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Chapter Text

The dragonet was inconsolable, and Hawthorne didn’t know how to help.

He didn’t usually have any difficulty making friends with other children.  Even as a baby, before he could walk, when his pram was placed alongside another baby he had had no difficulty in chatting in baby-talk with other babies.  (In fact, it had been another baby, whose name he didn’t even know, who had taught him to say the word “dragon” comprehensibly enough that his parents knew what he meant.)  As soon as he had been able to walk, he had happily been able to run into the park near his home and play with other toddlers or even older children. 

Before long, he’d been able to get his parents to understand that he didn’t just enjoy playing at being a dragon, or playing that Mum and Dad or Homer were dragons when they gave him rides on their shoulders, but that he actually wanted to learn to ride real dragons.  When he started his lessons at the dragon stables when he was three, he had been able to get the dragons he rode on to understand him.

But this was different.  This wasn’t a well-trained adult miniature dragon whom he could ride, as if she were an unnimal.  This was a dragon child, and she was unhappy, and he didn’t know what to do.

‘You’d best keep away from that one,’ said his teacher, Cecily, a catwun-minor with a furry face and body, clawed hands, who walked upright like a human and didn’t have a tail, but refused to wear clothes unless it was really cold.  ‘That’s Flaps Like a Crow In the Evening Storm.  She’s a bit – odd.’

Hawthorne looked at the little black dragon.  Her wings were feathery, like a bird or an angel, instead of the stretched membrane of all the other dragons he knew.

‘How old is she?’ he asked.

‘Five, like you.  She was hatched at Eventide, five years ago.’  (Hawthorne wondered why he had never seen her before, if she’d been here for the past two years, at the dragon stables he visited every week.)  ‘Her mum was Dances Like a Candle Flame, one of our silver dragons, but she got out one night and was gone a long time – we think she might even have mated with one of the wild dragons in the Wintersea Republic.  She’s lucky she survived – they hunt dragons there, as if they were unnimals.  They’d probably think I was an unnimal, too – either stuff me, or cut my tongue out, put a collar round my neck and set me to pull a carriage, the way they do to Magnificats.’  Cecily’s fur bristled with horror and indignation, and she quickly ran her tongue over her shoulder-fur to calm herself.  ‘So, anyway, Dances had the sense to come home eventually, laid an egg just after she got back to her stable, but she was so exhausted from the journey that she died immediately afterwards.  We tried getting Dances’ mum, Rises Like Dawn Mist, to incubate the egg – none of Rises’ other children was ready to start nesting yet – but she wouldn’t even look at the egg – behaved as if it didn’t exist.  So we had to incubate it artificially until it hatched, and rear little Flaps by paw.’

‘Doesn’t she have any friends?’  Hawthorne had seen the other dragonets playing together, including silver dragonets who he supposed must be Flaps’ cousins.

‘No, she makes the other dragons nervous.  We have to keep her on her own.’

Hawthorne leaned over to the enclosure.  ‘Hello,’ he said.  ‘Want to be friends?’

‘Maybe you should try talking to her in her own language,’ Cecily suggested.

‘Okay.  How do you say, “Will you be my friend?” in dragon language?’

‘“H’chath shka-lev,”’ Cecily told him.  ‘It means, “Long may you burn.”   If she wants to be your friend, she’ll say, “Machar l’ok dachva-lev,” which means “I burn brighter knowing you.”’

Hawthorne repeated ‘“H’chath shka-lev.”’ The dragonet’s wings and head drooped, and she responded with something that included the word lev.

Cecily talked to her soothingly in Dragontongue, and eventually the dragonet lifted her head and replied.

‘What did she say?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘She said, “I can’t breathe fire at all,”’ said Cecily.  ‘So I was just explaining that it’s not a problem, and plenty of dragons don’t breathe fire until they’re six or seven, and that you didn’t mean it literally and it’s all right to say, “Machar l’ok dachva-lev,” if she wants to accept you as a friend.  She says she won’t say that, because it’s a lie, but that she’d like it if you could come in and play with her, and she promises not to hurt you.’

‘How do I say, “My name’s Hawthorne”?’

‘I’m a bit busy now,’ said Cecily.  ‘Dragons to groom, you know how it is.  Hiccup?  Can you give this kid a tutorial?’

A boy with wild untidy ginger hair, a few years older than Hawthorne, came over to join them.  He had a tiny green dragonet, no bigger than a Sangese lap-dog, riding on his shoulder.

‘Hiccup?’ said Cecily again.  ‘Hawthorne here wants to learn Dragontongue.  Can you and Nips With Tiny Toothless Gums teach him?’

The little green dragonet said something Hawthorne couldn’t understand, which made Flaps’ tail twitch in what looked like amusement for the first time.

‘He says dragons are never helpful,’ explained Hiccup.  ‘Which isn’t true.  Nips is really brave and loyal, he’s saved my life nearly as many times as he’s got me into trouble.’

Nips made another comment.

‘He says that’s only because I tickle his tummy and tell him jokes and fetch him snacks.’

‘You can tell jokes in Dragontongue?’ said Hawthorne.  He had barely known that dragons had a language, let alone one that was complicated enough for jokes.

‘Some.  They’re not always that good, but they work if Nips hasn’t heard them before.’

‘Do all dragonriders learn Dragontongue?’  Hawthorne hadn’t encountered it in his lessons so far.

‘Most of them don’t bother learning more than greetings,’ Hiccup admitted.  ‘My dad doesn’t like me talking to Nips With Tiny Toothless Gums in Dragontongue.  He says the right way to train a dragon is to yell at it until it gets the idea.  But then, he didn’t hear his dragons threatening to eat Nips when I first brought him home.’

‘You have dragons at home?’  Hawthorne knew that he could only dream of having a dragon of his very own, at least until he was practically grown-up, maybe ten years or so away.

‘A few.  We’ve got my dad’s hunting dragons, Rends With Fangs Barbed Like Fishhooks and Stifles With Breath Like Pondweed, and when my mum’s home, her riding dragon, Shimmers Like a Phantom, lives with us too.’

‘Where’s your mum usually?’

‘Off on quests.  She’s in the League of Explorers.  She was home for a bit last year, when I first caught Nips and started trying to train him, but she’s never been around much, even when I was your age.  My granddad – mum’s dad – was the one who mainly brought me up, and he’s the only person who thought speaking Dragontongue was a good way to bond with Nips.  Now, what do you want to say?’

