Milo and the Dragon Cross

by Robert Jesten Upton

  “What are those?” Milo asked in amazement when he was able to see the milling creatures on the ground. He and Bori could also hear their yelps, growls, and howls. At first Milo thought they were wolves, but then he saw that they didn’t have fur, and they sometimes stood up on their hind legs. They had huge, hulking shoulders, suggesting massive strength. He thought they might be something like baboons, because they looked like misshapen humans except for their long ears and long muzzles, which had heavy, gaping jaws and long flashing white fangs that looked capable of ripping and crushing. The creatures were completely naked except for a bristly mane that continued down in a ridge between their shoulders and played out on their spine at the small of their back.

  “Can you see who they’re after?” Bori asked, looking into the focus of the frenzy.

  Milo saw a man, and soon enough recognized Tivik. Just as savage as his attackers, he fought them off, his back to the boulders. He was glistening in sweat and streaked with blood. It was clear that he couldn’t fight his way free.

  “Tivik!” Milo shouted. “Grab hold of my crate! I’ll lift you away!”

  Tivik looked above him, unable to take more than a glance away from the lunging, snapping attackers. Without a thought to his crate’s ability to lift the extra weight, Milo dipped in and dropped down as low as he dared. The sudden appearance of the craft surprised the weird beasts, and they shied back just long enough for Tivik to spring up and grab the open slats of the bottom of the crate. Anticipating the sudden jerk of Tivik’s weight, Milo touched the UP sign just as Tivik gripped fast, and with a heavy shudder the crate lifted out of the reach of the snarling jaws that lunged to catch their eluding prey.

  “Lopers!” Tivik said, panting. “Ambushed me this morning. I’ve been in a running fight all day. I wouldn’t have lasted more than a few more minutes if you hadn’t come along.”

  Milo flew the craft clear of the tops of the trees and rapidly away from the spot where the lopers, looking up and emitting a terrible howl, were already galloping to chase them from the ground. Tivik held on, struggling to maintain his grip from where he hung so precariously.

  “I’ll set ‘er down,” Milo told him, worried that Tivik might lose his exhausted hold.

  “No! Put more distance between us and them first. They’ll trail us by air scent, for days if they need to, and they can run faster than deer for hours and hours.”

  Just then the crate gave a lurch as the loose lashing broke. Tivik spun, jerking the crate in a yawl as he struggled frantically to get his free hand onto a different slat.

  “I’ve got to set down!” Milo shouted, his hands flying over the signs to maintain the craft’s equilibrium.

  A yowl from Bori caught Milo’s attention, and he saw that the cat was puffed up, back arched, tail bushed, and spitting. Bori was looking up, not down at the following lopers. Glancing up over his shoulder, Milo thought he saw large birds circling in fast.

  “What’s that!” he screamed at Tivik.

  Tivik, still dangling precariously, saw what was closing in from above.

  “Harpies!” Tivik shouted. “Dive, dive before they rip us out of the sky!”

  Milo needed very little encouragement to send the craft plummeting as he searched for a place to get cover from above. He spotted a thicket of trees ahead and steered the wobbling, yawing crate into them, dodging under their crowns and between the boles, painfully aware of the heavy rush of powerful wing beats just above them.

  Women’s screams of rage and frustration rang out as Milo skimmed between trees, feet from the ground. The crate gave another lurch as Tivik dropped off and rolled onto the grass. The sudden change in weight sent the craft out of control and crashing into a tree trunk.

  “Brilliant!” Tivik exclaimed with glee as Milo and Bori, bruised and disheveled, extracted themselves from the ruins of the crate. “Neither the lopers nor the harpies will follow us into the sanctuary of the willows,” he asserted.

  Milo looked up through the branches and leaves that separated them from the wheeling, screaming aerial pursuers. They looked a lot like eagles, only much bigger, and they had women’s heads, hair, and breasts.

  “I guess they don’t know Victoria’s Secret,” Milo said to himself. “Willows or not, I don’t think I like the idea of hanging out in this neighborhood. Do you, Bori?”

