CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BACK IN THE GLASSHOUSE, RALPH is waiting for me.
‘What took you so long?’ he barks.
‘Burned myself on the hot water in the bathroom and had to go to the sanatorium,’ I say, holding up my red finger with a sigh.
I take my seat and pull the loquisonus machine towards me. All this time, I’ve been talking about echolocation as if it’s just one singular language that varies slightly according to the region. How can I – a translator – have been so blind? Humans have languages, dialects and even particular ways of speaking among families: their own accents, words, inside jokes. Why wouldn’t dragons – who only developed spoken language because of humans – be the same?
Mama wanted to prove that, like human languages, dragon tongues include dialects. And now it’s up to me to prove the same of echolocation, of the Koinamens. It’s a language full of family dialects that are not only used to communicate and to hunt, but that have the power to heal, to make dragonlings grow inside their eggs . . .
Dragons may have only learned to speak orally due to the presence of humans, but language has been woven into their very being since the beginning of time.
‘Vivien, a Guardian of Peace just delivered this for you,’ Dr Seymour says. ‘He claims to have come all the way from London.’
I see Sophie flinch at the mention of home. Dr Seymour glances nervously at Ralph and hands me a parcel. I peer at the words stamped on the back and almost recoil in shock:
A cademy for D raconic L inguistics
Did Hollingsworth grant my request?
‘Recruits are forbidden from using the postal system, as you well know!’ Ralph spits.
‘But this was sent by car—’
He snatches the parcel from me and tears it open as everyone stares.
‘Dolores, I’ll be reporting you for enabling disobedience in your recruits.’
Dr Seymour pales. Beneath the parcel wrapping is a thick pile of bound papers.
‘This has been sent to me by Dr Hollingsworth, the Chancellor of the Academy for Draconic Linguistics, to help me with my research,’ I say calmly. ‘Special permission was granted by Prime Minister Wyvernmire, who needed our work in the glasshouse completed yesterday. You can check with her, of course, but I’m not sure she’d appreciate your meddling.’
If Ralph sees through my lie, he doesn’t show it. He flicks through Mama’s research proposal before handing it back to me, visibly annoyed that there’s nothing to suggest that I should be excluded from the DDAD on the spot. Dr Seymour gives me a perplexed glance. I’ll explain things to her later, when Ralph isn’t around.
Gideon has buried his face in his hands. What will happen to him if I decipher echolocation before he does? I don’t want to think about it and I can’t afford to. But part of me still hopes that if I can give Wyvernmire the so-called code she desperately wants, maybe I’ll be able to negotiate everyone’s release.
I look down at the research paper in my hands.
‘The Evolution of Dragon Tongues: A Case for Familial Dialects.’
My heart flutters as I race through the abstract, hearing Mama’s voice in the words she has written. Every thought is carefully presented and meticulously backed up with a study or a citation, and for a second it feels like she’s with me. It would be evident to anyone reading this that the author genuinely cares about the welfare of dragons and their place in society. The realisation hits me like a ton of bricks. Whatever reason Mama had for joining the rebels, it must have been a good one.
When Gideon goes out for a cigarette break, I listen to some of yesterday’s recordings. All this time, we’ve been adding calls to the indexing system as if they belong to one single language, when in reality they could belong to any one of the family dialects that exist. Soresten used the more simple, universal echolocation calls to talk to Muirgen, but a family dialect to talk to his sister Addax. But why would Soresten go through the trouble of speaking in dialect to Addax if she, too, understands the universal echolocation language he used with Muirgen?
I already know the answer to that question. It’s the same reason I speak to Mama in Bulgarian, and not English. Because it’s the language I know her through, the one we learned to love each other in. To speak to her in a different one would feel wrong. I lean back in my chair. If I can prove my theory that Muirgen and Rhydderch speak a version of echolocation different from the one Soresten and Addax speak, then I’ll be able to take my breakthrough to Wyvernmire.
Dr Seymour steps outside with Ralph, and I hear her threatening to make a formal complaint if he doesn’t let her do her job. Katherine is tapping her fingers nervously on the table, watching me with tired, bloodshot eyes. I do my best to give her a reassuring smile as Sophie appears beside me.
‘You’re on speaking terms with the Chancellor of the Academy?’ she hisses.
‘I ran into her at the ball,’ I reply.
‘See?’ Katherine tells Sophie darkly. ‘I told you.’
Sophie frowns.
‘Told her what?’ I say.
‘That you’re cheating.’ I’m surprised at the venom in Katherine’s usually cheerful voice. ‘You’re using your Second Class status to grovel for help.’
