The Dragon in the Cliff by Sheila Cole Read Free Book Online Page B

resting place on the cliff, that much I remembered, but beyond that I had no recollection of them at all. I would have to go back to look for them as soon as the coach left, as frightening as that might be. This time I would make certain that the tide was out.
    The press of work did not allow me to dwell on my loss. I did not have many curiosities prepared, and there was only time to prepare one more, which I did as quickly as I could with the few tools left in the shop.
    Time flew by as I worked and soon the church bell chimed two o’clock, the signal for me to put curiosities out on the table we kept outside the shop to attract travelers. Try as I might, the table looked bare. I searched through the shop for more attractive curiosities, but I could find only verteberries. I swept the whole lot of them into my apron and carried them to the table. There were eight of them—laid out in a row I thought that they looked as if they might belong together. As I was laying them out I recalled a conversation Papa and I had once had about verteberries. I had asked him if there were dragons in England. “Mr. Whitecomb says that the verteberries are the backbones of a dragon,” I explained, mentioning the name of a prominent member of our meeting.
    Papa had smiled at my question. “Some say that. Others say they belong to a crocodile. Whatever beast they are from, it was a big one. And it lived long ago, maybe even before the flood. No one has ever seen a crocodile or a dragon in England in our time. But you never know, Mary, you never know. There are strange things on this earth.
    â€œMr. Johnson, from Bristol, he’s interested in the verteberries we find in the cliffs. I asked him what creature they came from. He has been to university, but he does not know. Says no one does. We don’t have enough pieces of the beast to know yet, but someday we will.”
    â€œHow would they know if all the pieces came from the same creature?” I asked him. “They are all a jumble when we find them. Could be several different creatures mixed up together.”
    â€œJohnson tells me that collectors and scientists have their way of working these things out. But I tell him, they could be wrong and never know. Best thing is to find a skeleton in one piece. Then you know what it is. ‘Well,’ says he, ‘Find it, Anning, find it.’”
    The sound of iron wheels and horses’ hooves brought me back to the present with a start. An elegant carriage had come to a stop right in front of me. A footman dressed in livery was shouting to me, “Tell Anning that Squire Henley is here.”
    â€œMr. Anning died in November, sir,” I said.
    â€œBut this is Anning’s curiosity table, is it not?” he asked.
    I nodded.
    At that moment, Squire Henley reached over the carriage door with his cane and knocked on the side to be let out. The footman, a round, short-legged man, rolled himself down from his perch in back and went to help the Squire out of the carriage.
    Squire Henley was an impressive-looking man—dressed in the old manner with knee britches instead of trousers and powdered hair—he was tall, with dark, quick eyes set in a square-jawed face. “Did I hear you say that Anning is dead?” he asked, striding over to the curiosity table. Without waiting for me to answer, he picked up a curiosity and examined it.
    â€œYes, sir,” I answered with a curtsy.
    â€œBut then whose curiosities are these?”
    â€œThey are mine, sir. I am his daughter.”
    â€œYou mean to tell me, lass, that you go down to the shore and dig these fossils out yourself?”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    He picked up a verteberrie, then another, examining all of them in turn. “Where did you get these vertebrae?”
    It was the first time I had heard the word said that way, and I repeated it in order to remember it. Squire Henley must have thought that I was asking a question