Chapter 16
H is clothes?
He looked down at himself.
His clothing was suitable for any activity. Clean. Warm. Serviceable for a journey.
He hadn’t given them further thought.
"What about my clothes?"
"My love."
"Yes?"
"You are dressed," Poppy said, very gently, "like a man who is about to be cast as a sad knight in a regional theater's production of Macbeth ."
"I am not."
"Alsander."
"What is wrong with my clothes?"
"They are three hundred years out of fashion."
" I am three hundred years out of fashion."
"Which is why we are going to fix the clothes."
She pulled into a small leafy square. The houses around it were tall and narrow and made of red brick, with bright doors and iron railings and small tidy gardens behind the railings. Poppy parked Margery against the curb under a tree and turned in her seat.
"Okay. So. Auntie Niamh's house is on the next street. We’re going to walk there. We can’t walk there with you dressed like that. We need to keep a low profile. People will stare . I don’t want people staring. I want us to walk up to that green door and ring the bell like ordinary people."
"We are not ordinary people."
"We are pretending to be ordinary people. Until further notice."
"Fair."
"So. You're going to do that thing. The thing you did when you took us out of the lair. The thing where you change your clothes with magic."
"Yes."
"You need to copy someone with more modern style."
He raised an eyebrow. He’d always been very well dressed as a matter of pride.
"Someone —" Poppy paused. She was looking past his shoulder out the window. "Someone discreet ."
"Define discreet."
"Someone whose clothes will not draw attention. A man in a sweater and ordinary trousers. A man in a coat. Not someone in a costume or uniform. Not someone —" her face changed — "not someone whose clothes are particularly distinctive. Do you understand what I'm —"
"I understand."
"Okay. Find someone like that. Look at them. Do the thing."
"Fair."
He turned his head. He looked out the passenger-side window at the street.
There was an old woman in a beige coat. There was a small dog on a leash. There was a young man in a sweater and ordinary trousers — exactly the article Poppy had specified — walking briskly up the pavement.
And then.
Coming the other way.
A man in green .
A man in a high-vis green jacket. Bright, almost luminous green. With reflective stripes. Carrying a large gray sack over one shoulder. With a peaked cap on his head. A man on his way to a job that involved doing things in green .
As Alsander watched, the man stopped at one of the green doors of the red-brick row houses, opened a small flap in the door, and pushed something through it.
"What is that man?"
"Don't."
"What is he doing?"
"Delivering the post. Alsander, don’t —"
"A modern post boy. Fascinating."
"He is a postman . He delivers mail. We don’t need you to look like a postman. Look at the man in the sweater. Look at the man in the —"
Alsander stared at the postman.
His lips twitched. Then he ‘did the thing’ as Poppy said.
It was, as it always was, almost imperceptible to anyone not watching for it.
A small soft folding of the air around him.
A subtle shimmer. The linen at his throat became something else.
The trousers and boots and everything in between rearranged themselves in a single quiet exhalation of dragon magic.
When the magic released him, he was sitting in the passenger seat of Poppy’s vintage 1978 Mini wearing the full official uniform of a postman.
Bright green high-vis jacket.
Dark trousers.
A peaked cap.
A strap across one shoulder where the gray sack would have hung.
Poppy stared at him.
"Alsander."
"What." With effort, he kept a straight face. Sometimes a dragon needed to tease his mate. She was nervous. He needed to ease her tension, make her laugh. Even if it was at his own expense.
"You are dressed as a postman."
"You said modern."
"I said discreet ."
"The postman looks nothing like a post boy. It is modern."
"You are dressed as a postman ."
"Yes."
"Oh, my god."
"You do not approve? The postman has an important job. An honorable one."
"Yes. It is —" Poppy started laughing and put her hands over her face. Her shoulders began to quake with laughter. "It is — oh, Alsander, it’s not disapproval, exactly, it’s just — you are dressed as a postman, my love, and we are about to walk up to my Auntie Niamh's door and ring the bell, and you are —"
"It is fine."
