The Stone Bones

Chapter One

Not everyone has the start in life they need or want. Some don’t even get a start in life, they almost hit life at a run and never stop running. Others, cruelly, have a taste of how perhaps things should be, a taste of the best life can offer, but lose it through no fault of their own. Accidents happen and no one’s to blame. Some are fortunate to have family at all, families that take care of their own, but others with families wish for nothing more than an escape from their second-starts. A resentful grandmother, an unkind uncle, a reckless relative, the connection only half understood by either party, each in turn bound out of misplaced duty. Some run away, start anew for themselves and, perhaps, are the better for it. But lives are built on memories and foundations matter. Henry’s aunt was of the persuasion that he had no foundations at all until he set foot under her roof, but she was wrong. He had the firmest foundations he could have thanks to his father. He had his imagination, his father’s gift and constant companion.

Henry stood over the sink, potato skins falling onto the stainless steel basin. He only half paid attention to what he was doing and occasionally would take too much out of the potato. He knew if his aunt saw him do this he’d be in for it, so, when it did happen he moved that particular peel from the pile in the sink and into the bin beneath.

His mind was on the clouds outside. They raced from east to west, great towers and plumes lit up the colour of orange peel by the setting sun.

Over the sink, Henry’s thoughts always turned to the shapes he saw in the clouds, whether they were dark and miserable, or as they were in this instant: huge, beautiful monsters herding themselves against the horizon. He had once cut himself against the knife’s edge watching one particular cloud that at one moment was the face of a tyrant and the next, the head of a lion.

His aunt made a very good haddock and mash. She always used a full knob of butter with rosemary and crushed black pepper. He may not have liked his aunt all that much (and vice versa, mind you), but he never complained about dinner. Sometimes he wondered how his dad could have ever put up with her, but somehow he must have weathered the nagging and constant sniping. He occasionally dreamt up an imaginary sister for himself, saw her perfectly in his mind: the picture of his mother. His sister would be nothing like his father’s. She would be younger and reliant on him for everything. The idea of having someone to look after appealed to Henry; he had so far had a rough ride of it and felt he stood a pretty good chance of avoiding the crashing errors others had made with him.

A knock came from the door and his aunt answered. It was the boy from over the road come to call; he had the other boys with him. Henry didn’t want to go out, it was the same every time. He would be back by nine with a cut lip, or bruised arm or a scratched back and his aunt would point him in the direction of the bath. She never asked how it happened.

*

The nylon rope cut into Henry’s skin and the sack over his head scratched at his nose, making him want to itch all over. The sound of the river beside him was tortuous. He imagined if he was in it his body would be clean, fresh. Instead his trousers were almost certainly ripped at the knee, he could feel a wisp of air brushing his knee and when it did the branches of the trees would creak and shake.

The boys weren’t far away. Occasionally he would hear their laughter or a stone would land nearby, usually in the pool of water beside him with a heavy glump before, he imagined, it sank to join the others at the bottom. The spot they had brought him to this time was a real beaut. He had walked this way once before and had imagined then swimming in the pool with the rushing water filling it up and carrying on, while he remained in the cool depths. When he had seen it that time, it was bright but there was a dab of rain in the air, lurking, ready to spoil a dip, so instead he had stood at the edge watching the water skates pull across the surface and the occasional dragonfly flit into view before following the stream of water back up the valley. At the pool’s bottom stones and pebbles of all shapes and sizes rested. There was even some quartz scattered about.

Where the nylon cut his skin blood had begun to flow and Henry’s back ached from his sitting position. The pain reached up to his shoulders; it was familiar to him and for a moment he sat in his father’s car once again as it hurtled forward and shrugged to a halt.

“You had enough Henny?”

They were obviously as bored as he was now and he knew it wouldn’t be long before he could go home. He would shower first because it took ages to fill the bath. Afterwards he would fetch a book and sit by the bath as it filled up enjoying the smell of his aunt’s soaps. She didn’t mind the baths he took, he imagined she was probably happy he was old enough to arrange things himself.

