Dragon's Keep

by Janet Lee Carey

  “Just an owl,” I said for comfort. But the smell in the air told me otherwise. Burning leather, putrid flesh, rusting metal. A smell somehow familiar.

  The dragon.

  Overhead I saw him. Power. Muscle. Red-tipped wings wide as the church wall. His underside was gold. His back and wings blue-green. I was afraid but could not turn away.

  Beat. Beat. The wings shook out their shadows like dust from old carpets.

  In the foothills below sheep gathered on the grass like small clouds clustering in a darkened sky. The beast circled over them. Where was the shepherd now?

  Oh, run. Run. Don’t let the dragon catch you! My claw throbbed in time with the flapping wings as it had the day the dragon killed our Magda. I clenched my teeth, willing my mar to pound to another time, but it fell into the rhythm of the giant wings like a soldier to a marching drum.

  Run, sheep!

  They scattered beneath him. Then I saw the shepherd rushing down the hill. Two beats more and the dragon swooped down, caught the shepherd in his claws, and flew skyward again.

  I could hear the poor man screaming as the dragon flew closer to the cliff where I hid and landed on a broad, flat stone not more than sixty paces from me. I shuddered. The beast was thirty feet long from snout to rump, and his thrashing tail was nigh on thirty feet as well.

  The captive man screamed and flailed, imprisoned in the dragon’s claws. And I saw the sharp, encircling talons drawing blood against his cloak.

  The muscles in my legs twitched. I longed to run, but the beast blocked the way before me and the cliff edge was just behind. All I could do was wait, shiver, hide behind my slender sapling, and hope the dragon would not notice me.

  The dragon held the man out on the tips of his talons, blew a stream of fire at him till he was cooked, then plunged the dead man into his mouth. I closed my eyes, sickened, and pressed my hands to my ears. Still I could not shut out the sounds of the dragon’s teeth crunching the shepherd’s bones.

  Finished with his feast, the dragon licked his jaws, looked about, and sniffed. I hunched up close to my small spruce tree.

  “Rosalind!” My mother’s voice came from somewhere up mountain. The dragon turned and pricked up his ears.

  “Rosalind! Come back!”

  He lifted his head higher.

  “Rosie! Oh, Rosie! Answer me!”

  Slowly the dragon’s wings unfurled. He would follow her call and do to her what he’d done to the shepherd!

  I leaped from my hiding place. “Dragon.”

  He turned. I could see his nostrils flaring, green about and red within.

  Blood pounded in my ears.

  I searched the moonlit ground for a weapon: bushes, slender grass, pebbles. Nothing.

  The dragon’s tongue lashed out like a devil’s whip. He lowered his head, saying, “Sweet morsel.” Dragons know many human languages, being sharp-witted and slit-tongued, so the words did not surprise me. But the voice did: a voice like stones thrown into a river, deep and clear and sharp all at the same time. I could tell by the tone the dragon was female.

  She inched closer, belly to the ground like a stalking cat. The gold of her underside was the color of my gloves. Her eyes were large as lanterns, slit with yellow fire. These were the soft spots; all else was scaly armor.

  “I am not afraid,” I said, my heart thrusting in my ribs. The dragon stopped and peered at me. This was not what she was used to hearing, nor what I’d meant to say.

  The dragon blinked and seemed to smile.

  “You’re nothing but a winged lizard!” I shouted. “It’s sure you sleep on a flat rock in the sun and your brains are all in your gut!”

  The dragon’s mouth opened, her dagger teeth still red with the shepherd’s blood. “The morsel has no fat,” she said. “But I see she has a fire in her belly.” Then lifting her head, the dragon breathed flames into the sky. I felt the heat across my face and chest. The firelight shone like a thousand bluebells in a starry field. I swallowed hard, my tongue swelling in my mouth.

  She bent closer, smoke swirling about her head. Lifting her forearm, her five-taloned claw gleaming black and washed in moonlight, she paused, then lowered it again. Her eyes had fallen on my gloves.

  “Gold,” she whispered.

  Quick I tore them off and tossed them at her feet. The glittering threads of my gloves distracting her, I seized the moment, thrust out my hand, and scratched her right eye with my talon.

