Wendy

Jeremy Montagu

Description

Wendy is a good Welsh dragon, living on Pendragon hill in Llandraig. She has friends and lovers, past and present, in many parts of the world - under the water in Loch Ness, on an island in Polynesia (an emigrant from Cader Idris in Wales), in Edinburgh (once on Dragon Hill at Uffington, where he took umbrage at the inaccuracy of his portrait carved in chalk on the hill), under the Drachenfels on the Rhine in Germany (where he took refuge from a Wanderer and a young Hero with a sword), in Cambridge, in Turkey, in castles in Romania and Hungary, in Qumran overlooking the Dead Sea in Israel, in Bolivia with an ex-Welsh community (who had quarrelled with Merlin in Arthurian times), and in Armenia. Wendy is now making and selling magic carpets (with full anti-missile properties), and others. She also has six children to get settled in good jobs and with nice partners or even a husband or wife (and who knows how to organize a dragon marriage?). One, a true Welsh red dragon, first becomes a member of the Welsh Parliamentary Assembly and then an ambassador for the Prince of Wales. The second agrees to settle on the Drachenfels, which despite its name has had no dragon since Fafner hid himself deep below. The third has a job, shared with her Chinese husband, as the cuckoos of a giant dragon clock in a Swiss valley. The fourth becomes an attraction in Days-of-Oldeland at Lake Havasu in Arizona, where he meets other survivors from older times. The fifth becomes the charge of a Chinese dynasty who traditionally looked after the Imperial five-clawed dragons, and who settles with her in Scotland - where she falls in love with the son of Wendy's old friend in Loch Ness. And the last, after finding that kangaroos are indigestible, falls for the son of the magic carpet maker. The book is full of musical references, unpolitically-correct remarks about bankers, politicians, and others, and puns - telling how Wendy travels the world, visiting her old friends, getting her children settled down, enjoying good food (often of unwary passers-by), and reviving all her old affections.

Informations

• Publié par: eBook Versions
• Date de parution: 29 avril 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781843960270
• Langue: English

Extrait

WENDY
The Lives Loves
of a Dragon


Jeremy Montagu




SJS PUBLICATIONS
Oxford, England.
Published by
SJS Publications
Oxford, England.

Copyright © 2013 Jeremy Montagu

Author s website
www.jeremymontagu.co.uk

Jeremy Montagu has asserted his
right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988 to be identified
as the author of this work.

All characters are figments of the
author s imagination, save where
others got in first with those such as
St Brendan, Fafner, the Loch Ness
Monster, and the Sirens. None is
intended to resemble any known being
whether human or otherwise, ancient or
modern, imaginary or real.

ISBN-13 978-1-84396-027-0

A CIP catalogue record for
this ebook edition is available
from the British Library.

ePub edition production
www.ebookversions.com

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or
introduced into a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form
or by any means electronic,
photomechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without
the prior written permission
of the publisher. Any person who
does any unauthorised act in
relation to this publication may be
liable to criminal prosecution
Contents


Title Page
Copyright Credits
Dedication

Chapter 1
Wendy at Home
Chapter 2
Wendy s Children
Chapter 3
Draiggoch and Gwyndywr are Settled
Chapter 4
Blaellian s Wedding
Chapter 5
Cadwallader in Arizona
Chapter 6
Daffoddyll in Scotland
Chapter 7
Wendy in Shunnam
Chapter 8
Porffyrian in Australia
Chapter 9
Draiggoch and his Prince
Chapter 10
Wendy in Copenhagen
Chapter 11
Wendy s Holiday
Chapter 12
Wendy the Magic Carpet Seller
To Iris,
for whom it was
first conceived.
Chapter 1
Wendy at Home


Wendy was a dragon.
She lived in a cave on Pendragon Hill,overlooking the river Afon that wound through the fields below. The cave was ofa considerable size, big enough to give plenty of room for her and for whenanother dragon came on a visit.
The town of Llanddraig, set in a bend of theriver, was not very happy to have a dragon living in their hill. People had gotrather tired of having to produce a cow or a couple of sheep every week for Wendyto eat. Wendy said that she was sorry, but with herself and four or fivedraglets to feed, if they didn t produce the cows or sheep she might have tostart looking in the houses for the odd mouthful.
She didn t like people much. Very salty and toomany small bones to spit out. The ones that had sometimes been left out for herhad been either tough or nothing but skin and bones with no decent meat on themat all. Even sheep were better, although to begin with the wool had got stuckin her teeth. Later on, people had had the sense to shear them first so as tokeep the wool.
She was never quite sure how many dragletsthere were in their own pit at the back of the cave. She knew she had laid sixeggs. She had seen their clumsy oaf of a father tread on one and break it, andthat was why she had thrown him out and now lived alone as a one-dragon family.But there were so many legs and wings and tails in the draglets pit that shehad lost count. Every time one of them got cross with the others there was awhooosh of flame and a cloud of smoke, and that didn t make it easy to count,either.
One day she sent word to the mayor ofLlanddraig asking for an extra cow next week. One of her friends was coming tosee her and she wanted the visitor to see how well a good Welsh dragon couldcook.
The townspeople said that enough, now, wasenough, and that it was time to get rid of their dragon. Wendy wasn t too badand they were used to her, and besides it was good to have the only real RedDragon pub. But visiting dragons was pushing it to goodness, and as for aclutch of four or five draglets, once they grew up Wendy would be asking for acow a day, and no town wanted five or six Welsh Dragon pubs.
No one had seen the draglets yet - who wastheir father? Was he a good red dragon or was he one of Wendy s foreignfriends? If he was one of those dragons with scales of many colours theysometimes saw flying over, what colour scales would the draglets have?Everybody would laugh at them if they had polychrome dragons. A Blue Boar wasone thing, and so was a Green Man or a White Horse, but who d ever heard of aBlue Dragon, Green Dragon, or White Dragon, and so forth? Everybody knew thatthe only real Welsh dragon was red.
It was time to advertise for someone who coulddeal with dragons. Rats and mice, even fleas and ants, they had people to copewith them. Dragons now were a bit different. Bigger for one thing, and a firehazard for another, so there might be insurance difficulties with fire as wellas third-party and public liability. What would removing a dragon cost? Theonly union-recognised wage anyone could remember for a dragon-killer was aking s daughter, but they hadn t a king by them. Advertise, perhaps, and askthem to quote?
A few days later there appeared:

WANTED
Experienced Dragon-Slayer
to remove One red dragon
and a Quantity of
multi-coloured draglets.
Applications with qualifications
and names and addresses
of two satisfied referees
before 1st March.
Llanddraig is an
equal-opportunities employer.

There was a flood of responses. The RoyalSociety for the Protection of Creatures sent an immediate protest. TheAnti-Cruelty League sent a deputation. Several anti-bloodsports groups sentparties with posters to picket the town hall. Two small bombs from anti-vivisectiongroups exploded outside the offices of the local paper. Three nationalnewspapers set up appeals to support dragons and one enterprisingbreakfast-cereal maker created a children s club. Three box-tops won a reddragon badge and for ten box-tops a child received a certificate saying that heor she (the name neatly written in) had saved one green, blue, or othercoloured draglet [please tick the box for preferred colour], though what it hadbeen saved from, and even whether there were any draglets of the chosen colour,were not specified.
Several toy-manufacturers produced cloth orplastic draglets. They each came out a bit different because nobody had yetseen a draglet, but all the same children rushed to buy them. Some shops soldout faster than they could get stocks in, causing tantrums of screamingchildren and parents threatening to sue for thwarted progeny. It was well knownthat thwarting children led to psychological damage and future anti-socialbehaviour. Why should their child run the risk of becoming a criminal just forlack of a toy dragon? Where were the lawyers?
The Llanddraig town council tried to patentWendy so as to establish some control over the exploitation of their own dragonby outside enterprises unless they were licensed, but Red Dragon Pursuivantwent to the High Court to obtain a writ against this, saying that his was along-established post and no jumped-up provincial town council was going topatent him.
This heralded a question in Parliament, whetherdragons should be considered an endangered species, followed by a motion toappeal to the United Nations to register dragons under CITES. An immediatereaction came from the Far-Eastern bloc, where dragons were something of anuisance, breeding too fast, burning up the crops just as they ripened byrampaging around in their breeding season, and needed to be controlled. Acompromise was proposed by the Indian delegation, in exchange for anarrangement about tigers, under which only red dragons would be fullyregistered while a watching brief would be kept on those of other colours. AnInstitute would be established, with full extra-territorial rights anddiplomatic status so that staff would be freed from all national taxes, tostudy dragons and compile statistics on their population, range, requirements,and impact on public health. It would be invited to produce a preliminaryreport for filing in the appropriate places within the next couple of decades.
Back home in Llanddraig big-game hunters werebeginning to appear. They had been slow off the mark initially because of theneed to get police permission to move their armoury of guns and then to hiresecure vans to transport the weaponry. Their arrival was greeted with howls ofprotests, and anti-hunting groups immediately established a chain of picketsround Pendragon Hill.
Wendy much appreciated this attention. Thepickets were quite tasty, not too salty, and their duffle coats were good forroughage. Their posters came in handy, too, as picks to clear the rubber bootsfrom her teeth. Nobody seemed to miss them and the people of Llanddraig wereglad to be saved a few cows. They were pleased, too, that trade was picking upin the town. Perhaps Wendy would prove to be an asset after all. Every bed inthe Red Dragon, Blue Boar, White Horse, Green Man was booked up with hunters,reporters, and protesters, and as soon as a room became free (Wendy was veryhelpful about spitting out hotel room keys so that they d know which ones wereavailable), they were snapped up by newcomers.
The local MP came down to see what was goingon, and a number of people who d lost their seats at the last election gatheredhopefully, but he kept well back, sending a researcher to investigate for him.She was a pretty girl who d always liked dragons and she soon set up a goodrelationship with Wendy, suggesting that she ought to have her ownrepresentative. Why should Llanddraig try to license toys and other souvenirs?If anybody was going to make a profit out of all the fuss, surely it should beWendy. And she could sell her life story to whichever paper would pay most forit. If Wendy would agree that Marigold should act for her, Wendy would gettwenty per cent of all the receipts, after expenses had been deducted.
Wendy felt that eighty per cent commission wastoo high but Marigold reassured her that although sixty was normal, dragonswere special.
Wendy managed to beat her down to 75 percent,and after they d sign