His hands flew free. The boys had crept up and cut the cord. They cheered and ran off like Indians, disappearing into the wood and up the far bank. Henry pinched the top of the sack between forefinger and thumb and pulled it off, tucking his lips in as he did. Some threads were stuck to his lips and he spat them away.

The walk home was cold. The night was clear and the stars bright. No sign of the moon though. In the dim light Henry caught a flick of movement as bats swung in the air and arced at incredible angles out of view into a shadow. The shadows in the branches and in the wood resembled men reaching up to the stars, or crouching low to the earth. Giants hugged tree trunks or stretched out along the ground and as Henry moved from gravelled path to tarmac, the moon came into view, bright, full and fearless; its face askew, it regarded Henry with a questioning look and he felt it share the coldness of his thoughts.

Chapter Two

As predicted he wasn’t questioned by his aunt. He was back at nine, as promised, and that’s all she really cared about. Rules must be followed. After the shower and the bath he had promised himself he disappeared to his room. A sketchpad, hidden under the pillow, held great swirling shapes, the shapes of branches in miniature and a myriad of eyes peeking this way and that.

On hearing his aunt moving about downstairs he doused the lights. In bed with the sheets pulled tightly over his head he clicked the torch his father had once given him. He moved the photograph of his father, he used as a bookmark, and continued to draw and doodle. Other pages held a mess of shadows and bats; there was a rendering of the river, the moon, and, in the corner a face squashed by the heel of a shoe.

In the morning he woke beside the pad, one page creased where he had lain across it in the night. A remnant of his dream skirted at the edge of his mind; he never remembered anything from his time asleep. For such an imaginative boy, his father had thought it odd but had never mentioned it to anyone other than Henry’s mother. His mother’s hair was auburn and sometimes in the morning he caught a shade of its smell before he fully stirred.

It was the weekend and as always, since moving in with his aunt, he was at a loss. He wolfed his breakfast away and washed up after himself, quickly making his way outside. If he was in when the boys came to call he would be ushered into their care, but if he was out before they called then he was his own master. He checked his back pocket for his father’s bookmark. It was lucky. Using the back door, he rushed out into the lane and on to the woods where he could disappear all day without concern for the boys or his aunt.

The gravel crunched under his heels and he rushed into the wood the gravel led to. Each time he disappeared here he set himself a new target, a different field, or valley to reach. This time he followed the river to the spot the boys had taken him, he wanted to collect some of the quartz he knew was there.

It wasn’t a clear day and Henry could smell the rain hanging in the air above him. From the pool he took three good-sized quartz pieces and stuffed them in his pockets. After fishing out the third he caught sight of the blue nylon cord the boys had used and without thinking, added it to the contents of his pockets. Moving off up the river, he decided to investigate beyond the wooden bridge rotting at the seams: today he wanted to look down on his new home from the very top of the hill the wood covered.

Henry reached the protection of the wood’s reaching arms just as the rain began to fall; behind him, howls and screams came from the boys. His aunt must have told them his plans. Safe in the wood’s embrace he disappeared into its dark thickness. He ran on up the hill determined to put a healthy distance between him and them. The shouts from behind him faded.

*

Henry sat at the hill’s top, making sure to remove his father’s photo first. He sat below a heavy-set tree; a thick trunk mottled by yellow lichen. The lichen, creeping up the bark, held a thousand faces that turned to him, or away, some had their heads turned against him entirely.

The clouds were dark, but a bright expectancy shone from the ground and he knew it would rain. The drops would be hard wet stones before they shattered on the dry earth. From the shadow of the tree Henry could see the boys as they searched for him. They were on the other side of the valley now and the reds and blues of different football tops winked between the gaps in the trees, gradually they disappeared.

Henry’s new home stretched out to the sea. “A quiet sea-side town, Henry”, the social had said. She wasn’t used to him talking to her, but when she told him about his aunt’s home he’d spoken up:

“really?”

“Yes, really.”

He had felt a little triumphant in that moment. Now he sat looking down on it all. It wasn’t that quiet, not really; his first day had proved it. He was a new face and couldn’t go unnoticed.

