Jane and Jessamy

Stories for Another Day

Once there was a boy called Jessamy, but that wasn’t his real name. His real name was James, but from the time he was born, his grandmother called him Jessamy and she did it so often and so firmly that in no time everyone thought it was his real name. But it wasn’t. She did it because she knew something that nobody else knew.

Everyone knew the family legend that someone in the family named James would become fabulously wealthy and enormously powerful one day, so they all named their children James, hoping it would be their child. Jessamy had six cousins called James and four uncles and even an auntie. Someone had even hopefully called their cat James. But Jessamy’s grandmother knew the other half of the prophecy. One day someone named James would become fabulously wealthy and powerful, OR they would die a terrible, painful death trying to become wealthy and powerful. So when Jessamy’s parents named him James too, his grandmother wasn’t having any of that. “Jessamy,” she said firmly, “and that’s that.”

There were two things that made Jessamy special. One was that his left eye didn’t open properly. It was nearly shut all the time, and nobody knew why, not even his grandmother. The second thing was that he was not afraid to set out on an adventure without thinking about it first.

He wasn’t stupid – he knew it was a very bad idea to set off on a hot day without a hat or even a bottle of water, and he knew that maps were important if you didn’t want to get lost, so he generally asked his friend Jane to with come him, and you shall see why.

On the second Tuesday in September, Jessamy woke up and opened his right eye and knew without a doubt that today was a day to start out on a new adventure.

He called out the window to his friend Jane who lived two houses down and always slept with her window open, because that was the kind of person she was. By the time Jessamy was dressed and had finished his breakfast, Jane had arrived. She had two backpacks full of useful things like fold-up plates and snake repellent.

“Have you got your hat?” she asked Jessamy.

“Hat?” answered Jessamy, looking down the road dreamily.

Jane took a spare hat out of her backpack and jammed it onto Jessamy’s thick, curly hair. “Ready,” she said. She was already wearing her own hat.

“Let’s go,” Jessamy said. He led the way not down the road, as Jane expected, but into the kitchen, then down into the cellar, then through a door hidden behind the potato bin, down a long, dark passage with squishy things underfoot that Jane was terribly afraid might be slugs or leeches, then through a whole lot of twisty, turning tunnels, uphill and downhill, until he finally turned left, pushed at a big rock and brought them out into bright sunshine on the side of a mountain.

There was a loud clanging coming from nearby, and a heavy thumping shook the earth under their feet. “What’s that?” Jane asked. She was trembling so much that the knives and forks in her backpack jingled together.

“A giants’ jazz band?” suggested Jessamy. “Elephants playing tennis?”

Jane smiled and felt a bit better. “No, really,” she said, “what is it?”

“I don’t know,” Jessamy said. “Let’s go and find out.”

Jane was the kind of person that always wanted to wait and see, and Jessamy definitely wasn’t. When he strode off, she followed reluctantly behind him.

Around the side of the mountain, they found a group of big, strong men bashing at an iron door with the biggest hammers Jane had ever seen.

Jessamy bounced up to them and said, “What are you doing that for?”

The biggest man stopped bashing and wiped the sweat off his face. “We’re putting a door on this volcano,” he said, “to keep all the molten lava inside so it doesn’t get out and destroy our village.”

“I didn’t know there were any volcanoes around here,” Jessamy said.

“See for yourself,” the man said, pointing to a cloud of smoke rising from the top of the mountain.

Jessamy said to Jane, “A volcano, right here! We’ve got to see this.”

Jane took two pairs of fireproof shoes out of her backpack and they put them on and started climbing up the steep mountainside. It got hotter and hotter the closer they got to the top. At the very top they stopped. “It’s not a volcano,” Jane said, secretly relieved.

“No,” said Jessamy, “I didn’t think it would be.” There was a terrible, rotten-cabbage smell in air, that made Jane cough. Jessamy noticed an old man stoking a big fire with a long metal stick. Jessamy went up and asked him what he was doing.

“I’m just burning an old alligator skin,” the old man said. “They’re everywhere around here, messing the place up.”

Jane shivered and thought about getting out her telescopic alligator trident, but there didn’t seem to be much point if the alligator was already dead. She could tell that Jessamy was starting to feel uneasy. He was rubbing his ear and shifting from foot to foot. She pinched his arm and whispered, “Let’s go.”

The man said jovially, “There’s a short-cut to the bottom just over there behind that pile of rocks.”

“Come on, then,” Jane said, grabbing Jessamy’s arm.

The track the old man had pointed out was wide and grassy, with burnt patches here and there. As soon as they were out of sight, Jessamy whispered fiercely, “We have to hide, now!”

Jane had learnt over the years that when Jessamy said, “Now!” like that, you didn’t waste time arguing. She spotted a small cave among the rocks, and dragged Jessamy into it, covering the entrance with their backpacks, which were conveniently coloured camouflage green. They heard a heavy dragging sound, then a blood-curdling voice growled, “Where’s my dinner?”

Jessamy peered through a tiny gap with one eye. “I thought so,” he said. “It’s a big, old dragon.”

“A dragon?” Jane said, shrinking back into the farthest corner of the cave. “Couldn’t it be just a big alligator?”

“Talking and growling and breathing fire?” Jessamy said. “No, it’s a dragon all right. Those men weren’t blocking up a volcano, they were trying to seal a dragon inside the mountain. And that old man wasn’t burning an alligator skin, it was an old skin that the dragon had grown out of. When it’s burned, it’s supposed to make a powder that’s either deadly poison or makes you invincible.”

“Which one?” Jane asked. It seemed important to know.

Jessamy shrugged. “No-one knows, and no-one’s brave enough to try it and find out. The point is, there’s a living, fire-breathing dragon out there.”

“Now, Jessamy,” Jane began, as she usually did at about this point in their adventures.

Jessamy paid no attention, as he usually did. He pushed their backpacks out of the way and went outside. Jane grabbed the alligator trident out of her backpack and went after him.

“Hey!” Jessamy yelled. The dragon turned its head and fixed a yellow eye on him.

“Ah, dessert!” it smiled. There was no sign of the old man, just a heap of fine black powder where the fire had been, and a pair of empty boots.

Jessamy said, “You’re not going to eat us, you know.”

The dragon smiled widely, showing a million greasy teeth with horrible bits caught between them that Jane didn’t want to think about. “Oh, but I am,” it said, greedily. “First I’ll snap up the plump, juicy little girl, and then I’ll grind your bones and gulp you down.”

“No, you won’t,” Jessamy said. Jane’s tummy was going round and round. “All I have to do is open this eye,” Jessamy said, pointing to his left eye, “and it will see right through your leathery hide, right through your past and your present and into your future.”

Jessamy opened the eye that never opened and looked at the dragon, and through the dragon, and into time and space beyond the dragon. “Your mother called you Binkie, and you never cleaned your teeth,” Jessamy said. The dragon gasped. Jessamy went on, “You have just eaten your last meal. Your life will end here, in a puff of smoke.”

The dragon’s gasp turned into an angry snarl. It reached its savage claws towards Jessamy, but Jessamy kicked the pile of black powder directly into the dragon’s face. It snorted and choked, swallowed a mouthful of its own fire and exploded in a great cloud of smoke and flames.

When they were going down the mountain on their way home, Jane asked Jessamy, “How did you know all that about the dragon?”

Jessamy shrugged. “All dragons call their babies Binkie,” he said.

“What are you going to do with that powder?” she asked. She had noticed, because she was the kind of person that noticed things, that Jessamy had picked up a small handful of the black powder and put it in his pocket.

Jessamy smiled and told her, but that is a story for another day.