The Magnificent Monsters of Cedar Street, Page 3

  “I heard about your scuffle with Henry Haddock,” he said, and Cordelia’s heart plunged into her boots. She’d been sure, when her father had said nothing after Cordelia returned home with a scraped knee and swollen cheek, that she would somehow avoid getting into trouble for her latest fight.

  “He told everyone that you were bonkers,” she said. “He told everyone that we keep locked rooms full of eyeballs.” Henry Haddock had said plenty more besides that, over the years. That was not why Cordelia had punched him. But just thinking about what had really happened made her skin tighten with rage, and her fist throb, as if it wanted to punch him again.

  “That’s no excuse,” her father said. “The boy had an eye as swollen as a tomato. He was terrorized.”

  “He deserved it,” she muttered, shoving her hands into her pockets.

  Dr. Clay kneeled so he was face-to-face with Cordelia. The lantern lit up the crags and hollows of his cheeks, and the web of lines around his eyes. Cordelia experienced a sudden shock: her dad was growing old. “I know things aren’t always . . . easy for you,” he said quietly. “I blame myself for that. If you hadn’t grown up among so many monsters—”

  “I love the monsters,” she interjected.

  He smiled. But his smile didn’t reach all the way to his eyes, and once again Cordelia had the impression that he was anxious about something. “I know you do,” he said. When he was very serious, the Scottish accent that had trailed him all the way from Glasgow grew warmer and richer, rolling his vowels and consonants together. “But people can be cruel. They are afraid of what they don’t understand.” He put two fingers under Cordelia’s chin. “You’re too old to be brawling in the street. At St. George’s—”

  “I’m not going to St. George’s,” Cordelia said, for what felt like the hundredth time.

  Even the mention of St. George’s filled her with a vague panic, an image of coffin-like rooms and a thousand girls, all of them as cruel as Elizabeth Perkins, all of them laughing at her.

  Her father shook his head, but he let the subject drop. “You have to learn to control your temper, Cordelia. That’s part of growing up.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to grow up,” Cordelia fired back.

  She expected her dad to yell at her, but instead he just sighed again. He stood up slowly, wincing, as though even his bones hurt.

  “We all grow up, Cordelia,” he said, in a strange voice. “The world changes. We have to change along with it.”

  She knew he was talking about more than her fight with Henry Haddock, but before she could ask him to explain, he was walking again.

  The wind sounded like distant voices, howling and whispering and sighing by turns, and the rain felt like a fine spray of glass against Cordelia’s skin. At one point, she was sure that she heard footsteps behind her and turned, hefting her lantern. A man with glittering shark eyes, a sharp beak of a nose, and neatly parted hair was moving through the mist.

  Cordelia started to call out to her father, but then the man turned down a bend in the path and was gone.

  Cornelius Clay was unusually quiet. Normally, when they were on the trail of a monster, he told Cordelia stories about the world when it was young: a time when the hills of Scotland, where Cornelius had lived until he was twelve, had been packed so densely with werewolves it was death to go out after dark; when phoenix birds warmed their feathers by the high noon sun; when magic and monsters were everywhere. But now he responded to her questions with a grunt, or not at all. She wondered whether he was angry with her.

  For an hour they traveled in silence, their lanterns casting twin circles of light on the rough and rocky ground ahead of them. Cordelia was aware of the faint fizzing sound of the rain against the hills, and of the rustling of the underbrush as unseen animals scurried about their business. She was aware, too, of the smells on the air: wet grass and rotting leaves, and the smell of her father, like lint and tobacco.

  Cordelia’s father had taught her long ago that monsters—who liked the dark and knew all about skulking in the shadows—could be identified not just by sight, but by sound and even by smell. The mordrum smelled a little bit like burnt toast; the filches let out rumbling farts that smelled like rotten eggs. Cordelia had once found a diggle caught in a ditch, its hind leg twisted at a hopeless angle, because of the sudden and overwhelming smell of freshly baked gingerbread cookies.

  Which was why, when halfway across the foothills that rose like gentle waves toward the moon, Cordelia smelled the faintest wisp of acrid smoke on the wind, she knew that they had found their dragon.