The ground rumbled and the air shook as thunder filled the sky. A thick throb filled his ears and he stood up. The pregnant clouds fell and kissed the horizon, moving in from the sea. Henry tucked his father’s photo away and dashed back into the valley for cover.

At the wood’s edge he tripped and fell, scuffing his knees. The rain fell, shattering on the ground just as he had imagined it and he smiled, brushing himself down. In the wood the rain hadn’t begun to ease its way in, and wouldn’t, not here, not for hours, here the wood was its thickest and almost untouched by the National Trust. Henry had seen the man from the trust carving limbs from trees lower down in the valley days ago, but up here they seemed to leave it alone and the trees crowded in.

Henry took his time to wander through. It smelt fresh and warm. At the edges of the trees’ roots Henry could see quartz scattered about. He imagined that squirrels with peculiar appetites had collected it there. He saw them: larger than ordinary squirrels, with huge teeth and big black tails, but they quickly faded from his mind. He could feel his jeans sticking against his knees where they bled. Pinching the material between forefinger and thumb he dragged it away from his knee and felt his skin stretch where it had begun to glue up. The best way to keep it from sticking was to walk, it was no good standing around and so he moved further into the wood.

The ground continued to complain with deep rumblings. Henry’s cuts dried. He was beside the river just where the stones and quartz, hidden below the hill’s earthy flesh, peaked out. An assortment of sizes fell out of the earth, wet from the splash of the river. Henry chose to sit out on the most prominent; it was white with dark smudges in the rocky wrinkles.

He wasn’t sat long before he realised his father’s photo was still in his pocket. He shot up and swiped it out of the pocket. It was creased! The air fell silent and Henry’s eyes dried. He stared at the picture, his father, a staggered fold pushed its way across the image.

He didn’t have another. The ground rumbled and a voice filled the void.

Chapter Three

Henry didn’t come out of his room for food that night; his aunt called him down, but he remained resolutely mute and his aunt was thankful for an undisturbed evening alone. The voice he had heard haunted him. In the moment of hearing it, falling to the ground beside his perch, he was carried back into memory: the car skidded across the road, his mother’s scream joined the shattering of glass exploding in the air and his father lay limp at the wheel: after that there was no sound, no movement. The world was on pause.

“Hold on.”

That’s all he had heard. He knew the voice and the hushed tone of it. The voice was held like a treasure in the safe recesses of his mind, heard only by him: his mind echoed the words back to him over and over.

After the fall he had been pushed along as if by a guiding hand, the breeze nudging him back towards his aunt’s house and in every moment of doubt he heard the voice again.

“Hold on.”

The words cushioned him. He sat in his room, his back up against the papered wall, eyes closed listening to the memory.

His father’s voice had always had a solemn quality, quiet and assured, firm and sincere. Henry mouthed the words the voice had spoken to him, mimicking the tone and imagining the movement of the mouth they had come from.

Downstairs, his aunt sat silently, the cold television filling up her ears, but in Henry’s room the familiar voice pushed its way into him and warmed him, strengthening him against the days ahead.

In the morning a cold light slipped past the edge of the bedroom curtains. Henry’s alarm wouldn’t sound again for another hour or so; silencing the clock he crept down the stairs. His aunt was in the armchair. A glass of stale wine at the table beside her. He used the side door, softly pulling it back into the frame and holding the handle up so as not to let the catch click into place.

The lawn was covered in dew, undisturbed, and Henry took care to keep to the cement path that ringed the house before dashing up the path that led back to the wood. It didn’t take him long to find the rock he had fallen from. He climbed it and waited for the voice.

All around him the wood began to wake. He sat still. Patient. Clouds rolled by overhead and occasionally the blue sky snapped through a gap. The trees occasionally creaked; a squirrel leapt from one branch to another and the sound of the river trundled on.

“Henny! What ya doin’?”

Charlie’s voice bled into Henry’s ear as Charlie’s arm tightened around his neck.

Henry, if he had wanted, couldn’t answer. Charlie’s arm was tight against his windpipe and as he moved he could feel it crackling like gristle.

