Chapter 12
THE WYVERNS ARE IN A CONSTANT state of creative pursuit.
They read great piles of English and Gaelic books, sculpt with their curved foretalons and sketch with large pencils carved from tree bark.
They sleep curled up together in large groups, hot scale upon hot scale, but the night is for hunting too and sometimes I see a select few drag in puffins and fish and entire sheep.
Hunting is the only reason they leave the tunnels.
With my loquisonus demonstration complete I wander aimlessly, but the others are much solicited: Serena for her ability to embroider a pretty pattern or sketch scenes from her First Class London upbringing and Atlas for his lectures on the Peace Agreement, the lives of London’s dragons and the Babel Decree.
Marquis rarely leaves the healing caves, which the rest of us are not permitted to enter.
I am thoroughly bored, fit only to help Gideon and Aodahn with their lists of French verbs and German adjectives, and Atlas with his lectures.
‘Remind me which Babel Decree articles were instated when you were in London with Chumana?’ he asks me.
We’re looking over his notes in the mostly empty Amber Court, the sunlight shining through the orange stones above us in a dappled, golden glow.
‘The last one I heard was the instatement of Slavidraneishá as Britannia’s national dragon tongue,’ I tell him.
He nods, the warm light flickering against his dark skin. He’s serious, business-like in his manner and when he reaches towards me to take the pen from my hand, I lean in to kiss him.
He pulls away.
‘What is it?’ I ask, stinging from the rejection.
‘Nothing,’ he says, his eyes on his paper. ‘I’m just trying to concentrate.’
I feel my heart flutter unpleasantly. ‘Is this because I didn’t agree with your plan to listen to the wyverns’ echolocation?’
‘Of course not,’ he replies, still avoiding my gaze.
‘You’ve been acting like a spoilt brat lately!’ I burst out furiously. ‘Admit to that at least.’
Atlas doesn’t reply.
Is your secret mission bothering you? I want to say.
I bristle with anger, yet I’m still hungry for his touch, just a hand on my back or whisper in my ear, a sign that there’s no bad feelings between us.
But the past couple of days he’s barely looked at me, and last night he didn’t come into our cave until I was asleep.
I wonder if he somehow knows that I read his diary.
I glance around the cave, desperate to show him that I have something – anything – better to do.
Cindra is standing beneath one of the memory tapestries, watching me.
This is the third time I’ve caught her staring, her tail coiled around the books at her feet, her talons snapping in .
. . what? Trepidation? Anticipation? I glance at Atlas again, but he’s busy scrawling something across the page.
‘If you’re not doing anything,’ he says without looking up, ‘could you take a look at my notes on Bolgorith battle weaknesses? There’s a paragraph on family bonds that needs editing.’
The boredom and sense of uselessness smoulder gently, then combust.
‘I’m not your bloody secretary,’ I snap.
I stand up and cross the cave to Cindra.
‘Cindra,’ I say, forcing a smile. ‘Is there something you want from me?’
I hear a clicking sound in her chest and expect anger, but she nods.
Her eyes dart to the entrance, then back to me.
‘But not here.’ She gestures towards the left-hand passageway, which leads away past our sleeping cave and the pool entrance.
I glance back at Atlas, who hasn’t looked up, then follow Cindra out of the Amber Court.
We walk quietly past more wyvern chambers and I hear running water.
Cindra doesn’t speak until we reach a small waterfall, crashing down from somewhere high up in the rock.
The noise echoes so loudly that I can barely hear her talk.
‘Cindra?’ I say in Cannair. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘No, Vivien Featherswallow,’ she replies in English. ‘Everything is not okay.’
I reel in shock. ‘You speak English?’
‘Yes,’ she hisses in reply. ‘But Abelio must not know.’
‘Why?’
She lets out a tutting noise. ‘Because he believes it, and everything it stands for, will contaminate Cannair, and the wyvern way of life, and our . . . concealment.’
I think of Aodahn’s English names for the different wyvern caves.
‘You don’t agree with it, then?’ I say carefully. ‘With the living underground?’
‘Abelio laments that the wyverns harbour a strong interest in humans and claims that it began when Clawtail walked among us. But he is wrong. It is since he made us live away from the rest of the world that we have come to covet human ways.’ She growls.
