Harrowing the Dragon

by Patricia A. Mckillip

“And good riddance,” Baba Yaga said rudely. But she lingered in her mortar to listen.

  “Oh,” the young sorcerer groaned. “My head.”

  “Johann! You’re alive!”

  “Barely. That old witch Baba Yaga hit me over the head with her pestle—”

  “Hush, don’t talk. Rest.”

  “Father, is that you? Am I here?”

  “Yes, yes, my son—”

  “I’m sorry I blew up your house.”

  “House, shmouse, you blew up your head, you stupid boy, how many times have I told you—”

  “It was the Mandragora root.”

  “I know. I’ve told you and told you—”

  “Is this my bed? The house is still standing? Father, your cauldron, the cats, the pictures on the wall—”

  “Nothing is broken but your head.”

  “Then I didn’t—But how did I—Father, I blew myself clear to the Underwood—I saw Baba Yaga’s house spinning and spinning, and I stopped it for her, and she took me for a ride in her mortar and pestle—I saw such wonders, such magics, such a beautiful country… Someday I’ll find my way back…”

  “Stop talking. Sleep.”

  “And then she hit me for no reason at all, after I had helped her, and she sent me back here… Did you know she wears green spectacles?”

  “She does not!”

  “Yes, she does.”

  “You were dreaming.”

  “Was I? Was I, really? Or am I dreaming now that the house is safe, and you aren’t angry… Which is the true dream?”

  “You’re making my head spin.”

  “Mine, too.”

  The voices were fading. Baba Yaga smiled, and three passing crows fell out of the sky in shock. She beat a drumroll on the mortar with her pestle and sailed back to her kitchen.

  The Fellowship of the Dragon

  A great cry rose throughout the land: Queen Celandine had lost her harper. She summoned north, south, east, west; we rode for days through mud and rain to meet, the five of us, at Trillium; from there we rode to Carnelaine. The world had come to her great court, for though we lived too far from her to hear her fabled harper play, we heard the rumor that at each full moon she gave him gloves of cloth of gold and filled his mouth with jewels. As we stood in the hall among her shining company, listening to her pleas for help, Justin, who is the riddler among us, whispered, “What is invisible but everywhere, swift as wind but has no feet, and has as many tongues that speak but never has a face?”

  “Easy,” I breathed. “Rumor.”

  “Rumor, that shy beast, says she valued his hands for more than his harping, and she filled his mouth with more than jewels.”

  I was hardly surprised. Celandine is as beautiful close as she is at a distance; she has been so for years, with the aid of a streak of sorcery she inherited through a bit of murkiness, an imprecise history of the distaff side, and she is not one to waste her gifts. She had married honorably, loved faithfully, raised her heirs well. When her husband died a decade ago, she mourned him with the good-hearted efficiency she had brought to marriage and throne. Her hair showed which way the wind was blowing, and the way that silver, ash, and gold worked among the court was magical. But when we grew close enough to kneel before her, I saw that the harper was no idle indulgence, but had sung his way into her blood.

  “You five,” she said softly “I trust more than all my court. I rely on you.” Her eyes, green as her name, were grim; I saw the tiny lines of fear and temper beside her mouth. “There are some in this hall who—because I have not been entirely wise or tactful—would sooner see the harper dead than rescue him.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  She lowered her voice; I could scarcely hear her, though the jealous knights behind me must have stilled their hearts to catch her answer. “I looked in water, in crystal, in mirror: every image is the same. Black Tremptor has him.”

  “Oh, fine.”

  She bent to kiss me: we are cousins, though sometimes I have been more a wayward daughter, and more often, she a wayward mother. “Find him, Anne,” she said.

  We five rose as one and left the court.

  “What did she say?” Danica asked as we mounted. “Did she say Black Tremptor?”

  “Sh!”

  “That’s a mountain,” Fleur said.

  “It’s a bloody dragon,” Danica said sharply, and I bellowed in a whisper, “Can you refrain from announcing our destination to the entire world?”

