Weaving in the Dark

Chapter One: Dragons! In the Valley! (thought you oughta know)

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. But they couldn’t stay away. We all know dragons are attracted to shiny things. They come for gold. For jewellery. For toys. And so they came to the Valley, to Hollywood in Los Angeles, for the shiniest thing of all… The Stars.

Celebrities! Actors! Singers! All of them were snatched up by dragons and taken to their secret horde. No one knew where, though many Dragonologists had their theories...

‘Theories are all well and good, Professor! But your theories won’t keep my wife safe! They’re after her! She’s the brightest Star of them all!’

‘You need to calm down, Ken. Your shouting will cause your wife to get scared. And her emotions will release all her star qualities into the air and attract more dragons—oh no! It’s too late!’

Before the Professor could say another word the entire roof of their secret hideout was torn away and replaced by the fiery stinking hungry mouth of a giant purple dragon!

“Woooow now, Adam,” The nurse crouched beside me and quickly but gently stopped me in my swing. “Remember not to play so rough with the toys. The other kids need to share them too, they’re less fun when they’re broken. You also need to be careful of your IV. If you bump it out again the doctors will have to put another in and you don’t want that, do you?” I felt a pang in my chest, I definitely didn’t want them to stick another huge needle in me. It hurt. A lot. “Plus,” she added, “you need to be extra quiet while your little brother is sleeping…” The nurse lowered her voice as she spoke, as she reached down and collected some of the toppled blocks I had just smashed over, or rather the dragon had when it destroyed the secret hideout. She corralled them into a plastic bucket.

The nurse’s name was Ruby which I thought was a fun name. It reminded me of buried treasure and pirates. Ruby was my favourite nurse so far this visit, mostly because she always wore fun cartoon characters on her clothes instead of just plain old blue like the other nurses. Today she was wearing Winnie the Pooh and his friends, which I loved because I had my own Winnie the Pooh toy sitting beside me right now. Winnie was only watching though, he wasn’t ready to fight dragons.

“But most are my toys…” I began in a serious whine. Ruby’s face got cross, so I quickly said I was sorry, even remembering to keep my voice low. “Just… the dragons were about to catch Barbie. She’s the brightest star in Hollywood and they want her. See?” I lifted a blonde Barbie doll in one hand—worn down and damaged from overuse in the hospital playroom (it wasn’t mine)—and a big purple plush Spyro the Dragon in the other, still richly coloured (it was my brothers, but he was sleeping so I got to play with it.) I smooshed them together to emphasise how terrible the dragon was and then flew the dragon away with Barbie firmly gripped in its claws.

“Oh dear!” Nurse Ruby sounded very afraid, though she kept her voice to a whisper. “What about Ken? He has to save her!”

“Ken was killed when the roof came down. See?”

Ken was indeed dead. A plastic corpse lying very still beneath some big plastic Duplo blocks. Barbie would be heartbroken.

“Oh wow… Who will save her then?”

I thought about that for a moment. I hadn’t ever planned for Ken to save her. In fact I hadn’t planned any of this. It was just happening. As it always happened when I played. I frowned. “Why does she need saving? The Dragons might not be bad. Or if they are she might be able to save herself. But… I suppose we should send a rescue party just in case. Who will lead it?” I looked around at all my toys, all toppled over on the play-mat ready for action but as yet most were sitting on the sidelines.

I took a quick inventory and weighed up their skills; the yellow and blue X-men with their light up visors and electric hands and glowing sticks, and the Professor in his flying space chair; the purple alien Widget the World Watcher who could shape shift; the Red Power-Ranger with his T-Rex emblem on his chest, expert at karate. He didn’t have the rest of his team though so they couldn’t form the Megazord.

I considered all my dinosaurs—the T-Rex and Triceratops and Stegosaurus, and of course my favourite Velociraptor. All were from the movie Jurassic Park, with Alan Grant and Ian Malcom to scale beside them who I often made ride the dinosaurs just like Dino-Riders, another of my favourite shows (even though this never happened in the movie). Beside my dinosaurs were some less cool and very scuffed dinosaurs from the hospital. I couldn’t be sure but I was almost certain some of them were actually pencil erasers. There was a bendable Little Foot toy from The Land Before Time I quite liked even though it was broken and had wire sticking from its leg. I tried hard not to think about the SharpTooth or the earthquakes from that movie.

To distract myself I considered if Vinny, my really cool Biker Mice from Mars, could join the search with his red helmet and red motorbike; or the collection of Street Sharks all shiny and muscled and mean. One was a Killer Whale with a backwards cap and a huge tongue named Moby Lick, and he was my favourite because one of my favourite movies was Free Willy. But no, that didn’t feel right here either. My stomach dropped a tiny bit and I began to feel an uncomfortable pressure in my nose. I pinched my eyes closed, hard.