  Her father was walking ahead of her, head bent, lost in thought. “Dad—” she started, to call him back to her.

  But she didn’t finish her sentence. Just then a large tangle of briars at her left elbow burst into lively flame, and Cordelia was knocked backward by a sudden whoosh of air.

  Chapter 2

  Cordelia didn’t even register hitting the ground before she was rolling, rolling, away from the still-crackling flames, moving by instinct.

  “Cordelia!” Her father was running down the path toward her, sliding a little on the slope. She fumbled in her rucksack for her goggles and the nubby thick gloves, made of fire-retardant material, that her father had made her. Stupid to have been caught without them. She slipped on the goggles, and then the gloves, just as her father reached her.

  “Are you all right?” He pulled her to her feet. She nodded shakily. “I’m all right.”

  The fire—which had burned hot, in a sudden explosion of blue and pink flames—was already shriveling. As the briars turned black and curled into smoking nothing, the flames withered and died, leaving the air heavy with the smell of bitter smoke.

  “Stay back,” he commanded her. He pushed into the thick tangle of growth, parting hedges and yew branches with his gloved hands, his lantern swinging. But Cordelia took a deep breath and plunged after him.

  It was even darker once they were off the path, and the moon, barely peeking through the storm clouds, was eclipsed by tall, overgrown sycamores and tangles of vines.

  “Where are you?” Cornelius muttered.

  As though in response, there was a low hiss from just ahead, and suddenly the scene was lit up as another low-hanging bush burst into flame. Cordelia caught a quick glimpse of a pair of glittering eyes and felt her stomach drop. A dragon. Then the eyes were gone, and her father was frantically clapping out the fire before it could spread.

  Cordelia saw a sudden movement to her right—a flicker, a slight shifting of the undergrowth.

  “Cordelia!” her father cried, but she ignored him, parting a curtain of hanging vine, ducking under a magnolia branch. Her heart was pounding so hard, it was a constant thrum. A dragon, a dragon, a dragon.

  A twig snapped. She froze, listening. The wind lifted in the trees, carrying with it the sound of her father’s urgent whispers—“Cordelia, get back here, wait for me”—and the smell of singed bark and leaves. Nothing else stirred. The dragon had once again faded away into the darkness.

  Just then her father plunged through the growth behind her, panting, a streak of ash painted from cheek to chin. “Do you want to get yourself killed? Dragons are very aggressive. If we don’t approach carefully, we’ll end up roasted like—”

  “Look out, Dad!” This time, Cordelia had seen the first spark, the two winking eyes. She hurled herself at her father, knocking him out of the way just in time. They rolled several feet, crashing through a mulberry bush, as another portion of the forest turned to flame.

  Cornelius lost his head strap to a clutch of bushes. His lantern went out with the faint tinkle of shattered glass. Cordelia’s goggles were knocked off her head, and she landed with her nose planted directly in a soft pile of dirt. She sat up, sneezing.

  And came nose to snout with the wrinkled, wizened face of the dragon.

  A very, very small dragon.

  It was roughly the size of a kitten. Its wings, when fully extended, were the size of an eagle�
��s, but full of leathery folds, collapsible as a paper fan. In the illumination of the flames reaching for desperate purchase across the wet and leafless winter branches, its eyes were the color of polished moonstone, and when it opened its mouth, Cordelia could see a row of small, sharp teeth, some of them no bigger than a pencil tip.

  “It’s a baby,” she said wonderingly.

  The dragon drew back its gums, as though it was trying to smile. . . .

  A rough hand seized Cordelia by the collar and jerked her to her feet as the dragon released another burst of flame, incinerating the spot where her nose had been only a second earlier.

  “Baby, yes,” her father said. His goggles were hanging crookedly from his nose. “Harmless, no. Did you bring the tuber root?”

  Cordelia nodded. Her cheeks felt hot, as if she’d received a bad sunburn.

