Monday 12th October 2015
It's only just turned Monday, but I've had such a horrible dream that I don't feel ready to go back to sleep. I'm writing this by the light of the torch on my phone, which doesn't seem to disturb Mouse. I suppose, as his eyes don't shut (their fire just grows dimmer when he's asleep), he's learnt to ignore light.
I dreamed that my Master and Ivan and I had run away to rescue captive dragons, and that we were attacked by a dragon who burned my Master's arm so badly that he needed hospital treatment, but we had been stealing food to survive (not to mention stealing dragons from laboratories) and didn't dare go near a hospital, and so the injury just kept on getting worse, and my Master seemed to be dying, which meant I must die too – except that I woke up at that point. I managed to prevent myself from screaming just in time to avoid waking Mouse.
Down the ages, some philosophers have believed that dreams were prophecies, while others held them to be merely the result of an imbalance of humours in the body. Most sages these days seem to think that, while dreams don't tell you what the future holds, they are a way for the hidden parts of your brain to tell you about the thoughts you didn't know you were thinking. I suspect this one simply meant that I am thoroughly selfish and worried that my Master might like someone else more than he likes me, which means that I'm jealous of Ivan and even jealous of dragons, and therefore trying to convince myself that Ivan and dragons pose a threat to him. Even though I know that silver dragons like Firedrake don't harm humans with their flame – who knows what other species of dragon might still be out there?
The dragon in the dream looked utterly unlike Firedrake, and rather like a dragon in the DVD we watched with Ivan once. He was apparently meant to be Toothless, even though he looked nothing like Hiccup's description and pictures of Toothless as a young dragon. Then again, Hiccup does describe rescuing an older dragon, Furious, who had been cruelly imprisoned. Furious had been a great friend of one of Hiccup's ancestors, but, heartbroken at losing him and angry at the way that dragons were now treated as slaves rather than friends and equals, he had declared war on the human race. Apparently, dragons who are heartbroken don't die of grief, the way homunculi do – instead, they become really, really dangerous. The species that Toothless and Furious belonged to are quite small when they hatch, but they grow huge enough to swallow ships – and, far from only breathing magic fire that cures illness and breaks enchantments, they can even breathe exploding fire. So, if Toothless is still alive – who knows what he might be like by now?
All right. Perhaps my dream isn't just the result of me being jealous. But that doesn't mean it's likely to come true, either.
I just wish it hadn't felt so real.
(Evening) My first day of school has come and gone. It helped that, now the weather is cold enough for everyone to be wearing coats, I could crouch in my Master's jacket pocket, rather than having to squash into his bag among assorted textbooks, exercise books, pencil case, pocket calculator, and PE kit (plus the trusty penknife, torch and compass tucked into the inside pocket in case of emergencies).
On the walk to school, we met Ivan, and Miss Guinevere went on ahead with friends of her own to be out of the press of boys (Ivan's brother Josh seemed to be going to the school by a different route). We stopped at a small shop with jars of boiled sweets behind the counter, and shelves of everything else (chocolate bars and crisps, tinned foods, jars of instant coffee, cans of beer, and plastic toys) ranged around the shop. It was like a much smaller version of the big supermarkets like Lidl and Aldi, only without so many fresh vegetables or freshly-baked bread rolls. Here, there were only plastic bags containing sliced loaves.
After we'd wandered briefly round, my master went up to the counter, while Ivan stayed to look at the toys dangling from a stand at the back of the shop. Ivan kept calling out intermittently things like, 'Hey, Ben, d'you want a Halloween costume? D'you think a blue clown wig would suit me? Or a green one, then I could go as Atticus?'
My Master ignored him, as he was busy trying to negotiate with the shopkeeper:
'Please, can I have a hundred-gram bag of sherbert lemons and chocolate limes, mixed?'
The shopkeeper irritably glanced up. 'You want a hundred grams of sherbert lemons and a hundred bags of chocolate limes?'
'No, a hundred grams of both together, mixed, please.'
'I can't mix sweets.'
'But why not? They are the same price.'
'No they're not. We've got sweets with all different prices here. You see? Rhubarb and custard's £1 a hundred grams, fudge is £1.80 a hundred grams, flying saucers are £2.50 a hundred grams, Spanish gold's £1.40…'
'But sherbert lemons and chocolate limes are both £1 a hundred grams.'
