CHAPTER IV
THE WYVERARY
In Which September Is Discovered by a Wyvern, Learns of a Most Distressing Law, and Thinks of Home (but Only Briefly)
September woke in a meadow full of tiny red flowers. She had walked through the night, watching the moon slowly fall down into the horizon and all the dark morning stars turn in the sky, like a silver carousel. It was important, she reasoned, not to fall asleep in the dark where deviant things might carry her off. No matter how tired she was, or how sore her bare foot, she would wait till morning, when she could be assured of the sun to keep her warm while she dreamed. And the sun had pulled up a warm blanket of her light over the little girl, tucking her in with gentle beams. September’s long hair had dried on the meadow-grass. Her orange dress was only a little stiff now from the salt of the sea. She yawned and stretched.
“What happened to your shoe?” said a big, deep, rumbling voice. September froze in mid-stretch. Two blazing, flame-colored eyes danced before her. A dragon was staring at her with acute interest, crouching like a cat in the long grass. His tail waved lazily. The beast’s lizardish skin glowed a profound red, the color of the very last embers of the fire. His horns (and these horns led September to presume the dragon a he) jutted out from his head like a young bull’s, fine and thick and black. He had his wings tucked neatly back along his knobbly spine-where they were bound with great bronze chains and fastened with an extremely serious-looking lock.
“I… I lost it,” said September, holding herself utterly still so as not to spook either the dragon or herself, her arms still stuck out into the air. “It fell into the sink as I was climbing onto a Leopard.”
“That’s not losing it,” the beast rumbled sagely. “That’s leaving it.”
“Um,” said September.
“Don’t wear shoes myself,” the dragon haroomed. “Tried when I was a wee thing, but the cobblers gave me up for lost.” He rose up on heavily muscled hind legs and, balancing carefully on one of them, flexed one enormous three-toed scarlet foot. His black claws clicked together with a sound like typewriter keys clacking. “You’re very quiet! Why don’t you say something? Why don’t you do a trick? I’ll be impressed, I promise. Start with your name, that’s easiest.”
September put down her arms and folded them in her lap. The dragon hunched in close, his smoky-sweet breath flaring huge red nostrils. “September,” she said softly. “And… well, I’m very scared, and I don’t know if you’re going to eat me or not, and it’s hard to do tricks when you’re scared. Anyway, where I come from, it’s a known fact that dragons eat people, and I prefer to be the one doing the eating if eating is to be done. Which it hasn’t been since last night. I don’t suppose you have cake? I think dragon food would be all right, it’s only Fairy food I’m to watch out for.”
“How funny you are!” crowed the beast. “First off, I am not a dragon. I don’t know where you could have gotten that idea. I was very careful to show you my feet. I am a Wyvern. No forepaws, see?” The Wyvern displayed his proud, scaled chest, the color of old peaches. He balanced quite well on his massive hindquarters, and the rest of him rose up in a kind of squat S-shape, ending in the colossal head, which bore many teeth and a thick jaw and snapping bits of fire-colored whiskers. “And you must have very rude dragons where you come from! I’ve never heard the like! If people show up to a dragon’s mountain yelling about sacrifices and O, YE, FELL BEAST SPARE MY VILLAGE this and GREAT DRAGON, I SHALL MURDER THEE that, well, certainly, a fellow might have a chomp. But you oughtn’t judge any more than you judge a lady for eating the lovely fresh salad that a waiter brings her in a restaurant. Secondly, no, I don’t have any cake.”
“Oh. I didn’t mean any offense.”
“Why should I be offended? Dragons are a bit more than cousins, but a bit less than siblings. I know all about them, you see, because they begin with D.”
“What is your name, Wyvern? I should have been more polite.”
“I am the Honorable Wyvern A-Through-L, small fey. I would say, ‘at your service,’ but that’s rather fussy, and I’m not, you see, so it would be inaccurate.”
“That’s a very funny name for…”-September considered her words-“such a fine beast,” she finished.
“It’s a family name,” A-Through-L said loftily, scratching behind one horn. “My father was a Library. So properly speaking, I am a Lyvern, or… a Libern? A Wyverary? I am still trying to find the best term.”
“Well, I think that’s very unlikely,” said September, who preferred Wyverary.
“However unlikely it may seem, it is the truth and, therefore, one hundred percent likely. My sainted mother was the familiar of a highly puissant Scientiste, and he loved her. He polished her scales every week with beeswax and truffle oil. He fed her sweet water and bitter radishes grown by hand in his laboratory and, therefore, much larger and more bitter than usual radishes. He petted her, and called her a good Wyvern, and made a bed for her out of river rushes and silk batting and old bones. (They didn’t come from anyone he knew, so that was all right, and a Wyvern nest has to have bones, or else it’s just not home.) It was quite a good situation for my mother, even if she hadn’t liked him a great deal and thought him very wise. As all reptiles know, the bigger the spectacles, the wiser the wearer, and the Scientiste wore the biggest pair ever built. But even the wisest of men may die, and that is especially true when the wisest of men has a fondness for industrial chemicals. So went my mother’s patron, in a spectacular display of Science.”
“That’s very sad,” sighed September.
“Terribly sad! But grief is wasted on the very roasted. Without her companion, my mother lived alone in the ruins of the great Library, which was called Compleat, and a very passionate and dashing Library indeed. Under the slightly blackened rafters and more than slightly caved-in walls, my mother lived and read and dreamed, allowing herself to grow closer and closer to Compleat, to notice more and more how fine and straight his shelves remained, despite great structural stress. That sort of moral fortitude is rare in this day and age. By and by, my siblings and I were born and romped on the balconies, raced up and down the splintered ladders, and pored over many encyclopedias and exciting novels. I know just everything about everything-so long as it begins with A through L. My mother was widowed by a real estate agent some years ago, and I never finished the encyclopedia. Anyway, Mother told us all about our father when we were yearlings. We asked, ‘Why do we not have a Papa?’ And she said, ‘Your Papa is the Library, and he loves you and will care for you. Do not expect a burly, handsome Wyvern to show up and show you how to breathe fire, my loves. None will come. But Compleat has books aplenty on the subject of combustion, and however odd it may seem, you are loved by two parents, just like any other beast.’”
September bit her lip. She did not know how to say it gently. “I had a friend back home named Anna-Marie,” she said slowly. “Her father sold lawn mowers all over Nebraska and some in Kansas, too. When Anna-Marie was little, her daddy ran off with a lady from Topeka with the biggest lawn in the county. Anna-Marie doesn’t even remember her daddy, and sometimes when she’s sad, her mother says she didn’t have one, that she’s an angel’s daughter and no awful lawn mower salesman had a thing to do with her. Do you think, maybe… it could have been like that, with your mother?”
A-Through-L looked pityingly at her, his blazing red face scrunched up in doubt. “September, really. Which do you think is more likely? That some brute bull left my mother with egg and went off to sell lonemozers? Or that she mated with a Library and had many loved and loving children? I mean, let us be realistic! Besides, everyone says I look just like my father. Can’t you see my wings? Are they not made of fluttering vellum pages? If you squint you can even read a history of balloon travel!”