Harold Knightly and the Dragon

Harold Knightly and the Dragon

1

            The day that Harold Knightly slew a dragon and became a Very Important Person was the day that all of the sixth grade class at Portly Middle had gathered into little clusters of threes and fours and whispered anxiously amongst themselves. It was also the day that Ms. Gardener had gone to “Teacher Training” (as she called it) and had promised to be back sometime after second period, but before lunch. 

Ms. Gardener was the sweetest teacher in the sixth grade hall. She never yelled, never told a fib (not even those little ones that adults tell because they think that you’re too little to know the real answer to something), and she always came back exactly when she said she would whenever she went to Teacher Training. So when second period arrived and left again without so much as a whisper of Ms. Gardener having returned, Harold Knightly knew that something terrible must have happened to her.

Hoisting his yellow backpack over one shoulder, Harold slipped into one of the small clusters of his classmates and listened to their whispers:

“Ms. Gardener’s sub is just awful. She keeps the room real hot, and closed all the windows and turned on all the lights,” Sara Michelle explained dourly, “and she wrote all the instructions on the board in a funny sort of writing that we can’t even read, and she won’t read it to us.”

“Yeah, and she took my Darth Vader Lego man,” Justin Marksfield drew his upper lip into a sneer and crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s not even mine. It’s my little brother’s.” 

Murmurs of disapproval fluttered from one side of the cluster to the other. Others joined the group and contributed their own woes.

“—took my flower pen because she said we could only write in pencil…”

“—and my phone because it fell outta my pocket…”

“Now I have to get my parents to pick me up after school!”

And so forth.

Harold Knightly wasn’t the sort to wing his opinion out into the open, but he found himself saying, “She sounds like a dragon,” in a matter of fact sort of way.

Maybe it was because he didn’t speak very often, or maybe it was because it was the meanest thing that anyone had said about the substitute teacher to date, but the angry murmurs paused and everyone looked at Harold with intrigue.

Harold was not used to receiving attention from his peers, and his belly shrank, and his heart felt small, as the other boys and girls regarded him curiously.

Sara Michelle asked, “What do you mean?”

Harold Knightly shrugged his shoulders, feeling tight on the inside. “Well she makes the classroom all hot, and steals things, and writes in Secret Letters on the board,” it was easier to keep going now that he’d started, “I bet she doesn’t even get up from the desk. She probably guards all the stuff she stole. And,” he paused, feeling much braver now that they were really listening, “she probably hid Ms. Gardener so she could stay forever.” He made the words sound as ominous as he could manage.

One might suspect, and one might be right, that a group of eleven year old boys and girls would be too old to take on the notion of a substitute teacher being a dragon; but eleven year olds are notorious for attempting to be more grown up than they really are, and calling a woman a dragon was just vicious enough, and just harmless enough, and just fantastical enough, that the notion took them like wild fire.

“She has to be killed,” Justin Marksfield said immediately. “Or, you know, at least gotten rid of.”

A fierce purposefulness spread throughout the group, but before they could make any solid decisions on how to proceed, Mr. Gaffer, the Walrus Man, trundled across the hall and waved his hands at the group, shooing them to their next classes.

2

            Harold Knightly was not what you would consider particularly heroic. He was small for his age, quiet, and according to the school’s guidance counselor, as socially awkward as it was possible to be without some sort of mental disability to pinpoint as the cause.  Still, the day that the children agreed that the substitute teacher was a dragon, he had resolved to look passed his shortcomings and to do whatever needed doing in order to get Ms. Gardener back.

So had, from the sound of it, several other boys between the time that Harold had made his declaration, and the end of forth period. Justin Marksfield had earned himself a detention for trying to steal back all of the things that the dragon had hoarded throughout the day; Mark Hamilton had likewise gotten into trouble when he stood up and declared her dragonic state with all of the class as witness.

            Both Mark and Justin were big boys—tall and broad, the kind that would probably make the football team when they tried out next year just on those merits alone—so Harold wasn’t sure why he felt he stood a chance at ridding the school of a dragon when neither of his more adept classmates had been able to. Perhaps it was because he’d done a lot of reading about dragons; he was something of an expert among his peers, which explained why he knew she was a dragon without having seen her himself. But as he strode into the classroom at the beginning of fifth period, his resolve had solidified into an iron ball in the pit of his stomach.

            Either that, or he was about to throw up.

            The wave of heat that hit him as he entered portable twelve carried with it the stench of children fresh from P.E., victims, each of them, to the dragon that refused to let them breathe clean air. He staggered into the classroom, his yellow backpack slung over one arm, eyes searching for the beast.

            She sat exactly where he anticipated, a mass of purples and blues covering fleshy arms and thick shoulders. Her arms were draped across Ms. Gardener’s desk, curled protectively around an assortment of things she had collected throughout the day—there was the Lego Vader, and the flower pen, a paper fortuneteller coloured with crayon, and a set of keys to a bike chain.

Among the treasures Harold noticed there sat Ms. Gardener’s green candy jar, which she always left out for students who did exceptional work on the days that she was gone.

            “That’s where she’s keeping Ms. Gardener,” Sara Michelle whispered to Harold as she hurried out of the room, clutching her backpack. “I heard her shouting for help during silent reading.”

            Harold narrowed his eyes as he regarded the dragon. She, meanwhile, guarded her treasures and leered at the students as they took their seats.

            “Where’s Ms. Gardener?” complained Lily Mae as she adjusted the bedazzled hairband that tamed her orange frizz. “Ms. Gardener said she would be back by our class so we could continue our reading projects.”