Charlie took Henry’s arm with his other hand and pulled it up behind his back before releasing his arm from Henry’s neck.

“You can answer now, Henny. I promise not to hurt you.”

Henry didn’t say a thing. Not a word.

*

Hours later Henry woke finding himself propped up against the perch Charlie had pulled him from. His aunt wouldn’t fail to notice his blooded face: his lip was cut and he could feel it swelling. With his tongue thick, pushed against the cut, he could feel the throb of blood urged along by his snapping heart.

His ankle twinged, swollen from the fall.

Hold on.

Charlie’s eyes were cold and lifeless. He had been alone; if his friends had been with him it might have been worse. Henry remembered the laughter as he walked away and it reminded him of his own voice, laughing at the sight of his father flat on his back after slipping on the lawn.

The voice was in his mind and, like a balm, the pain in his lip eased and finally fled; his heart fell into a regular rhythm and peace settled on Henry. The swelling in his ankle subsided and, before his eyes, it returned to its normal shape and size.

Hold on.

He heard it over and over again; it had a shape, a pattern and he remembered. Remembered his father saying those exact words when the car changed everything, when he took to his bike, solo, for the first time, when he followed his father into a tangle of branches climbing higher and higher until they peaked across a valley his father opened to him. And now it was the same.

Pushing away from the rock he stood, listening to the pickering sound of a shower catching the leaves above him, a bird calling across the river, his own feet crunching against the earth and the grinding tremble of his perch as it moved away from the water, rising up as if hoisted by a mighty crane. Earth fell about and Henry leapt back, his face blank with awe. The creases in the rock’s face shifted and moved, twitching; Henry’s perch moved away from its gaze across the river and looked up to Henry. The shape of an eye blinked and grains of dust drifted down each time; the pupil there was dark and round. The rock...the face, came closer until it was inches from Henry, and spoke: “Hold on, Henry.”

The face was stone, but it moved. It looked as tough as elephant hide. It had all the features of a face and as Henry took it in he caught the angles of its cheeks, the breadth of its snout and saw it for what it was: the face of a dragon. It couldn’t be anything else. But it was stone and it spoke with that voice and said those words.

The beginnings of a question began to form on Henry’s lips and he coughed up some spit to beat back the dryness.

“Henny!”

Charlie’s voice sang through the wood.

The stone face felt Henry’s heart snapping in his chest, felt it as much as it might feel its own. Henry heard again, those two words, and smiled.

Chapter Four

Days went by, then weeks. A month passed and each day of that month Henry visited that place and in his dreams he saw his father in the eyes of that stone dragon.

Each day Henry shared the day's events with the dragon and each day a little more of that great animal shuffled up from the earth. Trees had toppled in places where the beginnings of his spine had risen out of the warm wet earth Pathways were now blocked by fresh debris and every now and then Henry had to forge a new path.

He saw less and less of his aunt. She almost seemed as happy with this as he was. After school a warm meal was always waiting for him: he ate, he washed his plate along with anything left there in the sink and leapt out the backdoor without a look, without a word. His aunt didn't seem worried.

At school Henry was still reclusive, but now, with a firm sense of confidence, his hand was propelled into the air to offer teachers answers, ask questions and try ideas. He moved from the shadows of the back of the class and found himself brought forward by the teacher.

The boys still followed him round in breaks and lunches, but they kept their distance and a wary eye on this boy they thought they knew so well.

The dragon hadn't quite made a clearing for itself, but there were the beginnings of one emerging at the river's side. When Henry arrived after a rainy day at school he found several trees had been moved aside allowing the dragon's stone tail to curl round like a cat's might as it napped on a cushion. With less cover from the trees the thick grass was sodden, but Henry had come prepared and, twisting the handle from his aunt's golf umbrella he revealed the stainless metal beneath and plunged it into the ground, satisfied with this he quickly spread out the blanket he had brought with him. The dragon smiled, stone teeth showed between stone lips and Henry sat down, cross-legged before it.

