Glass Like Toffee

Under the stage it was dark, and it smelled of dust and sawdust and melting ice.

Toby was lying on his side beside a tray of fresh ice, with the sock of red stones inside his shirt. Above him the boards of the stage were close enough to touch. In the middle of them was a square opening, the trapdoor, and through the trapdoor he could see the underneath of the case: the brass base, and the ice hollow under it, and the rows of little round holes. Through the holes, very faint, came a grey glimmer. That was Biscuit.

Beyond the edge of the stage hung a long velvet curtain that reached all the way to the floor. Through a gap at the bottom of it he could see the ballroom: a forest of legs, shiny shoes and the hems of long dresses, all moving, all crowding in. He could hear the voices. Hundreds of them.

Then he heard something else. Boots, coming down the little wooden steps at the side of the stage. Heavy boots, and the swing and creak of a lantern.

"Boy?" said a voice. "You under here, boy? His Lordship wants you."

Toby did not answer.

He pulled the tray of ice out of the hollow under the case, very quietly, and slid it away into the dark. Then he wriggled into the hollow himself, flat on his back, where the tray had been. It was just big enough. The brass base was a hand's width above his nose. The cold of it came down onto his face. Above him, through the holes, he could hear Biscuit breathing, very slow.

The lantern came along under the stage. It swung from side to side. Its light went across the dusty boards, and the stacked chairs, and the empty tray in the corner, and across the dark mouth of the ice hollow, and over Toby's boots.

It stopped.

Toby lay as still as the ice.

The lantern began to bend down towards the hollow. And then, in the light of it, something small and pale shot across the floor from under the curtain, right past the footman's boots, and away into the dark at the far end.

"Rat!" said the footman, and jumped. The lantern swung away. "There's a rat under here!"

He went after it, crashing among the stacked chairs. The pale thing went out under the curtain at the far side, and the footman went out after it, swearing. Toby heard a quiet voice beyond the curtain, a voice he knew, say, "Lost something?" And then the footman's voice, further off, calling up through the boards.

"Nothing under there but a rat, my lord."

Toby let out his breath, a little at a time.

Up on the stage, in the ballroom, the band stopped playing.

The velvet curtain was drawn back. And there, in the middle of the stage, under the great chandelier, stood the glass case on its brass stand, with the grey dragon lying on velvet inside it, and beside it, in a smaller case, a folded grey army blanket.

The ballroom went quiet.

Lord Harrowgate stepped up beside the case. He wore his lavender evening coat and his white gloves. His left hand rested on Josie's shoulder. He had brought her up onto the stage with him, and he had not let go of her the whole way.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said Lord Harrowgate. "My father spent his life looking for what you see before you. He did not find it. I have." He lifted his right hand towards the case. "The last dragon in the world."

There was a long sigh from the crowd. Somebody clapped, uncertainly, and stopped.

At the side of the ballroom, by the tall windows, stood a woman in green with spectacles on a chain. Dr. Pye had been writing in her notebook. Now she had stopped writing. She was looking at the girl on the stage under Lord Harrowgate's hand. Her eyebrows went up over the top of her spectacles, slowly, until they nearly reached her hair.

Josie stepped forward, out from under the glove.

It was only one step. But it took her to the very front of the stage, where everybody could see her, and Lord Harrowgate's hand closed on air.

"She isn't the last dragon in the world," said Josie.

Her voice came out clear and steady, and it went right to the back of the ballroom.

"She hums," said Josie. "When she's happy. She hummed to my grandfather's whistling before she was even hatched. She ate my grandmother's biscuit tin on the night she hatched, and she had roses on her tummy from it for a week. She's frightened of geese. She hides up the chimney from our goose. And every time you shut a door on her, she eats the latch off and sits there in the doorway, pleased with herself."

Somebody in the crowd laughed, and then stopped.

"My grandfather carried her egg home when he was nineteen," said Josie. "Wrapped in that blanket. He's here. He'll tell you."

At the back of the ballroom, an old man in a red coat straightened up on his two sticks.

"It's true," said Grandpa. "Every word of it."

Lord Harrowgate had come up behind Josie. "My dear," he said softly, "that is quite enough."

Josie did not look round.

"You put her in the cold so she won't grow," she said to the ballroom. "So she'll stay the same forever. So she'll be the last." She looked out at the faces. "She's not the last of anything. She's the first of her."

Under the stage, in the ice hollow, Toby could hear every word. He heard Josie's voice, and the silence after it. He heard Grandpa.

It was time.

He put his lips close to the little round holes above his face and whistled. Very softly. Grandpa's tune.

Nothing happened.

He whistled it again.

