Seraphina(30)

Where was she, though?

“Who’s there?” she said abruptly, nearly startling me out of the vision altogether.

The shape I had mistaken for statuary moved, was moving, slowly, one arm raised, feeling around in the empty air as if she were blind, or as if she were looking for something invisible.

“I don’t know who you are,” snarled the old woman below me, “but you have two choices: identify yourself, or wait for me to find you. You don’t want the latter. I don’t care if it’s the middle of the night. I will come straight to you, and I will make you sorry.”

I was still having trouble recognizing her. I blamed the firelight, but it wasn’t just the poor illumination. She looked different.

She was unclothed and far skinnier than she appeared with her gown on. In fact, she looked almost boyish. Was her portly bosom all made up of padding? I’d caught her in the middle of getting ready for bed, clearly, and while I was utterly embarrassed, I couldn’t seem to blink or turn away. One would think such a high lady, even one with fictitious breasts, would have servants to undress her.

Then I saw why not, and the shock of it threw me straight out of the vision and back to myself.

I felt like I’d fallen into my own bed from a considerable height; I was dizzy and disoriented and agog with what I’d seen.

She had a tail, a stubby one, shingled over entirely with silver scales.

Scales just like mine.





I pulled the covers over my head and lay there shivering, horrified by what I had seen, doubly horrified at my own horror, and absurdly excited by the implications.

She was a half-dragon. Surely there was no other way to interpret those scales.

I was not the only one of my kind! If Miss Fusspots was half dragon, could that mean that the rest of my grotesques were as well? Suddenly all the horns and wattles and vestigial wings in my garden made sense. I’d gotten off lightly with nothing but visions, scales, and the occasional blizzard of maternal memory.

I was still awake an hour later when there came a pounding at my door.

“Open this door at once, or I shall fetch the steward to open it for me!”

Miss Fusspots’s voice was perfectly recognizable through the door. I rose and crossed through my parlor, preparing an explanation. Fruit Bat had sensed my presence, but no one else in a vision ever had. What had changed? Seeing her in the real world? Being so near? If I had known she would detect me, I never would have looked in on her like that.

There was nothing to do but apologize. I opened the door, prepared to do just that.

She hit me right in the face, with a bloom of stars and a burst of pain.

I staggered back, dimly aware that my nose was gushing. Miss Fusspots stood in the doorway, brandishing an enormous book—her weapon of choice—breathing hard, a maniacal glint in her eye.

She paled when she saw me bleeding, which I mistook for a sign of impending mercy. “How did you do that?” she snarled through clenched teeth, stepping up and kicking me in the shin. She swatted at my head again, but I managed to duck; her arm left an incongruous waft of lilac perfume in its wake. “Why are you spying on me?”

“Nggblaah!” I said, not my most cogent explanation, but I was unaccustomed to speaking with my face covered in blood.

She stopped kicking me and closed the door. For a moment I feared that meant she intended something worse, but she wet a cloth at the basin and handed it to me, gesturing at my nose. She seated herself on the spinet bench while I cleaned up; her toadly mouth worked up and down, from disgust to annoyance to amusement and back. She was dressed now, of course, her figure back to its stout dignity.

How did she contrive to sit on that tail? I dabbed at the blood on my chemise, to keep myself from staring at her.

“Forgive me, lady,” I said, pressing the reddened cloth to my nose again. “I don’t even know who you are.”

Her brows shot up in surprise. “Is that so. Well, I know who you are, Maid Dombegh. I’ve met your father. He’s an excellent lawyer, a humane and gentle man.” Her expression grew stern. “I trust you take after him in discretion. Tell no one.”

“Tell no one what? That you arrived in the middle of the night to beat me up?”

She ignored that; she was scrutinizing my face. “Maybe you didn’t understand what you saw.”

“Maybe I saw nothing.”

“Liar. I followed my stomach here, and my stomach is never wrong.”

The word liar rankled; I shifted in my seat. “How did you know you were being watched? Could you see me?”

“No. I felt a presence—eyes upon me? I can’t explain—I’ve never felt such a thing before. Was it sorcery? I don’t believe in that, but then, I imagine there are people who don’t believe in the likes of me, either.” She folded her arms across her artificially portly bosom. “I am out of patience. What did you do, and how did you do it?”

I worried the bloody cloth between my hands and sniffled dismally; the inside of my nose smelled of iron. I owed her an explanation, maybe even the truth. She was a half-breed like me; she must have felt as utterly alone. I could let her know she wasn’t just by pulling up my sleeve and showing her my scales.

I had dreamed of this, but now that it came to it my voice didn’t work. The sheer weight of my intention hunkered down on my chest. I could not do it. Something would prevent me. The Heavens would cave in. I would roll up my sleeve and burst into flame. My chemise sleeve was unbound. I raised my hand high and let the loose sleeve fall away from my wrist, exposing my arm up to the elbow.