Chandi and the Golden Wheatstalk Read online

of a Welsh mountain with a heartbroken dragoness and a dying dragon with an arrow in his head. For once, even magical Chandi was at a loss as to what to do.

  "Er, Ms Dragon? I'm sorry – but what makes you think I can help?"

  "You're magical! You can talk to animals – even mythical ones. And you're a brain surgeon."

  Chandi smiled sadly. "Aah, I'm sorry, I don't know where you heard that – but I'm not a brain surgeon yet. That's just my dream. I'm still just a school-girl and... oh, no! Please don't start that wailing again. I suppose I could try...I don't suppose there's anyone else you can ask is there?"

  Ms Dragon shook her head vigorously sending Tabascoey tears flying so forcefully that one of them nearly thwacked Chandi off her feet. She sighed.

  "I'll see what I can do. But you're going to have to help me."

  Ms Dragon's golden eyes lit up – it reminded Chandi of the Christmas lights being switched on in a skyscraper.

  "Right – this is what I'll need..."

  Ms Dragon lowered her head down to Chandi's level and Chandi's instructions echoed back to her from the cathedral-sized ear.

  As Ms Dragon flew away to fetch what Chandi needed, Chandi sat down beside the golden arrow and gently stroked the ground... oh, er... Mr Dragon's head. She started humming a soothing, healing song that the Queen of the Fairies had taught her once (but that's another story).

  By the time she saw the horizon fill with the shape of Ms Dragon again, the moon was high in the sky. It's light glinted off her vast wings, and twinkled off her scales. From her claws there hung a large, white bundle. It was squirming a little.

  As Ms Dragon set it down on the mountain top – gently, so as not to hurt Mr Dragon – the first thing to emerge was a stream of sparkling coloured light, filled with furious, coughing fairies. They came at Chandi blinking on and off aggressively but she just laughed and said "Silly fairies, did Ms Dragon wake you up from your beauty sleep? Well, no time for that now – we've got work to do." She pointed to the arrow, the boulder eyelid, the weak whisps of smoke coming from the rocky nostrils... and they understood. They joined hands around the arrow and picked up the healing humming tune again.

  Next out of the bundle was Chandi's Grandma, blinking slighty in the darkness and clutching two big demijohns full of some dark liquid.

  Then came Chandi's Dad's van. And then Chandi's Dad stepped out of it carrying his tool box and looking around him in a slightly confused way. Like Grandma, Dad was walking in a slow, robotic way – they were both sleepwalking.

  Then came Chandi's other aunty, Joya, carrying her trusty chainsaw.

  They all lined up in front of Chandi, awaiting their instructions.

  "Well done, Ms Dragon. Lucky your smoky breath can put people into a trance and make them do what you say. Are you sure they won't remember anything in the morning?"

  Ms Dragon nodded proudly.

  "But what did you carry them in? I can't imagine a bag big enough for Daddy's van and all those people and fairies..."

  Ms Dragon's glance dropped a little shamefully. "Marquee" she mumbled. Oh dear, someone was going to get a nasty shock on their wedding morning tomorrow!

  "Right then. Let's get to work. Did you remember the book?"

  Ms Dragon nodded, opened her mouth and her tongue rolled towards Chandi like a very slimy blue train. On top of it lay a big yellow book – 'Brain Surgery for Dummies'. Trying not to grimace too obviously, Chandi picked up the slime covered book between two fingers and gingerly opened it.

  An hour later, she slammed it shut again. She had speed-read the entire book by the light of Ms Dragon's gleaming breath (Ms Dragon had been very careful to turn it down to the lowest temperature so as not to burn anyone. As well as giving enough light to read by, it also kept everyone warm on the chilly Dragon-mountaintop).

  "Ok, I think I've got it now. I've had to make a few calculations to work out how much of everything I need – I had to multiply the human dosages and dimensions by ten thousand to get the right Dragon equivalent. Now, Daddy, I want you to get your van and set up a plumbing system that will feed Grandma's sloe gin into Mr Dragon's mouth very, very slowly. Ordinary anaesthetic would work too fast for a dragon, it might kill him. Grandma, your delicious sloe gin is the perfect alternative – made from all natural ingredients, and just alcoholic enough to act as a dragon anaesthetic and antiseptic. Get ready to start pouring it slowly into Daddy's plumbing set-up. Joya, when I say "Go!", could you please start up your chain saw and cut all around this arrow so that I can see inside and try to fix the damage?"

