The Iron Dragon’s Mother

by Michael Swanwick

  The emcee leaped into the air, slapping his knee and clicking his heels, and laughed like a loon. “But we’re not going to let that bother us tonight, are we? No! Later on, we’re going to have a soprano sfogato who will thrill you with the otherworldly refinement of her voice. And after that, we have a special surprise guest who will perform an act you’ll be talking about for the rest of your lives! But now, let’s get the evening rolling with … Misery! Nihilism! and Revolution! Put your hands together for the Anonymous Everyhaint!”

  The haint who walked on stage wore shapeless work clothes and a simple white mask. She took the microphone and turned her head to cough into her hand.

  Then she spoke:

  “I am the only survivor of a litter of eight. I don’t use the term family because we lived like animals. There wasn’t always food. We fought each other for what little there was. I learned nothing in school—it was just a way of keeping young haints out of the way during business hours, so far as I could see. My mother worked three jobs when she could get them, and begged in the street when she could not…”

  There was a rustling of chairs being drawn up and a familiar scraping sound. Cat turned away from the stage to see three more pilots—Fiona, Meryl, and Bridget—pulling tables together.

  When they were seated, they all looked at Cat. Not a one of them blinked.

  “Okay,” Cat said, more to herself than anyone else. “This is getting creepy.”

  “Aren’t you glad to see us?” Bridget asked.

  “You should at least pretend to be glad to see us,” Meryl said.

  “You haven’t asked how we escaped,” Fiona said in an accusing tone of voice.

  Leaning forward, as if she were sharing a great confidence, Meryl said, “Glass Mountain is very, very small and made entirely out of mirrors. The prison is a flaw within a faceted diamond set into a pinky ring worn by the Year Eater. Not many people know that. They place you inside Glass Mountain and you wander forever, lost in the light, always coming upon yourself and everyone else imprisoned there.”

  “But distorted,” Bridget said. “So you never know if that’s really you or really them or maybe it’s you and them combined. Time is crazy in Glass Mountain. I spent a lifetime in a looking glass on the warden’s makeup table. After you’ve been there for a few millennia, you forget who you are. That’s why nobody escapes—who would want to go to all that work and trouble to break out someone who might be a complete stranger? You’d be walking the streets a free woman and suddenly realize that you weren’t who you thought you were and that you’d left yourself behind in Glass Mountain.”

  “But then Saoirse came for us,” Fiona said. “She was filled with darkness, so that her coming was like a solar eclipse at high noon! She gathered us together and explained that if we all escaped, that would surely include each individual one of us. I wasn’t sold at first, but then I glanced down at my hand and saw it wrinkle, shrivel, and turn gray. I wriggled my fingers and the dust that had been my flesh fell from the bones and sifted to the ground. That showed me that time wasn’t on our side.” She giggled. “So I—whoever I was—followed her out, only a little worse for the wear.”

  “Nobody comes out of Glass Mountain entirely sane,” Meryl said.

  They all stared at Cat, silent as stone.

  Why are you all looking at me? Cat wanted to say. Why is no one blinking? Caution, however, told her not to ask. Behind her, she could hear the haint, still speaking. The audience was laughing now, though nothing she said seemed to Cat in the least bit funny.

  “I pick up their used condoms, mop up their vomit, bury the corpses they leave behind. The high-elven think they’re so virtuous their shit doesn’t stink. Yet there is not a night goes by in which I do not dream of killing them all in their sleep. My mistress flaunts her ugly, pasty white flesh before me and never asks whether I want to see it or not—and her adopted sister is just as bad. Their grotesque girl-child kills frogs and raids the kitchen at all hours, and we have to pretend we don’t hate her as well…”

  Cat’s blood ran cold.

  “No one ever asked me what I wanted. So I’m telling you now. I don’t want justice—I want revenge! I don’t want reform—I want blood! I don’t want a kinder, gentler society—I want fire! I want to burn down this city and run barefoot through its streets, killing every one of you. Every one of you! Every one of you! Every one of you!” Her voice rose higher with each repetition until she was screaming: “Die! Fuck you! Die!”

