Harrowing the Dragon

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “I know,” Lark whispered, still amazed at the woman’s beauty and at the sight of Perrin, whom she had not seen in seven years, and never in the light, lying golden-haired and slack against another woman’s body. The woman bent over Perrin, turned him on his back.

  “He is hurt. Is there water?” She glanced around vaguely, as if she expected a bullfrog to emerge in tie and tails, with water on a tray. But Lark had already fetched it in her hands, from a little rill of fresh water.

  She moistened Perrin’s face with it, let his lips wander over her hands, searching for more. The woman was gazing at Lark.

  “You must be an enchantress or a witch,” she exclaimed. “That explains your—unusual appearance. And the way we suddenly became ourselves again. I am—we are most grateful to you. My father is King of this desert, and he will reward you richly if you come to his court.” She took a tattered piece of her hem, wiped a corner of Perrin’s lips, then, in afterthought, her own.

  “My name is Lark. This man is—”

  “Yes,” the princess said, musing. Her eyes were very wide, very blue; she was not listening to Lark. “He is, isn’t he? Do you know, I think there was a kind of prophecy when I was born that I would marry a lion. I’m sure there was. Of course they kept it secret all these years, for fear I might actually meet a lion, but—here it is. He. A lion among men. Do you think I should explain to my father what he was, or do you think I should just—not exactly lie, but omit that part of his past? What do you think? Witches know these things.”

  “I think,” Lark said unsteadily, brushing sand out of Perrin’s hair, “that you are mistaken. I am—”

  “So I should tell my father. Will you help me raise him? There is a griffin just beyond those rocks. Very nice; in fact we became friends before I had to fight the lion. I had no one else to talk to except bullfrogs. And you know what frogs are like. Very little small talk, and that they repeat incessantly.” She hoisted Perrin up, brushing sand off his shoulders, his chest, his thighs. “I don’t think my father will mind at all. About the lion part. Do you?” She put her fingers to her lips suddenly and gave a piercing whistle that silenced the frogs and brought the griffin, huge and flaming red, up over the rocks. “Come,” she said to it. Lark clung to Perrin’s arm.

  “Wait,” she said desperately, words coming slowly, clumsily, for she had scarcely spoken to mortals in seven years. “You don’t understand. Wait until he wakes. I have been following him for seven years.”

  “Then how wonderful that you have found him. The griffin will fly us to my father’s palace. It’s the only one for miles, in the desert. You’ll find it easily.” She laid her hand on Lark’s. “Please come. I’d take you with us, but it would tire the griffin—”

  “But I have a magic nut for it to rest on, while we cross the sea—”

  “But you see we are going across the desert, and, anyway, I think a nut might be a little small.” She smiled brightly but very wearily at Lark. “I feel I will never be able to thank you enough.” She pushed the upright Perrin against the griffin’s back, and he toppled facedown between the bright, uplifted wings.

  “Perrin!” Lark cried desperately, and the princess, clinging to the griffin’s neck, looked down at her, startled, uncertain. But the thrust of the griffin’s great wings tangled wind and sand together and choked Lark’s voice. She coughed and spat sand while the princess, cheerful again, waved one hand and held Perrin tightly with the other.

  “Good-bye…”

  “No!” Lark screamed. No one heard her but the frogs.

  She sat awake all night, a dove in speckled plumage, mourning with the singing reeds. When the sun rose, it barely recognized her, so pale and wild was her face, so blank with grief her eyes. Light touched her gently. She stirred finally, sighed, watching the glittering net of gold the sun cast across the sea. They should have been waking in a great tree growing out of the sea, she and Perrin and the griffin, a wondrous sight that passing sailors might have spun into tales for their grandchildren. Instead, here she was, abandoned among the bullfrogs, while her true love had flown away with the princess. What would he think when he woke and saw her golden hair, heard her sweet, amused voice telling him that she had been the dragon he had fought, and that at the battle’s end, she had awakened in his arm? An enchantress—a strange, startling woman who wore a gown of bloodstained feathers, whose long black hair was bound with cobweb, whose face and eyes seemed more of a wild creature’s than a human’s—had wandered by at the right moment and freed them from their spells.

  And so. And therefore. And of course what all this must mean was, beyond doubt, their destiny: the marriage of the dragon and the lion. And if they were very lucky—wouldn’t it be splendid—the enchantress might come to see them married.

  “Will he remember me?” Lark murmured to the bullfrogs. “If he saw me now, would he even recognize me?” She tried to see her face reflected in the waves, but of the faces gliding and breaking across the sand, none seemed to belong to her, and she asked desperately, “How will he recognize me if I cannot recognize myself?”

  She stood up then, her hands to her mouth, staring at her faceless shadow in the sand. She whispered, her throat aching with grief, “What must I do? Where can I begin? To find my lost love and myself?”

  You know where he is, the sea murmured. Go there.

  “But she is so beautiful—and I have become so—”

  He is not here, the reeds sang in their soft, hollow voices. Find him. He is again enchanted.

  “Again! First a stone lion, and then a dove, and then a real lion—now what is he?”

  He is enchanted by his human form.

  She was silent, still gazing at her morning shadow. “I never knew him fully human,” she said at last. “And he never knew me. If we meet now by daylight, who is to say whether he will recognize Lark, or I will recognize Perrin? Those were names we left behind long ago.”

  Love recognizes love, the reeds murmured.

  Her shadow whispered, I will guide you.

  So she set her back to the sun and followed her shadow across the desert.

  By day the sun was a roaring lion, by night the moon a pure white dove. Lion and dove accompanied her, showed her hidden springs of cool water among the barren stones, and trees that shook down dates and figs and nuts into her hands. Finally, climbing a rocky hill, she saw an enormous and beautiful palace, whose immense gates of bronze and gold lay open to welcome the richly dressed people riding horses and dromedaries and elegant palanquins into it.

  She hurried to join them before the sun set and the gates were closed. Her bare feet were scraped and raw; she limped a little. Her feathers had grown frayed; her face was gaunt, streaked with dust and sorrow. She looked like a beggar, she knew, but the people spoke to her kindly and even tossed her a coin or two.

  “We have come for the wedding of our princess and the Lion of the Desert, whom it is her destiny to wed.”

  “Who foretold such a destiny?” Lark asked, her voice trembling.

  “Someone,” they assured her. “The king’s astrologer. A great sorceress disguised as a beggar, not unlike yourself. A bullfrog, who spoke with a human tongue at her birth. Her mother was frightened by a lion just before childbirth, and dreamed it. No one exactly remembers who, but someone did. Destiny or no, they will marry in three days, and never was there a more splendid couple than the princess and her lion.”

  Lark crept into the shadow of the gate. “Now what shall I do?” she murmured, her eyes wide, dark with urgency. “With his eyes full of her, he will never notice a beggar.”

  Sun slid a last gleam down the gold edge of the gate. She remembered its gift then and drew the little gold box out of her pocket. She opened it.

  A light sprang out of it, swirled around her like a storm of gold dust, glittering, shimmering. It settled on her, turned the feathers into the finest silk and cloth of gold. It turned the cobwebs in her hair into a long, sparkling net of diamonds and pearls. It turned t
he dust on her feet into soft golden leather and pearls. Light played over her face, hiding shadows of grief and despair. Seeing the wonderful dress, she laughed for the first time in seven years, and, with wonder, she recognized Lark’s voice.

  As she walked down the streets, people stared at her, marveling. They made way for her. A man offered her his palanquin, a woman her sunshade. She shook her head at both, laughing again. “I will not be shut up in a box, nor will I shut out the sun.” So she walked, and all the wedding guests slowed to accompany her to the inner courtyard.

  Word of her had passed into the palace long before she did. The princess, dressed in fine, flowing silks the color of her eyes, came out to meet the stranger who rivaled the sun. She saw the dress before she saw Lark’s face.

  “Oh, my dear,” she breathed, hurrying down the steps. “Say this is a wedding gift for me. You cannot possibly wear this to my wedding—no one will look at me! Say you brought it for me. Or tell me what I can give you in return for it.” She stepped back, half-laughing, still staring at the sun’s creation. “Where are my manners? You came all the way from—from—and here all I can do is—Where are you from, anyway? Who in the world are you?” She looked finally into Lark’s eyes. She clapped her hands, laughing again, with a touch of relief in her voice. “Oh, it is the witch! You have come! Perrin will be so pleased to meet you. He is sleeping now; he is still weak from his wounds.” She took Lark’s hand in hers and led her up the steps. “Now tell me how I can persuade you to let me have that dress. Look how everyone stares at you. It will make me the most beautiful woman in the world on my wedding day. And you’re a witch, you don’t care how you look. Anyway, it’s not necessary for you to look like this. People will think you’re only human.”

  Lark, who had been thinking while the princess chattered, answered, “I will give you the dress for a price.”

  “Anything!”

  Lark stopped short. “No—you must not say that!” she cried fiercely. “Ever! You could pay far more than you ever imagined for something as trivial as this dress!”

  “All right,” the princess said gently, patting her hand. “I will not give you just anything. Though I’d hardly call this dress trivial. But tell me what you want.”

  “I want a night alone with your bridegroom.”

  The princess’s brows rose. She glanced around hastily to see if anyone were listening, then she took Lark’s other hand. “We must observe a few proprieties,” she said softly, smiling. “Not even I have had a whole night in my lion’s bed—he has been too ill. I would not grant this to any woman. But you are a witch, and you helped us before, and I know you mean no harm. I assume you wish to tend him during the night with magic arts so that he can heal faster.”

  “If I can do that, I will. But—”

  “Then you may. But I must have that dress first.”

  Lark was silent. So was the princess, who held her eyes until Lark bowed her head. Then I have lost, she thought, for he will never even look at me without this dress.

  The princess said lightly, “You were gracious to refuse my first impulse to give you anything. I trust you, but in that dress you are very beautiful, and you know how men are. Or perhaps, being a witch, you don’t. Anyway, there is no need at all for you to appear to him like this. And how can I surprise him on our wedding day with this dress if he sees you in it first?”

  You are like my sisters, Lark thought. Foolish and wiser than I am. She yielded, knowing she wanted to see Perrin with all her heart, and the princess only wanted what dazzled her eyes. “You are right,” she said. “You may tell people that I will stay with Perrin to heal him if I can. And that I brought the dress for you.”

  The princess kissed her cheek. “Thank you. I will find you something else to wear, and show you his room. I’m not insensitive—I fell in love with him myself the moment I looked at him. So I can hardly blame you for—and of course he is in love with me. But we hardly know each other, and I don’t want to confuse him with possibilities at this delicate time. You understand.”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Good.”

  She took Lark to her own sumptuous rooms and had her maid dress Lark in something she called “refreshingly simple” but which Lark called “drab,” and knew it belonged not even to the maid, but to someone much farther down the social strata who stayed in shadows and was not allowed to wear lace.

  I am more wren or sparrow than Lark, she thought sadly, as the princess brought her to Perrin’s room.

  “Till sunrise,” she said; the tone of her voice added, And not a moment after.

  “Yes,” Lark said absently, gazing at her sleeping love. At last the puzzled princess closed the door, left Lark in the twilight.

  Lark approached the bed. She saw Perrin’s face in the light of a single candle beside the bed. It was bruised and scratched; there was a long weal from a dragon’s claw down one bare shoulder. He looked older, weathered, his pale skin burned by the sun, which had scarcely touched it in years. The candlelight picked out a thread of silver here and there among the lion’s gold of his hair. She reached out impulsively, touched the silver. “My poor Perrin,” she said softly. “At least, as a dove, for seven years, you were faithful to me. You shed blood at every seventh step I took. And I took seven steps for every drop you shed. How strange to find you naked in this bed, waiting for a swan instead of Lark. At least I had you for a little while, and at long last you are unbewitched.”

  She bent over him, kissed his lips gently. He opened his eyes.

  She turned away quickly before the loving expression in them changed to disappointment. But he moved more swiftly, reaching out to catch her hand before she left.

  “Lark?” He gave a deep sigh as she turned again, and eased back into the pillows. “I heard your sweet voice in my dream… I didn’t want to wake and end the dream. But you kissed me awake. You are real, aren’t you?” he asked anxiously, as she lingered in the shadows, and he pulled her out of darkness into light.

  He looked at her for a long time, silently, until her eyes filled with tears.

  “I’ve changed,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “You have been enchanted, too.”

  “And so have you, once again.”

  He shook his head. “You have set me free.”

  “And I will set you free again,” she said softly, “to marry whom you choose.”

  He moved again, too abruptly, and winced. His hold tightened on her hand. “Have I lost all enchantment?” he asked sadly. “Did you love the spellbound man more than you can love the ordinary mortal? Is that why you left me?”

  She stared at him. “I never left you—”

  “You disappeared,” he said wearily. “After seven long years of flying around in the shape of a dove, due to your father’s appalling carelessness, I finally turned back into a lion, and you were gone. I thought you could not bear to stay with me through yet another enchantment. I didn’t blame you. But it grieved me badly—I was glad when the dragon attacked me, because I thought it might kill me. Then I woke up in my own body, in a strange bed, with a princess beside me explaining that we were destined to be married.”

  “Did you tell her you were married?”

  He sighed. “I thought it was just another way of being enchanted. A lion, a dove, marriage to a beautiful princess I don’t love—What difference did anything make? You were gone. I didn’t care any longer what happened to me.” She swallowed, but could not speak. “Are you about to leave me again?” he asked painfully. “Is that why you’ll come no closer?”

  “No,” she whispered. “I thought—I didn’t think you still remembered me.”

  He closed his eyes. “For seven years I left you my heart’s blood to follow…”

  “And for seven years I followed. And then on the last day of the seventh year, you disappeared. I couldn’t find you anywhere. I asked the sun, the moon, the wind. I followed the South Wind to find you. It told me how to break the spell over you. So I di
d—”

  His eyes opened again. “You. You are the enchantress the princess talks about. You rescued both of us. And then—”

  “She took you away from me before I could tell her—I tried—”

  His face was growing peaceful in the candlelight. “She doesn’t listen very well. But why did you think I had forgotten you?”

  “I thought—she was so beautiful, I thought—and I have grown so worn, so strange—”

  For the first time in seven years, she saw him smile. “You have walked the world, and spoken to the sun and wind… I have only been enchanted. You have become the enchantress.” He pulled her closer, kissed her hand and then her wrist. He added, as she began to smile, “What a poor opinion you must have of my human shape to think that after all these years I would prefer the peacock to the Lark.”

  He pulled her closer, kissed the crook of her elbow and then her breast. And then she caught his lips and kissed him, one hand in his hair, the other in his hand.

  And thus the princess found them, as she opened the door, speaking softly, “My dear, I forgot, if he wakes you must give him this potion—I mean, this tea of mild herbs to ease his pain a little—” She kicked the door shut and saw their surprised faces. “Well,” she said frostily. “Really.”

  “This is my wife,” Perrin said.

  “Well, really.” She flung the sleeping potion out the window, and folded her arms. “You might have told me.”

  “I never thought I would see her again.”

  “How extraordinarily careless of you both.” She tapped her foot furiously for a moment and then said slowly, her face clearing a little, “That’s why you were there to rescue us! Now I understand. And I snatched him away from you without even thinking—and after you had searched for him so long, I made you search—oh, my dear.” She clasped her hands tightly. “What I said. About not spending a full night here. You must not think—”