Magic dragon the dragonstone

The escape of the Talacon boa constrictor earned Spike his longest-ever punishment. By the time he was allowed out of his cupboard again, the summer holidays had started and , Lighting Dust had already broken his new video camera, crashed his remote control airplane, and, first time out on his racing book, knocked down Mrs. Spitfire as she crossed Privet Drive on her crutches.

Spike was glad school was over, but there was no escaping Lighting Dust’s gang, who visited the house every single day. ironwell, sour sweet, silver spoon, and diamond tiara were all big and stupid, but as Lighting Dust was the biggest and stupidest of the lot, she was the leader. The rest of them were all quite happy to join in Lighting Dust’s favorite sport: Spike Hunting. This was why Spike spent as much time as possible out of the house, wandering around and thinking about the end of the holidays, where he could see a tiny ray of hope. When September came he would be going off to secondary school and, for the first time in his life, he wouldn’t be with Lighting Dust. Lighting had been accepted at Uncle Wind rider’s old private school, wonderbolts flight School. Ironwell was going there too. Spike, on the other hoof, was going to shadowbolt high, the local public school. Lighting Dust thought this was very funny.

“They stuff pony’s heads down the toilet the first day at Shadowbolt,” he told Spike. “Want to come upstairs and practice?”

“No, thanks,” said Spike. “The poor toilet’s never had anything as horrible as your head down it — it might be sick.” Then he ran, before Lighting Dust could work out what she’d said.

One day in July, Aunt Petunia took Lighting Dust to Canterlot to buy his wonderboats flight School uniform, leaving Spike at Mrs. Spitfire’s. Mrs. Spitfire wasn’t as bad as usual. It turned out she’d broken her leg tripping over one of her photos, and she didn’t seem quite as fond of them as before. She let Spike watch television and gave him a bit of chocolate cake that tasted as though she’d had it for several years. That evening, Lighting paraded around the living room for the family in his brand-new uniform. Carousel boutiques mares wore maroon tailcoats, orange knickerbockers, and flat straw hats called boaters. They also carried knobbly sticks, used for hitting each other while the teachers weren’t looking. This was supposed to be good training for later life.

As he looked at Lighting in his new knickerbockers, Uncle Wind rider said gruffly that it was the proudest moment of his life. Aunt Petunia burst into tears and said she couldn’t believe it was her Ickle Lighting Dust, she looked so beautiful and grown-up. Spike didn’t trust himself to speak. He thought two of his ribs might already have cracked from trying not to laugh. There was a horrible smell in the kitchen the next morning when Spike went in for breakfast. It seemed to be coming from a large metal tub in the sink. He went to have a look. The tub was full of what looked like dirty rags swimming in gray water. “What’s this?” he asked Aunt Petunia. Her lips tightened as they always did if he dared to ask a question. “Your new school uniform,” she said. Spike looked in the bowl again. “Oh,” he said, “I didn’t realize it had to be so wet.” “Don’t be stupid,” snapped Aunt Petunia. “I’m dyeing some of Lighting Dust’s old things gray for you. It’ll look just like everyone else’s when I’ve finished.” Spike seriously doubted this, but thought it best not to argue. He sat down at the table and tried not to think about how he was going to look on his first day at Shadowbolt High — like he was wearing bits of old elephant skin, probably. Lighting Dust and Uncle Wind rider came in, both with wrinkled noses because of the smell from Spike’s new uniform. Uncle Wind rider opened his newspaper as usual and Lighting Dust
banged his Smelting stick, which he carried everywhere, on the table.

They heard the click of the mail slot and flop of letters on the doormat.

“Get the mail, Lighting Dust,” said Uncle Wind rider from behind his paper.

“Make Spike get it.”
“Get the mail, Spike.”
“Make Lighting Dust get it.”
“Poke him with your Smelting stick, Lighting Dust.”

Spike dodged the Smelting stick and went to get the mail. Three things lay on the doormat: a postcard from Uncle Wind rider’s sister harshwhinny , who was vacationing on the weather factory of cloudsdale, a brown envelope that looked like a bill, and — a letter for Spike.

