Chapter 2 Claws and Fire
CLAWS AND FIRE
To shake off that strange vision, I walked around the manor before going in. In the side garden, two of our hired men were digging onions. I had promised them a pail of onions for themselves, and they gave an enthusiastic wave when they saw me.
Inside, Mamma, Lydia, and Kitty had occupied the entryway to gossip about a wealthy new neighbor. I squeezed by and found Mary, my younger sister, waiting for me outside Papa’s library. Her brow was furrowed over some dire Latin volume.
I tapped the library door and heard “Come, Lizzy,” as Papa knows my knock. Mary trailed me as we entered, her nose still in her book.
Papa had the estate journals open. He waved us to wooden chairs by his desk, then lowered his spectacles to inspect us.
“Mary,” he said at last, “I am pleased you are accompanying your sister this morning. And, as I am devoted to fashion, allow me to compliment you on your black dress. It is a joy to see mournful respect from a daughter, although I admit surprise from learning that I have died.”
Mary had opened her mouth to answer, but by the time he finished, she had closed it again. Mary was very literal, and Papa’s humor often took her by surprise.
“Mary has worn black for a week, Papa,” I pointed out.
“Ah. Then I was inattentive. A symptom of my grave state.”
“I am in mourning,” Mary said, having composed her reply.
“But for the unjust death of our fellow sentient animals, not for you. You and I could not be speaking if you were dead.” Papa nodded to this incontestable point, and Mary continued, “I have cast myself into the social movement for natural enlightenment, so I shun all animal food as it engenders disease and vice.”
“What?” I said. Usually, I knew Mary’s intellectual directions, but this time I had been as inattentive as my father, other than noticing her clothing.
“And did you eat no bacon this whole week?” asked Papa, astonished, although I thought that was for effect. Mary shook her head, her lips clamped. “Then I must take this seriously, for you were a great believer in bacon as a child. To what influence do we owe this new conviction?”
“I have been studying both Stewart and Hunt, in the Examiner.”
Papa’s white eyebrows shot skyward. This time his shock was sincere.
Seeing Papa’s cheeks coloring, I said, “Papa, I should like to visit the tenants before the morning grows late.”
We switched to discussing the tenants and business of Longbourn, with pauses for frosty and determined glances between my father and sister.
Mary’s studious ways irk my parents because Mary is oblivious to both society and subtlety, which are the loves of my mother and father, respectively. I have some guilt also because Mary is a lure for irony, which is my bad habit, and one I sometimes regret the next morning.
But Mary is adventurous in her bookish way, and her disregard for convention is due to deep beliefs.
She is like Papa, which is why they clash.
I love them both, but once convinced of something, they are unmovable.
Papa uses wit to belittle any disagreement, while Mary pulls like a determined mule wearing blinders.
However, disapproving of Mary for reading the Examiner was unfair. It was Papa who subscribed, not only to the Examiner but to many liberal opinions. And each week, after he was done reading, the pages had a habit of finding their way to me or to Mary, depending on who spotted them first.
After discussing the tenants, Papa eyed me, then said, “And will you join your sisters in moping and crying if I do not call on Mr. Bingley?”
“Who?” I asked innocently, although from overhearing Mamma I guessed this was our new neighbor.
Papa huffed, but a smile twitched as he dismissed us.
Mary and I added spencers and bonnets against the chill, then set out to visit the tenants.
Longbourn estate includes the Longbourn village, which is five scattered cottages for the tenants who work the farms. The Bennet sisters were well known to them, and I think we were all liked or even loved a little, as the tenants were families who had watched us grow from girls toddling behind our father.
My father had always managed his estate directly, believing that a gentleman should know his business but also for economy—Longbourn was too small to support a hired manager.
And, as years passed and my parents accumulated five daughters and not a single son, it was I, the next-to-eldest after Jane, who became his companion for tours of the property.
I was always fascinated: the news and gossip, the unstuffy practicality of conversations about brooding sheep and dry wells.
These topics would never be broached, even by Papa, at home.
But on our walks, we would talk frankly of shillings, bushels, and livestock.
He listened to my opinions, and I reveled in his radical encouragement of a favorite daughter.
For the last few months, though, Papa’s health had made our companionable walks impossible, so I had toured Longbourn village without him, usually with Mary as a companion. We said I was “carrying Mr. Bennet’s regards,” but we all knew I was acting as my father’s agent to manage our estate.
Our last stop today was the cottage of Mrs. Trew, who had been widowed a year but farmed her plot admirably with two almost-grown sons and some help for the harvest from our hired men, which I justified by claiming they were bored.
As Mary and I prepared to leave, I complimented Mrs. Trew on her plump pumpkins, planted by a sun-warmed wall.
“Thank’ee, Miss Lizzy,” she said, an endearment that began when I was a four-year-old girl startled into tears by one of her chickens.