When I opened them again my focus went to my transformers. My fighter-jets. My space ships. I thought of my Lego which I wasn’t allowed to bring because of all the pieces I would loose and felt a pang of frustration because I know there would have been so many stories there.

Some of my little brother’s toys were here too—Simba and Nala soft toys from The Lion King that had magnets in their noses so they kissed just like in the cartoon, and he had all his farm animals in a little pen surrounding a red barn. I narrowed my eyes on that barn suspiciously. Maybe that was the dragon’s lair?

No, it didn’t make sense for there to be a farm in Hollywood, unless it was a pretend movie farm. So… maybe.

Then my eye fell on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle with the broken shell… and I felt a little sick in my tummy. I’d had taken it to school a few weeks ago and tried to throw it through the basketball hoop. I didn’t get it through. Instead it bounced off the backboard so hard and even though I’d known it would happen, had felt the thrill of it because I thought I could catch it, I didn’t and Donatello had smashed apart on the basketball court. I sighed loudly.

Nurse Ruby laughed and then rubbed me on my back. “It’s alright,” she said, “I’ll leave you to forming up a search party for Barbie. But remember—not too rough and not too loud.”

I stared down at my toys and sighed again, feeling my stomach drop and twist a little more. The flow wouldn’t come back to my story. Barbie had been taken away by the dragon and that was that. There was more, of course, like where she would be taken to, what for, would she escape, or even need to escape… and Ruby was right, they probably should go searching for her, but for some reason that didn’t feel right. None of the others were there really, in the hideout or in the story—not Widget or Donatello or even Winnie the Pooh—only the Professor who had managed to avoid the falling roof with his flying chair was actually in the building. Ken was dead. Ken always died. But maybe the Professor would go out and form a team to go searching for the Dragon Horde without him? He was great at forming teams after all! He was the leader of the X-Men! But… no. Here and now he wasn’t Professor X. He was a Dragonologist simply named the Professor. Here he didn’t have mind-reading magic powers, he just wanted to find out more about the monsters that flew in from nowhere and began snatching up stars. He wouldn’t go out and fight. Not right away… but…

‘Ken!’ The Professor used his flying chair to move out of the fire and fallen bits of roof. His bald head was bleeding but he didn’t care. His voice rang out into the crumbling building again. ‘Ken!’

‘I’m… Here…’ came the weakest voice. It was Ken. Dying. Crushed by the fallen debris. The Professor followed the voice and appeared beside him.

Leaning down to hold the man’s hand, the Professor said ‘You’ll be okay, Ken. It’s just your legs. They’re overrated anyway.’

Ken laughed, weakly, and blood spattered out over his chin. Then he squeezed the Professor’s hand harder and looked him in the eye and whispered his final words. ‘You need to find... Find the Dragons. Bring… B… B—‘ And then he was gone.

I sat with that for a moment, feeling a bit sick in my tummy still, like I’d been holding my breath to try and stop hiccups (which never even worked.) I frowned hard.

“What’s wrong, honey?” It was Mum who’d asked. She was sitting over on the playroom couches with my little brother asleep beside her, his head on her lap. She’d been watching the TV up on the chunky wall hinge with the volume very low. I had no idea what the show was or how she could hear it, only that it was one of those boring soap operas in the middle of the day where everyone was way too serious and always shouting. I hated them almost as much as the old midday movies or ones with subtitles, they always went forever and it was always the only thing on at that time. Never any cartoons.

“The story is wrong,” I told her in a grumble. Honestly I wasn’t really even sure I’d said anything at all.

“What’s wrong about it?”

“I dunno...”

“Stop mumbling. It’ll come to you if you just let it sit for a while. It’s nearly lunch time anyway, and you know what that means?”

I felt my stomach turn again, this time I actually knew why. “Physio time.”

“You remember you promised Brenda you’d do it three times a day. And you said you can’t do it after you’ve eaten, so…”

That was true. I hated doing physio. All the coughing made me throw up if I’d just eaten, and even if my stomach was empty it still made my head spin. But it was important, so I pressed myself up from the play-mat and followed the little carpet roads on the mat out towards my mum. “Can I do Bubble-Pep though?” I asked her. “My back hurts.”

“Sure you can, Honey. I’ll help you set it up.”