Spike picked it up and stared at it, his heart twanging like a giant elastic band. No one, ever, in his whole life, had written to him. Who would? He had no friends, no other relatives — he didn’t belong to the library, so he’d never even got rude notes asking for books back. Yet here it was, a letter, addressed so plainly there could be no mistake:

Mr. S. Drago
The Cupboard under the Stairs
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey

The envelope was thick and heavy, made of yellowish parchment, and the address was written in emerald-green ink. There was no stamp.

Turning the envelope over, his hand trembling, Spike saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a Griffin, an Roc, a bear, and a cockatrice surrounding a large letter S. “Hurry up, boy!” shouted Uncle Wind rider from the kitchen. “What are you doing, checking for letter bombs?” He chuckled at his own joke.

Spike went back to the kitchen, still staring at his letter. He handed Uncle Wind rider the bill and the postcard, sat down, and slowly began to open the yellow envelope. Uncle Wind rider ripped open the bill, snorted in disgust, and flipped over the postcard. “harshwhinny's ill,” he informed Aunt Petunia. “Ate a funny whelk . . .”

“Dad!” said Lighting Dust suddenly. “Dad, Spike’s got something!”

Spike was on the point of unfolding his letter, which was written on the same heavy parchment as the envelope, when it was jerked sharply out of his hand by Uncle Wind rider.

“That’s mine!” said Spike, trying to snatch it back. “Who’d be writing to you?” sneered Uncle Wind rider, shaking the letter open with one hoovf and glancing at it. His face went from red to green faster than a set of traffic lights. And it didn’t stop there. Within seconds it was the grayish white of old porridge.

“P-P-Petunia!” he gasped.

Lighting Dust tried to grab the letter to read it, but Uncle Wind rider held it high out of his reach. Aunt Petunia took it curiously and read the first line. For a moment it looked as though she might faint. She clutched her throat and made a choking noise.

“Wind rider! Oh my goodness — Wind rider!”

They stared at each other, seeming to have forgotten that Spike and Lighting Dust were still in the room. Lighting Dust wasn’t used to being ignored. She gave her father a sharp tap on the head with his Smelting stick.

“I want to read that letter,” she said loudly.
“I want to read it,” said Spike furiously, “as it’s mine.”

“Get out, both of you,” croaked Uncle Wind rider, stuffing the letter back inside its envelope.

Harry didn’t move.

“I WANT MY LETTER!” he shouted.

“Let me see it!” demanded Lighting Dust.

“OUT!” roared Uncle Wind rider, and he took both Spike and Lighting Dust by the scruffs of their necks and threw them into the hall, slamming the kitchen door behind them. Spike and Lighting Dust promptly had a furious but silent fight over who would listen at the keyhole; Lighting Dust won, so Spike, his glasses dangling from one ear, lay flat on his stomach to listen at the crack between door and floor. “Wind rider,” Aunt Petunia was saying in a quivering voice, “look at the address — how could they possibly know where he sleeps? You don’t think they’re watching the house?”

“Watching — spying — might be following us,” muttered Uncle Wind rider wildly.

“But what should we do, Wind rider? Should we write back? Tell them we don’t want —” Spike could see Uncle Wind rider’s shiny blue backhooves pacing up and down the kitchen.
“No,” he said finally. “No, we’ll ignore it. If they don’t get an answer. . . . Yes, that’s best . . . we won’t do anything. . . .”

“But —”

“I’m not having one in the house, Petunia! Didn’t we swear when we took him in we’d stamp out that dangerous nonsense?”

That evening when he got back from work, Uncle Wind rider did something he’d never done before; he visited Spike in his cupboard.

“Where’s my letter?” said Spike, the moment Uncle Wind rider had squeezed through the door. “Who’s writing to me?”

“No one. It was addressed to you by mistake,” said Uncle Wind rider shortly. “I have burned it.”

“It was not a mistake,” said Spike angrily, “it had my cupboard on it.”

“SILENCE!” yelled Uncle Wind rider, and a couple of spiders fell from the ceiling. He took a few deep breaths and then forced his face into a smile, which looked quite painful.

