by Jane Yolen
“No!” Jennifer cried, and started forward to help, even knowing she could not get there in time. So she picked up the jewel, which was now as large as a baseball, thinking maybe she could throw it at the demon and distract him.
But the minute she put her hand on the jewel, the hideous Redcap screamed and dropped the pikestaff, though no one had touched him.
Jennifer looked down at the jewel in her hand. It was pulsing like a heart. She squeezed it, and Redcap screamed again.
Quite determinedly, she took the key and scratched it along the surface of the jewel. The key left a deep mark in the red stone, and it looked like a wound welling up with blood. When she looked back at Redcap, down the right side of his forehead and across his bulging red eye was a thin line, like a nail scratch. The eye was weeping red tears. She knew the dragon, in its dying, had never touched him.
Magic, she thought, and remembered the strange lines that seemed to connect the white cat diagonally across the map with the white brides. She squinted down at the red jewel and saw similar lines stretching across the cave to the monster’s hat.
“Redcap!” she cried, and when he looked over at her with his one good eye, she put the jewel on the cave floor and—quite without anger—stomped down with all her strength on the red jewel, shattering it into a dozen pieces.
Redcap screamed again, and—as if he had been made of clay—he shattered as well.
For a moment there was silence in the cave. Then Michael Scot spoke in his drawling voice.
“One for one,” he said. “I’d call that a draw. But monsters are so easy to come by. I dinna think ye have enough friends to spare.”
It was his casual dismissal of the two creatures that undid Jennifer. Ignoring the wizard’s implied threat, she went over and knelt by the side of the dying dragon. Lifting his massive head in her hands, she looked into the dark eyes that were slowly shuttering.
“Now you are truly free,” she whispered, a catch in her voice.
The dragon gave a great convulsion; trembling waves ran down his length, to the very tip of his tail. Then he lay still, a black unmoving shadow beneath her hands.
Standing, Jennifer faced the wizard. “What guarantees will you give me for the map?” she asked.
“Your family intact,” he said.
“And free?”
He smiled. It was an odd sort of smile. “What is freedom, after all?” he asked. “Are ye not noo a slave—to yer parents, to yer country, to yer king?”
“Americans have no king,” said Jennifer. “We fought a war about that.”
Michael Scot, though, was not listening to her as he warmed to his topic. “A slave to fashion, a slave to desires, a slave to passions. How can ye think yerseP free?”
While he was speaking, Jennifer saw—out of the corner of her eye—that Peter was slowly standing up. And the ice columns that had been melted by the dragon’s dying flame had uncovered Pop and Da, who—having shaken themselves warm—had quietly sneaked over to the closest side of the stone bed, where Gran and Mom lay close together.
"...a slave to the calendar, a slave to duty, a slave to deadlines,” Michael Scot was saying.
Pop and Da slipped the still-sleeping women off the stone bed, as they were the nearest, and were going back for Molly before the wizard noticed them.
Turning, he raised a hand. “Touch that lass and I shall do mair than merely kill ye.”
“The map,” Jennifer whispered hoarsely, not trusting her voice any more than that. She took it from her pocket, unfolded it, and dropped it on the floor.
Behind her Peter gasped. But Jennifer, after a quick glance down at the map, knew what she had to do. “I will give it to you,” she said, “for the promise of my family’s and friends’ freedom.”
“Do ye,” came that slow, malevolent voice again, “trust me, lass?”
“Not for a minute,” Jennifer whispered. Then she shoved the parchment toward him with her foot.
He bent down to pick it up, and Peter scuttled behind him, ran to the stone bed, grabbed up Molly, and, clutching her limp body, raced down one of the twisting tunnels.
The wizard seemed not to notice. Instead he screamed in agony. “What is this? What cantrip is this?” He stood, holding the map aloft.
No longer the map of Scotland or Fairburn, or the garden map that Jennifer had spread out on the iron seat. Now it was the map of a single, deeply buried cavern.
