Paint Your Dragon Read Online Free Page A

going to have to rely on teeth and fingernails, which was a pest because it was ever so easy to crack a molar on those silly iron hats they insisted on wearing, and if dragons really are scarce, chances are there’s precious few competent serpentine dentists within convenient waddling distance.
    What I need, muttered the dragon to himself, is a good stiff drink of kerosene. He turned his head slowly from side to side, dilated his nostrils and sniffed. Over there ...
    At the back of the enclosure some tall iron gates swung open and four strange green vehicles rolled through. They were big, made of iron and fitted with long iron ribbons under their wheels - socks? go-anywhere doormats? - and when the dragon pricked up his exceptional ears, he heard a blue man by the gate shout to a colleague that it was going to be all right, the tanks were here now.
    Tanks.
    Yes, right, said the dragon to himself, tanks, I remember now. Big metal vessels used for the storage of liquids. At long last, here comes the Bell’s Whisky. And there was me thinking they were out to get me.

CHAPTER TWO

    I t can’t,’ Bianca protested, ‘just have disappeared.’
    Mike shrugged and made a pantomime of patting his pockets and poking about in Bianca’s toolbag. ‘Bee, love, it’s a tad on the big side to have rolled away and fallen down a grating somewhere. Of course it’s flaming well disappeared. Obviously, someone’s pinched it.’
    â€˜Pinched a fifteen-foot-long statue of a dragon? Kids, maybe? Bored housewife who didn’t know what came over her? Don’t be so bloody stupid. It’d take a whole day just to saw it off the plinth.’
    â€˜True.’ Mike peered down at the stone beneath Saint George’s charger’s hooves. ‘And no saw marks, either. In fact, no marks of any kind. You know, this is downright peculiar.’
    â€˜Peculiar.’ Bianca closed her mouth, which had fallen open. ‘Mike, if ever Mars challenges us to an understatement match, I’m going to nominate you for team captain. What the hell am I going to do?’
    Mike scratched his head. ‘You could start by telling somebody. The police. Birmingham City Council. Kawaguchiya Integrated...’
    He met Bianca’s eye. Comparable meetings include that between Napoleon and Wellington at Waterloo and the encounter between Mohammed Ali’s solar plexus and Joe Frazier’s fist back in 1974. ‘Quite,’ he said. ‘I see what you mean. This is going to be a problem, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Do you think,’ Mike suggested, after a moment’s consideration, ‘that you could, sort of, talk your way out of this? I mean, it’s your blasted statue. Convince ’em that there never was a dragon to begin with. Sort of, Saint George and the implied dragon. Saint George, just practising? Saint George and Imaginary Friend?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Maybe not. Or could you lose the armour, fiddle around with the sword a bit and rename it The Polo Player?’
    â€˜Mike.’
    â€˜Okay, okay, I’m just bouncing a few ideas here. Here, why not just call it Study for Saint George and the ...’
    Bianca closed her eyes and massaged them with the heel of her hand. ‘What I can’t imagine,’ she said, ‘is what the hell can have happened to it. I mean, dragons don’t just get up and walk away. Just to move something that size you’d need cranes, flat-bodied trucks, hydraulics, all that stuff. Believe me,’ she added, ‘I know. When I delivered that cameo group of Mother and Child in Macclesfield last year, they had to close off fifteen streets.’
    They stood for a few seconds longer, staring at the absence - a distinctly dragon-shaped absence, but an absence nevertheless. Compared to how Bianca was feeling about vacuums, Nature was honorary treasurer of their fan club.
    â€˜Well,’ said Bianca at last,