Chapter Forty-Seven #2
Dian looked delighted. ‘Oh well, as an interminably graceful fairy,’ they said with an exaggerated preen that Hamish would have deeply envied, ‘you should know I was born with many gifts.’ Their voice lowered to a deep purr, and Frida’s beaming smile fixed on her face, as she imagined the full scope of what they meant.
She cleared her throat hoarsely and in her free hand, the Jewel blazed with renewed life, a beacon to guide the way.
‘Yes,’ the Jewel sang. ‘Yes, oh yes! This way. Yes, this way!’
‘Can you hear it?’ Frida asked as they moved away from the carbuncle’s cage and back through the woods.
Dian gave a wondering laugh. ‘Don’t you think the whole world can hear the song of that dragon’s heart, Frida Rose?’
They smiled stupidly at each other, but it wasn’t until they drew closer to the darkened patch of grounds that held the dragon’s prison that Frida noticed an unsettling and resounding silence.
Muting the noises from the house, the battle cry of the creatures, the Jewel itself.
The absence swallowed the joy that had been raging through Frida. It swallowed everything.
With uneasy agreement, Frida and Dian inched out from behind a row of trees, lining yet another gravel pathway, and Frida’s heart sank. She felt Dian’s magic waver, and she smelled the stench of fear blooming over their skin.
‘Oh no,’ Moth cried bleakly.
Frida could have kicked herself. Between them and the smoky darkness of the cage, where she couldn’t even hear the dragon’s anguished keening anymore, sat the very solid, very real, very undeniable shape of Charles.
She should have known he’d be here. The man who’d wanted to carve her tattoos off her living flesh.
He sat calmly on a little bench with a shotgun over his knees, about fifty yards away.
His thin face turned up to the stars. She almost saluted his nerve, to ignore the unwarded dragon at his back.
Frida clenched her jaw. Good, she thought. Let him watch the stars. Let him burn.
She turned towards the terracotta dragon.
When she’d first seen her, she’d vomited all over her boots, unable to hold back the waves of bile at seeing the dragon’s blood.
Frida had thought nothing could be worse than that.
But now, the knowledge Frida held burned even hotter.
The jagged ruins of her wings looked as if they’d been cracked with hammers, stamped into the dirt, shorn off with a hacksaw.
Sir Joshua had said they’d searched her out, found her in her lair.
Had he been the one to take her wings? They’d probably needed her incapacitated in order to steal the Jewel.
Frida didn’t think Sir Joshua was the type to get his hands dirty, but she imagined money passing hands in a far away, sandy desert, Edward Caval orchestrating the transaction with his red, sweaty face.
They wouldn’t have wanted her too injured, not if they’d already arranged to bring her back here, to be exhibited.
But maybe it had gone wrong, or maybe they’d just assumed she would heal quicker.
Above, the moon had come, and the buttery light stroked the dragon’s bloody scales.
Frida couldn’t give the terracotta dragon her wings back.
But if she didn’t do anything, this dragon would spend the next two hundred years of her life in cages just like this, having her magic sucked out of her, bit by tortuous bit.
When Sir Joshua’s father had taken him to Brazil as a child, braving the risk of transatlantic travel, she’d assumed that bright-eyed auburn-haired boy had come back with an understanding of the sacredness of life – of other creatures, other places, other cultures, other worlds.
Of the way they were all inextricably linked.
And maybe he did. But he’d also come back with an understanding that he was better than everyone else.
She thought of the map she’d seen in the study, marked only for money.
The souvenirs arrayed over the shelves. The jade woman.
The spearheads, the ceremonial pots. The cloak of feathers.
She shuddered when she thought about how Joshua might have come to possess them too.
And then she thought about the way the LEZ managed the animals, the way enclosures were designed to mimic their homes, and yet how nobody spoke about the fact the animals were only there because the LEZ had enough money to buy them from their countries in the first place.
Joshua didn’t do what he did out of love, he did it because he knew he could gain from it.
And the world was arranged to let him get away with it.
She’d known this truth about other people.
So why had she convinced herself that he was any different?
History had tricked them, yes. Sir Joshua had played his game well.
But she’d seen what she’d wanted to see.
She’d seen what suited her, and only that.
About fifty yards away, Charles continued to look at the stars.
Around Frida, Dian and Moth, the raindrops refracted and twinkled. Ever so quietly, Frida whispered low enough so that Charles wouldn’t hear,
‘Dragon?’
Dian held their breath; Moth curled at their throat.
The dragon lay unmoving, moonlight dancing in the pools of her blood.
Frida whispered a bit louder. ‘Ma’am. Can you hear me?’
The dragon didn’t move. Frida tried a few more times, before eventually sinking back into the shadows.
‘Do you think she cannot answer, or will not?’ Moth asked desperately.
Frida studied the distance between them, chewing on her lip.
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted finally. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the Jewel, turning the crystal helplessly over in her palm, taking care to shield its glow with her shirt.
The glass-smooth surface warmed her skin.
She’d expected the dragon to sense the Jewel immediately, to hear the sound of the desert song.
But the crystal lay silent in her hand. She needed to get closer so the dragon could hear her.
But it would mean Charles would hear her too, and then they’d all be in trouble. There must be a way, she thought.
Dian, too, was studying the problem, their head bowed.
‘Dian?’ Frida asked, suspicious. When they lifted their head, there was a bold grin on their uptilted lips which Frida didn’t like the look of one bit.
It looked very much like they were thinking about doing something fairy-like, heroic and entirely stupid.
But Dian was already gently trying to extract their hand from hers.
She clung on in stubborn determination. ‘No. Nope. I’m not letting go. ’
‘Frida, come on. I’m not—’
‘Moth,’ she cried. ‘Tell me what they’re going to do.’
Moth said dourly, ‘Oh, just something extremely stupid.’
‘Dian—’
But Dian’s eyes sparkled violently. ‘Listen, Frida. I only have a few more raindrops left, but it is enough for a distraction.’
‘No!’ Frida cried. ‘We could smash him over the head with my rock!’ Only to remember that she’d left the rock somewhere near the carbuncle. Oh well, they could find another rock.
But Dian had got their hand loose now, the raindrops slipping away in a rush. They stepped away from her across the grass. Their bare feet left no trace as they flashed her a beaming smile, all white teeth and canines, and Frida’s insides turned to water.
‘No!’ she breathed. ‘You don’t need to—’
‘Frida Rose, let me do this,’ they said, cutting her off, and there was a blurriness to the way they were looking at her now, an ocean-breath intensity.
Frida opened her mouth to argue, but suddenly Dian leaned down, a soft, wistful look in their eyes, and their breath was warm, smelling of moss. ‘I am glad I met you, Frida.’
Then Dian was gone.