The Dragon, the Witch, and the Railroad

by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

“And you’re a witch? Is that why you dress so oddly?”

  “Of course not, dear. Besides, whatever others call me I’d think a girl who has been to all of those scientific boarding schools would have learned there are no such things as witches. I dress appropriately for my true calling.” She pulled her braids out from behind her back and smoothed them over her chest, rattling the little shells again. “These may look odd to you, but I keep a lot of information in these—um—these—ornaments? Beads?”

  “Shells,” Verity supplied. “They’re seashells. Cowries, I believe. Common enough on the southern beaches.”

  “Of course they are,” Ephemera said. “Yes, they’re what you just said and I carry stories in them. I have some I think will interest you, in fact. These are more—portable—portions of the Seashell Archives. That would be why they’re, you know…”

  “Shells? I’ve heard of the Seashell Archives, but my teachers rather sneered at them, so much so that questions were discouraged, so I’m not sure what it means.”

  “Up until the Great War, Argonia didn’t make much use of written language. Most people didn’t read or write, except the nobility. The news was cried or sung. History was sung. So were current events. An excellent system, though at times it was difficult to tell what happened to whom, or when. And most particularly, why.”

  “So the little shells… ?”

  “When the recording powers of the bigger shells—the ones shaped like those harvest baskets—were first discovered…”

  “You mean conch shells, shaped kind of like cornucopias.”

  “Those are the ones. People used to think they had to use those and always sang into big ones kept at a central location that was at first a room within the nether regions of the castle; later, in a network of caverns. But minstrels found it awkward to access them and in time, dragons began infesting caves making it even more problematic to either study or add to recorded events. So the epic songs and sagas with hundreds of verses gave way to condensed versions often no longer than 50 verses or so, and people realized they could be recorded in shells small enough to be carried more easily—like this.” She bounced her bosoms and rattled her shells to illustrate.

  “So, those little shells on your dress and in your hair have songs inside of them that tell stories? May I listen?”

  “We have a long ride ahead of us,” Ephemera said, plucking two shells from among those woven into her braids. They remained connected by one of her long silvery hairs. “They work better in pairs.”

  “Aren’t they different stories?”

  But her self-proclaimed witchy and possibly wicked godmother’s head was thrown back against the top cushion of the bench, her eyes closed, and her mouth open, her braids covering her ears. Her skin was darker than Verity’s, but seemed very thin, with all of the little seams on her neck and jawline jigging a bit with her breath. Verity was becoming a little alarmed. She had thought Dame Ephemera and Uncle Nic had arranged between them to remove her from the dangers of Queenston, but she began to suspect that rather than Ephemera looking after her, she really was going to have to look after the old lady. A seashell archivist who couldn’t remember the names of the shells or even that they were shells was having trouble, wasn’t she? And she had fallen asleep so quickly. How old was she anyway? Possibly she could write Uncle Nic and say she didn’t want this responsibility, except, well, this old lady, no matter how strange, was one of the last blood relatives she had—one of her father’s people. And although she couldn’t have protected Verity the way a senior relative protects a child, she seemed to know quite a lot and had thus far treated her if not with love or affection at least with courtesy and enough respect to answer her questions. That was a great deal more than Verity could expect from Sophronia.

  She dug in one of the very handy pockets Madame Marsha had installed in her new skirt and pulled out the notes Uncle Nic had given her. Something fell out and slid down her skirt, across the little carpet between the benches and under the bench.

  Trying not to jostle Ephemera, she wedged herself between the benches and felt back under the one in front of her, stretching her arm, hand, and fingers as far as they’d go until they encountered something smooth and round. She batted it toward her with a fingertip, having to repeat the gesture several times until finally the train did not roll it away again before she could grasp it. Pulling it out, she examined it.

  Must be her day for fashion and embellishments. This was a glass bead with a swirly gilt pattern that seemed to glow from inside. Pretty.

  Regaining her seat, she read the note.

  Dear Verity,

  I apologize for my delinquency in giving you this, the birthday gift your mother specifically asked me to see that you received when you attained the age of sixteen. Your mother told me the bead has special properties, but she did not elaborate, saying that you would discover them as the need arose. It seems the time has come, as you set out for Wormroost with Dame Ephemera, for I am not sure when I will see you again. Carry it with you or wear it always.

  On a more prosaic note, here is a list of the potions and various other procedures to follow for addressing the challenges Dame Ephemera faces with advancing age. She is a very valuable lady and has always had your best interests at heart, so be good to her, as I know you will, and look after her. I understand from her unusual nature it’s difficult to tell when she is—um—deviating from the path of known reality and when she is just pursuing the kind of knowledge she has always pursued in her own way. Probably you will be better able to tell as you get used to her.

  My fondest regards, your Uncle Nic,

  Tod Niconar Balgair, Attorney at Law

  Verity sighed and stuffed the paper and the bead back into her pocket, puzzling over them briefly.

