A Dragon in My Garden: Firefly

By E.H. Hartland

Firefly is a mischievous small dragon who sleeps in his stone shell in my garden. He was woken by a magic hedgehog so that he could tell the stories and adventures he had eons ago. He was told by Merlin that his task was to remind children everywhere that there is still magic and wonder in the world. His stories tell of the fun he had when first he left his hatching cave, to meeting unicorns, Merlin, and King Arthur and the journey he took to collect his eggshell and the battles he had with the dark magic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: May 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514498828

E.H. Hartland

Hilary Hartland was born in County Durham, UK, in December 1946. She left school at age 15 and trained as a hairdresser. She met and married her husband in 1968, and they have two boys. She and her husband shared a passion for horses. They moved to a smallholding in Co. Durham in 1983 and raised sheep and horses. In 1997, Hilary retrained as a reflexologist. Then in 2004, she and her husband retired and moved to Spain for ten years. They have recently returned to the UK to live in Wales to be nearer their four grandchildren.

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by E. H. Hartland. 725379

ISBN:   Softcover       978-1-5144-9881-1

            Hardcover     978-1-5245-9484-8

             EBook           978-1-5144-9882-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 05/03/2016

Xlibris

0800-056-3182

www.xlibrispublishing.co.uk

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1   Firefly

Chapter 2   Awakening

Chapter 3   My Hatching

Chapter 4   Learning Lessons Or Maybe Not!

Chapter 5   Moonshadow

Chapter 6   The Flight

Chapter 7   My Learning

Chapter 8   Merlin

Chapter 9   Camelot

Chapter 10   More Fun

Chapter 11   More Trouble

Chapter 12   The Cloak

Chapter 13   The Journey

Chapter 14   More Danger Ahead

Chapter 15   Egg Shell and Dragon Mother

Chapter 16   Return Journey

Chapter 17   Merlin’s Plan

To my four wonderful grandchildren

All my love and thanks

For all the fun and inspiration you have given me

And

To my wonderful husband David who has patiently stood behind me,

Read all and corrected both spelling and punctuation

Without complaint.

To Tom and Richard for their invaluable input.

To my great friend of long standing Gina, art critic and editor.

And finally

Beverley my best friend whom I trust to always say it like it is;

Who has always had faith in me and has encouraged me in

Everything I do.

Thank you.

INTRODUCTION

There is a dragon in my garden. We bought him some years ago from a shop in the North of England, and kept him in our garden there.

I moved to Spain with my husband for a few years and we took him with us. When we returned from Spain we brought him back to Wales to live with us. It was then that I noticed something strange about our stone dragon.

By day he is just a stone garden ornament curled up under a rose bush, but I would see from time to time what I thought were wisps of steam coming from around the rose bush, and at night he sometimes seemed to disappear. I started to keep watch, and after a couple of weeks, when the moon was full, he awoke and I saw him take to the air.

After a while I was able to make friends with him and learned that his name was Firefly, and that he had hatched from his egg in a cave in the high mountains of Wales, many eons ago at a time of the rare Blue Moon.

He is not a large dragon, but a small mischievous dragon with wonderful stories to tell. So I will let Firefly tell his own stories, for they are not mine to tell but his.

Chapter 1

FIREFLY

Hello,

I am Firefly. I am a small dragon and I now live back in Wales the country of my hatching, although many miles from the cave of my first breath of fire. The garden in which I now rest and sleep is a small beautiful garden near a stream with