Lyra Thornwing's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

The wyvern had not eaten in nine days, and Lyra Thornwing knew he would not survive a tenth. She crossed the yard at dawn with her journal tucked under one arm and a satchel of fresh goat meat over her shoulder. The little barn she had built for him sat beside her cottage, its door propped open so he could leave if he chose. He never chose. He lay curled in the straw, ribs sharp beneath green scales, watching her with the flat gold eyes of an animal who had decided to die. Lyra set the meat in the woven nest outside his door, where she had laid every offering for a week. Rabbit. River fish. Honeyed lamb. The nest was broad enough for a gryphon and shaded by the oak, and each morning she found the food untouched and stiff with frost. She opened her journal and wrote the date, the weather, the refused meal. Nine days. Beneath that she wrote the sentence she had been avoiding: If he dies, the court will never name me keeper. She struck it through. It was the wrong reason to save him, and she knew it. She sat in the straw beside the wyvern and opened the journal to older pages. Her notes on the female she had released two summers ago. A moon-serpent who had refused water in captivity and drunk from the river the moment Lyra unlatched the crate. She had written then: Some creatures sicken from the walls, not the wound. Lyra looked at the propped door. Looked at the wyvern. He was not caged. He could walk out. He had not. A rustle came from the rafters. Lyra glanced up and found a baby fairy-dragon peering down at her, wings twitching, eyes bright with the kind of hunger the wyvern had lost. The small creature had been living in her barn for weeks, stealing scraps. Lyra had let her stay. Now the fairy-dragon dropped to the straw, waddled to the wyvern's snout, and bit his lip. The wyvern flinched. He had not moved in two days. The fairy-dragon bit him again, then scampered to the nest outside, tore a strip of goat meat, and dragged it back through the door. She dropped it in front of him. She waited. The wyvern lowered his head and ate. Lyra did not move until he had swallowed three strips. Then she wrote in the journal, slowly, in a hand that shook: He was not starving. He was lonely. She closed the book. The fairy-dragon climbed onto the wyvern's shoulder and began grooming a torn scale. Lyra understood, sitting in the straw with two creatures who had chosen each other, that she had solved one problem and made another. The court would not name a keeper who kept a wyvern and an unlicensed fairy-dragon. She would have to decide which truth to tell them.