And even this far from the city, people, frightening creatures that they had become, infringed on the countryside. She had landed within another field’s length of a forest, a small river at its edge. Brightly colored wagons and tents sat upon the river’s banks and brightly clothed people bustled about. They had large animals, too, but she didn’t suppose they’d give her one.
No, they would probably finish her off. Taz cried, tears evaporating almost before they formed.
She would just lie there and die, never to see her boy again.
“Stop!” a voice cried. “You can’t go there, Beebee. There’s a dragon!” Other human voices spoke in a muddle, and Taz knew they were about to attack her, but hung back in fear. “It’ll eat you!”
“I don’t think so,” a woman said.
If dragon’s senses of smell and taste are weak, their eyesight and hearing are acute. Taz had heard this woman before. Her ear perked and swiveled toward the sound.
“This beast is a lot larger, but she looks like one I’ve met before,” the woman said. “A good one. A brave one.” These words were tossed back to the others as the footsteps rustled through the dry grass with the woman’s approach.
“You’re the little one who broke her boy out of the Queenston dungeon, yes?” the woman asked, and without any response from Taz, laid her hand on the young dragon’s aching and weary head and stroked her. “How came you here, my dear?”
Taz gave a very small, very subdued roar of welcome. This was the gypsy woman who had helped the girl help Taz’s boy. She was a friend! In all of this strange country, a friend who was not actually Toby had found her!
Taz broke into the throbbing rumble that dragons emit when they are pleased and happy or when they are trying to comfort themselves.
The woman smiled down at her and said, “What’s the matter, chavi? Why do you lie so still on the ground?”
Taz whimpered and moved a little to show the woman her wing.
The woman clucked over it and touched it very, very gently. “You’ll need care to heal, my friend.”
To the ones who were cautiously edging forward now that they saw Taz hadn’t harmed the woman, she called. “Move the camp! Bring it here! And the big top. Bring it first and build it over her. This dragon is an intelligent and loyal creature who has helped me before. We must help her.”
The big top, a large red tent faded to rose, was big enough to hold the average village—or to conceal one medium sized dragon while her wing healed. The woman sewed the tear in the wing so carefully it almost didn’t hurt. The bravest of men held a metal drum in front of Taz’s snout to contain her involuntary flame while the woman sewed.
“Can’t have you burning down the meadow,” the woman said, stroking her. “Oh, no, my dear, the farmer would not like that.”
While the humans did all sorts of human things, Taz healed. At nights the people often played strange, wild music and she listened, keeping time with her tail, but being careful not to wave it hard enough to endanger the tent.
One night a shadow unlike the shadows of any of the woman’s friends crept into the encampment and appeared against the cloth of the big top. Taz had a sense of danger and gave a mighty hiss and roar. The shadow disappeared. Later that same night, an eerie howl containing the voices of many creatures awakened the camp. Taz howled too, or the closest noise a dragon could make to one.
The woman did not return that night, or the next night, or the next. Taz was lonely, and suspected she’d been abandoned now that her wounds were healed enough to support her in flight again. She rose unsteadily at first, but soon was casting a long shadow against the meadow below as she soared toward the city.
The Pirates and Mr. Balgair
Tod
Tod N. Balgair, Attorney at Law, had been raiding hen houses the previous night and was sleeping it off before time to open his office. He had no appointments that morning so he was not expecting anyone. What he expected was that he could curl up in his nest of papers, wrap his bushy tail around his nose, blow the occasional feathery remnant of last night’s repast away when it tickled his nose, and sleep.
Naturally when the very firm knock pounded upon his office door, it startled him. His first thought was that the farmer whose chickens he had eaten had come to make a citizen’s arrest. Transforming to his human self, he called, “One moment please,” in his best lawyerly voice and proceeded to climb into the clothing that always felt awkward after spending the night in his own pelt. He brushed his hair back. His facial hair might need a trim but it was very early and those who came before office hours could hardly expect him to be at his sartorial best.
He was amazed when he opened the door to find a quite striking looking lady standing there, holding a carpet bag in front of her, while a motley crew of what appeared to be pirates arrayed themselves behind her.
“How may I be of service?” he asked, but the lady overrode his question with a statement of her own.
“We found it.”
“Found what?”
She dug in her carpetbag and pulled out two rusty lengths of chain, one end of which was attached to a scrap of brightly colored silk.
“This,” she said. “Don’t you remember, Ducky? Young Verity hired us to salvage this trinket from the bottom of the bay… something about how her old dad met his end.”
“Oh, yes!” he said, accepting the chain. “Do come in. I’ll put the kettle on and you can tell me all about it.”
“I told you ’e’d know,” the lady told the others, sweeping into the room with a peacock feather adorned train trailing behind her. The pirates were careful not to step on it, Balgair noticed.
“Indeed I do, and Miss Brown will be delighted to learn of your success—er—Captain Lewis or is it Madame Louisa today?” The sometimes-guitarist was well aware of the lady’s versatile nature. She and the crew were not acquainted with Balgair’s human form.
