Flexing his lean muscles, Gabriel shrugged. “It’s fun hopping from roof to roof and bombing cats with water balloons, but it gets pretty boring when you can’t show anyone your flying acrobatics.”
“Can’t show anyone?” Elam repeated. “Why not? Do you keep your wings a secret?”
Sadness clouded Gabriel’s face, belying his painted-on smile. He pointed with his thumb. “I stuff them in a hiking backpack like a pair of huge socks. My mother cut holes in the panel that goes next to my back to let my wings fit through, but they’re always trying to escape.”
Elam rose to the balls of his feet, stretching to get a look at Gabriel’s back. “So do you have holes in your shirts, too?”
“Yeah, but it’s a real pain. I have to ”
“Gentlemen.” Patrick gestured toward the table. “Please sit. We can talk about dragon-wing accessories another time, but right now we have more important matters to discuss.”
Elam and Gabriel took seats across from each other. Patrick withdrew a velvet jewelry box from his pocket and opened it as he set it on the table. Inside, a red gem sparkled at the center of an octagonal pendant. “The gem,” he said, lifting it by its chain, “is a rubellite. And not just any rubellite; it belongs to Timothy, Gabriel’s father.”
Elam reached over and tapped the swaying pendant, making it twirl. “But since Timothy is Makaidos, isn’t he your father, too? And wouldn’t that make Gabriel your brother?”
Patrick nodded. “Makaidos was my father, but whether or not Gabriel could be called my true brother, I cannot say for sure. You see, I was born to dragons, and he was born to humans, one of whom was transformed under Merlin’s prophecy and one who was apparently generated, if you will, from scratch. Although the transformed dragons never intramarried, knowing they could not procreate with each other, Makaidos was exempt from that incapacity since he was not part of Merlin’s prophetic group.” He let out a long sigh. “So, as you can see, Gabriel and I have extremely peculiar genealogies, and our relationship is uncertain.”
Elam nodded toward Gabriel. “You said he inherited the wings from his mother. How do you know that? Both his parents had wings.”
“From blood tests. Timothy has no traces of dragon blood in him, while Hannah and I show some unique cellular structures that I don’t yet understand.”
“Why is Timothy different?” Elam asked, but when he saw Gabriel’s gaze tip downward, he regretted his question.
“I wish I knew,” Patrick replied. “I can only deduce that God removed his dragon nature and gave him a human soul.”
Gabriel’s head perked up. “Don’t you have a soul?” he asked Patrick.
“I do, but not a human one. At least that’s what Merlin told me.”
“Merlin told me the same thing about the transformed dragons,” Elam said, glad to turn the examination toward Patrick. “You’re somehow both dragon and human, but without a human soul.”
“Merlin told you?” Gabriel asked, swinging his head toward Elam. “He lived over a thousand years ago, and you can’t be older than a couple of hundred.”
Patrick raised his hands, laughing. “As you both can see, there are many questions to answer, and I will allow the two of you to converse at length some other time. For now, however, we must plan our strategy.” He reached under his chair, pulled out a briefcase, and withdrew a ragged scroll of yellowed parchment. Carefully unwinding it, he laid it across the breadth of the table, giving Elam one of the rollers and Gabriel the other.
Patrick ran his finger along the text. “This is a missive from Merlin to Morgan that I . . . well . . . intercepted from Devin. As you can see, through about two-thirds of the scroll, the lettering is in the old style, but from there until the end, it is written in modern English.”
Elam leaned forward and gawked at the parchment. “Did you write the new stuff?”
“No. When I first read this letter centuries ago, Merlin had not used the entire scroll. I would guess about one foot of parchment was blank. I only discovered this new entry a week ago while I was deciding what I could show to Charles to help him translate the letter from Timothy and Hannah.”
Patrick tapped his finger on the first line. “If you please, Elam.”