The Dragon & the Alpine Star

by Allison Norfolk

  In this way they made an almost merry little family party, a first outing for all four of them. As they got higher and the air grew colder, Georg left his post to climb up Wilhelmina’s back and settle draped around her neck under her muffling scarf to take advantage of her natural warmth. He weighed less than a cat, so to have him there was hardly a burden. He chirruped and hummed in her ear periodically as they climbed, occasionally twisting around to talk to his sister in her wrapper. Wilhelmina could hear her faintly, responding in coos and other infant sounds.

  Once they reached the spot where Wilhelmina thought her goal likely was, she directed Markus to stop, slid down from his neck and began to dig, being careful at the same time not to dislodge Georg.

  “Hurry,” Markus urged her. “This cold is making my scales feel brittle.” George also whistled encouragement.

  “I am going as fast as I can,” she grumbled. “Come down here and help me, if you’re so eager to be off.” But at that moment she hit frozen ground and knelt to clear away the last of the snow. The plant she was looking for was little more than a slimy, blackish-green moss, but she quickly located a patch under a buried stone and scraped some into a small jar. She sealed the jar and clambered back onto Markus’s neck. If he went a little too fast getting back down the mountain and it felt as if they spent half the time sliding on ice rather than climbing, she thought she did well managing to keep her screams from escaping.

  She made herself a cup of tea with one of Clara’s leftover calming blends when they finally returned to the cabin.

  Markus seemed to sense she wasn’t completely pleased and disappeared back outside to go hunting with Georg. Edel didn’t want to be put down, and eventually fell asleep still strapped to Wilhelmina’s back as she worked. The weight and warmth of the baby, and the tea, eventually served to soothe Wilhelmina’s frayed nerves and by the time Markus and Georg returned she was in a much better frame of mind.

  They wisely didn’t schedule the christening until after Wilhelmina had successfully cast the spell on Georg and given him a human form. Markus was apprehensive and hovered close behind her—Wilhelmina felt terrible about how much the pain of that storm-soaked night must be weighing on his memory for his usual placid nature to desert him—but in the end his anxiety did prove unfounded. Wilhelmina’s new spell not only removed the part that involved blood, but also was set to guarantee a human rather than animal form. It also did not take nearly as long to complete; within an hour they had two human infants in the cottage, one on the table and one in a cradle by the fire.

  The one on the table immediately began to wail in outrage at his sudden helplessness. Then, with a soft pop, he turned himself back into a dragon. He hissed angrily at his parents. Wilhelmina narrowed her eyes, and Markus exposed his teeth and hissed back. Even though he was in human form the gesture produced a cowed young dragon; Georg curled into a ball and looked up pleadingly, begging forgiveness for his insolence.

  “You only have to when we take you into town,” said Wilhelmina. “Which won’t be often, until you and your sister are a bit bigger. But you have to be seen, occasionally, as a human, or people will whisper.”

  Georg grumbled, but he loosened from the tight knot into which he had wound himself. Wilhelmina noted with interest that from nose to the tip of his tail he was about the same length as his human self. She wondered how long that would continue.

  The christening was a nerve-wracking experience. Between keeping Edel calm and presentable, and praying to whoever was listening that Georg would behave himself and remain in human form for the entire ceremony, Wilhelmina was sure some of her gray strands began to return thanks to that day alone. Just as he was about to be splashed with the holy water, she thought she caught a mischievous glint in his green eyes.

  “Don’t you dare,” she hissed. Georg appeared as chastened as a month-old human infant could, but Wilhelmina looked up to find the priest staring. She went brick red, and didn’t dare look at Markus for fear that they would both begin to laugh.

  “Apologies,” she said. “Continue.”

  There were no more interruptions, and though it made her grind her teeth Wilhelmina even permitted some of the town women to pass the babies around and admire them. Georg was meek and pliant, and left everyone with the impression that he was the better-behaved of the twins as Edel was inclined to fuss. She hadn’t liked the cold water.

  As soon as they were out of easy sight of town on their way back home, Georg transformed himself back into a dragon, leaped from Markus’s arms, and disappeared into the brush. Markus and Wilhelmina glanced at each other. Markus shrugged and put an arm around her shoulders as they walked, a clear indication that he did not intend to pursue. “He needs his freedom, after being confined in those blankets for so long,” he said.

  Wilhelmina enjoyed that quiet walk. The feeling of Markus’s arm across her shoulders was almost identical to the way he wound his tail around her in lindworm form, and it was very soothing. Her disordered nerves began to right themselves, and bit by bit she felt the muscles in her back and neck relax.

  “Well, that’s over,” she said with relief once they were back in the cottage and she had tucked Edel into her cradle. “With luck, that will forestall any rumors that there is anything unnatural about the twins. There is enough superstition left in the backs of peoples’ minds that I think most will have difficulty believing anything evil could have been baptized. The record of it is in the church registry for all to see, should they care to look.”

  “You do think of everything,” Markus replied.

  “Not everything,” she said, though her face heated at the compliment. “I do my best.” Why did every time he smiled at her in that admiring way, she had to fight not to twist her hands in her skirt like a girl? It was maddening.