  Danica wheeled her mount crossly; peacocks, with more haste than grace, swept their fine trains out of her way. Justin looked intrigued by the problem. Christabel, who was nursing a cold, said stoically, “Could be worse.” What could be worse than being reduced to a cinder by an irritated dragon, she didn’t mention. Fleur, who loved good harping, was moved.

  “Then we must hurry. Poor man.”

  She pulled herself up, cantered after Danica. Riding more sedately through the crowded yard, we found them outside the gate, gazing east and west across the gray, billowing sky as if it had streamed out of a dragon’s nostrils.

  “Which way?” Fleur asked. Justin, who knew such things, pointed. Christabel blew her nose. We rode.

  Of course we circled back through the city and lost the knights who had been following us. We watched them through a tavern window as they galloped purposefully down the wrong crossroad. Danica, whose moods swung between sun and shadow like an autumn day, was being enchanted by Fleur’s description of our quest.

  “He is a magnificent harper, and we should spare no pains to rescue him, for there is no one like him in all the world, and Queen Celandine might reward us with gold and honor, but he will reward us forever in a song.”

  Christabel waved the fumes of hot spiced wine at her nose. “Does anyone know this harper’s name?”

  “Kestral,” I said. “Kestral Hunt. He came to court a year ago, at old Thurlow’s death.”

  “And where,” Christabel asked sensibly, “is Black Tremptor?”

  We all looked at Justin, who for once looked uncomfortable. “North,” she said. She is a slender, dark-haired, quiet-voiced woman with eyes like the storm outside. She could lay out facts like an open road, or mortar them into a brick wall. Which she was building for us now, I wasn’t sure.

  “Justin?”

  “Well, north,” she said vaguely, as if that alone explained itself. “It’s fey, beyond the border. Odd things happen. We must be watchful.”

  We were silent. The tavern keeper came with our supper. Danica, pouring wine the same pale honey as her hair, looked thoughtful at the warning instead of cross. “What kinds of things?”

  “Evidently harpers are stolen by dragons,” I said. “Dragons with some taste in music.”

  “Black Tremptor is not musical,” Justin said simply. “But like that, yes. There are so many tales, who knows which of them might be true? And we barely know the harper any better than the northlands.”

  “His name,” I said, “and that he plays well.”

  “He plays wonderfully,” Fleur breathed. “So they say.”

  “And he caught the queen’s eye,” Christabel said, biting into a chicken leg. “So he might look passable. Though with good musicians, that hardly matters.”

  “And he went north,” Justin pointed out. “For what?”

  “To find a song,” Fleur suggested; it seemed, as gifted as he was, not unlikely.

  “Or a harp,” I guessed. “A magical harp.”

  Justin nodded. “Guarded by a powerful dragon. It’s possible. Such things happen, north.”

  Fleur pushed her dish aside, sank tableward onto her fists. She is straw-thin, with a blacksmith’s appetite; love, I could tell, for this fantasy made her ignore the last of her parsnips. She has pale, curly hair like a sheep, and a wonderful, caressing voice; her eyes are small, her nose big, her teeth crooked, but her passionate, musical voice has proved Christabel right more times than was good for Fleur’s husband to know. How robust, practical Chri
stabel, who scarcely seemed to notice men or music, understood such things, I wasn’t sure.

  “So,” I said. “North.”

  And then we strayed into the country called “Remember-when,” for we had known one another as children in the court at Carnelaine and then as members of the queen’s company, riding ideals headlong into trouble, and now, as long and trusted friends. We got to bed late, enchanted by our memories, and out of bed far too early, wondering obviously why we had left hearth and home, husband, child, cat, and goose down bed for one another’s surly company. Christabel sniffed, Danica snapped, Fleur babbled, I was terse. As always, only Justin was bearable.

  We rode north.

  The farther we traveled, the wilder the country grew. We moved quickly, slept under trees or in obscure inns, for five armed women riding together are easily remembered, and knights dangerous to the harper as well as solicitous of the queen would have known to track us. Slowly the great, dark crags bordering the queen’s marches came closer and closer to meet us, until we reached, one sunny afternoon, their shadow.

