Chapter 10 #3
‘Why don’t you offer to give them Bible readings,’ Marquis hisses from behind.
Serena snorts and I turn around and glare at them, but it does nothing to wipe the grin off Marquis’s face.
‘Atlas is a soldier,’ I tell Abelio. ‘He’s been rebelling against the government for years. He knows all there is to know about the war and those inflicting it on us.’
‘We have no interest in your war,’ Abelio growls.
‘Forgive me,’ I say. ‘Only, I thought you said you were progressive dragons. But how can you possibly be progressive if you don’t know where progress is needed?
’ I pause, preparing my next sentence. ‘You’ve been isolated from human and dragon society for years, but Atlas can teach you about its politics.
Starting with the breaking of the Peace Agreement and the Academy for Draconic Linguistics. ’
Cindra’s eyes gleam like molten silver and Abelio lets out a satisfied grunt.
Atlas grabs me by the elbow. ‘Translate, please.’
‘You’re to be their Professor of Politics,’ I say.
Marquis bursts into fits of laughter behind us, hastily covering up the sound with a cough. Atlas gives me a bewildered look.
‘And this one?’ Cindra says, taking a step towards Serena.
Serena smiles sweetly. ‘The feminine arts.’
I raise my eyebrows and try to translate, but I don’t think the wyverns have the same concept of feminine as we do.
‘What is this art that is carried out by females?’ Cindra asks.
Serena lists off her achievements. ‘If you want to learn needlework, embroidery, decoupage, flower-arranging, drawing, oil-painting or the pianoforte, then I’m your girl.’
‘I don’t see many pianofortes around here, do you?’ I tell her, but she watches Cindra with a lazy confidence as Aodahn attempts to relay the information.
‘An artist,’ Abelio says solemnly. ‘There are many among us, but we will gladly learn from this one.’ His gaze flicks to Marquis.
‘Oh, I dunno,’ Marquis says, stuffing his hands in his pockets. ‘I studied dragon anatomy, before. The dragon body and how it works, inside and out.’
‘A healer?’ Abelio ask hopefully.
‘That’s right,’ I reply quickly.
The old wyvern nods.
Aodahn translates Marquis’s job description to him as Abelio stares Gideon down.
‘Human tongues,’ Gideon says. ‘I know five.’
A surprised warble comes from Aodahn, but as I relay the information Abelio shakes his head.
‘We need not know the tongues of man. Only our own tongue, Cannair, matters. On the contrary, it is men who should learn to speak our language, the most superior of—’
‘You would deny us such a resource?’ Cindra hisses to Abelio. ‘Are not all languages linked? This boy could help us learn more about our beautiful Cannair, about its roots.’ She rounds on Gideon. ‘Do you speak Scots? Gaelic?’
‘Scots,’ Gideon tells Aodahn, who is still translating.
Abelio stares at him and his jaw chatters like a cat on a hunt. ‘Very well.’ Then he turns to the other wyverns, who are still watching the spectacle. ‘Our cultural exchange will begin at dawn. But now, the Twilight Meal.’
Several wyverns appear in the entrance to the Amber Court, pulling wooden trolleys attached to the base of their wings by harnesses made of dried, twisted seaweed. On the trolleys are clay pots of all shapes and sizes and Aodahn reaches for one and sets it down in front of us.
‘Gather, eat!’ he tells us, leaning back on his hind legs.
Is it their short front limbs, which serve as arms, that allow the Hebridean Wyverns to act more human than dragon, to read books and weave tweed and serve food?
We sit in a circle around the pot, imitating the wyverns, and I see Aodahn cock his head as he observes the way I cross my legs.
Marquis lifts the lift of the pot eagerly, then recoils.
It’s full of large chunks of glistening, raw meat, scattered with some sort of green herb.
I glance around as the wyverns the next pot over use small stone bowls to scoop out a serving of meat each, then clink their bowls together before burying their snouts in the food.
‘Manners,’ Serena says incredulously. ‘They’re using their manners to consume a bowl of blood.’
‘Oh, I do beg your pardon,’ Aodahn says.
He has a fascinating way of speaking, using sentence structures that could only have been learned from Britannia’s First Class. Where did he get it from?
He returns the lid to the pot, then breathes fire on to the clay.
When he removes it again, the meat is cooked and steaming.
We scoop it up into bowls and eat. The meat is coated in salty juices, as if the herb used to season it has just been fished from the sea.
For a moment there is only the sound of chewing and slurping as we fill our stomachs for the first time in days.
‘Hungry, are you?’ Atlas mutters with a sly smile.
I lower the bowl, feeling myself blush.
‘I was joking, Viv. Don’t stop on my account.’
He slurps so loudly from his bowl that Aodahn looks up in astonishment and I burst into laughter.
‘Do you think it would be rude to go back for more?’
‘Featherswallow, you’ve gone from a comfortable Second Class existence to Bletchley Park to rebel life in London to a secluded island with the boy you thought was dead, but here you are worrying about wyvern social codes.’
I snort.
‘Have you noticed how they’re barely speaking?’ he says.
I glance around at the wyverns. They’re eating in quiet groups, but they have an energy, and mannerisms, like the twitch of a tail or the flare of nostrils, that suggest they’re communicating in silence.
‘Echolocation?’ Atlas says in a hushed voice.
I nod.
