Syren

Chapter 23 Buckets

  S eptimus slept on, and the sun reached its midday zenith. Fascinated by sleep, the girl in green sat motionless on her rock, Watching. After some time the feeling of being Watched began to filter through even to Septimus's deep sleep, and he stirred. Quickly the girl got to her feet and slipped away.

  The heat was slowly warming Spit Fyre's chilled dragon blood, and as his circulation began to quicken, his tail started to throb with pain. The dragon let out a long, low groan, and instantly Septimus was awake and on his feet.

  "Spit Fyre, what is it?"

  As if in reply, Spit Fyre suddenly twisted around, and before Septimus could stop him, he had his tail in his mouth.

  "No! No, Spit Fyre. Stop, stop!"

  Septimus raced back to the tail. He grabbed hold of one of Spit Fyre's nose spines and pulled as hard as he could. "Spit Fyre, let go, let go!" he yelled as he struggled to wrench the dragon's curved fangs out of the carefully wrapped HeatCloaks, to no effect.

  "Spit Fyre," Septimus said sternly, "I command you to let go of your tail. Now! "

  Spit Fyre, who was not feeling quite his normal confrontational self that morning - and did not like the taste of his tail at all - let go. Much relieved, Septimus pushed the dragon's head away. "Spit Fyre, you must not bite your tail," he told him. He rewound the shredded HeatCloaks while the dragon regarded his bandaging attempts with a baleful eye. He finished knotting the cloaks together, looked up and met Spit Fyre's stare.

  "Don't even think about it, Spit Fyre," he said. "You must leave your bandage alone. Your tail will never get better if you keep biting it. Come on, move your head this way. Come on. " Septimus grabbed hold of the large spike on the top of Spit Fyre's head and pulled him away from his tail. It took ten minutes of persuasion, pushing and shoving to get the dragon's head to a safe distance from his tail once more.

  "Good boy, Spit Fyre," said Septimus, crouching down beside him. "I know it hurts, but it will get better soon. I promise. " He fetched the WaterGnome and poured a long stream of water into Spit Fyre's mouth. "Go to sleep now, Spit Fyre," Septimus told him and, to his surprise, Spit Fyre obediently closed his eyes. Septimus felt hot and sticky after his exertions with Spit Fyre's tail. The sea looked cool and inviting and he decided to dip his toes in the water. He sat down on the edge of Spit Fyre's rock and, unaware that Spit Fyre had opened one eye and was regarding him with some interest, he undid his laces, pulled off his boots and thick socks and wiggled his toes in the warm sand. Immediately Septimus felt a wonderful feeling of freedom. He walked slowly down the gently shelving beach toward the water and across the line of firm wet sand left by the retreating tide. He stood at the edge of the sea, watching his feet sink a little into the sand as he waited for the next tiny wave to meet his toes. When it did, Septimus was surprised at how cold the water felt. He waited for the next wavelet and, as he breathed in the clean salt air, he felt, for a fleeting moment, indescribably happy. There was a sudden flash of movement behind him.

  Septimus spun around.

  "No, Spit Fyre!" he yelled. The dragon had his tail firmly clamped in his jaws once more and this time he was chewing. Septimus raced back across the sand, leaped onto the rock and proceeded to drag the dragon away from his tail.

  "You are a bad dragon, Spit Fyre," Septimus told him sternly as he finally managed to pull the dragon's jaws off the now-shredded bandage. "You must not bite your tail. If you do, it won't get better, and then. . . " Septimus was about to say, "and then we'll be stuck here forever," but he stopped. He remembered something Aunt Zelda used to say - that, once spoken, things come true more easily - and he changed it lamely to, "and then you'll be sorry. "

  Spit Fyre didn't look like he was about to be sorry for anything. He looked, thought Septimus, extremely grumpy. Ignoring his dragon's bad-tempered stare, Septimus bound up what was left of the tattered HeatCloaks and stood on guard while he tried to figure out what to do. He wished that Beetle and Jenna would come back; he could do with some help - and some company. But there was no sign of them. He had to do something about Spit Fyre biting his tail, and he had to do it now - he didn't think the tail would survive many more attacks like the last one. He maneuvered Spit Fyre's head away from his tail once again, and then, keeping a firm hand on Spit Fyre's nose, he sat down and began to think.

  Septimus remembered an incident with Beetle's mother's cat some months earlier. The cat - an aggressive creature that Beetle had never taken to - had also had trouble with its tail after a vicious fight. Beetle's mother had lovingly bound up the tail, only for the cat to do exactly what Spit Fyre had done - over and over again. Mrs. Beetle had had more patience than Septimus and had sat with the cat for three days and nights before Beetle insisted she get some sleep and promised that he would watch the cat. Beetle, however, was not as devoted as his mother. He cut out the bottom of an old toy bucket and stuck the bucket over the cat's head so that the creature had to wear it in the manner of a bizarre necklace. But the bucket had solved the problem beautifully - the cat could no longer attack the bandages around its tail, as it was unable to reach its head past the sides of the bucket. Mrs. Beetle was horrified when she awoke and saw her beloved cat with a bucket on its head, but even she had to admit that Beetle's idea worked well. She had spent the following weeks apologizing to the cat while the cat studiously ignored her. But the tail healed, the bucket came off and the cat eventually stopped sulking. Septimus thought that what worked for a grumpy cat was likely to work for an equally grumpy dragon - but where was he going to find a giant bucket?