  She roared, rearing back, and the ground shook beneath her. I ran to the right. She caught me in her claws, like a wee mouse to a cat. I worked to breathe in her grip, and with every gasp my chest was shot with pain.

  Now we were face to face. Drops of blood pearled along the gash beneath her eye. The smells of blood and burnt flesh filled my nose, and I felt as helpless as a worm in a robin’s claw. I thrust my arm out again to make a second wound, but I was too far back.

  Some trance shrouded the dragon as she stared at my naked hand: my scaly blue-green claw, the sharp black talon still wet with her blood. A shiver raced across her back and made the dry sound of rustling leaves.

  Afraid to move, I kept my hand stretched out.

  The dragon was so still that a yarrow moth lit upon her head and stayed there opening and closing its wings in the moonlight.

  I felt a calming come over me then, a peace down to my core. And though she had me in her grasp and I could not kneel or cross myself as I’d been taught, I loosed my soul to meet my end. In a twinkling, with a shift of soul, I was prepared to wheel upward into heaven. But I wasn’t ready for what happened next.

  The dragon’s warm wet tongue thrust out and wrapped about my arm. It twisted like a serpent, the slit ending at my fingertips. She held her tongue there, licking my talon as my blood chased through my veins. My claw had never been so gently touched.

  I swayed, and I heard a rushing in my ears as if the sky had sent a river down.

  At last the bright red tongue unfurled and slipped into her mouth. Letting go her hold, she set me down, uprooted my small tree, and flew over the cliff’s edge. I watched her drop the sapling to the valley floor below as she sped across the sky. The clouds blushed in her approach, and darkened again as she passed, like tapestry near a wavering candle.

  I was left standing, my arm still outstretched against an invisible foe. A cool breeze played about my flesh, my claw still damp from the dragon’s kiss.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Angel’s Betrayal

  AN ANGEL LEANED OVER ME as my eyes opened to the light, her golden hair blowing loose in the wind.

  “So I am come to the afterworld,” I mumbled, still half asleep. The angel’s small brows tilted. I noticed then she had no wings.

  Rain began to fall and with the rain, awakening.

  Alive.

  A girl of an age to me. No angel. Who was she, then?

  “Are you the shepherd’s daughter?” I asked. She began to walk. I followed her up the rocky path, my thoughts scattering like startled birds. The dragon. A female. She saw my claw and kissed it.

  My legs ached and my belly growled with hunger. We drank at a mountain brook. By the time we crossed it, I’d formed a plan.

  Father Hugh’s map and food were in my saddlebag. I’d find the trail I’d run down last night, slip into the copse where Rollo was tied, and ride him north to Columba’s Tear. The waters there would heal my hand. I would be free. But how was I to find the trail when I’d only seen it in the dark?

  The sharp wind caught my cloak as I followed the girl along the path, thinking.

  A voice cried, “Ah, you’ve put yourself to some use, Kit-cat!”

  Demetra! The girl had led me to the wolves!

  Mother rushed from the cave, her face mottled, her eyes red and swollen with tears. “Ah, God, Rosie! I thought the dragon—”

  I did not stay to hear the rest but flew away from her.

  “Rosie! Don’t run off again!”

  I stumbled back down the muddy path, r
unning fast and hard. But they caught my sodden cloak and dragged me screaming back into the viper’s den.

  “You’re back home now,” said Demetra, tying a leather strap about my waist and securing it to a metal ring on the wall. Home? This wasn’t home. With Ali’s help she’d pulled me down a maze of darkened tunnels to this small room.

  “Leave us, Ali,” said Demetra.

  Damp with sweat and breathing hard, I tried to regain strength for battle as Demetra sped about with wooden bowls and stinking herbs. Mother entered my cell.

  Demetra turned. “The cost before the cure.”

  Mother placed her silver on the table between a loaf of bread and a carving knife. Demetra snatched the coins and dropped them into her leather sack.

  The queen peeled off her golden gloves and sat beside me while Demetra crushed dried mustard seeds in her mortar bowl. The room filled with a pungent autumn smell as she worked.

