The Iron Dragon’s Mother

by Michael Swanwick

  “‘But if I bend like this, it won’t work,’ I said. ‘And when I lean back, the rest of me sticks out.’ No matter how I contorted myself, I just couldn’t seem to get inside the oven. All the while, of course, I’m reeling and staggering … Y’know, I almost spit in his face when my dad insisted I take mime lessons. But, sonofagod, the old guy knew what he was doing. I was so clueless I drove Sasha nuts.

  “Finally, she was so frustrated with me that she put aside the Mauser and got down on all fours. ‘Like this!’ she said.

  “Quick as a lizard’s wink, I shoved Sasha into the stove. Her head banged against the back, and I slammed the door on her butt.

  “Oh, did she roar! But she was good and caught. So when she ran out of steam, I said, ‘What will you give me to be let free?’

  “‘Nothing!’ Sasha cried. ‘I am hunger and winter and famine and drought. I am the night that never ends. I am she who does not give but only takes.’

  “‘My hand is on the gas knob,’ I reminded her.

  “Now Sasha began to see what a fix she was in. ‘I’ll give you your life,’ she said.

  “That was a good beginning. But I wanted more. So I said—”

  “Wait! I know this story!” Cat cried. “You’re Clever Gretchen! And Hank—he must have been the original for her brother Hans.”

  “That’s an old, old tale,” Raven said. “Whatever truth may lie at its heart, before the distortions of rumor and time, happened long before I was born.”

  But she did not meet Cat’s eyes.

  * * *

  At last, they came to a nothing-much village nestled into an almost-valley deep in the Debatable Hills. A river ran by it with ramshackle docks and a few unpainted warehouses at the bank and a marsh on the lower end of town. There were eight or ten brick buildings on the central square. All the others were clapboard or dressed log or even (the oldest ones) wattle and daub. “This is it,” Raven said.

  “Thank the Goddess.” The infant had been cranky all morning, though whether he was teething or suffering from colic, Cat had no idea. “I’ll be glad to get this insufferable brat off our hands.”

  Raven rounded on Cat, white with anger. “Don’t you dare talk that way about my—!” She stopped. “About the kid. He’s an innocent and I won’t let you slander him. Do you hear me?”

  Cat had never seen her friend like this. But she didn’t back down. “I heard you just fine. You said ‘my.’ Is that your baby?”

  “No. He’s not. Over there’s somebody we can ask directions from.”

  Working her way across the cobbled pavement of the town square with the aid of a walking stick was an old woman whose exposed breasts, wide hat, and green sash identified her as a hag. Raven got out of the truck, bowed before her, and said, “Reverend Mistress, your counsel I crave. We’re looking for a woman named Blind Enna.”

  “Blind Enna? There’s nobody in these parts by that name. The only Enna we have is Enna of the Bright Eyes. She’s light-haired, light-footed, light-hearted, and light-headed. A bubble of a girl. She lives at the edge of town where the marsh meets the river. Not the one you seek, I suspect.”

  “We’ll look her up anyway,” Raven said, touching a hand to her forehead, heart, and sex. “Our thanks be unto thee.”

  The house belonging to Enna of the Bright Eyes, when they found it, was a trim, acorn-shaped cottage with a thatch roof and a brick chimney for the stem. The door was ajar and when they rapped on it, there came no response. Cat strained her ears and heard someone sobbing.

  They went in.

  Enna was crouched in a lightless room, hands over her eyes, crying inconsolably.

  “What’s the—?” Cat began.

  “Quiet!” Raven summoned a handful of the lux aeterna and left it hanging in the air, where it illuminated the young woman, revealing two damp blotches on her blouse, one over each swollen breast. Kneeling, Raven put an arm around her shoulders. “You lost the child, didn’t you?”

  Without ceasing to cry, Enna nodded.

  “Where is the body?”

  “There’s … an island in the marsh. It’s where she was conceived. I dug a hole there and placed her within, wrapped in silk. I gave her flowers for the journey: thistles to protect her, wraith buttons to bless the way, hyacinth to keep her steady, hollyhock to give her ambition, groundsel so she’ll rise, and yarrow to help cure my heartbreak. Only that doesn’t seem to be working. Then, to make sure my daughter would be looked on with favor by the Goddess, I offered her my eyes.”

