Kumiko and the Dragon Read online

  Kumiko

  and the

  Dragon

  BRIONY STEWART was born in Western Australia in 1984, she spent her childhood watching cartoons and imagining the possibility of developing a superpower. After completing a double degree in Creative Writing and Art in 2005, she began putting her imagination to use as a freelance writer and illustrator. She currently lives and works in Perth, and still enjoys watching cartoons – preferably with chocolate. This is her first book.

  Contents

  Cover

  Author Bio

  Title Page

  Dedication Page

  Chapter one

  Chapter two

  Chapter three

  Chapter four

  Chapter five

  Chapter six

  Chapter seven

  Imprint Page

  FOR MY TWO GRANDMOTHERS

  KIRSTY AND KUMIKO

  WITH LOVE.

  chapter one

  My Obasaan told me the story of the dragon that used to visit her at night. A small white one, she said, head as big as a dog, long and snake-like, but with the snout of a pig. She said that instead of scales it had soft fur, and it used to lace about her window at night, like a kite fluttering in the breeze.

  ‘It was always gone by the morning,’ she said, ‘but it would return again at night, every night, until I turned fifteen. Then I grew bored with it. I thought it was pesky. I opened my window and cried “Shoo!” and it did what I said. I never saw it again.’

  I listen to my Obasaan, my heart beating furiously. If only it was that easy to get rid of a monster. If only I were that brave! As I sit at her feet I want to tell her that I understand, I want her to put her old arms around me and tell me what to do. But I know I cannot say a thing.

  Mother sends me to bed after a shared pot of tea with Obasaan. I plead with her, as I often do, to let me stay up later or to let me sleep in her bed.

  ‘No, no, Kumiko,’ Mother growls. ‘Stop being silly. You are perfectly safe in your own bed. You are almost nine years old!’

  Mother doesn’t care! I think to myself.

  After I wash my feet, I climb the stairs to my bedroom. Each step makes my heart beat a little more quickly and I wish so much to not be afraid. The darkness of my bedroom is getting closer. I am standing in front of my bedroom door ...

  This room has not always been my bedroom. I moved into it this year when my little sister, Arisu, was born. She got my old room downstairs next to Mother and Father’s room. I like that room better.

  I leave the door open as I jump under the covers of my bed.

  My bedroom is dark and quiet. My toys are stacked neatly and the kitchen light shines safely up the stairs. The room is not really such a terrible room, apart from the windows. The windows are what make it so awful. I pull the covers up to my nose.

  It doesn’t take long.

  You would think that I would be used to it by now, but I am not. The room starts to become breezy, though the windows are tightly shut. The bedroom door is blown closed, and then I hear the deep sound of wind being moved aside like waves. In my old bedroom downstairs I used to hear this same noise at night-time as I settled into sleep. I used to tell myself it was the trees outside rubbing together in the wind. This was easy to believe because that room had shutters on the windows and you couldn’t see what was really outside.

  It always starts like an ink blot on a piece of dark blue paper. Outside there is a dark moving shape that spreads across the sky, until you see wings flapping as big as the sails of a boat, a head big enough to swallow an ox. The shape glimmers with thick scales like slices of jade and its eyes flash yellow like a prowling cat.

  The dragon lands outside my window. It perches nimbly on the tiled roof and I press myself more tightly into the corner of my bed. The dragon looks at me through the windows, and snorts with a hiss of smoke.

  Once the dragon spoke to me. He growled like the belly of a volcano: ‘Tell no one of me, Kumiko.’ It was the most frightening moment of my life. The dragon has not said anything else to me, but I dare not disobey him. From that one time I saw him speak, I know his teeth are sharper than the sword of any samurai.

  During the day I wonder often how the dragon knows my name, but each night I can think only that he may want to eat me. I watch him until my eyes hurt with sleepiness and my blood stomps around my ears, as he quietly shifts about the roof, claws clicking, tail swaying.

