“How long have you been here?”he asked.
“Oh, I made the biscuits at home.”
“So what did you want to talk to us about?”Uncle Bram asked Celia, smiling as she delivered the plates of bacon and eggs to the table.
“I would like to know why Darian can talk to the dragons and I can’t.”
Uncle Bram nearly spit out the mouthful of tea.“I’m sorry, what?”he asked.
“Darian can speak to my dragons, and I can’t,” Celia said matter-of-factly.
His uncles exchanged a look.
Darian’s gut churned, and he put down the piece of bacon he’d picked up.They did know something, after all.He had almost hoped they didn’t know anything about dragons, that they hadn’t been keeping a secret like this from him his whole life.
But they knew.
“I didn’t realize you had dragons,” Uncle Bram said conversationally, as if he hadn’t nearly spewed his tea everywhere.“How did you come about them?”
“I’m a healer,” Celia said as she took a seat at the table with them.“I’ve given up healing humans, but when I found baby dragons that needed help, I couldn’t resist.They don’t have anyone else, so I might as well help them.But when Darian came, he was able to have a conversation with them, where all I hear are squeaks and chirps.And he said you might know why.”
His uncles turned to him with nearly identical expressions of disbelief.
“Why do you think we know anything?”Uncle Bram asked.
“Because you know everything,” Darian pointed out.“You’ve told me so many times.”
His uncles grimaced at each other.
“Well, that backfired,” Uncle Bram muttered.
“Are you saying you don’t know everything?”Darian asked, with a pretend gasp.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Uncle Amos said.“We do know quite a lot.But not everything.”
“Do you know about this?”Darian asked.
Uncle Bram sighed.“Give it up, Amos.He’s an adult.He knows we don’t know everything.And if you keep leading him on, he’s gonna think we know all the things about dragons that we definitely don’t know.”
There was a hidden current under his words.He knew more than he was letting on, but Darian didn’t want to push him yet.
“Do you know why I can talk to dragons?”he asked.
Uncle Amos shrugged, spearing a piece of bacon with his fork.“Some people have that ability,” he said.“It’s not one I’d go spreading around, though.Magic is illegal, you know.And I’m sure dragons would raise some eyebrows.You haven’t told anyone else?”he asked Celia, pausing with the bacon halfway to his mouth.
Celia shook her head.“Darian was the first person to discover it, and now you two.But I agree with you—I don’t want it to get out that I have baby dragons.There are people who will take dragons or dragon eggs as a source of power.”
“We have to protect them,” Uncle Bram remarked.
“Who’s ‘we’?”Darian asked sharply.
Uncle Bram shook his head.“Not me.I meant as a general ‘we.’It’s not something that I personally have any experience with.But when we were children, it was known there were people who would do so.Of course, we also thought dragons were a myth,” he said with a barking laugh.
But there was something underneath it that felt not quite honest.
Darian glanced at Celia, who was watching the three of them with her arms crossed against her chest, then back to Uncle Bram.
“So I’m able to speak to dragons,” he said, “but that’s it?And you don’t know why?And you don’t know where it comes from?”
