Throwing his head back in frustration, Peter let out a feral, ungodly scream. Gee Tee jumped ever so slightly in his chair.
"WHY WON'T YOU BELIEVE ME? I'M NOT WRONG!" he yelled.
Changing from good natured to serious, the old shopkeeper's face currently looked more dangerous than Peter had ever seen it. With more than a little tension flooding into the room, the young hockey playing dragon started to shake uncontrollably, the anger within him turning to fear and despair. Tears sprinted across his face, racing to see who would be the first to throw themselves off that cliff called 'chin'. Through blurred eyes, he looked up at the shopkeeper, his friend, his hope.
"I'm not wrong. Please... help me?"
With more lifetimes of experience than any being had a right to, Gee Tee had seen his share of action, theatrics and dragons who liked to play games, all for their own selfish needs and wants. This... youngling, dragon in a boy's body, was different, and he'd known it from their very first encounter, that day he'd come into the shop and stripped down to his underpants. Even then there was something about him, something that marked him out. Sure that once again destiny was giving him a little nudge, prompting him to help the boy dragon out, though he wouldn't reveal that to anyone. But it was all so vague and unbelievable. If only he could see it for himself.
'Get the girl in here and get her to strip off. How hard could that be to arrange?' he mused.
Lifting himself out of his chair, his ancient bones almost creaking from the strain, the old shopkeeper wandered over to the, by now, quivering young dragon and lifted his chin up with the tip of his right wing.
"You have to understand youngster... it's difficult for me to fully appreciate what you're telling me, without having seen it with my own eyes. I can see that you yourself are convinced one hundred percent about what you've seen, however unlikely it might appear. But without dragging your friend in here and getting her to show me her back, there's no possible way I can judge how much merit there is to what you say. Do you think you could get her to do it?"
Considering what the shopkeeper was suggesting, he wondered what his friend would think of his unusual request. It took only moments for him to realise it was ludicrous, and something she'd never agree to. And tricking her was out of the question, as he hadn't managed to fool her in the past and was pretty sure he wasn't going to any time soon. Resigned, he shook his head disappointedly.
"No... I don't think there's any chance I could even get her here, let alone get her to show you her wounds."
Sighing simultaneously, the two racked their brains about what to do. Just as the despair in the pit of his stomach threatened to rise up and overwhelm him, the master mantra maker's face changed ever so subtly, the brow of his forehead creasing, forming tiny rough valleys across his prehistoric expression, his sullen lips rising fractionally at the ends, producing not quite a smile... but something else.
"What is it?" Peter pleaded.
"There might be another way," growled the master mantra maker, a glint in his eye.
Peter stood bolt upright.
"Whatever it is, let's do it! I'll do anything, anything at all to prove to you I'm right."
Gee Tee snorted out the residual flame from his nostrils, making an almost pig-like "oink" in the process.
"I wouldn't be too hasty if I were you, not before you know what I have in mind."
Peter calmed down, well... a little anyway.
"A well famed dragon, both down here and in the human world up above, a certain Leonardo da Vinci, produced some very prolific mantras in his time, tending to go through phases exploring flight and art, the sun, moon and stars, and at one point... the human mind. Without doubt he was a genius, not only in his predictions of the future, but also his shaping and understanding of creating mantras.
Standing, mouth agape, hooked on every word Gee Tee said, he looked a right sight.
"Some of his mantras have endured to this very day. And one in particular may well be the answer to our little conundrum."
Shuffling past the youngster, the old shopkeeper beckoned him to follow. Weaving in and out of the ever present bookcases, looking like towering guardians, the two of them finally stood at the front door to the shop. Carefully, the master mantra maker slid out a key from between a row of raggedy scales that circled the top of his bulging belly, inserted it into the door and turned it tightly. A satisfying click echoed past Peter and back towards the bookcases. Sliding shut two silver bolts, one on the top of the door, one on the bottom, neither of which Peter had ever noticed before, Gee Tee ambled back the way he'd come, until he made a sharp left down an aisle Peter had barely noticed before now. After thirty or so yards, the two of them reached a dead end in the shape of an ancient oak bookcase, so high it strained the young dragon's neck just to look up at where he assumed the top was. And if somewhere there'd been an award for a bookcase that was the dirtiest, dustiest and most covered in spiders' webs, then this one would most certainly have been the outright winner, beating all the competition hands down. In fact, Peter was doing his best to shy away from it all, the exact opposite of Gee Tee who, much to his young charge's disgust, had thrust his hands through a mass of cobwebs and was busy shuffling tomes around. As he did so, he turned towards Peter and said,
"I'm trusting you with my most valuable secret, young one. Make no mistake, you must never, and I repeat NEVER, tell another living soul about this place. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"
"I do," stammered Peter, suddenly wondering what on earth he'd got himself into this time.
"NOT EVEN MY APP... ASSOCIATE TANK! AGREED?" demanded the old dragon, testily. Gulping, Peter nodded, just about managing to squeak a timid, "Yes."
"Good," declared the master mantra maker, turning back to face the shelves. Continuing to move the tomes around with a speed that belied his advanced age, a few seconds later a tiny hissing sound, very much like that of escaping gas or air, filtered up from the ground. Stretching out his wing, the shopkeeper forced Peter to take two steps back. As soon as he did so, the entire bookcase started to turn on its axis, as the pair of them stood and watched in relative silence. Splitting in two, the bookcase revealed a shiny metal pole, not quite the height of the aforementioned bookcase, with the bottom of it disappearing down a very dubious looking dark hole.
Gesturing with one wing, Gee Tee urged the young dragon forward towards the pole and the darker than dark hole it descended into. Taking three very tentative steps forward, Peter peered down as far as he could... not very far at all as it turned out.
"Now follow my instructions precisely," ordered the old dragon. "Slide down the pole, careful to tuck yourself in as fully as possible. In that ridiculous form you should be fine, but under no circumstances must you stick out any of your extremities on the way down. The consequences of doing so could well be deadly."
Legs trembling, all he wanted to do was go home, but it seemed to be much too late for that, and that fate itself had other ideas entirely for him.
"One last thing. When you reach the bottom, you are to take four strides off to the side, it doesn't matter which side, but you must not, under any circumstances, move forward in any way. Wait for me... I'll be right behind you."
Tummy somersaulting, legs wobbling, hands shaking, Peter took two steps forward, leapt onto the pole, wrapping his arms and feet around it as tightly as he could, and slid effortlessly into the darkness.
Watching, the old shopkeeper waited for a moment for what he knew would happen next, and wasn't disappointed. From far below echoed up an "AAAAAHHHHhhhhhhhhhh," that just seemed to go on and on. A toothy smile lit up his satisfied face as he realised the point in the journey that his young friend had just reached. Chuckling quietly, he threw himself forward, sliding into the darkness, all the time hugging the pole as tightly as possible.