Page 97 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

Frida stared at him, not comprehending. Then she looked down at her clothes. ‘This is where you got these?’ For a moment, an ominous thought crossed her mind – had he killed for them? But he just laughed, seeing her expression.

‘There are humans and there are humans, Frida Rose. The humans I speak of still embrace magic in their blood, and they have knowledge that has been lost to many. Like myself, they are stewards of the sacred places of this part of the earth. We are kin, of a kind. Not too long ago, I think, for human time is confusing to me, these people met the human that I see in your mind, the one you spoke of, the one you call Joshua. With coppery hair and smiling lips and brutality bound into his skin.’

She swayed.

‘He was a child, but they saw the things he might do. They read the patterns of the worlds changing and shifting with this boy, and they saw our paths crossing impossibly. We wept together, for joy and for grief, when they told me they’d seen the shape of my son who wasn’t yet hatched. And even though it would not stop all the harm that was to come, we agreed that when I heard him moving through the earth in a way that was beyond his strength, with a strange human on his back who spoke with a dragon’s tongue, I would answer. I would pay the cost of bringing you both here and sending you both home again.’ He gave Frida a hard look, and finished with, ‘I did not know why, and I did not know what you would ask of me. I did not know that you would ask for the gift of my son’s precious dragon fire. Now, I know.’

Lucky, on his other side, stirred. His drool patch glimmered in the light of the sickle moon. She didn’t know what to say.

Her heart was pounding so painfully, she wondered if it might burst.

‘What was the cost? What was the cost you had to pay?’

Lucky’s father watched his son settle back into sleep.

He did not answer, but she thought she knew.

‘Your life,’ she said through her tears. ‘Is that it?’

‘Yes.’ The sound of the single, crushing word was like a hammer falling.

His silver ancient life.

‘How will it happen?’ she asked, her voice breaking.

Around them, the jungle, thick and full and primeval, seemed to hush.

Achingly slowly, he turned his great head to look at her. ‘The earth will take me back when it chooses, but my energy bleeds out. The universe demands the price of what I’ve done.’

‘Will it be soon?’ she gasped, her head twisting towards the giant egg about to hatch.

The silver dragon’s slitted pupil was pure jet, floating in a sea of devastated lava. ‘That is not given to me to know. But yes, I think so. Although soon means something different to me as it does to you.’

She drew in a shaky, awful breath. She remembered what Lucky had said to her, clear as day now. It was right before the other awful little stinks came and took him. And then they took me. As if Lucky’s father would hold on as long as he was able, but she imagined she could see the holes in his scales, the bright silver fire of his life bleeding onto the rock, unable to protect himself or his son.

He rasped, ever so quietly, ‘I did not do it for you, Frida Rose.’ He stared at her for a long time, and Frida couldn’t look away from the searing, scouring flames. But if they held answers, she couldn’t decipher them. Eventually, he just lifted himself up, his bones creaking, and said simply, ‘I am old, and it is a gift to see my son grown.’

She gave a desperate sob.

‘It is time,’ he said.

It all happened so fast after that.

She still didn’t understand, but she reclaimed her boots and her uniform from the cave. She thought about leaving the latter behind, but in the end, she put it back on, feeling the weight of the dirt and the grease and the layers of mud settle back over her skin. Her dirtied history, written in unflattering cargo trousers. She left the beautiful clothes Lucky’s father had loaned her in a neat pile on the bed, and then they were standing back on the edge of the cliff face.

Lucky was bawling huge globular tears. ‘BUT I WANT TO STAY WITH YOU!’ His tail jerked back and forth so sharply, he almost took out half the line of red-barked primordial trees. ‘I don’t want to miss you again! It’s too hard! I don’t want to lose you.’

His father looked up at him tenderly, unspent tears trembling on his own argent eyelashes. ‘The earth is calling you back home, fire-spoken-and-soaring-on-exalted-sky-and-deep-notched-trees-with-great-hope-in-many-veined-hearts.’

‘THIS IS MY HOME!’ Lucky howled.

‘Yes, it always will be, little one.’ The silver dragon’s belly shone with such terrible brightness. ‘But you have another home now. And I am so proud of you. My gigantic son, remember all is as it needs to be, and no more, no less.’

Frida was weeping uncontrollably as clouds of moonlit insects hovered around her. Flocks of parrots flew through the hushed darkness. Night monkeys leapt through the lianas, and she thought she saw an Amazonian anaconda plant flicking their tongues through the shadows, hissing gently. Even through the fog of tears, she heard their words, their shapes, and reminded herself that all of this was precious.

Lucky pressed himself against his father. ‘Dada please!’ He tried tucking his face beneath his dada’s chest. ‘My heart hurts too much. I do not want to leave you.’

Frida watched, wordless, as tears began to fall down the silver dragon’s cheeks. The only thing that stopped her from begging him to let them stay was the knowledge that this, too, would go on. Down in the earth. The silver dragon would be there, just as surely as her mum would. ‘We – we have to go, Lucky,’ she said, her voice breaking. Somewhere just on the other side of that cliff, an egg was about to hatch.