  Then all the room was on their feet, clapping and cheering and laughing at the same time, wolf-boys howling and bird-girls chirping as they hopped excitedly up and down. The emcee came bounding on stage, exaggeratedly applauding as well.

  The haint started offstage, then turned around, came back to the microphone, and, looking straight at Cat, said, “At least one person here knows what I mean.”

  Then she was gone.

  The emcee reclaimed the microphone stand, leaning into it as if they two were dancing. “Wuzznat fabulous? The Anonymous Everyhaint, friends—the Conscience of Avernus! Now, I’m sure you’re all as avid as I am to set the city ablaze and get the looting and slaughter started. But before you do, laydeezangentz, you’ll want to hear our main act—Innocent Jenny! So pure is she, so simple, so delightfully without any thoughts or desires of her own that the music of the spheres flows right through her—into her gut, up to her chest, and out her otherwise silent mouth. And now she’s here to share that wunnerful, wunnerful gift with us!”

  The creature that stumbled onto the stage was a rusalka, perhaps, or a nymph, or a hulder, or possibly even one of the Tylwyth Teg. But her face was blank and without personality, and from the way she was prodded and pushed by a pair of baton-wielding black dwarves, it was clear she had little or no volition of her own. She was one of those unfortunates born without a soul and never used for a changeling. Her gown was brilliant cerulean.

  “Now, in order to sing with full effect, Jenny must be completely unencumbered!” The emcee’s horse-skull mask jerked lecherously. “If you know what I mean. And I know you do. Gents, if you will…”

  The black dwarves rapidly unbuttoned the gown, leaving Innocent Jenny clad only in plain white panties and brassiere. Her lower body was covered with bruises and her flesh looked slack and loose from lack of exercise. Nevertheless, the audience hooted and clapped.

  “Now,” the emcee commanded. “Sing!”

  Innocent Jenny shook out her hair, all the while staring cow-like directly in front of her. A glow blossomed from within her flesh and rapidly grew until she blazed with the sacred light of the awen. Extending one arm gracefully, she sang in impossibly pure tones:

  “My fingers are long and beautiful,

  as, it has been well documented,

  are various other parts of my body;

  If they’re small, something else must be small …

  The beauty of me is that I’m very rich.”

  There was that rustling sound again. Cat wrenched her attention from the singer and, to her complete lack of surprise, saw that Maeve, Deirdre, and Ashling had joined the group. Now all of the female dragon pilots, save only Saoirse, were assembled. “It’s just like old times,” Cat muttered. She was thinking specifically of the trial they had all put her through, and wondering what they had in mind for her now. Turning to Ysault and Sibyl, she added, “I was good to you guys.”

  “You were gracious and condescending and you gave us money,” Ysault replied. “That’s not the same thing. We despised you for it.”

  “Now you know,” Sibyl said.

  Cat twisted around in her seat, looking for a way out. But the room was crowded and every table was full and packed together too tightly for anyone to pass. Though somehow, the latest three arrivals had managed it.

  When she turned back to the table, none of them were listening to the singer.

  All were staring at Cat. Like wolves.

  “I guarantee you there’s no problem,

 
I guarantee. I am much more humble

  than you would understand

  and it is always good to be underestimated—

  The beauty of me is that I’m very rich.”

  Ashling looked Cat in the eye and said, “Do you have something to ask me?”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake. All right, I’ll ask. How did you get out of Glass Mountain?”

  “Fool!” Ashling’s face was cold and hard. “Nobody gets out of Glass Mountain.”

  “Alive,” Deirdre said.

  “Nobody gets out of Glass Mountain alive,” Maeve said harshly. “Am I right, girls?” Murmurs of agreement circled the tables. “You know I’m right.”

  Suspicions that had been building for some time now came together inside Cat. Ysault was sitting closest to her, so Cat grabbed her hand.

  Her fingers went right through as if there were nothing there.

