Dragonswood

by Janet Lee Carey

  Half the dragon’s bulk was hidden in the deeper chamber behind. The creature’s triangular head loomed over the huntsman. Garth stood very still below. He’d told me he’d seen dragons up close on Dragon’s Keep, but up this close?

  Now my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw the blue-green scales of a female. Her neck was not fully extended; still, it looked long as a pine sapling, near ten feet by my guess. All this I noticed in a moment, for now I could see her eyes were blue, a color rare in dragons. This must be the one who’d attacked us on the road.

  Another rumbling sound and I saw what I’d taken for a growl before had been a kind of speech. I listened, keeping well behind the rock.

  “. . . to Harrowton?” the dragon asked huskily. “And on the road?”

  “We went to gather a child,” said Garth.

  The dragon huffed, enveloping Garth in smoke. He went ghostly for a time and coughed till the smoke rose to the roof. “Should I do nothing to help the women Lady Adela hunts?” he asked.

  My knees wobbled. He’d told the dragon about us?

  The she-dragon tipped her head. “Are they witches on the run?”

  “They are no more witches than my grandmother was.”

  Both went silent as if in reverence, though how this dragon would have known Garth’s grandmother was beyond me.

  “Do any of the girls have fairy blood?” The dragon’s tongue flicked out, furling and unfurling.

  Garth did not answer straightaway. My heart sped.

  Finally he said, “Half fey you mean? How can a man tell that?” With one hand on his hip, he pressed the other against the cave wall and leaned against it, crossing his legs. An astonishingly carefree pose before a powerful dragon. What would he do next, start whistling?

  The dragon blinked, then smiled or snarled, I could not tell which. “Are they gone now from your lodge?” she asked.

  “One is gone with the leech. Four guests remain, counting a husband and a child.”

  “Put them out, Bash!”

  Bash? Had he lied about his name?

  The dragon flicked her tail. My ears pricked to a tinkling sound coming from behind her. Peering harder into the dark well of the cave, I caught a glint of gold.

  “I should not send them away, Ore.”

  Another name I knew from Grandfather’s history lessons. Ore was a she-dragon hatched under Queen Rosalind’s care, the smallest female of the clutch, and one with uncommon blue eyes. Might this be she? I wanted time to ponder it. Rosalind’s Ore was raised on Dragon’s Keep and might have met Garth there in his visits. There was no time to tease it out while they argued.

  “How can I put them out when the man is still recovering and they are all penniless besides?” argued Garth, or Bash, or whoever this huntsman was.

  The dragon swept her tail behind her. Gold coins tumbled out, rolling past her enormous clawed hind feet and settling near Garth’s boots.

  “Give them that. Then send them off.”

  “And where should I say I found the money?”

  “Bash!” She gave a warning growl. Garth backed away.

  “Before you leave, young sir, give me what you stole last time.”

  He wiped his sweaty forehead with the back of his sleeve. “It’s mine, Ore.”

  “We agreed I would guard it all.”

  “You do.”

  “All but the pearl in your pocket, boy.”

  “Shall we spar for it?” he asked, drawing his sword. The dragon reared back, extending a sharp black talon. I nearly screamed and raced out, but Garth jumped back, smacking his rapier against her talon as she matched parry for parry, breathing short, concentrative plumes of fire. It was like a tourney—both fighting for the contest but not the kill.

  Throughout the match, the dragon used only one talon against her smaller opponent. But her eyes were narrowed on Garth. She had no expressive brows, yet her eyelids wavered up and down as when a woman concentrates over difficult needlework. Garth avoided talon and flames, jumping onto higher rocks.

  “You hold back!” he accused, leaping to another ledge.

  “I do not, Bash!” She turned her scaly arm, clanked against his sword.

  “You could have me for supper!”

  “A puny snack!”

  Ore knocked him flat against the cave floor, flicked away his rapier, and imprisoned him under five long, black, fully extended talons.

  He sat up coughing in the dust, and laughed. “Touché, Ore. Let me out.”

  “Give me what you stole last time.”

  “I keep it only as a remembrance.” He spoke quietly, gripping the black curved bars. Though he knelt in her jail, nothing but his body knelt. Garth would not bow to her power. I wondered at it.