'Yeah, that's right. So if I give you a hundred-gram bag of each, that'll be two quid, okay?'
'No, I have only one pound. I need the rest for my dinner money.'
'So, what d'you want? A bag of sherbert lemons, or a bag of chocolate limes?'
'A bag of both, mixed, please.'
'I can't mix sweets.'
At this point Ivan rejoined us. 'C'mon, let's go. You shouldn't be eating candy in school, anyway – it'll spoil your appetite for the lovely food in the school canteen.'
'Have you seen anything that you want?' asked my Master.
'Not sure. It's a bit early to start shopping for Halloween – I might come back later.'
We arrived just in time for Personal Development Curriculum at twenty to nine. The teacher started by telling one boy to take his earrings out, reminding him that jewellery wasn't allowed in school, and neither was hair clipped into a Mohican and bleached white – 'and that applies to you, Meera, just as it does to Liam. Honestly, I thought the Last of the Mohicans died sometime in the 1980s! And, Shofiq, what did I say about wearing a school blazer and tie? Not a baggy hoodie?'
'I have them on!' protested Shofiq. 'But it's f-freezing cold in here!'
'If you're cold, you can wear a V-necked jersey under your blazer, the way the others are doing. Not a hoodie on top. Graska, are trainers allowed in school?'
'No, miss,' mumbled Graska, through a mouthful of something.
'No, Mrs Kaur, if you don't mind. And, may I remind you, neither is eating in class.'
'Mnot eating.'
'Well, chewing, then. What is it? Gum?' Graska nodded. 'Well, will you come and put it in the bin, then?'
'Why?'
'Because I don't like watching you sitting there with your jaw going up and down like a Victorian clockwork toy. Natalie! What is the school rule on phones?'
'I'll just be five minutes, Miss-is Kaur …'
'Natalie, this is a lesson. This part of the day is dedicated to your personal, moral, and social development…'
'Well, I'm on social media, innit?' protested Natalie. 'An' I don't fink it's very moral of you to try and stop me keepin' in touch wiv me uncle in Australia an' mum's cousin in Canada an' me dad in Malta an'...'
Mrs Kaur confiscated Natalie's phone (and a few others around the room) and Liam's earrings, reminding them to reclaim them from her at the end of the day, and put Graska's wad of gum in the bin, announced that she would phone Graska's mother about getting her some proper school shoes, and told Shofiq to hang his jacket over his chair till the end of the lesson. The lesson was on why it is wrong to treat people differently because of their appearance or the way they dress. Everyone burst out laughing. But by now it was nine o'clock, and time for English.
English (which seems to be for all pupils, not just those who don't speak English as a first language) mainly involves reading stories. At the moment, my Master's class are working through a book about a boy who could travel between different universes. 'Ben,' the teacher said, 'can you read Christopher today? And, Ivan, I'd like you to read a character called Tacroy whom we'll meet shortly. Now, who wants to read the bits in between?' Nobody volunteered. 'All right, I'll pick on someone. Shofiq, I'd like you to be the narrator from page 26 to the top of page 28, and then I'll choose someone else.'
By the end of the chapter, all the children were talking excitedly. Who was Tacroy? Why was he like a ghost when travelling between worlds, not solid like Christopher? And why did Christopher's Uncle Ralph want them to bring back dragon's blood?
The teacher wrote out the more interesting of these questions on the board. 'I'd like you to write down your ideas to each of those questions,' he said. 'You can discuss them in pairs first. And no, I don't want anyone reading on ahead, so I'm going to collect the books in now,' he added. 'Write about what you think is happening. And for homework, I want you to write a story about where Christopher and Tacroy's next journey might take them.'
My Master and Ivan quickly decided that Uncle Ralph was up to no good – after all, who but an evil person would want to exploit dragons like that? They weren't sure about Tacroy, but agreed that they liked him enough to reserve judgment on whether he was a villain for the time being.
Next came ICT, with a lesson on how to use databases. I'd thought that being able to access the internet on a smartphone was exciting enough, but now I realised that I been using it only to read things (mostly Wikipedia, or popular science sites like 'What If?'). I hadn't even thought of something so obvious as creating a database to store information about different kinds of fantastic beings – something infinitely expandable in a way that Professor Greenbloom's scrapbooks of photographs, drawings and handwritten notes just aren't. I need to talk to him about that – and about whether there's some way of sending text and photographs from a phone to the database, without making them publicly available on the internet.