Gran’s voice floated across the stones toward him, weak but plain. “Ye were once a generous man, Michael Scot, wi’ a heart as large and as full as Scotland itself, so the map ye invested yer soul in then was as large. But when ye turned to the black arts, yer soul shrank till it became the size and color of a lump of coal. Ye have drawn and redrawn the borders of yer heart, Michael Scot. All yer magic is noo confined to this pinprick of a place.”
“Then ye shall be confined wi’ me, old woman! Ye and the rest of yer cursed clan!” the wizard screamed as he crushed the map in his hand. He pointed his other hand at the unicorn. “De’il, I free ye!”
Some thin stream of old power shot across in flame at the black creature, who began to glow. The ebony horn sheered off but never landed; or if it did so, it landed soundlessly. The unicorn seemed to stretch and grow under the fire spell. Bigger at the shoulder, longer at the leg, higher at the haunch, greater at the head. And when it was done, instead of the dainty black prancer who had accompanied Jennifer into the cave, there stood a stunning ebony stallion, eyes wild, with a black mane standing about its glorious head like the rays of a falling star.
“Michael Scot,” said Da in a low voice, “had a devil of a horse.”
And a traitor of a horse, Jennifer thought, realizing that the last time the unicorn had spoken had been at the door of the cave.
“Find that boy and his little sister, and bring them back here to me,” cried Michael Scot.
For a long calculating moment the horse was still, and Michael Scot raised his hand. “Do ye mean to betray me again? Did ye like that prancing form so much, ye wish to own it for evermore?”
The dog, who’d been silent all the while, howled in his misery, then leaped for the wizard’s throat. But a casual wave of that powerful hand and the dog dropped, trembling at his feet. Jennifer gasped. What chance had they now?
“I will get to ye in the end,” Michael Scot warned the cowering dog.
The black horse—mind obviously made up—galloped down the path after Peter and Molly, hooves drawing sparks from the stone floor.
Michael Scot laughed. “I will get to all of ye in the end.”
Eighteen
Fire and Ice
The wizard threw the crumpled map on the cave floor and angrily turned to Gran.
“Old woman, weak are yer powers. I shall ha’e ye slave for me fore’er, be these cave walls the borders of my kingdom.”
Gran, at least, did not shrink from him. “My powers alone, perhaps, are weak, Michael Scot. But do not underestimate the powers of the children.”
“They are Americans,” the wizard said, laughing again. “And admit to none.”
Jennifer’s thoughts remained bleak. Michael Scot was right. They had no powers to compete with his. They were all weak, not just Gran. They were weak and lost.
But Gran didn’t stop arguing, and while she argued, Michael Scot kept a watchful eye on Gran—and on the other grown-ups as well. Even Jennifer was in his sight as he spoke. But he’d neglected to watch the cowering dog, who had begun to hunch away from him.
At first Jennifer was disgusted with the dog’s cowardly, servile behavior. But as he slowly moved, crabwise, away from the wizard, she saw that there was method in his movements. He was scuttling ever closer and closer to the discarded map.
She knew he could not take the thing up. It might have been thrown down by the wizard, but—as Gran had warned before—a magic thing could not simply be taken. It had to be given. So Michael Scot had flung it down without any fear that someone else could get it.
Obviously the dog knew this, too, for he did not try to pick up the map in his mouth. Instead, on his belly before the parchment—as if he were sniffing at the thing—he breathed.
Not in—but out.
That small breath—that tiny movement—powered the crumpled map, and it began to slide along the cave floor, pushed by the wind from the dog’s nose. In the smallest of increments, the map moved away from the wizard and toward the wall of green fire, the crouching dog behind.
Startled, Jennifer realized what the dog was attempting. Surely, she thought, I can distract the wizard long enough for the dog to succeed. Maybe we can win against Michael Scot without using any magic at all. She began walking toward the wizard so as to draw his attention to her, and so his back was firmly set to the creeping dog.