“Er — yes, Spike — about this cupboard. Your aunt and I have been thinking . . . you’re really getting a bit big for it . . . we think it might be nice if you moved into Lighting Dust’s second bedroom.”

“Why?” said Spike.

“Don’t ask questions!” snapped his uncle. “Take this stuff upstairs, now.”

The Wind riders’ house had four bedrooms: one for Uncle Wind rider and Aunt Petunia, one for visitors (usually Uncle Wind rider’s sister, harshwhinny), one where Lighting Dust slept, and one where Lighting Dust kept all the toys and things that wouldn’t fit into his first bedroom. It only took Spike one trip upstairs to move everything he owned from the cupboard to this room. He sat down on the bed and stared around him. Nearly everything in here was broken. The month-old video camera was lying on top of a small, working tank a Lighting Dust had once driven over the next door neighbor’s dog; in the corner was Lighting Dust’s first-ever television set, which he’d put his foot through when his favorite program had been canceled; there was a large birdcage, which had once held a parrot that Lighting Dust had swapped at school for a real air rifle, which was up on a shelf with the end all bent because Lighting Dust had sat on it. Other shelves were full of books. They were the only things in the room that looked as though they’d never been touched.

From downstairs came the sound of Lighting Dust bawling at his mother, “I don’t want him in there . . . I need that room . . . make him get out. . . .”

Spike sighed and stretched out on the bed. Yesterday he’d have given anything to be up here. Today he’d rather be back in his cupboard with that letter than up here without it.

Next morning at breakfast, everyone was rather quiet. Lighting Dust was in shock. She’d screamed, whacked his father with his Smelting stick, been sick on purpose, kicked her mother, and thrown her tortoise through the greenhouse roof, and she still didn’t have her room back. Spike was thinking about this time yesterday and bitterly wishing he’d opened the letter in the hall. Uncle Wind rider and Aunt Petunia kept looking at each other darkly.

When the mail arrived, Uncle Wind rider, who seemed to be trying to be nice to Spike, made Lighting Dust go and get it. They heard her banging things with his Smelting stick all the way down the hall. Then she shouted, “There’s another one! ‘Mr. S. Drago, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive —’”

With a strangled cry, Uncle Wind rider leapt from his seat and ran down the hall, Spike right behind him. Uncle Wind rider had to wrestle Lighting Dust to the ground to get the letter from her, which was made difficult by the fact that Spike had grabbed Uncle Wind rider around the neck from behind. After a minute of confused fighting, in which everyone got hit a lot by the Smelting stick, Uncle Wind rider straightened up, gasping for breath, with Spike's letter clutched in his hoof.

“Go to your cupboard — I mean, your bedroom,” he wheezed at Spike. “Lighting Dust — go — just go.”

Spike walked round and round his new room. Someone knew he had moved out of his cupboard and they seemed to know he hadn’t received his first letter. Surely that meant they’d try again? And this time he’d make sure they didn’t fail. He had a plan.

The repaired alarm clock rang at six o’clock the next morning. Spike turned it off quickly and dressed silently. He mustn’t wake the Wind riders. He stole downstairs without turning on any of the lights.

He was going to wait for the poststallion on the corner of Privet Drive and get the letters for number four first. His heart hammered as he crept across the dark hall toward the front door

— “AAAAARRRGH!”

Spike leapt into the air; he’d trodden on something big and squashy on the doormat — something alive!

Lights clicked on upstairs and to his horror Spike realized that the big, squashy something had been his uncle’s face. Uncle Wind rider had been lying at the foot of the front door in a sleeping bag, clearly making sure that Spike didn’t do exactly what he’d been trying to do. He shouted at Spike for about half an hour and then told him to go and make a cup of tea. Spike shuffled miserably off into the kitchen and by the time he got back, the mail had arrived, right into Uncle Wind Rider’s lap. Spike could see three letters addressed in green ink.

“I want —” he began, but Uncle Vernon was tearing the letters into pieces before his eyes.

