‘Well, maybe that’s possible for you,’ I say, eyeing his ever-present collar. ‘But some things are unforgivable.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Atlas says. All trace of his smile has disappeared. ‘Nothing is unforgivable. Not if you’re truly sorry.’
‘So you’re saying that people can go around committing horrible crimes, just for them to be forgotten when they say they’re sorry?’
‘Yes, that’s about the gist of it.’
I snort. ‘In that case, I could murder you right now and get away with it, as long as I sit in a little box and apologise afterwards?’
‘Wouldyou be sorry, though?’ he says, grinning again. ‘It looks like you really want to kill me right now.’
I glare at him. ‘You’rea bloody saint when you’re not punching people,’ I say. ‘What I did to get here, what I did to Sophie, it’s all so much worse.’
Why am I telling him this?
‘She’d never forgive me if she knew the whole story. She’d be so hurt that she’d hate me forever – and I wouldn’t blame her.’
Tears prick my eyes and suddenly I want to scream. This is none of Atlas’s business and yet here I am, revealing the innermost details of my past.
He just shrugs. ‘That’s her right. She doesn’thaveto forgive you, and you can’t make her. Butyoucan’t hateyouforever. Otherwise, how will you ever learn from your mistakes?’
‘Learn?’
‘My mum says it’s never too late to change.’
‘Mine says we must live with the consequences of our actions.’
Atlas nods slowly. ‘Sounds like we have a different understanding of whatsorrymeans.’
Of course we have. We’re chalk and cheese. A Third Class boy and a Second Class girl. A priest and a criminal.
The match dies and I speak into the dark.
‘Sometimes, Atlas, sorry just isn’t good enough.’
IN THE GLASSHOUSE, THE CLICKS and calls coming from the loquisonus machine threaten to put me to sleep. I stifle a yawn, and when Dr Seymour asks if I slept poorly I blame it on my arm, which is sort of true. As it turns out, healing broken bones with fireblod is excruciating. I keep last night’s events to myself. Revealing that echolocation’s true name is the Koinamens would be admitting to discussing it with Muirgen and Rhydderch – and risking immediate demotion.
Dr Seymour has added an hourly lesson to our shifts, which she teaches with the loquisonus machines on high volume in case of live activity. We look at the theory of sonar waves and at dragon biology, and she bombards us with rhetorical questions – are dragon horns necessary for the transmission of echolocation? Why is the tongue of the Bolgorith double-forked? Are particular dragon species better suited to particular languages?
We study semantic shifts in relation to dragon-migration patterns, and I learn that there are twenty Arctic Indigenousdragon languages that have almost three hundred different words forcold, made up of synonyms, metaphors and metonymy. Could the same be said of echolocation, she asks us? Only after this drilling session does she allow us to take our stations at the loquisonus machines.
Today I pore over the logbook until my eyes hurt, determined to catch up on everything I missed when I was in the sanatorium. There are two days’ worth of recordings containing several calls that sound different, but have the same meaning. The recordings in which the words ‘unidentified noise’ are communicated by a Skrill-type54 are always of conversations between Muirgen and Rhydderch. But they’re also said using a Skrill-type64, in a communication between the two Sand Dragons, Soresten and Addax.
So what if Muirgen and Rhydderch speak one version of echolocation and Soresten and Addax another? Both versions could be similar with subtle variations. That might explain what we observed in the fields: how Soresten used a particular echolocation call to give an order to Muirgen, but a slightly different one when talking to Addax. My heart races as I scribble my thoughts across the pages of the logbook.
I make three lists: calls unique to Muirgen and Rhydderch, calls unique to Soresten and Addax and calls shared between them all. There are more calls in the first two lists than the third. And the calls used by the four dragons communicatingall togetherhave more simple meanings:come,go,wait,stop…
I rub my eyes and force myself to think. I can feel an idea forming on the very edge of my mind, glittering in the corner of my vision. It grows like a bubble filling with air, then bursts.
Echolocation isn’t simply a language.
It’s a language with even more languages inside it.
Mama has been pushing the theory of the existence of dialects withinspokendragon tongues for years and nobody ever believed her. What if she was right, and echolocation is a language with dialects, too, just inaudible to the human ear? My hand shakes as I press hard on the pen, unable to keep up with my own thoughts. Across the table, Gideon is deep in concentration, unsuspecting.
What if the universal echolocation language – the Koinamens – used by the entire dragon species is simple? Limited in its vocabulary and less developed than the dialects that exist within it. That’s why Muirgen and Rhydderch couldn’t speak in great detail with Borislav and ended up fighting him. Had they spoken the same dialect, Borislav could have alerted them to the fact that he was not an intruder but a messenger.
But how did these dialects develop in the first place? Why don’t all dragons just speak one form of echolocation that communicates both simple and complex meanings? I should have listened more to what Mama was telling Dr Hollingsworth about dragon dialects, instead of obsessing over my portfolio and potential apprenticeship.