‘How do I say my name: Hawthorne Swift?’

Hiccup gave him a long Dragontongue phrase.  ‘That’s the Dragontongue version.  Literally, it means Radiates Hope As the Blossoming Trees and Migratory Birds Bring Promise of Summer, so it works quite well in Dragontongue.  Ben over there – Hiccup gestured to a boy with raven-black hair and pale skin who was rubbing the scales of a magnificent silver dragon – is Brings Joy Like a Son of the Open Meadow.’

‘What about you?’

Hiccup sighed.  ‘Fills With Alarm and Dismay As When a Fish-and-Chip Dinner Turns Out to Be a Nightmarish Monster.’

‘Really?  Cool!’

‘It’s not cool,’ said Hiccup dejectedly.  ‘It means I’m a disappointment.’

‘What?  Why?’

‘Because of everything.  Because I’m a nerd and a scrawny little wimp who’s scared of nearly everything and gets seasick, and I’m left-handed, and I speak Dragontongue and I prefer reading to playing rugby, and I own the tiniest dragon ever, and – just everything.  Except being ginger.  That’s maybe the only thing my parents like about me.’

‘Yeah, but – you’re a surprise.  Like Flaps.  Surprise is the start of an adventure.  That’s better than just being the child your parents expected to have, isn’t it?’

Hiccup brightened.  ‘Maybe it is.  Nips isn’t at all the sort of dragon I’d have meant to choose, when I went to catch a dragon to train, but I could sense him, even in the darkness of the cave, and I just felt that we were meant to be together.’

Hawthorne wondered whether he could sense that about Flaps Like a Crow.  He liked her, but was that the same thing?

Chapter Text

Over the next few years, it was some time before Hawthorne realised that he was, well, abnormally normal for a dragonrider.  Among his four best (human) friends at the dragon-riding classes, Ben, Creel, Hiccup and Yu, and the two teenage grooms whom he knew best at the stables, Cara and Cimorene, he was the only one who had two parents who were both at home and loved each other, a brother he didn’t get on too badly with (although Homer’s moodiness and sarcasm did make him Hawthorne’s favourite person to prank), plenty of friends at school, and no real problems in life.

Hiccup’s mother Valhallarama and Yu’s mother Ariadne had been best friends in the League of Explorers, but Yu’s mother had disappeared without explanation when Yu was a baby and Hiccup was five, and Valhallarama had been away on quests most of the time since then, probably (Hiccup suspected) trying to find Ariadne.  Hiccup had been babysitting Yu throughout her life, in exchange for metalworking lessons from Yu’s father, Sören, who was a blacksmith.  Sören had warned Hiccup never to encourage Yu to think that her mother might possibly be still alive, because it would only give her false hope and set her up for disappointment.

Ben and Creel were orphans, and, Hawthorne realised as he grew up and started to understand more about politics, almost certainly illegal immigrants.  Ben’s adoptive family and the orphanage where Creel lived had managed to protect them up until now, but, as they grew older, the Stink had been putting more and more pressure on their protectors to hand them over to be deported back to the Wintersea Republic. 

When Ben and Creel were eleven, they both signed up as applicants to the Wundrous Society.  This way, they would be protected while they were taking exams, until the Show Trial at the end of the year.

Creel had, in fact, been offered another way to avoid deportation, if she became betrothed to a prince and promised to marry him as soon as she turned eighteen.  She had rejected this offer without a moment’s hesitation.

‘Apart from anything else, it’s the wrong prince,’ she explained.  ‘His brother’s my friend, and maybe we might fall in love with each other when we grow up.  But I don’t want to be here to be a princess.  I want to be here to learn a trade and start my own business, and then if I get married to a prince it’ll be because I like him as a person, not because he’s a prince.’

‘Absolutely!’ said Cimorene.  ‘Being a princess is the most boring life imaginable.  I wasn’t allowed to learn anything useful, whether it was politics or swordfighting or Latin or cooking.  Which was why I decided to leave it all behind and spend my life looking after dragons instead.’

Hiccup’s grandfather, who was a member of the Wundrous Society, was sponsoring Hiccup as a candidate.  Hiccup’s father was a soldier, and wanted Hiccup to go to the Harmon Military Academy, but Hiccup hated this idea, and his grandfather, known to everyone as Old Wrinkly, was encouraging him to try for entrance to WunSoc.  To be on the safe side, Hiccup was also sitting the entrance exams for Graysmark School for Bright Young Men. 

‘I’m not convinced I’m cut out for the Wundrous Society,’ he confided to Hawthorne.  ‘My granddad’s an oracle, so they might think I’m only worth having if I have an arcane knack, too, which I don’t.  Granddad says I should value the skills I’ve got, and not waste time trying to be him or mum or dad.  So I’m giving it my best shot, but if I’m in danger of knocking Ben or Creel off the leaderboard, I’m withdrawing.  If I don’t make it, all that happens is that I’m a disappointment to my family yet again, but if Ben or Creel don’t get in, they’re exiled.  And their dragons won’t be safe if they go with them to the Wintersea Republic, but they won’t want to abandon their humans.  Especially Glistens Like Moonlight on Snow – he’s always so protective of Ben.’

Hiccup had grown more confident over the years, although he expressed this in such a weird way that you had to know him well to tell.  When his father had allowed him to buy a riding dragon, he had chosen a nervous, gawky dragon with a lame paw, Walks on the Sky as Effortlessly as on Solid Ground, to save him from being destroyed.  The salesman had warned Hiccup not to bother with this one, because he was a troublemaker who had tried to run away and been forcibly recaptured, and might flee again at the first opportunity.  In fact, the name Walks on the Sky as Effortlessly as on Solid Ground was a bit of a slander, as the hairy black dragon was far more graceful in the sky than his damaged forepaw would allow him to be when walking, although his wings were not yet strong enough to fly with a rider on his back.  Hiccup worked with him regularly to train him by riding him on the ground, and calling instructions to him as he flew on his own. 

In the meantime, the stable dragons let Hiccup and Hawthorne fly on their backs.  Glistens Like Moonlight on Snow was always very patient with human children, and big and strong enough that he could easily take two riders at once, although he made it clear that his real bond was with Ben.  However, he was enough of a leader that he could usually persuade the other dragons, or at least the other silver dragons, to allow them to ride.

