Wynnie's Wyvern

*Author note:- It is important to me when writing stories for a younger audience to be as inclusive as possible. I hope that I have portrayed Wynnie in a positive, affirming way. If for any reason I have missed the mark, please leave a comment so I can address it.

***

Wynnie’s Wyvern

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. I mean, we had our legends, and our red dragon proudly emblazoned on the national flag – but real life, flesh and blood honest to goodness dragons? Please. What nonsense.

Of course, that all changed last Easter, at the annual Cwmbran Easter Festival and Egg Roll. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’m Ffion, though most everyone calls me Effie. I’m thirteen years old, and I’ve got long brown hair, straight as a poker no matter how much I try to make it curl. My eyes are a muddy sort of colour – not quite blue, nor green or grey. Something in between. Just like me really – I’m an in-between sort of person.

My brother Gareth is 16, and thinks just because he’s on the school rugby team and has a weekend job down the newsagents that he’s somehow better than me. He’s 6ft 2” and kind of tubby, on account of how he spends most of his paycheck down the chippie. He’s kind of a jerk-face, if I’m honest.

And then there’s my little sister, Bronwyn. She’s 11 years old, with the curly blonde hair I always longed for and eyes as blue as the swimming pool she loves. Gran likes to say she was touched by the faeries, but that’s just because Gran doesn’t understand what neuro-divergent means. Wynnie has autism, and she’s mostly non-verbal, though she communicates pretty well with signing. Da says it’s a blessed relief to have one woman in the house that doesn’t gab all the life-long day.

Wynnie loves three things in life - drawing, her hamster Poppy, and ice cream. Doesn’t matter what flavour - it’s the cold and the texture she likes. Ma gave up trying to feed her hot food years ago, and now there’s tubs of gross coloured ice cream labelled ‘spaghetti bolognese’ And ‘roast beef + veggies’ stacked up in our freezer.

Anyhow, back to the story. Where was I? Oh yes, the dragons. Well, it all started the night before the annual egg roll. Da was showing Gareth and me how to dip the boiled eggs into bowls of coloured dye, then scratch patterns into their surfaces for decoration. Ma was blending up a batch of salmon, leek and potato ice cream, and Wynnie was humming tunelessly to herself while drawing eggs. The oval shapes were filled in with delicate lines and swirls and floral designs, in a kaleidoscope of colours. Her eggs were a whole lot prettier than ours, I can tell you.

“Mine’s going to win the egg roll this year,” Gareth announced, adding a fifth layer of Ma’s clear nail varnish onto his blobby red mostrosity. “Wait and see.”

“Only coz you’re cheating, putting that stuff on. Yours will be twice as big as the others by the time you finish with it!” I teased, swiping the pot and holding it out of reach.

“You’re just sore that you didn’t think of it first.” He had a point – it was a pretty sneaky idea.

“Wynnie love, can we move some of your artwork and get the table ready for dinner?” Ma started picking up the scattered egg drawings. Wynnie frowned, and reached up to snatch them back. Ma let her have them. “How about we go and stick these up on the windows? Then the whole town can see them,” she suggested. Wynnie smiled widely and flapped her arms in excitement. Ma is brilliant at avoiding her meltdowns. They disappeared off to decorate the front room, leaving Gareth and me to clean up and set the table.

As I put all the pencils back in their box, lined up by colour the way Wynnie likes them, I saw one last egg picture that had slipped under her chair. I scooped it up, fascinated by the strange design. It looked more like a pinecone than an egg, all spiky and purplish-blue. I waved it under Gareth’s nose.

“I bet Wynnie’s egg would beat yours tomorrow,” I told him. “It’s even got armour!”

***

The next day we all piled in Dad’s banged-up old station wagon and headed down the high street towards the market square. There was bunting hanging from the lampposts and the brass band was warming up in the gazebo.

“It sounds like someone’s torturing kittens,” Gareth muttered, and Wynnie put her hands over her ears in agreement.

“Be nice, you lot,” Da warned us as we walked over to check out the stalls, where the ladies from the Women’s Institute had laid out an impressive array of fairy cakes and scones. Ma stopped for a chat and some homemade jams, while Da carried our eggbox up the hill with us to the starting line of the race.

Gareth and I joined the other kids, everyone making bets on who the champion would be this time. Owen Ellis won last year, but everyone says he cheated and used a rock instead of a real egg. I had no particular interest in the contest, but I knew it made Da happy to watch us participate. He’d taken part in it when he was a lad, back when there probably wasn’t much else to do round this way. He won trophies two years running – they’re sat on our mantlepiece next to Mum’s college diploma. Ma once asked him which made him prouder – winning the egg roll or holding his firstborn in the hospital. Da refused to answer her, in case it earned him a clip round the lughole. Suffice it to say, the contest meant a lot to him.

Wynnie wandered off, gathering handfuls of red campion and yellow primroses that sprouted between the rocks and crevices of the valley. We let her go – she wasn’t keen on large crowds of people and knew to take herself off when things got overwhelming. She’d be back later, no doubt, when the tearoom opened up.

The whistle blew and we were off, our eggs tumbling willy nilly down the bumpy slope as we ran behind to help them along. Mine smashed into Gwendolyn Baker’s, and they both cracked from the impact, putting us out of the running. I didn’t mind too much, but Gwendolyn stomped off in a fury to rat on me to her mother. She looked so funny in her prissy lilac dress and white lace gloves, covered in mud and with one of her plaits coming loose from its ribbon.

