"I have now told all," said Faustus.

"Hardly," Alice retorted – though she had to admit, she had been afraid at one point he would never stop.

She was feeling – as she always did when she heard a story – frustrated by the stupidity of everyone involved. That ridiculous Eve-creature and her poetic punishments! Condemning her sister to love a mortal without a thought for the consequences! How many deaths could have been avoided if she'd just slapped her on the wrists? Or even executed her? Alice had a proper scientist's contempt for capital punishment, but in this case it really seemed to be the lesser of two idiocies.

And Myrrha herself! Alice had an instant antipathy for her. Oh, she understood the need to experiment – she understood the all-consuming desire for everything to be perfect, and the frustration of realizing other people didn't share it. But this was all the understanding she was prepared to do. 

In the name of science, Myrrha had spread stupidity like fertiliser across a field. She had caused the trial and execution of the Eve-creature, which had made relations between humans and new-breeds prickly for the next three hundred years. And she had tried to mould a young boy into a perfect husband, using methods that might have been called evil if they were remotely comprehensible.

Did you really get a strong man from a starved and abused child? Or did you get what Robin Crake undoubtedly was – a child in man's clothing, scratching and screaming when he didn't get his way? In Myrrha's case, the reasoned logic of centuries could have been replaced by the common sense of a village idiot and it would still have yielded better results! Alice felt sickened to have even heard about it.

But, at the same time, she felt... bubbly. Effervescent. And not in a warm way. She wanted to talk a lot and do a lot, and show everybody where they were going wrong. She wanted to chivvy everyone into action. 

Most of all, she believed, she wanted to ride the dragons, because they could move as quickly as her thoughts, and were just as lithe and dazzling.

She and Faustus were alone now. Val had lost interest and skulked off as soon as the story had started to revolve around Robin Crake. Alice had let the old man talk, because it was – in places – quite interesting, but the more light-bearing roots she had eaten, the more often her eyes had turned to the window-shaped opening into the dragons' cave, where they curled around great stalagmites like silver ribbons, occasionally raising their heads to sniff the air. 

Could they sense her eagerness? Her impatience to be off? She didn't have a destination in mind, she was just sure she could make a positive difference if she got out of this cave, where the air was as stale and ponderous as the old man.

She pushed her hair back from her eyes and tried to martial her skepticism. She wasn't sure she disbelieved the old man, but it seemed like the only reasonable place to start.

"Very well," she said. "So Robin Crake found the place where Myrrha was keeping your journal, and read it. Is that supposed to prove something? You ended on that revelation with such a flourish that I'm inclined to think so, and yet I can't for the life of me imagine what you mean."

"Why, that he now knows how Myrrha may be ended," said the old man. "Recall you not that that Eve and I purposed the city to be her executioner? We each of us set a guardian in place to preserve the city 'gainst our return, and to harness the city's power that we might end Myrrha's life – all which was set down in my journal, all which the Kraken hath now read. I'll answer for it, he is our ally. He it is to whom you must turn next."

"I?" said Alice, placing a hand on her chest. "Why should it concern me?"

Faustus frowned. "Know you not why? Truly?"

"I can't imagine what you think I'd gain by pretending."

"'Tis your business more even than it is my own," said Faustus, in a burst of wide-eyed amusement.

"I will ask you once again why you think this should be."

"Lady, you are the last of my line. You it is who I appointed guardian of Oxford 'gainst the time Eve should return. You it is who, in concert with the city's other guardian, may end Myrrha's life – such life as she has yet. You are her adversary as sure as Satan is the Lord's."

Alice opened her mouth, half-appalled and half-derisive. Strangely enough, at this moment – this of all moments! – she found her eyes sinking once again below his waist. Was he telling her he was her great-great-something grandfather and still refusing to put on clothes? Wasn't that tantamount to child abuse? It seemed as bad as anything Myrrha had done to Robin Crake.

Did she disbelieve him? It almost didn't matter. His whole story might have been true, or it might have been a fantasy. She would find it equally maddening either way.

She realized this had always been the case, throughout her life. She had found fairytales every bit as infuriating as real-life stupidity, because both of them had influence. Both might be copied by the credulous masses, in more or less literal ways. 

If Alice could have climbed into a fairytale with a frying-pan and whacked all the gullible heroines over the head, she would have done so. Perhaps this was exactly what she meant to do – albeit without the frying pan. Was there a better way of getting into a fairytale than riding a dragon?

"I'm not going to kill anyone," she said at last. "Why should I?"

"For that she can divest her sister of her power, and bring all to hang their heads before her – at which time it will avail nothing to oppose her! It will be not only demon heads she makes to bow."

"I've seen no evidence that she can do any such thing."

"The evidence of it will be the doing of it!" Faustus insisted. "Seek you a demonstration of her power? Then hie thee to the Kraken, he'll answer for't."

He was getting hysterical. Alice raised a hand to calm him, and then realized she hadn't the patience. She slapped him instead.

The old man was tough as teak, and dry as an Egyptian mummy. Her hand made a leathery sound across his cheek that made her think longingly of balms and lotions.

