Milo and the Dragon Cross

by Robert Jesten Upton

  Instead of entering any of these wings, however, Einter steered him through a side door, down a narrow stairway, and into a much tighter, musty-smelling environment. This region was also stuffed full of books, but more like a delapidated used bookstore than the Library of Congress. They turned one way, then another, down narrow, low-ceilinged passages, until Milo had no idea where he was.

  “Samuel’s study is down here someplace,” Einter explained, and mumbled under his breath, “I’ll be getting’ to it directly.” After one more turn, he stopped outside an open door. Inside was a study crammed with books, piles of them, with only narrow little trails between the stacks. The room was dim, lit by a single lamp behind mounds of books atop what supposedly was a desk or worktable.

  “Samuel? Yer in there?” Einter called into the room.

  “Uhm...?” came a reply, but with such effort that it sounded like whoever had made it might be in the process of being crushed by a topple of heavy, leather-bound books.

  Bori went in first, carefully, looking for possible mice as he penetrated the room. Einter went next, easing his way along to avoid tipping over any of the piles. Milo followed, recalling the banshee librarian in The Kingdom of Odalese.

  What they found was different. Samuel, as Einter soon confirmed, was unlike anyone Milo had ever met. The first thing he noticed was Samuel’s huge eyes which appeared to be glaring, oversized disks until Milo saw that he was wearing thick glasses. But the horns really were his: two of them, thick and mounted where they should be, on his forehead. His features were also wrong, out of kilter as if they had been assembled out of wood scraps, knot holes, twisted roots, and oak galls. His thin, lank hair reminded Milo of Spanish moss more than ordinary hair or even hair that has been neither washed or combed in a long time. Then, there was the smell. Barnyard with an extra punch of something reminiscent of mushrooms.

  “Samuel! Yuh ol’ bas...uh, feller!” Einter enthused. “How yer be?”

  The figure at the table stood, his face cracking open into a gap-toothed grin, and Einter threw his arm around his old friend to pound him on the back.

  Samuel was no taller than Milo. Shorter, actually, but substantial, like a tree stump. He was dressed in a coat and trousers that reminded Milo of bark.

  The friends tossed familiarities back and forth in a very uncouth fashion for a couple of minutes until Einter turned to introduce Milo and Bori. Samuel’s hand was as hard and as rough as a piece of wood, although it moved perfectly well to accommodate Milo’s. Bori hopped up onto the table to stand on the open book that Samuel had been studying, waving his tail in an offering of friendship. Samuel complied, stroking Bori’s head and chucking him around the ears.

  “There’s a fine cat,” Samuel exclaimed. “Might have an opening for a good mouser if he wants to stay on.”

  “Sorry,” Milo said. “I can’t do without him. He’s my Guide.”

  After some round-about conversation in which Einter explained who Milo was, and how Savoy had sent him, he got around to what it was Milo needed from Samuel. Milo took out the piece of slate with the symbols scratched on it. “Is this writing?” Milo asked.

  Samuel took it and turned it this way and that. “Hmm...” he said. “Where’d you get this?”

  Milo didn’t really want to tell, so he tried a route more circular than direct. “I...came across it. Do you know about the Magical Scavenger Hunt? You do? Well, you see, I’m a contestant, and I’m looking for my next clue, and”—

  Samuel broke in. “You’re a wizard?” he asked in obvious disbelief.

  “No, but I am a contestant. So when I came across this, I thought it might tell me about finding my next clue, but I have no idea what it says.”

  “That’s not odd. This script—if it is a script—hasn’t been used or read by anyone since...” Samuel broke off. “Is this a copy? Because it can’t be original.”

