Innes smooths down the front of his sharply creased plaid work shirt, straightens the ID at the end of the lanyard around his neck, levels his glasses, and steals a look at his reflection in the glass beside the door. With a bit of frown, he straightens a few errant bits of his recently-trimmed fringe.
Fig. 1. View from the MacIver home farm, Isle of Harris.
Both his natural bits and his glamor look neat and professional, if he does say so himself. And so he does say as he gives himself a hearty mental pat on the back.
From Innes’ padded right shoulder, Punky runs a red paw tipped with golden yellow claws over his scaly head and collar of short spikes. The little dragon, looking like a housecat-sized version of the great beasts of myth, cheeps a question in his bird-like voice.
“Aye, you are indeed the most handsome bloke in the whole of Glasgow.”
Punky sits up straight, posture perfect, spreads his wings, and gives them a brief rattle.
Innes chuckles. “Now that we’re properly chuffed, it’s time to get to work.”
Punky stomp-stomp-claps his forepaws as he tucks his leathery wings down to his back.
“That’s the spirit! Now: the job!” Innes raps his most professional rap on the black-painted door and waits.
That door—set into the front of an imposing red brick house on a rather posh street in a very nice section of south Glasgow, one of those houses that has big gardens front and rear shaded by mature trees, the sort of house Innes and Punky could never afford in even their wildest dreams—swings open on a sparkling, red-haired person in their mid-twenties.
Innes double-takes them and squeaks (most unprofessionally; he cringes internally), “Cherish?”
She blinks blue eyes at him a moment, her brow furrowed as she searches her memory. “Innes? The same little Innes from Paisley I used to babysit?”
He smiles across the now-vanished height difference. “Not quite so little now, yeah?”
“Oh my god! It is you! C’mere!” Cherish lifts him clear off his feet and hugs the air from his lungs.
Punky squawks nervously, digging in his claws to keep his perch; to be perfectly frank, Innes squawks, too.
Cherish sets him down and pushes him away, but keeps hold of his shoulders as she drags her eyes from his toes to his crown. “You’ve sure grown up handsome!”
“It’s been twelve years, yeah?” Innes shifts his feet in their heavy work boots, cheeks warming, and strokes along Punky’s neck to calm them both.
“Good lord, it’s been that long?”
Cherish smacks her forehead with her open palm. “Where’re my manners? Come in, come in!” She waves him into the close with both hands.
Innes hops over the threshold and resettles the bright new wicker capture basket over his arm on landing.
“You went and did it, huh?” grins Cherish.
Innes tilts his head. “Did what?”
“Got yourself a breathing dragon. Became a proper MacIver like I said you should.”
“Oh, that. Aye, that I did.” He grins. “That’d be why I’m here, after all.”
“Lucky for us! Follow me to the trouble!” Cherish twirls to march deeper into the house.
Cherish snaps one-hundred-eighty degrees around and Innes barely avoids crashing full-frontal into her.
Punky digs his claws into Innes’ shoulder and squawks afresh.
“Ugh! Don’t you dare call me that!” Cherish scolds.
Innes takes another step back and gestures for calm. “It’s polite?”
“No no no! You always call a woman ‘miss’ until she corrects you. Flatters her ego.”
Innes files that away. “I’ll be sure to do that from now on.”
“Good.” Cherish softens and smirks a tad. “Take it you haven’t been a working man long?”
“I’ve been an apprentice for a couple years, but this’s my first call flying solo, actually.”
“And you drew our house?”
Innes glances about the tastefully decorated foyer. “Certainly looks that way.”
Cherish smacks his arm, totally playful. “This is so awesome! Little Innes is all grown up and has a dragon familiar!” Cherish skips up a flight of carpeted stairs past a window glimmering with colorful stained glass as Innes pursues. “What’s your pretty friend’s name? He’s a lesser Hebridean, yeah?” she asks.
The dragon puffs up, sings a bouncy little tune.
“This’s Punky. He’s technically my partner, not a familiar, and yes, he’s a lesser Hebridean, but he thinks he’s actually Freddie Mercury.”
