The hatchling couldn’t be a … Farthing. Couldn’t be. I’d seen the way the mother dragon had defended her brood, had tried to lift the egg in her mouth …

I pushed the cloth back entirely and leaned forward to examine the newborn. To look for evidence on its tiny back, on its flanks. Like hatchling birds, the wings would be small, tiny; they would develop as the creature grew. The flanks were smoothly scaled, just as Farthing’s were, and green.

No wings.

“Well, I wouldn’t credit it if I had not seen it with my own eyes. You are a wonder, Covington. A wonder!” exclaimed Mr. Darwin. “To have an egg survive that journey? The creature seems healthy and it is highly probable it is the same species as our Farthing. How singular for her to lead you to the nest when the eggs were in peril. Usually only the parent would show such protective behavior.”

I didn’t understand. I stared from Farthing to the hatchling and back again. Same shade of green. But Farthing was too small to be the mother … much too small. There had to be another explanation for this.

One of the eggs had already hatched in the dragon’s lair.

“The shell, the shell that was in my foot,” I said, feeling gooseflesh rise along my arms.

Farthing leaped up onto the edge of the chest and poked her snout inside. The hatchling lifted its own tiny triangular face and sniffed. Farthing bumped its snout with her own. Before we could stop her, Farthing climbed into the makeshift nest and curled around the newborn. Like a cuckoo bird grown too large for the nest it stole.

“Well. I never saw the like,” said Mr. Darwin softly.

The sliver of egg in my foot was from the egg that Farthing hatched from. My Farthing had somehow hatched earlier than the others.

Mr. Darwin was right. They were the same species as Farthing, there was no doubt, and it made no sense.

Unless … they were all the dragon’s young.

Farthing had survived the dragon fire.

The dragon did not attack Farthing in its lair.

Farthing had been desperate to save the eggs because inside them were her brothers or sisters.

As I thought it, I knew it was right.

Farthing was a dragon hatchling. The wedge shape of her head. The scales were green compared to her mother’s gold, but somehow alike …

Mr. Darwin and Mrs. Harvey’s voices were a distant buzz.

None of the other eggs moved.

“Farthing is from the same clutch,” I said.

I looked at Mr. Darwin. His eyes were shining. History was being made here, without any mention of dragons.

An egg from the Galapagos, live and hatching, was enough.

The truth was too much.

“Doesn’t seem likely, but not impossible. We know nothing about the breeding of these reptiles, Farthing being quite unique,” he said.

“They are all … dragons,” I said.