  “Now what?” Danica asked fretfully. “Do we fly over that?” They were huge, barren thrusts of stone pushing high out of forests like bone out of skin. She looked at Justin; we all did. There was a peculiar expression on her face, as if she recognized something she had only seen before in dreams.

  “There will be a road,” she said softly. We were in thick forest; old trees marched in front of us, beside us, flanked us. Not even they had found a way to climb the peaks.

  “Where, Justin?” I asked.

  “We must wait until sunset.”

  We found a clearing where the road we followed abruptly turned to amble west along a stream. Christabel and Danica went hunting. Fleur checked our supplies and mended a tear in her cloak. I curried the horses. Justin, who had gone to forage, came back with mushrooms, nuts, and a few wild apples. She found another brush and helped me.

  “Is it far now?” I asked, worried about finding supplies in the wilderness, about the horses, about Christabel’s stubbornly lingering cold, even, a little, about the harper. Justin picked a burr out of her mount’s mane. A line ran across her smooth brow.

  “Not far beyond those peaks,” she answered. “It’s just that—”

  “Just what?”

  “We must be so careful.”

  “We’re always careful. Christabel can put an arrow into anything that moves, Danica can—”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean: the world shows a different face beyond those peaks.” I looked at her puzzledly; she shook her head, gazing at the mountains, somehow wary and entranced at once. “Sometimes real, sometimes unreal—”

  “The harper is real, the dragon is real,” I said briskly. “And we are real. If I can remember that, we’ll be fine.”

  She touched my shoulder, smiling. “I think you’re right, Anne. It’s your prosaic turn of mind that will bring us all home again.”

  But she was wrong.

  The sun, setting behind a bank of sullen clouds, left a message: a final shaft of light hit what looked like solid stone ahead of us and parted it. We saw a faint, white road that cut out of the trees and into the base of two great crags: the light seemed to ease one wall of stone aside, like a gate. Then the light faded, and we were left staring at the solid wall, memorizing the landscape.

  “It’s a woman’s profile,” Fleur said. “The road runs beneath the bridge of her nose.”

  “It’s a one-eared cat,” Christabel suggested.

  “The road is west of the higher crag,” Danica said impatiently. “We should simply ride toward that.”

  “The mountains will change and change again before we reach it,” I said. “The road comes out of that widow’s peak of trees. It’s the highest point of the forest. We only need to follow the edge of the trees.”

  “The widow,” Danica murmured, “is upside down.”

  I shrugged. “The harper found his way. It can’t be that difficult.”

  “Perhaps,” Fleur suggested, “he followed a magical path.”

  “He parted stone with his harping,” Christabel said stuffily. “If he’s that clever, he can play his way out of the dragon’s mouth, and we can all turn around and go sleep in our beds.”

  “Oh, Christabel,” Fleur mourned, her voice like a sweet flute. “Sit down. I’ll make you herb tea with wild honey in it; you’ll sleep on clouds tonight.”

  We all had herb tea, with brandy and the honey Fleur had found, but only Fleur slept through the thunderstorm. We gathered ourselves wetly at dawn, slogged through endless dripping forest, until suddenly there were no more trees, there was no more rain, only the unexpected sun illumining a bone-white road into the great upsweep of stone ahead of us.

  We rode beyond the land we knew.

  I don’t know where we slept that first night: wherever we fell off our horses, I think. In the morning we saw Black Tremptor’s mountain, a dragon’s palace of cliffs and jagged columns and sheer walls ascending into cloud. As we rode down the slope toward it, the cloud wrapped itself down around the mountain, hid it. The road, wanting nothing to do with dragons, turned at the edge of the forest and ran off in the wrong direction. We pushed into trees. The forest on that side was very old, the trees so high, their green boughs so thick, we could barely see the sky, let alone the dragon’s lair. But I have a strong sense of direction, of where the sun rises and sets, that kept us from straying. The place was soundless. Fleur and Christabel kept arrows ready for bird or deer, but we saw nothing on four legs or two: only spiders, looking old as the forest, weaving webs as huge and intricate as tapestry in the trees.

  “It’s so still,” Fleur breathed. “As if it is waiting for music.”