  “Better than anyone else’s best.”

  They stood looking at each other for a long moment. Wilhelmina’s heart drummed loudly, and she swallowed hard, forcing herself to stay in place instead of bolting like a rabbit. Markus took a step towards her, which brought him close enough that she could feel his warmth. She had to tilt her chin so far up to meet his eyes that her neck started to get a crick in it, but she ignored the discomfort.

  Slowly, he reached up with both hands and ran them over her hair and down until he was cupping the back of her head, which relieved the pressure on her neck somewhat. How did he know to do that? She trembled a little, but could not look away. The various hues of green in his eyes were mesmerizing. A woman could get lost in those depths if she wasn’t careful.

  As he started to lean down, Wilhelmina twined her fingers in his shirt and rose higher on the balls of her feet to bring their faces closer. She could feel his soft exhale on her lips.

  Then Edel started to cry. The moment broken, Wilhelmina plunked back down on her heels, looking in the direction of the sound. “She’s probably hungry.”

  Markus released her, raising his hands palm out in an odd gesture of surrender. To cover her confusion, Wilhelmina rushed over to the cradle, lifted the baby, and carried her over to the chair by the fire to nurse her. Once settled, she looked up again to find Markus still standing in the same place, watching them both. His expression was hard to read. Then, abruptly, he went outside. A bang told her he had changed into a lindworm, and within a minute the sounds of his movements had faded into the distance.

  Chapter 18

  Summer 1921, Brig, Switzerland

  She is driving him mad. Sometimes she seems to indicate that she would like more from him than just the gestures of mutual affection they have grown used to exchanging no matter what form he wears. But then, when he starts to edge closer as a human, testing the waters, she is always jumping away to attend the children, or catch something on the hearth from boiling over, or a thousand other things. He always lets her go.

  And yet, often when he looks at her when in his human form a warmth builds in his chest, a sense that he should sweep her up in his arms as he did that one g
iddying day when he found out she had swallowed the edelweiss petals and press his lips to hers and just drink her in. He has wanted to, a thousand times over again, since that day.

  He misses the ready excuse to touch her that her pregnancy offered, for she always seemed pleased when he wanted to caress her belly no matter how big she got. There was no denying that his touch had soothed the twins whenever they got too active, helping her to rest as well—it was why she had welcomed him into her bed when she might not have otherwise.

  Now that they have arrived, she shows no indication she wants him to sleep elsewhere. He doesn’t quite dare ask outright, afraid of the answer if he draws attention to it, but it seems to be part of their routine now and he doesn’t want to break it.

  He hadn’t realized how lonely sleeping alone was.

  He likes feeling her warmth next to him, he likes waking up to another presence. He enjoyed not having to hibernate through the winter. But it is more than that. Every time, he is glad that it is her, this incredible creature who is like no other being he has ever seen.

  Is this what humans call ‘love’? When he was younger, he had observed human behavior and thought he understood it, but it was always from a distance. He knew what the behaviors that indicated emotions such as friendship, affection, and attraction looked like from the outside, but he had rarely experienced them for himself. He and his father had shared a mutual deep bond, even when they did not see each other for lengthy periods. But now he realizes how inadequately observation alone prepared him for deciphering his own feelings.

  Friendship, yes, he is certain he has with Wilhelmina. That was true even before he gained a human form. It is the attraction that has so blindsided him, the physicality of it that his cold-blooded lindworm form, large as it is, could never encompass.

  And yet there is no escaping it, even in his lindworm form. At first when the warmth, fast-beating heart, and the urges to be close to her grew overwhelming, he could just go outside and transform. Then he would regain a sense of distance and perspective, and write it off as a strange new instinct of a human body desiring a female. As time goes on, however, even though as a lindworm he does not sweat or grow warmer, the wanting to be close to her, the feeling of connection, the bubbles in his chest when he looks at her, does not subside.

  He cherishes the memory of that one shocking kiss, when in his elation he allowed his human side to take over completely. He isn’t certain he will ever experience that particular kind of magic again.

  And she is impossible to read. If only he could get some indication one way or another what she wants from him, he would plunge himself into the role. More than anything, he wants to make her happy.

  Are all of these things together considered love, by human or any other standard?

  He wishes he had an answer.

  -0-0-0-

  Wilhelmina threw herself into childcare once Georg had a human form. It helped her continue to push aside her unease about where she and Markus stood with one another. That heartstopping almost-kiss still haunted the back of her mind at odd moments.

  She tried to dismiss it as Markus simply having human instincts, without really understanding the underlying sentiments such gestures usually indicated. He couldn’t be in love with her, not the way she was still steadily falling deeper and deeper in love with him. No matter what Clara might think.

  It hurt too much to allow herself to hope.

  Things began to settle into a semblance of a routine. Markus would disappear, usually for three or four days at a time, into the mountains to hunt. Sometimes, but not always, he took Georg with him. Georg also occasionally ventured out alone for a day or two, something that made Wilhelmina greatly uneasy since his human twin was still so tiny and helpless. Markus assured her that it was natural and necessary for a young lindworm—or in this case a dragon—to learn independence, so she had to be content and try not to worry too much about either of them. At least Georg had not yet learned to fly; neither Markus nor Wilhelmina had any idea when that momentous development might occur.