  “And you’ve shown it to no one since taking it?” Smoke now, not fire. I guessed she was trying to keep her temper, but she would not let Garth go till she had what she was after.

  “One saw,” he admitted.

  More smoke from Ore’s nostrils. “And what did you tell him?”

  “Not him. It was a girl.”

  “Why did you show her the pearl?” This came out like a moan, if dragons moan.

  “I’m sorry, Ore. The girl, she… she—”

  “Attacked you? Held a knife to your throat?” said Ore. “What?”

  Yes, what? I thought behind my rock. Why did he let me hold it? My heart pounded.

  “I see,” said Ore at last.

  See? What did she see? A look? A gesture? Garth’s back was to me. What did I miss? It was all I could do not to show myself then and insist the man finish the speech he’d started.

  Ore released him.

  He took the necklace from his pocket. “I thought you would not begrudge me keeping this one pearl,” he said.

  The dragon held the necklace in the air between them and spread a thin carpet of blue fire under it.

  Behind my stone, I held my breath. The pearl glowed atop the blue flame like a tiny sun.

  “She was so beautiful,” said Garth.

  Outside, snow whipped in the wind. Trees leaned toward the cave where we three hid. Still, it was day within. The fiery stream from the dragon’s mouth made a sound like rushing water, spreading light around the pearl.

  Ore lowered it again. “I know you’d like to keep it, Bash. But the crown jewels must be guarded.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  THE CROWN JEWELS! Garth had struck me as an outlaw from the moment I saw him. How had he fooled me, fooled all of us? Garth or Bash or whatever his true name was, was no more than a common thief.

  When he quit the cave, I followed him down the snowy ravine and up again, fighting through the thorns behind him.

  The time we’d hidden from the king’s troop on the road? The man hadn’t done it to defend me; he’d done it to protect himself!

  I kept him in my sights for an hour as I worked up the courage to confront him. I didn’t get the chance. He was suddenly accosted by seven knights of the realm. They surrounded him with such speed he’d no chance to defend himself. Next they made him mount a horse. A part of me wanted to rush out in his defense, but the other wanted him to get what he deserved. Just before they rode off, Garth spotted me through the greenery. He looked somewhat stunned to see me. Before he glanced away, he shook his head, warning me to stay hidden.

  The royal troop rode off in swirls of snow and mud, Garth’s dark hair clinging to his cheeks. He’d warned me not to show myself, but I couldn’t let him go so easily. I darted through the wood after the troop. The horses’ easy trotting pace in the thicker wood turned to a canter as the trees gave way to wider paths. The captors rode too far, too fast. At long last I gave up the chase and stood, breathless in the falling snow.

  I hadn’t written Garth a good-bye letter. Pointless now. His name wasn’t even Garth. He’d lied to me from the start.

  I wandered deeper in the wood, paying little attention to my steps as my mind repeated the same words over and over. Garth. Bash. Huntsman. Thief. G
arth. Bash. Huntsman. Thief.

  Three days I journeyed north. DunGarrow drew me toward itself. The tugging sensation was stronger with each step as if I were in an invisible river.

  At first the foothills seemed farther and farther away as if I chased a moving land, but on the third day, Morgesh Mountain loomed ahead. Snow melted under a warmer sun, falling from the boughs in slow, heavy drops. Even in my weary state, I sensed a difference in the air as if I’d crossed some invisible boundary and entered the fairy realm.

  Reaching a small clearing on the third night, I fell exhausted. By my count it was All Hallows’ Eve—a night to keep watch. All manner of spirits are loosed on the Witch’s Sabbath when covens meet to sacrifice the innocent and seethe a stew of human bones. I was wary to be in Dragonswood on such a night. It took a long while to light a small fire in the damp, even using the last of the parchment I’d taken from the study. Finally small flames licked the torn page and caught the kindling.

  As I squatted, damp and shivering, holding my hands out to the fire, darkness weighed down over the world like a hushed, black wave about to fall. I was far from humankind, yet I felt I was being observed like an insect under a mage-glass. I glanced about. No eyes glared from the woods. I heard familiar scuttling noises of small forest creatures and the dry, dusty sound of flitting wings.