  With a swish of his tail, the cat agreed.

  “We can expect to find a stream farther in under the willows,” Tivik said. “I’m thirsty, and I wouldn’t mind washing off the blood and loper slobber.”

  Although Tivik didn’t strike Milo as the sort of guy who would be overly concerned with personal hygiene, he agreed with the wild man. Sure enough, they found a delightful clear little stream. By now the screaming of the harpies and the howling of the lopers had converged, then faded into the distance. Tivik said that the mutual hatred between the two groups had moved their interest in the humans into a battle with each other. Tivik, Milo, and Bori were forgotten.

  Bori and Milo drank the sweet, cool water upstream of Tivik, who waded in to wash off the gore. As the caked blood and dirt melted away, the various gashes and wounds appeared, but then they too closed and faded. “It’s an enchanted stream,” Tivik observed. He looked up, his senses cocked like a hunting hound’s. “I wonder if there’s anything to eat here. I haven’t had a meal since I left the Kingdom.” Tivik’s appetite gave Milo a shiver.

  “Look!” Tivik whispered.

  Milo looked, and saw a white deer—a hind—standing some distance away, watching them. “Aha!” Tivik exclaimed, glancing craftily at Milo. “A sign—or a meal.” Instantly, Tivik dashed away in pursuit as the hind took flight, vanishing into the thicket. Tivik crashed in after, the sound fading until Milo and Bori could no longer hear.

  “I hope he doesn’t catch it,” Milo said with a shudder. “He doesn’t strike me as being that much different from those loper things.”

  Milo and Bori decided to continue on, following the general course of the stream. The ground became boggier, and cypress trees, trailing long beards of moss, replaced the sorts of trees that like drier ground.

  The sky opened up between the branches and exposed the surface of a misty lake. Balanced silently on one impossibly long leg, a crane, snaky neck cocked, stood motionless as a statue. Milo and Bori moved cautiously nearer. It was all white, with black on its folded wings and long red wisps of feathers like a crown above its eyes. Milo and Bori moved nearer and nearer without so much as a flicker from the bird until they were at the water’s edge. The crane stood a little way out in the water.

  Milo started to whisper to Bori, but the crane, without the slightest break in its concentration, silenced him.

  “Shhh!” the bird admonished. “He’s here! If you frighten him, I’ll spear you instead.”

  Milo and Bori sank down. Milo decided there was no reason to be surprised that the bird spoke. After all, he had a cat that could. He thought it best just to wait.

  Minutes passed. The crane didn’t move. If he hadn’t spoken, Milo would have begun to suspect that he was artificial, despite the way the faint breeze ruffled a feather here and there.

  Feeling thirsty, Milo lay down very slowly and carefully on his belly, taking his queue from Bori, who was crouched down to lap water from the lake. Milo lowered his hands into the crystal coolness.

  “Look!” Bori whispered, hardly louder than a faint hiss.

  Milo saw his own reflection flicker on the water’s surface. “What?” he whispered back.

  “There! Almost between your hands!”

  Milo looked through his own reflection down into the water itself. He could see his own arms and hands, pale beneath the surface. And sure enough, almost between them, he saw the dark, nearly invisible shape of a large fish hovering in its own element. All Milo had to do to catch it was to slowly, gradually close his hands together and...

  Pop! Milo pulled up the huge, slippery fish and flung it onto the grass. As his balance shifte
d, Milo almost fell into the water. Bori jumped on the flipping fish before it could fling itself back into the lake, and Milo joined the fray, wrestling with the cool, solid body.

  As the two of them managed to get the fish in their grips, the crane hopped above them.

  “By Jove, you’ve gotten him! It’s the salmon! I’ve fished for him for years, you see, and now you’ve caught him, just like that!”

  Actually, Milo was more surprised by his catch than Bori or the crane was. Although he’d heard of catching fish that way, with your two hands held down in the water, he’d never actually done it, or even tried it.

  “It just...happened, I guess,” he told the crane. “Would you like to have it, since you’ve tried to catch it for so long?”