Dances Around Obstacles as if They Were Clouds didn’t offer to join in, as he was strictly a one-rider dragon, and that rider was Cara.  Cara’s mother had been an award-winning dragon-rider who had been killed in a flying accident, and Cara’s father, the owner of the dragon stables, had forbidden Cara to ride dragons, let alone to have her own dragon, in case she suffered the same disaster.  Nonetheless, she had secretly learned to ride, and had successfully trained the wild dragon Dances Around Obstacles when nobody else could get him to accept them as a rider. 

Although Dances didn’t talk about much his past, at least when he thought humans were eavesdropping, Hiccup suspected that he had been abused by other would-be riders.   Hawthorne had once overheard Dances mentioning to Creel’s magnificent golden dragon, Glows Like a Glazier’s Furnace, that he had been threatened with having his wings slit and being sentenced to a grounded life as a guard-dragon.  It was hard to imagine that, when he was the best-performing show dragon in the stables.

Glows Like a Glazier’s Furnace had horrifically scarred wings, though Hawthorne didn’t know how he had been injured.  His mate had the same type of scars, but also a scar on her chest where someone had once flayed off part of her beautiful blue skin to make shoes from the leather.

Glistens Like Moonlight on Snow had befriended Ben and brought him to Nevermoor because they had both been made homeless by new industrial developments in the Wintersea Republic.  Although by now they both had families of their own, Ben with his adoptive parents and sister and Glistens with a mate and a clutch of dragonets, they were both deeply protective of each other, and it was easy to see why.  Life for a dragon wasn’t safe, even in Nevermoor.  Dragons were legally property, even if most people would never be able to afford to buy one.

Taming a wild dragon was an alternative way of coming to own one.  When Hiccup’s young friend Yu first arrived for riding lessons, the only dragon the stable had available for her was the amiable, flatulent old farm dragon Snuggles Like an Oversized Pussycat, who could barely see to land without demolishing a building.  Still, after a series of thefts from the stables – a ruby pendant which Hiccup had recaptured from a thief and which he had discovered had originally belonged to his mother, Ben’s silver locket containing a scale that Glistens Like Moonlight had given him, a dress Creel had been embroidering, and a glass sculpture that had been Glows Like a Glazier’s Furnace’s first attempt at making art – Yu had identified the culprit as a wild dragon, whom she subsequently tamed, and named Pounces on Shiny Things Like a Magpie.  He enjoyed flying with Yu on his back, and benefitted from the mentorship of Glows Like a Glazier’s Furnace, who, Creel said, had been even more of a devil for stealing shiny things, especially church windows, before he had decided to take up glass-blowing himself.

But could you truly own a dragon anyway, when they were intelligent people who, like Glows, could choose to become artists instead of thieves?  Walks on the Sky and Nips didn’t object to being Hiccup’s dragons, but Glistens Like Moonlight on Snow and Glows Like a Glazier’s Furnace were the friends and protectors of the humans they had taken under their majestic wings, rather than pets.  Hiccup often had long conversations with them in Dragontongue about the politics of dragon liberation, and whether it would be more feasible to campaign for dragons in Nevermoor to have equal rights with humans, or to establish a separate homeland where dragons could organise their own civilisation.

And then there was Flaps Like a Crow In the Winter Storm, who was nine now, still not breathing fire, and still had barely any dragon friends.  The nearest were Nips With Tiny Toothless Gums, because he enjoyed teasing her, and Glistens Like Moonlight, because he was kind to everyone and especially children, but when Glistens had invited Flaps to his nest to play with his own dragonets, it had not gone well.  Nobody understood quite what had happened, but somehow there had been a mass panic among most of the other silver dragons until Glistens had managed to calm things down.  When, shortly afterwards, Flaps’ grandmother, Rises Like Dawn Mist, had become so ill that she could barely fly, and the expensive male dragon who had just been bought as a mate for the youngest of Flaps’ aunts died before they had a chance to mate, many of the staff at the stables – not just Cara’s father, Dragonmaster Huw, but Cecily the catwun, who spent most of her time with the silver dragons – insisted that Flaps had to be kept in isolation, as she was clearly a bad influence.  She now lived in a personal stable which was nearly as big as the communal stable where her relatives had individual nests for each branch of the family, but that allotted to Flaps was an open space to allow her to practise flying without going outside.

Hawthorne came to visit and play with Flaps at every opportunity.  He knew now what sort of jokes made her laugh (as expressed by the twitching of her tail and wings), and would have come up with lots of pranks to cheer her up if there hadn’t been the risk of getting her into trouble.  Instead, he had to learn enough Dragonese to tell her about all the things he’d like to do to Huw.

Master Huw was considering selling Flaps, except that no-one in the Free State was offering to buy her, especially considering her lack of flame.  He had promised Cara, who had a soft spot for the dragonet, to give her until she was eleven years old.  If she hadn’t breathed fire by her eleventh hatchday, the vet would come to put her down.  After all, as he said, it was no life for a flameless dragon.

To Hawthorne’s dismay, Flaps seemed to agree with this.

Chapter Text

When Hawthorne was ten, three things happened in his life.  The first was that he acquired a baby sister.  Homer – who by now had taken a vow of silence, and communicated only by writing on a slate – wrote to him, ‘Now you’ll discover all the joys of being an older sibling.’  Hawthorne knew, even without being able to hear a tone of voice, that this was sarcasm, and that Homer had resented being displaced from being the youngest child at the age of three when Hawthorne was born, just as Helena had been displaced from being an only child when Homer arrived.  But for Hawthorne, aged ten, it was so long since he had been a baby that he had nothing to feel jealous about.  He helped with little Davina – named after dad, and soon named Baby Dave for short – when his parents asked him, and wrote to Helena to tell her how amazing her newest sibling was, and how she’d see for herself if the cyclone surrounding the Gorgonhowl College of Radical Meteorology was mild enough for her to come home for summer or Christmas this year.  He didn’t know how long it would take for the letter even to get through to the college.

Still, Hawthorne didn’t have too much babysitting to do, as he mostly wasn’t at home.  Most of the time when he wasn’t at school, he was out with friends – especially at the stables with his dragon friends and dragonriding friends.