  The dragon hopped back a few feet, hissing, passing out of the small square of moonlight that filtered in through the trees. The storm was finally passing. Now Cordelia could barely make out the soft thrush of its wings dragging against the ground—one of them, Cordelia saw, was hanging crookedly, obviously hurt.

  Cornelius touched a finger to his nose, and then pointed to the left. Cordelia nodded again to show she understood, and watched him slip off into the darkness in a rustle of leaves. She had never understood how her father could move so quietly; soon he was nothing but a shadow.

  Cordelia fumbled in her bag for the tuber root—a favorite among dragons, especially growing ones—but could feel nothing in her thick gloves. She hesitated for a second—take the gloves off, and she risked having her fingers turned to toasted marshmallows. But time was running out; if the dragon passed into the shadows again, they might lose it.

  She shook off her gloves, letting them fall into her rucksack, and almost immediately her fingers closed around the narrow jar of tuber root. She popped the lid with one hand and shook a bit of the dark, flaky substance into her palm.

  The dragon hadn’t moved. She could still see it, just barely, its wings fanned across the carpet of leaves and mud. She could hear the whisper of its breathing when it inhaled; faint curlicues of smoke emerged from its nostrils.

  She didn’t know where her father was.

  She took a careful step forward and the dragon scuttled backward, baring its teeth again. Cordelia hesitated, one hand extended.

  “It’s all right,” she whispered, even though she knew the dragon couldn’t understand. “I’m here to help you.”

  Slowly, slowly, so slowly she felt as if she were sinking through a heavy vat of molasses, she lowered into a crouch. The fires were smoldering now, into bare embers. The dragon’s dark eyes watched her, reflecting the miniature swell of a nearly full moon. Now Cordelia’s bare hand was only six inches from the dragon’s nostrils—close enough to be burned.

  Close enough to be smelled.

  The dragon advanced an inch, so that once again the moonlight fell over the ridged peaks of its long snout; over the hard knob of skin between its eyes; over its velvet-dark nostrils, quivering slightly.

  Come on, Cordelia thought.

  Another inch. Now the dragon’s snout was only a centimeter away from her fingertips. Her pulse was going crazy. It could take her hand off in one gulp, or fry her like bacon. She felt the electric heat of its breath every time it exhaled, and had to force herself to stay still, to stay calm.

  Where was her father? What was he doing?

  Suddenly the dragon moved, and Cordelia nearly fell backward, yelping in surprise.

  At the last second, just as the dragon nudged its head into her hand, she managed to right herself. At a slight nod from Cordelia, it hungrily gobbled the tuber root from her hand, avoiding nipping her skin.

  Cordelia wanted to laugh out loud. Her blood was singing. A baby dragon was eating from her palm, its jaw working against her fingers, its hot breath stinging her skin. The dragon smelled like damp leather, and fresh wind, and fire.

  “That’s a good boy,” she whispered. Up close, she could see the small knob on the back of its head that distinguished it as a male. She noted a tear in its left-wing fold, and a place where the bone looked crooked. She felt a surge of pity for the monster. Who knew how long it had been earthbound, or when it had last eaten?

  She hoped that it had not yet developed a taste for human fingers.

  Cornelius appeared behind her. He kneeled to slip a large muzzle over the dragon’s snout. “Gotcha!”

  Instantly, the dragon went still. The muzzle, secured in place by means of several leather straps and made of the same fire-resistant material as Cordelia’s gloves, included soft leather blinders meant to impair its vision. Dragons were extremely dependent on their eyes, and easily confused without use of them. The constant flow of flame through their nostrils meant that their sense of smell was practically negligible, and their ears were comparatively small and unreliable. That was why Digbert had been so miserable when his eyes began to fail.

  For a moment, both Cordelia and her father sat there over the now-subdued dragon, breathing hard. At last, Cordelia’s heartbeat began to normalize. A sense of wonder invaded her whole body. The dragon had touched her. It had licked her.

  Cornelius removed his goggles, resting them on the top of his head, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of a palm. “All right, Cordelia. Fetch your lantern. Let’s see what’s what.”