  Every morning I wake up not knowing how I could possibly have got to sleep, and, like in my Obasaan’s story, the dragon has disappeared.

  I know I cannot go on like this. What if the dragon haunts me forever? But I wouldn’t dare to speak to the dragon, to approach him, to open the window. I know for sure that I cannot simply tell my dragon to ‘Shoo!’

  And then, like a summer breeze through a cherry tree, a sweet thought comes to me, an idea. It is the only thing I can think of, but it soon grows bitter in my throat. It is too terrifying, too daring! If I were to write a note to the dragon during the daytime and stick it onto my window, could he read it? Would it make him angry? But if he really wanted to eat me, surely he would have done it by now.

  Yes, I think with a gulp, it is the only way. Tomorrow I will write a letter to the dragon.

  chapter two

  It is morning and the sun is shining off the blue tiles on our roof. The dragon has gone. I slowly creep towards the window, right up to the glass, and then I look out, like I do, just to make sure. There is nothing but the misty morning outside.

  There is a terrible feeling in my stomach, like taiko drums beating a wild dance. What can I possibly write to a ferocious dragon?

  I think about this as I go down the stairs. I ponder it over breakfast. I consider it fully while doing my chores. And when I am supposed to be doing my schoolwork all that fills my head is: Oh, I am to be eaten for sure!

  When I get home from school, Mother is with Arisu in the kitchen.

  ‘Hello!’ I say, then hurry to sit down.

  Mother frowns. ‘What is wrong with you, Kumiko? You look very pale. Are you feeling ill?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Perhaps you should go to your room and lie down?’

  ‘No!’ I shout, almost tipping a bowl of loquats. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Alright,’ says Mother, still frowning as she returns to cutting up fish.

  Beyond the kitchen window the sky is turning the colour of melons in summer, or perhaps it is the horrible orange fire of dragons getting closer. I look at the sky and at my school bag under the table in turn. I have to do it now or I may never bring myself to do it. Pulling my schoolbook from my bag, I neatly tear out a page. The words form themselves in black across the paper:

  To the honourable dragon

  No sitting on this roof please

  It is firm but polite, and straight to the point but not too hurried. Surely this is the best I can do.

  When Mother turns to the stove and throws the fish into a pan, I dig my fingers into the sticky rice, to make my letter sticky. I run out of the kitchen and creep up the stairs. As the first star appears in the sky, I press the letter onto my bedroom window.

  Back in the kitchen, Mother sees me staring sadly at sticky hands.

  ‘Kumiko?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Go and wash those before dinner, please.’

  By the time dinner is finished, the sky has been emptied of the sun, and the moon is hanging feebly like a paper lantern in the dark. Mother decides it is time for bed. My feet decide they will not move off the tatami floor.

  ‘I cannot go to bed, Mother,’ I tell her with tears in my eyes.

  Mother sits beside me, her expression a mixture of anger and confusi
on.

  ‘Kumiko, why must there always be something? I remember when you were afraid of dogs, afraid of your teacher Mr Takahashi, and afraid of mice! Mice, of all things! And now you are afraid of the dark. This is silly. I want you to go to bed without another word. Maybe it won’t be today, maybe it won’t be tomorrow, but one day you will realise that there is nothing in your room to be afraid of.’

  I want to tell Mother that she is wrong. I want her to be terrified of my dragon too, but I know she will think I am making up stories. I just look at her and hope that she is terribly sad and sorry when I have been eaten by a dragon.

  I do not say goodnight to Mother or even give her a hug. I just go up to my room as she told me to, without another word.

  I tread slowly, letting my feet feel for the last time the loveliness of each wooden step.

  In my room I stand for a moment looking at the letter I’d written. I could remove it, I think. I could just take it off right now! But as much as I long to do such a thing, I know that there is nothing worse than being afraid forever.

  The dragon appears past the paper moon, coming directly towards my window.