  Enna lowered her hands and Cat saw with horror that they were black with blood. As were the empty spaces where her eyes had been.

  “Get the bag,” Raven said, and Cat hurried to comply.

  The baby was still fast asleep in the nest of blankets they’d fashioned for him in the open top of the leather satchel, so Cat brought him along. Inside, she lifted him to her shoulder so she could paw through its contents with her free hand.

  Each artifact had been wrapped in linen, tied up with string, and labeled with a neatly lettered strip of paper. “There’s a packet near the top marked ‘sleep,’” Raven said. “Find it.”

  Cat rummaged, found, untied. Within was a small silver bell. “Now cover your ears.” Raven lifted the bell and shook it by Enna’s ear. Then both she and Enna slumped slowly to the floor, one this way and the other that. The baby, already asleep, seemed unaffected.

  Enna of the Bright Eyes had been sitting alongside her pallet. Cat lifted her onto it. She groped her way to the window and threw open its shutters, flooding the room with light and returning the lux aeterna to the substrate of the universe. Then she shook Raven awake.

  “Whoof! Wish I’d thought to bring along earplugs.” Raven dug through the satchel. She came out with a misericorde and, leaving it scabbarded, slid it under the pallet. “This will help ward off despair. It’s why I fixed the baby nest where I did—to erase some of the trauma of losing his mother.”

  “I wondered about that.”

  “The healing-women can care for those eyes and a few courses of antibiotics ought to clear up any infection. We’ll get them on the case. Right now, sleep is the best doctor.”

  “Shouldn’t we be looking for the father?”

  “He’s not here. So he’s not worth finding.” Raven reached for a pack of cigarettes that wasn’t in her pocket, scowled, and said, “Our job is to patch her together so she can take care of babykins here.”

  “Tell me you’re joking.”

  “She’s young, unattached, and lactating. It’s perfect.”

  “She’s also blind, heartbroken, and probably suicidal.”

  “Yeah, well. We work with what the Goddess gives us.”

  Just then, the baby woke up and began to cry. Cat, who by now understood his moods, hurried to mix formula with warm water from the sun bottle. Behind her, she heard Raven crooning: “Awww. Is oo hungry? Is oo hungry? Don’t oo worry, itty-bitty, I’ve got a pair of nice milky tits coming your way. Just be patient for a few days and they’re all yours.”

  * * *

  Back in the center of town, the square was empty. The hag was nowhere to be seen, nor any of her compeers. But Raven gave a copper penny to a passing hummingirl and said, “Tell the healing-women that Enna of the Bright Eyes has lost her child and blinded herself. Go! As fast as you can fly!”

  The child lifted into the air and, with a whirr of her wings, disappeared.

  “Now for a room,” Raven said.

  The only available lodgings in town belonged to a two-story brick hotel with a wooden façade on the roofline that wouldn’t have fooled a hedgehog. The halls were dim, the rugs running along them smelled musty, and where the front office should have been was a bar. Raven talked to the barmaid and got a pair of keys to 2-B. She booked the room for a month, which told Cat they would be staying at least a week.

  * * *

  The healing-women converged upon Enna’s cottage. Cat and Raven saw them scurrying in and out as they passed it on the
ir way to Edgemoor Road to show the infant the marsh-flowers in bloom. “That will keep everybody occupied for a few days,” Raven said. “In the meantime, you, me, and the rug rat can get some much-needed downtime.”

  “Speaking of whom, isn’t it time we gave him a name? How about Milkweed? Or Belvedere Electroluxe? Or maybe People’s Fertilizer Unit 437?”

  “Oh, be serious.”

  “What is this, a fucking puzzle? I’m supposed to put together the clues and figure out what’s going on? You’re obsessed with this kid, you’re determined to unload him on an emotional basket case, you’ve gone so far off-mission I can’t even imagine how we’re going to get from here to Ys, you deny he’s your baby while acting as if he were, and you refuse to give him so much as a nickname. What gives?”

