Somewhere Beneath Those Waves Read Free

campestris ’s skull. “I remember coming here with my brother. We believed they were alive, you know.” She waved a hand at the surrounding skeletons.
    “Indeed.”
    “We thought they watched us—remembered us. We imagined them, after the Museum had closed, gathering in a circle to whisper about the people they’d seen that day and make up stories about us, the same way we made up stories about them.” Her face had lost some of its haggardness in remembering, and he watched her, almost unbreathing.
    “Indeed.”
    “Tell me about them. Tell me about this one.” She pointed at D. campestris .
    “What do you wish to know?” he said, his gaze not following the graceful sweep of her arm, but remaining, anxiously, on her face.
    “I don’t know. We never read the placards, you see. It was so much more interesting to make up stories in our heads.”
    Their eyes met again, as brief as a blow, and then the taxonomist nodded and spoke: “This is Draco campestris , the common field dragon. This specimen is an adult male—you can tell because his wings are fully fledged. He is thirty feet long from snout to tail-tip and would probably have weighed well in excess of three tons. The wings are merely decorative, you understand, primarily used for display in mating rituals. The only dragon which can fly is Draco nubis , the cloud dragon, which is hollow boned—and much smaller than campestris in any event. Contrary to popular belief, campestris does not breathe fire. That would be vulcanis ,” he pointed at the magnificent specimen which dominated the Salle, “which must breathe fire because it would otherwise be unable to move fast enough to catch its prey.”
    “Yes,” the lady murmured. “It is very large.”
    “ Campestris , like the other dragons, is warm-blooded. They are egg-layers, but when the kits hatch, the mother nurses them. It is very rare for there to be more than two kits in a campestris clutch, and the sows are only fertile once every seven years. Even before that Arc was lost, sightings of them were very rare.”
    “Yes,” the lady said sadly. “Thank you.”
    He took a step, almost as if he were being dragged forward by some greater force. “Was there something else you wanted to know?”
    “No. No, thank you. You have been very kind.” She glanced over her shoulder at the doors of the Salle, where the men in suits still waited. She sighed, with a tiny grimace, then straightened her shoulders and defiantly extended her hand.
    The taxonomist’s startle was overt, but the lady neither flinched nor wavered. Slowly, gingerly, he took her hand. He would have bent to kiss it, if she would have allowed him, but her grip was uncompromising, and they shook hands like colleagues, or strangers meeting for the first time.
    Then she released him, gave him a smile that did not reach the fear and desolation in her eyes, and turned away, walking down the Salle toward the men who waited for her.
    The taxonomist stood and watched her go, as unmoving as the long-dead creatures around him.
    At the door she paused, looking back, not at him, but at the great skeleton towering over him. Then one of the men in suits touched her arm and said something in a low voice. She nodded and was gone.
    x.
    Even the Museum cannot preserve everything, though it is not for want of trying. The Director is vexed by this, perceiving it as a failing; tithe-children and curators are allied in an unspoken conspiracy, tidying the riddles and fragments out of her way on her stately progresses through the departments and salles of the Museum.
    But always, when she has gone, the riddles come out again, for scholars love nothing more than a puzzle, and the tithe-children have the gentle persistent curiosity of Felis silvestris catus , as that species is classified in those arcs to which it is native, or to which it has been imported. It is as close as they come, curators and tithe-children, to having conversations, these attempts to solve