The Serpent in the Glass (The Tale of Thomas Farrell) by D.M. Andrews Page A

you OK?’
    ‘Yes, yes,’ Thomas replied, beginning to walk again.
    Jessica eyed him with a little concern, but then her face returned to its normal exuberance. ‘It means ‘valorous man’. One of your ancestors must’ve been called Fearghal!’
    Thomas nodded as casually as he could. Jessica had no idea just how close that ancestor was. How strange that his father’s surname should have the same meaning as his first name. Jessica of course had no idea. He’d told no one his father’s or mother’s first name since Mr Trevelyan had revealed them to him, and Jessica hadn’t been close enough to overhear, despite her fondness for eavesdropping whenever she had the opportunity.
    It was nearly nine o’clock when Thomas heard Jessica’s familiar footsteps racing up the ladder. The next thing he knew, a book landed on his chest as he lay there in bed. If it’s not maps, it’s books, he thought to himself.
    ‘Mum and Dad are watching that silly programme on TV again, so I thought we’d make good use of the time.’ Jessica sat down beside Thomas’s dog-basket bed with a book in her hand.
    Thomas didn’t know what ‘silly programme’ she was referring to, but she seemed satisfied that the Westhrops weren’t going to be leaving the living room for a while, so he sat up and stared at the book on his bed. ‘What’s this?’
    ‘A book.’
    Thomas shook his head. ‘Yes, I know — I mean—’
    ‘It’ll complete our research. That book and this’ — she held up her own book entitled Snakes and Other Reptiles of the Amazon Basin — ‘were the last ones in the wildlife section. I booked them out the library after you left to eat.’
    Thomas looked down at the title on the black cover of the book before him: Beasts of Legend . He rubbed his eyes and looked at the box next to his bed where lay the receptacle that held his filtered contact lenses. Reminding himself that he had perfect eyesight, he sat up. Jessica was the only person who ever saw his bright green eyes these days, eyes that had become far brighter than Jessica’s as the years had passed. But she didn’t seem to share her mother’s aversion to them. Perhaps they didn’t show so well in the poor light of the dim bulb. The loft was the only place he was allowed to go without wearing his lenses.
    Thomas flicked the book open and found the first page with a picture: a unicorn standing in a forest by a pool of water. He yawned and looked up at Jessica. She was lost in her book, her free hand idly playing with her hair as she scanned each page for reptilian images. The nearest thing they’d found to the creature in the glass so far had been a lizard with a web of skin around its limbs, but it was still a poor likeness.
    ‘I think this was on the wrong shelf, Jess.’ He turned another page half expecting to see a mermaid or something similar, but instead saw something he wasn’t expecting at all. ‘Look at this!’
    Jessica moved around to see. A black-and-white drawing of a creature very similar to the one in the glass stared up at them. Thomas looked at the title above the image: The Great World Serpent . What did it mean by ‘serpent’? The question was answered by Jessica as she read out the words beneath image.
    ‘In myth, a serpent was another name for a dragon or wyrm, usually of the longer, more sinuous variety.’
    Thomas grabbed his father’s orb from the box by his bed and compared it with the image on the page. They were a good match, even down to the small wings upon the back.
    Jessica closed her book with a snap. ‘Well, it looks like we found it! It’s a serpent!’
    Thomas held the Serpent in the Glass — for that is what he’d decided to call it — before his face for some time after Jessica had crept off to bed, taking her books with her. She always liked to get to the bottom of things. Mrs Westhrop had often told her daughter that curiosity had killed the cat. It was only a few years ago that Thomas had realized it was a