  “I told you. Just because you have questions doesn’t mean you’re entitled to answers. That’s Theology 101.”

  Thus quarreling, Cat and Raven passed an otherwise idyllic week. They took long walks and got to know the town and its environs. Sometimes they hired a boat and went fishing. The townsfolk in their turn assumed they were a couple, made it clear they suspected the infant was alchemical in origin, and cheated them at every opportunity. Then one day they saw a lone crone exit Enna’s cottage. She poured a libation of wine on the ground to feed the spirits of the land, threw a handful of flour to the wind to feed the spirits of the air, and left a smear of blood on the lintel to feed those spirits whom none dared name. “They’re done,” Raven said. “We’ll give her a few hours to recover and then—”

  “No.” Cat was carrying the baby in a Snugli (bought for twice its proper price in the general store) in front of her. Now she undid the ties and handed both it and the baby to Raven. “You want my cooperation, tell me what’s going on.”

  “You don’t understand. This is an obligation. I don’t have any alternatives.”

  “Then spill.”

  Raven clawed at the side of her face, the way she did when the tobacco cravings were particularly bad. “Awright, awright, awright.” She took a deep breath, looked away, and then looked back. At last, almost shyly, as if admitting to something shameful, she said, “Don’t laugh, because this is serious.

  “He’s my father.”

  Cat did a little mental arithmetic. “The timing’s about right. Go on.”

  “This is the town he grew up in. Perfectly happy childhood, the old man told me, until the War came and busted things up permanently. The place shaped him. Important thing is, he was raised by Blind Enna. There’s only one Enna in town and she just blinded herself. Coincidence? Not a chance. Do you have any idea what’s going to happen if, in direct contradiction of everything we know took place, this baby isn’t raised by her?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest notion.”

  “Neither do I and I don’t want to find out. It would be like poking the Goddess in the eye. I don’t think the results would be pleasant.”

  * * *

  Raven bought what had to be a dozen yards of black veiling and wrapped them around and around Cat’s head until she felt like she was peering through a cloud. Chanting guttural cantrips in what sounded like the Dawn Tongue, Raven tacked the cloud to itself with silver pins until at last she said, “It’s done.”

  “Yes, but what is it?”

  “A spell of disregard. Unless you speak to them directly, nobody will notice you. They’ll see you but it simply won’t register that you’re there.”

  “That seems like a lot of fuss to go through when I happen to know that there’s a ring inside the satchel labeled ‘invisibility.’”

  “Magic always costs, remember. For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. That’s Merlin’s third law. Use that ring and it’s also going to make visible something that was meant to be hidden—we don’t know what and we don’t want to find out. Same thing with the spell except I know what it’s linked to and I know some young ladies who are going to be very amused by what they see. Now. Enna is going to have a supernatural visitor—you.”

  “Eh?”

  “Let me explain…”

  It took hours of scripting, objections, overruling, challenges, clarifications, and quibbles that threatened to flare up into arguments before Raven finally said, “Remember: Nothing but the truth. If you don’t know the truth, don’t say anything. Platitudes are fine. But one lie and the whole thing falls apart.”

  “It’s nothing but lies.”

  “I know. That’s the beauty of it.”

  * * *

  Unnoticed, Cat passed through the village and up Mud Street to the little lane that led to the acorn cottage. She eased the door open and tiptoed into the bedroom. Enna lay on her pallet, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Cat stood nearby, saying nothing, until the soft sound of her breathing alerted the young fey to her presence. “Who’s there?”

  “A friend.”

  Both waited for the other to speak. At last Enna said in a dead voice, “They told me I’m cured. But all I want to do is stay in bed forever. I feel a little less awful here.”

  Cat made a mental note to remind Raven to retrieve the misericorde before they left. “You’re not cured. You’ll never be cured. Cured of memories of your daughter? Who would be mad enough to want that? But the day will come when you feel a little less awful. Now stand up. We’re going outside.”