  The crane looked quite taken aback. “You would...just give it to me?” the crane asked in astonishment. “You would freely give me the Great Salmon?”

  “Well, I can’t really do anything with it, and since you’ve been trying to catch it and all...Maybe you could share some with Bori here.”

  The crane stared at the cat as if the whole idea was beyond comprehension.

  “Umm,” Milo said. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Take it to my castle for proper cooking, of course,” the crane proclaimed.

  “Your...castle?” Milo asked incredulously.

  “Why, yes. I’m the Crane King, and my castle is just over there, across the lake. You, and your companion here, of course, are invited to be my guests for the night if you will. And I hope, after this generous—oh, so much more than generous—gift, that you will allow me to host you, to honor you with every gratitude that my kingdom and I can offer.”

  That sounded pretty good to Milo. He wondered why this fish was such a big deal. But then, this was a king of cranes. How would Milo know what to expect from him?

  “My cat and I would be delighted,” Milo replied.

  “If you would be so kind as to bring the salmon to my skiff over here—it’s rather heavy, and I have trouble carrying heavy things due to my...infirmity.”

  The salmon was heavy, but Milo managed it okay, with Bori walking proudly along beside him, casting hungry glances at the fish.

  “Bori,” Milo told him under his breath, “you’d better leave that fish alone until the crane offers you some. He’s making such a big deal out of it, I don’t think you should try snitching a piece.”

  The bird hopped ahead on one leg. The other leg remained folded up under his body, clearly moving with effort and pain. Milo wanted to ask what was wrong, but he thought it might be impolite to mention the king’s disability. He didn’t want to seem nosey.

  The skiff was nearby, although Milo had to wade into the lake to put the fish into the boat. Bori jumped from a log and onto the boat’s bow, and from there onto one of the wooden seats. Milo’s climbing in over the gunwale set the boat rocking, but it seemed stable enough not to tip over. He gave the cat another warning look.

  The Crane King took a hop up onto the bow, and Milo pushed off. Standing on his one leg from his position on the bow, his balance stately, the Crane King asked Milo to row.

  “It’s impossible for me to row myself,” said the crane, “so if you would be so kind, as you’re the only one who can grip the oars,” the Crane King said apologetically.

  “No problem,” Milo said, setting the oars and beginning to row. “I’ve rowed a boat before, with my grandfather, fishing. Milo wondered what the bird would have done if he hadn’t come along to do the work. But he didn’t ask that either.

  Just the same, though, Milo was very curious. How did a crane become a king and have a castle? Why was he so keen on this particular fish, and what made this fish peculiarly special? How did the crane become injured? Milo thought he saw the fletching of an arrow—very old and bedraggled—lodged in the thigh joint of the leg that the bird kept drawn against his body. Milo remembered the wildlife rescue operations back home that might be able to remove the arrow and heal this magnificent bird. Only, to the best of his knowledge, that sort of organization didn’t exist here.

  The lake was really a swamp with very little open water and lots of tangles of rushes and islands of cypress. The Crane King indicated to him which way to take around the islands and what channels to follow. Milo soon had no idea where he was or how to get back to where they’d started. That bothered him, since he would have to find the crate again in order to fix it so they could get on with their search.

  “What’s that?” Bori whispered.

  Milo turned. A tall gray castle soared above the layers of mist, its towers partly obscured by the trails of fog that hung above the surface of the lake. It had an air of forlorn magnificence, its color muted, perhaps by the fog.

  “That is my castle, friends: Crane Castle,” the bird said gravely.

  Attendants—humans dressed in white liveries trimmed in black and red—met the skiff. In silence and with grave respect, they drew it up to the stone pier. They bowed to the bird and helped him onto a litter, where he lay to be carried by two of them.

  “These are my new friends and guests for the night,” the Crane King told the attendants as he gestured toward Milo and Bori. “This young man has captured the Great Salmon, which now lies in the bottom of the boat. He has gifted it to me. Please extend him and his cat every courtesy in honor of the guest oath.”

  The attendants picked up the crane’s litter. “Cedric, my seneschal, will see to your needs and conduct you to your chambers. I will see you for supper by and by.”