  Still I sensed something else. Who watches? I looked left and right.

  Then in that hour light came, thrown like a ball to the base of a tree. One circling flame falling, then another, and another. I screamed as the light orbs piled up on all sides. Heat washed over me, drying my damp clothes to the stiffness of brown leaves. The rushing sound of flames hushed all else in the night wood. In brightness, I was lifted, swung, paraded through the forest on waves of living fire that did not scorch or burn, but sang beneath me:

  Eshkataa breelyn kataa. Bring her in, her in, her in.

  Fairy bound in human skin. Bring her in, her in, her in.

  PART THREE

  Fey Folk and Foul

  Chapter Twenty-two

  LET ME GO! Put me down!” I shouted as the company of will-o’-the-wisps bore me over the night wood. Mighty in number, they flew on and on, all heat and light and whirring speed.

  They raced me toward a castle that appeared at first to be made entirely by nature’s own device, rising in a series of gray-black pinnacles against the mountainside with a waterfall riving it in two and gushing right down the middle. The scalloped terraces on the pointed towers were edged with green. The ferns were all a-dance in the swirling mist sent by the fury of the central waterfall.

  My frightened screams were as nothing to the whirring of the wisp wings, and soon the rushing water drowned out all other sounds. I was flown through an open window in one of the many towers. They careened down a maze of hallways to a large room with a central, steaming pool, stripped off my stinking clothes, and threw me in the water. I thought I’d drown till I extended my legs and found I could stand in the shallows. Making me sit again, the tiny fairies washed my hair.

  Straight from my bath they flew me naked through more passages leading down to an inner room with one wall made entirely of hives stretching floor to ceiling. The wall hummed with what I supposed were bees. The whole of it was the glassy gold of Tupkin’s eyes. In the middle of the room a plump, milky-skinned woman sat on a throne made of vines.

  I did not think the woman was a fairy; she was like none I’d spied anyway. White-haired, white-browed, and white-gowned besides, she seemed bleached of all color. The leaves sprouting from her chair looked vivid green by contrast.

  Dripping wet and shivering, I faced her. I’d crossed into the fairy realm. Trespassed. Was that why they’d stripped off my clothes? Had they brought me here to torture me? I held one arm across my breasts, and one hand covering my most private part.

  The woman appraised me without pity. I near fainted then and there.

  “Turn about,” she said. I could barely hear her over the humming bees.

  “First, my cl-clothes, please.” My teeth chattered. I tried not to whimper.

  The woman’s gown swished about her ankles as she got up to pluck a needle hanging, point down, from the ceiling. In her chair again, she repeated her command, this time with a sigh. There was no anger in her voice and no love in it either. Afraid to cross her, I turned about as I was told, covering my behind as best I could when my back was to her, then bringing arms in front again to face her. “What are you doing? What do you want?”

  “Mind me and we’ll get this done quickly.”

  She had power I could sense from where I stood. Even now my flesh had begun to dry in the heated room. White as snow, this woman was all heat. She turned her attention to the glassy hives. “Grass green,” she mumbled. Pricking herself with the needle, she let out a little snarl of pain before pressing the bleeding finger into the wall. A long needle-thin green line bled across the glassy hexagonal orbs. Transfixed, I watched as it branched in all directions. It was like a map with a tiny blood-fed river crossing a golden landscape.

  Then the green-winged insects flew out and swarmed overhead. Hundreds on hundreds. They looked like bumblebees but for their longer legs and strange color.

  “Stop!” I screamed. “Do they sting?”

  She laughed. The swarm descended. I flung my hands up, waved them off, then turned and ran down the long passageway. A few will-o’-the-wisps followed me out, though not enough to shed any real light. The green swarm was in chase. The woman shouted from her room. “I’ll call the flits back. Go naked to the fairy king if that’s what you want, half-blood!”

  “Fairy king?” I paused, blushed at my condition, swore, and raced back inside. She’d called the insects flits. I’d not seen or heard of flits before. Why had she released them? The woman pointed to a flat stone pedestal three inches off the floor. “Stand there. Hold your arms out a little.”