“Leave my Gran alone,” Jennifer called, shaking her finger at the wizard. “Or I’ll—”
“Or ye’ll what?” Michael Scot asked. His voice was fully confident and had lost that drawling quality that—Jennifer suddenly understood—had been just for show. The wizard hadn’t been entirely sure of his ability to win, not sure at all. And that knowledge made Jennifer secretly pleased.
She was trying to think of a response to Michael Scot’s question, something to disturb his new confidence, when she heard the sound of the devil’s hooves returning down the corridor back to the cave.
Oh, Peter, she thought miserably. Oh, Molly. Her mood suddenly swung back toward bleakness and despair.
She turned to look at the horse and was as surprised as Michael Scot, for the horse had returned to the cave without the two children.
“Did ye nae bring them back?” the wizard cried.
The horse bowed its great neck. “Gone, my lord.”
“Dead, ye mean?”
The horse did not answer but kept its head bowed.
Behind the stone bed, Mom screamed once and was still, though Pop cursed and kept on cursing for a full minute, using words Jennifer had never heard before, but whose meanings she knew at once.
“Ye appalling libbit, ye great gomeril!” Michael Scot cried. “I needed that bairn for my spells.” He was practically foaming at the mouth in his fury. “With her pearly heart I might ha’e managed to enlarge the map. But not noo. Not noo!”
Jennifer turned her head away, biting her lip so she wouldn’t cry. She couldn’t really believe it. Molly dead? And Peter? Peter. They were twins, as close as close. Surely she would have felt something if he were gone. But, just as surely, the horse wouldn’t lie to his master.
Then she saw that the dog was still at his slow task, inching closer and closer to the wall of fire with each courageous breath, blowing the map in which the wizard’s power was invested. She knew she had to put aside her own agony and sorrow, and help.
“Michael Scot!” she called, turning back to him. “Beware. If my brother is dead, my other half, then I have all the powers myself,” She remembered a bit from the movie they’d seen on the plane coming over to Scotland. The hero had marched right up to the bad guy, and while he walked, all eyes were on him. No one saw what else was going on behind.
So she walked close to the wizard, within a hand’s breadth of him, waggling her finger right up under his nose.
The dog’s soft breath pushed the paper toward the wall of fire.
And Pop, having exhausted his store of curses, took that moment to leap on the stone bed, and then launch himself onto the wizard’s back.
“Avaunt!” Michael Scot cried, raising his hand toward the hurtling man.
“Avaunt yourself!” cried Jennifer, lifting her own hand—without knowing any spells at all, but wishing, and making Mr. Spock’s Vulcan sign. She struck the wizard’s hand with her own, and she could feel a surge of awful power, like a lightning strike, run down his arm and into her fingers.
There was a sudden roar of flames rushing from the fire wall, and suddenly Michael Scot was afire, his black hair burning, his black cloak burning, his dark doublet burning, his green hose shimmering with flames.
Jennifer stepped back from the excruciating heat and turned her face away.
Pop fell to the floor, hands beating frantically at his own clothes, which were on fire as well. Gran and Da raced around the stone bed to roll him on the floor till the flames went out. At the same time, Mom raced to Jennifer and held her in a tight embrace.
No one thought to help Michael Scot, who continued to burn with a fierce green flame until he was only a pile of grey ash.
The horse waited until the wizard was truly gone, then whinnied once, loudly.
Safe in her mother’s warm embrace, Jennifer heard footsteps coming down one of the long corridors.
“Mom,” Peter called, “Pop! We’re safe. We’re safe.” He came into the cave from the corridor, dragging Molly behind. “The horse told us to wait till he called.”
Mom opened her arms and scooped Molly up. Da put his hand on Peter’s shoulder. Gran helped Pop to stand.
Only Jennifer, still wondering if she’d actually defeated the wizard on her own, heard the whimper by the wall. Turning, she saw that the dog was now as grey as stone, his nose badly seared by the flames. He lay on his side breathing shallowly, quickly, as if he’d just come in from a long run. She went over to him and knelt down.
“You are the real hero,” she whispered. “You—not me.”