  Milo didn’t want to tell that, either, and he sure couldn’t show Samuel, or anyone else, the source of the writing, but he was having a hard time coming up with a plausible tale on the spur of the moment. “I’d rather not say, if you’ll pardon me. There are circumstances...it may be dangerous for you or anybody else to know where I got it. I know it’s dangerous to me. That’s part of the reason I really need to know what it means. The fewer people who know about it, the better. Savoy said I could trust you, and that you should help me as a favor to him. He said to tell you that. He said—”

  “I see,” Samuel said, breaking him off. “As much as I’d like to know where you got this, I won’t insist. I will tell you why I’d like to know, though. I think this is a very ancient script. So ancient, in fact, that it’s the grandfather of the oldest known writing. The language it represents is the ancestor of the oldest language that any scholar today can decipher. Luckily, I am that scholar. I can’t read it, but if you’ll give me some time, I may be able to tease out the meaning. It’s written, you see, in symbolic ideograms. That means that this script isn’t made up of letters that correspond to the sounds of a language, so they aren’t alphabetical. The figures represent abstract pictures suggesting ideas and concepts instead of linguistic words, so in theory, it could be read without knowing the language it was created in. The hard part is to identify the meanings that the author used these symbols to refer to, since even if I can recognize the patterns of the ideograms, I may not be able to interpret the correct concepts the author intended. The huge void between his time and our own makes his cultural understanding alien to the way we think about things. I’m an antiquarian, but this makes even the earliest culture I know seem almost recent.”

  That sounded bad. Milo didn’t have much choice, though, but to let Samuel have a go at it and hope for something meaningful to come out. When they were back in the street, Milo just had to ask this question: “What sort of...person is Samuel, anyway?”

  “Oh, he’s like me brother, but of course he idn’t, ‘cause he’s an Ogma. My Pap found him under a cabbage leaf when he was but a wee little thing. Pap knowed right off he was an Ogma, an’ left him there a spell, hopin’ his mum would come back for him, but when she didn’t, he had no choice but to bring him back to the house. So Samuel grew up like me brother, only Samuel always had an intellectual bent where’s I was dull when it came to sittin’ still through lessons an’ all. Samuel got into the university an’ I got an apprenticeship with a tinker. I don’ know how he can sit down there in the bowels of the earth, surrounded by all them dusty, smelly books all the time, but then he’s an Ogma.”

  “Why? What is an Ogma?”

  “They’s woodfolk. Very shy. Keeps t’ theyselves, mostly. Us humans rarely, if ever, even sees ‘em, even when they’s our neighbors.”

  “How do they live?”

  “Like I said, they’s woodfolk. They takes care of the natural countryside an’ live so close with it, they’s like a part of it. They’s so much a part, that yeh kin look straight at ‘em an’ never see ‘em. Samuel, of course, since he growed up like part of our family is more like us. But he’s still Ogma and looks like ‘em. He went off for a spell with ‘em once, but then he came back. Guess he preferred the academic life over the sun, the rain, an’ huddlin’ under some big ol’ oak instead of in a house.”

  Milo changed the subject. “Do you think he can translate the writing I gave him?”

  Einter shrugged. “If anybody can, he can. He speaks—oh, I don’t know—dozens of languages, I guess, an’ half of ‘em nobody speaks at all no more.”

  So Milo waited. While he waited, he spent time with the only people he knew: Einter and Dame Renee. Gradually, he realized that Dame Renee had picked out one hint after the other during their conversations, and soon had a fair idea of what Milo was doing.

  They were drinking tea and nibbling cakes as they talked one afternoon. “So you started out as a contestant in the Magical Scavenger Hunt, but there seems to be more to it than that. Some sort of danger.”

  Milo was perturbed that she had come so close
to his private business.

  She continued. “And the thing you have Samuel working on has to do with the danger as well as the Hunt.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Milo told her. But he liked her. She had been very good to him and to Bori and he didn’t want to seem ungrateful. So he added, “It’s...well, the less you know, the safer for you.”

  Einter put in. He told Renee, “That’s what he said when Samuel asked into it. From the message from Savoy askin’ to help the boy out, I got the idea that Savoy thought so, too.”

