“Roger, you really do look like a proper wild-west cowboy now,” she giggled, but then cried out again, wincing with pain from her bruised ribs and throbbing, sprained ankle.
“Owww! Stop! It hurts when you make me laugh, Roger!” she exclaimed, rather unfairly. “Oh, please don’t make me laugh!”
“But I haven’t said anything funny,” Roger protested, with a puzzled look on his face.
Now Mary had thought she would die, all alone and deep down and lost in the dark. Just buried and forgotten forever beneath the unforgiving Erf. She had never felt so relieved and so happy to see anyone as much as she did right there and then. Even if she was still underground in a dark and dismal smoke-filled cavern; Trapped and injured as she was, and with a fiery and fearsome Dragon, at that!
Despite the evidence of his eyes, Roger stood rooted to the ground like a petrified statue and pointed up at the fabulous Dragon with an expression of complete disbelief on his face.
“M-M-Mary… is that really a D-D-Dragon?” he asked.
“Of course not, silly,” teased Mary, smiling at him. “It’s obviously a lost sheep taking a summer holiday underground, can’t you tell Roger?”
Roger just stared dumbly at her, his lower lip aquiver, far too taken aback to say anything else. All coherent thought had completely vanished from his being suddenly brought face to face with an actual and for real, live Dragon.
Mary could see that a proper introduction and an explanation were now definitely in order.
“Let me introduce you properly,” she said to Roger gently and waving her hand airily toward the huge Dragon. “This here is Mavis Davis, the Dragon Queen.”
The Dragon lowered her head towards Mary’s and gave a small growl.
“Well, it’s actually Sivam Sivad, she says,” continued Mary, “but we can call her Mavis, as she says that’s much easier for us. She’s a very nice Dragon too… and she’s been in this ‘orrible cave quite a long time, and, and…”
Here Mary faltered, her voice cracking and straining to keep herself from crying again. Roger thought it must be her ankle, but it wasn’t. Some pains are even worse than physical ones like her twisted ankle or scraped knees and her bruised ribs; Some pains were pains of the heart; raw emotional pains, one might call them, and it was this kind of pain that Mary was feeling right then.
“She’s dying!” Mary cried. “Oh, it’s so unfair, Roger,” she finished, sniffing and sobbing.
Roger could see she was extremely upset, and he felt his heart melting with compassion, now suddenly in sympathy with the Lady Dragon’s very sad condition.
“I’m so s-s-sorry to hear that,” he answered quietly, looking at Mary and then the Dragon. “Is there anything I can do?”
Mary held her arms out to him and Roger just let all logic and questions go for another time and flung himself toward her and held her gently as she wept, her head buried in his arms, all the pain and suffering now bubbling up out of her.
“Oooh, now mind my ribs, Roj” she sniffed at him after a little while, with a pained smile.
“Are you all right then, Mary? Are you able to walk at all?” he asked her anxiously. “We’ve still got to get ourselves back to the surface somehow, you know?”
“I’ll be O.K. in a little while, Roj. Mavis says that I’ll mend, and she’s given me some of ‘er Dragon Medicine to help too; Blue Dragon Flame’ she calls it. She says I should rest up a bit before I starts rushing off and clambering up any smoky tunnels and such things though.”
Roger looked at his new friend and smiled at her compassionately. He fully realized she was doing more than putting a brave face on things. He could tell she was in fact, in a lot of pain. Physical and emotional. Her tear-stained face was pale, and she wrinkled her nose and screwed up her eyes whenever another jolt of pain stabbed through her body.
“O.K., Mary, you rest up and get your strength back; we can just talk and catch up a bit.”
“Well, come an’ sit down then an’ I’ll tell you all about what I’ve gathered, so far anyway, or even better, if she wants to, then maybe Mavis will herself,” she answered with a sigh.
Roger sat himself down next to Mary, not even being bothered now by the fact that they were both leaning against Mavis’s scaly dragon flank and that one of her sharp looking claws was lying close to them. He had now realized they weren’t in any danger from Mavis. Logically, if they had been, they would have both already been toasted to a crisp!
The Dragon was curled up behind them, her golden wings furled away. Her arching neck curled over her shoulder and her head facing towards them. Her breathing was still ragged. Now and again she’d raise her head up and give a growl and then blast a few gouts of smoke and flame into the air; But when she did, Roger noted, she always, very considerately, faced away from them. She’s got very good manners for a Dragon! Roger thought.
Mary had only been alone with the Dragon for barely an hour before Roger had appeared; But in that time, they had had a lot to say to each other. Roger was told how Mavis had heard Mary fall, as she’d slid down the slope to her cavern. And she had immediately realized that unless she caught Mary, the little human girl would smash onto the rocky cavern floor and be broken beyond repair.
Mavis had pulled herself upright and had unfurled a great golden, bat-like wing, just in time, just as Mary had flown off the ledge, and flew in a great arc through the smoky cavern; Just like some sort of a human cannonball. And then the miraculous Mavis had caught hold of this strange ‘ball’ as skillfully and as deftly as any professional cricket or baseball fielder could have ever done.
“Most Dragons just like to go about their own business and not be bothering anybody else and not being bothered by them either,” Mary told him, “just like us humans, really, but then there are always some exceptions, of course, as you already well know, Roj.”
“Yes, there are always exceptions,” muttered Roger, thinking of their recent encounter with Josh the Cosh and his gang of Cold Arbor thugs, whom they’d so narrowly escaped from earlier that day.
“Isn’t it strange that just one or two rotten apples can spoil a whole barrel?” Mary mused. “Anyway, Mavis saved me,” she continued, “and then, well ... then ... well… she talked to me… err, in my mind actually, I mean!” Mary meekly finished, feeling foolish and embarrassed.
“What? Wh-wh-what did you say?” exclaimed Roger, looking at her totally astonished. Had Mary completely lost her wits?
“Now, just let me explain,” Mary said plaintively.
“No, please, allow me!” came a deep, throbbing voice, suddenly booming clearly inside Roger’s head.
Queen Mavis had spoken. But not with a normal voice. Not as we humans would call a voice as such, anyway. There was no actual sound involved at all. Mavis was speaking to him telepathically!
“And hello to you, Master Roger,” she said. “I am very pleased to meet you, indeed!”
CHAPTER: 13:
TRAVELS THROUGH THE UNDER-ERF
“V-v-very n-n-nice to meet you t-t-too, I’m sure,” Roger squeaked back, totally astonished, not sure whether speaking out loud was considered correct etiquette or not for Dragon-talk.
Mary had been knocked unconscious when she’d been caught, just in time as it happened, by the Dragon’s miraculous, bat-like wing. When she’d come around, the first thing she had heard was the gentle booming in her aching head, feeling just like a soft, nagging headache, but one that talked. But now it was Roger’s turn to experience the strange and far-reaching mental abilities of a True Dragon.