LITMIR.BIZ

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harmful dust can collect in the corner of the eyes and go unnoticed. It did not go unnoticed in the home of the White Dragon.

      The creature stood seven feet tall and could hide easily under heavy clothing and a long trench coat. He walked on two feet. His head was fairly small, and though his neck was a bit longer than a human’s, it could retract.

      The dragon had a white tail, long, full and strong. He kept his tail curled up against his back so it could be hidden under a coat. His white wings could also be kept hidden, but he rarely flew. That required too much energy and dirt particles would fly into his eyes.

      When at home, naturally, the creature hid nothing. He stretched out his long tail and his baggy old body and lay around in his pricey little kingdom, listening to the radio tuned to no particular station. White noise, of course. The ultimate lounge lizard.

      The only matter that troubled the dragon was that he liked to sleep in flames. He would spew fire into the massive fireplace and sleep inside, with fire all around him. This was delightful to him. In the morning, however, there would be all that mess to clean up. Fire makes things black.

      To keep things clean, a small army of workers was employed at all times. They did not know for whom they worked. They only knew that the fireplace must be kept perfectly clean at all costs, every single day. Only white ash was allowed to remain.

      Even the creature’s fire was white. It was magic fire. The old serpent liked to make the fire grow like a white vine, like ivy, in long strings that would crawl on the wall and branch out in thin, glowing strands. He thought fire was lovely. He could make it come out of his mouth or his eyes or his hands or his fingers, but after that, it might do whatever it wanted. Dragonfire is an unpredictable thing. After a few seconds in the air, it can actually come to life. From time to time, the dragon would unleash a fire just to have someone to talk to. The living fire would laugh with him and speak of terrible things. It sometimes took the shape of a blobby man with no real face, and it would walk around the room, scorching everything. The dragon hated the messes it made.

      The creature had other ways of making messes. He had developed an interest in art. His new joy was painting pictures.

      They were pictures of the colour white.

      If his paint should ever drip off the canvas, it only added to the white in the room.

      The painting he was currently working on was a pride and joy. Like the others, it used various shades of white to create a subtle white abstract effect. Blobs of colours from white to off-white, to egg white, to cream, to vanilla, to ivory, to almost-a-colour, to tannish white, to greyish white, all fell together on a big canvas. A white canvas. It was wonderful. The creature was certain he was on the verge of something brilliant. Art is white. Anything else distracts from the art.

      The creature cheated at his art as he cheated at everything in life. No one else in the world would be much interested in a painting of shades of white. So as he worked, the White Dragon touched the art with magic. Anyone who looked at a White Dragon painting saw exactly what he wanted dimly reflected under the white paint, and everyone saw something different. The artwork was just enchanted enough to capture your heart, without a drop of extra enchantment left behind.

      Each one was worth a small fortune.

      The dragon smiled at its work. Captivating, even to him. The only thing more marvellous was the work of that delicate woman across town, at the modern art gallery.

      You see, the dragon had one other interest. A lovely lady, an art collector. To him, she was as beautiful as the art that surrounded her.

      The White Dragon had made himself somewhat well-known with his own paintings, and the woman had placed many of his art pieces in the gallery where she worked. She was a painter herself, so the two had much to talk about.

      The pity was that no one else saw the quality of her paintings. The woman had displayed them in her office discreetly, and the dragon passing through the gallery one day had taken note of them. Her paintings were scratchings of green colours laid out over odd symbols, runes that were brushed in with shades of gold. Most people thought her works were quite strange. Not the dragon. He loved them. He made a habit of calling her to tell her how much he loved them.

      The two had only spoken on the telephone. He had seen her only from afar.

      He decided it was time to introduce himself formally. But he was low on energy. He had used his magic quite a lot recently and needed to rest.

      The White Dragon had been to a town called Ebony Hollow, looking for a boy named Simon St George. An amazing discovery: the Dragonhunter had a son. The White Dragon’s dying brother had sent him word through one of his spies. An unusual act of cooperation, but they were brothers, after all. It’s a shame the spies weren’t up to the task of destroying the knight, but that was a pleasure the dragon wanted for himself anyway. Always hunting each other, they were. The game went round and round.

      The St George family was a curse to dragons. St Georges were faster, smarter and stronger than other humans. They could see through Serpentine magic.

      The true power of the child was not known. But it did not matter, thought the dragon; the boy would no doubt amount to nothing. His dragon spies remained on the job. They’d find him.

      Or, better yet, he thought, maybe he will come right to me.

      Across the city of New York, this was precisely what was going to happen.

      Simon St George was preparing for battle.

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       The Woman who Fell in Love with a Dragon

      The boy and his father had docked the Ship with No Name in New York Harbour and made their way quickly – Simon would say too quickly – through the streets by taxicab to a perch in a giant tree in Central Park. Aldric scaled it quickly, but Simon struggled with the climb. No one could see them because they were so high up, and the tree was deep inside the park, thickly covered in autumn colours.

      Aldric St George had set the area up nicely for their needs long before his trip to the Lighthouse School. Stuck away here and there among the branches were little gunny sacks of food and water, small flashlights, a clock, some books, and below at the trunk, two comfortable easy chairs that Aldric had salvaged from a skip off Park Avenue and which would serve now as a place to sleep, something Simon found depressing. Lodged in the tree were two old brass telescopes, positioned to see in every direction around the park.

      “What are we looking for?” Simon wondered.

      “The signs. He’s been here, you can tell. Lurking.”

      “How do you know?”

      Aldric’s eyes passed over the people below. “You can see it in people’s faces. Everything weighs heavily on them. Their hearts beat slower. The fire that drives them through life is burning low. Look at them, Simon. Nothing reaches past their sadness – not the landscape, not the movement of the city, not the souls around them … They’ve lost something and they don’t know what it is. Some haven’t noticed what’s missing inside, but they know enough to suspect that the city has stolen something from them. You can feel their anger. These people don’t want to be alive any more. The gloom is falling down around them like rain.”

      Simon looked. He saw ordinary people, doing ordinary things.

      Aldric pointed down. “The cab driver at the corner, yelling at the woman crossing. The old woman in the grey coat. The priest. Don’t you feel it?”

      Quiet filled the tree as Simon tried to sense what his father described. The city was just a city. Finally he had to admit, “All I see are a bunch of ticked-off New Yorkers. I thought that was supposed to be pretty normal here.”

      His father frowned. “These are

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