Mimi and the Mountain Dragon. Michael Morpurgo

      First published in Great Britain 2014 by Egmont UK Limited The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN www.egmont.co.uk

      Text copyright © Michael Morpurgo 2014 Illustrations copyright © Helen Stephens 2014

      Michael Morpurgo and Helen Stephens have asserted their moral rights

      ISBN (HB) 978 1 4052 6934 6

       ISBN (epub) 978 1 7803 1742 7

       ISBN (KF8) 978 1 7803 1743 4

      A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

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      For Isla and Alara,

      their story

      M.M.

      Every Christmas Eve

      in the

      little village of Dorta where I grew up, high in the mountains of Switzerland, we have a carnival, a carnival like no other. We call it “Drumming the Mountain Dragon”.

      Everyone gathers around the Great Bear, the statue that stands in the middle of the village square. Sounding our hunting horns, and banging our drums, and not only drums but pots and pans too, we make our way up through the streets. The children lead the way, cracking their long whips and yelling as loud as they can. Even the smallest children join in.

      Wrapped up on their sleds, they blow whistles, shake rattles, or bang away on their tambourines.

      We troop through the village until we’re out on the snow-covered slopes right under the mountain, all of us banging and clanging, shouting our defiance, letting that beastly Mountain Dragon know

      just how we feel, telling her to

      stay in her castle and leave us

      in peace for another year.

      Then the next evening, and of course it’s Christmas Day by now, all of us gather in the village square again, not with hunting horns and drums and whips, but with bells, sheep bells for little children, and cow bells for everyone else. We carry flaming torches partly to light the way, partly to keep us warm. We go the same way we went the day before, but this time ringing our bells. We climb up higher than we did on Christmas Eve, right up to the tree line below the castle walls. Here we always stop and listen to the mountains above, echoing with the sound of our bells. Then we sing a Christmas carol, to the Mountain Dragon, and always

      the same carol: “Sweet bells, sweet

      chiming Christmas bells”.

      Now, after the last echoes have died away, comes

      the time for the story, the story of Mimi and the Mountain Dragon, the story that reminds us each year why we have our carnival on Christmas Eve, why we come back up the mountainside again on Christmas Day, and why this time we come ringing our bells and singing our carols.

      The storyteller is chosen by lottery, a name plucked from a hat. This last Christmas time it was my name that came out. I was the storyteller. Everyone hurled their flaming torches into a heap to make a bonfire, and we clustered round it.

      “Don’t make it too long, Michael,” the Mayor told me, “or, bonfire or not, we’ll freeze to death up here. Always remember the story has to warm our hearts and warm our toes at the same time.”

      Keeping his advice in mind, I began my telling of the story.

      “This story happened a long, long time ago, before the first cars and tourists and skiers ever came to our little village. No one came here, except passing tradesmen, or the occasional traveller lost in a blizzard and seeking shelter

      for a night. In winter-time, snow would cut the village off from the rest of the world for months on end. Families and their animals huddled together under the same roof, to keep warm, to survive. And in summer-time, every daylight hour was spent growing and harvesting corn and hay and straw, gathering berries and herbs and mushrooms from the mountainsides, fattening the pigs and sheep, making cheese, and bringing in enough firewood from the forests.

      By Christmas each year they were in the depths of winter, and everyone was longing for the dark nights to shorten, for the snows to melt away in spring, for sunshine to light up the world. But Christmas for the villagers then wasn’t simply to celebrate the promise of spring to come, or even the birth of a baby in Bethlehem 2,000 years before. All the singing of carols, the ringing of bells,

      the merrymaking, the dancing and the feasting, had another purpose too: to drive away the evil spirits they knew were lurking in the darkness outside. And there was one evil spirit above all that frightened and threatened them: the Mountain Dragon.

      This terrible dragon lived in the castle ruins high above the village. No one had ever set eyes on her, but everyone knew she was up there, because when she became angry she would rage and roar in her castle lair, and bring death