“Split the difference and call me Captain Louisa since I’m here at the head of me crew and in a professional capacity. I’d like to see the lass’s face when she sees it and knows how right she was…”
“I wish I could arrange that, but Miss Brown is currently on an extended visit to a relative in the north. I will see to it personally that she receives this and knows of your diligence and good wishes.”
He started to pour the tea, but reconsidered. “Such success demands a more portent celebration. Rum, anyone?”
Later that afternoon, he boarded the train for Dame Ephemera’s home at Wormroost Castle.
At the end of that long journey, after giving up his pocket watch to satisfy the trolls, he was surprised when Cousin Isabelle told him that Dame Ephemera and Verity were not in.
He was flabbergasted when she told him why.
“She received your letter about meeting her mother in Drague and the ladies set out for there at once. Some three months ago it was, sir.”
“I sent no such letter.”
“But I saw it. It was on your own stationery.”
No fox can call himself a fox and not recognize a trick.
“Can you put me up for a bit?” he asked.
She nodded agreement. “I was just fixing something for dinner.”
“Ah,” he said, licking his lips. “Wonderful. If you can show me to my room, I’d like to change before we eat.”
And change he did, before running on foxy feet out to the top of the glacier where he cried his combination bark and scream, which was picked up at once by the dogs of the village and the wolves in the woods, and onward—another Howl reverberating through time and space, summoning the gypsy woman. If anyone knew Verity’s whereabouts, it would be her.
The Rescue Party
When the rescue party returned to Stockyard and swaggered into the pub, Ephemera had to think for a moment to figure out who they were and what they were doing there. She gave a sideways nod in their direction and lifted an inquiring eyebrow at the innkeeper’s wife, Marta.
Marta shrugged and
said, “Dunno what them men thinks they’re doin’ here. Your girl will be long gone.”
Ephemera tried to think who she could mean. Isabelle? No, surely not. Another girl. Important girl. Vitia? No, that was the dragon’s name. She’d learned some important information about the dragon recently but would have to find where she’d stored it. She’d been faithfully recording everything that happened or was said to her as soon as possible, before she could forget.
“But if they intend to poke around on Vitia’s mountain,” Marta continued, “best do it before the thaw is all I’m sayin.’ Her won’t be half cranky when her’s wakened before her’s had her nap out.”
Ephemera cheerfully conveyed the wisdom regarding the dragon’s disposition to the searchers.
Uninvited, she skied out with them when they assaulted the volcano.
A herder had showed them the trail up the northern face of the mountain. Meanwhile, a boy set up a hot air balloon in the valley.
The balloon, graceful as a bubble, sailed up into the crater and was swallowed by it without a sound.
Later, while men still clung to the sides of the mountain, it rumbled and belched forth its guardian—the great coppery gilded dragon.
Among the searchers was Verity’s stepmother’s cousin, Briciu.
“Look at the size of her!” he said, seeing the mother dragon take flight. “We could breed some life back into our livestock with a queen like that.”
And they set off, forgetting all about Verity, whom everyone assumed was probably dead, but from their banter Ephemera gathered that although they called themselves a rescue party, what they were actually hoping to rescue was the dragon’s hoard. Apparently there was also a market for the dragon.
Chapter 25
Rousing Sleeping Dragons
Vitia awakened early, and arose from her lair, sensing the invaders. She was up the lava tube and into the crater like a shot. She must draw danger away from the nest.
Loveday and Copperwise screeched and skronked after their mother, but at the mouth of the tube, Vitia turned and roared at them, and the two whimperingly slid back down the tube, looking as utterly dejected as their species permitted them to look.
“Some mothers are like that.” Verity told them. “Mine deserted me, too.” She hadn’t intended to say that, even though it was true. She had trusted her father’s explanation that her mother had reasons beyond loyalty to her family, but that she might return to them some day. She had believed it up until he married Sophronia. Would he have done that if her mother had still been alive?
Why didn’t the dragon want her babies with her? Verity scrambled up the tube herself. It seemed safe enough since Vitia no longer blocked the entry. Loveday and Copperwise followed her into the tube, but she pointed sternly back toward the ledge. “Stay put until I suss out the situation. Your mother must have had her reasons for roaring at you.”
She made the entrance in time to watch Vitia’s flight out of the crater and over the mountain-shadowed meadows and forests below. She watched in awe, much more appreciative of the beauty of the dragon’s glide now that she was not a passenger.
The dragon buzzed the men assaulting her mountain, strafing them with her fire. She soared off, but all of a sudden there was a huge boom! that shook avalanches of snow from the mountainside. The dragon, flying above distant treetops, plummeted from a great height, wings no longer visible, disappearing into the spires of greenery.
She must have been hit, Verity thought, though she would never have suspected even modern weapons would have such a long range. Orange flame blossomed above the tree tops and most of the men who’d been scaling the mountain remounted and galloped off toward the trees. Verity held her breath, though she wasn’t sure why. If the dragon was gone, she was free! She could leave with her rescuers, escaping the mountain to re-board the train and go to Drague to find her mother. Presumably, her charges could remain in the mountain, living off the livestock Vitia had left until they were old enough to raid the farmsteads on their own.
