Dragon Red E-Book

Shoo Rayner

• Herausgeber: Firefly Press Ltd
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: Dragon Gold
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 68

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Harri knows the two dragons, Tân and Draca, are not thriving locked up in the castle. When Ryan's dad steals his white dragon, and goes on the run, the police ask Harri and Tân to help find him. Harri knows he has to set Tân free. But what will happen with two dragons flying wild? Is Harri's destiny about to come true?

Leseprobe

Contents

About Shoo RaynerTitle PageAlso in this seriesChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenChapter TwentyChapter Twenty-oneChapter Twenty-twoChapter Twenty-threeChapter Twenty-fourChapter Twenty-fiveChapter Twenty-sixAdvertisementCopyright

Shoo Rayner

Shoo began his career as an illustrator in a garden shed near Machynlleth. He drew for Michael Morpurgo and Rose Impey, but people kept encouraging him to write. Many years and more than 175 books later, Shoo has built a worldwide following for his award-winning how-to-draw videos on YouTube. http://www.shoorayner.com/

Shoo lives in the Forest of Dean with his wife and three cats.

Shoo’s first book about Harri and Tân,Dragon Gold, was highly commended by the Tir na n’Og award 2015.

To Helena Cochrane – the CEO

Also in this series, available from Firefly Press:

Dragon Gold

Dragon White

Chapter One

The tall tower loomed over the town. At its foot, the hooded figure of a man pressed back into the dark shadows. He waited a moment, to make sure he’d not been seen.

There were no security cameras watching that part of the castle, as no one would would be stupid enough to do what he was about to try. Slowly, hand over hand, inch by inch, fingers tightly gripping the sharp granite blocks, he scaled the fortress walls.

A short while later, he appeared on top of the battlements, raised his arms, punched the air and let out a wild cry of triumph.

As the sound faded, another shape overshadowed him. Huge wings unfurled against the bright, moonlit sky. The unmistakable silhouette of a dragon! It opened its mouth wide, roaring jets of red and yellow flame into the night. The man’s face glowed in the blazing light. A smile spread across his face.

The man climbed up awkwardly onto the dragon’s back. As one, the dragon and its master swooped over the rooftops, blazing fire and leaving a trail of gleeful laughter in their wake. Curtained bedroom windows lit up, as the townsfolk were woken from their peaceful dreams.

An alarm sounded. Sirens wailed in the distance. A loud, electronic voice broke into Harri’s dream.

‘This is a police emergency announcement. All residents must stay indoors. Do not leave your house for any reason. I repeat, stay indoors. A dragon has escaped. If you see it, report it at once. Under no circumstances should you approach it yourself.’

‘Wake up, Harri! The police are here. They want to talk to you.’ Harri’s mum gently shook her son awake.

Harri threw the covers off and sat up in bed, blinking and shaking the sleep out of his eyes. He felt confused and muzzy. He’d been dreaming of the dragons. Was this still the dream?

‘What’s that noise?’ he croaked.

‘They’ve set off the old air raid sirens,’ Mum explained.

‘Why? What’s happened?’

‘It’s Ryan’s dad,’ said Mum. ‘He’s managed to free his dragon from the tower. No one knows where they’ve gone. The police are downstairs. They want to talk to you.’

He wasn’t quite sure if he was really awake or still dreaming. He put his dressing gown on and followed his mum downstairs. ‘But I don’t know anything about it,’ he grumbled. ‘I haven’t seen Ryan’s dad for weeks.’ Ryan and Harri were good friends and in the same class at school.

Imelda, Harri’s sort of adopted granny, put a mug of tea on the kitchen table in front of him.

‘It’s serious,’ she said. ‘This is the Chief Constable. And this is Detective Chief Inspector Griffiths and Detective Sergeant Hughes. They want to ask you some questions.’

Chapter Two

The Chief Constable introduced himself and soon left to hold a news conference, but the two detectives stayed for what seemed like hours, asking the same questions, checking every detail of how Harri and Ryan’s dad both came to own dragons.

‘So tell us again how you got Tân,’ DS Hughes asked, patiently noting down everything Harri said in her little black book.

Harri glanced at Imelda. You could barely notice the movement of her head, but Harri knew what she meant: ‘Don’t tell them the whole truth. They won’t understand.’

‘I was playing up on the hills and I found an egg,’ he lied. Harri felt his cheeks burning with embarrassment. He was sure they knew he was lying, but he had practised his cover story well. ‘I brought it home and it hatched into Tân — my dragon. He was so cute and helpless, I kept him and looked after him.’

Harri avoided looking in their eyes. He felt like a criminal. Would they arrest him for not telling the truth?

‘Have you any idea how Ryan’s dad got his dragon?’ asked DCI Griffiths. ‘You and Ryan are good friends, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’ Harri shrugged. ‘He must have found an egg too.’ The truth was even more unbelievable. If he told them, they really would think he was lying.

Mum had a shop called Merlin’s Cave where she sold magical things like dreamcatchers and crystals. She also sold tourist stuff and bottled holy water from St Gertrude’s Well.

Since Imelda had come to live with them, business had improved a lot. Imelda was a witch. Not a kid’s-book type of witch, but one who knew the old ways and how to mix plants and flowers that she harvested from the fields and hedgerows. Now they sold her spells and love potions in the shop. Customers loved them.

When they first met, Harri had told Imelda about his school’s Eisteddfod challenge. There had been a prize of dragon gold for anyone who could make a dragon fly for more than ten seconds. She had wanted to help him. She crumpled up his dragon drawing and placed it inside a magic egg.

A week later the egg cracked open and Tân came into their lives — bright red, cute and perky and with a huge appetite for worms and chocolate. They could never have guessed how much trouble owning a dragon would turn out to be.

Harri and Ryan were friends in school. But Ryan’s dad liked winning. He liked to make sure his son Ryan won everything. On the day of the challenge, his radio-controlled model of a Chinese J-20 Mighty Dragon Stealth Fighter Aircraft and Harri’s Tân came equal first.

That wasn’t good enough for Ryan’s dad. Beating Harri became a burning obsession. He blackmailed Imelda and made her turn his own drawing of a fierce white dragon, Draca, into the real thing.

The two dragons finally met at the Ancient Briton’s Re-enactment Society bank-holiday display, frightening the crowd when Draca attacked Tân. They were captured and taken into police custody.

Thanks to ancient laws that Harri and Imelda managed to discover in time, the dragon’s lives were spared. They were allowed to live, as long as they were always locked within the walls of Castle Gertrude.

But now one of them had escaped. The law could no longer protect it. The creature was a menace and a danger to human life.

Chapter Three

DS Hughes’ phone rang. ‘They’ve caught Ryan’s dad forty miles away,’ she explained. ‘He was walking along the side of a busy dual carriageway, but there was no sign of the dragon. He’s at the police station drinking tea and eating chocolate biscuits, but he’s saying nothing.’

‘We’ll go and interview him now,’ said DCI Griffiths. ‘If we can’t get any sense out of him, we’ll have to let him go. We can’t prove he’s broken any laws, so we’ve got no real reason to charge him.’

As they got up to leave, Harri had a moment of panic. ‘I’m going to be late for school!’