Violet blinked.“Elfed?What’s wrong?”
She wedged the toe of her worn boot in a crack in the rock wall and pushed herself up to get closer to him, but Elfed’s mother, Cariad, stepped in front of her offspring with a warning huff of her own.
“What are you doing, Cariad?It’s me!Violet!”she protested, pushing herself up another step.
Then Violet found herself flat on her back, outside the paddock, trying to catch her breath.
Cariad had pushed her off the wall.
Violet groaned and sat up.
The dragons had taken themselves away to the other side of the enclosure.
On a thought, Violet sniffed her clothes.Sure enough, they smelled of trains, and towns, and the cart she had arrived in.
Disconsolate, she trudged down to the river’s edge, near the foss, where she knew the water ran clear out of the rock, and bent down for a drink.
The cold was sharp as an electric shock.
Violet contemplated her options as she wiped the freezing drips from her chin.If she swam here, she might manage to wash away the foreign smells that had offended the dragons.They might like her better after, but it would do her no good for she would be dead.
She shifted her weight.She had the distinct feeling she was being watched, and by hostile eyes.Tensing to run, she looked about her slowly and carelessly so as not to raise suspicion.
“There are lots of us,” said a small voice, oddly distorted, “and our dragon bitesandmakes fire, so don’t even think about running away.”
Violet looked above her and found a small child perched in the tree, with a tuffet of red hair that looked like a bright bird’s-nest caught in the spring-budded branches.
One of his cheeks was enlarged by the presence of a round object within, and it was this that made him sound odd.
“Are you a dragon snatcher?”he asked, swallowing laboriously around the object.
“I’m something far duller,” Violet confessed.“Don’t you recognise me?Because I recogniseyou, Ignatius Drake-Forrester.And I suppose your twin isn’t far behind?Do you remember me taking you to the circus, years ago?You liked the bears best of all.”
There was a rustle in the undergrowth behind her.A girl of the same age as the boy—dark-haired, eyes like subterranean pools—crouched in the weeds.Her arm hung round the neck of a black dragon the size of an exceptionally large dog.The little girl reminded Violet of the murderous water-maidens Janushek used to tell them stories about.
“And Frances, too, I see,” said Violet, holding her hand out to the familiar feather-touch greeting of Frances’s forked blue tongue.“Getting a little stout, isn’t she?Have you been feeding her too many sweets?Now, I know you’re named for my sister Gwendolyn, but what do they call you these days?”
Something shifted in the girl’s gaze, so that Violet no longer felt at risk of being pulled into the water.
“It’s our long-lost cousin,” she declared solemnly.“I’ve seen your photograph.”She thrust out a brown paper bag.“I’m Dolly Drake-Forrester.Would you like a humbug?”
Ormdale, 1 day later
Violet sighed and stretched her limbs in the big tub of blissfully hot water in the new bathroom at Wormwood Abbey.
She washed her hair with special care, looking forward to a warmer welcome from the dragons behind Drake Hall once she smelled like the Violet they remembered.
There was a tap at the door.
“Una?”Violet guessed.
“I’ve brought some clothes,” her sister replied through the door.
“Come in, then,” said Violet.“It’s unlocked.”
Una came in, averting her eyes.She carried a pile of Violet’s old shirtwaists and cardigans in one arm.Her other arm was burdened with a basket containing Oolong.
“I’m in a frightful hurry, but I found some of your old things,” Una said in a light tone.She glanced at Violet, then away.“They may not fit you anymore.”
