As Boo and her mummy walked home from school, all that they could talk about was the upcoming circus visit.
As they walked, Boo told her mommy all about Joey Grimaldi and showed her the sketches that she had made the previous evening. Her mommy was very impressed. ‘Which book did you find the original pictures in, sweetie?’
‘Oh I found a book about the history of clowns in the school library’. Boo went a little pink around her ears. She was a terrible liar, but her mommy just plain did not believe that she had befriended a dragon and he took her on adventures.
Luckily Mummy did not notice. It had started to rain a little and the game of ‘kick stone’ that they had been playing came to an end as the puddles made stone location a little difficult.
A few minutes later they arrived at home, Boo raced to her room and quickly changed out of her school uniform into her skinny jeans and a colorful teeshirt. Boo’s mommy meanwhile also changed into her jeans but chose a less colourful teeshirt. Her boyfriend already had his jeans on and a vintage punk band tee-shirt on. Boo could not remember seeing him in anything other than jeans for years.
All three of them rushed out of the house and headed to the big top, which had been erected in a nearby park. Once they got there they found their seats and Mommy bought snacks and drinks for all of them and they started eating and drinking almost instantly. Boo looked around between mouthfuls of popcorn and gulps of cola, there were several of her school friends in the audience and also several of her arch enemies, Emma was sitting almost opposite her on the other side of the circus ring, holding James’ hand as usual. What worried her though was that her dragon was missing entirely, she had not seen him since last night.
After they had been seated for just about long enough to eat half of their snacks, the lights dimmed and the ring master came out from behind the curtains. ‘Welcome, welcome, one and all’. All of the circus acts all spilled out into the ring as they were introduced, the bearded lady looked rather lot like a man, the strong man was wearing a leotard that looked like one that mommy wore at the gym sometimes and the first of the clowns looked more like a tramp than a clown.
Once the acts had all been introduced, the action began, first the high-wire acts and the trapeze artists were introduced as the flying Jimmies, they all managed to pull off their stunts without the use of the safety net and the crowd loved it.
In between acts the clowns would come out, the first time they all came out in an old car, which fell apart, the second time they all rode bicycles, which also fell apart. By the time they came out in a second car it was obvious to Boo that this too would fall apart, however the act had a twist, rather than the cars falling apart, the clowns’ trousers all fell off to reveal spotted underpants. ‘Mommy’, began Boo, ‘I still do not like clowns, but occasionally they can be funny’. Boo wrinkled her nose, they clowns were running around like crazy and chasing each other, with buckets of water. ‘They seem to be way too cartoony’.
The next act was a lion tamer, the sets had changed while the clowns had entertained the crowd once more.
Boo was no longer watching the acts though, she had spotted her dragon, he was perched rather precariously on the high wire near to the roof of the tent. He seemed to be watching the lion tamer rather closely.
Exactly what happened next was debated in the local newspaper, The Echo’, for weeks. Only Boo knew exactly what happened, but she was not about to tell.
At the moment that the Lion tamer cracked his whip in the direction of a beautiful lioness, called Sheba, the dragon struck.
In less than the blink of an eye, he swooped down from his perch, melted the bars of the cage, swept up all six lions in his arms and simply exploded upwards out of the cage, then blasted straight through the roof of the tent leaving a smouldering hole about three meters round in the canvas.
The crowd thought that this was perhaps the most amazing magic act that they had ever seen, the smoke, the flames and the vanishing lions and, rather oddly the vanishing pants of the lion tamer all added up to a spectacular, if not rather strange illusion.
The lion tamer looked a little stunned, then rather embarrassed over his missing pants, but took a bow and exited, stage left regardless.
Boo turned to her mommy ‘Wow, did you see what Dragon did ?’
Boo’s mommy looked at Boo, ‘Sweetie it was just a magic trick’.
‘One of the best I’ve ever seen’, chimed in her boyfriend, who was eating popcorn at an almost dragon like rate.
Boo rolled her eyes, she did not really understand how the dragon had moved so fast, but she realised just how much he hated animal cruelty, so she was not really surprised that he would save the lions, she just wondered what he had done with them. Then she once again remembered that he had taken the lion tamers pants too and she giggled to herself.
A couple of hours later she kissed her mommy goodnight, patted her boyfriend on the head and tickled his beard and went off to bed. As usual she left her window open a little before carefully and quietly closing her door and snuggling into her bed. She was very tired, but also hopeful that her dragon would visit.
She was not disappointed. Moments after she had turned off her bedside light, she heard the familiar leathery rustle of dragon wings and a very familiar voice said ‘Are you still awake Boo ?’. Boo was delighted, she sat up in bed and turned her light back on, simultaneously grabbing a couple of granola bars and three packets of smoky bacon crisps. ‘Of course I am’. She smiled.
Her dragon grinned and then inhaled his snacks in a single snort.
‘Dragon, I saw you save the lions, that was very nice of you, but where did you take them ?’
‘Oh, you did, did you, I was about as fast as i could manage…’
‘Except you paused to remove his pants too’, giggled Boo.
‘Yes, well, picking on the lions like that with a whip and all, he deserved it’.
‘You still haven’t told me where you took them.’ Boo smiled.
‘Well, I figured that as they are now classified as a vulnerable species, that it would not be a bad idea to drop them back in North Africa’ and hope that they can breed a bit and make lots of baby lions’.
‘Silly dragon, those lions were really tame and I am not sure that they have any idea how to hunt’
‘Ahh, I thought about that already, I rounded up a few dozen sheep for them, so they can get a bit of practice in, and I can go and check on them quickly anytime.’
Boo thought that her dragon looked immensely proud of himself, so she tickled his chin a little
‘I’m really tired dragon’
‘Me too, it was a long day today, those sheep took an awful lot of catching’.
Her dragon curled himself up on the floor and moments later little snores accompanied by little curls of smoke were coming from his nostrils.
Boo sighed, rolled over and moments later she too was snoring lightly and although she had dragon shaped dreams, not a single curl of smoke came from her nostrils…..