Page 101 of Dragon Cursed
The words were not English.They were not Irish.They wereflowing, curving, interlacing — a script written in air, a song the language of the high tongue had been built from at the beginning of the world.
The elves' silver eyes went wide.
Then wider.
The tall older elf inclined her head —deeplythis time, the way she had inclined it to Alsander.
"Lady Niamh."
"My friends."Niamh's voice in English was the same dry voice she had used to scold Alsander about looming."It has been an age."
"Sixty-four years, my lady."
"Has it.Goodness.Time slips."
"You will come with us," the tall elf said.It wasn’t a question.
"For a little while," Niamh agreed.Her sharp blue eyes turned to Poppy."If my niece can spare me.There are things I have been waiting six decades to discuss with these people, and I find I am not as young as I was last time we spoke.I do not want to put it off."
Poppy's mouth opened.Poppy's mouth closed.
"Auntie."
"Hush, child.I will be back.Probably.Eventually.I am eighty-three.I do not promise things in days anymore.I promise things inseasons."
"You don’t just read it, you speak —High Elvish— "
"My line passed it down, dear.The way yours passed down the pendant.We have had different keepings to keep.Someday I will tell you about it.Today I am going with my friends, who have been very patient, and you are going home with your dragon and your child, and we will all sit down at my kitchen table some evening this autumn and have a long talk about it."
She turned to Alsander.
"You.Listen to me."
"Yes, Lady Niamh."
"Take herhome.Feed her.Make her sleep.She has just died and come back and she is carrying your child and she is going to need agreat dealof attention for the next nine months.Are we clear."
"We are clear."
"And you are going to come and meet me at the door with a cup of tea the next time I visit.In trousers.Not in a postman's uniform."
A laugh tore out of Alsander.Real.Unguarded.
"Yes, Lady Niamh."
She kissed Poppy on the forehead.
She tapped her stick once on the moss.
She walked into the wood between the tall silver-eyed elves, her gray cardigan luminous in the morning, her stick steady in her hand.The wood took them.The light took them.The trees parted and closed and theAos Síand Lady Niamh of the keeper-line were gone.
Poppy stood in the silence after.
She felt Alsander's chest rise and fall behind her.She felt his heart beat against her shoulder blade.She felt — under her own hand, where she hadn’t let it leave her belly since she had understood what was there — the small new fire of her daughter answering her own with a slow contented warmth.
She turned in his arms.
She looked up at her dragon — her three-hundred-year-old, lair-dwelling, brooding, defaced-his-sister's-shrine-with-his-grief, postman-uniform-wearing, mate-of-her-soul, husband-already-in-everything-but-name dragon — and she smiled.