  She stood up and hurried back the way they had come. Her knees were wet and the wind reached cold fingers down her back, but she barely felt it. She was full of a profound joy: love for her father, love for the shadows and the forest, love for all the strange and wild things that lived there.

  She found her lantern lying in the dirt where she had dropped it. She soon managed to get the wick lit and returned to kneel at her father’s side.

  “Let’s see, let’s see,” Dr. Clay murmured, as he did a careful visual inspection of the dragon for injuries. The lantern illuminated delicate colors threaded through the dragon’s wings: seams of gold and purple and blue and green. “The dingle clips won’t do. Put them back in my bag, will you, Cordelia? It looks like the femur is broken, poor creature. And see where the membrane has ripped away? I don’t want to worsen the tear.”

  He was all business now. He indicated the injury with the tip of a pencil, tracing the outline of the wings in the air, and Cordelia tried to absorb and memorize everything. “He’ll need stitches, too, but that will have to wait. A splint might work, but I’m concerned the trauma is too deep.” He frowned, obviously deep in thought. Then, rousing himself, he replaced the pencil in his jacket pocket. “Better to be safe than sorry. Cordelia, get the rigiwings from my rucksack, will you? The smaller size should do.”

  Once again, Cordelia hurried to obey. How often had she knelt with her father in the thick darkness, tending to a sick or injured monster? How often had he called her to his side, or ordered her to fetch bone splints and cough drops, heart-pumps or tentacle creams? Countless times. Measuring tablets and tinctures, patching wounds, selecting instruments, sweating in the darkness—all of it was familiar to her, as familiar as the sound of her father’s footsteps or the smell of her mother’s perfume, which she could still perfectly recall.

  And yet—for a moment, kneeling beside her father’s rucksack, digging through the jumble of tools and medicines—she was assailed with a certainty as sudden as fear: this was the last time, the very last time, that she and her father would ever save a monster.

  Immediately, she dismissed the idea as ridiculous. As long as there were monsters in the world that needed saving, Cordelia and her father would be the ones to do it.

  The rigiwings were not actually wings, but a series of interconnected mesh plates that somewhat resembled a waffle iron. This, Cornelius eased carefully over the entirety of the dragon’s injured wing, tightening each plate carefully, so that the wing was entirely immobilized. Only then did they risk moving the dragon itself. Cornelius had anticipated they might have to return home f
or the wheelbarrow, but given the dragon’s size, decided it was unnecessary. Instead he removed his jacket, and they bundled the dragon carefully inside it.

  It was unlikely, Cordelia knew, that they would be spotted. Still, the fishermen would stir and the bakers would start kneading their dough, even before dawn. And her father had told her a million times: no one must be allowed to see or know about the monsters.

  “Why?” she had wailed as a young child, when after telling a story about naughty pixies, she had been promptly lashed by Mrs. McDonough—the final and shortest-lived of all her tutors.

  “Most people,” her father had said very slowly, “want the world to look like what they know already. They are afraid of seeing the face of the unfamiliar. That’s why your mother was so determined to . . .”

  He had trailed off, his eyes brightening with tears. Years after her death, Cornelius still struggled to speak his wife’s name. But Cordelia understood.

  Elizabeth Clay, a naturalist, had devoted her life to monsters. She had seen her work on the origin of monsters discredited, ridiculed, even slandered as diabolical—all because she had set out to prove that monsters belonged to the world just as much as people did, that they had evolved just like Mr. Darwin had proved other animals did.

  In the end, she had even died for it—absorbed into the jungle on her final trip to recover a specimen she was sure showed evidence of a branching evolutionary path definitively relating the monster and animal kingdoms.

  She had never returned. Her book had never been completed. And her work would remain forever unfinished.

  “Promise me, Cordelia,” her father had said to her that day. “Swear to me you will never tell anyone about the monsters we keep here.”

  If people knew how many monsters Cordelia and her father were keeping, they would be afraid. They would demand that the monsters be kept in cages, or shipped off to some foreign place or even killed. Perhaps they would want Cordelia and her father to be arrested.

  They didn’t understand that everyone needed saving sometimes. Everyone needed someone to care.