  “Oh, the cards told me the same,” Dame Renee said, flipping one into view. It had a picture of a stealthy man dressed in black slipping around the corner of a house in a street at night. “Thief in the Night,” she said, naming the card. “The card of secrecy, doubt, and the unknown.” She put the card down on the table. “But then there’s this—” snapping down a second card.

  Milo couldn’t see where she had her deck, although he knew she always had it with her. The card she’d shown had a picture of a king with armor, a drawn sword set point down before him, a shield behind him and banners whipping in the breeze to the right and left.

  “Noble Purpose,” she said. “The card of service and honorable intentions. It indicates a high level of idealism, but it can lead to disaster if not balanced with practicality.”

  She nudged it into a position alongside the first card and produced a third one to lay across the first two. One by one, she put down twelve cards on the table, telling the face meaning of each one as she did so. “And now, the thirteenth.”

  It was one Milo had seen before, the first one she’d ever shown him, ‘The Wanderer.’

  “That’s the card that identifies you, at least within this spread,” she explained. Milo couldn’t tell if the cards had come up randomly, or if she had sorted them to come out that way. “These other cards,” she said, pointing out the ones that already lay in the pattern she had created, “describe the actions and relationships between the major cards, like your Wanderer, or The Thief. They operate the way verbs connect nouns in a sentence to produce a statement.”

  She pointed out the card with three cups in its picture, explaining that cups have the energy of water. Stars showed fire, stones were earth energy, and spirals gave air.

  “Now I can tell you about your quest,” she said. “Maybe not the details, but I can outline the path you’ll encounter. You must follow a way that takes you into a place of shadows, and the shadows will tell you the way to a place suspended between the underworld and the heavens. The heavens will teach you what you must know to enter the underworld, and still return. You do want to return, don’t you?”

  A cold shudder accompanied that idea. Milo indicated that he did.

  “Stay true to your teachers and you shall.” She tapped him on the chest. “Your heart. That’s the card of Noble Purpose. Don’t forget it.”

  “Thank you,” Milo told her, unsure still about what practical advice he’d just received. “I’m really not sure I understand it all.”

  “Of course you don’t! If you did, it wouldn’t be a quest! Stay with this”—she tapped the card with the king—”and you’ll find your way. The Way will show you your purpose. After Samuel translates your inscription, you must seek the place of shadows. It won’t be long.”

  Indeed it wasn’t. That very evening, Samuel came to Dame Renee’s.

  “I believe I have it,” he announced with a smug look on his gnarled face. “It’s an ingenuous cryptograph, but when translated into modern parlance, it could go something like this:

  The dragon’s cross must hold the door

  Of that which can’t be opened;

  The stone womb is the sacred tor

  That heals the bond that’s broken.

  A crossroad is an open door

  That’s closed until you take it;

  An opened tomb lies just before

  The choice before you make it.

  It’s an incantation, I think.”

  “What does it mean?” Milo asked, perplexed.

  “I have no idea,” Samuel said. “Maybe I didn’t get it right. It could be:

  A crossroad is an open door

  That’s closed until you take it;

  An opened tomb lies just before

  ...and then something about repairing. It’s not all that clear. Very intriguing. Are you sure you can’t tell me where you came across it? That might help make its meaning more precise.”

  Milo assured him that he couldn’t offer more information, and thanked him for what he had done. After that, Dame Renee invited Samuel to stay for dinner, and they talked about things that old friends talk about until late at night. The food was delicious, though Samuel’s odd scent put Milo somewhat off his appetite, and the yarns the three adults entertained themselves with were engaging, making Milo rather envious of the many adventures their lives had had.

  That night, Milo discussed the situation with Bori. Bori said, “I think it’s time we moved on. You have what you came here for.”

  “But where? I don’t know which way to go.”

  “You never have. Why does that bother you now?” Bori pointed out.

  “Do you know where this shadow place is that Dame Renee read from the cards?”

  “No, but it’s your quest. I’m just along to help out. Do what everybody’s telling you to do. Follow your heart.”