  All was silence but for the rhythm of mortar and pestle. Then wiping her hands on her wool kirtle, Demetra left the cell.

  “Untie me quick, Mother. Take me home.”

  She patted my arm. “No, Rosie. This woman will heal your mark. She has great powers.”

  “Dark powers!” I spat.

  Mother flinched. “It’s time to take this cure. No one else has healed you. If there were another way . . . You must be brave, Rosie.”

  There were tears in Mother’s eyes as she said this, but I felt no pity for her. She could free me if she chose.

  In the copper firelight, I eyed the knife next to a loaf of bread on the nearby table. Whilst Mother turned to dab her eyes, I reached for the silver glint, but Demetra swept in and caught me by the wrist.

  “You must be hungry, child.” She let go her hold then clapped her hands twice. Ali appeared, received her orders, then returned with honey and a horn of goat’s milk. The hag tied my wrists firmly on either side of me as Ali sliced the loaf and dripped honey on the bread. Eyeing the crumb-encrusted knife, I ate the morsels Mother fed me until my aching belly calmed.

  My betrayer came to take my horn, and I saw a ring of dirt beneath the girl’s fingernails. Still, her hands were slim and beautiful, and I felt a pang. If I had God’s power to order, “Let her hands be mine,” I’d do so. What would it matter to this girl who betrayed me to the hag? Who would care if she had a claw?

  “Who is the girl?” I asked when she’d left the cave.

  “Ah.” Demetra laughed. “She might have walked in your shoes.”

  “Quiet,” ordered Mother.

  Demetra left the cell, her gray hair lifting like cobwebs in a breeze. It was the first time Mother had crossed the hag since I’d been recaptured. But it was in defense of another.

  “What does she mean to you?” I asked, the words leaking from the ache in my chest.

  “Nothing at all,” said Mother. “She’s Ali’s bastard, Katinka.”

  So Katinka went from angel to bastard in a single day. How strange the world was. Then I remembered the look Ali had given Mother when first she’d seen her. “You knew Ali before she was a servant here,” I guessed.

  Mother started. She would have denied it if she could and worn a fixed look of indifference, but I’d read the truth in her face already. “She was once my lady’s maid,” Mother admitted.

  Marn had told me about the lady’s maid expelled from Mother’s service for bedding a wandering minstrel. “And wasn’t she rounding with child already before she left?” Marn had said. “Ah, she was spoilt. And here she was as pretty as an angel.”

  Demetra still hadn’t returned, and Mother was softening to me, it seemed.

  “Free me.” A command, not a plea this time.

  Mother kissed my damp hair. “You will be healed, Rosie. And later when you’re married to Prince Henry, you will thank me.”

  “Take me to the lake. I’ll find my healing there.”

  “The lake?” asked Demetra as she darted back in.

  “Columba’s Tear,” said Mother, patting my arm.

  Demetra laughed. “It’s nothing but a marsh now.”

  “I don’t believe you!” I said.

  “Well, now, do you think I’d live here if a lake could do my healing? I’d stir the waters myself and charge good coin for folk to come and take a dip.”

  The hag slit a prune and removed the pit. Humming to herself, she took a jar from the shelf, pulled the cloth from the lid, and drew out an enormous spider. Its legs flailed in the air.

  “Mother,” I said, hoarsely. “Order her to take the thing away!”

  She knew my fear of spiders. I’d always run at the sight of them. A year before this, when a fat spider had crawled into my solar, I’d screamed and leaped onto my bed. Mother had bolted the door and made me stand beside the spider. “A princess doesn’t show her dread,” she’d said. And so the spider crawled up the wall while I held my breath. Thus, she’d taught me to swallow my fear, to let my blood scream in my ears and not give voice to it.

  Blood was screaming in my ears now as Demetra held the spider by its leg.

  “Mother! Tell her to get rid of it! I don’t mind my curse at all. I’ll wear my gloves till death.”

  “Till death, you say?” Demetra laughed. “That may be.” Demetra dangled the spider above the fruit then stuffed it into the shriveled plum.

  I tried to get up, but the leather cinched my gut so tight I fell back on the cot.

