The Iron Dragon’s Mother

by Michael Swanwick

“Thanks,” Cat said. Then, almost as an afterthought, “What’s your name?”

  “Esme,” the girl said, with a smile as big and bright as all springtime. “I bring luck.”

  A locomotive dragging all the world’s unease back and forth across the whole face of the earth would grow very tired.

  —Tove Jansson, “The Locomotive”

  The boards were rough and hard and the night air whipping through the boxcar was cold. But there was something comforting about watching the landscape glide by outside. Three moons hung in the sky and two of them were full, so the trees were all limned with silver light. Magic worked more easily on such nights and thus, all across the globe, factories would be running on overtime and lovers striving to conceive.

  “I don’t know why we’re not both dead right now,” Helen groused. “It’s just blind luck that you didn’t get trampled.”

  “Dame Fortuna favors the prepared,” Cat replied. “They ran me ragged in the Academy and now I’m glad of it.” Then, aloud, “Look at your hair!” She got a brush out from her bag and, putting Esme on her lap, set about untangling the knots and elflocks. Esme struggled a bit at first, but after a few minutes came to accept Cat’s ministrations. “Where did you come from, little missy?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Nobody in the jungle seemed to be responsible for you. How did you wind up there?”

  “I don’t remember things,” Esme said. “It’s better that way.”

  Cat continued brushing. Normally, she read in Lieutenant Anthea’s grimoire every night, looking for clues to the conspiracy that had made her a fugitive. For the second time this evening, it looked like she would not. Steadily, methodically, she brushed, thinking about the tramps she had left behind, and Loosh as well, wondering what had become of them, and pondering the fact that she would never know. By slow degrees Esme fell asleep.

  Eventually, Cat did too. But for a long time after putting the brush away, she kept on stroking the child’s hair as if she were a kitten.

  * * *

  Even with the duffel bag for a bolster, the boxcar was not a comfortable place and Cat did not sleep very deeply. So when Esme shook her, she immediately opened her eyes and said, “I hope you’re not planning to wake me like this every time I try to get some rest, young lady.”

  “Something bad’s about to happen,” Esme said. “I always know. You’d better brace yourself.”

  The train lurched.

  It was mad how time seemed to expand. Cat saw Esme, arms out like wings, hanging in the air before her, and then the child slammed into her stomach. She wrapped her arms about Esme and they both crashed into the side of the boxcar. Fortunately, the duffel bag was somehow between them and the wall and they hit the softest part of it, where her clothes were folded. But it still hurt like blue blazes.

  The world roared, shrieked, crumpled, and turned over on its side. Then all was still. Cat closed her eyes in relief, but—“None of that, now,” Helen snapped. “Get up, grab the brat, and get your butt in gear. Rescue workers will be coming and we certainly don’t want them to find us.”

  The boxcar had come to rest with the unlocked doors uppermost and only one slid shut. It was no great chore for Cat to get herself and Esme free.

  The train had derailed itself by a field of rye. Cat saw the silhouettes of a scarecrow and several hexes and smelled the fresh green of the crops. Up and down the tracks, the cars were scattered about like the playthings of a petulant giant. The air stank of burnt metal.

  Flat, featureless fields stretched uninterrupted to a low fringe of trees at the horizon. Cat didn’t see a farmhouse. “Any idea as to which way we should go?”

  Neither Esme nor Helen offered any suggestions.

  “All right, then. Straight across the fields. Esme, have you got your knapsack? Good. Let’s—”

  Cat’s mouth ceased to move. She could no more have uttered another word than flap her arms and fly to the stars. A thickness entered her thought and her throat and she felt her head turn to face the front of the train wreck. The rest of her body turned as well. Against all her will, her legs began to move.

  A compulsion was upon Cat. It walked her up the tracks toward the locomotive with a long, confident stride that in no way reflected her internal panic. Esme hurried along with her, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, occasionally skipping, and once twirling around and around in circles and then running to catch up, oblivious to the spell that held Cat in its thrall.

