Trains and dragons are inevitable favourites any toddler, but I felt my son had hit on a particularly complimentary combination with this selection of words.
11th October, 2026
The boy had been at home, but it was Sunday night, and this meant it was time to go back to school. His parents deposited him on the platform, gave him a big kiss, and told him to wait for the train to come. He was used to this; it happened every other week. But he never got used to the cold at the station. It bit at his fingers and his toes through his shoes. It bit at his nose and his chin whenever they poked above his scarf. There was nothing to do but wait in the cold dark, looking up at the stars. Each and every time, it was the longest time he had ever spent.
With a rolling, crunching sound, two little pinprick lights appeared in the distance and got bigger and bigger. Then came a hiss and a rumbly growl, like the belly of a giant when it’s ravenous, and the train swooshed onto the tracks in front of him. The only other people on the train at this point were the conductor and the ticket collector. Sometimes the ticket collector watched the boy as he got on, checking he was doing it correctly by leaning out of one of the little windows. But tonight, because it was so cold, he was inside the conductor’s cabin with him, sharing a flask of tea.
The boy went to his usual seat: D1. It was a good seat: right by the window, far enough from the doors not to feel the cold wind each time they opened, but close enough for him to see his bag on the rack. The boy leaned down towards the little heater that puffed out warm air just above the floor. A tiny gust of heat was coming out, but it was hardly enough to warm even his little pinkie.
The boy counted the hills as they passed by, capped with snow, as he always did, to distract himself. And soon enough, more people began to filter onto the train. With each stop at a new station, more piled on: grandparents with crossword books, women with hiking sticks, a group of girls putting chopsticks and glitter in their hair. Soon the train was so packed that people were sitting on the tables, and the strap of someone’s rucksack tickled the boy’s cheek each time the train wobbled, which was all the time.
Everyone was angry at everyone else. “Could you move your bag?” “That’s my seat.” “You’re standing on my foot.” “There’s nowhere to put it!” “Can someone shut that door?” Nobody wanted anybody else on the train, even though they all had to be there, going to their separate places on their own little journies. Everyone stayed in their groups, glaring at each other as all their things bashed into one another. And when the ticket collector tried to manoeuvre himself between the bodies to collect the tickets, everyone just glared at him too. Knowing perfectly well how much they had paid for them, he quickly scurried on and said he’d ‘come back later’.
Feeling trapped, the boy squeezed out of his seat and moved into the corridor, where he slumped down and leaned his head against the rumbly, rattly door. Even though he had a bit more space, he had lost the little stream of warm air that brushed over him beneath the table. Now he could feel the cold wind seeping in under the door, and he shivered all over again. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, imagining he was in India, rushing through a forest looking for Bengal tigers in the trees.
Just then, he heard a cough somewhere behind him. The boy sat up. Behind him was only the wall of the train; it was impossible that he had heard something there. But there it was again - not one cough this time, but a whole coughing fit, soft and quiet, as though coming from a little wasp.
The boy realised that just behind his head was a grate, with little bars he could see through. And when he looked more closely, he saw tiny sparks of fire flickering inside it. He twisted around and pressed one eye to the grate, trying to see through the darkness.
There, curled up inside, lay a tiny red dragon.
The boy blinked.
The dragon was lying on the floor with his eyes closed and one hand resting on his stomach, as though he felt ill. Every now and then he coughed, and little yellow sparks flew out of his nostrils and fizzled away like fireworks.
The little dragon rolled over, yawned, opened his eyes and jumped at the sight of the boy’s enormous eye staring at him through the grate.
“Excuse me,” he said, annoyed. “You’re blocking my light.”
The boy blinked again.
“Are you a dragon?”
“What do you think?” the little red dragon replied grumpily. “What do you think these spikes on my back are for, if not to show I’m a dragon? Or my long black tongue? Or my tough, scaly skin?”
To prove how tough his skin was, the dragon knocked on his own little round belly — tap, tap — which sounded like someone knocking on a hollow tree.
“But what are you doing in there?” the boy asked.
“Working, of course,” said the dragon. “And you’re disturbing me. Shouldn’t you be in your usual seat, D1, anyway?”
The boy gasped.
“How do you know where I normally sit?”