  I jump into bed just before he lands, and even though I desperately want to hide I can’t help but watch. He lands in silence with his tail lashing the air like a ribbon. He snorts. He turns. He looks right at my letter!

  Smoke rises out of his nostrils like incense. He seems to be reading.

  He looks at me. Oh no!

  He reads the letter again.

  Just as I have been dreading, he opens his mouth. I see knife rows of teeth before he suddenly blows fire at my letter, which shrivels up like dry tea-leaves and blows away in the wind. He must be offended.

  Still looking at me, the dragon opens his mouth again, and then he speaks, the sound of stones rolling: ‘You wrote this?’

  I considered shaking my head, but a nod comes out instead.

  ‘You are afraid of me?’

  A silly question, I think, sweating. Who would not be afraid of a dragon? I make no response.

  ‘You should not be afraid of me,’ he says. ‘Don’t you know why I am here?’

  I relax my grip on the bedsheets a little and shake my head. He does not seem to be angry. He scratches his head, as if confused.

  ‘You really do not know why I have been sitting here outside your window every night since you were born?’

  I shake my head again. I had not known it had been that long, but this is not a happy thought.

  ‘Come here,’ says the dragon. He steps back from the window a little. ‘I won’t hurt you.’

  Inside, my heart is jumping about, like a fish that has just been caught. Something strange is happening. The dragon seems to think I should know why he is sitting out there on the roof. Perhaps it is a trick to get me closer to his sharp teeth. Perhaps he will eat me after all. But strangely I do not think so. There is a knot in my belly but it hasn’t come undone. His eyes do not seem to be lying to me.

  I lower the bedcovers and step with shaking legs towards the window, without taking my eyes off it for a second. The window latch is cold but I keep my fingers there for a long time, looking at the dragon, the dragon looking at me. I slide the latch open.

  Behind me, the curtains rush to meet the wind outside. They flap around my face as I lower myself onto the roof.

  ‘Now,’ says the dragon quietly, ‘carefully look down and tell me what you see.’

  I hold onto one of the flapping curtains and edge across the tiles. I look down like the dragon says and ... I gasp so deeply that I almost lose my balance on the roof. What does this mean?

  Down below, near the closed shutters of Arisu’s bedroom, is another dragon! It is a fat blue one, smooth and round like a great balloon. He looks sleepy, as he wheezes smoke out of his fat nose. He does not look as terrifying as my dragon, but still, there are two dragons at my house, two of them! And I’ve been spending my time being afraid of only one.

  I hurry back inside my room and, with all the strength I have before I cry, I say to the dragon, ‘Why are you here?’

  He smiles at me and he winks at me, and then he says, ‘To look after you and Arisu. We are your guardian dragons.’

  chapter three

  Guardian dragons? I think to myself. How can this be? I’ve never heard of a guardian dragon before. Then I think of my Obasaan, and the dragon that used to visit her at night. Mother had always told me it was a made-up story, that my Obasaan was just filling my head with nonsense. Even when I believed Obasaan and believed in dragons, I never thought that our two situations might be one and the same. Now there are so many questions filling my head it’s like I’m stuck inside a well on a rainy day! Why do I have a guardian dragon? Why was I never told? Why does Mother not believe me? And, most of all ... What could possibly be so bad that I would need a dragon to protect me?

  ‘Shhhh ...’ the dragon whispers. ‘So many questions all at once. How do you expect to hear an answer?’

  Can the dragon hear me thinking?

  ‘A little,’ he says at once. ‘I hear curiosity.’ He laughs. ‘But never have I heard so much from something so small!’

  I hug my arms to my chest, determined to keep all my thoughts inside.

  The dragon peers downwards and calls out, ‘Otto-wan!’

  With a thump, the round blue dragon jumps up from the ground like a bouncing ball and lands beside my dragon on the roof.

  Now both dragons sit in front of me with wide-eyed expressions, much like two chickens that have just laid eggs. Only these two are a hundred times larger and one thousand times more foreboding than any chicken.