"It is not fine."
"You said modern."
"I said discreet. But you know what? It is fine. We’ll go with it. Auntie has a sense of humor. She’ll be charmed."
"Good."
"Do you have the cap on, or —"
"I have the cap on."
"Is the cap straight?"
"The cap is straight."
" Oh, my god. "
She got out of the car still laughing.
She was laughing in a way he’d never heard her laugh before — the helpless laughter of a woman whose joy was spilling over and she couldn’t contain it. Didn’t want to.
He grinned as he climbed out of Margery in his postal uniform.
He stood up to his full height on the pavement in full sunshine.
He understood with the slow acceptance of a man who had once been a creature of myth and was now dressed as a modern post boy, that this was perhaps the most undignified moment of his life.
And he didn’t care because he’d mate his mate laugh.
Eased her anxiety about seeing her kin. He tilted the postman’s hat. "Does this work?"
"It is —you look — you look very official ."
"Good."
She took his hand.
She was still laughing under her breath. He let her lead him along the pavement of a quiet Dublin street in the bright morning light — past the red-brick fronts and the iron railings and the small tidy gardens.
"Do you have a parcel?"
"I don’t have a parcel."
"We should get you a parcel."
"Poppy."
"Okay. Okay. I'm sorry,” she said, clearly not sorry at all. “Come on. The house is just here. Just — try to look natural, my love. You are doing wonderfully. Truly. The cap is excellent. The cap is the best part."
He was wearing a postman's uniform.
His mate was holding his hand and laughing helplessly.
Despite the indignity of his costume and the slow, mounting dread now ever-present at the back of his mind about what the thing in the Elvish book would say when they finally read it — despite all of it —walking down the street with Poppy’s hand in his and her laughter in the air, he thought he had never been so glad of anything in his life.
The house was tall and narrow and made of red brick — exactly as the others on the street were tall and narrow and made of red brick — and the door was green.
Bright green. A clean, fresh green that caught the sunlight with a heavy brass knocker shaped like a fist. There was a decorative, arched window above the door, featuring colored glass in intricate, fan-like patterns and a small, blue ceramic plaque beside the bell that read 17 in old, careful lettering.
Poppy stopped at the bottom of the steps.
She straightened her coat. She straightened his coat — which was a postman's coat and didn’t require straightening, but she did it anyway. She tucked a strand of his hair behind his ear with the small unconscious gesture of a woman whose hands had always known what to do.
"Okay. I have not seen her in five years. She is older than she should be. She is sharp. Don’t —"
"What?"
"Don’t be too brooding. Don’t loom. She finds looming funny."
"I do not loom."
"You’re a dragon. You loom.”
"Fair."
"Also —" Poppy bit her lip — "she doesn't know what you are. I haven’t told her. I haven’t told anyone. So, when you meet her, just —"
"I shall be a postman."
"You shall be a man , Alsander. You shall be a man I am bringing to meet my aunt. Please. Just —"
"I understand." He squeezed her hand.
She climbed the steps. He followed.
She lifted the brass hand and let it fall against the door — three slow knocks.
They waited.
Inside the house, footsteps.
Slower than they would have been once. He could hear, even through the door, the faint rhythmic tap of a stick.
The footsteps reached the door. The chain rattled. The latch turned.
The green door opened.
She was small.
That was the first thing he noticed. She was small, compacted with age. Her hair was white and pulled back into a knot at the base of her neck. Her eyes were blue.
Still sharp.
She had wisdom that only came with great age.
She wore a soft gray cardigan over a long blue dress. A thin gold chain at her throat. A wedding ring on her left hand that she hadn’t, evidently, removed when its giver had died. She held a stick in her right hand and leaned on it.
She looked at Poppy first.
And her face — her tiny, human face wrinkled with age— did the thing faces did when love had been waiting a long time for the door to open. She beamed.
"Oh, child." Her voice was soft. "Oh, my girl."
"Auntie."
Poppy was crying. He hadn’t seen her start.