Henry's day had felt particularly long today. He had been taken from Maths set 2 to Maths set 1; Mrs Matthews had come to collect him from his normal class when she remembered the move had taken place. His normal teacher was out of school and so a cover teacher hadn't known to send him down the corridor. He left one class with work half-begun, half-finished and joined another in the midst of a test. He had to wait for them to finish so, though it seemed a little pointless, he completed the work in his book. When the class was finished Mrs Matthews gave Henry a new book and told him to put the other one away.

He explained all this to the dragon, finally remarking that he was pleased, but it had all felt a little embarrassing; the Maths book was still in his bag and he showed the dragon his workings out, when he saw the dragon smile Henry reddened, but smiled all the same. His aunt never looked at his books.

*

In the night he heard the soft sound of his father's voice again and took the remaining pages of his Maths book, filling them with all the imaginings of his mind. The dragon's face took precedence on almost every page.

The next day his aunt was out, the chair she occupied was cold and no wine glass littered the side-table. He made his breakfast, locked the house and left for school.

School started well, Maths period one and then PE. At break Charlie pushed by him in the queue, but was quickly sent to the back by the teacher in charge of the line. When Charlie reached the back of the line, the boys joined him and began to paw over something that Charlie held. They passed it round, snatching it back and forth until it wasn’t just Henry watching them, but others too, including the teacher. When they noticed they were being scrutinised the photo disappeared. Henry wondered why they would be so fascinated by the picture before asking for a bacon roll.

In English the clouds that had brought the rain the day before rolled in once again, darker this time and in the distance thunder could even be heard, which caused some excitement before the teacher quieted things down and instructed everyone to take out their reading books. Henry's was in his hands before the instruction was finished, he thumbed through for his page looking for his father, his bookmark. Passing the page he knew he was on he skipped back, then checked other pages, then his bag, his pockets, his jacket pockets and repeated this all over again: his father's picture was gone.

Behind him whispers were passed back and forth; silent reading meant silent reading and Charlie was quickly sent out, but not before Henry saw him stuff the missing picture, his father, unceremoniously in his back pocket.

The thunder drew closer and in an instant Henry was out of his seat his hands tearing at Charlie's throat. Unprepared, Charlie fell back and Henry gleefully noted the look of terror in Charlie's surprised face for an instant before digging his nails into his neck. Charlie hit the ground with the full weight of Henry on top of him, Henry's knee pushed down below his ribs and Charlie's head slammed against the floor. Charlie had also been chewing gum, unbeknownst to the teacher, and now blood rose from his mouth as he choked on the gum. Letting go of his throat Henry dived into his pocket pulling on the photo that only tore with the added force of the teacher pulling him away from Charlie who rolled away gasping for air, choking on the gum.

Outside the office Henry tried as best he could to flatten out the image of his father, but he could do nothing to the scratch marks Charlie had made with a coin. His father's eyes and mouth were now bare marks; there was nothing there.

He was out of school until the end of the week and stuck with his aunt until things returned to normal.

Chapter Five

Henry spent the first day adding to every blank space in his old Maths book; eyes and teeth crept into every corner that had previously been untouched. At the end of the day his aunt brought him his dinner on a tray, left it on his sideboard then locked the door. When he had needed the bathroom he had knocked on the inside panel of his door until slow steps drew his aunt up to hallway where she asked him what it was. This had caused quite some upset for her as she waited for him to finish before locking him back up in his room. His door didn't lock cleanly either, so each time she locked or unlocked the door there was a good deal of labour attached and a great deal of noise as the metal shivered in and out of the casing.

The second day, feeling her point was made and unwilling to continue with the rigmarole, she trusted Henry to keep to his confinement. He made use of the time by pulling his bed back from the wall a good two feet and hunkered down with pens and pencils. By lunch, the wall hidden by the headboard was cluttered with scales and great branching arms that swept out from vicious looking maws. The images were laid one upon the other so that, if you or I were to inspect Henry's work, it would take some time to piece together the beasts that writhed to and fro across the previously empty wallpaper.