“I know everyone and everything on this train,” said the dragon. “How could I not? I’ve spent my whole life here, after all, working away day and night to keep you all warm.”
The boy watched as the dragon pulled himself up from the floor, stretched, gave a huge yawn and began doing a few little exercises.
“Time to get moving, I suppose,” the tiny dragon said.
Then something extraordinary happened.
The dragon breathed in and in and in and in, until the boy thought he might explode, and then blew out with an enormous “phooooooo!”
A great gust of fire blasted from his nostrils and shot straight into a pipe in front of him. Almost at once, the boy felt heat moving through the pipes beneath the floor.
Down the carriage came little coos of delight.
“The heating’s finally come on!” someone said.
The dragon wiped his nose and gave a little tut.
“I am Chief Head Executive President of Temperature Control for North-Western Railway Carriages A to F, B2019 Model 100,” he said sniffily. “Just like my father before me, and my grandfather before him.”
“I’ve never met a Chief Executive before,” said the boy, impressed.
“It wasn’t always like this,” said the dragon. “Once we were the most important part of trains; we made them move. Ever seen one of those old trains with great plumes of smoke billowing out of the top like a chimney?”
The boy nodded. He had been on a steam train one summer with his grandparents.
“That would have been one of my relatives,” said the dragon. “Some of them still work on those trains. Could have been my cousins Marjorie, Mayfield, Maisie or Malik…” He trailed off. “I chose to stay here, of course. I don’t go in for all that touristy stuff.”
A little red light flashed inside the dragon’s tiny cave behind the grate. He puffed himself up again, ready to blow another great gust into the pipe.
But this time he collapsed in a fit of coughing.
“Are you alright?” the boy asked.
The dragon wheezed and rolled onto his back, clutching his belly.
“This wretched cough,” he said weakly. “I come from the best lineage of fire-breathers you’d ever seen. My own grandmother ran the Orient Express, if you don’t believe me! But now every dragon’s gone off the trains to work in air-conditioning. How do you think we do that? We were never made to blow icicles.”
The dragon closed his eyes and sat with his legs splayed on the floor. One big fat teardrop fell from his cheek and plopped onto the ground, where it began to freeze.
“It’s this cough,” he said eventually. “I caught it off the mice cleaners, I’m sure of it”.
Just then, the boy had an idea. His mother had given him a packet of honey-and-lemon sweets before he left for school, for whenever he felt homesick. He hurried back to his suitcase, pulled out the packet, unwrapped one and pushed it through the grate.
The sweet plopped onto the floor.
The dragon eyed it suspiciously, then gave it a lick with his long black tongue. His eyes widened. He snapped it up in his tiny jaws, flung his head back and swallowed it whole.
“Delicious,” he said, licking his lips.
Then he gave an enormous burp, and a great burst of boiling-hot flame shot out of his nostrils.
The dragon looked as surprised as the boy.
“Quick!” he said. “I need more of those yellow capsules!”
The boy scrambled up to get another sweet. As he did, a wash of cold air crept in beneath the door. He looked out of the window. Ahead, the train was about to enter Drumochter: the long passage between the hills where there were no houses, no lights and, most importantly, no warmth.
The boy stopped.
He needed to give the dragon something to keep him going. But if he gave away all his sweets, he would have nothing left for the dark nights at school when he woke up alone and wanted something that reminded him of home. He kept the packet hidden in a little gap in the ceiling above his bed, just for emergencies.
At that moment, a loud voice sounded above his head.
“Excuse me.”
The boy looked up. A man in hiking boots and a thick woolly jumper had cornered the ticket collector.
“Can we get some heating on, please? It’s freezing in first class.”
The ticket collector nodded very seriously and waited until the man had gone. Then he looked around to make sure nobody was watching and gave the wall beside the grate a hard kick.
Inside, the dragon went tumbling sideways.
He picked himself up, muttering furiously under his breath, and breathed in and in and in. The little honey-and-lemon sweet bobbed upwards in his round tummy with every breath until, finally—
“Phoooooooo!”
A flame shot from his nostrils and into the pipe.
For a moment, the boy felt a river of warmth rush beneath the floor. Then it weakened, and weakened, and disappeared.
There was no chance it would make it all the way through carriage D, let alone up all the way to B, C or First Class A.
