Darwin's Dragons

by Lindsay Galvin

  My throat filled. I hadn’t imagined this, or anything like this.

  ‘But I can’t, I will not – your reputation, your important studies, your book. It is too much risk to you, sir.’

  When Mr Darwin fixed me with those clear eyes, I saw he was decided.

  ‘It is a risk I choose to take,’ he said, and his voice dropped. ‘The lizards were going to die there, Covington, eventually. With the Queen’s involvement, I could see no way to prevent it. But you . . . you set them free, so I will set you free. I will not argue on this, my boy, it is decided.’

  It was my turn to nod. I thumbed hot tears from the corners of my eyes and edged closer to the fire.

  ‘Farthing wouldn’t leave. I had to shout at her, to make her go,’ I mumbled. Mr Darwin’s eyebrows rose in the middle as he shook out a clean handkerchief and handed it to me.

  ‘That must have been very hard, dear boy,’ he said, and paused, ‘but you did what was best, let them take their own chances. It was brave. Now – you have your own escape to think on.’

  Australia.

  I sniffed. ‘I’ll never be able to thank you, sir,’ I said.

  Mr Darwin poured more tea.

  ‘Well, in that case, we are in the same boat. So to speak.’

  My good master clapped my shoulder, and then squeezed it hard, his hand warm through my damp clothes.

  I saw his own eyes were wet and shining.

  The memory came to me, and I am sure it came to him, of the pitching waves. Of a boy and a man lost at sea, and a rope held tight by two pairs of hands.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Twenty-five years later

  The dark mound of Narborough Island eased closer, silhouetted against the hot blue sky. Eleven-year-old Emmeline Covington’s heart danced in her chest as she gripped the rails of the rowboat. She was really here. The Enchanted Isles, the setting of all her pa’s most fantastical stories. When Pa promised he’d bring her here one day, she’d thought that was one of his stories too.

  It had only been ten days since they left Lima in Peru, but the voyage from Australia had been six weeks, so it was strange that this short trip by rowboat to the island, seemed to be taking longest. Pa’s stories of his adventures on this Galapagos island had been the backdrop of Emmie’s imagination for her whole life, as familiar as the red Australian dust that usually clung to her boots. Until now. Now her boots were salt-stained and bleached by the sun, and she was going to find out how much of Pa’s stories were built of truth, and how much make-believe filled the gaps.

  ‘At least the sea is a little calmer than the first time I visited,’ said Pa, taking a swig from the water flask and passing it to her, ‘a perfect Greenish Blue.’

  Pa was right. There was barely a wave, and the boat rocked gently with the rowing of the men.

  ‘What colour was the sea during the shipwreck storm with Mr Darwin?’ asked Emmie.

  ‘Well, I could barely tell the colour . . . since so much of it was in my eyes,’ a smile was in his voice, ‘but I suppose it was an angry Greenish Grey, with a foam of Skimmed-milk White.’

  Pa had taught Emmie the special colour descriptions that Mr Darwin used from Werner’s book for as long as she could remember. She liked the animal descriptions that went with each colour the best.

  ‘Ahh . . . like the White of the Human Eye,’ she said, smiling, her own eyes clinging to the peak of the island.

  ‘Sounds about right!’ said Pa with a low laugh. ‘Certainly saw the whites of my eyes that day.’

  ‘And Mr Darwin’s!’ she said.

  ‘Definitely Mr Darwin’s. He was never a good sailor at the best of times.’

  At last they hit the shore of Narborough Island. One of the burly sailors swung Emmie down, out of the rowboat on to the jagged rocks, and she wobbled with the strangeness of being on dry land. Her mind wobbled too, with the oddity of the place. Pa had said the Galapagos would be completely different to anything she had seen, but Emmie still hadn’t been prepared. It was so . . . dark and bare. The grey rocks, the black lava plains, the peak of the volcano, no longer smoking. There were no ‘imps of darkness’ lizards that Pa had told her about, but she did catch sight of a few Sally Lightfoot crabs, scuttling between rocks. She’d have to take a closer look later. There were no sea lions either, which was a shame as Farthing’s leap on to the fighting sea lion’s head was one of her favourite stories. But at least there were the white birds with the bright blue feet. Blue-footed boobies. She had always laughed at the name and wondered if Pa had made it up, but now saw how it suited them.