  Septimus decided he would just have to make his own bucket. He took a leather cup from Marcia's saddlebag, cut out the bottom and also cut along the seam that ran up the side of it. Then, telling Spit Fyre very firmly that he was not to move an inch or there will be big trouble, he laid the small, almost crescent-shaped strip of leather on the sand and performed seven Enlarging Spells - allowing the leather to grow slowly and avoiding the risk of collapse, which can so often happen with an over-enthusiastic Enlarging Spell. Eventually he had a piece of leather about ten feet long and four feet wide. Now came the hard part. Septimus approached Spit Fyre, dragging the Enlarged sheet of leather across the sand; Spit Fyre lifted his head and eyed him suspiciously. Septimus caught the dragon's gaze and held it, then very formally he said, "Spit Fyre, as your Imprintor, I hereby command you to stay still. " The dragon looked surprised but, to Septimus's amazement, obeyed. Septimus was not sure how long the dragon's obedience would last, so he quickly set to work. He wrapped the unwieldy piece of leather around the dragon's head and Sealed it along the line where he had cut it a few minutes earlier. When his Imprintor at last released him from his command and stepped back to view his handiwork, Spit Fyre was wearing what looked like an enormous leather bucket on his head - and an extremely irritated expression.

  As Septimus stooding watching Spit Fyre, he became aware that he himself was being Watched.

  "Septimus. "

  He spun around. There was no one there.

  "Septimus. . . Septimus. "

  The hairs on the back of Septimus's neck rose. This was the voice he had heard calling to him when he had flown out to the Trading Post.

  Septimus stood beside his dragon for protection. Keeping his back to Spit Fyre, he turned slowly in a circle and scanned the rocks, the beach, the empty sea, the sand dunes, the rocky scrub grass behind the dunes and the hill beyond - but he saw nothing. He repeated the circle once more, using the old Young Army technique of detecting movement by looking ahead but paying attention to what was at the edge of his field of vision; and then - there it was. A figure. . . two figures. . . walking across the scrub grass behind the dunes.

  "Jenna! Beetle!" Septimus called out. An immense feeling of being released from something came over him, and he ran up the dunes to meet them.

  "Hey, Sep," said Jenna as she and Beetle scrambled down the last dune toward him.

  "You okay?"

>   "Yep. " Septimus grinned. "I am now. You two have a good time?"

  "Lovely. It's such a beautiful place here and - hey, what's that on Spit Fyre's head?"

  "It's a cat bucket," said Beetle. "That right, Sep?"

  Septimus grinned. It was so good to have Jenna and Beetle back. There was no denying it - the island was a creepy place to be on your own. That afternoon, Septimus made a hideout.

  The feeling of being Watched had unsettled him, and Septimus felt himself slipping into his Young Army way of thinking. The way he was beginning to see it, they were trapped in a strange place with unknown, maybe even invisible, dangers, and they needed to act accordingly. This meant having somewhere safe to spend the nights. Using the contents of Marcia's Young Army Officer Cadet Hostile Territory Survival Pack, and with rather reluctant help from Jenna and Beetle - who liked sleeping on the beach and didn't understand what he was bothering about - Septimus constructed a hideout in the dunes. He chose a spot overlooking the bay but near enough to Spit Fyre to keep an eye on him.

  He and Beetle took turns digging a deep hole with sloping sides and strengthened it with driftwood to avoid any danger of collapse. Septimus then pushed Marcia's set of bendy telescopic poles deep into the sand around the hole and covered them with a roll of lightweight Camouflage canvas, which he found wedged at the bottom of the bag and which blended into the dune so well that Beetle nearly stepped on it and fell in. Septimus then covered the top of the canvas with a thick layer of grass pulled from the dunes, because that was how they had always done it in the Young Army, and it felt wrong not to. He stood back to admire his handiwork. He was pleased - he had constructed a classic Young Army hideout.

  The inside of the hideout was surprisingly spacious. They lined it with more long, coarse grass and placed the opened-up saddlebags on top as a rug. Jenna was won over - she pronounced it "really cozy. "

  From the outside, the entrance was hardly visible. It was no more than a narrow slit that looked out through the dip between two dunes to the sea beyond. Septimus was pretty sure that, once it too was covered with grass, no one would ever guess they were there.

  That evening they sat on the beach and cooked fish.

  The Young Army Officer Cadet Hostile Territory Survival Pack did, of course, include fishing line, hooks and dried bait, which Marcia had naturally remembered. And as the evening tide came in over the warm sand, bringing a shoal of black and silver fish with it, Beetle had sat on a rock and caught six in quick succession. Fish held high, he had waded back triumphant and worked with Jenna to make a driftwood fire on the beach.

  They cooked the fish in the approved Sam Heap style, by threading them onto wet sticks and holding them over the glowing embers. Marcia's StayFresh bread and dried fruit provided the rest of supper, and the WaterGnome fueled so many FizzFroots that they lost count.

  They sat late into the night, chewing Banana Bears and Rhubarb Lumps, and watched the sea as it began once again to retreat, leaving the sand shining in the moonlight. Far across the bay they saw the long line of dark rocks that led to a lone rock standing tall like a pillar, which Jenna named the Pinnacle. To their right, past Spit Fyre's rocks, they saw the rocky summit of a tiny island at the end of the spit, which Jenna declined to name, as she had an odd feeling that the island knew its own name and would not take well to being given another. The island was, in fact, called Star Island. But for much of the time they looked neither right nor left but gazed straight ahead to the distant lights of the lighthouse, the lights that had drawn them to the island and saved them. They talked about the little man at the top of the lighthouse and wondered who he was and how he had gotten there. And then, much later, they squeezed into the hideout and fell fast asleep.

  Sometime later, in the early hours of the morning, the thin shadowy figure of a girl in green wandered back down the hill and stood over the hideout Listening to the sounds of sleep.

  Septimus stirred. In his dreams someone was calling to him; he dreamed that he put a bucket on his head and heard no more.