The crevice is at eye level and has been lined with small rocks and stones. Heat rises from them, warming my face, and when the dracovol breathes a flame across their surface they turn red, then white. Nestled in between the hot stones are three small black eggs. The dracovol curls her tail round them and lets out a small warning hiss. Behind me, Gideon has taken one of the loquisonus machines from the buggy and is setting it up on the ground.
‘Maybe she’s not carrying a written message, but an echolocation one,’ he says excitedly as he puts on the headphones.
‘She’s not carrying a message, Gideon,’ Sophie says, rolling her eyes. ‘She’s parenting.’
But Gideon is twisting the dials on the loquisonus machine, searching for the right frequency. Dr Seymour stares helplessly at him and an awful thought shatters my good mood. Is thisDr Seymour’sdracovol? I feel a prick of terror as she sits down on the forest floor with her head in her hands.
This isn’t a wild dracovol at all.
‘I’m right,’ Gideon says with a grin. ‘She’s echolocating.’
Can dracovols echolocate like dragons? Dr Seymour never mentioned that.
She never mentioned her secret messenger, either.
‘Who is she talking to?’ I ask as my stomach fills with dread.
Could there be several dracovols in the area? And, if so, who owns the other ones? Does someone at Bletchley know Dr Seymour sent this one to look for Ursa?
I stare into the crevice again. The dracovol is pressing her snout to one of the eggs, her eyes still on me.
‘It doesn’t sound anything like dragon echolocation,’ Gideon says, concentrating on the live transmission.
I hold my hand out. ‘Can I listen?’
He hesitates, then gives me the headphones. I press them to my ears. I hear two simultaneous sounds: a low humming sound and a twitching, scratching sort of noise. This echolocation call is continuous. There’s no pause, no opportunity for a response. I hand the headphones to Dr Seymour, who takes them reluctantly, and look back inside the tree crevice. The dracovol’s eyes are closed now, her head still on top of the eggs. Suddenly one of them shivers.
‘Oh my God,’ I say quietly. ‘I think … she’s talking tothem.’
‘To who?’ Sophie says, peering in beside me.
‘To the eggs.’
‘Impossible,’ Gideon says.
I turn round to face Dr Seymour.
‘Isit impossible?’ I say. ‘Or could she be communicating with the dracovolets inside the eggs?’
Dr Seymour snaps into life again, standing up and looking inside the tree. When the dracovol sees Dr Seymour, she gives a high, throaty chirp.
‘It might not be female,’ Dr Seymour says. ‘Sometimes the female dracovol abandons the eggs and the male hatches them instead.’
Gideon, I notice, is writing all this down in a notebook he has produced from his pocket.
‘But is it possible?’ I say.
She sighs. ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’
‘Then dragons probably do the same, right?’
Dr Seymour nods.
‘Well then, this is proof,’ I say, raising an eyebrow at Gideon. ‘If dragons and dracovols echolocate with their young inside the eggs, then echolocation was never intended as a weapon.’
‘Viv’s right,’ Katherine says. ‘Echolocation must come naturally to them, like an in—What’s the word?’
‘Instinct,’ Sophie finishes.
