“Scuffenbury” in dragontongue
At the end of the last dragon era, it came to a point where there were just twelve left. Driven from their aeries by wild-hearted men who knew no better than to kill a creature they couldn’t tolerate and didn’t understand, the dragons came together and decided to surrender. They didn’t give themselves up for capture or sacrifice; they just refused to fight anymore. This, to me, is the saddest story ever. I grow tired of people who only think of dragons as fire-breathing, maiden-snatching, cave-dwelling monsters. Dragons had heart. Morals. Courage. Zanna always says they were the spiritual guardians of the Earth, and for once I agree with her. We don’t really know what happened to the twelve. The legend is they separated and flew away to isolated places, remote volcanic islands and the like, where they could live out their lives in peace, and where they could eventually die in peace. Up until yesterday, the only location I knew about was the Tooth of Ragnar, where Gawain set down. Now, if David is telling the truth, there’s one hidden underneath Glissington Tor, close to Scuffenbury Hill, not a million miles from here.
Professor Steiner has also informed Liz and Lucy that he has seen dragontongue written before — in some photographs of wall markings taken in caves at a place called the Hella glacier. Henry Bacon, the Pennykettles’ next-door neighbor, tells David of an incident that happened there when Henry’s grandfather was part of an expedition to explore the area in 1913. A fellow explorer had disappeared there in unusual circumstances — lost, presumed dead. Lorel is a polar bear captured in a photograph on the study wall.
“People say he wandered off to find his watch.”
“What?”
“Had a risky incident a few months before. Found himself stranded near a native settlement with a large male polar bear for company. No rifle, and too far away from camp to summon help. All he had with him was a pocket watch. Played a tune when you opened the casing. Our fellow set it down in front of the bear. Story goes, the beast swaggered up to the watch, sat down, and listened. Our man backed off and escaped to camp. Went back with his comrades twenty minutes later, but the watch and the bear had both disappeared.”
“Who was this man?” David asked nervously.
Henry turned the book around. He pointed to a plate at the bottom of a page. “Third from the left. Fair-haired. Scandinavian.”
David cast his eyes down.
It was Dr. Bergstrom.
As David’s mind wrestled with the incredible conundrum of how a man in his forties who lectured at Scrubbley College could look exactly like a polar explorer reported missing in 1913, the house came alive with the trill of telephones. David thought he detected four at least. Henry snapped the book shut and returned it to the shelf. “Something amiss, boy? You look a bit pale.”
“I’m fine,” said David, “just … thinking, that’s all.” He cupped his hand around Gadzooks and looked through the slatted window blinds. There was a good view of the Pennykettles’ garden from here. He picked out Lucy right away, still by the brambles, puttering about with her hedgehog book. A slightly moody-looking Bonnington was sitting near the rock garden, paws tucked under his tummy, watching. And in the center of the lawn, as if a cloud had dripped and left a great white blot, lay the hunk of ice that had once been a snowbear, still surviving despite the rain. As Henry lifted a phone and the house became silent, David thought about Lorel and turned to look at the bear print again. For a fleeting moment he became the bear, looking back into the lens of Bergstrom’s camera. And from somewhere between the bear and the man, from the bright cold wilderness of frozen ages, from the leaves of books, from the creaking timbers of icebound vessels, came a voice like a wind from another world, saying, There was a time when the ice was ruled by nine bears …
(… which is a whole other story: Chris’s own massive White Fire Arctic saga. But you can read a little more about the nine bears in Icefire.)