At break, my Master and Ivan went over to hang around outside the sixth-formers' building, which is a separate part of the school from the blocks for under-sixteens, to see whether they could catch sight of Atticus. There was no sign of him, and, when we went inside to ask, the woman on the reception desk said she hadn't seen him.
'Did he call in sick?' asked Ivan earnestly. 'Only we promised to meet up with him – it's part of this new pupil counselling programme, you see.'
'No, he hasn't deigned to tell us what the excuse is this time,' said the secretary. 'I expect he'll slope in sometime around lunchtime. I didn't know Atticus was a pupil counsellor, but, really, you could look for a better role model.'
'So, what happened on Friday?' asked Ivan as we left, to stand in a quiet part of the grounds where nobody was likely to notice if I put my head out to join in the conversation. 'Did you get him to eat garlic?'
'No, of course not!' said my Master indignantly. 'Just liver, and then chocolate torte. He has, uh…' he struggled to find the right English phrase, and turned to me, 'Was heißt "erbrechen" auf Englisch?'
'He threw most of it up before he left,' I explained. 'It might be because he can't digest food, or because he'd had too much to drink, or both.'
'Do you think he is a vampire?' asked Ivan.
'Yes, we are all nearly sure,' said my Master. 'My parents were afraid he might be something worse – a Hollow or a Wight – but if he is only a vampire, it is equal.'
'Equal? You mean, he's just as bad as Hollows and Wights?' asked Ivan, confused.
'No,' I explained, 'my…' (he really doesn't like being described as my Master, but that's still how I think of him – though now less in the sense of being an owner, than someone who can teach me how to be a person) 'Ben means that the Professor and Professora don't mind that Atticus is a vampire, as long as he's not a bad person. I think they even feel sorry for him.'
'I can't imagine my dad feeling that way about a vampire. But then, I can't imagine him feeling it about a dragon, or…'
But at this time the bell rang for an RS lesson about the Buddhist Wheel of Life and the six realms one can be reincarnated in: humans, gods, angry gods, animals, hungry ghosts, and souls in hell. Humans are generally reckoned to have the best chance of reaching enlightenment, because they experience both happiness (unlike the souls in hell) and unhappiness (unlike the gods), are not wholly governed by greed (like the hungry ghosts) or aggression (like the angry gods), and have enough intelligence to understand what happens to them (unlike most animals). I wondered where on this wheel the Buddha would have placed homunculi, dragons and brownies – or vampires, for that matter.
PE came next, which gave me plenty of time to think as I waited in the changing-rooms while everyone played football. Mostly, I thought about different religions' attitudes to the afterlife. I remembered something that Mouse had said about Hollows, who eat Peculiar humans like Professor Greenbloom, and the Wights who serve the Hollows. He had heard a lot by eavesdropping on the conversations of the humans in Miss Peregrine's Loop, because nobody thought of him as a person enough to try to stop him listening. Miss Peregrine had explained that the Hollows were a group of Peculiars who had tried to make themselves immortal. Instead, they had turned themselves into monsters, possibly because they had regressed to a time before their souls were conceived (Miss Peregrine apparently did not believe that souls had existed forever, in one incarnation or another). They are possessed with the urge to hunt and kill Peculiars because, if they eat enough Peculiars, they can become Wights, who are nearly human enough to pass for normal humans.
Miss Peregrine had said that being a Hollow was hell, and being a Wight was purgatory. I'm not sure she was right about that. It's a while since I studied Christian theology, but I thought the point of purgatory is that it is not the realm of the damned, but the realm of the saved who are not yet perfected enough to be able to enter into heaven. They experience suffering, yes, but it is the suffering of the hospital, not the torture chamber. They are there to be purified, not to be punished, and they endure it willingly because they know it will be worth it to be able to unlearn the wrong ways of thinking and feeling and behaving that had marred their earthly lives.
I wonder whether Buddhists, who believe that no-one goes to hell permanently, believe something similar to the Christian doctrine of purgatory? Except that I don't think Buddhists believe in a God who loves us and wants to help us find redemption. They think we need to work it out on our own – but people can help each other, and even donate the good karma they have earned to other people.