Ten minutes later I was back in my own hospital room with its own bed and bathroom. I was sitting up on my bed with the mattress cranked up so it would be like a chair and my back was mostly straight, with the hospital tray table across my legs. Sitting on it was a blue hospital tub filled with water and one end of a long thick tube stuck in it. The other end of the tube was in my mouth and I had to blow bubbles for as long and as hard as I could on each breath. I had to count ten of them, and then make three of my biggest dragon breaths and cough. I had to do this ten times before I could have lunch. I was on my second set and already I was bored, feeling sick and dizzy.

“Can I at least play my Gameboy while I’m doing it? Or can you ask the nurses if the Nintendo is free yet?” I asked my mum. She was over by the portable television station they’d given me putting in a videotape for my brother.

“No,” she told me. “You always get distracted playing those things. Finish your pep.”

I huffed a sigh and continued it into a long breath which made the little blue tub bubble like a witches cauldron. Bubble Bubble Boil and Trouble! I heard a witch cackling from down the hall and it gave me a fright but also got me excited. I held Winnie the Pooh closer to me and kept blowing bubbles until I’d counted to ten.

“Now do your dragon breaths,” mum said.

Three deep breaths followed by three long wheezing huffs. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! On the third one I didn’t have to make myself cough though, instead I burst out into a full on fit of it until I felt the tightness in my chest ease up and my mouth filled with a slimy salty frog. I spat it out into the styrofoam cup with the other frogs. Witches and their curses. My head was spinning and I saw stars. In the background I heard The Wiggles on TV and my brother began flailing his arms and dancing along to their music.

I caught my breath after a minute and forced myself to go again. One deep breath in. Hold it. Then long and hard as I could I blew bubbles. Blow blow blow blow blow! I had to remember to drop the tube from my mouth before I inhaled again. I’d forgotten that before and sucked up a heap of water.

“Good afternoon, Adam,” Brenda the Physio entered my room. “How many sets have you done?” she checked my sputum cup, “Your sputum is still green, what did your lung function say today?” She didn’t walk so much as glided around and her long white lab coat trailed out behind her like a cape. She took a clip board from the end of my bed and checked it. “Hmm,” she hmm’ed a lot, “hmm.”

“This is my sixth set,” I lied and mum was too busy with my brother to notice it.

“Four more then” Brenda told me. “Show me how you’re doing them.”

I tried very hard not to smile as I blew my next one. Then huffed and coughed as she’d shown me, and spat the frog into the cup. The usual pain shot into my head and made my temples throb.

“Are you okay?” The physio asked me.

“I just get dizzy after. Today is pretty bad. I’ve got a headache.”

“Hmm.” Chugg-a-chugg-a-Big-Red-Car sang in the background. “Well finish up and then you can have lunch. Do you mind if I borrow you for a second, Mum?” For some reason Brenda always called my Mum ‘Mum’ when I was around. She didn’t seem to mind though, and went out of the room with Brenda.

My brother was still flailing around to The Wiggles, he tried to copy their dance moves but never had them all figured out.

“Hey Chris,” I slid out from under the hospital tray table and landed on the floor. “Wanna play Spinnyfun?”

My little brother’s eyes lit up and he immediately began spinning on the spot as fast as he could go. I joined in right away and lifted my head up as the room began to swirl around me in a much more pleasant way than physio made it do. Faster and faster and faster. I could hear The Wiggles singing and swirling along with us, the hospital noises in the background of beeps and buzzes, my brother laughing as he reached the fastest he could go. On cue we stopped spinning and tried to run at each other. My whole room rocked like a pirate ship on the seven seas, I saw water flying over the railing, Pooh gripped the side of the bed in fear as I laughed and my brother laughed, and then we heard the tv yell “Wake Up Jeff!” Suddenly there was a horrible pain in my arm. I looked down and saw blood all over the deck of the ship as it spun in triple vision, double vision, slowing down. My brother was crying beside me and my mum raced back in through the door with Brenda and a nurse beside her.

“What happened?” Mum picked him up and checked him over. Then she looked down at me and I saw her face go white.

“I’m okay,” I told her. “I just… umm…” I wasn’t quite sure what had happened. Pirates. Rocky seas.

Ruby appeared beside me with another nurse and lifted me up onto the bed. “Silly boy,” she said, “what did I tell you? He’s alright, but the IV has been pulled out.”

“I have a headache,” I tried to tell Ruby. She said I hit it pretty hard. I tried to tell her no, it didn’t feel like that. It felt strange, like the pressure I get in my head and the knots in my tummy when I’m playing and the story isn’t right. It isn’t wrong. But it isn’t exactly how it should be. Close. But not. Ruby wrapped my arm in a bandage and got me an apple juice while another nurse had cleared up all the spilled water from my bubble-pep. My brother had stopped crying, though now he had a Sesame Street bandaid on his head. I didn’t believe Bandaids magically healed things so I didn’t want one. The apple juice was good though. Mum was outside my room at the nurses desk on the phone. I could faintly hear her talking while I flicked on my Gameboy and watched the pixels spell the word ‘Nintendo’ on the screen.