Gareth fared better, his egg made the first cut and I passed him as he huffed his way back up the hill for the second round.

“Told you!” He gloated as he walked by.

“Cheater,” I replied, sticking my tongue out at him. But secretly I hoped he did win, if only to make Da happy.

At the bottom of the hill I saw Gwendolyn talking with Mrs Baker and my Ma, gesturing angrily towards me. I ducked down behind the raffle table and crawled round the back of the refreshments tent. I had a fiver in my pocket, saved from my birthday back in March, so I figured I’d check out the bookstall for old books. I loved the smell of their yellowing pages, and the fancy gold embossed letters on the front covers. Some of those Victorian stories were pretty exciting – highwaymen and ballerinas, romance on the high seas and explorers of ancient cities. I found a book of fairy tales for Wynnie – with paintings of magic folk and princesses. She loves that kind of stuff, it can keep her busy for hours. I paid my 50 pence and headed back up the hillside to find her.

After ten minutes I was starting to grow worried. Where was she hiding? The races were over now, the competitors all gathered on the town hall stairs to receive their medals. I couldn’t see Wynnie among them, and she stands out, with that head of curls. Nor was she up at the top, where the vicar was dressed in a white bunny costume, hiding cadbury’s crème eggs for the Sunday school kids to find. I asked him if he’d seen her, but he shook his head, his oversized ears flopping from side to side.

I scanned the valley below, especially beside the river. Wynnie is fascinated by water, and we always used to have to keep right by her in case she jumped in. Even when she was tiny and couldn’t swim she had no fear of it. But she’s older now, and I couldn’t see her near the river. It was possible she’d started walking home… she’s got a kind of homing instinct like that. One time we got up in the morning to find her bed empty, and while we turned the place upside down, Gran phoned to say Wynnie had shown up on her doorstep, barefoot and in her nightie, signing about wanting cookies. It’s 4 miles to Gran’s house, down past the old mine, so goodness only knows how she got there in one piece.

The mine – that was a thought. I shuddered, imagining my little sister wandering around all that rusty old equipment and getting hurt. Probably the shafts were all covered over, but none of us kids were allowed to play down there. Most of Cwmbran were superstitious about it – whispering tales about the ghosts of dead miners trapped in the cave-in of 1883. If Wynnie had gone down there, I needed to get her out fast.

I ran down the grassy slope, gathering speed as I went. I almost tripped at the bottom, twisting my ankle slightly and tearing a hole in my knee-length white socks. Ma would be cross about that later. But not nearly as cross as she’d get if I returned without Wynnie.

“Wynnie? Wyn-Wyn? Where are you?”

I called out as I headed over to the wrought iron gates that guarded the colliery entrance. No response. I squeezed through the gap between them, picking my way down the gravel drive, avoiding the puddles. It was creepier than I expected, the whole place deserted like that. Empty beer bottles lay around the place, signs that the older teens used it as a hangout. A few of the windows of the mobile offices were broken, and I saw the initials G.W spray-painted on a door. I took a photo for future blackmail purposes; Ma would kill Gareth if she found out he’d been tagging again.

Suddenly there came a noise from behind the nearest slag heap. I hurried over and stopped dead in my tracks as I saw Wynnie, covered head-to-toe in coal dust, halfway up the pile.

“Wynnie!” I called out, trying to keep my voice as calm as possible in case I startled her.

She turned towards me, taking a few steps back down the heap.

“Fffff” she said happily, unaware of the rumbling in the pile behind her.

There was something shiny in her hands, and she clearly wanted to show it to me. From the top of the pile a few large chunks of rock began to tumble down, and dust rose up in a cloud around Wynnie. She was still a few meters from the bottom, she’d never make it in time.

“Jump!!!” I screamed, running towards her as fast as I could.

The ground beneath her feet shifted and her eyes opened wide, stark white against the black dirt. She leapt towards me and I grabbed her arm, yanking her hard just as the side of the pile disintegrated and tumbled behind her.

We fell down, coughing and spluttering as coal dust filled our lungs. When the air cleared and the rumbling subsided, I sat up and checked out the damage. Our clothes were filthy, karma no doubt for laughing at that prig Gwendoline earlier. Wynnie had a scrape on her left knee, and a small gash on her forehead, but otherwise seemed okay. My ankle was throbbing more than before, a swollen lump growing large enough to see through my sock.

“Ma’s going to kill us,” I said, getting to my feet and making a pathetic attempt to brush the dirt off my dress.

Wynnie was still smiling, as though this was just a fun day out for her. I wanted to be angry, but it’s hard to get mad at her when she’s happy like that. She held out a rounded object towards me.

“What is it?” I asked, taking it from her hands and rubbing it on my skirt. It was heavy, about the size and shape of a rugby ball, but somehow spiky. It glimmered a blueish-purple where the dust rubbed off. It seemed familiar, but I couldn’t think where I’d seen it before.

“Egg, egg!” Wynnie signed to me, flapping with delight.

And so it was – a giant, spiky egg, just like the drawing she’d made the night before. She reached for it, cradling it in her arms like a baby.

“What kind of creature lays an egg like this?” I asked her as we limped back towards the Easter festival.

Boy were we about to find out.