Page 63 of Miss Bennet's Dragon
That was true. She was making no sound.
When I first studied French, I had laboriously translated each word. Butthen, after being peppered mercilessly by my father, foreign phrases had become meaning without thought.
This felt the same, but silent.
“This is… astounding. Fantastic.” Her eyes watched me without response. “Why do you call me child?”
you are young
“I am twenty years old. How old are you?”
old. i have lived many lives
“Many lives? I do not understand. Do you mean many bindings? I cannot imagine you refer to the Hindu ideas of reincarnation.” The wyvern’s eyes flickered cool sapphire as her head turned. “Or do you?”
Her jaws opened, panting like she did when I scratched her. Laughter, or joy.
Powerful wings spread. Wind buffeted me, and she was gone.
24
BINDING SICKNESS
One partof that night was spent reviewing the hundreds of important questions I should have asked a talking wyvern. Even the most idiotic was profoundly more intelligent than asking if she was Hindu.
The other part of the night was confused. My argument with Mr. Darcy had left my emotions splintered and rutted, like a boat flung against an unseen rock.
Bleary-eyed, but bored with staring at the ceiling, I went down when the household woke. Charlotte was friendly but subdued. Mr. Collins was oblivious. When the post delivered two letters for me, I retreated to my room.
The first letter was from Jane, but it was old. She had misaddressed it, and an unknown hand had written a correction.
The other letter was in Mary’s distinctive hand. Mary wrote rarely, at least for pleasure, so that was unusual.
I decided to read in order of posting and unsealed Jane’s. Her last letter had described another ball, so this might be light-hearted. Mary’s letter would likely require that I wade through Latin.
Jane began with no salutation as if continuing a prior page:
“The river is slick and beautiful with rain. Denny just slipped in andfloated, instead of that terrible violence, and was never seen again, happy when he stopped, caught in reeds or sunk at last.
So I danced again. Charles held my hand, and we spun and spun. Cold, though. The snow on my slippers, my hair soaked. He carried me to warm me, and my feelings replenished until the moon drew them. But now I am alone. Mamma is irksome, rattling about Charles leaving when he is underneath—”
That was all. I turned the page over and back, then said out loud, “What?” Charles seemed like a reference to Mr. Bingley, but my mother would have written by express had he returned. And anyway, it was… fantasy. Incoherent.
I opened Mary’s letter. The page was dense with her angular writing, marked by sharpened hooks even on the corners of her a’s and e’s:
“Dear Lizzy,
I write with extreme concern for our sister Jane. She has not left our house since you departed and hardly leaves her room. Her words, whether spoken or written on the peculiar notes she leaves in the hall, have become bizarre.
Papa and I have argued on this. He declares Jane upset over Bingley, or star-crossed, or invokes Ophelia. That is an offensive categorization of female fragility, as if a missing man will fracture our sanity. I told him he was incorrect, but I influence his opinion less than you.
Sadness over Bingley I would believe. But Jane is too sound and sensible for what I see. Therefore I have, for the last eight days, pressed to determine the cause.
After much wasteful investigation, I chanced upon our Scottish laundry maid visiting Jane. Through forceful insistence, I discovered you treated Jane’s venomous poisoning by administering draca blood.
I will note that it would have simplified my task had you told me this directly. But do not mistake me; I do not question your decision to treat Jane, for you had no choice.
Through examination of the Loch bairn journal, I suspect Jane has an illness variously named “torn bynding” or “binding sickness.” An old passage describes a woman who “drinkes golden ichor most potente” while in love. The man she loves dies before they bind, and she contracts the disease.