Verity retreated to the tube as she heard scrabbling, chunking, and finally voices at the northern edge of the crater. The men breathed so heavily, she could hear it from her hiding place.
One asked, “Do you think the girl will still be there?”
“Her ashes and bones maybe. But there’s supposed to be treasure, according to legend. The dragon’s never been gone long enough for anyone to search for it before.”
Now that she was, they were coming to cart off her hoard. Verity was less concerned about Vitia’s treasure than she was about her offspring. She had become quite fond of Loveday and Copperwise and had no wish to see them captured or killed. For their safety, they should be gone or at least well hidden before the men found their way into the cavern.
The young ones flew up the tube and met Verity on her way back down, their wings beating and tails lashing their anxiety. They knew their mother was gone, somehow, and pressed Verity to tell them where and when she’d return.
“I don’t know. She fell into the forest,” Verity told them, “She was attacked by the men who came to rescue me.”
“We come, too,” Skronk/Loveday told her.
“Not a good idea. Your mother went out to meet them so they wouldn’t find you.”
“Mother fire them.”
“You don’t understand the outside world, I’m afraid. If they don’t kill her, they will carry her back to Queenston to be breeding stock, or harness her to some machine—or both. They’ll probably cut her wings so she can’t fly away. Your life here is much better. You know where the locals will bring you livestock so you can feed yourselves. You need to hide when the men come and I will go out to meet them and try to lead them away.”
“Veri leave us too?”
“Well, I think that’s for the best, don’t you?”
“Noooooo,” they both wailed and dug their claws into her clothing. They’d already learned about skin.
Verity knew that they could survive without her, but their distress brought tears to her eyes. She couldn’t bear the thought of them in captivity. In fact, she could hardly bear the thought of their mother in captivity. Working dragons might be very convenient for people and their contraptions, but the way dragons were used in the city was extremely unfair to them. She might have taken their lowly place in the labor force for granted like everyone else in the past, but now she knew better.
The rescuers were not so much rescuers as looters who already thought she was toast but used her as an excuse to hunt for the dragon’s hoard. She expected they might be disappointed to find her alive. To avoid complications, they might finish her off and claim the dragon had done it. That way she could not contradict whatever story the locals had concocted about her being carried away.
“Very well,” she said. “But I don’t want to live here forever. It’s a bit gloomy for a human. We all need to hide. This ledge is too easy for the men to find. Can you help me get down there?” She pointed to the abyss below. “In one piece, I mean?”
Neither of them was strong enough yet to carry her alone, but she rigged a harness for herself between them, using her cloak as a sling. It was a precarious perch and she was frightened of falling, but she knew they would be careful. Their work together over the winter making the beads had helped them to trust each other. They were very careful with their flames now that they had greater control over them. They gave the same care to spiraling down to the cavern floor with her.
She was dizzy and had to be sick once they landed, but they led her to the hoard in the middle of the underground river that had been their mother’s bed, carrying her to the middle of the river too.
Near the nest, lit by dragonfire, the colorful crystal formations were splattered everywhere on the cave walls and floor, adorning stalagmites and stalactites as well, glittering in the dragonlight. In the midst of them all, lay the fragments of what on closer examination turned out to be a large beaker. Every bit of it was encrusted with the sparkly rainbow
swirling stuff.
Was the stuff of her beads some sort of mineral deposit? She hadn’t seen or heard of anything exactly like it, and her father had had hundreds of mineral samples, geodes, and rocks scattered around the workshop.
She had no need for any of the gold or jewels in the hoard—at least not now—but when the twins’ flames illuminated hundreds more beads similar to the ones they’d been making, she stuck some in her pockets. Perhaps these had the same sort of powers and would help other people understand the dragons. They’d surely treat them better if they could communicate.
If nothing else, maybe she could sell them and buy herself a crust of bread. Or pay off an angry herdsman if the dragons helped themselves to a few head of livestock. Even if they weren’t gold or silver, they were pretty and unusual.
Men’s voices magnified by the lava tubes echoed inside the cavern. She had to keep away from civilization as much as possible to avoid endangering the young dragons. She could circle around the village and surrounding lands by sticking to the mountains, then return to the railroad tracks to follow them back to civilization.
This was a fine strategy in theory and very workable for the dragons, but less so for her. She could not fly or walk fast enough to keep up with the dragons, and she was not equipped for travelling over some of the roughest terrain. Her boots had large holes in the soles and though she had patched them with scale to keep out the cold, they were stiff and clumsy, not suitable for long hikes.
Nevertheless, she and her young friends had to escape the cave without being intercepted by the so-called rescue party.
The great cavern inside the crater was Verity’s only first-hand experience with a cave, but she had read a few stories about spelunking and felt sure the river would be instrumental in finding the way out of the cave.
The Dragon, the Witch, and the Railroad Page 22