“… Overnight,” she was saying. Then a pause. “No, I’m not coming home! He has to go into theatre. They need to put an IV—” Another pause. “It got knocked out again. I told—No, I need you to come get Christopher. Fishing is more important is it? While your son has a chest infection and pneumonia on top of his Cys—”

“That’s a fancy Gameboy,” said Ruby all of a sudden.

“It’s the new colour one,” I told her. “My dad bought it for me after he threw my old one down the stairs—ah!” I huffed as another Zubat appeared two steps after the last one. “I hate this cave.”

“Can you pause that for a second, Honey?” I glanced up as Mum came back into the room. She was flustered again. Her eyes were red and she was tired. I paused the game and put down the Gameboy as a tall figure appeared behind my mum and followed her into the room. Instantly my heart raced and I felt sick again.

“I’m sorry mum,” I told her. I could feel my eyes burning. “I didn’t mean to knock it out again.”

“It’s okay,” my mum told me.

The tall figure walked around to the end of bed and lifted my chart in silence. After a long moment of me staring at him he said, “We’re going to need to put another IV in, Adam.” He sounded frustrated and I knew why. “You’ve knocked out too many so we’re going to need to take you to Theatre and put a special one in.”

Theatre? I saw a part of the hospital form in my mind, red curtains and an empty stage. I don’t think I’d been there before. I squeezed my mum’s fingers. She held my hand and said, “They’re going to put you to sleep, just for a little while—”

Before she could finish I was already crying. I could feel the hot tears running down my cheeks and my nose immediately began to run. The taste of salt and snot and something else I thought was blood.

“Wow wow wow,” Nurse Ruby rubbed my back again, “it’s okay. It’s just like a sleepover.”

“I don’t like sleepovers!” I told her. I sleep badly “And Sam’s Dad had an alien in his stomach on my last one. I could hear it gurgling in there all night. And the other kids make fun of me for trying to cover my ears. And I c-c-can’t always bring my pump.”

“Why do you need to cover your ears?” Asked the doctor. “Do loud noises keep you awake?”

I shook my head, tears spilling like waterfalls down from my eyes. “Earwigs!” I told them.

“Well there’s no earwigs in the theatre,” Ruby assured me. My mum held my hand tighter and confirmed it. “We make sure to keep them out.”

“And you’ll have your pump,” Mum added.

I sniffled, my eyes began to dry up, but my nose was still running. My brother was sitting down watching his videotapes again. Winnie the Pooh was on and they were going on an adventure under the bed.

I grabbed Pooh and held him to my chest. “Can Pooh come with me?”

The Doctor frowned, “Pooh will…” he glanced at Nurse Ruby and my mum. Then he put away the chart. “Of course. Are you ready?”

My heart began to race in my chest. “Now?”

“It’s okay, Adam.”

“Are you coming with me, mum?”

“I can’t honey. I have to stay with your brother. But you’re brave. It’ll be over quickly and you’ll be back here in time for dinner.”

I glanced up at the clock but the hands were ticking around like crazy and I couldn’t focus on them at all. It was getting dark outside though, so dinner wouldn’t be that far off. “… Okay,” I took swallow of apple juice and sighed. “I’m ready.”

Two seconds later I was being wheeled out in my bed, clutching Pooh tight against my chest as I watched the hallways drift past me and the lights whoosh by overhead. My heart was still racing though now I felt a bit dizzy and dreamy and things began to slow. The red curtains of the theatre appeared and I was pushed through them and into the stage room. The doctor was there with all his nurses, all of them in blue with little blue masks and little blue hats and little blue gloves. They wheeled me to the centre of the stage and put a mask on me just like my pump and I felt the relaxation hit me as it always did. So calm. My heartbeat slowed.

“You like the mask? Take deep breathes. Count backwards from ten.”

Ten

“Like a fighter pilot. Like Maverick.”

Nine

“We’ve got a Bogey Twelve O’clock. Four Hundred Miles.”

Eight

“Great Balls of Fire! Ha-Haaaaaaaa”

I began to feel my eyes grow heavy. Fighting the fear to cover my ears.

Seven

Thankful at least for all the lights because Vampires hate light and that was one less thing to worry about here too. Especially with my blood so easily accessible.

Six

My head was still aching though. I felt it deep deep down, almost forgotten. I reached down to clutch at Pooh.

