Dragon Bedtime Stories — Personalised for Your Household

Mara was pulling up carrots in her garden when she heard a sound like a tiny sneeze.

She looked down. Sitting in the dirt between two carrot tops was the smallest dragon she had ever seen — which was saying something, because she had never seen a dragon at all. It was no bigger than a teacup. Its scales were the colour of a fresh leaf, bright emerald green, and it had golden eyes no larger than two apple seeds.

It sneezed again.

"Bless you," said Mara, because it seemed like the right thing to say.

The dragon looked up at her. "Thank you," it said, in a voice like a very small bell. "I am Pip, and I am quite lost."

Mara crouched down slowly so as not to frighten it. "Lost from where?"

"From the train," said Pip. "The train that goes between seasons. My mother rides it every year to bring spring to cold places. I fell off somewhere near autumn and now I cannot find the station."

Mara had not known there was a station. But she had sometimes noticed, at the bottom of the lane, a narrow door set into an old stone wall, painted the colour of rust.

"I think," she said carefully, "I might know where that is."

She held out her hand. Pip stepped onto her palm, delicate as a moth, and curled its tail neatly around her thumb.

They walked to the end of the lane together. The rust-coloured door was there, just as Mara remembered. When she pushed it open, warm air rushed through — golden and smelling of bonfires and apples, which was strange, because on Mara's side of the door it was a cool spring morning.

Beyond the door sat a train. It was long and green, with windows full of moving light — amber through one, pale blue through another, blinding white through a third. A conductor in a coat the colour of bark stood on the platform.

"One passenger returning," the conductor said, nodding at Pip.

Pip lifted its head and sniffed the air. Then it made a sound Mara had not heard before — a low, humming purr, like a kettle just beginning to warm. "She is on the train," Pip said. "I can smell her. She smells like warm rain."

Pip stepped off Mara's palm and onto the platform. Then it paused and looked back.

"You were very kind," it said. "I hope your carrots grow large."

Mara smiled. "I hope your mother isn't too worried."

Pip's golden eyes went soft. Then it turned and trotted up the steps of the green carriage and disappeared inside.

The door in the wall swung shut on its own, slowly and without a sound.

Mara stood in the lane for a moment. The spring morning was exactly as she had left it — cool and bright, the smell of damp soil on her hands. She looked down at her palm, where a tiny scorch mark, no wider than a fingernail, glowed faintly like a last ember.

She closed her fingers around it and walked home.

High up in the mountain pass, where the cold wind blew all day, travellers would stop and leave small carved stones. Some stones were round and smooth. Some had little fish scratched on them, or stars, or just a wavy line. Nobody knew who had carved them first. But everyone kept doing it, because the stones made the pass feel friendly.

A boy named Crispin lived at the top of the pass. His house was made of grey stone, and his garden was full of flat rocks and tough little flowers. Every day he walked out to look at the carved stones the travellers left behind.

One morning, Crispin found something different. Tucked behind the biggest stone was a dragon. A very small dragon. She was about the size of a cat, green as a new leaf, with golden spots on her wings. She was sitting very still, hoping he wouldn't notice her.

"Hello," said Crispin.

The little dragon looked at her feet. Her name was Essie, but she didn't say so yet.

"Can't you fly home?" Crispin asked.

Essie shook her head. She felt a little embarrassed. All the other dragons in her family could fly. She couldn't. Not even a little bit.

Crispin sat down on a flat rock. He didn't say anything unkind. He just said, "Well, you can stay in my garden, if you like."

So she did.

Every morning, after breakfast, Crispin came outside. Essie was always there, waiting by the gate. They would choose a flat piece of ground, and Essie would try. She would stretch her wings out wide. She would flap them hard. She would hop from one foot to the other.

And then she would stop and look at the ground.

"Maybe try leaning forward a bit," Crispin would say, very quietly. He didn't clap or shout. He just watched and said small things.

The days went by. The travellers kept leaving their carved stones. The cold wind kept blowing. And every morning, Essie tried again.

Then one afternoon, Crispin held out both his hands, low to the ground, like a little step. Essie looked at his hands. She looked at the sky. She put one foot on his hands, flapped her wings as hard as she could, and —

Up.

Not very far. Just up over the garden wall and back down again, landing with a small thump on the other side. But up.

Crispin ran around the wall to find her. Essie was sitting in the grass, looking at her wings like she had never seen them before. She felt surprised, and warm, and very glad.

That evening, Crispin found a smooth round stone. He sat at the kitchen table and scratched a little dragon onto it with a nail. Then he carried it up to the pass and set it down with all the others.

The wind blew. The stones sat quiet in the last of the light. And somewhere above the pass, if you listened very hard, you might just hear the sound of small wings learning.

In the meadow at the edge of the village, the flowers hummed.

They hummed low and slow, the way a kettle hums when it forgets it is boiling. Clover and foxglove, moonbell and sweet-fern — all of them breathing music into the warm dark air.

Mira sat in the middle of the meadow with her shoes off and her toes in the grass, listening. She came here every evening when the village went quiet and the lamps winked out one by one.

That is when she heard it — not a hum, but a wingbeat. Soft. Enormous. Like a sail filling with wind.

He landed without a sound.

He was so big that his shadow covered the whole meadow. His scales were the colour of a stormy sea at twilight — deep blue-green and faintly glimmering. But along the edges of his great wings, the scales gave way to something softer. Feathers, pale as milk, that trembled in the breeze like the petals of the moonbell flowers below.

His name was Sorvel.

Mira had never seen Sorvel before. But she was not frightened. There was something about the way he folded his wings, slowly and carefully, so as not to flatten a single flower.

"Hello," she said.

Sorvel tilted his enormous head. One golden eye, large as a cartwheel, looked at her with great gentleness. Then he lowered his neck until his chin rested on the ground, and he waited.

Mira looked at his back. She looked at the feather-edged wings, folded and still. She took one careful step, then another, and climbed up between his shoulder blades, where the scales made a soft, warm hollow just the right size for a small girl.

Sorvel rose.

It did not feel like falling upward, the way Mira had always imagined flying would feel. It felt like being lifted by a careful pair of hands. The meadow shrank below her — a dark circle of softly humming colour. The village rooftops came into view, chimneys still trailing thin ribbons of smoke, every window dark and dreaming.

Up and up, until the air grew cool and bright.

And there was the moon.

She was large and round and the colour of warm cream, and she seemed pleased to have company. Mira felt sure the moon smiled, the way a friend smiles across a room — not a big smile, just a small, certain one.

Mira smiled back.

For a long time, she and Sorvel drifted through the quiet sky. Below them, the village slept. Above them, the stars kept still.

Then, slowly, Sorvel began to glide back down.

He landed in the meadow again, just as softly as before. The flowers were still humming. Mira slid from his back and stood in the grass, her heart full of something she did not have a word for yet.

"Goodbye," she said.

Sorvel looked at her with that golden eye. Then he looked up at the moon. Then he looked back at her, and he blinked — one slow, deliberate blink.

Mira thought about that blink all the way home.

Somehow, she did not think it meant goodbye at all.