  They all set to work, while Chandi supervised and Ms Dragon hovered anxiously nearby. At last, as the moon was nearing the horizon, they were ready. A funnel mounted on a tall platform was connected to network of pipes zig-zagging away across the mountain. It ended in a flat pipe wedged between Mr Dragon's picket-fence teeth. Grandma stood on a high stepladder – which was, in fact, Ms Dragon's knee – holding her huge sloe gin demijohns over the funnel, let it drip slowly in.

  "Go!" said Chandi. And the silence of the night was split by a spluttering roar as Joya started up her chain saw. The fairy ring around the arrow leapt up and the mountain gave a sudden shudder, making the plumbing contraption tremble dangerously. Grandma teetered on her dragon knee ladder. But once the sound settled into a steady hum, they all calmed down again.

  Chandi joined the fairies in humming the healing tune as Joya lowered the chainsaw towards Mr Dragon's head. Ms Dragon couldn't bear to look and covered her eyes with a wing. Sparks flew up into the pitch black sky as the chainsaw made contact with the rock. She worked for hours, and then finally Chandi saw that a perfect, neat ring had been cut around the place where the arrow sprouted.

  She gestured to Joya who slumped down, exhausted, and was soon asleep beside Mr Dragon's gently smoking nostrils.

  Chandi beckoned urgently towards Dad, and he came running over with a huge hosepipe like firemen use, and washed the area all round the arrow with sloe gin. Then slowly, gently, she started to ease out the disc of rock holding the arrow.

  Black smoke boiled out of the opening... they all flinched away – it smelled foul, like the bottom of a pond that hadn't been cleaned in years "Two thousand years..." thought Chandi.

  After all the smoke had cleared, she worked away cleaning the area with handfuls of moss dipped in sloe gin. Then she reached into the hole and pulled up what looked like a huge, purple electricity cable that had almost been cut in two by the arrow. Faint sparks crackled across the gap between the two almost separate ends... and they were getting fainter.

  "Dad! Quick! You know what we need!" yelled Chandi.

  Quick as a flash, Dad had dived into his van and whipped out a roll of duct tape. Chandi put the two ends of the "cable" together and firmly bound them with the tape. She turned to the rock disc, snapped the end of the arrow off, and pulled it out of the hole, and then lowered the disc back into place so that the top of Mr Dragon's head was whole again. She made a little moss plug soaked in sloe gin and covered the arrow hole with it, holding it in place with an X made of duct tape.

  "Well, I think that's it. All we can do now is wait and hope for the best." Chandi dusted off her hands and snuggled up next to Daddy, Grandma and Joya who were all now fast asleep huddled around Mr Dragon's nostrils for warmth. The fairies didn't seem tired at all and started playing a game where they hovered over the nostrils and rode up and down on the thermal currents from the warm dragon breath.

  Ms Dragon couldn't sleep either, and spent the rest of the nights stroking Mr Dragon's head with the tip of her wing and planting soft, fiery kisses on his rocky cheeks.

  Chandi and co were woken rudely by the sound of a siren...or so they thought. They all leapt up and the fairies shot into the air like multi-coloured champagne corks (afterwards they tried to look like they weren't embarrassed at all and had meant to do it).

  A pillar of fiery smoke was shooting up from each of Mr Dragon's nostrils.

  "Quic
k everyone, get down the mountain before he wakes up!" But it was too late. The mountain heaved, the rocks lurched, the ground shook beneath their running feet. Pathways turned into huge rifts in the ground, and the side of the mountain was rearing up, up, into the sky. The ground was getting so steep that they could no longer keep their footing and all started tumbling over each other down what had become a sheer cliff wall. And worse still... the van was tumbling rapidly towards them!

  "We're all going to die!" yelled Chandi in an uncharacteristically panicky moment. But luckily, Ms Dragon heard the panic in her voice and it broke through her joy at seeing her husband stirring for the first time in two thousand years.

  Chandi, Dad, Grandma and Joya suddenly found themselves rolling into something that felt like a leathery trampoline – one of Ms Dragon's wings – and just before it landed on top of them, the van was plucked out of the air by a set of black claws. All of them were set gently down on the flat ground below the mountain.

  They were nearly knocked down again when a roaring wind started charging down from the rising mountain, but as they looked up, the mountain spread a pair of wings that made Ms Dragon's wingspan look like a bird's. A tail unfolded from the entire length of the Welsh valley, uprooting trees and toppling cottages as it rose into the sky.

  The moon and the stars were blotted out by epic quantities of