In the afternoon the phone rang; Henry lay his head flat against the floorboards and listened to his aunt as she listened to Charlie's father, angry at the state his son was now in. The thick bass voice couldn't be missed; Henry's aunt offered no apology and returned the phone to the hook. Some time later she left the house, locking the front door.

Halfway through the second wall Henry paused, the sun was still up but he could see the edge of the moon hanging in the sky. He lay his arms across each other over the window ledge, resting his chin on his top wrist, feeling the bone there with the point of his chin. The sky was clear overhead, but around the edge of the village a mist held itself at bay. Shapes fought for a moment's form, before disappearing into smoky forgetfulness. As he began to look for claws, eyes and great scaled heads in the mist a scuffle broke out below him. They hadn't seen him, but the boys, along with Charlie were making their way round the back of the house. Charlie was picking up a stone and aiming at the kitchen window.

As the glass shattered Henry raised the frame of his window to its height and dropped to the path that edged the house below, by the time he was at the garden's gate the boys were screaming at him from his bedroom window. A voice reached out for him from the mist and quickened his pace: Hold on.

"You're dead, Henny. Dead." Screamed Charlie. It didn't take them long to find the back door and the garden gate, the path, the wood's edge and the wet touch of the mist descending, shadowing Henry's escape.

Slowed, but determined, Charlie cut the boys with curses and threats as they followed Henry into the valley.

*

It wasn't long before Henry was at the clearing; his dragon lay there waiting and Henry went straight to it, holding the beast, their eyes locked together, the dragon raised a paw from the earth and shook off the remaining soil. It picked Henry up between its heavy claws, clutching him like a kitten in the jaws of its mother, depositing him on its back: Hold on.

The boys stumbled into the clearing having scrambled over the fallen trees that now ringed the dragon. Before them they saw him: Henry. Sat on top of bone white rocks, he stared back at them all: Charlie, Jake, Jim, Connor and Kai. They fanned out in a semi-circle, Charlie at the centre. Their knees were muddied, Kai's collar was torn.

Henry's mind clouded, numbed for an instant. The photograph of his father was at home, the eyes and the mouth scratched out, but he remembered his father's eyes now, the soft sound of his voice. Remembered stories made up in an instant at request. He felt the touch of his father's hand on his head, smoothing down his thick hair; he felt the heartbeat in his father's chest as he held his ear close. Felt against his palms the bristle of his unshaven face.

Henry's father had always told him to hold on. Hold on to his hand as they crossed a street, or as he wobbled from side to side on his BMX; on a swing, in a tug of war with the dog; he had always told him to hold on. 'Hold on': the last thing he had heard his father say as tyres screeched, metal crunched, cloth tore and glass, covered in blood, shattered in the air around him.

He remembered being picked out of the mess without a scratch, the man in the ambulance and his amazement, the limp bodies of his father and mother as they were hauled from the car and later the wooden cases they had been hidden in. There had been mist that day as well.

Charlie stepped forward a lump of wood firmly held in his hand.

"Come down Henny; I just want to talk to you."

The others had stones and sticks they had picked up along the way and Henry imagined the stones flying at him when he disobeyed Charlie. He imagined the wet smack of the sticks against his legs and shoulders. The boys moved forward, each of them urging Henry to come down and face them.

Charlie screamed a command and stones flew at him, along with the sticks. Connor's stone rounded on Henry's knee and he cried out. The boys spun round searching the earth for more. The stone bones bristled and the dragon's paw rose with incredible stealth swiping Jim from his feet. Turning at the sound the boys saw the rocky claws hanging above them. The dragon raised itself up, its chest high above the boys who stood frozen in the soft ground. Rain was now feeding the earth and the air was thick with it pouring down from the mist. Connor's rock, freshly dug from the ground, fell and in that instant the stone paw dropped pushing him down to join it in the mud, his face crushed between earth and stone.

Henry could see the screams forming in their mouths, could see, equally, the screams frozen there. 

