coat glossy under the spotlights. She stooped next to Pendratis’ foot – I could see her mouthing words to him, shushing him, her fingers teasing the ragged, bloody scales with feather lightness. She didn’t care about getting blood on her coat. If the rumours were true, she never wore anything twice.

Jack stood up when they presented her with her medal and winnings; she barely gave the glittering metal a glance. He nudged me in the ribs.

“That’s you, four years in the future,” he said. “Perhaps without the knee-high boots.”

“Ah, shut up,” I laughed, but my chest ached. I wished he wouldn’t joke about it. “I’ve got some boots like that, actually. They come all the way up my stupid legs.”

“The woes of the vertically challenged,” he said, sliding his hands into his pockets. “Now, I’m feeling a milkshake. Or a sundae.”

I started to say something, but my phone buzzed again. I pulled it out, cupping my hand around it so I could see the screen. Two missed calls from Shelley. Now a text. I swiped it open.

Everything dulled.

“Hey,” Jack said, waving a hand in front of my face. “Critical decision to be made here. Milkshake or sundae?”

I swallowed once. When I put the phone back in my pocket, I felt like I was moving through liquid.

“Sorry, I’ve-” I shook my head. “I’ve got to go. I’ll catch you later.”

*

The hospital smelt of sharp antiseptic and cheap coffee. My trainers squeaked as I ran down the corridor, my eyes blurring on bright, poster-paint signs, the letters squirming around and swirling together. Fourth floor, Shelley had said. Cardiology ward. Orange ward.

I crashed into an empty trolley, the metal striking my ribs hard. My eyes burned.

“What d’you think you’re doing?” a nurse called. “You shouldn’t be running in here!”

Her voice didn’t have much bite to it, but the tears sprang anyway. Never could handle being told off – Mum always ended up doing the apologising when I’d done something bad, cuddling me while I howled. I scrambled off before the nurse could corner me, my body shaking, my legs clumsy. An orange sign loomed overhead, the lettering fragmented by tears. Cardiology.

I found Mum in her own room at the back of the ward, sat upright in bed. She was chatting to Shelley, talking with her hands, this morning’s mascara still clinging to her eyelashes. A little bit of lipstick on her smiling teeth. She looked normal.

Her crinkly eyes found me in the doorway. I burst into tears again.

“Oh, come here, you daft thing,” Mum said, with a shaky laugh. “Don’t ruin your eyeliner on my account. Don’t want you looking a little panda.”

I stumbled over to her like a toddler. When she pulled me to her chest, I breathed in the warm smell of her flesh and cheap coconut body butter and cried harder.

“Come on, chick, I’m alright,” she said, stroking my hair. She sniffed it. “Ooh, you smell like a bonfire. Did that Queen win?”

I nodded as I pulled away from her, my face uncomfortably slick and sticky.

“Ah, well, at least you saw the end of the match,” Mum said. “I don’t know why Shelley called you. I’m right as rain. Had a bit of a funny turn, but that’s what you get for drinking at my age.”

I wanted to be young again. I wanted to be four years old and too blind to see behind the smile and the bouncy voice. My gaze shifted to Shelley, who was hunched over in the chair by the bed, chewing on a curl of her reddish hair. When her green eyes locked on mine, she spat the hair out.

“You look like shit,” she said. “Come on. I’ll get you a coffee.”

She wasn’t going to get me a coffee. I walked with her anyway, my trainers dragging against the floor. She stopped at the other end of the corridor and pushed me in the chest.

“What d’you think you’re doing, baby-crying in front of her?” she hissed. “You think she’s not scared enough?”

I sniffed. “I couldn’t help it.”

She set her jaw. Shelley had the same round face and chubby cheeks as me, but her movements made her look sharp. She wiped my eyes with the pad of her thumb, her ragged, bitten nails catching on the sore skin.

“What happened to her?” I asked quietly.

Shelley shrugged. “She just…she was hoovering. Got lightheaded and keeled over. She didn’t want to come, but I wasn’t having it anymore.”

My throat was tight. Mum had been getting more and more fatigued recently, but she always laughed it off and said it was middle age finally catching up with her. I laughed with her, because it was easier that way.

“It’s her heart,” Shelley said, not looking at me. “Dunno what – it’s all stupid names that they give stuff, these doctors. She’s had it forever, but it’s only messing her up now. If they’d got it sooner, they might’ve been able to…I told her to go months ago. I told her.”

“But they can-” the words stuck in my throat. “They can do something, can’t they?”

Shelley finally met my eyes. “She needs a transplant, Yas. Where the hell am I going to get the money for a shitting transplant? It’s already thousands just for bringing her in.”

