Chapter 5 #2
I feel a sense of revulsion. Do something for the man who stole Atlas away from me? Who let him die in my arms? I’m gripped by a sudden, furious desire to dash the machine against his head.
‘I don’t think so,’ I snarl. ‘You killed . . .’
I breathe in sharply. I can’t bring myself to say his name out loud.
Ralph’s smile disappears. ‘That was an accident.’
I shake my head, my eyes filling with tears. ‘You pulled the trigger. You shot him.’
‘He was going to get away.’ Ralph lights a cigarette and the tent slowly fills with smoke. ‘Just listen, will you? The Bulgarian Bolgoriths have seen the benefit of collaborating with a few high-achieving humans. Myself. And perhaps you, if you’re willing.’
I laugh in pure surprise.
‘There is no alliance,’ he says. ‘When the time is right, the Bolgoriths will turn on the Prime Minister.’
My stomach drops. I suddenly remember how in Bletchley Dr Seymour begged Deputy Prime Minister Ravensloe to oppose the so-called collaboration, how she begged the government not to put Britannia under foreign rule.
‘How do you know this?’ I ask.
‘Goranov,’ Ralph says. He drags on the cigarette. ‘We’re a pair.’
‘A . . . pair?’
‘You haven’t heard of such a thing?’ Ralph says.
‘Ah. Of course you haven’t. You’re too young.
Too . . .’ His eyes linger on my face. ‘Inexperienced. Bulgarian dragons and humans have been known to pair up. It’s a rare practice, but it happens more often during war.
Each has something the other wants, and the pairing allows for an interspecies exchange, one that surpasses any social or cultural codes. ’
‘What could Goranov possibly want from you?’ I glower.
Ralph smiles. ‘Never you mind. The point is, I want to check the sincerity of the pairing on his side.’
‘Are you telling me you had some sort of wedding ceremony with a dragon?’
‘They’ll wipe us out if we don’t cooperate, you know.’ Ralph bites a hangnail. ‘Or herd us like cattle to be butchered at will. Or keep us as bargaining chips as they expand their regime across the globe.’
The smoke is burning my nose. ‘Their regime?’
‘The Bulgarian dragons have turned Bulgaria into a fully-functioning dragon kingdom, without a trace of humanity left. Their genius is on a par with that of the Roman Empire.’
‘And does your . . . pairing mean that you want to help them take over?’
‘Like I said,’ he replies, ‘they’ll keep some of us. Involve us, train us, let us be part of the new world.’
I’ve never been to Bulgaria and they never taught us at school what it became after the Bulgarian dragons wiped out the human population. I find myself morbidly curious to find out.
‘And Wyvernmire has no idea?’
Ralph laughs quietly. ‘Of course not. She still believes in her so-called alliance. But if she can’t regain control of the country, of those who no longer want to be governed by her, then the Bulgarian dragons won’t see a need for her.
That’s why the rebels must be stopped. She’s the only thing standing between us and a full-blown massacre. ’
I don’t know which scenario is worse. Ralph’s, in which the Bulgarian dragons colonise and maybe eat the whole of Britannia, or Wyvernmire’s, in which she helps them occupy the country and gain political immunity in the eyes of Europe.
I look from Ralph to the loquisonus machine.
I don’t want to help him, but he might be my only way out of Wyvernmire’s camp.
He flicks his cigarette into the chamber pot. ‘Goranov will arrive tomorrow. I want you to listen to what he’s saying. See if you hear anything about me.’
If I didn’t hate him so much, I might almost feel sorry for Ralph.
‘Are you really so desperate,’ I say coldly, ‘that you would believe anything that comes out of the mouths of one of those . . . monsters? If you’ve gone and made some sort of promise to a Bolgorith, then what does it matter if Goranov is lying? If you try to get out of it, he’ll just kill you.’
‘He needs me,’ Ralph says stonily.
I laugh as I pull the loquisonus machine towards me. ‘Yeah, right.’
‘Just do it,’ Ralph says as he opens the flap of the tent. He looks over his shoulder at me. ‘Otherwise, my finger might just slip on the trigger a second time.’
I stare at the entrance long after he leaves, trying to control the anger that threatens to make me vomit.
Wyvernmire and Ralph have both tried to recruit me to spy on the Bulgarian dragons, but both refuse to see that echolocation is an untranslatable language.
There’s no call for Ralph’s name in the Bolgoriths’ Koinamens.