  ‘Otto-wan, we are misunderstood,’ says my dragon to the other. ‘Kumiko does not know why we are here at all!’

  The blue dragon shakes his round head. ‘Is this true, Tomodo?’ His voice is as soft and low as a song.

  ‘Yes, it is! And Farelli’s to blame, that arrogant little dragon. He started this, years ago, disappearing just because someone was rude enough to tell him to “Shoo!‘ Of course, his son, Bertolli, performs the tasks of a guardian dragon, but he has been invisible for all of Kumiko’s mother’s life!’

  ‘And?’ says Otto-wan.

  ‘And,’ says my dragon, ‘now her family does not know why we are here and the story has been lost. How careless this has been!’

  Otto-wan wheezes and smiles sleepily. ‘No, Tomodo, it is not lost. Little Kumiko is right here, isn’t she?’

  The two dragons turn and look at me standing by the edge of my window. I am like a mouse among humans.

  Otto-wan nods at Tomodo, winks, and then rolls his giant body off the roof, back onto the ground with a yawn, as my dragon, Tomodo, leans in to me.

  ‘If you can trust me, Kumiko, I will show you who you are and why you are so precious.’ He lies flat against the tiles and says simply, ‘Come with me.’

  Outside it seems that time does not pass. No breeze blows and no birds stir. Only my feet move, as I cross the roof in step with the beating of my heart, and with the warm breath of the dragon on my feet. Slowly I reach my hand out and onto the dragon’s nose. Soft bristles push up around my fingers, like moss with whiskers. The bristles twitch as my hand moves over them. For a moment I pause and listen to my mother’s voice in my head: ‘Don’t go, Kumiko. You’ll be killed!’

  ‘She’ll be sorry she didn’t listen to me,’ I say to myself as my bare legs stretch over leathery scales. Feeling somewhat safer behind the dragon’s teeth than in front of them, I flatten my whole body over his back and press tightly. With one quick breath and a stomach-turning jerk we leap off the roof and rush up towards the stars.

  chapter four

  I have never been on anything in my life that moved so quickly. Tomodo and I speed across the land like we are made of the wind itself, slipping between the mountains and making holes in the clouds. It is at once the most wonderful and the most terrifying thing I have ever done. I hold on to Tomodo so tightly my hands hurt. But I hardly
notice this because, looking down, I see we are flying over places I have never seen before, and I know I have never been so far away from home. Below us, our moonlit shadow races over rice fields, and in the distance I see only black, as though the land is coming to an end. Tomodo flies more slowly and I see that we are near the ocean. Many small houses crowd near the water and all around them fishing boats sway up and down. We land on a roof with green tiles.

  Shaking, I slide off Tomodo and squat beside him, wondering why he has brought me to this place.

  ‘I have brought you here, Kumiko, because this is where your story begins,’ says Tomodo, answering my curiosity.

  He looks around at the boats, he looks at the water and the stars, and then he says to me: ‘A dragon should never be underestimated. Though some may be small, no bigger than mice, they could be the most powerful dragons of all. Every dragon is born with different abilities. For instance, I have the gift of speed and I can hear the curiosity of all creatures. Some dragons are wise, others breathe fire or ice, others sing songs that can make the wind turn back in fear or the sun brighten with joy.’

  The pounding of my heart has begun to subside.

  Tomodo gives me a small smile. ‘Now that you know this, I can tell you a story that happened a long time ago, a story I know well. And yes,’ he says with a wink, ‘you will see why soon.’

  I wrap my hands around my knees, curious to hear Tomodo’s story.

  ‘It begins in a kingdom that existed in the sky, a kingdom of dragons, a palace in the clouds. In this palace lived a dragon king who was terribly important because in his blood lay the most powerful magic that dragons knew, the magic that kept all dragons alive. If the dragon king were to die, then so would every dragon that existed in the world.’

  ‘I think I’ve heard this story before,’ I say. ‘My Obasaan told me when I was very young. The king of dragons had two sons.’