  The chug and rattle of the train, the clanking of the wheels on the rails, the rocking motion of the car, were soothing. With the shells halfway to her ears, she became aware of and tried to identify an angry muttering sound submerged in all the others, but when she tried to think about it, exhausted from her adventures of the last two days, she lost her way and wandered off into a dream.

  What Briciu Found

  That evening, when Balgair was supposed to arrive for his appointment with Sophronia, Briciu left the house with a caution for the maids, “Be sure and give the floors another quick mopping here and in Madame’s chamber. I expect she will be doing a certain amount of falling on her knees and wringing her hands or, possibly, fainting.”

  He was in such a good mood as he located the key he knew would be above the door frame at Balgair’s office that he chuckled to himself. Crazy as he had always been about Sophronia, it was entertaining to see her as the unwitting dupe for a change.

  Of course, it wouldn’t be all that enjoyable if he could not find the woman who should have been dead and ensure that she became that way—dispatched, as it were, with all possible dispatch.

  Once inside the office, he saw a shaft of light come in through the bottom of the door and saw a rectangular cut-out about the size of a sheet of paper. A pet door? Perhaps a cat. If there was a dog, it would have been barking by now. Tufts of red fur clung to the frame.

  Littering the floor of the mudroom were piles of what appeared to be broken traps, snares cut to pieces. Evidence from poachers, perhaps? But then, Balgair did not handle criminal cases.

  Once in the office proper, Briciu began a thorough if not too tidy search of the files and papers. Anything lacking currency designations was beyond his comprehension, really, though he did scan anything with the Brown name on it. He did not find wills or deeds of property or anything of that nature.

  Then, clearing away a scattered pile of papers on the floor, he saw that there was a dog bed beneath it, lined with more papers liberally sprinkled with red hairs. It smelled gamey enough that he wrinkled his nose, but he did peruse the papers. In the very middle of the bed, just as he was about to go, he discovered a leather bound book of loose sheets with time designatio
ns and notations. The dates were odd ones and didn’t make much sense to him and some of the names of places were in runic or possibly that language called Pan Elven the magical people used to use among themselves and beasts. Strange place to put a book, he thought. Perhaps the dog was ordinarily quite fierce and guarded it from his bed? A bit lumpy, one would think.

  Leafing through the book, he saw that some of the entries pertained to Lady Morag Brown and some to Romany Brown, or simply Romany or Morag. From what he could glean, this appeared to be the same person. At the back was a sort of appointment book. Its entries spanned an impossibly long period of time and the places were in locations all over the map of the world known to Argonia. After two pages of blanks, six months into the future, a notation said, “Romany, Gypsy Gather. Drague. Verity?”

  Pausing just long enough to purloin two sheets of Balgair’s imprinted stationery from his upper middle desk drawer and as an afterthought, sprinkle it with a few of the dog’s red hairs for the sake of authenticity (Verity would be certain to be friends with that dog. She was that type of girl.), he let himself out the back again, leaving the key where he’d found it.

  If Romany was, as he suspected, indeed an alias for Lady Morag, this presented an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, as it were. Two big Brown birds.

  Chapter 12

  Shell Game

  She awakened to the long howl of the dragons powering the train. For the first time, hearing that cry, she wondered if perhaps they were being injured each time they cried out. But that was ridiculous. The dragons were much too valuable to allow them to be mistreated in that way. Her father would never have stood for it, she was sure.

  Aunt Ephemera snored in odd, tuneful little bursts. She seemed to be singing in her sleep.

  Verity put the shells into her ears.

  A song began without preamble or explanation, but from the first verse, she gathered it was the tale of one True Thomas, who was lolling about on the grass when a lady of suspicious origins arrived on a horse weighed down with more ornamental bells than a Miragenian elephant.

  The lady proceeded to spirit Thomas away to her home of origin where all manner of magical stuff happened, but warned him not to eat or drink anything, which must have been very trying for him, since he stayed for seven years! At the end of the time, the fairy queen (for so she turned out to be) was so pleased with him she bestowed upon him a gift—that his blessing, like Verity’s curse, was that he could not lie, but only tell the truth. Hence the name True Thomas, which at least had a pleasant sound to it, unlike her own name, Verity, which meant truth as well. It sounded so plain. She might not have minded being True Thomasina or True Tamsin or even True Trudy.

  The song did not include his prophecies. The shell holding it was not very big. The next one began singing and this was more interesting as it told the story of Bronwyn the Bold, the lying princess.

  Or she thought the shell was telling her the story, singing her the song, except she saw pictures as well. The train rocked in time with the song:

  Here’s the true story of Bronwyn the Bold,

  A liar was she if the truth it be told,

  She traveled all over and fought the red tape,

  With her buckler and sword and her two stalwart mates.

  And there was a red-haired girl with a helm and buckler and some sort of armor, a brown-haired girl in a plain brown gown beside her, and a boy with curly black hair behind them. So that was Bronwyn, she of the capacious gowns in the attic, and the gypsy Jack, who was a king in his own country as well as Bronwyn’s consort.