“He’s got a lovely voice, but can he play the piano?”
Punky looks to Innes and gives his best shrug: a brief, fluttery flex of his wings.
“We’ll have to find out after we take care of whatever I’m here for.”
“That’d be in here.” Cherish steps from a long hallway into an expansive bedroom decorated in soothing greens and blues, complete with a giant bed and what looks like a working fireplace.
Faint scraping and cheeping reaches Innes through the masonry. He steps closer to it and prompts, “They’re in the chimney?”
Cherish crosses her arms and frowns at the fireplace. “They’re in the chimney and they’re raising a ruckus all day, which keeps my da awake. He’s slowly going mad with lack of sleep.”
“That’s not ideal.” Innes scratches the back of his head, poking Cherish’s childhood descriptions of her father back into the depths of his memory. “You … you think it’s dragons instead of birds because …?”
“Because I saw one of the little scaly bleeders crawling into there from the roof. With what looked like a mouthful of sparrow.”
“That’s likely a dragon.”
Innes shrugs. “It could be a very confused and unhealthy squirrel.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Not at all. You didn’t meet Chompers, the Terror of Harris.” Innes shakes head as he fits the red and blue lenses of the x-ray specs over his glasses.
“You’ll have to tell me about that someday,” Cherish laughs.
“If I ever have another free moment. The boss’s promising to run me ragged.”
Cherish pulls an exaggerated pout. “I haven’t seen you for yonks and here you are promising to disappear again.”
“I, I never disappeared. Went from Paisley to Mount Floridon and Loch Tay, then Harris, and now here with a job to do. Always been in the directory.”
Cherish beams reassurance like sunshine. “I mean I let us fall out of touch, but we’re living in the same city again and we absolutely have to catch up, aye?”
“Aye,” says Innes, smiling relief. He takes a deep breath and turns his attention to the brickwork.
The magic bound to the x-ray specs reduces the structure of fireplace, chimney, and wall to a greenish mist, revealing three fingerling dragon chicks curled up under the wing of an adult the size of a crow nestled in the throat of the flue.
“And the verdict is?” prompts Cherish.
“There’s a nest of boomers, complete with mum, in there.”
“Don’t hate on them too much, yeah? I wouldn’t have this dream job without their special sort of nuisance.”
Cherish snorts a laugh. “You know why they call them ‘boomers,’ right?”
“I’ve heard a few versions of the tale. What’s yours?”
“Because the damned things always come back like bloody boomerangs.”
“That’s a new one on me.”
“Nope. Been running in different sorts of circles, apparently.” Innes returns the colored specs to their case on his toolbelt and pulls on his dragon-skin gloves, then crouches, eases Punky to the floor—”Down you go, buddy.”—and folds the fire screen aside. After a bit of twisting, he gets his top half into the fireplace, his spine braced against the back wall.
“Absolutely nothing. It’s black as midnight in here.”
“Naw. I can make my own. Let there be light!”
The tight space fills with a sourceless golden glow.
“You must save a fortune on batteries.”
Innes hums agreement as he scopes the situation. The spot he’s in is barely wider than his shoulders, coated with soot, and sealed at the top by a hinged metal plate.
“So how do we get them out?” Cherish leaves the barest beat. “Is it magic? Please say it’s magic.”
“I’m actually thinking more along the lines of opening the damper a tad and scooping them out.”
“This job isn’t always the stuff of legends.”
“Says the man making like Santa Claus.”
“Fitting, seeing as I’m about to deliver you some presents.”
“Would you be so kind as to open my basket, nudge it closer, and work the damper? Open it maybe halfway?”
A bit of scuffing and something bumps Innes’ foot.
A metallic grinding, some scraping, and somethings soft and scaly bounce off Innes’ nose—
“What the—” Innes sneezes himself down hard onto the grate.
—and emit tiny chick-cheeps from his lap, along with pricking his thighs with needle claws.
Innes spits feathers, says—
Leathery wings batter his face and chest, then retreat and—
A yank at his belt, then—
Cherish squeals, then laughs.
