The dragon problem

I was woken early one morning by the sound of six geep rushing through the geep-flap in my back door.

 

I was just drifting back off to sleep when I was disturbed again, this time by the sound of six miniature elephants charging through the elephant flap in my back door (Alun often complains that my door’s more flap than door).

 

‘Funny’, I thought, ‘the elephants usually only come down from Elephant Mountain during lettuce season.’ It was doubly peculiar because both the elephants and geep are fond of a lie-in in the morning and are rarely seen until long after the early morning boat has been at 6.30.

 

Intrigued, I quickly dressed and went downstairs to investigate.

 

My menagerie were in something of a state, sweaty and anxious, unusual for Happy Island, which is normally such a relaxed, peaceful place (‘Geep Heaven’ it was once called in Geep Keepers Monthly Magazine).

 

I towelled the geep and elephants down, gave them a bowl each of Happy Water and distributed the sole lettuce in my refrigerator amongst a dozen greedy mouths, and went outside, to see what was causing all this uncommon commotion.

 

I didn’t have to search long. In fact it was obvious the second I walked through the door. There, sitting on the very peak of Elephant Mountain, was an enormous great dragon, one of the Welsh variety, big, muscular, fiery, with claws as long and sharp as any sword. Its wings, in full span, were each as wide as two football pitches, and in total the dragon took up a significant proportion of the island.

 

I was still staring at the sight when I spotted Alun running up to my house from South Bay.

 

“Jed, Jed,” he cried, “you’ll never guess what’s happened.”

 

“Er, actually I think I can guess,” I said. “There’s a dragon taken up residence at the top of Elephant Mountain.”

 

“Yes, yes, that’s obvious Jed, but there’s worse news than that. I’ve just come from South Bay and the boatman didn’t stop for us.”

 

“The boatman didn’t stop? But the boatman always stops.”

 

“I know Jed, even that time he died he still made the trip to Happy Island.”

 

“That was the last boatman,” I said. “The current boatman has never died, to my knowledge.”

 

“I know that Jed, I’m not stupid. I’m just pointing out that the boatman never misses us out.”

 

“So why’s he missed us out today? Is he ill? Is he dead?”

 

“No Jed. It’s the dragon. He says he’s not visiting Happy Island when half the island is taken up by a dragon.”

 

“What are we going to do?”  The boatman provides a lifeline to Happy Island, and a dozen islands like it, bringing food, booze and gossip from the mainland. Without the boat our island would become a disconnect, a non-place, adrift from the world.

 

“There only one thing we can do Jed. We’ll have to get rid of the dragon.”

 

“What, you want us to fight a dragon? Two men against a beast like that.”

 

“Of course not Jed. Don’t be a fool. That’s a fiery great Welsh dragon, not some pathetic French dragon that would run away at the first sight of a fire extinguisher. No we have to steal its hoard.”

 

“Its hoard?”

 

“Every dragon settles on top of its hoard of gold. If we sneak up the mountain, steal the gold, move the hoard to an empty island, the dragon will settle wherever we leave the hoard.”

 

“It sounds difficult. Stealing dragon’s gold.”

 

“Nonsense, Jed. People steal dragon’s gold all the time. We watched a film about it last week, remember?”

 

“I don’t think that was a documentary,” I said.  However, I couldn’t think of a better idea and reluctantly consented to the plan.

 

We carefully crept across the island, to the foot of Elephant Mountain, atop of which the great dragon lay.

 

“We have to be careful now, Jed,” Alun said. “If the dragon catches us stealing his hoard he will roast us with flames and tear our roasted bodies into a thousand pieces.”

 

“Are you sure this is the BEST plan you can think of?” I started to say, but Alun shushed me to be quiet, and mimed being roasted and ripped apart.

 

We started to climb the mountain. “We’ll go the tail side,” Alun whispered, “so that the dragon won’t see us.”

 

We climbed up to the dragon. Close up the stench was overwhelming, like a million fetid underpants.  We crept along the body of this great beast, reaching the tail, thicker than any tree trunk you have ever seen and twice as long.

 

“Careful Jed, that’s a powerful tail, he could knock you into Distant Island if you’re not careful.”

 

However, I was already being 100% careful due to the being roasted alive issue, so I could merely continue at that level. 

 

“Look Jed, under the tail, I can see the glistening of gold.”

 

We crept closer, taking care with every step and every breath.

 

There, under the dragon’s backside, was a bowl filled to the brim with golden-flaked cereal.

 

“Is that it?” I said. “The dragon’s hoard?  A bowl of cereal!”

 

“I told you dragons could be stupid Jed. But it doesn’t matter, we have to steal the bowl of golden flakes, move it to another island and be rid of this dragon once and for all.”

 

I’ve often been described as the sort of guy dragons don’t notice, and for this reason it was me who was chosen to do the actual stealing of the gold. I crawled across the rocky mountain slope, edging myself up against the dragon’s bottom, under which lie the bowl of dragon’s hoard.

 

I clasped the bowl and slowly pulled it toward me. There was no movement from the dragon, so I pulled it closer. A couple of stray flakes of gold fell out of the bowl. I paused, for dragons can hear the fall of a single flake of gold from a thousand paces. Sure enough the dragon had heard, his great body started to rise, and in no time at all he rose up, turned round and his great fanged-face was pressed against me, as I struggled prostrate against the ground.”

 

“What’s this?” the dragon roared. “Little things stealing my gold. I shall roast you alive for this you fools.”