  12

  Into the Dark

  So...where’re yuh headin’?” Einter asked when Milo announced that he would be going soon—the same day, in fact. He made his announcement when he came down for breakfast, dressed in his pilgrimage gear. Dame Renee pressed a small purse of coins into his hand after assuring him that she’d known he would be leaving this morning. It had been in the cards.

  Milo answered Einter’s question honestly. “I don’t know. Down the road, I guess, wherever that takes me.”

  “Well, if yuh don’t have more of an idea than that, why not go along with me for a spell? I hitched up ol’ Senster an’ Dexter an’ mean to be hittin’ the road myself. I’m sure the brothers wouldn’t mind addin’ yer weight to the load an’ havin’ yer company. Me neither.”

  With Bori stretched out on top of the box and Einter with the whip slack in his hands, Milo found himself once more up on the bench, watching Inverdissen fade away into open farm land, and then into wilder country beyond that.

  “Where are you headed?” he’d asked Einter as Einter urged the oxen into motion that morning to pull out of Renee’s courtyard.

  “I take up the circuit down the coast ever year ‘bout this time. Couple of days travelin’ up an’ down the rocks along the water, then I skirts Korrigan Forest an’ head on inland into the wheat lands. Flat, wide open country with plenty of farmers watchin’ for me to come along. Easy goin’ on the boys”—he flicked out his whip over the rumps of his oxen without touching their hides to indicate who he meant—“onct we leave the coast. A couple of days of real work won’t hurt ‘em after their vacation at Renee’s.”

  It was true. The road worked the rocky coastline up steep hillsides and across the rocky spines of the ridges. Arched stone bridges crossed smaller gullies and noisy, bouncing creeks, or rollercoastered longer spans of linked arches crossing swift-flowing rivers that gushed into the sea. Gulls swirled and yelled as if Einter’s cart reminded them of the crabbers’ boats that were visible out on the water, bobbing on the long rollers that relentlessly smashed against the rocky coast in high sprays of foam. The clean salt air tousled Milo’s hair and stiffened it with the aerosol of salt from the thundering surf.

  For the several days this passage took they made a few stops at remote fish camps before leaving the coast and climbing away from the fading sound of the surf. The cries of gulls were replaced by the lonely, hollow croaking calls of ravens and the chirruping of crickets. Low ridges stood along the horizon in shades of blue baffles, turning to dark green as they drew nearer. “Korrigan Forest,” Einter announced. “So d
eep an’ thick that nobody much dares to go in. They says it reaches back to the beginnin’ of time, from before the Age of Man. A road from the earliest days goes into it. Right up ahead, in fact; see that notch between the hills up there?”

  “Why don’t people go there?” Milo asked.

  “Because the place ‘s haunted.”

  “How do you mean, ‘haunted’?” Milo asked.

  “Shades. Shades of the Old Folk. The folk what live here say that the Ogma use it, but common decent folk stay away. They won’t go in there at all, ‘cept in broad daylight.”

  “Shades?” Milo asked. “Like...ghosts?”

  Einter shrugged. “Don’t know exactly. Ghosts be like the spirits of dead folk, an’ I always got the feelin’ that Shades was somethin’ different. Anyways, they be hostile to human folk. It’s said they play tricks on ‘em to get ‘em lost, an’ makes ‘em go mad, they does. But not to worry; we go around it, here on the road. The wheat lands start up beyond them distant ridges there, and that’s where we’re headin’.”

  Shades. Shadows. Milo wasn’t so sure about going into the wheat lands, but he didn’t think much of the alternative, either.

  They camped at the place where the ancient road broke off from the one Einter was following and plunged into Korrigan Forest. Long ago it had been paved with cobblestones, but now they were uneven and weathered, matted with untrampled grass. Still, the old road showed a clear passage into and under the trees that made an arched tunnel, their tall and ancient limbs sheltering the passage into the gloomy forest. Bori, prowling for voles, called Milo’s attention to something at the side of the road, hidden in a tangle of brambles.