  After a while, her ears grew tired of having objects in them and she pulled out the shells, stuck them in her pocket until their owner awakened, and looked out the windows. Vistas of humpy tundra backed by foothills swept past, and she was just thinking how glad she would be to see something else when deep moaning, like a particularly mournful foghorn, and altogether unlike the dragons’ normal howl, droned down the tracks.

  Verity arose, left the compartment, and walked up the car and back down again, bending down, trying to look out the windows and see if there was anything on the tracks that would delay the train. If there was, it was out in front, away from her line of sight. Daylight filtered through misting rain.

  The rain made her sleepy and she returned to the compartment for another nap.

  When she awoke, she was hungry, as was Ephemera, and they poked into a bag to see what Cook had packed for them.

  A lovely big sausage, about three feet long, a small bag of apples and a third of a wheel of cheese, along with a small jug of apple cider.

  The train huffed and chugged. The dragons gave one more howl and the train came to a stop. Almost at once, people filled the corridor and then appeared outside, just below the window, stumbling down the embankment and out into the lumpy muskeg.

  Battle of Blazing Bogs

  Ephemera turned her head sideways and looked out the window. “Hmmm,” she said. “We’ve come this far already. I somehow thought it was further on.”

  “Where IS this far?” Verity asked. “Why have we stopped? Is there a station?”

  “Way out here? Why would there be a station here?” she asked with a snort. “No, it’s a curiosity, but I understand the dragons always stop here for a bit in remembrance of the battle where so many of the Argonian Air Force were slain or maimed in the Battle of Blazing Bogs.”

  “I think I may have heard that mentioned before,” Verity said. “But it was an extremely long time ago.”

  “Not for a dragon,” Ephemera said. “Not only do they have very long memories but, without a war to kill them off or unsuitable diet or work, they live for a very long time. Some of the train dragons could conceivably be veterans of the battle.”

  “But that must have been at least a hundred years ago!”

  “Ordinarily, very long-lived, as I said. Besides, it used to be thought, at least, that dragons could pass memories down, but of course, no one spoke the dragon tongue well enough to know for sure.”

  “Why are all of those people getting off the train if there’s no stop?”

  “You might notice they’ll re-board in a moment. If you’ll excuse me, I believe I’ll do the same. The chamber pots are so awkward on a moving train.”

  Verity went with her, though they stopped at separate spongy hummocks of tundra to do what was necessary. Verity wondered if the dragons might not consider it somehow disrespectful to the memory of their ancestors but then, she had no reason to suspect dragons were fastidious about such matters.

  While she was in the necessary awkward position, the thought crossed her mind that the battle must have been terrible indeed if even dragons were killed.

  A blast of fire blazed past her head to be answered by a whistling missile—artillery. Cannonballs and fire.

  The day disappeared.

  The train disappeared.

  Blazing trails seared the rain from the air.

  Cannons thumped. People shrieked.

  Then louder than everything was the first bawling bellow. The ground quaked as something huge fell from a great height.

  A chorus of furious screams followed and a thunderstorm of dragons split the valley with grief and rage.

  Another dying bellow and another.

  “Allll aboard!” the conductor cried.

  Verity struggled aloft, pulling her breeches up under her skirt, and returned to the compartment where Ephemera awaited her.

  “Your back is all wet and mossy,” Ephemera said.

  “Are there songs in your shells about the battle?” Verity asked. “Is that how you know about it or—you weren’t there, were you?”

  “No, I had a prior engagement,” she said with a perfectly straight face. “As we discussed, it WAS over a hundred years ago and though my family has a good record for longevity…”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Only—I think I was just there.”

  The train jerked, stopped, and jerked forward again. The sulfurous sm
ell of dragon breath burned her nostrils. Soon the train clacked away from the former battleground and into the charred remains of a forest, within sight of another mountain range. The trees were no bigger around than Verity’s wrist, new-looking saplings among blackened skeletons with brush and vines climbing them. This continued all the way into the mountain pass.

  “That—the trees weren’t burned in the battle, were they?” she asked.

  “No, dear. This section was cut down for timbers for the mines and the railroad.”

  “Did the loggers set the fire as well?”

  “Accounts differ. Some say it was a careless dragon, but others say it was during the year of the Phoenix, the time when those indigenous to this area returned to ash—only on that particular occasion they took a good bit of the forest with them.”

  “So was there a song about that?”

  “I’m sure there is somewhere. You can hunt for it when we return to Wormroost. I’d have brought it had I known you’d be this interested.”

  “A dragon battle, a dead forest, what DO they write songs about if not those things?”

  “Oh, you know, romance, love, unrequited love, great banquets, longing, sex, royalty, that sort of thing… occasionally a murder.”

  “But there aren’t any songs about what happened in that battle?” Verity asked, wondering if a song like that would confirm what she’d experienced.

  “I recall an instrumental—lots of soaring war pipes and droning, but since there were no eye-witness accounts, not from anyone who could still tell the story, I suppose words, however poetic, must have seemed inappropriate. Those who might have survived to tell the story were finished off by the remaining dragons, apparently, and their burned corpses left on the field.”

  “So dragons lived through it, but of course, they couldn’t tell anyone anything.”