  Emmie approached one of the birds for a closer look, and it didn’t move. She waved at it. It looked away. She took out her tin whistle from her pocket. She’d never taken to the fiddle like Pa and her sister, or piano like Mama and her brothers.

  She played a jolly tune. The bird opened its black beak wide, as if yawning. She laughed and turned to Pa. ‘I don’t think he likes my music.’

  Pa grinned. ‘It was the same when I was here as a boy, the animals don’t know humans, so they haven’t learnt to be cautious . . . although I’m sure he’ll soon learn to be afraid of that whistle.’

  Emmie tried to glare at her pa, and failed.

  The sun pounded hot on the crown of the wide-brimmed straw hat they’d bought to replace her bonnet at the market in Lima. Much to her delight, Pa had also purchased her boy’s clothing in sturdy beige linen, stout boots and canvas gaiters, so she looked like a smaller version of him. It was very strange to wear trousers – so free. She wasn’t sure what Mama would have thought. Pa called it ‘expedition clothing’, essential for where they were going. She thought of Mama now, still unable to believe she had allowed her go. Emmie was the second youngest of eight children, her oldest brothers, Syms Junior and Charles, were both grown up and Syms had been married last year; they were running the Post Office while Pa was gone. Her elder sister, Bess, would help Mama, when she wasn’t out courting with the butcher’s son and playing her fiddle. Eddie, Alf and Phillip would be eating all the bread and butter as quick as Mama could bake and churn it, but they worked hard on the homestead and Phillip had promised to read to her youngest brother, Walter, while she was away.

  Emmie wouldn’t be missed, not really. She’d always been a bit different to the others, with her rock collection, dusty skirts and her tin whistle. Pa was the person she spent most time with. The family were surprised when he told them his plans, but not so much that he was only taking one of them, and it would be Emmie.

  She looked at Pa now. He was gazing up at the volcano through the eyeglass.

  ‘I expect you’ll tell me you are searching for dragons,’ she said. Usually he would have taken this opportunity to tell her every detail about the golden fire-breathing dragon, who had thrown him into the sea and hunted him, about how Farthing had saved him, and then turned out to be a baby dragon herself. Emmie would shake her head and tut, because she was too old for his stories, and Pa would laugh. But today Pa said nothing.

  Emmie followed his gaze, but there was nothing to see. She was more interested in the ground, watching for lizards of green.

  ‘Do you think Darwin’s Dragons are really here, Pa?’

  Pa put his arm around Emmie shoulders and gave her a squeeze.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Emmie pulled the sheets and blankets up to her chin, the slope of the tent canvas was rippling ever so slightly above her in the gentle evening breeze. They’d only had time to explore a little before nightfall, when the two sailors Pa had employed were setting up the camp. Emmie had passed the dead chimney-like fumaroles, and miles of black sandy soil dotted with cactuses, she’d even tried the famous prickly pear; which wasn’t quite as delicious when a person wasn’t marooned and dying of thirst. Her camp bed was set behind a cotton curtain and was as comfortable as she could ask for. Pa’s section of the tent had a small desk and a lamp. She watched his silhouette. Her eyes stung with tiredness, but her mind raced.

  ‘Get some
sleep now, Emmie,’ said Pa, although she hadn’t made a sound. He turned down the lamp, ‘we’ll be up at daybreak.’

  ‘Play for me?’ she said.

  Pa sighed, but fetched his fiddle all the same, and then the swooping notes of the lullaby he’d written for her as a baby filled her ears and switched off her mind. Her eyes instantly grew heavy . . .

  The cream canvas slanting above her suddenly ballooned inwards, with a ripping sound. Pa’s fiddle screeched a jarring note and Emmie gasped and covered her head, thinking something had fallen on them, or the whole tent was coming down.

  ‘Pa?’ She sprung up in bed, as the canvas billowed back out again. ‘Pa! What was that?’ she said, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, staring up at the canvas, blinking.