  “Keep her still,” ordered Demetra.

  “Marn!” I screamed as Mother held me down. My nursemaid was far away down the mountain, but she would have stood between Demetra and me, old bones to old bones, and kept the horrid spider away.

  I clamped my jaw against the fruit. If that spider crossed my lips, I was sure to enter a strange world knit by the devil’s needles—a world where a loving mother would pay out silver to have her girl tortured.

  Demetra bent over my cot, her breath smelling of turnips. “This will stave off the shivers.” She thrust out the puckered plum, the spider’s leg wiggling out one side.

  “Take it, Rose. It’s for your good,” said Mother.

  I bit my lips, but Demetra pulled my jaw open, dropped the spider-fruit in, and clamped it shut.

  O, Saint Alodia, protector of children, come wrap Demetra with your cord and drag her into hell, I prayed. But there was no saint. No cord. And the only thing wrapped was my tongue around the wretched prune. I pressed it to the side of my cheek while Mother ran her fingers through my hair. “Soon all will be well, Rosie,” she said.

  Demetra moved my jaw up and down to make me chew the spider-plum. I never will forget the crunching sound the spider made between my teeth.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Flying as in a Dream

  MOTHER HAD NEVER LET ME show my hand to anyone in the world but her, but all vows were broken in Demetra’s stinking cave. She dismissed Ali and her child then carefully removed my glove before the hag. Demetra’s glance was hungry, as if she hoped to toss my severed claw into a soup and sup upon its power.

  “Woman!” said Mother impatiently. “Will you but stare and stare?”

  The hag applied a poultice of hot mustard plaster and stinging nettles, wrapping the mustard cloth tight around my scaly claw. Stinging heat seared my flesh, flamed into my hand, and burned up my arm. Soon my hand began to round and swell like a ripened peach. I was racked by shivers. So much for the medicinal powers of spider-fruit.

  “Stop,” I cried. “Make her take it off.”

  Mother, still holding me to my cot, kissed my forehead. “Hush now,” she said.

  “The nettles sting.”

  “They fight your cursed flesh,” said Mother.

  A small shadow hovered in the hall; an edge of skirt appeared. Mother adjusted the poultice so no part of my claw could be seen. “Enter now, Katinka.”

  She came in with a tray of mint leaves.

  “Mint,” I called.

  Katinka held out her tray. Mint would cool my burning claw. I could stand the pain
a moment more, knowing it was near. Mother laid the wet mint leaves on the backside of my hand just above the burning poultice.

  “Be gone,” said Demetra, pushing the girl from the room. Katinka tumbled to the floor in the shadowy hall, but she did not cry out.

  I waited for the cooling mint to work, holding my breath and thinking of a rhyme Father used to say. “Hug her and kiss her and take her on your knee, and whisper very close, darling girl, do you love me?”

  “Darling girl, darling girl . . . ,” I whispered over and over, but my hand grew redder and rounder till it seemed like a wormy apple torn from the branch to rot.

  The fire in the pit crackled as Demetra unwrapped the poultice. I felt a moment of relief, then she added more hot mustard smear and nettle leaf.

  Burning. Stinging. “My finger! It’s stinging like a thousand bees.”

  “Enough,” said Mother turning to Demetra. “Stop her pain.”

  “Sleep potion has a cost,” said Demetra above my screaming. Mother tossed more silver on her table. Demetra pocketed the coins and took a sea sponge from her little shelf.

  “When Rosalind’s a good girl, she’ll have her cakes and custard,” said Demetra, holding out the sponge. “But when she pouts and cries, she’ll have nothing but hot mustard.” Demetra laughed at this, her gap-toothed mouth showing her gray tongue. Leaning over me, she pressed the sponge to my mouth. I thrashed and screamed into the strange-smelling sponge.

  “What’s in it?” asked Mother.

  “A good sleep potion. Poppy tincture and hemlock—”

  I drifted away from the hag, my mother’s worried gaze, the cell with its crackling fire. In my fevered dreams, I faced a legion of angry sprites who cut off my arms with their grass-blade swords. No matter how many arms the fairies cut, I grew more back, till I had eight arms in all.