I raise an eyebrow and put the headphones on. ‘That’s ridiculous,’ I say as clicks fill my ears.
I check the loquisonus machine, surprised. I haven’t selected a recording yet, but the calls are definitely playing. That means they’re happening now. I glance up through the roof, but there’s no sign of a dragon in the patches of the sky I can see through the tree branches. Maybe it’s Soresten communicating with the dragon due to take over his shift. I write down the calls I can identify, scrawling them across a page of the logbook as they come. It seems to be just one dragon, speaking alone and receiving no response. Some of the calls I don’t recognise and I have to reach for the index cards to see if they’ve previously been recorded. I take notes as fast as I can as the calls become quicker and more erratic, writing down any possible translations.
Pitch-type3 (girl)
Pitch-type4 (female)
Trill-type15 (human)
UKNOWN CALL
Trill-type15 (human)
Pitch-type3 (girl)
Trill-type15 (human)
Pitch-type4 (female)
UNKNOWN CALL
Trill-type15 (human)
UNKNOWN CALL
Pitch-type3 (girl)
UNKNOWN CALL
I’ve never seen echolocation used like this before. The dragon seems to be reciting a sequence of words that have no connection to one another. And it’s constantly repeating itself. The last call, the one I don’t recognise, is similar to Echo-576, which in the indexing system means break or betray . But it’s different, shorter and louder than Echo-576. And, I realise, it’s followed by a quiet whistle, so fast it’s barely audible. Sophie suggested what it could mean last week: a quiet whistle at the end of a call could denote a noun or a name for someone or something. I decide to go with the closest translation I have.
‘Someone who breaks or betrays,’ I mutter to myself. I go to the cupboard for a dictionary and rifle through the pages until I land on the word I want.
betrayal noun deception , corruption, infraction, misdeed, break, delinquency, crime.
I underline the word that seems to sum up all the others: crime. I could be wrong, but I can always go back and pick another definition later.
Sound fills my ears again. The calls have changed now. There are two new ones, repeating one after the other in a constant alternation. The first is a friendly trill I recognise, and there are several different meanings for it in the index system. Trill-type93 has been translated several times as a verb: to slide or slither . But I’ve also heard it used by patrol dragons to mean snake . I search for a translation for the second call, a Sweep-type3. It’s been defined on an index card to signify something new, like a new human or a new patrol.
So I have two more potential words: snake and new .
This makes no sense, but the snake new pattern continues, as persistent as it is confusing. I rub my eyes, staring unseeingly at the word snake in the dictionary. I should probably give up on this call and move on to testing my dialect theory. But what if this is a rebel communication? I can’t just pretend I haven’t heard it. Out of boredom more than anything else, I flick back through the dictionary until I find the definition of the word new . I know that, in Wyrmerian, the translation – fersc – is only used in relation to offspring. A young hatchling, or a human baby, can be fersc , for example, but a new building, or a young plant, or a newcomer cannot.
I sigh. What if new isn’t the right word at all? What if the index card is wrong and the calls all mean something else? I read back through my logbook, looking for an account of the use of Sweep-type3, but there’s nothing there.
Gideon’s still outside smoking, talking to Dr Seymour. I can hear his low voice and Dr Seymour’s consoling one. Quickly, I reach for the other logbook, the one Gideon has been using. There it is, a mention of the Sweep-type3 from four months ago in handwriting I don’t recognise. But it’s been translated not as new , like in earlier entries, but as first . So could it be a mistranslation? I stare at the word: first .
It was used between three dragons discussing a first flight, in a recording dated 1 September.
I put the words together with the others I managed to translate, discarding female , which seems to be a synonym.
Human.
Girl.
Crime.
Snake.
First.
Human girl who committed a crime? A shiver runs down my spine. That could be said of most of the female recruits, but … Suddenly I’m remembering the words uttered by a voice that set my hair on end.
Do you have a blade, human girl? We both know we cannot count on your teeth.
I seize the dictionary and find the word first .
first ordinal number Coming before all others in time
OR
order; earliest; initial; original; basic
OR
Before doing something else; first and foremost; in the
first place; now
OR
The first occurrence of something notable; novelty; new
experience; maiden voyage
I feel a jolt of recognition. I take a pencil and circle the first word of the last synonym. Then, barely breathing, I amend my list.
Human.
Girl.
Crime.
Snake.
Maiden.
I’ve heard those words together before.
Snake Maiden? That’s what it means in English, doesn’t it?
Chumana.
Chumana is at Bletchley Park, calling to the human girl who committed a crime.
Chumana is calling to me.