‘The wyverns didn’t always make art, then?’ I say. ‘But what about your tapestries, your tweed?’
‘Wyverns have always been creatures of comfort and creation and ceremony. They are things we do, in the same way that bees build hives. But since we have lived underground, unable to fly except for the purpose of hunting, our minds no longer travel. Our souls are tethered. Our art forms have changed. Weaving can still be practised underground, but glass-blowing, flame-throwing, cloud-spinning . . . these are all but lost to us.’ Cindra casts a glance back down the empty passageway.
‘And so we have found solace in other pursuits, such as the consumption of human literature. This is why the wyverns sculpt human figures, write about humans, speak like humans. A bird will mimic human singing if caged for too long. Abelio is well-intentioned but misguided. In seeking to preserve our traditions and language, he fails to see that it is the sharing of them that would keep them alive.’
‘If you were to come out of concealment, dragons and humans would witness the waulking of the tweed, see the memory tapestries, hear Cannair.’
Cindra is nodding. ‘Some of us, those who lived before Clawtail, speak other tongues, too. We are not all monolingual.’
‘You’re the one who asked Clawtail to translate Cannair!’ I say.
Her eyes gleam. ‘Yes. And now I am asking you to continue Patrick’s legacy by translating Cannair into English so that it can be recognised by your Academy as a dragon tongue.’ She pauses. ‘As things stand, if the Hebridean Wyverns were to perish, then Cannair would die with us.’
‘Cindra,’ I say gently. ‘To record a new language would take me years.’
‘You need not record the whole thing. Not to begin with.’
Her tail sways as she moves towards an alcove in the wall and pulls out a huge stack of papers covered in thin, inky lines of written Cannair, scratched by a talon dipped in ink.
‘My writings on the Hebridean Wyverns,’ she says.
‘Our history, our traditions, our language. Patrick did not have this last time. You will not have to start with nothing, like he did. If you are able to translate merely a few of my writings, you will be making an English record of Cannair and of the wyvern way of life. This your Academy will accept, yes?’
I hesitate. It’s true that the Academy only requires a small translation sample in order to award a language what it calls pre-emptive official status.
‘And in exchange, the wyverns will fight in your war.’
My heart leaps. I’m getting close to the information Hollingsworth wants, I’m sure of it. ‘Fight . . . how, exactly?’
The movement of Cindra’s tail is a blur until it cracks against the stone wall above me, bringing down a rain of shards. I cover my head with my hands as she snarls.
‘Do not trouble yourself with the fighting skills of the wyverns. I can assure you they are more than satisfactory.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ I say. ‘I have been told you have an advantage over other dragons. Something that makes you different.’
Her eyes narrow into cat-like slits. ‘Translate Cannair for us and you might just find out.’
I pore over Cindra’s writings for the rest of the day as I wait for the others to finish their various activities.
The pages are too big for me to carry around, so she leaves them in our cave.
They contain far more complicated descriptions of the wyvern practices than those Clawtail recorded in his own journal.
Cindra dedicates a hundred pages to the waulking of the tweed, full of information I don’t understand.
One section describes a young wyvern’s first hunt.
The wyverns have words for things that simply don’t exist in English, like the very particular sensation the wind makes on the tertiary feathers of a wing, or an expression that refers to locating one’s prey in the air which, translated literally, becomes to taste a pulse on the back of a cloud.
When I ask Aodahn to explain certain terms to me, he lacks the English vocabulary to translate exactly what they mean.
‘I have to talk to you,’ I tell the others as they trail into the sleeping cave that evening, exhaustion on their faces.
‘Can’t stop,’ Marquis mutters. ‘I have to attend a flying lesson.’
I sigh. ‘Then we’ll come with you.’
As we follow Marquis through the tunnels, I tell them what Cindra has proposed.
‘If we can’t find out exactly what Hollingsworth thinks is so special about the wyverns, then this could be the next best thing.
At least, if Cindra can convince Abelio to let the wyverns fight with the rebels, we will have achieved something. ’
‘But how are you going to translate an entire language?’ Serena says.