  They had not gone far when Cat saw two dark figures moving toward them inside a sphere of light. One was a hag who carried a lantern in the crook of a long staff. The other was tall and slim and moved with the uncanny grace of the high-elven. As they came closer, Cat saw that the crone wore a railroad uniform while the elf wore loose trousers of deepest crimson and a matching tunic emblazoned with the inverted white cross of a medic. She wore her hair blond and chopped short and spiky in an expensive-looking cut. Her eyes glittered like starlight. One arm was splinted and tied up in an obviously improvised sling.

  “This is the one whose presence I felt,” the crone said. She lowered the lantern and blew out the flame. Cat’s head cleared. Her limbs were her own again.

  “A vagrant.” The elf-lady looked offended. “Still, she has iron in her blood and we are in desperate straits. ’Tis good she was here to be found.”

  “Enough words. Time is short,” said the crone. Turning to Cat, she said, “There’s work for you, lass. It’s dangerous but you’ll be well paid. What do you say?”

  Cat crossed her arms and said nothing.

  “Defiant, eh?” The crone tapped the glass of her lantern with a taloned finger. “I can place the compulsion on you again. And will, if I must.”

  The elf scowled. “Hold your tongue, Grimalka. We need her willing cooperation.” Then, addressing Cat directly: “What do you want? Gold? More than a guttersnipe like you has ever seen. Sex? Three days of whatever you want, just as soon as I get off duty. Drugs? Your choice of enough cocaine, moondust, or nightmare to fuel a monthlong binge. Name it.”

  Cat did not uncross her arms, for fear she would punch the bitch in her smug, chiseled face. “Are you through?”

  “I am.”

  “I want respect. As much as you’d expect to receive were you in my position and not one curtsy less. Were you treated as I have been, just now, what would you do? What would you say? How cruel a revenge would you be planning to take?” Calling upon the formal diction her mother employed only with her closest friends, Cat said, “I tell thee that upon this very day I dined with the lowliest dross of society and from them received more grace than is to be found in all thy words and, aye, thy deeds.”

  Anger blossomed on the elf’s porcelain-white face. But she fought it down. “I … crave thy pardon, mistress. Let us start anew. I am the Fata Narcisse, chatelaine-in-training of House Syrinx, reserve officer in Her Absent Majesty’s service, and surgeon-archimage to the Lords of the Rails.”

  “Cat.”

  As if this had been the most gracious of responses, Fata Narcisse touched Cat’s forearm with the hand of her uninjured arm. “You are half mortal. I too am tainted, or I would not be able to practice my profession. My mother was an octoroon and so I am a quintroon and immune to cold iron, though I possess a true name as the others in my maternal descent did not.” Over her shoulder, she said, “Return to the patient. Do what you can to ease her pain. We’ll need tools as well. Find them.”

  Without a word, the crone crunched away up the grade.

  “Look into my eyes,” Fata Narcisse said. They were as dark as oceans and as deep. “My true name is—”

  “No!” Cat cried involuntarily. Knowing someone’s true name gave you power over them. You could demand anything from them. You could kill them with a word. It was not a responsibility she wanted. Particularly coming from a complete stranger.

  “—Aerugo. It means ‘rust.’”

  For an instant as brief as a thunderclap, Cat could see the skull
beneath Narcisse’s face, the silver fire coursing across her nervous system, and, behind it all, the Abyss. Then reality restored itself.

  “We are as sisters now, you and I. In all ways will I support you. Your enemies I will harry, your rivals I will slander, your pockets I will fill. If ever you need an item of clothing, you can go through my closets without asking.”

  Shaken, Cat said, “Whatever you want can’t possibly be worth such a price … can it?”

  Slipping her arm under Cat’s, Narcisse led her up the track. “No more questions, I’ll explain as we go. As the courtesan said to her young leman: My way will be easier.”

  Esme trailed after them, sometimes lagging and then running to catch up.

  “Fire spirits are a secretive lot. I knew Olympia was pregnant and that her time was nigh, but she had assured me that … well. We have summoned a fresh-built locomotive to house the newborn spirit. It will be here within the hour. But the crisis will resolve itself one way or the other before it arrives. If the outcome is to be positive, we must intervene. I will talk with the spirit, and you will guard the womb-door against it. Normally, I would do both, but … this arm. If we can delay the birth, all will live to see the dawn. But if not, the explosion will leave naught but a crater.”