—Punky shrieks his absolute indignation.
—an adult boomer peeps an interrogative at a relative distance.
—nothing, but coughs out even more feathers and spits into the ashes. He cradles the baby boomers close to prevent escape and uses his free hand to scrape yet another pillow’s worth of feathers from behind his glasses.
“Are you all right?” giggles Cherish.
“I’m a bit down in the mouth—”
“—but unharmed. Never heard of a dragon hoarding feathers like this, though.”
“It’s not hoarding. She wanted her chicks warm and cozy. Isn’t that right, mummy?”
Another questioning chirp arrives in answer.
Innes nestles the chicks in his basket, then wiggles his way out of the fireplace to stand on the hearth. He pushes up his glasses, clears his eyes with his cuff, and blinks. “You caught her?”
“Yep!” Cherish holds up the utterly confused adult female boomer trapped in her hands, lightly iridescent gray-blue wings pinned and legs and tail dangling immobile. “Snagged her right out of the air! Even little Freddie missed her!”
Innes smiles down at Punky. “Next time I’ll let you off your lead first.”
Punky sniffs approval, but some sulk remains in his posture.
“I’ll take her off your hands.” Innes opens his.
Innes takes a solid hold of the now rather miffed dragon—who looks overall like a cross between Punky and a small iguana—pours her into the basket with her chicks, and locks the lid behind her. “Suppose … suppose I’ll have to give you a discount for that.”
Cherish pouts, hands on hips. “I wasn’t already getting one?”
Punky leaps onto Innes’ shoulder, shakes his wings into alignment, then drapes himself around Innes’ neck.
“The discount’s for family only.” Innes straightens up with basket in hand.
“You babysat me twelve years—”
“The fuck’s all the noise?” growls the person who slumps against the doorframe, the one who resembles Cherish in age and face and coloration enough to be her sibling. They haven’t gotten sleep or sun in much too long, if their surprising dead pale skin and the dark half-moons under their eyes are any indication.
“Hi, Da! Did we wake you?” asks Cherish, absolutely chipper.
Mr. Lennon glares perfect exasperation at her. “I’m fucking sleepwalking, of course. And sleep-talking.” He looks to Innes, blinks a couple of times and says, “You catch them, MacIver?”
“I caught the mum!” sings Cherish, peering around Innes, “and he got the three itty-bitty babies!”
Mr. Lennon grunts and shuffles into the room. “No. You’re not keeping them.”
“They’ll actually be happier on the outskirts than in the city like this,” adds Innes.
Cherish gives him a dark look. “Whose side are you on?”
“That’d be the dragon’s side, where he should be and stay,” says Mr. Lennon. “Now, Mr. MacIver, do everyone a favor and take those little noisemakers away so I can get some bloody fucking sleep already.”
“But, the mess?” Innes gestures to the feathers, soot, and ashes dotted across what looks like an antique rug. “I’m to—”
Mr. Lennon waves dismissal, then herds Cherish and Innes into the hall. “I’ll have the cleaners see to it when they’re in tomorrow.”
Mr. Lennon inclines his head and slams the bedroom door in their faces.
Innes and Punky blink rapidly.
“He is such a grump,” sighs Cherish.
Innes gathers his scattered wits while waves a hand over his clothes, evaporating the smudges and down they’ve collected. “How long’s it been since he’s had proper sleep?”
“Poor soul, no wonder he’s a tad short on patience.”
“That’s no excuse for that kind of rudeness.”
“Perhaps, but it’s as near to one as I can think of.”
Cherish huffs. “Can you stay for a cuppa?”
“Unfortunately not. I have to drop this lot off at headquarters, then be on to my next call.”
“There’s no rest for the wicked.” Innes gives her a winning smile.
“You? Wicked? Puh-lease.”
“I’m only starting out. Give it time.”
“Never! You’re one of the good guys!”
Innes laughs along. “Guilty, I suppose.”
Image credit: Chris Downer. Urgha: view along the Laxdale Lochs. Image file (.jpg). 15 August 2012. CC BY-SA 2.0. https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3283041
