Page 131 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
I pointed down. “The dragon is in the stone below us.”
Every head dropped to examine the dirt. Mr. Darcy shifted the toe of one boot. “How do you know?”
“I never understood how Fènnù could sleep in the Thames without being found. The river has been sounded countless times. But when Yuánchi and Fènnù rose, the earth shook, and then I remembered the Loch bairn journal, ‘her wæs eac eorðstyrung on lak manegum stowum’—an earthquake at a lake. When draca return to the water, they swim in a fish-like form, but when dragons sleep, they dig into the bottom, into stone itself, then burn it to seal it. The shaking is when they break free.” I pointed to the hillside we had seen. “The stone here has been melted and cooled.”
“How do we wake a buried dragon?” Mr. Knightley asked.
“Fènnù was raised with her song,” Georgiana said. “We need the third dragon’s song.”
Mr. Darcy shook his head. “Fènnù was raised with her songandwith the dagger.”
“We do not have the flute,” I admitted, “but we may have its song. Thepiece of the flute I held had markings. I think they are musical notation. May I see the amulet?”
Emma lifted it over her head and passed it to me. I rubbed off the dirt, revealing the layered iridescence of Yuánchi’s scale. The jade whorls of the setting were intricate but too uniform to conceal information, so I flipped the amulet over.
The backside had irregular, fine radial grooves. Their lengths and spacing varied. I rotated it, mentally piecing them into a horizontal sequence like a musical score.
“The markings on the flute are like these,” I said with a surge of excitement. “Musical scores have a… feeling. A structure one sees at a glance. This is notation.”
“Can you sing the flute’s song?” Georgiana asked.
I was spinning memorized images of the flute in my head and matching the symbols. They were the same, but… “I have notheardeither song. This is like memorizing an alphabet without hearing the letters.” I passed the amulet back to Emma, thinking. “We need Fènnù’s song as well. That is the reverse situation: I have sung it, but I have not read the dagger’s markings.”
Harriet wrapped her arms around herself. “The dagger is dangerous. It summons the black dragon.” I had forgotten she was forced to use it while drugged by the slavers.
“Read the markings,” Mr. Darcy advised, “but do not sing them. Before we call Fènnù, we must raise the dragon of song, and Emma must break Yuánchi’s binding and bind Yuánchi… and Georgiana must bind the dragon of song…” His cheek twitched. It was a daunting list, even if his logic was sound.
Lizzy drew the dagger and shook back the sleeve on her other arm, but I stopped her. “Let me do it. You will make a mess.” She hesitated but passed me the dagger.
I used the point to prick the tip of my left, littlest finger, then pressed the flesh with my thumb until drops welled. I painted that down the flat of the blade, away from the serrations. The notation, presumably, was on the smooth part.
Patches of blood began to hiss and smoke, stinking like burned hair. Symbols emerged, metallic-bright in the carbonized ash. I turned the knife horizontal, realized it was upside down, and reversed it. “It uses the same notation.”
Eyes smarting from the smoke, I picked out the symbols. More examples helped; rules clicked into place. The markings were more abstract than amusical staff, which literally conveyed pitch. This was like a composer’s shorthand for chordal structure. That was a breakthrough, and the symbols fixed in my memory. Structure was easier to recall than randomness.
“Can you sing it?” Mr. Darcy asked, his voice tight. “We do not have much longer.”
“Do not rush her,” Georgiana warned.
“I am still working on the notation,” I muttered, rereading the dagger. Reading was easy now, and this time I imagined Fènnù’s song in my mind while I read. I knew the song; I had even transcribed it to paper. “The marks are not a melody. The same symbol can indicate any of several notes. What we humans sing, what we call the song, is one melodic line of many.”
Mr. Darcy checked the sky. “We do not need the theory—”
“Be quiet,” Georgiana said. “It matters.” Mr. Knightley added a cautioning look at Mr. Darcy, who nodded rigidly.
“The notation is like acantus firmusin counterpoint,” I mused. “It defines what the song permits. It is rules for how to choose the notes, not the notes themselves…”
“You are marvelous at counterpoint,” Georgiana said supportively.
I reread again, hearing Fènnù’s song in my mind and sinking deeper into this alien form, music that was not only unfamiliar but inhuman, the harmonic system of another species. As my eyes skipped from symbol to symbol, a whispered voice echoed the tune…
I yanked my eyes away and frowned at the watching faces. “Do not sing.”
Heads swiveled. Georgiana said, “Nobody sang.”
The whispered voice crooned on in my mind, an inhuman rendition filled with fury.
“Fènnù heard,” I realized. “She heard mythoughts.” I bunched a handful of my skirt and pulled the blade through, stripping whatever power it drew from the blood of a wyfe. The cloth fell in two, sliced by the passing edge, and the blade emerged pristine, the obsidian finish reflecting the sky, but the whisper continued. I slipped the blade through the leather loop for my reticule and let go, spreading my arms wide so my hands were far from it.