            The dragon shifted, adjusting the jar with her talons, and droned a response.

Harold wasn’t listening. His thoughts were on how to get her away from her hoard so that he could steal back his classmates’ treasures, free Ms. Gardener from the jar.

            An arm draped in blue swung away from the treasures and pointed at the whiteboard where a strange script was scrawled in red. Secret Letters. Ancient Letters. Harold Knightly recognized them immediately as the secret script that adults sometimes wrote in when they didn’t want kids to know what they were writing.

            “Excuse me, Miss? Excuse me, but we en’t learned that sort of writing.” Kevin Miller’s blond eyebrows drew together concernedly. “How’re we ‘posta read that if we can’t read it?”

            “You,” the dragon’s voice was raspy with high points and low points all in that single syllable, “are all in sixth grade, and you should be able to read that. If your teacher’s been teaching you anything worth knowing, that is.”

            There was a murmur of discontent among the rest of the class.

            It was one thing to take their things, to make the classroom yucky, smelly and hot, and to write in Ancient Letters, but no one had said anything about insulting Ms. Gardener’s teaching.

            “Ms. Gardener is a wonderful teacher,” Harold Knightly surprised himself by saying loudly.

            This was not the way he imagined that the battle would commence. He would have much rather sneaked behind the dragon’s back and stole its stuff then taken her on face-to-face. Now that her attention was on him, he realized that she was much more intimidating than he’d been lead to believe.

            Suddenly, the room seemed a lot smaller and a lot darker, despite the bright lights. Suddenly, the dragon seemed a lot bigger and a lot more vicious. Suddenly, her teeth seemed big, her eyes seemed yellowy and smallish, and her purple and blue drapey clothing seemed like demon’s wings. Suddenly, Harold realized that if he threw up now, he’d probably die.

            So Harold Knightly did the bravest thing that he’d ever done in his entire life. He stood up, hoisting his yellow backpack so that it was between him and the dragon, and brandished his voice like a sword, “Ms. Gardener is the nicest most wonderful teacher we ever had! You let her come back right now, or I’ll have ta do something…” he searched for something intimidating sounding—something truly knightly. “It’ll be a REALLY impressive something!”

            The dragon raised herself from atop her hoard, slowly, wings spreading, yellow eyes gleaming and teeth gnashing with poisonous intent. “Young man,” she rasped—was that flame that flickered around her tongue? “You sit down, or I’ll give you a detention!”

            The dragon’s victims looked from the beast to the knight. Harold felt his heart swell with bravery he never knew he possessed, and he widened his stance, bracing his yellow shield against the flame that was sure to engulf him. “Make me!”        

            Her movements were heavy, lumbering, exactly what one would expect from a dragon stuck on the ground. As long as they were in the confines of the cave where she couldn’t spread her purpley wings, as long as his yellow shield held up against her hot breath, he would stand a fighting chance.

            She crossed the room, pushing through chairs and children, and loomed over Harold, leering and glaring all at once. Claws reached for his shield, and Harold wished that he had remembered his sword.

            “Sssit….down…” she hissed, pulling the backpack from his grip and pointing.

            Harold’s bravery was failing, but he knew that sitting would only lead to defeat—and worse, embarrassment—so instead, he dived under his desk.

Satisfaction bloomed when his hands gripped a large Crayola marker. He pulled off the cap and waved it at the opening of the desk. “Don’t come any closer, or I’ll colour on you!”

 He heard the dragon make a sound—an angry, fierce sound. He could only see her from the knees down, but he imagined that any moment she’d start breathing fire.

            The rest of the class cheered and began to chant his name.

            His bravery renewed, Harold clambered from under the desk and took a fighting stance, marker uncapped and at the ready.

            The dragon had dropped his shield on the floor at her feet and stepped over it, advancing purposefully, arms extended, claws reaching, wings flaring as she moved.

            Harold held fast to his marker and braced himself for the worst.

            The phone rang.

            Harold stopped.

Another ring.

The other students stopped.

            On the third ring, the dragon stopped as well, and returned to the depths of the cave, sifted through her treasures, and picked up the phone. “Yes?”

            Pause. The person on the other end was talking.

            “I see.” She glared menacingly at Harold, a look of triumph in her eyes. “Thank you.”

            Then she replaced the phone, and walked to the other side of the room. She opened the door, and stepped outside.

            The class gave a mighty cheer and rushed for Harold. Girls squealed and made exclamations of how brave he was, the boys patted him on the back and said things like “That was the coolest thing I ever saw!”

            And for the first time in Harold Knightly’s life, Harold felt like he’d done something important and worth doing.

            But his task was only half over. Grimly, he crossed the room, walking toward the desk where the hoard lay unguarded. He took up the green jar with both hands, and reverently pried the lid away.

             The door opened. Ms. Gardener entered the classroom looking tired, but happy.

            “My goodness it’s stuffy in here,” she noted with a wave of her hand. “Someone open the window before we all roast. Go ahead and take out your books if you haven’t already. We’ll finish reading our story”

            Ms. Gardener meandered to her desk, frowned at the pile of bric-a-brack, and looked up at her students for some sort of explanation. They kept their secrets, instead opening the windows as she had asked, and scuffling through their belongings to take out their books.

            Unbothered, Ms. Gardener took her own book from the desk—a crisp red hardback with gold letters. “We were on page two hundred and sixty-four, at the top of the second paragraph. Harold, why don’t you read for us.”

            Harold opened his book, feeling much braver than he ever felt before. He cleared his throat and read.