  Christabel turned a bleary eye at her and sniffed. But Fleur was right: the stillness did seem magical, an intention out of someone’s head. As we listened, the rain began again. We heard it patter from bough to bough a long time before it reached us.

  Night fell the same way: sliding slowly down from the invisible sky, catching us without fresh kill, in the rain without a fire. Silent, we rode until we could barely see. We stopped finally, while we could still imagine one another’s faces.

  “The harper made it through,” Danica said softly; what Celandine’s troublesome, faceless lover could do, so could we.

  “There’s herbs and honey and more brandy,” Christabel said. Fleur, who suffered most from hunger, having a hummingbird’s energy, said nothing. Justin lifted her head sharply.

  “I smell smoke.”

  I saw the light then: two square eyes and one round among the distant trees. I sighed with relief and felt no pity for whoever in that quiet cottage was about to find us on the doorstep.

  But the lady of the cottage did not seem discomfited to see five armed, dripping, hungry travelers wanting to invade her house.

  “Come in,” she said. “Come in.” As we filed through the door, I saw all the birds and animals we had missed in the forest circle the room around us: stag and boar and owl, red deer, hare, and mourning dove. I blinked, and they were motionless: things of thread and paint and wood, embroidered onto curtains, carved into the backs of chairs, painted on the rafters. Before I could speak, smells assaulted us, and I felt Fleur stagger against me.

  “You poor children.” Old as we were, she was old enough to say that. “Wet and weary and hungry.” She was a birdlike soul herself: a bit of magpie in her curious eyes, a bit of hawk’s beak in her nose. Her hair looked fine and white as spiderweb, her knuckles like swollen tree burls. Her voice was kindly, and so was her warm hearth, and the smells coming out of her kitchen. Even her skirt was hemmed with birds. “Sit down. I’ve been baking bread, and there’s a hot meat pie almost done in the oven.” She turned, to give something simmering in a pot over the fire a stir. “Where are you from and where are you bound?”

  “We are from the court of Queen Celandine,” I said. “We have come searching for her harper. Did he pass this way?”

 
“Ah,” she said, her face brightening. “A tall man with golden hair and a voice to match his harping?”

  “Sounds like,” Christabel said.

  “He played for me, such lovely songs. He said he had to find a certain harp. He ate nothing and was gone before sunrise.” She gave the pot another stir. “Is he lost?”

  “Black Tremptor has him.”

  “Oh, terrible.” She shook her head. “He is fortunate to have such good friends to rescue him.”

  “He is the queen’s good friend,” I said, barely listening to myself as the smell from the pot curled into me, “and we are hers. What is that you are cooking?”

  “Just a little something for my bird.”

  “You found a bird?” Fleur said faintly, trying to be sociable. “We saw none… Whatever do you feed it? It smells good enough to eat.”

  “Oh, no, you must not touch it; it is only bird-fare. I have delicacies for you.”

  “What kind of a bird is it?” Justin asked. The woman tapped the spoon on the edge of the pot, laid it across the rim.

  “Oh, just a little thing. A little, hungry thing I found. You’re right: the forest has few birds. That’s why I sew and paint my birds and animals, to give me company. There’s wine,” she added. “I’ll get it for you.”

  She left. Danica paced; Christabel sat close to the fire, indifferent to the smell of the pot bubbling under her stuffy nose. Justin had picked up a small wooden boar and was examining it idly. Fleur drifted, pale as a cloud; I kept an eye on her to see she did not topple into the fire. The old woman had trouble, it seemed, finding cups.

  “How strange,” Justin breathed. “This looks so real, every tiny bristle.”

  Fleur had wandered to the hearth to stare down into the pot. I heard it bubble fatly. She gave one pleading glance toward the kitchen, but still there was nothing to eat but promises. She had the spoon in her hand suddenly, I thought to stir.

  “It must be a very strange bird to eat mushrooms,” she commented. “And what looks like—” Justin put the boar down so sharply I jumped, but Fleur lifted the spoon to her lips. “Lamb,” she said happily. And then she vanished: there was only a frantic lark fluttering among the rafters, sending plea after lovely plea for freedom.