I swallowed, pushing myself up to standing as well. “With all due respect, sir, I am perfectly all right with the notion of dragons remaining extinct.”
“I’m not talking about that brute. That is a shame as well, I suppose—not his fault, really, but that’s the nature of the beast. Chameleomorphs are rare, but they’re hardly one of a kind. My hat, on the other hand, was made from the wool of one of the sole surviving yeti of the Swiss Alps, dyed in ink mixed by Baba Yaga herself, and painstakingly knit by a wood nymph named Agatha, expressly for me.”
“You’re bothered about your hat?”
“It was a birthday present. It had sentimental value.”
I pulled myself out of the trench to survey the damage. At first I was not certain I had climbed up the correct side of the soot-blackened ditch, and when the reality of the scene washed over me, I blanched. The explosion had decimated the landscape. There was nothing left of the colossal dragon save a smoldering fire pit carved into the hilltop and the occasional scraps of ash that drifted to the earth like snowflakes. My eyes stung as I scanned the hill. I could find no trace of the indomitable Nellie Fuller.
Even the fossils she had fallen on had been obliterated. Only a few splinters of bone littered the hilltop. The most spectacular scientific discovery in modern history had been reduced to charred scraps no larger than my pinkie. Not even Horner and Lamb could be bothered to argue over these leftovers.
All across the blackened hilltop, pools of greasy fire danced, and the destruction reached well beyond the dig site. A ring of charred earth half a mile wide bespoke the range of the explosion, and all around its perimeter trees and grass were crackling with orange flames. I cast my gaze down the hill. The field was ablaze. The already damaged barn had been leveled completely, and the Brisbee farmhouse had been ravaged by the blast. A broad section of the nearest wall had caved in, and what little had not been destroyed was now being eagerly consumed by a healthy fire. The farm was gone. The fossils were gone. Nellie Fuller was dead. I sat down on the edge of the trench and watched the ashes spin for a moment while I caught my breath.
Jackaby came over quietly and sat beside me. “There is a solemn dignity in a funeral by fire,” he said softly. “It is an honorable tradition in many cultures.”
I wiped a tear from my cheek with a soot-streaked hand and nodded. Nellie would certainly have preferred to leave this world in a glorious blaze than to remain left on the edges of it like a discarded rag. My throat felt tight.
Jackaby reached down and plucked from the ash a pale sliver. It might have been dragon bone, but it was no larger than a pine needle. He tucked it into his jacket anyway. “I must admit,” he said. “I did not give paleontology enough credit. This pursuit of yours turned out to be of monumental importance after all—and your performance in it admirable.”
“That is . . . generous, Mr. Jackaby,” I said, “but we are literally sitting in the ashes of a disaster we completely failed to prevent. What this pursuit of mine really turned out to be is an especially spectacular failure.”
Jackaby shook his head. “Miss Rook,” he said, “the greatest figures in history are never the ones who avoid failure, but those who march chin-up through countless failures, one after the next, until they come upon the occasional victory.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “Failure is not the opposite of success—it’s a part of it. And as failures go,” he added with a lopsided grin, “this one was really spectacular, wasn’t it?”
The firelight bobbed merrily in my employer’s eyes, and behind him the roof of the farmhouse collapsed into a smoldering heap. I sighed, and in spite of myself I managed a weak smile. “It really was, sir.”