Page 59 of Dragon Cursed
"I have seen this hand before.I cannot read it.It is the high tongue.The court tongue.There are perhaps a dozenAos Síalive who can still read it fluently.There were once thousands.There are now perhaps adozen."
"My grandmother kept this in her chimney."Poppy’s eyes were wide.
Alsander nodded."She did."
"My grandmother had anelvish bookin her chimney."
"Caitlín.Saoirse," Alsander added softly, "and whoever came before them.They knew it was here.They kept it.They couldn’t read it.They held it for whoever could."
Poppy turned another page.A great curving shape that might have been a dragon or might have been the line of a coast seen from above, was scrawled a across the page, the script in spirals around it.She turned another.Another drawing of the pendant — this time with the chain pulled tight, the stone bright at the throat of a stylized woman whose face was only suggested.
She turned another.
The script changed character.Sharper.Pointed.Urgent.
There was a small notation at the top of the page, clearly not part of the original script, and Alsander's finger brushed over it before he had fully registered it.
"What does that mean?"Poppy whispered."You said you couldn't read it."
"I cannot.But I know that mark."His voice was very low."It is the mark for abinding.A working.Something performed.A page of instruction.The rest of the book is history, perhaps, or song.Thispage is something one is supposed to do."
They looked at the page together.
A page they couldn’t read.
A page that might break the curse.
A page that might tell them how tofinishwhat the Lady had begun three hundred years ago.
A page in a language only a dozen magical creatures in the world could still read.
"We go to them," Alsander said.
She closed the book.
"No."
"Poppy."
"No."
"Listen to me."He had stepped back so he could see her face.The careful tenderness was gone out of his voice, replaced by something flat and old and tired."You heard your great-grandmother.The full of your line's story is in their hands.The book in your hands is in a tongue only they can read.They are the only ones who can tell us what we need to know.There is nothing else.We have read through everything else you have.The answer is with them.You will stay here.We don’t know which one wrote it — which one allowed a human girl with knowledge of the Draquonir, knowledge of the Secret Kingdoms, to live.So, you will stay and I will go."
Poppy’s heart, already pounding, nearly doubled in speed."We don’t know where they are."
"I know where they are."
"You said you haven’t seen them in two hundred years."
"I know which hill, Poppy.I have not gone because I had no reason to be welcome.I have a reason now."
"Alsander."She was holding the book against her chest.She hadn’t realized she had pulled it to her chest."You cannot just walk up to a hill of elves with a book they haven’t seen in ten generations, maybe ever, and saysolve this for me."
"Why not?"
"Because they willkeepit."Her voice rose."They will keep the book.It istheirs— more theirs than mine.If you walk into their hall and put it in their hands, they will look at it and they will know what it is and they won’t give it back.Or they will read it and refuse to tell you what it says.Or they will tell you what it says and demand a price for the telling I can’t pay.Or worse."
"Poppy —"