Then we went into the canteen for lunch. My Master bought cottage pie, runner beans, and sweetcorn, and a currant bun for dessert, carefully putting the change back into his wallet. Ivan, behind him in the queue, sighed at the young man serving us. 'No burgers and chips again?'
'It's the healthy eating policy, mate. You get fish and chips once a week, on Friday.'
'Yeah, but what about burgers?'
'There's mince in the cottage pie. And potato on top. Go on, try it.'
'Nah, I'll just have a bread roll. Gotta watch my figure.'
'Hey, you need to watch out you don't get anorexic.'
'I look okay, don't I? You Brits are always making out all Americans are obese, you should be glad one of us is a healthy weight.'
The server sighed. 'One wholemeal roll, then. 20p.'
We went over to a table, where my Master broke off a piece of currant bun and slipped it to me before making a start on his own meal.
'Do your family know you eat meat?' asked Ivan. 'They're vegetarian, right?'
'They are. So I am vegetarian when I am at home. They do not ask what I eat at school.'
'Yeah, neither does my dad!' said Ivan, with a burst of laughter. I could hear him unzipping his bag and bringing out rustling things which, as he opened the wrappers, I could smell to be chocolate bars, peanuts, and crisps. 'I just told him school meals cost £2 a day, so I needed a raise on my allowance to cover that. I didn't say I wouldn't get my food at the shops on the way to school.'
I was quite certain that Ivan had not bought anything on the way to school. There didn't seem to be a tactful way to ask, so I made do with a tactless one. There was a pen in the pocket, and a bus ticket. On the back of the bus ticket, I wrote, 'STEALING?' and poked it out of the gap in the top of the pocket. My Master read it, gave a small nod, and poked the scrap of paper back in. I wrote, 'AT THE SAME SHOP? EVERY DAY?' This time, my Master read it thoughtfully, and then pushed it across to Ivan.
'Oh, come on!' snapped Ivan. 'You lived on the streets for years – you must've had to steal to survive, didn't you?'
'Yes, but I went not to the same shop, at the same time every day,' my Master pointed out, with a note of caution in his voice that I had almost never heard before.
'It won't be much longer,' said Ivan. 'Just until I can get the bus fare to somewhere a long way from anywhere. I didn't know how crowded this stupid little island was! I need to be somewhere no-one'll notice when a beautiful, big blue dragon swoops in to give me a ride. And then, when I'm travelling with Issiah, I really will need to steal – he may be able to live on moonlight, but I can't. This is just practice.'
My Master slipped the scrap of paper back to me, and I wrote in the remaining space, 'DOES HE NEED TO? RIM OF HEAVEN CHRISTMAS.'
My Master read it. 'You have right!' he whispered to me. 'Ivan, in the Christmas holidays go we to the Rim of Heaven. You could come with us, and from there call Issiah. He might be happy, with other dragons to meet.'
'That's ten weeks,' said Ivan bleakly. 'Ten more weeks of living with my dad.'
'Or half-term?' suggested my Master. 'In two weeks have we half-term. Maybe could we then… maybe we could go to Scotland then,' he corrected himself. 'Finally, if you become caught stealing, your dad will watch you like a jailer.'
'Two weeks of being a good boy?' said Ivan dubiously. 'Uh – I'll think about it. But you know what it's like to need to run away, don't you? Don't you?'
Given that modern English doesn't use the singular 'thou', I think he meant that we both knew how it felt. We did, of course. Ivan's father doesn't seem to be a monster who might gobble him up, like Nettlebrand, but he might be just as unpleasant as Mr Foulweather, who had been once my Master's foster carer.
After lunch came Maths, and then Science (finding out what happens to a strong acid when you add a strong alkali to it, one tiny drop at a time). The science teacher started off by telling the children what they were supposed to be finding out, then asked them to write down what they predicted would happen, then let them do the experiment, and then explained why the strong acid had stayed a strong acid for so long, then briefly jumped to being neutral, then to a strong alkali. She explained what a strong acid actually is, in terms of atomic structure. Humans these days really do seem to have turned alchemy into a science.
School is fascinating. I wonder whether Ivan will miss it, when he runs away. He doesn't sound as though he thinks he'll miss much else about his life here – except, perhaps, having a human friend who understands how he feels about dragons. Unless, of course, they decide to run away together.
What if my dream really does come true?