The second thing that happened was that Hiccup, Ben and Creel were all accepted into the Wundrous Society, after a year of competitive exams.  These weren’t boring tests of book-learning, which Hawthorne and Yu thought sounded a relief, but Hiccup seemed disappointed about.  There had been one written exam, but while they weren’t allowed to talk about the details, the candidates all said it had been nothing like anything they were expecting.

Some of the tests had been moderately rough games, which Hawthorne thought sounded fun but which had made Hiccup sick with nerves in advance, though, as Ben said, he had done really well when they were underway.  Some were unexpected adventures which put you in perilous situations.  Again, Hawthorne thought that sounded exciting, but even Ben, who was usually fearless, had nightmares for weeks afterwards, as his trial had triggered memories of a monster he and Glistens Like Moonlight and Glistens’ mate Soars Like a Comet had fought years earlier, a construct created by a long-dead Wundersmith to hunt and kill dragons.  He came to the stables every day to spend time with his dragon friends and be reassured by them.

The trials varied from one year to the next, but the final trial was always one to demonstrate your knack: the thing you were exceptionally good at that made you special.  Ben was selected for his ability as a dragonrider.  Of course, for his demonstration, he wasn’t allowed to ride Glistens Like Moonlight on Snow, or any dragon he already knew, but had to demonstrate his ability to establish rapport with a dragon he had never met before.

Hiccup, to his surprise, had been asked to talk to one of his own dragons.  His knack was as a linguist, with a range of human and non-human languages apart from Dragontongue.  Someone had decided to test him by asking him to communicate, not with Nips With Tiny Toothless Gums, who had a slight stutter but could easily make himself understood, but Walks on the Sky as Effortlessly as on Solid Ground, who was so shy that he barely talked at all.  So Hiccup had needed to use his most persuasive eloquence – in Dragontongue, of course – to coax the twitchy dragon into relaxing.

Creel was the most surprised to be accepted, as her knack was the most mundane of mundane abilities: excellence in tailoring.  She had learned to sew because she wanted to have a trade that would allow her to find a job, send money home to her family, and, in time, start her own business, but, as she said, being good at fashion design didn’t make her a hero in the making.

‘Do you have to be a hero?’ asked Flaps Like a Crow.  ‘I thought it was just a club for people who were exceptionally good at something.’

‘That’s what they claim,’ said Creel.  ‘But I don’t think they’d spend a year testing our characters and courage and strategy and resourcefulness if all they wanted was impressive knacks.  And I don’t think Nevermoor would give members of WunSoc all the privileges they do, if we didn’t have responsibilities to go with them.  We’re being recruited for something – we just won’t find out what it is until we start our training.’

Hawthorne hadn’t thought of it like that.  Joining the Wundrous Society for adventure and danger – and the chance to spend your time training in what you most loved doing – sounded good.  But responsibility sounded much too grown-up.  What if it meant you didn’t have time to play any more?

Still, if his friends did have privileges from being in WunSoc, maybe they could save Flaps.  Maybe they knew someone who could help a dragon breathe fire if she was struggling to do this?  No, they didn’t.  Or maybe they could get the people in charge at WunSoc to buy Flaps?  No, they had been firmly warned that as first-year scholars, they were the least important people there.

The third thing that happened was that Hawthorne had a new teacher at the riding school: Nan Dawson!  He hadn’t even thought to dream about getting one of the dragonriders he idolised, one of the ones he had posters of all over his bedroom, as a teacher.  It could hardly have been cooler if Didi Gundry herself had been teaching him – though thinking about it, this would have been tricky as Hawthorne didn’t speak Nevermoor Sign Language, so would have needed Hiccup there to translate for him.

The first time he saw Nan Dawson at the riding stables where he had lessons – the first time he had ever actually had a chance to see her to talk to, not just as a figure on dragonback – she was in a wheelchair.  It had been in all the newspapers that she had retired from show-riding after being mauled in a dragonriding tournament, and Hawthorne hadn’t known she was even out of hospital yet.  But, Nan explained, she didn’t want to have to wait until the stump of her leg had healed enough to have a prosthesis fitted before she spent time with dragons again.

‘So you’re Hawthorne Swift, are you?  Cara says you’re the best rider in your age-group – better than Ben Wiesengrund, even.’

‘Do you know Ben?’

‘I was there when he won his place at the Show Trial, and to welcome him and the rest of Unit 917 to WunSoc on their first day.  I’m going to be his teacher on weekdays, now, as well as being yours at the weekend.  Are you planning to try out for WunSoc, as well?’

‘Could I?’

‘Give me a year to watch and coach you, and I’ll let you know.’

‘Could you get WunSoc to buy Flaps Like a Crow In the Winter Storm?’

‘Dances Like a Candle Flame’s daughter?  Ben told me about her.’

‘She’s a good dragon!’ burst out Hawthorne desperately.  ‘Everyone blames her for everything, but she’s kind and lonely and sad, and Cara’s dad says she makes other dragons nervous, but that’s only because she doesn’t get enough time to be around them to know what she’s supposed to do.  Nips With Tiny Toothless Gums is the one who knows her best, and he’s not nervous of her at all!’

‘You could be right.  Well, give me a chance to get to know her as well as you, and I’ll see what I can do.’

Over the following year, and especially through the Winter of Eleven, Hawthorne pleaded with everyone he knew who might be able to get someone to offer Flaps Like a Crow a new home.  Ben’s parents, founders of the Society for the Protection of Wundrous Beings, offered to buy Flaps in order to offer her a good home, and the companionship of the only other dragon who lived there, a lonely, elderly male from the same colony Glistens Like Moonlight had come from, who was very gentle and good with children.  Hiccup’s father’s friend Big-Boobied Bertha offered to buy Flaps as a pet for her daughter Camicazi, who Hiccup said was absolutely crazy, as reckless as her name suggested, and might be just what Flaps needed to get her to stop moping.

