The wing had been chewed off along with a few other bits here are there but it was, unmistakably, a dragon. Not the watered down, PG cartoon dragons of modern pop culture. No, this was the fire breathing, human charring, flying devil type dragon, that populated stories of monsters and demons. From the times when kids tales didn’t have to be adjusted for an audience unfamiliar with horror, because it lived in their life every day.
And there, next to the corpse was the slightly sheepish looking form of Minion. The cat my kids were allowed to name after watching that Steve Carell movie with the slightly racist European accent. A cat looking sheepish is a bizarre thing. You rarely see it, their natural vanity and arrogance account for that. When you do though, it is special. It's more the absence of the normal strut and self-possessed poise than anything else but the effect is clear.
“What the fuck?” was all I could think to say. This smelt like a TV game show prank. Well actually it smelt a bit like raw meat and lighter fuel but general weirdness was still the overarching feeling.
“Innit though, Sarah”, said Minion sorrowfully. “I’m not going to be able to bury this one, am I.”
“AAAHH WHAT THE FUCK!” I screamed this time.
Minion flinched. “Oh. Yeah. There’s that as well. This is gonna be an odd morning.” He stretched absentmindedly. “Sorry”, he added.
I sat down heavily on the faux rattan sofa that lay next to the slain dragon in my back yard. I’d resisted the purchase at the time (worried about space) but I was grateful for its support now.
“What. The. Fuck?” I muttered, creatively.
“Look”, Minion said, hopping nimbly upon the arm of the sofa, “I’m sorry about the dragon there. Not as sorry as he is obviously, but he was talking smack, and things got out of hand. You never used to react like this. Do you remember? You’d harvest the fire gland, and some scales, and give me a fish head.”
He looked morosely, at my blank open-mouthed face. “No. I suppose that was the point, though." He sighed. "Look you just take a minute or two.”
In the silence, I looked up at the sky and thought how lucky I was the kids were already at breakfast club before school. That led me to thoughts about the lunchboxes for tomorrow that I needed supplies for, the car service I needed to book and before I knew it my brain was into a familiar loop. So familiar that I reached out and started to stroke the now quiet feline on the arm of the sofa next to me.
His purr brought me back to the present. Mainly because it sounded a lot like “mmmmmmmm” and less like a purr. I snatched my hand away like I’d been burned.
“What is going on here?” I asked my cat.
“Well, the main thing that’s going on right now for me, is that I’m working on clearing the mother of all scaleballs. Do you think a hairball looks uncomfortable? Well, this is significantly spikier” he said retching slightly.
“Scales from the …..” I paused looking for a less ridiculous way to finish the sentence, but there wasn’t one. “From the Dragon you just killed. For trash talking apparently?”
“Right.” He looked at his paws in embarrassment.
“So. And I don’t want to sound like a broken record here, Minion. Are you still called Minion?”
“Yeah, I don’t mind the name actually. Some sort of poetry to it.”
“Ok, um, Minion. I don’t want to sound a broken record, but what is going on?”
He sat up, curled his tail around to cover his paws and looked me straight in the eye. “I think our spell is wearing off. I think the magic is leaking back in. You are starting to remember your power, Mistress. I think you are starting to find me, your familiar, familiar.”
As it said it, I knew he was right. I’d known he was right for a while, but I’d been hiding from it. I’d seen a frog near the pond last week, and I just couldn’t stop thinking about what I could do with its eyes. The approach of Halloween and the pointy hats and broomsticks in the shops had made me angry. And not because it was only August. Instead, I think because of the cultural appropriation. There was no hiding from it, try as I might in order to protect my family from what comes with it.
Mummy was a suburban witch.
