The British Sand Dragon(Draco arenicolus)is brown, green or beige in colour. The underbellies of fertile females turn yellow during the mating season. Nests contain one to two eggs and are made of hot sand. The first tongue learned by the dragonlings is usually Wyrmerian.
The British Sand Dragon is native to the sandy heathlands of Dorset and Kent in the South of England.
So Soresten and Addax, both Sand Dragons, are very possibly from the same region of England. Which further backs up my theory that echolocation dialects could be regional. My chest flutters. It’s all coming together and—
I drop the book. There’s a box on the floor at the end of my bed, with an envelope stuck to the top. How did I not notice it before? I pick up the envelope and turn it over. The paper is thick and expensive and sealed with red wax. My name is written on the front in purple ink. There’s a box byevery bed, I realise. I tear the envelope open.
Your presence is requested at Prime Minister Wyvernmire’s Christmas Ball this Friday evening at seven o’clock.Formal dress only.
Please be advised that leaving the building after blackout is strictly forbidden.
PS Attendance for recruits is mandatory.
I untie the string round the box and lift the top. My fingers brush against tissue paper, which I pull away, and then something like satin. I lift out a rose-coloured dress made of silk marocain. The material shimmers as it slips between my fingers. It’s sleeveless and dripping with beads, the most beautiful item of clothing I’ve ever seen. The door to the dormitory bangs open.
‘Have you seen this?’ Marquis says incredulously.
He’s holding a green suit and a pair of leather shoes. Atlas appears behind him, a red smoking jacket and a black tie in his hands.
‘Nice to see you keeping daylight hours, Featherswallow,’ he says with a wink. ‘Any idea what’s going on?’
I stare from my dress to the silver heels neatly packaged at the bottom of my box. Then I look back at the boys, all thoughts of Sand Dragons gone.
‘It seems,’ I say, ‘that we’re going to a ball.’
From the private papers of Dr Dolores Seymour
Excursion to Rùm– June 1919
6 June – Day 1
I am here at last. The necessary permissions weren’t granted until late last night, so I arrived on Rùm in the early hours of this morning. The Isle of Rùm, one of the Small Isles of the Inner Hebrides, is a rocky, mountainous landscape with scarcely an acre of level land. The smallest Scottish island to possess a summit above 2,500 feet, Rùm is an ideal hatching ground for British dragons. From its coast, one can see the Isles of Eigg and Canna, both property of the government. While trespassing on Eigg would result in a prison sentence of up to ten years, permission has been granted to the dragons to hunt on Canna, which, by the sounds of the screams, may be inhabited by wild pigs. Travelling to Rùm by any form of advanced transport that may disrupt the nesting space is illegal, as stipulated by the Peace Agreement. Therefore I accessed the island by way of the most primitive of rowing boats from the mainland. My camp for the next few days is composed of a tent and a cave, which – my colleagues have assured me – remains uninhabited.
7 June – Day 2
The spring mating season has given way to a time of nest-building and egg-laying. The dragons do not inhabit Rùm all year round, nor do they use it to mate. Extraordinarily, Rùm is used solely as a hatching ground and, even more incredibly, by all species of dragons. None are discriminated against. Since my arrival yesterday, I have spotted several species, including the Western Drake (Draco occidentalis), the Green-spotted Wyvern (Draco bipes viridi) and the Wyrm (Hydrus volatilis), one of the rarer, non-fire-breathing breeds that lays its eggs in the shallows.
8 June – Day 3
Oh, the exhilaration my work induces! Today I had the opportunity to observe, from a safe distance, a female Western Drake with her egg. The latter was purple in colour, and the shell was covered in calcium peaks that formed jagged edges not unlike the spikes along the ridge of the mother’s snout. She has chosen a precarious location for her nest, on the very edge of a cliff – so precarious, in fact, that I did much of my observing from a tree. Although more and more dragons land on Rùm each day in search of a nesting spot, the island is far from overcrowded. This female’s decision therefore remains a mystery to me.
9 June – Day 4
The Western Drake left her nest long enough for me to see it up close. It is lined with stones, which she keeps smouldering hot, and dry ferns that occasionally catch alight. She has only one egg, which, I believe, is not unusual for a young first-time mother. The reason for her absence was to converse with another Western Drake, in the process of building her nest on a neighbouring cliff. While I couldn’t hear much of their conversation, I was able to establish they were speaking Wyrmerian – the one and only dragon tongue whose basic grammar I can grasp. I wish I could attempt communication with them, but I don’t dare. My presence here, I have no doubt, will only be tolerated for so long.
10 June – Day 5
The crash of waves against rocks, the screeches of the gulls and the cacophony of hundreds of dragon voices – these are the sounds I fall asleep to. I fear the noisiness of the hatching season – almost a social event – may suggest that the Royal Observatory’s speculation about dragons’ ability to communicate via ultrasonic sound waves is incorrect. If the dragons could do so, why would they deign to use their voices at all? There are both males and females present on Rùm– some share the egg-nurturing duties while other single parents are merely visited by their flightier mates. I have been watching two BritishSand Dragons tending to their nest on one of the beaches near my camp. Both are female. I have seen them both turn the eggs over with their talons before burying them once more. There is no sign of a male partner in the vicinity.
11 June – Day 6
The Western Drake’s egg is moving. If one watches very closely, one can see it tremble for just a second before standing still. This phenomenon only occurs when the mother approaches the nest. It’s almost as though the tiny creature inside can sense her presence. And yet she rarely touches it, except to turn it over or bathe it in flame.
12 June – Day 7
Today I observed some peculiar behaviour. The Western Drake brought her head down to the top of her egg, as if smelling it. And again I saw the egg move, more visibly this time. It shook almost violently, then toppled over on to its side. The mother raised her head, satisfied, and left to hunt. It is almost as if she had instructed the creature inside the egg to move. I have had a tentative, outrageous thought. What if dragons do possess a means of communication that is not the spoken word? It is a theory we considered during the war, then further explored last year through the observation of a small, isolated dragon clan on Guernsey, a highly unusualgroup because they spoke only one singular tongue. Might it be possible that these dragons had decided they had no use for multiple tongues, seeing as they could read each other’s minds?
13 June – Day 8