Uncle Wind rider didn’t go to work that day. He stayed at home and nailed up the mail slot.

“See,” he explained to Aunt Petunia through a mouthful of nails, “if they can’t deliver them they’ll just give up.”

“I’m not sure that’ll work, Wind rider.”

“Oh, these creature’s minds work in strange ways, Petunia, they’re not like you and me,” said Uncle Wind rider, trying to knock in a nail with the piece of fruitcake Aunt Petunia had just brought him.

On Friday, no less than twelve letters arrived for Spike. As they couldn’t go through the mail slot they had been pushed under the door, slotted through the sides, and a few even forced through the small window in the downstairs bathroom.

Uncle Wind rider stayed at home again. After burning all the letters, he got out a hammer and nails and boarded up the cracks around the front and back doors so no one could go out. He hummed “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” as he worked, and jumped at small noises.

On Saturday, things began to get out of hoof. Twenty-four letters to Spike found their way into the house, rolled up and hidden inside each of the two dozen eggs that their very confused milkmare had hoofed Aunt Petunia through the living room window. While Uncle Wind rider made furious telephone calls to the post office and the dairy trying to find someone to complain to, Aunt Petunia shredded the letters in her food processor. “Who on earth wants to talk to you this badly?” Lighting Dust asked Harry in amazement.

On Sunday morning, Uncle Wind rider sat down at the breakfast table looking tired and rather ill, but happy. “No post on Sundays,” he reminded them cheerfully as he spread marmalade on his newspapers, “no buching letters today —”

Something came whizzing down the kitchen chimney as he spoke and caught him sharply on the back of the head. Next moment, thirty or forty letters came pelting out of the fireplace like bullets. The Wind riders ducked, but Spike leapt into the air trying to catch one —

“Out! OUT!”

Uncle Wind rider seized Spike around the waist and threw him into the hall. When Aunt Petunia and Lighting Dust had run out with their arms over their faces, Uncle Wind rider slammed the door shut. They could hear the letters still streaming into the room, bouncing off the walls and floor.

“That does it,” said Uncle Wind rider, trying to speak calmly but pulling great tufts out of his mustache at the same time. “I want you all back here in five minutes ready to leave. We’re going away. Just pack some clothes. No arguments!”

He looked so dangerous with half his mustache missing that no one dared argue. Ten minutes later they had wrenched their way through the boarded-up doors and were in the chariot, speeding toward the sky. Lighting was sniffling in the back seat; her father had hit her round the head for holding them up while she tried to pack his television, VCR, and computer in his sports bag. They drove. And they drove. Even Aunt Petunia didn’t dare ask where they were going. Every now and then Uncle Wind rider would take a sharp turn and threw in the opposite direction for a while.

“Shake ’em off . . . shake ’em off,” he would mutter whenever he did this.

They didn’t stop to eat or drink all day. By nightfall Lighting Dust was howling. She’d never had such a bad day in his life. She was hungry, she’d missed five television programs she’d wanted to see, and she’d never gone so long without blowing up an alien on his computer.

Uncle Wind rider stopped at last outside a gloomy-looking hotel on the outskirts of a big city. Lighting Dust and Spike shared a room with twin beds and damp, musty sheets. Lighting Dust snored but Spike stayed awake, sitting on the windowsill, staring down at the lights of passing chariots and wondering. . . .

They ate stale cornflakes and cold tinned tomatoes on toast for breakfast the next day. They had just finished when the owner of the hotel came over to their table. “’Scuse me, but is one of you Mr. S. Drago? Only I got about an ’undred of these at the front desk.”

She held up a letter so they could read the green ink address:

Mr. S. Drago
Room 17
Railview Hotel
Cokeworth

Spike made a grab for the letter but Uncle Wind rider knocked his hand out of the way. The mare stared. “I’ll take them,” said Uncle Wind rider, standing up quickly and following her from the dining room.

“Wouldn’t it be better just to go home, dear?” Aunt Petunia suggested timidly, hours later, but Uncle Wind rider didn’t seem to hear her. Exactly what he was looking for, none of them knew. He drove them into the middle of a forest, got out, looked around, shook his head, got back in the chariot, and off they went again. The same thing happened in the middle of a plowed field, halfway across a suspension bridge, and at the top of a multilevel parking garage.