Captain Jupiter North, of the League of Explorers (where he was friends with Hiccup’s and Yu’s mothers) and the Wundrous Society (where he was friends with Hiccup’s grandfather, and also knew Nan Dawson), and owner of the fantastic Hotel Deucalion, offered to buy Flaps as well, though he didn’t say what he wanted her for.  He had a nephew the same age as Ben and Hiccup, but as far as they knew, Jack wasn’t particularly interested in dragons, nor looking for a pet of any sort.  Flaps was still too small to fly with even a child on her back, let alone an adult, so presumably Captain North didn’t want her as a steed for his adventures.  He did lots of charity work, volunteering in mental hospitals and secure children’s homes for young offenders, which sounded very noble in theory, but Hawthorne hoped he wouldn’t let Flaps get hurt by some psychopathic serial killer or some teenage gangster.  But – maybe he was buying Flaps to donate her to the Wundrous Society?  Maybe, if Hawthorne got into WunSoc, he’d be able to see his friend there every day?

There was rumoured to be an offer even from a businessman in the Wintersea Republic, where Flaps’ father had apparently come from.  The mysterious businessman wouldn’t say why he wanted a dragon, either, and he was a busy man who couldn’t come in person to inspect the dragon he was trying to buy, though he had tried to make an appointment to send his agent to conclude matters as discreetly and efficiently as possible.  Hawthorne remembered what Cecily had told him when he was a little boy, about people in the Wintersea Republic regarding dragons as vermin.

When he tried to talk to Flaps about this, and ask her whether any of the offers appealed to her, she barely responded.  Her wings drooped.  ‘I’m going to be dead by Spring’s Eve,’ she said.  ‘No-one will really buy me.  Nobody wants a flameless dragon.’  She sounded as if she agreed that she was vermin.  Master Huw certainly seemed to do so.  Cara said he behaved as if all the offers he’d had for Flaps must just be some sort of joke in bad taste.

By the time Spring’s Eve was drawing close, Hawthorne resolved that if nobody else could do anything, he would have to steal Flaps and run away with her.   After all, Ben and Glistens Like Snow had run away together, and faced many dangers, so why shouldn’t he and Flaps?

When he suggested this to Glistens, however, the huge silver dragon shook his head.  ‘It was hard enough for me to keep Brings Joy Like a Son of the Open Meadow safe, as an adult dragon,’ he said.  ‘I knew nothing about the world outside the valley where I was hatched, but at least I could fly, and I looked dangerous enough to frighten off nearly anyone who might want to hurt a human child.  But there were some enemies even I couldn’t defeat alone.’

‘But you did!’ protested Hawthorne.  ‘Ben told me how you defeated Burns Like a Nettle-Sting!’

‘Yes, but not alone.  Brings Joy Like a Son of the Open Meadow and Soars Like a Comet and I needed help from many people, from several ratwuns and a homunculus to a djinn we asked for advice along the way – and a number of wise humans, including Brings Joy’s father.  If everything depended on you, Radiates Hope As the Blossoming Trees and Migratory Birds Bring Promise of Summer, I am confident you would find a way to save Flaps’ life single-handed.  But this time, you don’t have to.  Be glad you don’t yet have to face the trauma that Brings Joy Like a Son of the Open Meadow did.’

Hawthorne took no notice.  Dragonmaster Huw had booked the vet to come and euthanase Flaps at midnight on Spring’s Eve, the only slot the busy vet had on her schedule.  If Hawthorne could sneak out of bed after he was supposed to put his light out at 9pm, he could climb out of the window and be at the Dragon Stables by 9.30.

The hardest part was allaying his parents’ suspicions that he didn’t plead to be allowed to stay up to see the dawn of a new Age – the first in his life, if you didn’t count the one that had happened eleven years ago when he was a tiny baby.  He had to claim to feel unwell, and refuse dinner, to throw them off the scent.  He crawled into bed, waited until mum had gone to make him a milkshake – his favourite comfort food when he was ill – and a hot-water-bottle, while dad was busy soothing Baby Dave.  Then he climbed out of the window.  When his parents realised he had tricked them, with luck they would just think he had sneaked out to go to a Morningtide celebration somewhere, and it wouldn’t be until tomorrow morning that they noticed that he had taken a few changes of socks, a map and compass and plenty of food with him.

When he arrived at the stables, it was already too late.  There was a blackened, charred spot in one of the exercise paddocks, clearly recognisable as all that was left when a dragon died and burned up from the inside.  ‘Dad’s telling the vet she needn’t come,’ Cara explained.  ‘Poor old Flaps just let loose a lifetime’s worth of fire in one go.  We only just managed to get her outside before she could burn down the stable block.’  She winked at Hawthorne, and he knew there was some trick.  ‘I think we both need some distraction to cheer ourselves up,’ she went on.  ‘Captain North gave me an invitation to the Hotel Deucalion, and one to give to you.’

They hurried there by Wunderground, but there was a delay as the train was in a bad mood, and Hawthorne and Cara didn’t manage to arrive until somewhat after midnight.  In fact, dawn wasn’t far off breaking.  Hawthorne could see crowds of people laughing and dancing on the roof, with a dragon puppet weaving among them – no, not a puppet.

As the sun rose, everyone leapt off the roof, all umbrella-parachuting (why couldn’t Hawthorne have been there in time to get up on the roof and take part in that?) apart from one guest who had no need of a parachute, and simply spread her feathery black wings and soared up into the sky, circling round joyously (or as near to joy as Flaps ever got these days) before landing between Captain North and a huge grey Magnificat.

Hawthorne beamed.  ‘You saved Flaps!’

‘Certainly not,’ said Captain North.  ‘I’m sure your friend Cara explained to you how poor Flaps Like a Crow In the Evening Storm died tragically young yesterday evening.  This is the latest addition to the permanent residents at the Hotel Deucalion, Springs Like a Cat.  Cara thought making friends with her might help console you after Flaps’ death.’  He added in Dragontongue, ‘Cat, do you want to show Blossoming Trees your new cave?’

‘Don’t call me “Cat”,’ grumbled the dragon.  She turned and nudged Hawthorne. ‘Happy Morningtide, Radiates Hope As the Blossoming Trees and Migratory Birds Bring Promise of Summer.’  And she flew into the building and up the stairs, with Hawthorne following her, to show how what looked like a perfectly normal hotel bedroom from the outside was already morphing into a cave fit for a dragon.

