Page 58 of Dragon Cursed
The brick came out clean.
Behind it was hollow.The interior was lined with a piece of waxed cloth she could just see in the firelight.
And within that, rested something wrapped in oiled leather darker than the leather of any book in the chest.
She lifted it out.
It was small.Smaller than her grandmother's journal.The outer wrapping was nearly black with age but still supple, as if the oil had been refreshed by hands she would never know.She carefully, reverently unfolded the leather.
Resting inside was the book itself.
The cover was made of the finest wood, thinly bound, carved all over with patterns she couldn’t name — spirals and knots and the suggestion of leaves.At the center, raised in low relief and inlaid with something that caught the firelight like a held breath —
A replica of her pendant.
Her own pendant.Exactly.The shape of the stone.The setting.Carved into the cover of a book that had been hidden in her chimney since before her grandmother was born.
"Oh," she whispered.
"Oh," Alsander said behind her.He had risen.He was at her shoulder.
She opened it.
The script inside was nothing she had ever seen.Not English.Not Irish, old or otherwise.The letters didn’t march along the line — theyflowed, curving and interlacing.A script that looked more like a song written down than like writing.
The shapes of the letters were beautiful.
Somehow Poppy knew they were not for human eyes.
She turned the page.Another drawing of her pendant.Full size.Detailed.The stone in its setting, the silver pattern, the chain.Beneath the drawing, lines of the flowing script she couldn’t read.
She turned another.More script.Then a small drawing of a tree — but the tree wasn’t quite a tree.The branches forked into the shapes of animals.The roots forked into the shapes of letters.The whole thing was the same flowing script blooming out of itself.
She turned another.
She looked up at Alsander.
"Can you read this?"
He was looking at the page.His face had gone very still.
"No."
"But you know what it is."
"Yes."
"What is it, Alsander?"
"Elvish.It is written in the tongue of thefae.TheAos Síof the island."
She stared at him.
"You said they left —"
"I know what I said."
His finger had risen.Almost touching the script.Not quite.
