Page 38 of The Teacup Dragon Sanctuary

Listen to the song.

The stronger the emotion

the less it will go wrong.’

Fi was right. It didn’t make any sense at all.

Portia turned the page, but the map had vanished. Just like her copy of it. When she turned back, the note was gone as well.

She let out a growl of frustration. ‘Not now, Uncle Art.’

There wasn’t time for this. Not for any of it. But when this was all over she was going to have a very serious discussion with Seb about this book and what else it might contain. Had he been hiding it from her? All the magic, all the secrets it could hold…

She pulled in a breath and let it out slowly, carefully composing herself. Throw all you have into this. She could do that. She had to.

Portia kept Jade with her as she worked. She distilled the moonflowers exactly as instructed, added the other ingredients, each one carefully measured and prepared. She whispered constantly to Jade, telling her what she was doing, that it was going to help, that it had to work.

Because it had to.

Cross referencing with her own, and Milo’s notes, Portia sketched out the sigils she had designed, and fixed her mind entirely on her intentions – to heal, to restore, to bring back balance with the thaumaturgical threads within the land and those who needed its touch. Ophelia came and went, keeping her up to date on the teacup dragons as morning came. August’s boyfriend Weir continued to play music to them which seemed to be helping. He sang in a rich baritone, the songs permeating the castle like ghosts. She only hoped that when her brother inevitably messed this relationship up, it wasn’t a disaster. He was kind. The dragons loved him. Music and magic often went hand in hand, could strengthen the simplest spell and…

Portia stared at the incantation she had planned to read out. She had heard music. The threads had responded to her voice. She had heard the song, like the one her father used to sing and…

Listen to the song…

Was it as simple as that?

Instead of an incantation, a song?

She kindled the witchfire beneath the flask. If she was wrong about this, or if Milo had made a mistake about the vibrations affecting the outcome…

Music was just another kind of vibration, wasn’t it?

There wasn’t time to test it further. There wasn’t time to gather more ingredients. The moonflowers were from Starling Island and once upon a time, the island had been famous for the quality of its magical ingredients. It was the reason Art’s emporium had been so renowned.

There was a well of magic here. She had seen it herself, even if no one else had. And right here, right now… she needed it to work. For Jade’s sake. She needed to reach out to the magic of the island itself.

Portia lifted her voice in song and to her amazement, Jade joined in, the little teacup dragon singing along with her, harmonising beautifully. She closed her eyes to listen and once she did that it was like falling into the light again. The island stirred around her, the rocks beneath her, the trees on the hillside, the waves on the shore and the wind that whirled around the very top of the castle. It was all a song, all interlinked, and right at the heart of it, right at the heart of her, she sensed those glowing threads of magic, as pure and as powerful as they had seemed to her when she almost lost herself in them.

She felt the change, that alchemical transformation. It shivered through her and wound itself around her song. It stole her breath, and yet the song kept going. It threaded its way through the castle corridors, rose up through the snuggery. Another voice joined in. Seb. It sounded like Seb. It had to be. Singing to the dragons as he sank effortlessly into the magic with her. He probably didn’t even realise what he was doing.

And not just Seb. Fi was there too, humming along as she busied herself in the kitchen. So was August, sitting with Weir as he played his lute. The bard’s magic was as potent as her brother’s. Perhaps they weren’t aware of what they were doing but it didn’t matter. The spell was rising, powerful, spiralling upwards. Music was the key.

The teacup dragons stirred, their wings spreading and Portia felt Iris as well, her great-aunt an anchoring point, the one thing they could all rely upon. Always.

The dragons took flight in the snuggery once more, the magical energy filling them, singing as they looped and dived like a whirl of colour in the morning light.

Portia drew in a single, shuddering breath as she came back to herself, just for a moment, focused on the flask containing the elixir, and released everything into it.

It was the only hope she still had.

In her mind’s eye she saw Noah, standing outside the cave in the rain, holding her, so close to kissing her, his eyes aglow with desire. It was an impossible thing, a dream she never thought to have. It was pure and perfect. A perfect moment filled with endless potential.

She felt everything change, felt the threads of power burst back into life through her, in her, felt the island stir and awaken and see her, as if a great leviathan had suddenly opened an eye, and smiled.

Downstairs, Ophelia gave a cry of alarm as the teapot slipped from her hand and smashed on the kitchen floor. Portia felt the surge of desire as Weir paused in his song to kiss August, and August smiled against his lips. In the snuggery, Seb laughed out loud, a sound of wild delight as the whirl of the dragons settled on him, all of them bathing in the magic that came from him as naturally as breath. She felt Iris’s heart race with joy when she looked at the dragons moving through the air. All those emotions coalesced within her chest.

Something else moved, something deeper shimmering through the whole island, stirring up every artifact in the emporium so much that Lore the raven cried out in rage at the arcane interference in his world. In the library the books fanned out their pages, the rustling of the leaves like a storm tearing through the forest.