 

“Don’t roast us,” Alun said, “we’re here to negotiate.”

“Negotiate? Dragons don’t negotiate. Dragons don’t need to negotiate. We tend to win our arguments, you see.”

 

“If you move to another island,” Alun said, “we’ll give you more gold.”

 

“More gold?”

 

“Yes, an entire packet of golden flakes,” Alun said.”

 

“I’ve got a packet at home as well,” I said.

“Two packets of golden flakes, if you just move a couple of islands across.”

 

“Well, it would be nice to have a larger hoard, I suppose, and this island is a bit dull. Okay, so it’s a deal. If you bring me two packets of golden flakes I will leave your island and find a new home for my enlarged hoard.”

 

Alun and I quickly descended the mountain, fetched our packets of golden-flaked cereal and returned to the dragon.

 

“My, what an impressive hoard you’ve given me,” the dragon said, emptying the golden-flaked cereal onto the mountain top.

 

Hoard topped up, the dragon settled back down, as if to sleep.

 

“Excuse me,” Alun said, “but you agreed to move to another island in exchange for our gold.”

 

“I told you,” the dragon roared in response, “dragon’s don’t negotiate. We sometimes lie, we often steal, but we never negotiate. I’m afraid I shall never move from this place, it is my lair now.”

 

“That’s great,” I said, “not only has our island become a dragon’s lair, we don’t even have anything for breakfast. What are we going to do?”

 

Alun sighed. “Well Jed, we can’t live here with a fully-grown Welsh dragon on the island.  We’d be at constant risk; just one stray flick of its tail or burst of flame and we’re flying toast. There’s nothing we can do, we’ll have to leave the island.”

 

“Leave the island. But what about my geep and my miniature elephants.”

 

“We can take them with us Jed.”

 

“Take them with us, but how? The boatman isn’t visiting and we don’t have a boat of our own.”

 

“That’s easy Jed. We’ll just build an ark. We’ll take six of every clean creature and two of every unclean creature.”

 

“Why only two of the unclean animals? This isn’t a religious quest.”

 

“No, Jed, that’s true, but we don’t want unclean animals stinking our ark out.

 

“But how are we going to build an ark. There are only a few trees on the island, where will we get the wood?”

 

“We’ll use my do-it-yourself shed kit. I’ve had it for years, I never got round to building it.”

 

“A shed. You want to go to sea in a shed?”

 

“It’s an ark-shaped shed. I bought it during my novelty period, Jed. It will only take a few simple adjustments to turn it into a sailable ark.”

 

Alun was right. It was simple to construct and within a few hours we have built an ark/floating shed, ready to set sail.

 

We inspected the geep and elephants, happily they were all clean and we were able to take all six of each.

 

“Where will we go?” I asked.

“Anywhere we want,” Alun said. “The mainland, another island, we can go wherever the wind takes us.”

 

“Yes, it’s lucky your shed came with a free sail isn’t it,” I said.

 

“It was a special offer, free sails with every shed. It’s one of the reasons I bought it.”

 

We loaded he boat with personal items we couldn’t bear to leave behind and sufficient provisions to last us until we reached shore.

 

Alas, our ark construction skills weren’t as great as we’d believed, and within a few feet the ark started to sink. We hastily rescued our personal items and helped the geep and elephants swim safely ashore.

 

“Well,” I said, that’s it. We’re stuck on this island forever now, we’re destined to become dragon-fodder or flying-toast.”

 

“Not necessarily, Jed. We could hitch a ride to the mainland, hire a boat, come back for your geep and elephants, and then set off to a new life.”

 

“Hitch?” I said. “Hitch how? The boatman isn’t stopping here, remember.”

 

“It’s a busy archipelago Jed, there’s bound to be another boat pass by eventually.”

 

It was a crazy scheme, but the best plan we had. We stood on the South Bay waiting for a boat to pass. About five minutes later a boat approached. We stuck out our thumbs, optimistically, and to my amazement the boat stopped.

 

“Any chance of a lift to the mainland?” Alun shouted.

 

“Or anywhere else,” I added. Dragon-fodder can’t be choosy.

 

“Hop in,” the ship’s captain shouted.

 

We climbed aboard, thanking the captain profusely.

 

“I’m not going straight to the mainland, mind,” the captain said, “I’m going to GoldFlake Island, loading up, then going back to the mainland. It’ll be a couple of hours in all, if you don’t mind waiting.”

“That’s fine,” Alun said.

 

“GoldFlake Island?” I asked. “I’ve never heard of GoldFlake Island.”

 

The ship’s captain looked at me in amazement. “You’ve never heard of Goldflake Island!  Why, it’s only the site of the world’s biggest goldflake cereal mine.”

 

“Goldflake cereal mine?” I said.

“Why, yes. We supply breakfast to half the mainland.”

 

“So, the biggest pile of golden cereal in the world is on your island,” I said.

“Yes. You wouldn’t be interested in becoming security guards would you?”

 

“Security guards.”

 

“Yes, security’s a real issue. Our rivals are always trying to steal our golden-flake fortune, and we can never get security guards to stay for more than a few days – they get bored you see, there’s nothing to do on the island. Even the guard dogs swim to the mainland at the first opportunity.”

 

“We might have a solution …” I started to say.

 

“For a price.” Alun added.

 

Which is how we came to set up DragonHire, a company that has made us a considerable income over the years, not to mention free breakfasts for life.