Page 18 of Dragon Cursed
She fell forward and wrapped Poppy in her arms, and for a moment they were just two girls on a beach again, holding each other while the world rearranged itself.
"Bless you," Aoife whispered into her hair."Bless you, bless you, bless you."
A surge of confidence rose in Poppy.A certainty in her own work that was stronger than ever before.The Aos-sí-bloom tincture would work.Itwasworking.The forest's magic — the dragon's magic, in some way she didn’t yet understand — was flowing through her hands and saving this child's life.
Then the dizziness rolled through her again, and she had to grip Aoife's shoulder hard to keep from falling over.
She laughed it off, insisted she was just tired.She wasn’t sure that was it, but she didn’t want Aoife to worry.They chatted quietly for a few minutes, then Poppy went on her way.
She visited two more families.The Donnellan girl.The Byrne twins.Each tincture worked.Each fever broke.Each mother wept and clung to her hands and called her blessed.
And each time, the dizziness grew worse when she was done.
By the time she made her way back up the path to her cottage, the unease was no longer something she could ignore.The air felt heavy.Still.Wrong.The sounds and smells of the village fell away behind her, and the path that should have felt like coming home increasingly felt all wrong.
She stopped short.
Her eyes widened in horror.
Her garden — her pride and joy, the garden her grandmother had tended before her and her great-grandmother before that — wasdying.
The cheerful marigolds she had planted last week drooped, its bright orange petals turned brown and wilted.The lush green leaves on the climbing rose vine by her door were brittle, edged with black like they had been touched by frost in high spring.There, on her stone doorstep, its fuzzy body unnaturally still, lay one of the fat, happy bumblebees that always pollinated her lavender.
She stared at the bee in horror.
A wave of nausea rolled through her, so sudden and violent she had to grip the fence post to keep from falling.The heaviness in her limbs returned — a profound, bone-deep weariness that made her want to curl up on the ground and sleep forever.
Something dark was here.
Something that didn’t belong.
She stumbled into her cottage and slammed the door shut.Her heart hammered against her ribs.What was happening to her?To her home?
Her eyes were inexplicably drawn to the small, locked chest at the foot of her bed.
The family journal.
She would find an answer there.Shehadto.
Her fingers trembled as she worked the old, intricate lock and lifted the heavy lid.The leather-bound book inside was older than her great-grandmother.Older than the cottage itself, some said.Its pages were filled with her mother's elegant hand, her grandmother's spidery script, and more.Dozens of women had written in the sacred tome — a record of recipes, spells, and the sacred history of their line stretching back many generations.
She flipped frantically through the pages.Her eyes scanned for anything, any clue that might explain the sudden sickness in her garden.In her own body.
There was almost nothing about dragons.
Almost.
On one page, written by an ancestor at least two hundred years ago, was a list of mythical creatures that were, according to the woman who had lived long ago, very real.Dragons — calledDraquonirin the old tongue — ruled the others.Elves, dark and light.Shapeshifters.Fairies.Witches and mermaids.
Poppy had memorized that list as a little girl.
She had spent hours at the edge of the forest and on the coast, young hopeful eyes constantly scanning every shadow and flicker of light, waiting to catch a glimpse of one of the creatures her family's books had promised her existed.
Until yesterday, when a dragon had appeared, she had believed but never seen any of them.
She turned to the page she had read a thousand times.The page her grandmother had pressed her finger against the night she died, voice rasping with the last of her breath, “Remember, my Poppy.Remember.He will come.The heart of the eldest daughter shall be a beacon, waiting for the cursed one whose wound is deep.She shall know him instantly.Her touch shall be his salvation.”
Poppy read the passage again.Confused.Her love was supposed to heal.