  Enna retrieved two sticks that were leaning on the wall. She probed awkwardly in front of her with them, managed to make her way through the door.

  Gently removing one stick from Enna’s hand, Cat said, “Take my arm.”

  Without further conversation, the two walked down Mud Street and into town. New Street led them to the village square, where, it being market day, a labyrinth of tables had been set up from which farmers could sell roots, fairy fruits, and greens, butcher a fresh chicken or firebird or rabbit plucked from a stack of cages, or offer pies baked overnight by the whole or half or slice. All the air smelled delicious and the cobbles underfoot reeked pleasantly of vegetal rot. This being the first time Enna had been out and about since her self-mutilation, there was a rustle of excitement wherever she passed. “Ahhh, Enna,” the old gaffers said sadly, while young matrons hugged her fleetingly and whispered condolences, and children were slapped when they demanded to know what had happened to her.

  “I should have worn a cloth over my eyes. Over where my eyes used to be, I mean,” Enna said.

  “Oh, don’t worry about that, sweetie!” a woodswife cried in alarm, and, “You’ll do that next time,” Cat murmured in Enna’s ear.

  As they were leaving the square, a cow-tailed hulder in a flower print dress rushed up and gushed, “Oh, Enna. Wandering through the market alone! And the terrible thing that happened to you so new.”

  “But I’m not—” Enna began before Cat quieted her with the tip of a finger on her lips.

  “I just wanted you to know I think you’re ever so brave.” The hulder gave Enna an impetuous kiss on the cheek and fled.

  Marveling, Enna said, “She talked to me as if you weren’t there. She couldn’t see you. Nobody can see you.”

  “No. Not when I don’t want them to.”

  “Are you a goddess?”

  Cat said nothing.

  “You are!” Enna started to fall to her knees. “Tell me! Which one are you?”

  “No names,” Cat said, hauling her back to her feet. “Revere all, give the Goddess her due, and I will be well pleased. For now, say nothing and think seriously on what you have learned today. I will visit you again tomorrow and then you can ask me what you will.”

  * * *

  The next day, Enna was waiting in the open doorway. She shrieked when Cat came up noiselessly and said, “I’m here.” But she clung to the offered arm eagerly.

  Cat and Enna walked together up Mud Street to Edgemoor Road. After a time, Enna said, “The pain is so much worse than anything I’ve ever known. Why is that?”

  “You have suffered a loss that is worthy of such pain. That�
�s all.”

  “Yes.” They walked on for some time. Then, hesitantly, Enna said, “Sweet, beloved goddess … why? My daughter did no one any harm. All those people at Brocielande Station—maybe some of them deserved what happened to them. But surely not all. There’s so much misery and injustice in the world. Why?”

  Remembering Raven’s instructions, Cat was silent.

  “Are you there?”

  “I am here.” Despising herself, Cat said, “Whether you know it or not, you are never alone.”

  “Why is it there are so many questions you won’t answer?”

  Cat was silent.

  “Am I wrong to want those answers?”

  “No.” They walked onward, away from the village. It was a beautiful day, but Cat paid no particular attention to what she saw. She was listening to the smells and tasting the sounds: A frog plopping into water rich with algae. The almost inaudible scrape of crab-folk diligently widening their burrows in the sulfurous mud and repointing the bricks of their wee chimneys. Pussy willows and dogwoods whispering in the breeze. When she deemed there to be clues enough for an answer, Cat said, “Do you know where we are?”

  Enna lifted her chin and inhaled. “I do! It’s Hagmere Pond.” The tremble in her voice told Cat this was a significant place for her.

  “Tell me what happened here.”

  “There was this boy. Man. No, boy. He was my first. He said I had nice eyes. Everybody said I had such nice eyes.”

  “You did. They belong to your daughter now.”

  “Yes. Thank you. They do, yes. Oh, that makes such a difference!”

  Cat had been carrying Enna’s second stick for all their walk. Now she returned it to her and said, “I’m going to leave you now. You’ll have to find your own way home.”

  “But I can’t—”

  “You’re about to learn that you can. You’re not as helpless as you think you are.”