Chapter 8 #2
Portia was tired and irritable. She’d had another letter from Milo only this morning which told her absolutely nothing of use.
Everything was just dragging on. She’d written to him telling him about Art’s book and the various recipes and theories it contained, and he had replied that same day, sending the fastest messenger bird the Academy could provide.
But he seemed far more interested in the contents of the book than helping her get herself reinstated.
It didn’t help that she had stayed up too late trying to decipher Art’s appalling handwriting – like a spider had rolled in ink and crawled across the page – and her head ached with exhaustion.
Now was not the time for Noah bloody Turner to start a lecture.
‘I didn’t ask for this,’ she reminded him shortly. ‘This is Iris’s idea. Take it up with her.’
Noah frowned, his expression troubled. He didn’t want to do that, clearly. He idolised Iris and wouldn’t dream of arguing with her. So, he was going to keep sniping at Portia instead. She knew how this went. She pinched the bridge of her nose in a vain attempt to ward off the growing headache.
‘I just…’ Noah began again, paused and then ploughed on in spite of all good sense. ‘How are you going to test it?’
Portia exhaled slowly. Patience… ‘I have the perfect subject right here. Jade won’t mind.
’ Jade still had traces of those papery flakes on her scales, especially on the upper underside of her tail.
There was no risk to this. It was just a topical cream.
Portia wasn’t going to accidentally poison her dragon.
You wouldn’t have known that from the look he shot at her.
‘You’re planning to experiment on Jade?’
What on earth was he on about?
‘It isn’t experimentation. The balm isn’t something new or strange. It’s harmless. An old recipe, tried and trusted. It’s just a richer form of the same cream you’re banging on about, almost exactly the same. I’m using some local ingredients but really—’
Noah set Glitter down into a carrier where the dragon curled up happily. The vet’s face was fixed in a frown. ‘I cannot condone this, Portia.’
‘Condone what?’ She knew her tone was icy. She didn’t care.
He schooled his face to something like understanding, and carried on in a calmer voice.
‘I believe that you mean well, and that you’re an expert apothecary, but that doesn’t mean you can just blithely decide to test whatever concoction you come up with on your dragon.
Or on any of them. You don’t have any right to—’
‘I am not doing anything blithely,’ she bit back at him.
‘I am a trained professional, thank you very much, and I have lived with dragons for half my life. Even if I hadn’t, my uncle Art knew more about dragon physiology than anyone this side of the border.
Iris has made teacup dragons her life’s work.
She trusts me. I realise this is just a stopgap for you, Noah, a means to an end before you head off into the wilds to rediscover the great dragons or whatever it is you think you’re going to do, but we do know a thing or two about looking after their little cousins. And they are just as important.’
‘This isn’t a stopgap!’ He actually had the nerve to look offended. He was probably regretting sharing his dream with her. But he had and it had stuck. He didn’t want to be here any more than she did.
She poked a finger at his chest, hard. ‘Of course it is. You aren’t interested in them.
And if I’m supposedly experimenting on them, your only interest is in what they can teach you about the ones that have vanished.
You look down on them, and on everyone who cares about them.
Don’t pretend you give a damn about them.
You see them as nothing but shadows of what came before them.
You aren’t interested in them at all. You’re like Moorland and Harvey and all those other members of that wretched dragon fancying association.
You think they’re a silly pet, something to be pitied and dismissed at best.’
His back straightened and suddenly he towered over her.
It was easy to forget how tall he was, how broad his build.
He glowered down at her. ‘Whereas you aren’t interested in them at all!
All you care about is getting back to the Academy and your precious work there.
If anyone is treating working here as a stopgap, it’s you. ’
‘My work there is precious. You have no idea of the cures Milo and I have been responsible for, or the applications of our current work to balance thaumaturgical healing with the physical.’
‘A wild theory.’
‘What would you know about it?’
‘I read your papers, that’s what. And you can’t see the massive flaw at the heart of it all, can you?’
Portia froze in her rage, staring at him. ‘What flaw?’
‘That the two can’t be brought together by any external factor and are not meant to be. Being born without magic can’t be repaired and there is nothing wrong with that. Not having magic isn’t some kind of deficiency and this so-called cure you’re pursuing is a dangerous myth.’
So-called cure? How dare he? And as for a dangerous myth…
‘And so are your great dragons! Even if they ever existed, they’re all gone now and you despise what’s been left behind.
At least our elixir could help people. Some people want to reconnect with the magic in the land, the magic all around us.
Some people know what they’ve lost. And it’s not just for those who were born without magic.
It will help people whose connection has been disrupted or severed.
All your obsession does is cling to a dead past.’
‘And who are you going to test the elixir on, if you ever make it?’ He scoffed.
‘Something as malleable and within your grasp as the dragons in the sanctuary? You’ll probably need human subjects eventually.
Your friend Esme’s class perhaps? Why do we need it Portia?
Most people get along perfectly well without magic.
I certainly do. You’re trying to cure something that isn’t even an illness. ’
She didn’t even have an answer to that. No one had ever put it that way before. And how dare he! How dare he dismiss her life’s work the way he dismissed the teacup dragons!
‘You have no idea what you’re talking about, Dr Turner. You’re just a vet. The level of research Milo and I—’
Noah folded his arms and fixed his jaw defiantly. ‘Perhaps you being sacked from the Academy was a good thing after all. If your ethics are so shaky as this—’
‘Children!’ Iris barked from the doorway to the snuggery. She was leaning heavily on her stick and looked horrified. No, enraged. ‘What is going on here?’
A terrible hush fell over them. The whole room was still, and utterly devoid of the whirl of wings and musical calls that usually filled it.
The dragons, Portia realised, were all cowering in their dens, watching the two of them with wide and terrified eyes.
Even Jade was huddled on the table between them, her head under her wings.
She was trembling, petrified by their raised voices, and by the anger flowing through Portia.
When Portia picked her up, her little heart was racing so hard, she could feel it against her own skin.
‘Nothing,’ she said to her great-aunt. The wash of shame was like a bucket of iced water. ‘Nothing at all. This conversation is over. If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.’
She stalked from the room, and back to her study, slamming the door behind her.