  ‘Stay where you are, Emmie, don’t move,’ he hissed.

  She hugged herself, teeth clenched tight. It must have been a huge gust of wind? Just out of nowhere? But the canvas was now still, it made no sense. Unless . . . it had been something above, passing overhead. But it would have to have been . . . huge.

  Pa and one of the other men spoke in hushed tones at the entrance of the tent, and then he came back in and crouched by her bed. He tucked in the covers and kissed her forehead.

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘I don’t know for certain. But it’s gone now. Get some rest.’ He looked down at her, but his eyes were far away, and they didn’t seem afraid. They shone in the yellow light of the oil lamp.

  Suddenly Emmie wondered if it was possible Pa had always told her the truth. About everything. That none of it was make-believe. No, that was impossible.

  But whatever made the tent move like that, hadn’t been an albatross, or a blue-footed booby, or a flamingo, or any of the other Galapagos animals he’d told her about.

  There was only one thing in the air that big.

  And it wasn’t . . . real.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  Emmie was surprised when the sailors left early the next morning. The men said they would fish in the waters around this and the other Galapagos islands, and come back the next day. She hadn’t actually thought that her and Pa would be left on the island, alone. She skipped to keep up with Pa’s fast pace, as he cut a straight line towards the centre of the island. He was quiet, his eyes pinned to the volcano.

  Pa had been a bit odd this morning, when she’d asked again about what could have made the canvas billow out that way, he’d just replied that he didn’t know. Every half an hour he stopped to scan the sky with his eyeglass, and on more than one occasion she saw him reading the old crumpled letter from Mr Darwin that he always kept in his breast pocket. It was the one thing he’d always kept secret.

  The sun rose in the sky and passed overhead, and finally Pa stopped and scanned the entire sky. Then he flicked back his hat and used his neckerchief to wipe the sweat from his brow.

  ‘It’s like I can feel them,’ he said, as if to himself.

  ‘The lizards? Farthing?’ asked Emmie.

  He didn’t reply.

  They finally stopped to eat, resting their backs against a fumarole which rose like a black jagged chimney to Emmie’s waist.

  She pointed at a small bird, pecking at a yellow flower on one of the prickly pear cactuses.

  ‘Pa! Isn’t that one of Mr Darwin’s finches? The one with the big beak that you drew for him?’

  ‘Hmm yes. The common cactus finch.’

  Emmie frowned. She’d expected Pa to tell her again about the day he found it, explain the bird had a different beak because it ate different food, and that the birds with the right beaks would breed to produce more birds the same. He’d quote Mr Darwin’s remarkable book, On the Origin of Species, that had arrived in the post last year, which had a whole shelf to itself in the parlour back home, and Emmie wouldn’t interrupt, even though she might have heard this exact part many times before. Emmie suddenly realized that Pa must have started planning this trip just after he received the book everyone was making so much fuss about back in England. The Big Idea Mr Darwin had worked on for so long had made Pa’s former master such a famous man. Pa said Mr Darwin was scared of what people might think of his theory; he joked that he knew the feeling, because his master hadn’t thought much of his own ideas . . . about dragons.

  But Pa was quiet now, chewing slowly, thoughtful. Emmie bolted the cold potatoes, fish and prickly pear, washed it down with water, then slid her tin whistle out of the pocket in her breeches. She played a lively jig Pa had taught her, one from when he was fiddler on the Beagle.

  High fluting notes flew across the empty plain before them, with no echo, snatched by the clear air. She played on, blending one tune into the next, lost in the music, until her father sprung to his feet with a gasp.

  The whistle dropped from Emmie’s mouth.

  ‘What is—’ She stood and clutched Pa’s arm.

  A black silhouette above the peak of the volcano. Bat-like wings, powerful body, legs hanging below. It flew at such speed, it grew bigger by the second, and although Pa pressed Emmie to get down, she grabbed him, and instead he put his arm around her shoulder, and she felt him tremble. They both raised their chins to stare.

  They were powerless, tiny; there was nothing to be done, nowhere to hide, because it was flapping directly towards them.