  The other pilots shimmered in the gloom. How could she not have recognized they were wraiths? How could it have eluded her that neither Sibyl nor Ysault ever touched her? That when they met for drinks, though they pretended to sip from them, their glasses were still full when everyone left the table?

  “I will build a great wall.

  Nobody builds walls better than me,

  I will build a great, great wall,

  Mark my words:

  The beauty of me is that I’m very rich.”

  The wraiths that had once been her friends, and later her persecutors, continued to stare at Cat. Nobody moved. They were obviously waiting for something.

  * * *

  Then the singing was done and applauded and Innocent Jenny had been prodded back into the wings. The emcee, who had earlier been restless as a flea, stood stiff and motionless. “And now for our pièce de résistance, our coup de théâtre, the ceremony that is the delight of kings and the entertainment of the rabble—performed tonight only! and never again. The pomp … the ceremony … the majesty of … Ritual! Virgin! Sacrifice!”

  The drummer hit a rimshot. Cat looked frantically for a way out. “I’ve got to go to the ladies’ room,” she said.

  “Too late for that,” Ashling replied.

  The emcee was gesturing someone onstage. Flashing a dazzling smile, Saoirse strutted across the boards, waving with her left hand to one side of the crowd and then with her right to the other half, as if she were a celebrity they should all recognize. She was too solid to be a wraith, though her face was powdered white as bone. Wrapping both hands lovingly around the microphone, she brought it to her blood-red rips. “Thank you, maestro. You are so very, very kind.” Saoirse was wearing her Dragon Corps dress blues and that, more than anything else, made Cat hate her.

  “Let’s start by introducing tonight’s star, the victim herself—the notorious dragon slayer, Captain Caitlin of House Sans Merci! Can you stand up, officer?”

  Cat stood. Shouting over the applause, she swept a hand toward the other pilots. “You killed them, didn’t you? Admit it.”

  “I cut a deal.” (To her side, Cat heard Sibyl say, “Told you.”) “Twelve lives for my freedom, complete exoneration, and restoration of rank. Eleven of those lives were already in Glass Mountain. They weren’t going to get out alive anyway. So I sacrificed them, blocked their way to the Black Stone, and set them loose. Knowing they would thread the labyrinth of Europa and find you.”

  “We’re both officers. I claim the right—”

  “Hold that thought,” Saoirse said. “I have a question for your little chums first.” She pointed at Cat and directed her question at Ysault. “Is she still a virgin?” Saoirse shouted. Mingled laughter and jeers rose up from the audience. “Is she?”

  “Really-o and truly-o!” Ysault shouted back. “We had a long talk about sex and it was obvious she didn’t know what she was talking about.”

  “Innocent as shit!” Sibyl amplified.

  “You should have seen the way she looked at this slave boy in the market! Like a spayed queen staring at a hot young tom. She knew she wanted to do something with him but she hadn’t the least idea what,” Ysault said.

  The audience roared.

  “Then bring her up!” Saoirse cried.

  The pilots were on their feet, swarming about Cat. Now their hands were solid and corpse-cold, gripping her arms, seizing her legs, pinching her and grabbing at her face as they ran over the tables and chairs and diners. Spitting and cursing, she was brought onto the stage. Ashling and Brianna ran offstage and back again, rolling an X-shaped wooden cross before them. It had leather cuffs near the tops and bottoms of the beams and had been decorated with plastic vines and swirls of gold glitter. It was the tackiest imaginable item on which to die. “Don’t bother stripping her,” Saoirse commanded. “The Goddess doesn’t care about clothing. Just lash her to the cross.”

  In a trice it was done.

  “Now,” Saoirse said to Cat. “You had some sort of request or demand, I believe?”

  “I am an officer in Her Absent Majesty’s Dragon Corps. I demand that we settle this by single combat.”

  A small, sneering smile played on Saoirse’s lips. “Always thinking of yourself, aren’t you? Never of your fellow officers, your classmates, your dog-sisters. Denied rebirth. Doomed to wander Faerie until your death completes the geas I placed upon them. Did you for an instant consider their welfare? I don’t think so. So no trial by combat! No hearings, no hesitations, no special pleading, no fussing about with facts. That was our mistake the last time. Tonight I’ll simply kill you.” A commando knife appeared in her hand.

