Hollowpox The Hunt for Morrigan Crow - Jessica Townsend Page 0,23
family’s Christmas Eve tradition of sitting by the fire and toasting absolutely any item of food that could be pierced on the end of a stick was one she could really get on board with.)
‘I liked the firebird,’ she said at last.
She couldn’t stop thinking about that firebird, actually. How had he done it? Now that she knew exactly what was involved in the act of bending fire to one’s will – in making it appear seemingly from nowhere – she found this signature move of Saint Nick’s even more mystifying than she had last Christmas.
His mastery of fire was just too precise – had he somehow learned the Wretched Art of Inferno? Was that how he could be so utterly in control of it? Or was this just some elaborate trickery? An act of complicated illusion wrought by many hands, taking practice, precision and planning?
Or … could Saint Nick, perhaps, be a Wundersmith too?
Was that such a ridiculous idea? There used to always be nine, after all – that’s what Elder Quinn had said. Could there be seven others out there somewhere? Could one of them be the jolly man in a red suit who brought presents at Christmastime?
Morrigan smiled a tiny, secret smile. The thought that there might have been another living Wundersmith standing in front of her gave her the strangest thrill of … hope.
But it was a crazy idea. A fantasy.
‘Full credit to the Yule Queen, though,’ Dave was saying when Morrigan emerged from her daydream. ‘That snowdragon was brilliant. Baby Dave said she wants one as a pet, so that’s her next birthday sorted. Ha!’
‘I’ll have a dragon one day. A real one,’ said Hawthorne matter-of-factly, licking toasted marshmallow from his fingers. Helena scoffed, and Homer rolled his eyes heartily, giving a sarcastic thumbs-up. ‘No, I will. I will, Nan said so! She said if I keep going the way I am and training hard, and if I do well in the annual tournaments in the next few years, when I graduate from junior to senior scholar she’ll see about getting me a dragon youngling of my own, to raise up and train to respond only to me. My own dragon, that nobody else can ride! It’s true, Homer, stop laughing.’
Morrigan looked up in surprise at the silent Homer, to find he had indeed written Ha ha ha on his blackboard. As a student of the Conservatory of Thought, Homer had taken a vow of silence for all but one day of the year, so the blackboard went everywhere with him. He had not, however, taken any kind of vow against mockery, sarcasm or scorn, and she liked that about him.
‘Hawthorne-in-My-Side,’ said Helena, as she poked a chunk of cheese onto the end of her skewer. ‘Why are dragon names so stupid?’
Hawthorne screwed up his face. ‘What? Shut up, they are not.’
‘Yes, they are,’ she insisted. ‘They’ve all got those long, pompous names like On a Glorious Flight to Valour and Victory, or Defeats His Enemies with Fire and Fury, or whatever.’
‘Oh, those are tournament names,’ Hawthorne replied with a shrug. He paused to take a noisy sip of hot chocolate. ‘Every dragon entered into a tournament has to have a unique name to log in the record books. It can’t be too close to a name that any other dragon has had in the history of the tournament, and that goes back about four hundred years. So they’ve had to get creative.’
‘They’re not creative, they’re narcissistic,’ said Helena. ‘Like that one who got gold in the Melee last year – Look How Big His Talons Are? I mean, honestly. Everyone knows that whatever name a rider gives their dragon, they’re really talking about themselves. They should just be more honest about it, that’s all. If you do get a dragon, Hawthorne, you should call it something true about yourself, like … I don’t know. Tries His Best But is Mostly an Idiot?’ she finished with a grin.
The Swifts all laughed at that, even Hawthorne.
‘Needs to be more specific,’ said Cat, her eyes twinkling. ‘How about … Practises Posing Heroically in Front of the Mirror?’
‘Nice one, Mum,’ said Hawthorne, reaching over to steal a marshmallow from the end of her skewer. ‘If you had one we could call it Doesn’t Realise How Loud She Snores.’
‘HA!’ Cat threw her head back in a booming laugh. She tossed a piece of popcorn at him in retaliation, but he caught it in his mouth and cheered.