  “What for?”

  “Do you want a gown or not, Tess?”

  She knew my name. “Y-yes,” I stammered. “A gown, please.”

  “Hold your arms out. No, not that much. Yes, that much. Now be still or be stung!”

  The humming noise was deafening as the flits swirled down in a winged wheel spinning silken green threads from their abdomens. With wriggling legs they wove soft cloth about my neck and shoulders. Spinning down each arm, in a tiny windy gale that tickled as they wove shimmering green sleeves.

  “Oh, beautiful,” I said all in a breath. I made to scratch a tickle and screamed. One of the little beasts had stung my forefinger. It throbbed.

  “I said be still.”

  “I am!” I shouted, and was stung again, this time on the neck. Tears ran down my cheeks, but I froze then and there. Two angry stings were enough for me, if all the flits should sting…

  The woman watched me cry; seeming satisfied at last, she told me, “I am the fey called Morralyn,” she said. “Mistress of the Hives.

  “Gold to set it off,” she said, her forehead wrinkling with concentration. She pricked her finger, fed the hives, and new flits swarmed and spun, adding golden patterns to the green.

  They fell to the floor when done. I could not tell if they were dead or only sleeping, but as I touched the silky cloth I saw my green gown had the same golden stitchery I’d seen Mother wearing in my dream the first night I slept at the king’s lodge. This was the very gown. What did it mean? Was it myself I’d seen and not my mother? I whispered what I’d said to Mother in the dream.

  “It’s you,” I said, blinking back the tears.

  “Hungry?” asked Morralyn.

  “I… I…”

  The hive mistress sucked her pricked finger and frowned. “Did I waste my flits on a dull-wit?”

  “No. I am hungry, mistress, thank you.”

  “Good,” said she. “You’ve made me late to the feast as it is.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  WE MADE OUR way through the long corridor. Few torches burned along the walls, but will-o�
��-the-wisps flew ahead for light. In the busy hallways we were greeted by fairy children running to and fro with food platters. Each waif stopped to bow, holding the trays steady as they did so. Mistress Morralyn dispatched them to their duties with a nod. Climbing a spiral staircase, I thought of what lay ahead. Would I meet my father at last? What would I say to him here in the fairy kingdom? He’d not come to me in my world. Left me on my own for seventeen years. Would he even wish to see me?

  “I’m not ready,” I blurted. “My hair’s still wet.”

  Morralyn drew back. Her chest swelled, then she blew a stream of warm air. The hall torches sputtered in her wind and I broke into a sweat. My hair is thick and curly, often taking an hour to dry, but her breath nearly crisped it.

  “There,” she said. “Ready?”

  I had no excuse now. The last and longest passage opened to a Great Hall. A clear stream rived the room right down the middle. Fairies used the flower-spangled bridge to cross side to side. I’ll cross the bridge just like the girl in the tale “The Whistler.” I paused a moment. Would God I won’t return to the human world an old woman after a hundred years have passed. Mistress Morralyn urged me across the running water.

  Crowded feast tables lined both sides of the enormous room, snaking through a high archway all the way out to the meadow. Only days before I’d been with my friends and Garth, and now here I was, about to dine with the fey.

  I’d never seen such beauty or such variation. My fingers itched to draw them, even more to paint them in full color. All were richly dressed, yet it was not their clothes that captivated me, but their vivid faces, their smooth skin that varied from a rich black to light brown to a creamy pale (though Morralyn was in extreme the palest of all). Grandfather had said fey folk live hundreds of years, yet with exception of the smallest children who raced about in twos and threes playing with the will-o’-the-wisps, and the older children serving the repast, I could not begin to tell their ages.

  As we moved among them, I scanned the Great Hall for my father. I was sure I would know him at once. I cannot say how. I checked the highest table, where the fairy king was slitting an apple. He was blond-haired, rosy-cheeked, and merry. He’d surrounded himself with beauties, a short, pale lady on his left, and a taller, dark-skinned lady on his right. Mother was blond like him, my hair was curly brown. Not my father, I thought. The bearded king leaned right, kissed the taller lady on her cheek, and raised his goblet to her. All the fairies in the room held their goblets high.