She moved up the last step and the old woman opened her free arm. Poppy went into it gently, careful of the stick and fragile bones.
Alsander remained on the step below to give them the moment. The old woman held her grand-niece against her shoulder for a long, quiet count, her hand on Poppy's back patted — slow and steady — the way a mother comforts her child.
"There, dear. There. I knew you'd come eventually. I’ve been waiting. Oh, my girl."
"I'm sorry it's been so long."
"You're here now."
"I brought —" Poppy pulled back a little. Wiped her cheeks. Turned. "Auntie, this is —"
Niamh had already looked at him.
She had looked at him over Poppy's shoulder the way an old woman with very sharp blue eyes looked at a stranger on her step. She had taken him in: the height of him. The breadth of his shoulders. The green of his postal jacket. The peaked cap. The boots that didn’t quite match the rest. The line of his jaw.
The way he was standing protectively close to his mate but not so close as to loom over her aunt.
Niamh's gaze passed over him from cap to boot.
It returned to his face with a smile.
"Well," she said. "Well, well."
A pause.
"Poppy, my love."
"Yes, Auntie?"
"I must say, I never thought I'd live to see a Draquonir on my doorstep wearing a postman’s uniform."
There was a beat of silence.
Every muscle in Alsander’s body went rigid with tension. His dragon senses sharpened, homed in on the tiny human creature standing in front of him. He breathed very carefully. Slowly. "What." It wasn’t really a question. They both knew it wasn’t a question. He’d heard her words perfectly.
Niamh’s smile widened, but it didn’t immediately soften her sharp blue eyes. For a brief moment, her gaze turned cool and analytical—the look of a woman who had been waiting a very long time for a particular guest, and was finally seeing him arrive.
"Oh, do come in." Her voice was warm. "You're letting the heat out."
"You know what I am."
"Of course, I know what you are, dear."
She tilted her head.
"I am eighty-three years old. I have been a member of this line my entire life. Did you think we didn’t know about you?"
"The Draquonir laws —"
" The Draquonir laws. " Niamh's mouth twitched. "Oh, you dragons. Thousands of years of telling yourselves no mortal shall know your secrets , and meanwhile every keeper-line has a journal entry about the lot of you going back as far as we do."
She tapped her stick once against the floor.
"Come inside, dear. We have a great deal to talk about and my hip is not what it was. The kettle is on."
She turned to Poppy.
"Poppy, my girl. Take off your coat and put your hand on his shoulder before he keels over. The poor dragon looks like he's been kicked ."
Niamh turned. Tapped her stick once more. Began the slow careful walk back into the house.
Alsander — arrogant Draquonir , nearly two thousand years old, last of his line — stood on the doorstep of a Georgian terrace house in Dublin in a postman's uniform, dumbfounded.
He turned to look at his mate.
His mouth was slightly open.
He couldn’t, for a long moment, find words.
"She knows."
"She knows," Poppy whispered. Her hand had come up to her mouth. He couldn’t tell if she was about to laugh or cry.
"What did she mean by keeper-lines ?"
"The dragons are not the only families with secrets."
His mate winked at him. As if her aunt's life — her life — wasn’t in danger.
"Your aunt is —"
"My auntie is what ?"
"In danger. Poppy — she knows what I am. She knows what you are. If Laoch finds her —"
"Alsander."
"He will come for her, a chuisle . He came for you in the lair. He will come for her ."
Poppy burst into laughter.
"This is not funny."
"It is very funny."
"Poppy."
"You heard her. She’s been waiting for this her entire life , Alsander, and she didn’t look like she was afraid of you. Not even a little. So, I dare Laoch to come for her. Dare him.”
He stared at Poppy. Then — slowly, almost despite himself — the corner of his mouth moved. "I am beginning to like your aunt."
" Come on. "
She put her hand on his shoulder, as instructed. She steered him gently through the green door into the warm, book-cluttered hall of her great-aunt's house.
"Come on, my love. The kettle is on. Auntie Niamh reads Elvish. Let's find out how to break that curse."