Fiv—

“POOH?” My eyes opened wide and I sat bolt upright in the hospital bed. Pooh was gone! My heart was racing again! I must have let him go! Dropped him! He must have fallen off the side of the bed! I looked over so quickly that my momentum threw me from the bed and I tumbled three times before I hit the theatre floor, hard. At the same moment as I landed I heard the single ring of a bell. Deep and long.

Dingggggg!

I saw the red theatre curtains swish and flick and a little yellow foot raced by. A familiar echoing drum beat followed me as I stood up.

Shh-Shh-Shh-Shh—Kah-Kah-Kah Kah-Shh-Shh-Shh-Shh.

I pulled off my mask and left the hospital bed and theatre behind me. In the background I could hear the faint whir of engines heating up, and that echoing drumbeat repeating itself louder, my heartbeat growing louder with it. Everything was spinning as I threw one foot in front of the other and hurled myself between the thick red curtains. As I did that bell rang again.

Donggggg!

I fell out into the hallway with all the white lights flickering overhead, or at least I thought for a moment, but when my eyes adjusted I realised it wasn’t a hallway and it wasn’t lights. It was the deck of a giant flat ship and it was fire in the sky. Music began to play all around me; a slow guitar riff I remembered but couldn’t place. The heat and steam gliding across the surface of the ship, the whirl of the jets and fire, the sweat on my brow… All of it familiar. I knew it. I’d seen it all before, almost. Close. But not.

The music continued to build and I couldn’t say where it was even coming from. Only that it was there in my ears and in my head. Slow, melodic, the same riff over and again but each time different, higher, growing, building. Men raced around the deck of the ship, all around and in front of me and between the dark shapes of fighter-jets being prepped for take-off. The whole world was cast in orange light. Everyone was a shadow against the sun and sky and fire.

One of the shadows was waving at me, urgently. I could see him on his knees ducking beneath a huge flat wing, his big helmet and shining goggles reflecting fire and orange light. He pointed over at a jet and I found myself suddenly beside it, climbing up a ladder, staring at the cockpit of a fighter plane. Or what I thought was a fighter plane. This too was different somehow, though I couldn’t put my finger on it. I looked to my left and right, for other jets but there was only one. Steam obscured most of it but as the music continued to build I saw a pilot sitting in the cockpit, with shining goggles and a worn red and black helmet covered in little white painted stars. He smiled at me and gave me a thumbs up. The music continued to build. I turned back around to face my own cockpit, huge as a swimming pool but as I climbed in and sat down it seemed to shrink in around me. I felt peddles against my feet. A gear stick in my fist.

Over the engine whirring I heard a slurping loud in my ear. Startled, I spun around and saw sitting in the back end of the cockpit a little yellow bear wearing a red t-shirt. He had one paw around a jar of honey and the other, slathered in honey up to his elbow he was trying to lick clean. If it wasn’t for the goggles and helmet he wore that were clearly getting in his way I would have been sure he’d succeed.

“POOH!” I shouted over the music and rising jet engines.

“Oh bother,” he huffed. “I suppose I’ll just have to save it…” he paused and sighed, “for after.”

I spun back around and landed hard in my cockpit chair, a huge smile on my face. Everything would be alright with Pooh here. But still… what was going on? I could see people around me. More than that I could feel them. These shadowed strangers silhouetted against the orange light and fire in the sky, hidden in the smoke and steam. I understood them, their every breathe and step, ducking beneath the wings of my craft, checking the rigging and the crystals. Crystals? Yes. I knew now how these jets were different. I could feel the energy of the Red Obsidian humming and whirring through my plane, through the ship, through the world, through me. It’s song growing higher, whistling higher, roaring higher. The music, the riff, the melody.

The glass canopy of the cockpit was slid down over me, locked, and smacked hard by a gloved fist. I looked over to the man who’d done it. I looked past him at the other man in his cockpit. He was smiling ear to ear.

Suddenly his face was hidden in darkness. I glanced up, startled as the shadow passed over me next. I followed it around, snapping my head from left to right, and as it cut across the orange sky I saw the perfect black silhouette of a giant dragon. Wings. Spikes. Horns. Claws. Tail. It dove towards the prow and ducked below the horizon, beneath the ship.

“There weren’t always dragons in the Valley…” said a muffled voice. I didn’t know from where. But I knew I’d heard it before.

And then the men outside dropped their raised hands and pointed forward. The slow building music was replaced by a thundering slapping base riff that hit me from the sky and I slammed my feet down on the peddles, was thrown back into the cockpit chair, shot down the runway, and launched into the sky with a whirling, careening, magical whoooosh of crystal-power and electric guitar.