And even if I am able to catch Goranov talking about him, I’ll barely be able to understand what he’s saying.
I change out of my singed trousers and blouse and curl up under the itchy military-grade blanket.
Hollingsworth and Chumana will be looking for me now, but there’s no way for them to know I’m on Canna.
I doze until someone brings me food – bacon, eggs and buttered bread – and I wolf it down.
Then I sit cross-legged on the bed and pull the loquisonus machine on to my lap.
I have no intention of translating the Koinamens for Wyvernmire – or Ralph, if I can avoid it.
But perhaps listening in on the Bulgarians will give me some information that will help me escape without him.
I study the loquisonus machine, suddenly nervous.
Didn’t I promise Chumana I wouldn’t touch one again?
This machine is smaller than the ones I worked with at Bletchley Park, with a short, primitive-looking speaker.
The dials are marked in Bulgarian as frequency and volume.
But there is no switch for input and output, meaning that while this machine can listen to echolocation, it cannot attempt to speak it.
I feel a sweep of relief. Wyvernmire won’t be able to use it to send out recordings that could confuse or exploit the dragons, meaning that it cannot be used as a weapon against them.
This loquisonus is far less dangerous than the ones we used at Bletchley.
I pull the headphones on, start the machine and twist the dial. I hear crackles, awful scratching sounds that slowly smooth out as I find the right frequency. And then . . .
Goosebumps rise on my skin as my ears fill with the familiar clicks and calls, long trills and loud pitches.
I instinctively look skywards, forgetting I’m inside a tent.
Canna is a cacophony of conversation. Where are all these dragons I’m hearing?
Some of the calls are distant but the loudest ones come from close by.
Are there dragons flying above the beach?
Or am I listening to the inhabitants of Rùm across the water?
A thrill shoots through me and I immediately feel guilty.
I shouldn’t be listening at all, Chumana made that abundantly clear.
The Koinamens is a sacred language, one so deeply rooted in dragons’ psyche that without it they cannot hatch their eggs.
To live without it would be like humans living without touch or eye contact.
As I twist the dial again and focus on the loudest calls, translations come flooding back to me: land, stranger, tomorrow.
I used to believe these calls belonged to separate dragon dialects, when actually their meanings differ depending on the emotional bond of the dragons communicating.
I move the dial ever so slightly and an even louder transmission comes through, so loud that I almost pull the headphones off.
The dragon must be right above my head. The calls are a Skrill-type06 followed by a Trill-type15 and a Pitch-type3. A slow shock fills me.
Impossible.
My translations must be wrong. I listen again, but the calls remain in my mind as if the time I spent in the glasshouse has permanently etched them there. How could I ever forget the encounter that changed everything? I string the translations together and feel my head spin.
Greetings, human girl.
I stand up so fast that the loquisonus falls with a clatter to the floor.
With shaking hands, I push the tent flap aside and run out on to the sand.
The black beach stretches out before me, frothy waves rising up to kiss the shoreline to my left.
Seabirds whirl through the air and the taste of salt settles on my tongue.
Across the bay I see green fields full of sheep and behind them, hills blanketed with trees.
The pale smoke of a fire rises on the horizon but the sky is empty.
Where is she?
‘You’re supposed to stay in the tent!’ Ralph hisses, surging out of nowhere. ‘I’m not—’
A rush of flame pours down the cliffside, licking across the tops of the tents like a fiery snake.
Screams sounds as Guardians run to put the fire out and Bulgarian dragons lurch from the sand towards the cliff.
Ralph pulls me backwards as the tent next to us bursts into flames and I shake him off as a flash of pink streaks by.
A dragon swoops low on to the beach in another whoosh of flame and my heart skips a beat.
Chumana.
I dart back into the tent and stuff the loquisonus machine into its case.
Then I’m back out on the sand, running through the camp as Chumana circles above, snarling at the Bulgarian dragons closing in on her.
My eyes water as I stare through the smoke.
Why haven’t the Bolgoriths attacked? Do they think she’s one of their own?
I need to get somewhere higher, somewhere she can reach me.
I race towards the cliffs, my heart bursting.
Chumana has come for me. I’m about to escape.
Wyvernmire emerges from her tent amid a swarm of Guardians who push her further up the beach.
The air is too hot to breathe. I run, almost tripping in the heavy sand, as screeches sound in the sky.
When I look up, Chumana and the Bulgarian dragons attacking her have disappeared. My stomach drops.
No. No. No.
I’m too late.