“You’ve been a generous help, and we be managing, though it’s hard being a woman on my own.
” Her wrinkled lips pursed. “Will you be giving our respects to Mr. Bennet?”
“I will pass them on until he is well enough to receive them in person.”
“You are a brave lass.” Her fingers, cracked by a lifetime of hard chores, rubbed my cheek before she turned into her doorway.
The scrape of her touch faded, but her affection lingered. Not only affection. Pity.
She did not expect my father to visit again.
Mary became impatient, tapping her fingers in memory of some music she had played, while I stood, my heart torn for the second time that morning.
We were a quarter mile from home when I heard a growl. We turned, and Mary drew a frightened breath.
A large, filthy dog stalked us. Its legs shook with every step. A snarl rumbled, pushing a rope of foamy slime from its jaws.
I caught Mary’s hand. “Do not move. It is mad.” A mad dog had bitten a child a few weeks before. Horrible stories of the child’s slow death had circulated ever since.
My pulse pounding, Mary and I took a step back. The animal slunk closer. Hackles lifted its matted fur. Its reddened eyes fixed on Mary, and her hand tightened on mine.
I forced my fingers open. “Mary, go behind me. Run to the manor and tell Mr. Hill to bring the gun.”
“I am too afraid,” she said in a strained voice. “And you are the faster runner.”
The animal crouched, its shoulders straining.
A blur of bronze flashed, the fleeting image impressed on my eyes like an etching in a book—our firedrake streaking through the air, wings furled to strike.
He passed inches above the neck of the dog, seemingly without touching.
There was only one sharp thock, like our cook cutting up oxtail with her cleaver.
The dog’s head ducked, and its neck fell open, cut deep, the severed backbone protruding before the animal collapsed.
Mary screamed, a shattering cry unlike any of the pretty shrieks I remembered from teasing her as a child. Her running footsteps faded. I did not move, rooted to the spot by relief and horrified shock.
With a flurry of wings, the drake landed in front of me.
He reared on his two legs, facing the obviously dead dog, his gleaming bronze head reaching my thigh.
His wings unfurled. I had never been so near when they were open—wider than I could stretch my arms, ribbed like two huge fans, and spanned with skin so thin that I saw the glow of sunlight behind.
It was a silhouette of violent protection, an animal’s challenge to defend me and my sister.
The drake’s chest swelled. With the howl of a rushing gale, a jet of flame shot from his mouth.
It was unnatural fire, blue and transparent, almost invisible in the sunlight, but the heat was like facing a bed of coals.
The dog’s carcass burst into flames, filling the air with the reek of burned hair.
I had never seen a drake throw fire. Or even met a person who saw it firsthand. But it was foolish to be so surprised. They are called firedrakes, after all.
The drake stepped toward the dog, as if he meant to attack again, or even to eat.
“Stop,” I cried. “It is diseased! You must not touch it!”
His head swiveled on his long neck to observe me with black, unblinking eyes.
“You will die if you touch the dead animal,” I said.
But the drake had touched it already, somehow. I saw that his hind talons, curved like small scythes, were glistening wet and red.
“You must wash your feet, or you will grow sick.” I babbled. “Or… is only the bite dangerous? We could call for a physician’s opinion.”
The drake gave a screeching cry. I realized I was discussing medicine with a beast.
My shock broke, and my suppressed fear rose, cold as ice then hot and furious, my own belated challenge to danger. A shudder cranked through my shoulders and down my spine, leaving me trembling—fingertips, jaw, ankles—as though I raged with fever.
The world turned harshly exact and bright.
Again, another vision overlaid mine, but now vivid and vibrating with indescribable hues.
This time, I recognized the woman I saw—myself as if seen in a mirror, but from below, a child’s perspective.
The delicate pattern of my muslin dress shimmered in woven violet, every detail phenomenally precise.
My bare skin glowed with warmth. My dark eyes shone—blazed—with power more potent than heat.
The ground banged my knees. I caught myself, palms pressed on rough earth, and hauled in desperate breaths. I still saw myself, crouched, head tilted back to keep my gaze locked with our drake’s.
The strange double vision cleared.
I must be fainting. Ladies are supposed to faint. This was good.
I counted wobbly breaths, waiting. Maybe I should lie down. But that seemed very dramatic.
Five breaths passed. I was giddy, my stomach roiling at the gore and fumes.
Ten breaths. I began to be disappointed. A lady in a novel would have swooned elegantly by now. And in the more salacious editions, she would then wake in the arms of an apparently roguish, but secretly landed, officer.
Mary thumped to a stop beside me, breathing hard and catching my hand while she helped me stand. Mr. Hill, no officer in his rough working clothes but carrying a long gun, advanced puffing while making scat noises at the firedrake.
Ribbed wings flexed and spread wide, causing all but me to jump back, and then the drake was gone, tracing a soaring curve on the sky like a pen stroke addressing an elaborate invitation.