Page 147 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
“They really do have everything in hand,” I said softly to Darcy.
“I know,” he admitted stiffly. “It is just a very great change.”
“Feeling regrets?”
He shook his head and smiled. “Never, Mrs. Darcy.”
The harness maker, on loan from Harriet’s school in London, was assisting Lucy and Nessy in explaining the luggage buckles to the footmen. When they finished, I waited while Darcy climbed the ladder-like stirrup to his seat. Then Fènnù swung the elbow of her wing to the ground. I hopped on and let her lift me until I could step nonchalantly onto the saddle. It was a showy way to mount, but the occasion called for panache.
To Fènnù, I thought,We will fly far.
Slabs of muscle shifted in her thighs, and we rocked upward. Fènnù took a huge step to the garden’s edge and leaned expectantly, admiring the precipitous drop to the lake.
Fly where?she asked.
I pictured the Egyptian queen I first saw when I dipped my fingers into the frozen Thames, a vision from Fènnù’s memory while she slept in the water below. Fènnù tensed, her bronze scales tightening into the defensive shield of draca, but she relaxed when I stroked her neck.
“We will learn of the past,” I whispered, “and learn to forgive. Then, we shall dance to the great song.”
43
EPILOGUE: PRESENT DAY
Olivia rubs her strained eyes,rapid circles to purge fatigue. Her phone glowsMonday 9:14 AM.She sits on a battered wooden rolling chair in the Apsley House research office. The office is not open to the public; it is a modern room concealed down a flight of stairs, half subterranean and renovated in the ’80s. The high-set windows look authentic from outside but sport aluminum frames.
The double-paned glass is rose and orange with the onset of day, and it muffles the crowd milling in Hyde Park. A short walk away, the Thames rises and falls, tidal even in the center of London. Every month, the water laps higher.
Olivia is breathing fast. As confirmation, to test reality, she lowers her hands over the thick sheaf of paper, but her fingers flinch from touching—even after turning every page, years of conservation training scream: this is precious.
The final page is crammed with tidy, efficient cursive. The entire manuscript is the same. This is not a “fair copy” for publication—it is a working draft with inky crossings-out and corrections. The longer insertions are carefully sized rectangles of ladies’ stationery pasted along a single edge so they can be folded aside.
After the story, a personal note is written:
“The finished manuscript! It was difficult with the Darcys’ whereabouts unknown, but I visited Pemberley to fill in the gaps. I have become good friends with young Jemma, who is only three but calls me Aunt Jane and loves stories of Fairyland.
I am very tired, though, so I chuse to leave this factual chronicle in your hands. If you can secure the assent of princes and find a publisher who tolerates an earnest female authoress, I shall be delighted to see it in print.
J.A., Apr. 23d, 1816”
“Bloody hell,” Olivia breathes and rushes her hands through her hair, hooking the strands behind her ears. She returns the pages to the nondescript cardboard box and cautiously carries it up the steps.
Apsley House is closed to the public on weekdays. She cuts through the empty Gallery, her gaze catching on a sculpted dragon, then through a short, modern exhibit, the exit for visitors after they tour the historically preserved parts of the house.
She pauses at a bell jar displaying a wickedly curved black claw the length of her longest finger. The card says:
Firedrake claw, personal collection,
1st Duke of Wellington
The wall behind holds a large poster featuring an artist’s conception of a dragon in flight:
Draca: Truth and Myth
Rare physical evidence, such as this claw, prove that draca were more than exotic birds and reptiles imported as pets. Indeed, the fewer than two dozen claws and scales in the UK are the object of intense scientific research. Their unique properties remind us of nature’s ability to amaze.
More mysterious is the unexplained disappearance of draca. The last credible sighting was in Leatherhead, Surrey, 1823.
But didhuge dragons fly in English skies? Naval logs from Nov 19, 1812 attribute England’s disastrous losses to a dragon, and London newspapers from the time are filled with eyewitness accounts. However, skeptics claim exaggeration. The agricultural plague of 1813 and the horrors of the war, when French cannonades leveled whole neighborhoods of London, spawned hysteria—