 Chapter Six

Rain gathered in the skies above and thundered down into the clearing, the air was choked with thick drops. Churned up by the mad scramble of the boys as they slipped and fell, the ground gave way to mud which gave way to the boys' footings. Each one fell and slithered, eventually working their way out and under what cover was offered at the clearing's edge, like worms, as Henry's dragon advanced.

His heavy paw made a sucking sound as it came free of Connor's body, twisted and melted into the earth under the dragon's savage embrace.

Henry held on and heard the words repeat and repeat through his mind, echoed by the dragon's great voice, as it strode forwards towards his tormentors. The voice of his father and the voice of the dragon becoming one, becoming whole; metre by metre Henry felt the layers of fear, dismay, worry and terror for a world without either his mother or father disappear, leached out by each swathe of rain as it clapped itself upon him.

Finding their voices once more each boy screamed like beasts driven mad by the poisoned bite of a master's whip, crashing through the bushes in a wild panic. Each step of the way the stone dragon drew himself closer and closer upon their heels; trees fell to the ground like paper towers from a bruised, frayed and forgotten deck of cards.

The rain continued to fill the air, the clouds above drawn ever closer to the ground below. The hillside began to flood, branches and loose rocks tumbling down, dragged by gravity and the forceful surge of rain as it gathered into a torrent pulling anything that would join it deeper into the valley and on towards the town below.

People in neighbouring villages stopped and witnessed a black cloud, like an ink stain, cover and hide Henry's home as if it had never been anything but a terrific smudge in the distance.
Charlie screamed at his friends, but each one splintered from the direction their leader had taken and slipped on in vain, fighting centuries of soil determined to push them back towards the dragon's embrace.

Tripping over rocks loosened from the once firm banking, Kai's ankle snapped and he howled in horror at the pain and the sight of his bones pushing the skin out in a bloody bubble. He fell as though pulled back and thrust down by an unforgiving bully's blow and as he looked up one last time the sharp beak of the stone dragon's claw sent Kai's face back into a furious mess of gurgling mud and leafy remains.

Pushing Kai back into the ground the dragon surged on at a severe pace; the great stony bulk moved without any regard for impediment, fixing only the boys in its sight, and, all the while, the voice of the dragon called out to Henry: 'Hold on'.

The boys carried on up the valley's steep sided banking, fighting the ground below them as it turned to nothing under the beating of the rain.
In the village the river swelled up and spread out onto the car park, then next the road before opening doors into unsuspecting homes, sucking out the contents and spilling them out into the path of cars and pedestrians as they fled the flood tearing its way through the quiet town.

 *

 Henry's aunt stood above the town's harbour as branches, trees and cars hurtled down the swollen line of the river. A helicopter moved ponderously in the air above winching people away from the danger of their roof tops and into the tin inners. She saw her car buckle under a fresh shoulder-thrust the water was making from the side streets before it scraped and tore at the cobbles below and disappeared like a penny's wish, emerging again with a loud and desperate yelp as its windows gave way, shattering under the pressure.

At the valley's peak Jake and Jim struggled upwards, neither now distinct from the other, they looked like discarded rags, torn and useless; bizarre puppets under the pull and tug of a maniacal master. Charlie was all the time ahead of them, his face burnt with fear and dread and his fingers numb as they clawed their way onwards and upwards out and away from the beast at his back.

Henry's dragon planted its stony arms into the soft ground and raked back the earth encouraging the ground ahead of him to give way as the foundation it once rested on was tossed aside. Jake fell back as if he were standing on a duvet pulled from under him; his head snapped forward as his crown met the hard stone of the dragon's muzzle; he breathed in the thick mud below him, immobile. Choking and vomiting, he was lifted into the air, his collar neatly held in the stone jaw. The dragon tipped back its head, presenting Jake to the sky above and under the rain's clean shower the mud streaked away from his face. With one violent twitch his neck cracked and the dragon spat him to the floor; his body rolled away, unfaltering, joining the loose detritus as it hurried to the town below.