  In between his hunting trips, Markus would spend upwards of a week living in the cottage with Wilhelmina, Georg and Edel, apparently as perfectly at ease with his human form as anyone born that way. He repaired anything that needed fixing, dressed the kills he brought back from the mountains for sale in town, assisted in Wilhelmina’s expanding garden, and even learned to cook. He was far more present than Allen had ever been during their short marriage, and it was odd for Wilhelmina to contemplate that what she had with Markus felt more like a partnership and less like two separate spheres of existence that frequently intersected, as exciting and warm as those intersections had always been. Nothing could ever erase the bright spot in her heart that Allen occupied; what she had with Markus was simply different, just as Wilhelmina’s love for the twins had not superseded or lessened her love for Karl.

  When Markus was at home, the family made frequent trips to Brig so that they could sell meat, pelts and potions and so that Wilhelmina could visit her patients. Sometimes, too, people in need would make the trek up to the cottage to ask for help in person. After a very narrow shave involving Wilhelmina faking a rainstorm to cover the thunderclap of sound of Markus’s transformation to an unexpected client, Markus was strongly encouraged to change a certain distance away from the cottage and walk up to it like a normal human. Georg, in his turn, learned that he must either hide if he wished to remain in dragon form, or temporarily transform into a human if there were non-family members around.

  One early evening just as the leaves were beginning to turn brilliant colors, there was a knock at the cottage door. Markus and Georg had been gone for about a day, and Wilhelmina had Edel strapped to her back because the baby had been inclined to be fussy.

  Wilhelmina went to the door and opened it a few inches. A tickle of cool autumn breeze swirled past her face.

  A man about her own age, or perhaps a few years older, stood there. His clothes were patched and had definitely seen better days. He had a craggy face, and very bright, dark eyes that seemed to gleam in the light from the fire behind her. The rest of him was backlit enough from the setting sun that he was difficult to make out well.

  “May I help you?” Wilhelmina asked politely.

  The man’s face split into an unpleasant grin when he saw who was behind the door. Wilhelmina struggled to control her reaction when he brandished a thick hunting knife. “Warm food. New clothes. Now.”

  She glanced down at the knife pointed at her chest, her face cool and calm. “Of course. There is no need for that.”

  He kept the knife square, his expression as hard as hers was serene. So that’s how it’s going to be, she thought. There’s no helping this one. Mentally, she reviewed what herbs she had in reach and what she could do with them. Then she held open the door.

  He barged in, and she could tell he was trying to fill up the space with his mere presence by the way he stood planted with his feet apart and chest thrown out. He was taller than she by at least a head and wiry with muscle, but he failed at making the cottage feel cramped. She was too used to Markus’s huge frame and the way he took up space without effort. This stranger would have to work much harder to come close to matching him.

  She set about fetching a bowl for the stew she already had on the fire and gathering things for tea. He watched her every move. She was careful to always keep her body turned towards him, blocking access to Edel as much as she was able. Luckily the baby had calmed and from what Wilhelmina could tell had gone to sleep.

  “Clothes, too!” he snapped as she ladled a bowl of stew. She clenched her hand around the bowl and refused by sheer effort of will not to let a drop spill. He was trying to rattle her, unnerved by her refusal to show fear.

  She would not be rattled. He would regret the moment he decided to come here.

  “All in good time,” she replied placidly. “Though I doubt any of my husband’s clothes will fit you.”

  She put down the bow
l on the table with a spoon, and went to a trunk where Markus kept his spares. When she held up a shirt and he realized the sheer size of the person it was sewn for, his eyes widened and she allowed a smirk to flit across her face. He saw it, and the surprise hardened into a scowl.

  He stalked across the room and flung himself down at the table, one hand still on his knife. Wilhelmina mixed a specific blend of tea, calling on her power as she poured the leaves into the pot over the fire. She also sprinkled a few more herbs into the fire itself, where they vanished in crackles and puffs of smoke to rise up the chimney.

  When she made to pour him a cup, he snapped, “You drink it first!”

  Well. He was at least smart enough to realize she had put herbs he was unfamiliar with into his tea. She could very well have poisoned it. Few mountain women had no familiarity at all with the local herbs and flowers and their uses.

  Deliberately, she raised her eyebrows as if in surprise at the accusation in his tone. Then she sipped the tea without hesitation.

  “See? It’s only mint, lavender, and a few other things.” She poured him a fresh cup and held it out.

  Still glaring suspiciously, he took it. Sniffing deeply, he acknowledged that she had told the truth—mint and lavender were by far the strongest scents and masked anything else. Finding it not too hot, he gulped it down. Wilhelmina watched it disappear with cold satisfaction.

  Within seconds he was blinking, fighting the sleep that she had cast. His eyelids continued to lower no matter how he struggled. He realized she must be the cause from the triumphant look on her face and fumbled for his knife, but it dropped from his numb fingers.