Chapter 28
Chapter twenty-eight
Ormdale
It was a bank holiday, and it was sunny.
A portentous mood descended over the people of the Royal Menagerie of British and Foreign Dragons. The public always behaved much worse on a Bank Holiday, and sunny ones were worst of all.
Una readied herself for the day grimly. Unprompted, Martha had brewed her coffee.
Una drank it determinedly. She found it unpleasantly bitter, even with the sugar she put in, but she did not doubt its effectiveness.
Janushek had recommended it to her for such a time as this.
Una knew it had seen him through many unspeakable things—pogroms, riots, Russians!
—and she could use a little of his grit today.
For on top of whatever the British public got up to, there would also be Violet.
But Violet did not appear at breakfast to do justice to the hot rolls. Una sighed. Likely she was stirring up trouble somewhere, and would make herself known in due course.
Una left Oolong to nap and went out alone to sit on the bench near the pond just before the gates opened, as was her habit on bank holidays.
From here she would be able to watch the people pour in.
It was best to get a good look at them in advance.
Crowds came in flavours, and a bad apple could easily spoil the whole barrel.
A queue had formed outside already. There were a lot of children, Una noted. This meant nipped fingers and scraped knees that required bandaging, as well as crumpled sweet wrappers to be picked up, and lost dolls and tin soldiers to be restored.
At least they didn’t run through smelling salts at such a rate now that the Renwick Cockatrice had been restored to Renwick.
It had been a great favourite of the children.
Its effect on adults of nervous disposition had not been salutary, but they would insist on looking at it, no matter the signs Una put up.
There had been a visitor who expired looking at it and was buried in Ormby.
Everyone had said it had been the man’s weak heart and that he had exercised himself too much walking about the menagerie all day, but in her own heart Una laid the poor man’s fate at the feet—or talons—of the cockatrice.
Una stiffened, a new movement snatching her gaze upwards. It was a cloud of birds, startled out of the tree line down by the river.
She watched the birds tracking across the sky, her mind very sharp. No, please, no, she prayed.
Then the beating wings became a struggling, protesting tangle, and the whole flock tumbled out of the sky as if yanked from it by an invisible hand.
But it wasn’t an invisible hand. Una knew exactly what had happened to those birds. They had been sucked straight out of the sky.
Una deftly sidestepped her way through the crowd surging through the gate, outwardly calm.
Once at a distance from them, she put the whistle to her lips and blew.
Then she began to run.
Violet was by the river with the twins, collecting stones for skipping in a shallow part of the river, when the water level suddenly fell.
Then they heard the whistle. Iggy jerked up straight where he was paddling and Dolly looked up from the glittery rock she had found.
Violet looked at them.
“Is it a specific signal,” she asked, “or just help, generally?”
Iggy was indignant. “You didn’t learn the signals?”
There came a tremor under their feet.
Dolly’s eyes gleamed like the wet river rock in her palm. “It means they’re awake,“ she whispered.
Una slowed down as she approached the opening to the caves under the cliffs.
The river burbled cheerily from its underground source, as if happy to be out in the sunlight again.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” Una shrieked. “It’s too early! It’s April! Go back to bed! Go back to your mate!”
A great inky serpent lay like a shadow in the reeds, damming up an area of water. It was immense, bigger than lorries, black as sleep.
But it was not asleep, and that was very much a problem. Her problem, specifically.
Una waded up to it. The great head loomed towards her. She found this immense face very hard to read, but she thought its expression at this moment was pitiful, like a child told to go back to bed on Christmas morning.
Shouts from the bushes—the sound of children approaching.
Una’s chest tightened and her thoughts staggered. If Simon didn’t get here soon, things could go very badly.
There had been an incident once—a boy throwing stones at them—that no one had forgotten, and it had happened in high summer when Simon had been nearby to calm them and give the boy a talking-to afterwards.
Violet and the twins burst out of the bushes. Una leaned against the huge flank in relief.
“Oh, thank heavens! Where is your father?” Una asked.
Iggy had already crouched down to give Dolly a boost so she could climb up onto the creature’s back.
“Up on the fells,” said Dolly, slipping about on the silky scales. Violet steadied her.
Iggy slapped mud off his hands. “He won’t be back for hours,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ve got my electric torch!”
Una met Violet’s eyes. To her surprise, Violet seemed to grasp the gravity of the situation.
“What’s the plan?” Violet asked.
“Plan?” Una repeated. She had plans for everything, but there was no plan for a rogue quetzalcoatl awakening from brumation two months early.
The creatures hadn’t a malicious bone in their giant serpentine bodies, but they would lash out if frightened.
They were safe enough with the locals, who knew their way around them, but there was no predicting what a crowd of tourists might do to provoke them.
And there were so many children at the menagerie today!
Una’s vision began to speckle over at the thought.
“I don’t—I don’t know what to do…” she heard herself gasp. “If the visitors find their way down here…”
Violet leaned close to Una. “Are you actually breathing, Loon?”
Una managed two or three decent breaths. When she came back to herself, Violet’s hand was next to hers against the serpent’s oily blackness—firm, freckled, with uneven nails that urgently required a nail brush. Una focused on them.
“I can’t do this,” Una said shortly. She felt as if she didn’t know herself, all of a sudden—she, who knew how to manage every contingency. All she wanted to do was run away.
“Good thing you aren’t alone, then, Loon,” Violet said. “I’m not going anywhere. We’ll do it together. Do you hear me?”
“And there’s us!” chorused Iggy and Dolly. “Don’t bother about Father!”
“Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it,” said Violet. “Give me my quest, Fair Una!”
And with those words, Una was seven years old again, acting out the Faerie Queene with her sister.
They had mapped every inch of this wood in torn stockings and tangled hair, with flower crowns and stick swords.
They had kept it all secret and they had paid for it with copywork and missed meals and the occasional whipping.
They had thought it well worth the price.
Dolly had managed to lodge herself behind the feather frill of what Una now realised was the male of the quetzalcoatl pair.
“Lay kleppe!“ Dolly said, stroking the feathers. “That’s what Hanna tells us every night. Then we know we really have to go to bed.”
To Dolly, this was somehow just a game. I’m a child again, thought Una, and it doesn’t matter. This is a game we are playing. Play, Una. Just play.
Una’s lungs suddenly began to work again.
“My violin,” Una said.
“Going!” said Violet, and she was off, almost before Una knew she had spoken the words aloud.