‘Aodahn,’ Serena says, adopting a soft, high-society voice. ‘Have you read Wuthering Heights?’
Aodahn’s eyes light up. ‘Yes. I have my very own copy. Would it please you to borrow it?’
‘I’d love to,’ Serena says. She leans forward, her empty bowl still clutched in her hand. ‘But where did you get it?’
Aodahn’s own bowl of cooked meat is untouched. ‘From the old human smuggling caves,’ he breathes. ‘They were used back when people lived on the island. The wyverns came across them when tunnelling and Cindra allows us to visit it to retrieve books. The caves are still being used, you see.’
‘Used?’ I say. ‘By who?’
‘Perhaps by the humanlings on Canna, or by merchants from a neighbouring island. Every so often they fill with objects – food, clothing, literature.’ He suddenly looks apologetic. ‘I only take books, and never more than I can carry.’
I catch Atlas’s eyes and know we’re both asking ourselves the same question. Who is sending supplies to Canna?
‘What are those?’ Gideon asks.
He’s pointing to the tweed tapestries containing scrolls of paper.
‘Memory tapestries,’ Aodahn replies. ‘Made of the most durable textile known to wyverns. Our memories deserve to be preserved in our old age. The wyvern tradition is to record them on paper and keep them inside the tweed, so that we never forget.’
He stands to pull a scroll from the wall and begins to translate the writing aloud.
It is Edin who teaches Aodahn to weave his first piece of tweed.
She sings to him about how the loom has a mind of its own, about how no two tweeds are the same, about how a wyvern must weave just as he must breathe.
Aodahn watches his mother’s tweed appear on the loom, the wool bright white, and decides she must have mixed it with moonlight.
‘My favourite memory of her,’ he says, tucking the scroll back inside the tweed.
I point to another tapestry, this one embroidered with hundreds of wyverns flying like a flock of birds above the sea. On the water are several huge ships.
‘Is that a memory too?’ I ask.
‘The wyverns are a peaceful species, but there were times before we came underground that we had to be formidable fighters. And we were. We commanded the respect of all Canna’s dragons.’
Marquis raises an eyebrow.
‘But when the British government came for Patrick Clawtail and killed him despite our defences,’ Aodahn says in a hushed voice, ‘it shook Abelio to his core. We didn’t know that human battleships can shoot a wyvern out of the sky.’ His wings flutter gently on his back. ‘We lost many.’
‘They sent battleships for one man?’ Gideon asks. ‘What was so special about Clawtail?’
‘He was the first person to suggest that dragon tongues should be recorded and recognised as official languages,’ I say.
‘The government was on the verge of signing the Peace Agreement with Queen Ignacia, secretly hoping to use it to subdue dragons. But what Clawtail was proposing would have empowered them.’
I yawn, my eyelids growing heavy. The heat of the fire envelops us and throughout the cave, wyverns are basking lazily in the flickering shadows of the flames.
Aodahn moves next to me, so close that the silky feathers of his wings press against my bare arm.
I can feel the heat rising from his scales.
They’re a pearly blue, the colour of a dragonfly.
‘You will not be asked to explain the golden machine tonight, dear one. You could retire to your chamber, if you so wish.’
Dear one.
Chumana is not as gentle, and yet the closeness of Aodahn and the way he calls me something other than my name makes me miss her. I suddenly long to hear the words ‘human girl’ growled at me. I wonder where she is now and what possessed me to be so unkind to her.
I nod, mumbling goodnight.
‘You’re going to bed?’ Marquis says incredulously. ‘This is the first time in our lives that we’ve socialised with dragons.’
He jumps as a wyvernling appears at his side, wearing a harness made to carry glasses filled with a golden liquid. His wings flutter beneath the weight of it and he rises just above the ground.
‘A honeyed wine, for erudite dreams,’ Aodahn says. His tail intertwines with the wyvernling’s and gently tugs him back down to the ground. He lets out a purr as Aodahn gestures to Marquis to take a glass.
‘Th-thank you,’ he stutters to the wyvernling.
Atlas and I walk back to the chamber together, hand in hand down the hot tunnels.
‘These are the oddest dragons I’ve ever met,’ I say. ‘My mama would be fascinated. I wish she could see them. Their tapestries, their memory scrolls, their wine. Dragons who make art, it’s . . . What’s wrong?’
Atlas is walking with his eyes on the ground, his mouth set in a tight line. ‘Sorry?’ he says, as if I’ve woken him from sleep. ‘Nothing, I’m fine.’ He looks up and gives me what he must mean to be a reassuring smile. ‘It’s a lot to take in.’
We curl up beneath tweed blankets and the feeling of lying in his arms is so strange that my body responds to his slightest movement.
His face is buried in my hair, his hands placed firmly above the blankets.
But as my mind begins to drift and my breathing slows, I feel him slip away, gently extracting his arm from under me, to sit by the fire.
He feels uncomfortable lying next to me, I think as my heart hammers silently inside my chest. There’s something different about him.
An inwardness – a turmoil – that has replaced the confidence he had back at Bletchley.
He isn’t sure about us, not any more. We’ve never really defined what we are, after all.
We’ve not even spoken about all that happened between us when we were Wyvernmire’s prisoners.
I think of the reckless abandon with which he kissed me back in the forest, of how natural it felt to walk across the island hand in hand. But if those things were real, then why do I get the impression that Atlas is more of a stranger to me than I thought?