Red Japanese dragon on a calf

The showman was Ezra Vell, who ran a fair that moved from Lincoln to Ely on three lorries and one temperamental horse. Across the front of his ghost train he had a red dragon, scales like a fistful of cherries, teal cloud curling behind its head. Every night it watched the queue. Every night Ezra swore the whiskers had grown a finger's width since the evening before.

Then came the wet September when the claw went black at the tip, as if someone had dipped it in ink and never wiped it off. Wren Ashby, who sold toffee apples from a trestle by the gate, said the claw was reaching for the cloud behind it. Nobody listened. On the last night at Ely the lamps guttered out, and by morning the canvas was bare, with only a scatter of red scales on the cobbles like dropped coins.

Ezra found the dragon a fortnight later, coiled round the mill chimney at Pell's Gault, jaws open, claw hooked on the cloud as if it had been pulling something out of the sky. Wren had walked out there every evening with a toffee apple wrapped in greaseproof, and she said it was the only thing the dragon ever ate. So if you see a red dragon on a fairground, look at its claw. If it's reaching for something you can't see, don't ask what it wants. Pay the man his shilling and walk on.