Green dragon among grey clouds design

He heard it first as a dry scraping along the chimney, like someone dragging a broom across slate. Then the air went thick and grey, and a cloud came curling through the back door, folding over itself the way steam does off a pan. Behind it came a head the colour of pond water, whiskers trailing like smoke, and a pale belly that caught the light from the gas ring. The creature looked at the cold oven with what Tom could only call disappointment, and then it reached out one long green claw and gripped the blue glass ball that sat by the flour bin, the one Mrs Abernethy had polished for forty years and never once explained.

"Well," said the dragon, in a voice like a kettle thinking about boiling, "you've let the fire go out, boy."

Tom relit it with the matches from his apron. The dragon breathed on the flame, and the flame stood up tall and blue, and the dough rose in the tins so fast it spilled over the sides like a sea coming in. By the time the sky turned the colour of weak tea, there were sixty loaves cooling on the racks and the dragon was gone, leaving only a ring of cloud-scented damp on the step and the blue orb sitting back in its place, a little warmer than before.

Mrs Abernethy looked at the trays and said nothing at all, which Tom had never once known her to do.