"Calm yourself, sir. I realize you haven't been in civilized society for a good while, and I've made allowances for your deficiencies, but my tolerance has limits. Now that you've revealed yourself – in every possible way – perhaps you will allow me to tell you my story. I am no murderer, and I'm no fool. You have talked at great length without offering a shred of substantiating evidence. And let me be clear – a modern transcript of an ancient document is not evidence. A Renaissance turn of phrase and a disregard for clothing is not evidence. An underground stable full of dragons is not evidence, unless it's evidence of cruel neglect towards your fellow creatures."

She stopped and narrowed her eyes, because the old man was smiling. Perhaps he knew what she was going to say next. She said it anyway.

"You needn't be afraid that I haven't heard or understood you. I have done both – I simply don't trust you. I'll get to the bottom of this matter on my own, and I will decide what should be done next, and I will do it. It is not that I disbelieve in magic, or in prophecies, or in dragons. I just disbelieve in you."

***

Ellini knew they were getting close to Alice Darwin when bats started hurtling down the tunnel in the opposite direction. It wasn't that she was loud – she was never loud – her voice just had a prickly authority that worked in the same way as volume. 

They turned a corner, and Ellini saw her, outlined in the doorway of a dimly-lit chamber ahead. She turned at the sound of Val's boots on the gravel, and pinned both of them with a look.

The sight of her, as always, made Ellini want to step back and shield herself. How could you have breasts that big and a waist that small, even with the most sophisticated corsetry? How could someone so beautiful be so impatient? Was it because people were always gawping at her and trailing off in the middle of their sentences?

Ellini had been trying to assemble her words for the past half-mile, but, in the face of Alice's glare, they scattered like pigeons.

She had wanted to say thank you. Thank you for standing up for me when no-one else would, and throwing hymn-books at that gargoyle. I can't explain what you saved me from. I can't explain how alone I felt. I know the very sight of me makes you angry, but I promise I'm not doing it just to spite you. I can't be the fast-thinking, practical woman you want me to be, but I appreciate you, Mrs Darwin, and I always will, because you think tolerance is logical. How many other people in the world can say the same?

She didn't say any of that, dearly as she would have liked to. She said, "I – I-" until Mrs Darwin snapped her lips into a smile and took charge.

"Ah, Miss Syal. So good of you to join us. I'm not at all surprised to find you amongst the living, and nor do I require an apology for the madness you directly – and perhaps willingly – caused by pretending to be dead."

Ellini tried throwing another strangled "I-" into the conversation, but it was swept aside.

"Allow me to introduce you to Doctor Faustus," said Alice, motioning to a bent and silvery figure behind her. "Living proof that one should never meet one's heroes – or, if at all possible, one's family. Try not to stare. If you could keep him entertained while I go riding, I would be marginally grateful. When I come back, we'll see about avoiding the perilous situation he will no doubt have sketched out for you."

One shock followed another after that. Ellini had barely focused on the old man – the naked old man, whose beard, though formidable, was not quite long enough to cover him – when Alice hauled herself onto the ledge of an opening in the cavern wall, and dropped through.

Ellini started forwards, but when she got to the window, she saw that Mrs Darwin had landed quite daintily on a pile of scree and rubble that sloped down into an immense darkness, punctuated with silver.

It took a few moments of staring for her to realize that the silver things were alive – were raising their heads and blinking sedately, putting forth quizzical, lightning-fast tongues, as if to taste Mrs Darwin on the air. 

They were more serpent-like than dragon-like, and yet Ellini could see perfectly streamlined wings tucked away on their backs, like folded and pressed laundry.

She recognized them instantly. They were bigger than the sticky, spiky creatures that had hatched from her eggs in that moon-bright pool in Edinburgh, but she still knew them. She remembered the way they had felt in her hands. Stirring and prickling with new life. Bits of eggshell still clinging to their scales. 

She remembered lifting each one to her mouth and whispering her message  – the vaguest message in the world, even though she had been thinking about it from the moment she'd met him. 

Dear Jack, 

Don't despair. 

Love, 

Ellini.  

Could it really be them? Dragons lived a long time, but it had only been – what? Twelve years ago? She knew they had never delivered their message – Jack would have mentioned something like that – but that didn't necessarily mean they had died. She'd given them no deadline, and twelve years was probably the blink of an eye to a dragon.

Alice was now seated decorously on the largest dragon's back. She had arranged her skirts to cover every inch of her legs, but she was never going to be one of those women who rode side-saddle.

The smaller dragon was waddling to its feet too, unfolding silky-fine wings. They looked as delicate as a butterfly's, and were almost translucent. Ellini could see a skeleton of bones and sinews mapped out inside them, not gruesome but beautifully functional.

It looked determined – if it was possible for an animal to look determined. It might have been surplus to requirements, but it was not going to miss out on a flight.

Ellini had expected them to exit through the roof, but they ducked low under a ledge instead and leapt headfirst into – a chasm? Another cave? The centre of the earth? 

She saw no more after that. Her last glimpse of them was a careless flick of the second dragon's tail – the one that had no rider. And she thought peevishly, but much too late, that the second rider should have been her.

To be Continued...