Chapter Eight #2
Jasper preferred the idea of a bird-human hybrid. The other options sounded much scarier, and harder to feed, too. The peeping sounds were reassuring.
*
Delia was always unsettled by her meetings with Mr. Thornton.
How unfortunate that, after being selected by a unicorn, she should become infatuated with a man for the first time in her life.
He was so handsome, and so kind. He spoke to her as if she was an intelligent person, and listened to her as if she might have something of value to say.
Of course, she had fallen in love with him.
And of course, it was impossible. Not only was she Sapphire’s maiden, but Mr. Thornton was a mage and the heir to a duke.
She was gentry at best, had no dowry, was only passably attractive, and was much too common and boring for a man of such high estate—one who was, furthermore, young, good-looking, and wealthy.
She would put him out of her mind, she decided—though not for the first time—and focus on her blessings. After all, a few months ago, she had believed she would never leave Nettleford Manor, and would dwindle into old age as the spinster caregiver to her parents.
Now, she was on an adventure, and if some parts of it were uncomfortable, such as knowing that an enemy of unknown power and ability was determined to capture her, at least it was interesting.
Also, she was needed and appreciated. Being Sapphire’s maiden was important enough, but the more she read about catalysts, the more she understood that they appeared at times of great change, and that they were, somehow, involved in guiding that change.
It was a great responsibility. Too great for an ordinary girl like her. Delia had said as much to Sister Louise, but the nun had said that she must trust in God and in her gift. “You are the right person, Delia. The fact you have the gift is evidence enough you are meant to have it.”
It would be nice if I were meant to have Jasper Thornton, she thought, as she returned to her room. But life is not a fairy tale.
“Miss,” Polly greeted her, “I think something is happening with the egg.”
There was no doubt that the peeping had largely given way to the sound of tapping, but the outside of the egg was unchanged, so after watching it for a while, Delia and Polly went on with their usual tasks.
The tapping, interspersed with the occasional peep or chirp, continued for the rest of the day, and by the time evensong prayers were over, a small chip of the outer shell had fallen away, leaving a hole no bigger than Delia’s smallest fingernail just below the blunt end of the egg.
Delia asked Polly to help her set up a blanket before the fire, and moved the egg from its box to the blanket, where the hatchling would have more room. She then arranged with the nuns for Sapphire, Mary, and Polly to sleep elsewhere, and prepared herself to watch through the night.
Perhaps the baby inside the egg was also sleeping, for nothing happened for several hours.
No peeping. No tapping. No change to the egg.
Ah well. Delia had several books from London that Mr. Thornton had delivered that day.
She opened the first, but it had been written by a scholar who had never seen a polysyllabic word he didn’t want to use, and whose sentences ran on for pages at a time, with so many commas and subordinate clauses that she often had to read the sentence a dozen times to be certain of what it meant.
Quite when she nodded off over the boring tome, she could not have said, but she was woken by renewed tapping. The baby must have sensed that freedom was near, for the steady beats of the earlier assault on the shell had been replaced by a series of cascades of taps.
As Delia watched, another chip broke off, and then another in line with the first and second.
Several hours must have passed, for the moon was above the horizon, and moonrise had been expected an hour before midnight. The gardening nun kept track of such things because of their influence on garden tasks such as planting, harvesting, and pruning.
A fourth chip, and then a fifth. To let the baby know it was not alone, Delia began singing a lullaby, one her nurse had sung to her, and that she had often sung to Mary and Sapphire.
Before long, she noticed that the tapping was now keeping time to the lullaby, and so she sang to the baby, and the baby tapped back, occasionally pausing for a rest, then peeping before it resumed its task.
In due time, the sun rose. Polly came in with Sapphire and Mary, admired the egg, and went out into the garden. Polly had their bottles, so Delia supposed she intended to feed them there.
By noon, the row of chips encompassed a little over half the circumference of the egg. Delia kept wondering if she should help the baby by breaking bits off from her side of the shell, but she refrained.
Rushing a chick could kill it, and Delia had no way of knowing whether the baby was slow because it was not ready, or whether it really needed help. Certainly, as long as it started up again after each rest break, she would be better not to interfere.
She didn’t like to leave it, though, so she spent the day in her room singing and talking to the baby in the shell, eating what was put in front of her, and watching as the two ends of the line of chips grew closer together.