  Cat stopped in her tracks. Esme took advantage of this to plonk herself down and dig a gooly-doll out of her knapsack. But before Cat could snatch it from her and command the girl to run straight away from the train as far and as fast as she could, Narcisse, discerning her thoughts, held up a hand. “I very much doubt that your youngling could get out of the blast radius in the time we have allotted us.”

  “Blast … radius?”

  “Even an infant fire spirit is a creature of tremendous power. It does not properly belong in this world, and so it must be—” Narcisse began. Then, “Oh, hailstorms and plague!” For the world began to shimmer and wave. An unseeable nothingness pushed against them. It felt to Cat as if she were walking against a strong, hot wind, yet the air was still and cool. She struggled forward more slowly yet with greater effort than before and with increasing difficulty. It was as if existence itself were resisting her progress. Gusts of unreality blew over her. The air sparkled and the tracks looped like gleaming metal snakes. Esme laughed and clapped her hands. “We have less time than I had thought,” Narcisse said. Her words were cool bubbles in the jasmine-perfumed air. “We must act and act quickly.”

  Then she stopped. Stopped. For they had arrived. Arrived. Arrived at their destination.

  The locomotive lay on its side, a black iron hulk beached on the sterile shore of existence. But simultaneously, Cat saw it as a titanic woman—a giantess, possibly even a goddess—made of roiling smoke and fire and steam and shamelessly naked. This apparition turned her head to stare with one unblinking eye, central on her forehead, at Cat. Her expression was as arrogant and aloof as any dragon’s but also bore the marks of calm under suffering. Hers was a greatness untouched by malice. Cat had to fight the impulse to fall to her knees. “This one stinks of foulness. And she sees me unarmored,” the fire spirit said in a surprisingly gentle voice. Her body cast off so much heat that Cat found herself sweating copiously. “It seems my humiliations are without end.”

  “Lady, I—”

  “O nobly born, she is half mortal,” Grimalka said. “A fully iron-blooded mortal would be better. But we must work with the tools we are given.” She was dragging a toolbox as long as she was tall. Now she let it fall with a clangor and threw back the lid. It was filled with weapons: maces, spears, pikes, a flare gun, and the like.

  The crone lifted up a sword. “You know how to use this, kid?”

  Cat did, of course. But she shook her head. “I don’t intend to kill anyone. Anything.”

  Narcisse laughed, a sound like a brook running lightly down a mountainside. “Nor could you, in this case. If you struck with all your might, it would do no more than cause sparks.”

  Nevertheless, a sword was not a particularly versatile weapon. So Cat picked up a lignum vitae staff. “I’ll take this one.” She ran her hands up and down the shaft, checking for splinters, roughness, slick spots. She found no problems and concluded, “It will serve.”

  A shudder racked the giantess’s body. She stared up at the sky but made no sound.

  “Lady, your time is upon you,” Narcisse said, “and you weaken and tire. You cannot hope to hold back the birth without our help. We must go inside you.”

  “I had hoped to be spared this indignity. Yet, for the sake of my child, it seems I must endure it.” The fire spirit rolled over onto her back and spread her legs wide. A crack of darkness edged with flame appeared at their juncture.

  Narcisse started forward, gesturing Cat to follow her into the body of the locomotive.

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Helen said.

  “The quest is noble. I cannot refuse it.”

  “It’s not just your life you’re throwing away, you know—there’s mine too.”

  The selfishness of the statement took Cat’s breath away. “Nobody gives a damn,” she snapped.

  “Story of my life.”

  “Take care of Esme,” Cat commanded Grimalka. “See that she comes to no harm.” Then she stepped within.

  * * *

  The scorching heat of the fire-giantess gave way to the pleasant coolness of an early summer evening. Like so many vital things, the locomotive was larger on the inside than appeared possible from without. Cat could sense that, though the interior was absolutely without light. A light breeze touched her face. She smelled oak leaves, ferns, a stream.

