IndieAni Bones and the Dragon’s Lair

It was a misty morning when she woke me. She was up and about earlier than usual… I wasn’t even awake when she started bustling about… and yet, when I’d had my breakfast and went for the leash, all I got was “Not now, girlie.” I ask you… what kind of a start is that to the day? “Don’t worry,” she says, “you’re going on an adventure.” Then she put some water and my bowl in her bag, dug out my seat belt and stuffed me in the car!

Well, she promised me an adventure, and I certainly got one! I thought I was going to see my canine mates, Gooch and Hardy, ‘cause we started off going that way. But no… we ended up in a car park with a big, long metal worm thing that was eating people. “It’s a train, you daft dog,” she says. Not reassuring, I can tell you. So instead of parking there, she put the car near a field and we had a run for a while. Different, yes, but not exactly an adventure… and then she stuffed me back in the car before I’d chased so much as a duck!

Then she took us right up close to the train thing, and two two-legses came up to the car… waving and smiling. Mine jumps out and they start hugging her! Well, I don’t normally allow hugs… not even from two-legses that she wants to hug (apart from little ones… that’s different.) So I barked a bit, just to make the point… and the new two-legses ignored me and got in my car regardless! One of them climbed in right beside me too! Her name was Alethea and I’ve heard a lot about her. “I’ve heard a lot about you over the years,” she says. Well, that shut me up, ‘cause you never know what she might have heard… but it can’t have been too bad, ‘cause she stroked me and seemed happy enough to be with me. Now I knew why I’d had to have a bath the day before… reinforcements had been called in and they stuffed me in the tub without so much as a by your leave…

Anyway, it seemed we really were off on an adventure, ‘cause we drove for ages. I might have got a little impatient in the rush hour traffic around somewhere she said was called Oxford, but it is called singing, not whining. It’s a Toller thing, and my Dad was a Toller. And anyway, they were talking all the time, so I was just joining in. But eventually, after hours and hours of driving… which she said was nowhere near that much… we pulled up at a green place and she finally let me out. It was a perfect spring day… all warmth, flowers and sunshine…

“Just a quick stop,” she says, taking the girls over to a big stone by the roadside. She said it was the Blowing Stone, a big sarsen with holes in it. If you put your mouth to the right hole and blow in just the right way, it makes a sound like a musical instrument that can be heard for miles. Alethea tried and, unlike my two-legs, sounded the stone almost straight away. That was a really good start! If these new two-legses understood the stones, we were in for a really good day!

We drove on a bit further and stopped again. This time she locked the car and took ‘my’ bag with the water in. A much better sign! “Dragon Hill,” she says. Now, I’ve wanted to go to this place for ages, ‘cause her and the ball guy talk about it so much. Alethea took my leash, but as I was a bit worried about whether my two-legs would make it up the hill, she had to give me back. So, up we went to the top, where the bare patch of chalk shows where St George slew the dragon… yeah, right! There is a dragon here… but it is far from slain.

Anyway, once she had checked for sheep, she let me off the leash at last… and then the fun really began! She started to tell them about the place, and about how her and the ball guy had started their adventures here. While I explored, she told them about the hill and how it might have been used in the long-long-ago, when the land was much younger. She showed them the Manger, and told them how she had ‘seen’ it filled with water and reflecting back the folds of what he had realised was the dragon’s wing. We looked up and saw the white outline, carved into the hill above… and she wondered if it was a horse or a dragon… but told us it was not the dragon…

But, when I tried to go up the slope to get a closer look, she called me back. We only had a few hours there as she had to take my boy to the hospital later, so she was going to move the car to another place to save time… and then we would get a closer look…

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