The dog pushed his head up against her hand.
Nineteen
Ashes
Carefully Gran swept up Michael Scot’s ashes into a white handkerchief that Da had had in his pocket. Then, with Peter and Da supporting Pop, with the dog set upon the horse’s back and steadied by Jennifer’s constant hand, and with Molly comfortably between Mom and Gran, they traveled back through the long stone passage into the light.
It was still afternoon, the sun slanting down through breaks in the forest canopy.
Jennifer turned once to look again at the cave entrance, but the cave had disappeared. The little white summer hoose was there in its stead, the white cat fast asleep on the steps. Jennifer tried squinting and thought she could see—as if through a shimmering curtain—the outline of a darker, bigger, rounder entrance imposed over the house’s small door. But then a bit of sun slashed down and broke that vision into dancing motes of light.
***
After Pop had been to the doctor and gotten some cream—“unguent,” Da had called it—for his bums, and after the vet had seen to the dog’s nose, they bought a takeout order of fish and chips and all sat in the garden, around the wrought-iron table, and ate a casual dinner. No one spoke about what had happened in the cave. In fact, for a long time no one spoke at all.
The horse stood in the middle of the lawn, cropping contentedly at the grass. The dog lay by Jennifer’s foot, but there was an alertness in his long, lean body, and though his head was down, he did not close his eyes. Both animals acted as if they belonged in Gran’s garden, and—Jennifer thought-in a way they did.
Molly soon fell asleep, her head in Mom’s lap. And Pop, tired from his burns, went upstairs to bed.
“I’ll take the wee bairn to her room,” said Da, carrying Molly off.
“I’ll come, too,” said Mom. “I’m exhausted. All that running around.” She followed after him.
Jennifer wondered if they were remembering what had really happened, or if it would all retreat to the substance of a dream.
“Is he truly gone?” Peter asked Gran. “The wizard, I mean.”
Gran pulled out the handkerchief and untied the knot. The grey ashes lay in the center of the white linen square. “What do you think?”
Peter shrugged silently.
Jennifer shivered and answered for him. “We don’t know.”
From the lawn, the horse cleared its throat. “Michael Scot once told me that if he died in fire, his ashes should be set out for the birds. A raven and a dove will come and circle above them. If the raven comes down to get the ashes, then the ashes should be scattered to the winds. But if
the dove tries to bear them away, the ashes should be given a Christian burial.”
“A Christian burial?” Peter was outraged. “He was too evil for that.”
Gran shook her head. “‘Evil’ is a strong word, Peter. Once he was a good man. But the black arts changed him. Still, at the end of the day, we dinna ken what was truly in his heart.”
The dog at Jennifer’s feet growled.
“Or if he even had a heart,” Peter muttered. “Do you know what he did to the horse?”
Jennifer knew Peter was not asking a real question. He already knew the answer and was about to tell them.
“He thought the horse had betrayed him and so he punished him in the worst possible way.”
“A unicorn is a worst possible way?” Gran smiled.
“A big, strong stallion turned into a mincing, prancing female!” said Peter passionately. “And reciting poetry!”
Gran and Jennifer broke into laughter, and then Jennifer thought—with a bit of an ache—-that she and Peter had moved very far apart this vacation. And summer had only just begun.
Though it was evening, the sun was still high, as it always is in Scotland in July. The ashes in the handkerchief seemed such a small reminder of a man.
Jennifer looked around the garden, trying hard to listen for birds.
“I don’t hear any,” Jennifer said.
“Hearing is a gift,” said Gran. “Perhaps it’s nae yers. Ye have other compensations. Ye understood about Color Correspondences wi’out being told. And about the Rule of Giving. And Riddles.”
But the dog suddenly sat up, his ears twitching back and forth. “They come!” he said.
Jennifer strained to hear something. Anything.
“I hear it!” said Peter.
“I don’t,” Jennifer complained.
“Patience is a virtue,” said Gran.
“Patience is a game,” Jennifer and Peter said together.