Chapter Text

Nan Dawson had told Hawthorne some of what to expect in competing for a place in the Wundrous Society, beyond what Hiccup and Ben and Creel had already told him of their experiences in the trials.  The Treasure Hunt Trial sounded fun, and he wouldn’t mind the Speech Trial – he had never been shy about talking, and coming from a large family, it had been a lot easier to be heard once he had one sibling who was away at college, one who had taken a vow of silence, and one who couldn’t yet talk.  Hiccup said he was lucky the Nervous Breakdown Trial had been banned after the experiences of their Unit, 917.

If there was a Chase Trial, maybe he could borrow Springs Like a Cat and ride her?  Nan said flying animals weren’t allowed as steeds for this trial any more, and dragons in particular weren’t, as they had a tendency to set fire to other people’s steeds.  But Springs was too young to fly with a rider on her back (Walks on the Sky as Effortlessly as on Solid Ground, who was several years older, was only just getting to be big enough to carry Hiccup in the air, and Hiccup was small and light for his age), and she didn’t have any flame.  So why shouldn’t she be allowed?

Nan couldn’t tell him what was coming up this year, as she and the other patrons weren’t supposed to know much in advance, though there were ways around if you were sneaky enough.  According to rumour, a WunSoc member called Baz Charlton not only sponsored dozens of candidates each year, but helped them to cheat.  According to another rumour, Captain Jupiter North, who never sponsored a candidate, had finally decided to do so this year.  Hawthorne wondered who it would be.  Captain North’s nephew Jack was the same age as Ben and Hiccup, so maybe he was too old, but the rules only said that you had to have had your eleventh birthday before you entered, not that you had to be still eleven – or maybe Jupiter had other nieces or nephews?  Maybe Hawthorne would see them around the Hotel Deucalion, where Captain North had invited him to come and visit Springs Like a Cat any time.

Would the candidate be human?  Nan said the Wundrous Society hadn’t had a wunimal member joining in the last few years, though in some units there were one or two humans with unusual physical characteristics, like breathing underwater.  Even though Alioth Saga, a bullwun major, had been elected as one of the new trio of Elders, too many WunSoc members were humans with racist views.  So Nan hoped that Jupiter, one of whose Unit-brothers was a meerkatwun, who was dating an angel, whose staff at his hotel included a vampire dwarf and a Magnificat, and who was Secretary of the Wunimal Rights Commission and chairman of the Charitable Trust for Decommissioned Robot Butlers, might manage to bring a talented wunimal into Unit 919.

Hawthorne made a mental note to ask Springs (she didn’t mind this as a shortening of her new name, though she still objected to Cat) whether she knew anything about her new owner’s candidate, when he was next allowed to visit her, after his period of being grounded for running away.  He wasn’t literally grounded, in that his parents still allowed him to practise flying on dragonback (he hadn’t let them know about Cara’s involvement in his disappearance on Spring’s Eve).  He still loved flying.  And Ben and Creel and Hiccup and Nips With Tiny Toothless Gums and Walks on the Sky still also came there on Saturdays.  But visits weren’t the same without the prospect of playing with and chatting to Flaps Like a Crow, or Springs Like a Cat or whatever she was called this week.

Hiccup had visited the hotel later in the day on Morningtide, and reported that Springs had been deeply depressed and anxious because she worried that it had been her fault that the chandelier in the lobby, a magnificent pink glass sailing-ship, had fallen to the floor and smashed, even though Springs hadn’t been flying anywhere near it.  But by the next day, he said, she had cheered up, and explained that a visitor who had stayed in the Deucalion many times over the years had shown her that a new chandelier was growing, like a new tooth where a milk tooth had been shed.

The next time Hawthorne was allowed out to anything other than riding lessons and school was the Wundrous Society’s welcoming party at Proudfoot House for all this year’s candidates (and one day before, to help the groundskeeper tidy the garden up in readiness for the party).  Nan had warned him that candidates were expected to dress smartly to make a good first impression, so Hawthorne wore the most ridiculous of his collection of ugly jumpers, the one with a sequinned cat with a pink ribbon and a real bell that jingled.  Nan laughed when she saw it.  Hawthorne knew she would be more eager to show off how splendidly high-tech her new leg was than concerned about what he wore anyway.

Nan made him promise to be on his best behaviour and not wander off or get into trouble on his first day there.  Hawthorne had meant to obey, at least until he’d seen Jupiter North and found out who his new candidate was.  But he was hungry, so he’d gone over to the buffet table to stock up on cakes, and there was a gigantic green jelly and a horrible bullying girl in a sparkly blue dress, and somehow he’d found himself standing at an upstairs window with the jelly and a perfect vantage point to drop it over the nasty girl’s head.  She was surrounded by other girls – most of whom seemed to be her friends, or at least hangers-on who wanted to think they were her friends, apart from a shy, sweet-faced girl with curly blonde whom Noelle (he didn’t know how he knew she was called Noelle) was jeering at.

Springs Like a Cat was there, as well.  He heard her hiss, ‘Consider your next words carefully.’  Back at the dragon stables, dragons many times her size would have panicked if Flaps Like a Crow In the Evening Storm had flown anywhere within sight or scent of them.  Here, Noelle just sneered, ‘Ugh, don’t they have some way of keeping strays from flying in?’   The blonde girl suggested timidly, ‘She might not be a stray; she might belong to the Wundrous Society,’ but Noelle sneered, ‘If you think anyone at the Wundrous Society would own a mongrel like that, you’re clearly not their sort of person.  It can’t have been bred in Nevermoor – that must be one of the wild dragons that some sentimental unnimal-lover smuggled in from the Wintersea Republic.  Hmm, if most of their dragons look like that, I can see why they’re classified as vermin.’

Hawthorne tipped the jelly.  ‘Want some dessert, Noelle?’ he called.  Noelle flounced off, squealing with rage.  Hawthorne thought he heard someone laughing, though he couldn’t remember afterwards who it was – was it the little blonde girl?  But she was too polite to laugh at someone else’s misfortune.  Springs Like a Cat’s wings were flapping with glee, but he was sure he had heard a human girl laughing, too.

He jumped down from the window, and scratched Springs behind the bases of her wings and the nubs where her horns were starting to grow.  ‘Well done on threatening her,’ he said, ‘but it’s a pity more people don’t speak Dragontongue.  At least jelly is a universal language.’  Mentioning the jelly reminded him that he still hadn’t had much to eat himself yet.  There had been bakewell tarts and lemon drizzle cake and coffee-and-walnut sponge and currant-filled pastries and spicy nutty fruit-cake and cream-cheese-topped carrot cake and fruit scones with jam and clotted cream and – it occurred to Hawthorne that he hadn’t seen anything suitable for dragons on the buffet table.  No raw meat or fish.  Of course, Springs now lived in a posh hotel where she probably had lobster for breakfast every day, or at least shared an order of fresh fish with the Magnificat, but even so…

‘Have you had lunch?’ he asked.

