Prentice put his arms round Rory's neck and got up onto his back; Rory set off at a run. Prentice whooped.

"See?" Rory said, slowing to a fast walk.

"I'm not too heavy, honest, Uncle Rory?"

"What? A skelf like you? Never."

"Do you think this is a punishment from God for talking about walking on a Sunday, Uncle Rory?"

Rory laughed. "Certainly not."

"Do you not believe in God either, Uncle Rory?"

"No. Well; not in the Christian God. Maybe something else." He shrugged his shoulders and shifted Prentice into a more comfortable position on his back. "When I was in India, I thought then I knew what it was I might believe in. But when I came back it all seemed to go away again. I think it was something to do with the place." He looked to one side, at the dazzling expanse of machair; endless emerald green scattered thick with flowers so bright they seemed lit from inside. "Places have an effect on people. They alter your thoughts. India does, anyway."

"What about when you went to America? Did that effect what you thought?"

Rory laughed gently. "Yeah; it did that all right. Kind of in the opposite way, though."

"Are you going to go away again?"

"I expect so."

Prentice elapsed his hands in front of Rory's chin. Rory glanced at his wrists; thin and fragile looking. Prentice was still holding the little Lifeboat flag, twirling the pin between his fingers.

"When did you stop believing in God?" Prentice asked.

Rory shrugged. "Hard to say; I think I started to think for myself when I was about your age, maybe a bit younger."

"Oh."

"I tried to imagine how the world had been created, and I imagined Sooty — you know; the glove puppet —»

"I know; they still have him. Sooty and Sweep." Prentice giggled.

"Well, I imagined him standing on a wee planet about the size of a football —»

"But he hasn't got any legs!"

Ah, but he did in the annuals I got for Christmas. Anyway, I imagined him waving a wand, and the world came into existence. Like, I'd been to church, been to Sunday School, so I knew all the stuff in the Bible, but I guess I needed to envisage it… see it, in my own terms."

"Uh-huh."

"But then I thought; wait a minute; where does the planet Sooty's standing on come from? I thought Sooty could have waved his wand and made that appear too, but where would he stand while he was doing it? I mean, I didn't think, Well, he could float in space, and it never occurred to me to ask where Sooty himself had come from, or the wand, but I was already heading towards not believing, I suppose. It was like the dragons."

"Dragons?" Prentice said, sounding excited and wary at once. Rory felt the boy tremble.

"Yeah," Rory said. "I used to hide under the covers of my bed at night, imagining there were dragons out there; in the room when the light was out, when there was nobody else there. I'd hunch down under the covers with just an air-hole to breath through, and shelter there. The dragons couldn't get you through the air-hole; they could only get you if you put out a foot or a hand, or worst of all your head; that was when they struck; bit it off, or pulled you right out and ate all of you."

"Waa! Alien!" Prentice said. His arms squeezed Rory's neck.

"Yeah," Rory said. 'Well, I guess a lot of horror films come from that sort of background. Anyway; I used to be petrified of these dragons, even though I knew they probably didn't exist; I mean I knew there was no Santa Claus, and no fairies and elves, but still thought ghosts and dragons were a possibility, and it only took one to kill you… I mean how did I really know I could trust adults? Even mum and dad? There were so many things I didn't really understand about people, about life. Most of the time you could just ignore a lot of the stuff you didn't know; it'd come in time, you'd be told when you needed to know… But how did you know that there wasn't some big secret, some big, evil deal going down that involves you but had been kept secret from you?

"Like, maybe your parents were just fattening you up until you would make a decent meal for these dragons, or it was an intelligence test; the kids smart enough to have sussed out the fact there were dragons around were the ones that would survive, and the ones that just lay there, trusting, each night, deserved to die, and their parents couldn't tell them or the dragons would eat them, and stories about dragons were the only clues you were ever given; that was all the adults could do to warn you… I was pretty paranoid about it. I used to be frightened to fall asleep at night sometimes, afraid I'd stick my head out from under the clothes while I was asleep and wake up to find my head in a dragon's mouth, before I died."

"Wow!"

Rory grunted, shifting Prentice's weight again. Kid wasn't so feather-light after all. "But then one night, under the covers — I was just getting older, I guess, but anyway — I was sort of reviewing the day, and I was thinking about school, and what we'd learned, and we'd been doing the Second World War, and I hadn't liked the sound of this Hitler guy at all; and I'd asked dad, just to double-check, and —»

"So he was still alive? When you were ten?"

"Oh yeah; didn't die until I was twelve. Anyway; he brought down this book; history of the War in pictures, and it had like all these photos of the death camps, where the Nazis murdered millions of Jews, and communists, and homosexuals, and gypsies and anybody else they didn't like… but mostly Jews, and there were like just piles of bodies; incredibly thin bodies, like bones; skeletons wrapped with tissue paper, and piled higher than a house… and pits; long pits full of bodies, and the metal stretchers they were put onto to be shoved into the ovens, and the piles of wedding rings and spectacles; glasses, and even artificial legs and weird stuff like that…

Anyway, that night they put a night-light in my room, in case I had nightmares, but the shadows were even worse than the darkness, and so I just lay there, under the covers, quivering with fear thanks to these damn dragons, and I wished Ken was back from University because sometimes I was allowed to sleep in his room, and I wished I was allowed a torch in my room, but 1 wasn't, and I was wondering about crying really loudly, because that would bring mum and dad in to see me, but then what did I say was wrong? And then I suddenly thought…

The dragons might be there; they might be real and they might be every bit as vicious as I'd imagined, but I'm a human being; so was Adolf Hitler and he killed millions of people!

"And I threw back the bedclothes before I had any more time to think about it and burst out of the bed; threw myself into the middle of the bedroom, screaming and roaring and thrashing about."

"Ha!" Prentice said, squirming.

"That brought mum and dad through; thought I was having a fit or something. But I just looked up from the carpet with this great big reassuring smile and said there was nothing to worry about." Rory smiled at the memory, bringing his head up to look around. A break in the dunes let the sound of surf grow louder. There was a car in the distance coming towards them.

"Brilliant!" Prentice said.

Rory grunted, shifting Prentice's weight once more. "Never had any trouble with dragons after that."

"I'll bet you didn't!"

The car hummed nearer as the view to one side slowly opened up through the dunes to reveal the shining beach and blue-green ocean.

"Let's see if we can get a lift off this car, eh?" Rory said. "You okay to get down?

"Yeah!" Prentice slid off onto the grass and stood there, favouring his good leg, while Rory stretched and rubbed at his lower back. He stuck one thumb out when the car was still a few hundred yards away. Prentice reached up and put something on the thin collar of Rory's shirt. It was the little paper Lifeboat flag. Rory held his collar out so that he could look at it. He looked down at the boy's grinning face. "Thanks," he said.