  Beyond Saoirse, Cat saw the audience. From the stage, it was a single, hundred-headed creature: fanged, clawed, reptilian, lupine, avian, with pig snouts and fox ears and leather wings and ivory tusks. All yearning for her blood.

  “Regrettably, this will be fast,” Saoirse said. “But I’ll savor it afterward.” Her knife rose into the air.

  Laughter cut through the silence. A billowing figure leaped out of the darkness and into the light, revealing himself to be the emcee. He removed his horse-skull mask and straightened to his full height. He flung off his tunic and stepped out of the baggy trousers. An extra pair of arms unfolded from his torso.

  It was Counselor Edderkopp.

  The audience was booing and clapping in equal measure. Somehow, without hurry or force, Edderkopp removed the combat knife from Saoirse’s hand and used it to cut Cat’s bonds. He helped her down from the cross.

  “I don’t understand,” Cat said. “How can you possibly be here?”

  “What kind of lawyer would I be,” Edderkopp said, “if I didn’t know when I was needed?” He spun about, producing a leather bag from out of nowhere. Holding the bag up in the air, he rattled it enticingly before the wraiths of the dragon pilots.

  “Hear that sound? Eh? Eh? Eh? Oh, I know you want it as you know I know and I know you do. It’s full of copper pennies. Not those nasty copper-clad zinc disks but real red copper, bright and shiny. Copper! You can taste it, can’t you? And I have two of them reserved for nobody but you.” Edderkopp advanced on the nearest wraith. “Would you like to have them? Both of them? Forever?”

  Fiona closed her eyes and nodded.

  “Then lie down. That’s right, child. Right here on the stage. It’s dirty, but don’t mind that. This is a noble world and dirt is a noble material, the foundation of all we are and all we aspire to. From the dirt you arose, to the dirt now return.” He placed pennies on her eyelids. “Doesn’t that feel nice?”

  But Fiona was already melting into the boards. Behind her, the other dead pilots crowded forward, arms outstretched.

  “No need to rush! No need to grab! There’s plenty for all. Lie down, lie down! I’ll close your eyes for you and lay the cool, cool copper on their lids.”

  Dazed and confused as she was, Cat saw it all in a blur. Then Edderkopp had her hand and was leading her somewhere. Metal doors clashed open.

  Counselor Edderkopp smiled in an almost-kindly manner. “Here’s the elevator,” he said.
“I think you can find your way home from here.”

  * * *

  That night, as Cat was drifting off to sleep, Helen said, “You want Saoirse to stop? Go to a bar. Smile. When a guy makes a joke, laugh at it. When he invites you to his place, go. It’s that simple.”

  “I can’t see myself doing that.”

  “Or you could just hand the chore over to me. I’d be glad to take care of it. In fact, I’d enjoy the hell out of it.”

  “You are a disgusting old woman.”

  “Yeah, but at least I had fun getting this way.”

  “In any case,” Cat said, “Saoirse was lying about the other pilots being drawn to me. I figured out some time ago how I was being tracked, and that’s not it.”

  Peace, peace! learn from my miseries and do not seek to increase your own.

  —Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, or the New Prometheus

  After an uneasy night of troubling dreams, Cat awoke to discover that Fata Narcisse was on her deathbed. Rodolphe, Josie, and Queenie watched patiently over her in shifts with a team of medical hags nearby, ready to dose her with morphine and tincture of kingsfoil should the pain grow too great. “I’m afraid I lied to you, my pet,” she said to Cat. “Forgive me for being greedy. I merely wanted to enjoy your unpitying company a little longer.”

  Cat pressed her lips against Narcisse’s hot forehead. “You’re going to live, though,” she said. “Tell me you’re going to live.”

  With a flip of her hand, as if waving away a trifle, Narcisse said, “If you could see what is inside me, you would not ask me to tell such a lie.”