‘Just some punch with worms in.’

‘Want some toads?’  He had spent the previous day helping clear up a vermin infestation, and those that weren’t required for potions ingredients were going to be used to feed the resident dragons anyway, so why shouldn’t they be shared with one more dragon who might be destined for the WunSoc stables anyway?

‘Ooh, yes, please!’

‘Okay – if you help me with something…’

After Springs had eaten her fill of toads, she carried the three largest basketfuls of toads she could manage (one basket-handle gripped in her teeth, one basket between each pair of paws) into the air, and released them over the guests just as Hawthorne tipped the remainder from a barrelful on the balcony.  After all, the resident dragons would enjoy hunting their own prey far more than having it handed to them in a bowl.

Nan, who was chatting to Captain North, yelled at Hawthorne, but Captain North only smiled at Springs and said, ‘Enjoying yourself?’  Her ears and tail-tip twitched in admission that, actually, yes, she was enjoying getting into mischief.

After that, Hawthorne was grounded until the first trial of the year.  Or that was what his parents said when Nan told them about the jelly incident and the toad incident.  But a couple of weeks later, when his mother came to collect him from his riding lesson (he was so strictly grounded that he wasn’t even allowed to catch the Brolly Rail or the Wunderground on his own), Nan waited to ask them to lift the ban.  Jupiter North had asked for clemency so that Hawthorne could come to the Deucalion to help Jupiter's candidate study for the first trial, which was to be a Book Trial.

Chapter Text

Hawthorne wasn’t particularly surprised to see who Jupiter North’s candidate was.

What did surprise him was when she opened her scaly black jaws and said, very carefully, in human language, ‘Hel-lo, Hawww-thorrrne.’

‘You can speak!  I mean, I know you can speak, obviously, but – speak like a human!’  Hiccup had told Hawthorne that there had been a few dragons who could do this, but it was much rarer than a human becoming fluent in Dragontongue, because a dragon’s mouth and throat were less versatile in producing different sounds.

‘Yyyesss.  Fffen-ess-tra tea-each mmeee.  An-nnd D-dame Tschannn-drraa, and Mi…’ – she caught herself hurriedly – ‘annd D-juh… D-juhh…’ she looked helplessly at Captain North.

‘Go on, Cat,’ he said encouragingly, again in human language.  ‘You can manage.’

‘If you can’t use my name when you gave it to me in the first place, why do I have to say yours?’ growled Springs, reverting to Dragontongue.

‘Excellent!  Now say that in Nevermoorian!’

‘D-ju-pi-terrr Amm-mannn-tiusss Nnnorrrth, yyyou arrr a pessst!’

‘Splendid!  However, I’m a rather busy pest this morning, so maybe Hawthorne can take over the lesson from here.  Why don’t you show him around?  Remember, if you’re to plan anything involving toads, jelly, or anything else interrupting the smooth running of this hotel, you need to plot it in Nevermoorian.  And please don’t eat my pet frogs or any of Dame Chandra’s audience; we’re all rather fond of them.’

‘Who was that other person who’s teaching you?’ Hawthorne asked, reverting to Dragontongue, as soon as Captain North was out of earshot.

‘Master Son of Creator-is-Gracious – Mmmiss-terrr D-jones,’ admitted Springs Like a Cat shyly, switching between languages.  ‘He’s a ghost who haunts the hotel.  He’s the one who explained to me about the chandelier.’

‘A ghost?  Like – they who do not rest?’  Hawthorne had never heard a Draconic word for the Unresting – they were seldom talked about even by Nevermoorians – but he fell back on a literal translation.

‘I don’t think so.  He’s a clerk for a rich man in Great Wolfacre in the Wintersea Republic, where my dad came from.  He was the one who was sent to try to buy me, but he vanished before any humans came in to see him.  But I think he came from Nevermoor, when he was alive.’

‘Why does a ghost need a job?  It’s not as if they need to eat or buy clothes or somewhere to live or anything.  They can just sleep all day and float out in the evening to sneak up on people and shout “Boo!” can’t they?’

‘Maybe he’s bored.’

‘Maybe he’s just pretending to be a ghost?  I read a story once where the Nevermoor Opera House was built by a mad ugly genius who built a secret lair for himself in the basement…  

‘And secret tunnels all over the building so that he can live in the basement and spy on everyone while he’s pretending to be a ghost, and he’s tutoring a girl who thinks he’s an angel, until he admits he’s a human called Rules Forever – Eh-rikk – because he wants her to be his girlfriend, so he kidnaps her to try to force her to marry him, because he’s so lonely and ugly and even his parents never loved him and he can’t find love any other way.  And the only person who knows who Rules Forever really is, and can help the girl’s boyfriend rescue her, is a retired policeman from Far East Sang who’s the nearest Erik has to a friend, and moved to Nevermoor to watch Erik and make sure he isn’t causing too much trouble,’ went on Springs Like a Cat.  ‘It’s cool, isn’t it? Fff- the vampire dwarf party planner here lent it to me to help me practise my reading.  But Master Son of Creator-is-Gracious really is a ghost.  He looks like a human, but he’s got no scent.  And he lived here over a hundred years ago, and humans don’t normally live that long, but he doesn’t look old, so he must have died when he was quite young.

‘I sshhhould prrac-tisss Nne-ver-mmmooorr-i-an, though,’ Springs reminded herself conscientiously.  ‘Ffforrr the b-book trrialll.’

‘Aren’t you allowed a translator?  Aren’t you allowed a translator?’

‘D-jhuhh… Lightens Like the Planet That Brings Jollity Even to Frozen Realms said I should be able to get one of the tutors there to translate for me if I get stuck, but it’ll make a good impression if I speak in Nevermoorian as much as I can.  If you talk to me in Nevermoorian, it helps me get used to the language.’