  The crane was borne away, leaving Milo and Bori with Cedric.

  “Come this way, if you will,” the man said formally. Milo noticed that another servant was handling the still flopping fish with something like reverence, as if it were of immense value.

  It wasn’t as if there was anything unfriendly about any of this. It was just so solemn. It gave Milo a chill, and he wished he were anywhere else. He picked up Bori, glad to have him near. The cat rode on his shoulder, looking around with his big green eyes.

  “I wonder if they have dogs in there,” Bori noted as they crossed the drawbridge into the castle.

  “I just hope they give us supper and a dry place to sleep, and show us how to find the crate again tomorrow,” Milo said in his turn.

  Cedric led them through a courtyard, up flights of stairs, into a hallway, and down corridors and more stairs. They turned corners and passed various rooms filled with tapestries, heavy wooden furniture, and all the sorts of armor and weapons that one would expect to find in a castle. The scene was every bit as confusing as the lake. Although the castle was ornate and stately looking, it also seemed ancient and stale, as if everything had been placed on hold for a long, long time.

  Cedric brought them to their rooms: yes, rooms plural, a whole suite of them. A fire burned brightly in a fireplace as big as some people’s living room, making the suite much more welcoming than the rest of the castle. In attendance were four beautiful maidens dressed in white with the black and red trimmings that seemed to be the fashion here. They curtsied and bustled in a rush of satin to take Milo and Bori in hand from Cedric, speaking only when he had left.

  “Come this way if you please, my...Lord,” the leader of the maidens said as the others hid their giggles. Milo was embarrassed by the whole thing.

  But not as abashed as he was by what happened next. They insisted on helping him to undress, and then put him into a hot bath. Not that he had anything against a nice, hot bath, but, after all, nobody had actually given him a bath since he was maybe five years old. Especially not young women, hardly older than he was. But they insisted that he do exactly as they ordered. He was very glad to sink down into the water and take cover under the thick layer of bubbles and veils of steam.

  This really is a strange trip I’m on, he thought to himself, feeling the heavy blush on his face.

  Bori, on the other hand, was enjoying himself. While Milo soaked, the young ladies lavished attention on the cat, carrying on
over him and brushing his coat to remove all the burrs, tangles, and mud.

  Milo soaked for a long time, dreading the moment when he’d have to get out of the water, and trying to devise a way to do it without help or onlookers. But, alas, the time came. Two of the maidens stood by, holding towels to assist. As Milo rose half out of the water, he reached up and snatched away a towel to wrap himself in before he rose all the way out of the bubbles. The maidens tittered, but he didn’t care.

  “Listen, this may be what you’re supposed to do,” he said to the maidens, willing down his blush, “and I appreciate the help and all, but I prefer to do this myself.”

  As they tried to squelch their giggles, the leader said, “As you wish. We have fresh clothing here for you, and we can help you to dress or, if you prefer, leave the clothes here for you. You may call when you’re ready. We’ll be just outside the door.”

  “What about my own clothes?” Milo asked.

  “They’ll be laundered and ready for you on the morrow,” she promised.

  He chose to dress himself, and they left.

  “Why are you making such a fuss?” Bori asked. “They’re very gentle, kind ladies.”

  “It’s...You wouldn’t understand. It’s a human thing. Like you not having pockets. I’m not used to having help this way.”

  Bori didn’t look convinced. He sat looking at Milo with his wide, round eyes, tail wrapped primly around his feet, but he didn’t say anything more.

  Milo would have preferred his jeans to the tights they had left him, but the long white linen shirt was okay. The tunic that went over the shirt felt stiff and heavy because of its brocaded stitching. The boots felt a lot warmer than his marsh-soaked sneakers, and more trustworthy for the rough walking he’d been doing. His sneakers were wet enough to make a home for frogs.

  “Okay,” he called. “I’m ready.”

  The four maidens came at once. He was relieved that they didn’t giggle this time. Instead, they complimented him at how handsome he looked. One of them had a comb and worked down his bath-tousled hair.