I could hardly breathe. “Maybe…dad could…”

“No,” she said vehemently. “No.”

I bit my lip, tears pressing at my eyes. She shoved me in the chest again.

“I’ll think of something. Stop crying,” she snapped. “Go home if you’re going to cry.”

If I’d been more like Shelley, I’d have wiped my eyes and stuck my chin out. I’d have gone back down the corridor and pulled a smile onto my face, and I’d have chatted to Mum about the soaps and the minging hospital nightgowns like everything was normal. But I wasn’t like Shelley.

I left.

*

I let myself into the barn, breathing in the smell of hay and old wood. As I walked between the stables, horses muttered and stamped, tails whipping the air. The light was low and midge-laden, slick against the metal bars, warm on my skin. Prince was lounging on a crate at the other end of the barn.

He opened one blue eye as I approached, then stretched like a cat, his flexed, blueish wings almost translucent in the yellow light. He pattered down from the crate and over to me, bowing his head for me to stroke. I trailed my fingers over his silvery scales, working the tiny arches of soil from the chinks where they fitted together. When I sat down, he rested his warm head in my lap and closed his eyes again. I talked. I knew he was listening.

Dad bought me Prince about twelve years ago, back when I was a kid with too many dragon posters who snuck into the stadium to watch the local tamers competing. On one of his infrequent visits, I begged him for a dragon, and on his next, he came bearing a crate with something furled and silver inside it. A domesticated French fishcatcher, long legged and beautiful. I still don’t know how much Dad paid for him.

Mum went off at him. I think Shelley did too. I was too young to understand that we didn’t have the space or money to accommodate a pedigree dragon, so I just cried. Cried so much that Mum took pity on me and asked the Henriettas if we could pay to keep him at the farm. I think they must have taken pity on me as well, but it sort of worked out. He was good at protecting the livestock, and once I started entering him into tournaments, I always gave them a cut of my winnings.

I stroked the curve of Prince’s horn. Whenever Shelley saw him she would frown at him, the same way she would frown at old photographs of Dad. She’d call him an ‘ugly fish-face looking thing’, though I’d told her time and time again that he could understand her.

If I was Shelley, I’d have hated Dad.

I wasn’t Shelley.

Prince looked up before I did, his ears keener than mine, and half a minute later the barn door creaked open. Jack walked in, thumbs in the pockets of his jeans, and came to sit down next to me.

“Mum said she saw you moseying up the drive,” he said. “You okay?”

I twisted my lips. “Dumb question.”

“True,” Jack said, leaning back. “What happened?”

My hands tightened on Prince’s horn. I didn’t speak. If I told him, it would become real.

“Yasmin?” he said, nudging me. “Come on, don’t leave me in suspense. No. Sorry. That’s a stupid thing to say. Sorry.”

The truth came out, all in a rush, my voice stretching higher and higher until it cracked and I was crying and stumbling over words and crying and crying. Jack dithered, blinking a lot behind his glasses, and gave my shoulder an awkward squeeze. Prince shifted around and pressed his warm, leathery forehead against mine, his flaring breaths lulling and rhythmic. Little by little, I came back to myself.

“I’m sorry, Yas,” Jack said quietly. “How much does the transplant cost?”

I shrugged listlessly. “Shelley didn’t- she didn’t say. A lot, though. She says she’s going to get it somehow, but I…”

Jack drew his long legs up against him, his brow furrowed. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

Jack straightened his legs again, drumming his fingers against his knees. “You know how much the winnings are for the Treslam Cup, don’t you?”

I blinked at him. “I’m not doing the Treslam Cup. And even if- the Queen’s reigning champion, there’s no way-”

“Why not?” Jack said. “You’re good enough, or nearly. Prince is in his prime, and you’ve paired with him longer than the Queen’s paired with Pendratis. You’ve got something to fight for. What’s the Queen fighting for? A new fur coat. A holiday in bloody – I don’t know - bloody Cyprus or Madagascar or wherever.”

I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t an outrageous thing to suggest – my coach had entered me into similar tournaments before; I usually made the semis, rarely any further, but Prince and I had been improving a lot in the last year. Beating the Queen had never been a private dream, just an embarrassing one.

But I’d imagined entering the Treslam Cup as something I’d do out of confidence, not out of desperation. I’d imagined being happy about it.

“…talk to your coach,” Jack was saying. “If he can swing the medical cover for Prince, there’s no reason not to give it a shot. You’ve been gunning for this from the start.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah.”

I waited for other words to come. They didn’t.