‘Okay.  How are you going to do the written bit?  Can you hold a pencil in your claws?  I dunno, how do you reckon Elder Saga manages?  He doesn’t even have claws.  Maybe he gets someone to strap a pen to his hoof?’

‘I’ve been practising writing by dipping a claw in a pot of ink.  Lightens Like the Planet That Brings Jollity Even to Frozen Realms says they don’t mind letting me have a pot of ink instead of a pencil.  At least I can’t set fire to the paper by breathing on it,’ sighed Springs wretchedly.  Then her tail twitched.  ‘Lightens said his answer paper kept setting fire to itself anyway, when he had his Book Trial,’ she added.  ‘He says you have to be completely honest in the written paper, and the answer paper burns up if you put down the answers you think people want to hear.  He had to have five goes and he barely had time to answer any questions, but he just about scraped through because he did better in the talking bit.’

They practised as much as they could, which mainly involved Springs practising explaining things in Nevermoorian as she showed Hawthorne around the hotel and introduced him to her new friends, which included all the staff and most of the long-staying customers.  Disappointingly, it didn’t include Mr Jones the ghost, but there was so much else to see that Hawthorne didn’t mind.  When they could bear to sit still for a little while, Springs practised reading out loud from textbooks on Nevermoorian history, and showed Hawthorne how she had been practising her claw-writing in scratching out a transcript of The Phantom of Nevermoor into an exercise book.  She was proud to show how Room 85 had grown into a better cave every night, a cavern that looked bigger than the Deucalion itself, with a range of sleeping crevices to fly between, rock outcrops that formed steady platforms for books and a writing desk, walls sparkling with veins of crystals, a spring that carried away dung into the drainage system, and pictures and decorations on the walls, including, to Hawthorne’s amusement, a picture of a green jelly sculpture hung over the drainage spring.

‘What’s that?’ asked Hawthorne, catching sight of a small wooden object nestled among black cushions on one of the sleeping shelves.

Springs looked a bit embarrassed, but flew to the sleeping-platform and picked up in her claws a carved wooden model of a rabbit.  ‘Crawls Like an Ant,’ she answered, and then switched to Nevermoorian.  ‘Emm-met.  I’ve had him ever since I was a hatchling.  He used to belong to my mum when she was a hatchling, too.  She took him with her when she flew away, and brought him back when she came home.  When Brings Jollity to Frozen Realms came and stole me and tricked Thought Masters Dragons, the father of Beloved Friend, into thinking a blackened stain on the ground was me, he let me bring Crawls Like an Ant with me.’

‘I’ve still got my old stuffed toy dragon, too,’ Hawthorne admitted.

‘Most hatchlings are too young to play with soft toys, until we learn to control our teeth and claws,’ explained Springs.  Then she sang, in Nevermoorian, more fluently than Hawthorne had heard her speak the language:

‘Little dragon, little dragon,
With your flapping wings,
Swooping down into the meadow,
’Midst the quivering things.

‘Little rabbit, little rabbit,
Stay by mother’s side,
Or the dragon, little dragon,
She will eat you, fried.’

‘Where did that song come from?’ asked Hawthorne.

‘Mis-ter D-jones teach – taught me.  He says I should be ashamed of being so slack and I should have been able to speak your language by the time you were old enough to learn mine.  He says Brings Jollity to Frozen Realms is far too sentimental and too soft on me, and that the Wundrous Society isn’t worth getting into these days because there’s no-one left there who can teach me any of the things I need to know, because they’re not used to having people like me any more.  I told him there were plenty of dragons, and he said that wasn’t what he meant.  He says his master, Helper of the Storm, could teach me far more, and I can go to him if I ever change my mind, but for now he’ll help me learn to speak Nevermoorian and get into the Wundrous Society if that’s what I really want.  He’s been teaching me every night.’

‘That does sound a lot like Erik,’ pointed out Hawthorne.  ‘Maybe Mr Jones isn’t really a ghost.  Maybe he’s just got – some trick for letting you see him and hear him while he’s at home in Great Wolfacre.  Maybe your mum didn’t even really choose to fly away.  Maybe Mr Jones or his boss stole her, and she managed to get away, so now they’re trying to steal you.’

‘Hhe’s a g-good teacher, anyway,’ said Springs firmly.  ‘Annnd hhe’s prrromisssed hhe wwwon’t sssteal mmmee.  Hhhee ssayss Helper of the Storm only wwantsss mmee wwhennn I wwant to llearrrrn.  Annnd I wwwant to llearrrn hhoww to ssspeak and wrrrite.’

So they did that.  Springs Like a Cat had never learned much about life outside a dragon stables, but then Hawthorne had never paid much attention in school to anything that wasn’t about dragons anyway, so he learned more history and geography from Springs reading aloud to him than he had learned in six years of attending school so far.

‘I hope Stubborn Christmas and her friends don’t get through the first round,’ Springs added when they took a break.  ‘Especially that tall dark girl who kept giggling at Stubborn Christmas being horrible to Humbles With an Answer That Is Bald and Barren but Beautiful.’

‘Who?’

‘Stubborn Christmas – No-ellle De-ver-eaux.  The girl you tipped jelly on.  Humbles With an Answer That Is Bald and Barren but Beautiful – A-nah K-kah-lo.  The one with the blonde curls.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I saw those two, but what did you mean about her friend?  I didn’t see anyone else.’  At least, there had been a crowd of other people swarming around Noelle, but no-one who sounded like Springs’ description.

‘Maybe that’s her knack,’ said Springs.  ‘Being invisible except to dragons.  I wish I had a knack.’

‘Of course you’ve got a knack!  Captain North wouldn’t be entering you as a candidate if you hadn’t!  Maybe being a dragon is your knack.’

‘There are lots of dragons.’  And some of them belonged to the Wundrous Society, but, both children knew, they were property, like unnimals, not actual WunSoc members like Elder Saga or Sofia the necromancer.

‘Well, maybe it’s because you’re a dragon who can speak Nevermoorian and write!  How many dragons can do that?’

‘Maybe.’  Springs practised the word in Nevermoorian.  ‘Mmmayy-bee.’  But would the examiners really think she was good enough, just because she could do most things a normal dragon could do – apart from breathe fire – and a few things most dragons would probably be able to learn if they could be bothered?

‘Maybe seeing invisible people, like that girl you told me about, is your knack.  That’s a seriously cool knack to have, on top of flying.’