‘We’re accustomed to such doings around here,’ she replied. ‘It’s Griaule’s work. The scale . . . he must have shed it when he was young and it wound up in that jar. For some reason he set you to find it. So you could clean it and rub on it, I imagine.’
In reflex he said, ‘That’s ridiculous.’
With a loose-armed gesture toward Haver’s Roost, she said, ‘Teocinte is gone. How else do you think it happened?’
Aside from grass swaying, palmetto fronds lifting in the wind, birds scattering about the sky, the land was empty. Odd, he thought, that birds would act so carefree with a hawk in the vicinity. Shielding his eyes against the glare, he tried to spot the hawk, but it had vanished against the sun field. His uneasiness increased.
‘We can’t stay here,’ he said.
Sylvia arranged her towel into a makeshift blouse and appeared to be awaiting instruction.
A bug zinged past George’s ear – he swatted at it half-heartedly. ‘Which way should we go?’
She tugged at a loose curl, a gesture that conveyed a listless air – it had become apparent that she had surrendered herself to Griaule or to some other implausible agency. George grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her to him.
‘If this is where Teocinte stood, you know where we can find water,’ he said
Sullenly she said, ‘There should be a creek over that way somewhere.’ She pointed toward the depression in which Morningshade had once sprawled. ‘It was filthy last I saw it, but now, with nobody around, the water ought to be all right.’
‘Let’s go,’ he said, and when she showed no sign of complying, he shoved her forward. She swung her fist, striking him in the forehead, an impact that caused her to cry out in pain and cradle her hand.
‘Are you angry?’ he asked. ‘Good.’
‘Don’t go pushing me!’ she said tearfully. ‘I won’t have it!’
‘If you’re going to act like your spine’s been sucked out, I’ll push you whenever I choose,’ he said. ‘You can mope about and wait to die on your own time.’
5 The process by which Griaule purportedly had been killed took more than 30 years to complete and was achieved by the utilization of arsenic- and lead-based paints in a mural painted on his side. The manufacture of these paints had destroyed the lush forests of the Carbonales (a steady supply of timber was necessary to heat the vats in which the paint was distilled) and placed such a stress on the economy that a number of wars had been fought with neighboring city-states in order to replenish Teocinte’s exchequer.
6 Cele Van Alstyne of Port Chantay, who had secured the rights to Griaule’s heart, estimated to weigh nine million pounds, was desperate to revive her failing pharmaceutical company and initiated legal action. She was joined in this by a group of speculators who had bought the approximately one hundred and sixty million pounds of bones (except for the skull, sold to the King of neighboring Temalagua) and planned to export them to foreign countries for use as sexual remedies, charms, souvenirs, etc.; and by a second consortium who had bought the skin, all two hundred and twenty million pounds of it (not counting the mural, destined to be housed in the Cattanay Museum). Lawyers for the council fought a delaying action, claiming that since the dragon’s death could not be proven absolutely, the lawsuits were invalid.
7 She had adopted this nom d’amour after George expressed dissatisfaction with the first name she gave, Ursula, and a selection process that winnowed the choices down to three: Otile, Amaryllis, and Sylvia. He had settled on the latter because it reminded him of a grocer’s wife he had admired in Port Chantay, a woman from the extreme south of the country, a region ‘Sylvia’ also claimed as home.
8 The excerpt is from the preface to Richard Rossacher’s Griaule Incarnate. Rossacher, a young medical doctor, while studying Griaule’s blood derived from it a potent narcotic that succeeded in addicting a goodly portion of the population of the Temalaguan littoral. After experiencing an epiphany of sorts, he became evangelic as regarded the dragon and spent his last years writing and proselytizing about Griaule’s divinity.