Above him, through the holes, something stirred. The grey shape shifted on the velvet. And very faintly, so faintly that he felt it more than heard it, Biscuit hummed.

Toby took the sock out of his shirt and untied the knot with his teeth.

He took out a pinch of the red chips. They glowed between his fingers. He pushed them up into the nearest hole with his fingertip, one chip and then another, and they rattled through.

He heard the crunch.

He pushed up more. And more. A pinch at a time, through one hole and then the next, as fast as his cold fingers would go, and above him Biscuit's head had come round and her mouth was down against the brass, licking them up as they came through, crunch, crunch, crunch, until the sock was empty.

Then he lay still and looked up.

The grey began to go.

He could see it through the holes. It went first from the place right above him, her chest, where the stones had gone down. A dull red glow came up through the grey, from somewhere deep inside her. The glow spread. The grey went from her belly, and her legs, and her neck. It burned away like frost off a window.

And underneath it was Biscuit's own colour. Copper. Red copper, glowing from inside, brighter and brighter.

The brass above Toby's face was getting warm.

Up in the ballroom, a woman screamed. Then another. Then everybody was talking at once.

The glass of the case was changing.

It began at the bottom, where it met the brass. A mist came over it, white, like breath on a mirror. The mist crept up the glass, slowly, from the bottom to the top, until the dragon inside was only a red glow behind white. Then the white began to change. It went pale yellow. Then gold. It went gold all over, deep and shining, like a window with the sunset behind it.

Toby did not wait for it to get any warmer. He wriggled backwards out of the hollow on his elbows and heels, out through the trapdoor, and rolled away across the dusty floor under the stage to the far side. From there, a long way off, he watched the brass base glow a dull red, and begin, slowly, to bend.

On the stage above him, the gold glass sagged too.

It sagged the way toffee sags in a hot pan. The top of the case bent in the middle. The sides went soft and leaned outwards, slowly, slowly, and began to run down onto the stand in long thick golden drips. There was almost no sound at all. Only a faint hiss, and a smell like burnt sugar.

And out through the soft gold glass, as if through a curtain, stepped Biscuit.

Josie saw her come.

She stood on the stage, three steps away, and watched Biscuit step out of the melting case onto the boards. The dragon was copper from nose to tail, glowing, and she was bigger than Josie remembered, or seemed bigger. Heat came off her in waves. Every candle in the chandelier above her leaned its flame towards her. In her teeth, trailing, she had Moss's long brown coat.

She dropped the coat at Josie's feet. Then she lifted her head.

She breathed out.

It was fire. Not sparks, and not a puff. Her first full fire, a great roaring column of gold and orange flame that went straight up from her open mouth into the empty air above the crowd, high over everybody's heads, until it reached the chandelier and stopped. The light of it filled the ballroom. Every face in the room was lit up gold.

The fire stopped. In the silence, the crystals of the chandelier rang, very softly, all together.

"Net!" said Lord Harrowgate.

He had a net. It had been hanging folded on the side of the stage, ready, and he had it in both gloved hands now, a great shining brass net. He came across the stage with it held up high, towards the dragon, in his lavender coat.

Biscuit turned her head and smelled him.

She smelled the lavender. Her nose wrinkled. Her eyes narrowed. She looked straight at him, and took careful aim, and sneezed, a great hot shower of sparks all over the front of the lavender coat.

Lord Harrowgate jumped backwards, beating at his coat. His foot caught in the net. The net came down over his head. He staggered backwards across the stage in a tangle of shining brass, with his arms flapping inside it, until his back came up against the empty case that stood beside the melted one, with its door hanging open.

The case that said RESERVED.

He stumbled in backwards.

Josie was standing right beside it. She looked at Lord Harrowgate inside the case, wrapped in his net. Then she took hold of the glass door with both hands and swung it shut.

It clicked.

"Children change," said Josie, through the glass. "You said so."

Lord Harrowgate stood inside it, wrapped in his own net, with his nose pressed flat against the glass.

Two keepers in green had come up the steps at the side of the stage. They stopped in front of the RESERVED case and looked in at Lord Harrowgate. Then they looked at each other.

Then, without a word, they decided that there was no hurry at all.

Toby came scrambling up the steps at the side of the stage, black with dust, and ran to Josie, and she grabbed his hand.

Biscuit stood in the middle of the stage between them and the crowd, blazing copper, with the last of the melted glass cooling to gold drips on the boards behind her.

Every door in the ballroom was full of keepers in green. They had long poles in their hands, with nets on the ends. More were coming in from the gardens through the tall windows.

From beside the windows, a voice cut through all the noise in the room.

"Nobody move," said Dr. Pye. "Especially the dragon."