Around them, the grumbling began again as the train trundled and rattled through deep, dark Drumochter, between the snow-covered hills. The dragon, meanwhile, had collapsed onto the floor again and was coughing away.
Then the boy had another idea.
He took a deep breath, then opened the automatic doors of the carriage with a whoosh, and stepped up to the girls with the chopsticks and glitter in their hair.
“Can you help me?” he said.
The girls looked at him and the boy felt a lump of nerves in his stomach.
“We need to get everything we can to get the heating going. Could you lend me your chopsticks?”
The girls looked at one another. Then one of them shrugged and pulled the chopsticks from her hair.
The boy went over to the grandparents with the crossword books next, who tore out a few finished pages for him with a smile, and then to the women with the hiking sticks, who gave him some of the fruitcake they had hidden in their pockets for sustenance.
Soon everyone wanted to know what was happening, and suddenly everyone was getting involved and giving him things: woolly socks, a bar of soap, the bell from a bicycle, an old newspaper, a wooden pencil.
The boy thanked everyone as the pile in his arms grew higher and carried his bundle back to the corridor.
He pushed everything through the grate and it all landed with a rumble tumble. The dragon’s eyes widened as the objects came tinkling into his little cave.
He picked up the things one by one, threw them into the air and swallowed them with big gulps. The boy watched as each object collected inside his round tummy, which grew bigger and bigger as it filled up, things of all shapes and sizes poking out. With every new thing he swallowed, the dragon seemed to grow stronger.
The tiny dragon puffed himself up, and up and up and up — so much so the boy worried he would burst.
“BURP-phoooooo!” went the bicycle bell. A great flame shot into the pipe.
“BURP-phoooooo!” went the bar of soap. Another, even bigger flame this time.
“BURP-phoooooo!” went the crossword puzzles.
Soon the pipes beneath the floor were growing hotter and hotter, until a river of heat was spreading through the whole train. People began pulling off their hats and scarves and unbuttoning their coats. And what was more, they had started talking to one another. The girls with the glitter were chatting to the grandparents. Someone passed the women with the hiking sticks a biscuit because they’d lost their cake. People were laughing.
The ticket collector came rushing into the carriage to take the credit, but nobody paid him any attention.
When the boy looked through the grate again, the dragon seemed different. His scales had turned a deep ox-blood red, and there was a fiery glow in his eyes.
“Thank you,” said the dragon. “Now, if you please, I really must get back to work.”
The boy smiled. “Can I ask you something?”
“Very quickly. I’m extremely busy.”
“When I first got on the train, there was a little bit of heat coming from the radiator. How did you manage that when you were feeling so ill?”
The dragon gave an impatient sigh at the obvious question.
“I always save my first fire for D1,” he said. “For when you get on.”
The boy blinked at him. Outside, the train had left the dark hills of Drumochter behind and the lights of the town were beginning to appear.
“It’s your stop,” said the dragon.
“Yes,” said the boy.
And for the first time, he realised that perhaps he had never been quite as alone on these journies as he had thought.
The boy went to quickly fetch his bag as the train pulled into the station and carried it towards the doors. Just before they beeped open, he crouched down and peered through the grate one last time. “See you in two Sundays,” said the boy, but the dragon was too busy to answer, already puffing himself up for another blast of fire.
The boy took a step towards the doors to leave.
Then he stopped.
He looked down at the packet of honey-and-lemon sweets in the side pocket of his bag. For a moment he thought about the little gap in the ceiling above his bed, and the dark nights when he woke up missing home.
Then he quickly grabbed the bag of sweets, crouched down and pushed the whole packet through the grate. The dragon gave a little gasp and clasped both claws over his mouth. For once, he seemed to have nothing to say. Then he remembered himself, stood up very straight and gave the boy a small bow. “Thank you, Deputy Temperature Assistant of Intercarriages D and E,” he said quietly.
The boy smiled. Behind him, the train doors opened.
As the train roared away, the boy stood on the platform and watched its yellow-lit windows disappear into the night. Inside, people were pulling off their jumpers, stretching out their feet to feel the warmth beneath the tables, and laughing and chatting with each other.
The boy gave the train a little wave.
And as it disappeared into the darkness, the two little red lights at the back looked just like the fiery nostrils of a tiny red dragon.