  A soaring giant of glinting gold.

  A dragon.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  The dragon swooped low, and Emmie’s body told her to crouch and cover her head, but instead she froze, Pa’s strong arm tight around her. She gaped upwards at its pale belly and the mighty claws, as it swept overhead, casting them in its long shadow. The wind from its enormous wings battered their upturned faces, whisking up dust. It raced past, then soared upwards and around, banking back.

  It hovered between them and the volcano, wings spread wide, the bright sky shining through their thin leather. With the sun darting off its scales, the dragon looked like something owned by the Gods of Olympus in the Greek myths Mama used to read to her, and she quaked and clung to Pa.

  The dragon dropped from the sky like a stone, only at the last moment flapping its wings in one final eye-watering blast, and landing gracefully on all four of its powerful legs.

  It was now only fifty or so steps away from Emmie and Pa. A hillock of gold.

  Pa released his hold around her shoulders and turned.

  ‘Stay here,’ he whispered.

  She grabbed his hand to stop him, unable to tear her eyes from the dragon’s head, wider at the top and crested by two deep bronze spiralling horns. Its huge golden eyes flashed, its snout tapered to dark nostrils. Did the fire come from those or its mouth? Emmie couldn’t remember what Pa had told her.

  Pa eased his hand from hers. She wanted to hold on to him, but didn’t dare make a fuss, didn’t dare attract its attention, which was all on Pa. Was this the mother dragon? It certainly looked exactly how her father had described her.

  Emmie swallowed as Pa removed his rifle and placed it on the ground, followed by his knapsack and finally his hat. He had nothing but the clothes he was wearing.

  Pa put out both of his hands, palms up in front of him, and slowly walked towards the dragon.

  How to describe its size? Bigger than four stagecoaches all squashed together, but much longer with its tail as well. Its wings were now folded against its body. Pa stopped only a yard or so in front of it and Emmie’s heart pounded in her throat. The dragon ducked its head, so its eyes were on a level with her father’s, except its head was bigger than Pa’s whole body and its eye bigger than Pa’s head. She gasped with fear for him and covered her mouth to stop herself crying out. It blinked, and then made the most curious sound she had ever heard.

  Something like a rumble that vibrated in the base of her belly, but then turned more like the hoot of an owl.

  And her father . . . laughed.

  The dragon raised a crest of scales behind its horns in a waving motion, and Emmie noticed one was missing.

>   She’d once asked Pa how he could tell Darwin’s Dragons apart, when they all grew to the same size. He said Farthing always had a scale missing on the ruff at her neck.

  Pa had told her – he had told Mr Darwin and Ma too – that the miraculous golden eggs were the dragon’s eggs, that the green lizards Queen Victoria had loved would grow into giant golden beasts . . .

  When he was a boy only a little older than she was now, he’d set them free.

  All this time. All this time, and no one had believed him.

  But Pa’s stories were the truth.

  And now Emmie’s amazing Pa was beside Farthing – Farthing the dragon – and his hand was on the side of her muzzle, and he was talking to her, although Emmie could not hear what he said.

  Her heart danced a jig in her throat, but she could not stop grinning, as she watched Farthing gently butt her nose against Pa’s chest and hoot again.

  She walked towards them, her fear buried under her fascination.

  Emmie gripped Pa’s hand tight, as the dragon swung her head back and arched to look down at her. Farthing’s eyes were impossibly beautiful, no longer copper as a new farthing, but fiery rippling gold, with a deep slit of darkness at the centre. The dragon sniffed and she was so giant, Emmie felt the suction on her clothing. Then Farthing released a gentle hoot, almost a whine, lowered her head and tilted it to one side.

  ‘Stay bricky. She can tell who you are,’ said Pa.

  Emmie shrugged out of his grip, and when she reached up, fingers trembling, the dragon tilted her head further down to meet her. Farthing’s ruff rippled as Emmie’s hand rested beneath her eye. Her scales were warm and smooth, each one the size of her hand.

  Emmie was touching a dragon. This was Pa’s Farthing, all grown up.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR