Harrowing the Dragon

by Patricia A. Mckillip

“What advice was given?” Sarah asked faintly. Middle-aged, plump, pretty, she looked constantly harried, as if she were trying to catch up with something always blown just out of reach. Having half a dozen boys would do that, Heather guessed. The cuckoo clock stretched time again, suspending Heather’s thoughts between its tick and its tock.

  “I got to call Storm’s children.”

  Somebody’s cup and saucer crashed onto the floor. Heather opened her eyes. Dawn’s hands were over her mouth; her eyes looked half-shocked, half-smiling. Rachel, of all people, had dropped her coffee on the floor. Luckily she was sitting over in the kitchen area, where there was nothing to spill it on. Laura Field’s eyes looked enormous, stricken; she was patting her hair as if a wind had blustered through the room. Tessa closed her own eyes, looking as if she were praying, or counting to ten.

  “Who in hell,” Tessa demanded, “gave that advice?”

  Rachel, standing beside Poppy while Poppy wiped up the mess, gave Tessa a reproving glance. But no one else seemed to think the profanity unjustified. Heather sighed. Storm had been born out of blistering sun, dust storms, blizzards so thick they had swallowed houses, barns, light itself. But Storm had been the aftermath, the memory of what had passed. She had swallowed the storms, had them inside her, returned them as gifts her children carried—lightning bolts, icicles, streaks of hot brown wind—across the threshold of the world.

  “A fish,” Heather said.

  Tessa pressed her lips together. She was ten years younger than Heather, but heavy and slow; the veins in her legs nearly crippled her. She had kept books for the lumber mill for thirty years. Whenever it closed down, depending on whether the political outcry was for live trees or lumber, she fiddled with an article about how things got named up and down the river between Junket and Crane Harbor, along the coast between Port James and Slicum Bay. She’d be fiddling in her grave, Heather thought privately; she viewed bits of information as suspiciously as she might have viewed something furry in her refrigerator.

  Dawn opened her mouth, her young face looking perplexed, as well it might. “What is inside Oyster Rock?” she asked. There was a short silence.

  “Don’t know; nobody knows. Mask, it’s called. Legend is a woman from over Klamath way faced it down and drove it inside the rock.”

  “If one woman did that,” Rachel said tartly, “why do we need to send for Storm’s children?”

  “Because the trout said,” Heather answered wearily. “That’s all I know. Advice given by water.”

  Poppy, rattling fake pearls in one hand, asked Heather resignedly, “Where are they?”

  “South,” Heather said. “Somewheres. California. Texas. Lydia called me a year ago on Evan’s anniversary. She gave me a number to call if I needed them. Said she changed her name to—oh, what was it? Greensnake. She never said where she was calling from exactly. Number’s in my book…” She leaned her head back tiredly, closed her eyes, wanting to nap now that she’d fed and warned them. She lifted her head again slowly at the silence, found them all watching her, as still and intent as cats. She shifted. “I suppose—”

  “Quit supposing,” Rachel said sourly. The phone on its long line was making its way toward her, hand to hand. “Do it.”

  “Call me Lydia again,” Lydia said sweetly. Her hair was green; she wore a short black dress that fit her body like a snakeskin and black heels so high and thin she probably speared a few night crawlers on her way across Heather’s lawn. Georgie, hauling bags out, turned to give Lydia a sidelong glance out of glacier-cold eyes. Georgie had hair like a mown lawn, quick-bitten nails, flat, high, craggy cheekbones like her grandfather’s, and a gold wedding band on her left hand that flashed like fire as she heaved a suitcase into the porch light. Poppy had driven her old station wagon to pick them up at the airport in Slicum Bay. Joining Heather, she seemed unusually thoughtful. Heather, counting heads anxiously in the dark, said, “Where’s—” And then the third head came up, groaning, from between the seats.

  Lydia said brightly, “Grace is a little shaken.”

  Grace hit the grass hands first, crawled her way out of the car. She was skeleton thin, with hair so long and silvery she looked a hundred years old when she stood up, haggard and swaying. “I threw up,” she whispered.

  “In my car?” Poppy said breathlessly.

  “Georgie’ll clean it up. I can’t travel in anything with wheels. Not even roller skates. It’s because I’m so old.”

  Poppy’s agate necklace clattered in her hand. “Oh,” she said, and stuck there.

  “You can’t be more than twenty-five,” Heather guessed, calculating wildly.

  “Twenty-nine,” Georgie said succinctly, and clamped her thin lips together again.

  “I mean older than the wheel. Deep in my…in my spiritual life.”

  Lydia hiccuped in the silence. “Oh, I beg,” she said. She leaned down from a great height, it seemed, to kiss Heather’s cheek. As she straightened, Heather caught a waft of something scented with oranges. Her head spun a little: Lydia seemed to straighten high as the moon, as long as the Junket River in her black stockings and heels.

  They settled in the living room finally, cups of coffee and tea fragrant with that smell of oranges from Lydia’s flask. Heather had some herself; a sip or two, and she could swear orange trees rustled at her back, and she could almost see the fire within Georgie’s cold, granite face. In his photo, the last taken, Evan seemed to smile a tilted smile. Poppy, who never drank, had a healthy swig in her cup.

  “Oyster Rock,” Lydia mused, sliding a heel off and swinging it absently from her toe.

  “Mask,” Poppy said, “they called it back then.” She tapped an agate bead to her teeth, frowning. “Whenever then was, that you call back then whenever they were.”

  “Uh,” Grace said with an effort. She held on to her cup with both hands, as if it might leap onto the carpet. A strand of her white hair was soaking in it. “I’ll find out.”

  “Tessa might know more.”

  “Tess the one sounds like a sea lion in heat?”

  Poppy pushed the agate hard against a tooth. “You might say.”

  “Uh. She goes back, but not as far.”

  “As far as—”

  “Me. She goes back to when it had a name. I go back to when it didn’t.”

  Grace started to sag then. Lydia reached out deftly, caught her cup before she fell facedown on the couch. Lydia ticked her tongue. “That girl does not travel well.”

  “She all right?” Heather asked, alarmed.

  “Toss a blanket over her,” Georgie said shortly. “She’ll be back before morning.”

  Lydia watched Grace a moment. She looked dead, Heather thought, her face and hair the same eerie, silvery white, all her bones showing. Lydia’s green head lifted slowly. She seemed to hear something in the distance, though there wasn’t much of Junket awake by then. She made a movement that began in her shoulders, rippled down her body to end with a twitch that slid the shoe back on her foot. When she stood up, she seemed taller than ever.

  “That place,” she said to Heather. “What’s its name? Tad’s. That still alive?”

  “Tad’s?” Heather sought Poppy’s eyes. “I guess.”

  “I left something there.”

  “You—But you haven’t been here for seven years!”

  “So it’s been there seven years. I like a night walk.”

  “Honey, you can’t go in Tad’s! You can’t go among truckers and drunks with that hair and them shoes. Whatever you left, let it stay left.”

  “I left a score,” Lydia said. She flicked open a gold powder case, smoothed a green brow with one finger, then lifted her lip to examine an eyetooth. “I left a score to settle at Tad’s.” She snapped the powder case shut. “Coming, Georgie?”

  Heather closed her eyes. When she opened them and her mouth, there was only Grace looking like a white shadow on the couch and Poppy wandering around collecting cups. She stared, horrified, at Poppy.

&n
bsp; “We got to do—We can’t just let—You call Cass, tell him to get down to Tad’s and help those girls—”

  “No.” Poppy shook her head; shell and turquoise clattered with emphasis. “No, ma’am. Those aren’t girls, and they don’t need our help, and I wouldn’t send Cass down there tonight if Tad was singing hymns and selling tickets to heaven. Stop fussing and sit down. Have some more tea.”

  Heather backed weakly into her rocker, where she could keep an eye on Grace, who looked as if she had bought a ticket and was halfway there. Heather dragged her eyes away from the still face to take a quick look around the room. She said hopefully, “Don’t suppose Lydia left her flask…”

  Poppy gave her a tablespoon of Lydia’s elixir in her tea; she was asleep and dreaming before she finished it.

  Grace sat upright on the couch. The house was dark. It wasn’t even the Junket house, Heather realized; it was more like the old farmhouse where Storm had been born.

  “Shh,” Grace said, and held out her hand. She had color in her face; her hair glowed in the dark like pale fire. For some reason she was wearing Heather’s old crocheted bedroom slippers. “You can come with me but don’t talk. Don’t say a word…”

  Heather took her hand. Grace led her into the bedroom where she and Evan had slept over fifty years ago. The bed, under its thin chenille spread, glowed like Grace’s hair. Then it wasn’t a bedspread at all—it was the sea, foaming pale under the moon. Heather nearly stumbled at a blast of wind. She opened her mouth, but Grace’s hand squeezed a warning; she put a finger to her lips. She turned her head. Heather looked in the same direction and nearly jumped out of her skin. The old rock heaved out of the ocean like a whale in their faces, as black against the sea and stars as if it were an empty hole.

  Then she knew it wasn’t an emptiness. It was something looking for its face. It was a live thing that couldn’t be seen—it needed a face to make it real. Then its eyes could open; then its vast mouth could speak. Heather clung like a child to Grace’s hand, her mouth open wide. The wind pushed into her so hard she couldn’t make a noise if she’d wanted.

  Heather, the emptiness said. Heather.

  She jumped. She opened her eyes, saw Grace rising up on the couch, her hair glowing like St. Elmo’s fire, her eyes white as moons. Then her hair turned red. Then blue. Heather, too stunned to move, heard Poppy say, “Guess they finished at Tad’s.”

  It was after one in the morning. Flo Hendrick’s son Maury was standing on Heather’s lawn talking, while his flashing lights illumined her living room through the open curtains. She couldn’t move. Then she heard a strange sound.

  Laughter. From Maury Hendrick, who hadn’t smiled, Flo said, since his pants fell down in a sack race in the third grade.

  Poppy sucked in her breath. Then she grinned a quick, tight grin that vanished as soon as Heather saw it. Maury’s car crunched back out over the gravel. Lydia strolled in, carrying a beer bottle.

  “Well,” she said lightly. “I feel better. Don’t you feel better?”

  “What happened?” Poppy asked.

  “Where’s Georgie?” Heather asked.

  “Oh, Georgie’s still down there helping Tad. Georgie likes tidying things. Remember how she cleaned up the church lot after Grandpa’s funeral?”

  “What happened?” Poppy asked again. She was so still not a bead trembled; her eyes were wide, her mouth set, the dimples deep in her cheeks. Lydia looked at her, still smiling a little. Something in her eyes made Heather think of deep, deep water, of dark caves hollowed out, grain by grain, by the ancient, ceaseless working of tides.

  “A lot of women in Junket suddenly had an urge to drink a beer at Tad’s tonight. Funny. There was some trouble over comments made. But as I said, Georgie’s helping clean up.”

  Poppy moved finally, groped for her agates. “Did Tad call Maury in?”

  “Nobody was called. It was a private affair. Maury was just cruising Main. He stopped to chat about open containers on public sidewalks. Then he gave me a ride home.”

  “What’d you say to make him laugh?” Heather demanded. Lydia’s smile slanted upward; she turned away restively to Grace, who was sitting motionless on the couch. Heather followed Lydia, still not finished about Tad’s, wanting to comb through all the details to get the fret out of her. The wide, moony look in Grace’s eyes chilled her.

  Lydia stood in front of Grace, gazed down at her silently. Evan, in his sailor suit, looked innocently at them both. Heather wondered suddenly if Evan could have seen them coming, his storm-ridden granddaughters, he would have passed on down the road to peaceable Mary Ecklund and married her instead.

  “Grace,” Lydia said, so sharply that Heather started. “Where are you?”

  “In the dark,” Grace whispered. “Watching.”

  “Watching when? Then? Or now?”

  “Shh, Lydia. Whisper.”

  Lydia softened her voice. “How far back are you?”

  “Then. Tide’s full. Rock was bigger then. Moon’s behind clouds. Seagulls floating on the high tide, little cottony clouds you can barely see. Now—they’re all flying. They’ve all gone. It came out.”

  Heather’s neck crawled. Poppy, walking on eggs, came to stand beside her. Heather clutched at her wrist, got a charm bracelet that clanged in the silence like cowbells. The faint, reckless smile was back in Lydia’s eyes.

  “What is it?”

  Grace was silent a long time. She whispered finally, “I know you.” Heather’s knees went wobbly. “I know you. I saw you under a full moon ten thousand years ago. You were sucking bones.”

  Heather sat down abruptly on the floor. For a moment the house wavered between light and shadow; the light from the kitchen seemed to be running away faster and faster. The cuckoo snapped open its door, said the time, but time seemed to be rushing away from her as fast as light. Dark was the only thing not running; it was flowing into the emptiness left by light and time, a great flood of dark, separating Heather from the little, familiar thing that counted off the hours of her life.

  Cuckoo, said the clock.

  Heather, said the dark.

  Cuckoo.

  Her eyes opened; light was back in bulbs and tubes where it belonged. “It’s two in the morning,” she protested to Poppy, who was lifting up the phone receiver. “Who’re you waking up?”

  Poppy hesitated, receiver to her shoulder, and gave Heather a long look. “I was calling an ambulance.”

  “I’m all right. I got to go to bed is all.”

  Lydia was kneeling beside her. Heather groped wearily at her proffered arm. Thin as she was, Lydia pulled Heather to her feet as if she were made of batting.

  “Don’t be scared, Granny.”

  “It was eating up everything.”

  “That’s why you called us. We’ll handle it, me and Grace and Georgie. But we need you to help.”

  “I’m too old.”

  “No. We need you most of all. It’s old, too. So’s Grace. You get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow you call everyone, tell them to meet us at Oyster Rock at sunset. Georgie, you’re back.” She smiled brightly at Georgie, who, carrying a couple of empty cans, a flattened cigarette carton, and an old church bulletin, looked as if she had started to tidy up Junket. “Have a good time?”

  “Smashing,” Georgie said dryly, and did so to a soda can.

  “Good. We’re about to make another mess.”

  Between Tessa hobbling on her canes and Lydia wobbling on her spikes, they looked, Heather thought, about as unlikely a gathering as you might meet this side of the Hereafter. They stood on the cliff overlooking the beach and Oyster Rock; they had chosen the Viewpoint Cliff because the sign was so well hidden under a bush that nobody ever saw it. Poppy, wearing stretch jeans and a bubblegum-pink sweater and enough makeup to paint a barn, had driven Heather in the VW. She hovered close to her now, for which Heather was grateful. Georgie had just driven up. She had borrowed Poppy’s station wagon earlier and asked directions to the dump. Heather wo
ndered if she had spent the afternoon cleaning it up.

  In the sunset, the rock looked oddly dark. The birds had abandoned it; maybe the barnacles and starfish had fled, too. The grass on its crown was turning white. Heather shivered. The sun was sliding into a fog bank. The fog would be drifting across the beach in an hour.

  “You all right?” Poppy said anxiously for the hundredth time.

  “I’m all right,” Heather kept saying, but she wasn’t. Her hands felt like gnarled lumps of ice and her heart fluttered quick and hummingbird-light. She could feel the ancient dark crouched out there, just behind where the sun went down, just waiting. It was her face it wanted, her frail old bones it kept trying to flow into. She was weakest, she was easiest, she was closest to the edge of time, she was walking on the tide line…

  Maybe I should, she thought, clutching her windbreaker close, staring into the sinking sun. It’s about time anyway, with Evan gone and all, and it would save some fuss and bother… Wouldn’t get much out of me anyway, I’m so slow; it wouldn’t have a chance between naps…

  She felt an arm around her, smelled some heady perfume: Lydia, her hair a green cloud, her eyes narrowed, about as dark as eyes could get and not be something other.

  “Granny?” she said softly. “You giving up without a fight? After all those blizzards? All the drought and dust storms and poverty you faced down to keep your family safe and cared for?”

  “I was a whole lot younger, then. Time ran ahead of me, not behind.”

  “Granny? If you don’t fight this, you’ll be the next thing we’ll all have to fight. You’ll be its face, its eyes, you’ll be hungry for us.” Heather, stunned, couldn’t find spit to swallow, let alone speak. “Am I right, Georgie?”

  Georgie picked up a french fry envelope, shook out the last fry to a gull, and wadded the paper. She didn’t say anything. Her eyes burned through Heather like cold mountain-water. Then she smiled, and Heather thought surprisedly, There’s Storm’s face. It’s been there all along.

  “Granny’ll be all right,” she said in her abrupt way. “Granny’s fine when she’s needed.”

  The sun had gone. The fog was coming in fast. Waves swarmed around the base of the rock, trying to heave it out of the water or eat it away before morning. But the rock, black as if it were a hole torn through to nothing, just stood there waiting for the rest of night.