Newsworthy.
Ryan and my breakup.
Newsworthy.
I reminded myself that I’d forgiven Ryan. Mostly. Partially.Stop it,I told myself.He explained himself. And he’s trying to make it up to me.Just seeing one stupid picture shouldn’t undo those lovely feelings of forgiveness.
This—the churn of ugly feelings—was exactly why my family and I stayed off-line. Except for checking the weather. And movie times. And shopping. And reading the occasional fashion blog.
“None of this means anything,” I said. “The tabloids like drama, and my family has had a bunch of it lately. Can we not look at that photo? In fact, I may need to scrub my eyeballs.”
Gabriela clicked onto another page. “I didn’t begin to put two and two together until I started to research wyverns and treasure.” Jumping off her chair, she scooted past me and knelt on the floor, pulling out binders and opening them. They were full of print-outs—articles, photos, blog posts.
I had a sick feeling in the base of my stomach. The fact that wyverns were rich was common knowledge, of course. The fact that wyverns were thieves…not so well known.
She then took the Wyverns Through the Ages poster off her door and spread it out on her bed. “So here’s the first wyvern who ever revealed himself to humans: Atahualpa in 1533.” She tapped her finger on his picture. “He was king of the Inca Empire when the Spanish conquistador Pizarro arrived with about a hundred soldiers. Under a banner of truce, Pizarro met with Atahualpa—”
“And then Pizarro betrayed the truce, ambushed and slaughtered five thousand Inca with his superior weaponry, and took Atahualpa captive.” I’d heard this as a bedtime story. In retrospect, it made for a rather gory story to tell a toddler. Not sure what Mom was thinking.
“Oh, right. Guess you totally know this, it being your history and all.”
Gabriela looked so embarrassed and uncomfortable that I took pity on her. “Go ahead,” I said. “I know you have a point.”
“Pizarro agreed to free the king if the Inca filled a room with gold. A lot of gold.”
“A room twenty-two feet by seventeen feet, eight feet deep.” Every wyvern knew the size of that room. To this day, we built our vaults to precisely that size, in honor of Atahualpa.
“From all over the Inca Empire, the people brought their treasures, filling the room…but Pizarro again betrayed the Inca and didn’t free their king. After a mock trial, he found Atahualpa guilty of treason and sentenced him to die by burning at the stake. Legend says that as the fire began to burn, Pizarro threw open the door to the gold room to mock Atahualpa for what he’d lost…and that was when the king of the Inca transformed into a dragon.”
Still wasn’t sure where she was going with this.
She pointed to the next picture on the poster, Sir Francis Drake. “Atahualpa was able to save the Inca Empire in Peru, but thanks to all the smallpox and the slaughter by other conquistadors, the rest of South and Central America was lost and their gold looted, which brings us to Sir Francis Drake. He was a privateer for the British Empire.”
“A pirate.”
“A royally sanctioned pirate. He waylaid ships carrying gold from the New World to Spain, on behalf of the queen of England. And when a very angry Spain began to build an armada…he revealed himself as a wyvern too. He transformed into a dragon and burned the half-built Spanish Armada as it sat in the harbor of Cadiz on the coast of Spain in 1587. They called it the Singeing of the King’s Beard.”
Again, this was benign information. Anyone could have found that out. It was taught in elementary schools. “Youdohave a point, don’t you?”
Gabriela pointed to more photos and articles. “The point is, every time a wyvern has revealed him- or herself in history, treasure has been involved.”
“No wyvern has transformed into a dragon since Sir Francis Drake. We lost the ability.” But I knew that wasn’t what she meant by “revealed.” She’d noticed the connection between us and treasure. So what, though? Others had noticed our fondness for wealth.
Her face was flushed, and she was flapping her hands with excitement. “You’re treasure hunters! Generations of Indiana Jones types. But not just any treasure….” She paused, and there might as well have been a drum roll. “You hunt mythological objects! Dragon talons! Unicorn horns! Werewolf teeth!”
I opened my mouth.
Shut it.
Opened it.
Shut it.
Swallowed.
She leaned back, triumphant, kind of panting a little. “Don’t try to deny it. Today proved it. That man…You were talking about spells! He provides magic for your quests, like Q giving gadgets to James Bond.”
“Um. That’s…well, everyone knows wyverns like gold.” Honestly, she wasn’t far from the truth, except that she put a shiny, happy spin on it that didn’t include any illegal activities. Plus we didn’t care about mythological objects. Just gold.