  “This will not do,” Narcisse said. “Darkness can be used against us.” Ions gushed up about them as she summoned zero-point energy from the substratum of the universe.

  “Let there be stars,” the surgeon-archimage commanded. The sky filled itself with a glory of stars and nebulae, enough for Cat to see that they were surrounded by a forest of black silhouette trees.

  Narcisse produced a twig from a hidden pocket of her tunic and, one-handed, snapped it in two. “More light!”

  Every leaf in the forest blazed as brightly as an incandescent bulb. Blinded, Cat threw an arm over her eyes.

  “Softer … softer … shhh, yes … there.” Narcisse spoke hushingly to the leaves, as if they were a skittish horse. Cat opened her eyes to a twilight world and blinked away the pain and afterimages.

  “Let there be a meadow.”

  The trees retreated a good two bowshots in every direction, leaving in their wake low grasses studded with yellow wildflowers.

  “We have our theater,” Narcisse said. “Now we shall see how well we can operate in it.”

  Cat probed upward with her staff, heard it go thunk on iron, though there still seemed to be a starry sky overhead. Behind her was a high stone wall with, at its center, an open gateway just wide enough for one person to pass through. Beyond it she saw darkness, a curve of tracks, scattered boxcars. Taking her place before the gate, she asked, “Are we in the Empyrean?”

  “No. Well, yes, in a sense. But not really. Doubtless you were taught that there are many realms: Faerie upon which we dwell, Aerth from whence we came, Hel below us and the Empyrean above, and so on and so on. However, these are only different energy states of the same place—think of them as the surfaces of an n-dimensional tesseract and you won’t be far wrong. The adept understands that there are only two worlds: the exoteric or outer world—the surfaces just mentioned—and the esoteric or hidden world, which is the place where all the realms come together. Both make sense in their own ways, but the senses they make are very different from one another. You stand inside the locomotive’s body, a holy place and part of the esoteric universe which your eyes and ears and touch were not designed to perceive. All that you see is but illusion and metaphor. Put no trust in what you see, hear, or feel. Be strong.”

  Cat had spent her entire life pretending to be strong. She nodded in the way that she had observed capable peop
le did.

  “Your job is to stand here and make sure that nothing gets past you and through the birth-gate. That’s not going to be easy. The fire spirit will be more powerful than both of us combined. So we’re going to have to bluff.”

  “Bluff?”

  “Bluff. I’m the examiner. You’re the guardian of the gate. We’re both cosmic Powers. Get it?”

  Cat assumed a fighting stance and, though the lignum vitae staff was longer than the bo staffs she was used to, it felt good. She ran through eight swings, one for each direction, ending with a thrust. Four repetitions of the exercise to loosen up later, she said, “Got it.”

  Fata Narcisse looked surprised. “You’ve had training.”

  “You should see me with an MK 17. What now?”

  “We wait. Not very long.”

  * * *

  Cat felt the spirit’s approach long before it appeared at the far end of the meadow. There was a tension in the air accompanied by a corresponding unease in her stomach and an acidic tang in the back of her mouth. Then a cloud of smoke billowed up over the trees, eclipsing the stars. With a snort, the smoke congealed into a torso, sprouted a thick neck, and bent down to strike the earth with iron hooves. The ground trembled underfoot. There were flashes of lightning within the cloud.

  “This is genuinely scary,” Cat said.

  “Leave all speech to me. You don’t know what to say.”

  Dwindling, changing, sprouting wings and then reabsorbing them, growing more distinct as it approached, the roiling darkness grew closer and closer until at last it resolved itself into a skinny young woman in a flowered sundress and a wide straw hat. Her knees and elbows were knobby and she looked anything but dangerous. Still, Cat knew without doubt that this was the child waiting to be born, for, like her mother, she had one large round eye in the middle of her forehead. “What’s this?” the young woman said when she came to them.

  “You cannot exit, O nobly unborn,” said Narcisse, “until you pass my examination to prove yourself worthy of your mother, your new world, and the Lords of the Rails.”