Charlie, now at the valley's rim, looked back at the scene below him. He saw his friend's body hurtle out of sight. He saw the impossible picture of the stone dragon as it pawed at the ground; Henry on its back. Henry's eyes searched upward as the last friend Charlie would ever see slipped and dropped from view emerging again under the back foot of the dragon. The creature sent Jim's body away without even a look back, like a bull scraping and cleaving the ground with its hoof, its stare and that of Henry's, pinned solely to Charlie.

Charlie now stood in the lower field of Home Farm. He dashed up into the clearing away from the clouds that had filled the valley. Behind him the town was nothing but wave upon wave of black, slate grey cloud sloshing from side to side. His legs burned and his arms swung back and forth at his side, but they were numbed and deadened and each step he slowed and floundered, breathing harder and harder.

Stumbling forward, he planted his palms in the ground and sank, shivering. He tried to crawl as best he could away and out of sight toward the hedging that ringed the field, but he couldn't. His body was arrested by the cold bite of the dragon's jaws, then dropped and nudged forwards, but all Charlie could do was roll like a rag doll that held the imagined potential of motion and movement. 

Chapter Seven

Shop fronts were swept clean and the car park emptied; trailers, caravans, trees, branches and stones continued to plunge down into the depths of the town as if fleeing some terrible punishment before finding shelter and deep solace in the depths beyond the harbour wall.

Henry's aunt saw her red settee carried out, several others pointed and cried out as once valued and recognisable belongings were sent out to sea.

There seemed to be no end to the water that brought the valley into the town and it continued to arc over the bridge in folds and creases, interrupted by intermittent debris and accompanied by shocked gasps.

Firemen began to take names of those standing by looking at the town that was once so familiar, praying the rain would cease, the water would recede, praying for peace again.
Henry slid from his dragon's back, his hand held at its side, reluctant to let go. But he did, he stepped over to Charlie. The last torturing devil; the others washed away.  He could see his chest rise and fall, saw the shake and quiver of his body. Aware of Henry's step Charlie scrambled away, but the long hard claw dragged him back by his heel, flipping him on his back at the same time. Charlie wouldn't look at Henry, his face turned away each time Henry looked into him. Eventually Henry knelt at his side and took his face in his hands, his palms resting against Charlie's cheeks, forcing him to see him.

'My father didn't like photographs, Charlie.'

A stuttered 'so', spat from Charlie's lips.

'I only ever had that one photograph Charlie. The one you took.'

Henry didn't expect a reply; he couldn't imagine what Charlie might say or whether he would understand even.

Charlie tried to shake free of Henry's grasp, but Henry held on.

'You don't understand?' Henry almost felt sorry for him, that he couldn't understand the photo was his one solid memory of his father, that it was proof, evidence that he had even had a father rather than the aunt he now lived with; his one memory that once everything had been better and that he had felt safe. Loved.

Charlie spat it again, this time he didn't stutter: 'So!'

Henry let go; standing, he thumbed the red marks at his wrist and turned away.

The stone dragon picked Charlie up delicately, holding him only by the skin of his sodden shirt.

He held him up to the sky as he had done with Jake. The mud and tears stuck to Charlie though, the rain was in the valley and here they were above it.

Henry turned and watched as Charlie was forced down deep into the ground face first; he watched as his arms began to lose their motion and as his scream, that became a gargle, finally gave out entirely, leaving just the sound of his body as it moved between stony chippings and loose earth.

Finally the stone dragon pulled him clear and with one mighty swing, flung Charlie down into the valley; his body sunk into the clouds and gradually joined broken branches still slipping and sliding away, battering Charlie's body still further until it moved without any resistance from skeletal stiffness.

*

The rains ended and gave way to the sun's sight; the sun looked on to a bruised and broken town with as much awe as the homeless residents. After a few hours the boys were found to be missing and after five days their bodies were found in the backwash of the flood.

Henry's dragon resumed its rest in the clearing, its last words to him: 'Hold on'.

It sighed as it spoke and Henry's hand rested on its maw and he looked into its eyes and said goodbye. It was returning to the earth, to its rest.

Henry held on and when he was a man, with his own son, he took him to the stone bones of the dragon. His son rode on its back and he shouted: Hold on.