“Daddy’s gone mad, hasn’t he?” Lighting Dust asked Aunt Petunia dully late that afternoon. Uncle Wind rider had parked at the coast, locked them all inside the chariot, and disappeared.

It started to rain. Great drops beat on the chariot. Lighting Dust sniveled.

“It’s Monday,” she told her mother. “The Great Humberto’s on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television.”

Monday. This reminded Spike of something. If it was Monday — and you could usually count on Lighting Dust to know the days of the week, because of television — then tomorrow, Tuesday, was Spike's eleventh birthday. Of course, his birthdays were never exactly fun — last year, the Wind riders had given him a coat hanger and a pair of Uncle Wind rider’s old socks. Still, you weren’t eleven every day.

Uncle Wind rider was back and he was smiling. He was also carrying a long, thin package and didn’t answer Aunt Petunia when she asked what he’d bought.

“Found the perfect place!” he said. “Come on! Everypony out!”

It was very cold outside the chariot. Uncle Wind rider was pointing at what looked like a large rock way out at sea. Perched on top of the rock was the most miserable little shack you could imagine. One thing was certain, there was no television in there.

“Storm forecast for tonight!” said Uncle Wind rider gleefully, clapping his hooves together. “And this gentlestallion’s kindly agreed to lend us his boat!”

A toothless old Stallion came ambling up to them, pointing, with a rather wicked grin, at an old rowboat bobbing in the iron-gray water below them.

“I’ve already got us some rations,” said Uncle Wind rider, “so all aboard!”

It was freezing in the boat. Icy sea spray and rain crept down their necks and a chilly wind whipped their faces. After what seemed like hours they reached the rock, where Uncle Wind rider, slipping and sliding, led the way to the broken-down house.

The inside was horrible; it smelled strongly of seaweed, the wind whistled through the gaps in the wooden walls, and the fireplace was damp and empty. There were only two rooms.

Uncle Wind rider’s rations turned out to be a bag of chips each and four bananas. He tried to start a fire but the empty chip bags just smoked and shriveled up.

“Could do with some of those letters now, eh?” he said cheerfully.

He was in a very good mood. Obviously he thought nobody stood a chance of reaching them here in a storm to deliver mail. Spike privately agreed, though the thought didn’t cheer him up at all.

As night fell, the promised storm blew up around them. Spray from the high waves splattered the walls of the hut and a fierce wind rattled the filthy windows. Aunt Petunia found a few moldy blankets in the second room and made up a bed for Lighting Dust on the moth-eaten sofa. She and Uncle Wind rider went off to the lumpy bed next door, and Spike was left to find the softest bit of floor he could and to curl up under the thinnest, most ragged blanket.

The storm raged more and more ferociously as the night went on. Spike couldn’t sleep. He shivered and turned over, trying to get comfortable, his stomach rumbling with hunger. Lighting Dust’s snores were drowned by the low rolls of thunder that started near midnight. The lighted dial of Lighting Dust’s watch, which was dangling over the edge of the sofa on his fat wrist, told Spike he’d be eleven in ten minutes’ time. He lay and watched this birthday tick nearer, wondering if the Wind riders would remember at all, wondering where the letter writer was now.

Five minutes to go. Spike heard something creak outside. He hoped the roof wasn’t going to fall in, although he might be warmer if it did. Four minutes to go. Maybe the house in Privet Drive would be so full of letters when they got back that he’d be able to steal one somehow. Three minutes to go. Was that the sea, slapping hard on the rock like that? And (two minutes to go) what was that funny crunching noise? Was the rock crumbling into the sea?

One minute to go and he’d be eleven. Thirty seconds . . . twenty . . . ten . . . nine — maybe he’d wake Lighting Dust up, just to annoy him — three . . . two . . . one . . . BOOM.

The whole shack shivered and Harry sat bolt upright, staring at the door. Someone was outside, knocking to come in.