Toothless dragon tattoo on the lower back

The snow shut the Hollin Pass on Tuesday and it has not opened since, so you will have to take my word for what came down the chimney that night. Father swears it was a heron. Mrs Peel swears it was the devil. I have seen it myself, sitting on the taproom flagstones with its wings folded like a wet umbrella. It is a dragon no bigger than a sheepdog, black as the inside of a coal scuttle, with eyes the green-gold of a lamp held up to glass.

It would not come near the fire at first. It kept to the corner by the bread oven, and when the carter tried to shoo it with a broom, it knocked the broom clean out of his hands with its tail, which fans out at the end like a pressed fern. I took it a bowl of mutton fat from the larder, and it ate with its eyes on my face the whole time, as if working out whether I was worth the trouble. By the third evening it had decided I was. It lay with its chin on my boot while I did the accounts.

Father has been hard on it since, and I cannot blame him, because the guests are frightened and the till is short. But this morning the cloud broke for an hour. The dragon climbed the back stairs to the attic window, stood on its hind legs, and looked north towards the pass for a long while. Then it came down and sat by the door, the way a dog does when the walk is due.

I have left the bolt off. If the road is clear by Thursday, come up and help me see where it means to go. The spare key is under the water butt, same as always, and I would rather it went with someone who knows the way.