Lyra Thornwing's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Lyra rode into the market village at midday, hoping to buy a licensing form and read it in private before she chose which creature to declare. She tied her horse near the well and walked toward the clerk's office. She did not reach it. A notice board stood at the crossroads, and a fresh flyer had been pinned dead center. A cheerful drawing of a fairy-dragon smiled out at her. The word MISSING ran across the top in thick brown letters. Below it: Answers to Little Wind. Reward offered. Inquire at the tavern past the mill. Lyra took the flyer down, folded it small, and put it in her pocket. She knew the tavern. She had passed it that morning without noticing the new sign hung above the door, or the pens visible through the side yard fence. Someone had turned the place into a shelter for strays and lost pets. A tower rose off the back for flyers. She could hear a goat bleating from inside. She walked there because pretending she had not seen the flyer would be worse than knowing. Inside the tavern a woman sat at a long table with a stack of the same flyers and a ledger open beside her. She had the tired eyes of someone who had been asking the same question in every village for a week. She looked up when Lyra came in. Lyra did not sit. She asked how long the fairy-dragon had been missing. Sixteen days, the woman said. She lifted a small painted collar from the table. Little Wind had chewed through it and slipped the yard during a storm. The woman turned the collar so Lyra could see the name stitched inside. Lyra thought of the baby fairy-dragon curled against the wyvern's shoulder that morning, grooming a scale she had already cleaned twice. She thought of the wyvern eating for the first time in nine days because that small creature had bitten his lip. She thought of the keeper's post, and the license she did not have, and the moon-serpent she had once carried to the river. She set the folded flyer on the table. She said she had seen the fairy-dragon in her barn. She said the creature was well, and fed, and she would bring her back the next morning. The woman began to cry, and thanked her, and offered the reward. Lyra refused the coin. She rode home with the flyer still in her pocket and one problem gone and another sharpened to a point. The wyvern would be alone again by sundown tomorrow. He had eaten because of the fairy-dragon, not because of her. She had until morning to find another way to keep him eating, or she would lose him after all, and with him the post she had not yet told anyone she wanted.