Dragon Book, The

by Gardner Dozois

  All along the clean, pale beach, in the high line of driftwood, were the ribs and planks of boats, old wrecks, sun-bleached. Some looked burnt. And down on the bottom in the clear blue depths, she saw a boxy stern and part of a thwart poking out of the sand. Nowhere was there a sign of a living man, except those newly come.

  A gull wheeled above them, screeching. She thought, for an instant, that she caught a note of warning in its voice.

  Marco was giving crisp orders. “Perla, you go ashore and make us a camp. We should have brought some other women with us to help you, but we’ll pitch in when we get ashore this afternoon. Ercule, Juneo, shake out the nets.” He put his hands around his mouth, to shout to the other two boats, and Perla grabbed his arm.

  “I’m not going ashore! I didn’t come this far to watch you, Marco.”

  Around them on the boat, the other men laughed and nudged each other. Juneo said, “Marco, I hope you’re handling the lines better than you handle her!”

  A general hooting followed that. Perla lowered her eyes, ashamed, thinking she had made a fool of herself, and of Marco. But her brother took her by the chin and turned her face up.

  He was smiling. He said, “Yes, you should fish with us.” He glanced over his shoulder at the rest of the crew. The other two boats had drawn closer. He said, “I remember when you were the only brave one in the village.”

  That sobered the other men. Ercule and Juneo turned to the barrels that held the fishing nets, and Lucco and the skinny boy, Grep, sat on the two front rowing benches and ran the oars out. Perla lingered there, in the middle, wondering what to do, and Marco put his hand in hers and drew her back beside him at the tiller.

  The other boats rowed in a widespread line across the bay from west to east, the headland behind them looming up above the unbroken stretch of beach. Marco called out for the oarsmen to raise their oars. The warm sun glistened on the bay; looking over the side, Perla watched fish as long as her arm, in schools that seemed endless, weaving slowly through the open water. The men had trailed the net out behind them, and Marco let the boat drift slowly along, down the sun from the fish.

  The yell from Juneo jerked them all upright. The netsman was hauling on his net, and beside him Ercule bellowed also: “Help! Help!”

  With a roar, the two rowers bounded to grip the nets, to try to haul in the catch. Marco gave a whoop. He pushed the tiller into Perla’s hands and leapt back there to join them. She gripped the tiller with both hands and looked back, amazed, as they dumped a huge slithering silver avalanche of fish into the back hold of the boat.

  Marco came hurrying back, his face ready, his smile abeam. “I knew this would work.” He slid onto the bench beside her and grabbed the tiller away. “Row!” He lifted his voice to shout orders. “Row!”

  Perla laid her hand on the gunwale; down the bay, she saw the other two boats also hauling in their catches, and the tiny figures waved their hands over their heads, and she could hear their thin cheering voices. Marco laid the tiller over.

  “Down there! Under the headland, where the water’s sheltered—Row!”

  The boat felt different now, even Perla could sense it, heavier with the load of fish. The men pulled strongly; Lucco squirmed deftly out of his shirt between strokes. The sun blazed on the water, but as they drew nearer, the high stone crag blocked it and cast a shadow out over the deep.

  Marco called, and the men shipped their oars and ran to the nets. The other boats were rowing fast after them. Perla stood up; this time she meant to join them bringing the nets in.

  She felt the boat under her quiver slightly.

  Marco called, “Juneo, cast the net!”

  “I—I—” Juneo was balanced on the stern of the boat, the rolled net gripped in his hands; he turned his white face toward Marco, and then the boat began to slide sideways.

  Marco yelled. Perla grabbed hold of the gunwale with both hands. The boat was spinning along at the edge of a whirling circle of water; at the center, the water sank down, and down, all spinning and widening, so that their boat now lurched and swayed, tipped halfway into the vortex. Perla shouted, “Marco, what should I do?”

  Then up through the center of the eddy came the dragon.

  Its great horned head reared up into the air, its long neck arched, its shoulders thrusting through the whirl of the water. For an instant, the men on Perla’s boat stood frozen where they were, their faces lifted, and then Marco bounded toward the mast and the gaff tied to it.

  “Get back, Perla!”

  She took a step back, but the red, horned head towering over her was turning toward her, toward the boat, and the long jaws parted and a gust of green flame erupted from its throat. The ball of fire hit the boat by the forward thwart, and it exploded into flames. Perla leapt overboard.

  She swam away from the boat, but the whirlpool caught her; in spite of her thrashing arms, she went skidding down the side of the eddy. The beast loomed over her, enormous, its red scales streaming water. She saw its head dart past her again and rear up, a man clutched in its jaws. She screamed; that was Lucco, from her boat, his arms waving. The dragon flipped him up into the air, so that he fell headfirst, and swallowed him on the way down. The huge head swung around again. Away from her. She struggled in the furious current, trying to swim across the tow, get out of the whirlpool, but it was carrying her swiftly downward, always closer to the dragon. A scream reached her ears, and she saw the wedge-shaped red head rise again, another man in its teeth.

  Then the wave of the whirlpool brought her directly against the dragon’s side. Her fingers scraped over the slick red scales, trying to grab hold. Above her, the beast’s spines rose like giant barbs, and she lunged up and caught one and held on.

  The beast was still rising. Clutching the spine, she was borne higher up into the air. All around her, below her, the water tossed, full of men, some screaming and waving their arms and some trying to swim, and the dragon caught another, and another, its head darting here and there at the end of its long neck. She tied her belt to the spine, to stay on. She saw Marco down there, on the lip of the eddy, and tried to yell, but he disappeared in a gust of steam. The dragon breathed out again, and the last of the boats burst into flame.

  She clung to the spine, thick as a tree bough, polished smooth and sleek as gold; she was sick to her stomach, numb with fear, sure that Marco was dead, that they were all dead. The beast whirled and her head struck the spine hard enough to daze her. The sky whirled by her, then, abruptly, the dragon was plunging down.

  She flung her head back, startled alert again, and fought to untie her belt. The wet knot was solid. She fought to pull the belt loose off the spine, while the dragon dove down into the dark green water, but the belt held her, and just as the sea closed over her head, she gasped in a deep lungful of air.

  The sea rushed past her. They were going down into the darkness. She looked up, saw a body floating limp in the shrinking patch of pale water. Then the dragon was swimming sideways, into an underwater cave or a tunnel.

  The light vanished. In the pitch darkness, surging along on the dragon’s back, she could not imagine an end. She had to breathe. Her lungs hurt. The dark water rippled on her skin. Her fists were clenched around the spine, her body flying along above the strong-swimming beast. She had to breathe! She kept still a moment longer, counting. When she got to ten, she counted again. Her lungs ached. She could see nothing. Strange lights burst in her eyes, in the dark, and were gone. Nausea rose in her throat. Then the dragon was swimming upward, toward the pale surface.

  She counted again, on the ragged edge of giving up and breathing in water, and at eight, she burst into the light and the air.

  She gasped, clinging to the spine, looking around her. Her whole body shuddered. They were inside the headland; some underwater passage connected it to the sea. Sheltered inside the sheer rock walls lay a lagoon with a little brown beach. The dragon was swimming toward the beach. She gripped her belt. With a leap of relief, she saw that i
t had frayed almost apart in the wild ride, and, with her fingers, she ripped it off just as the dragon reached the shallow water. She plunged down the red-scaled side and ran up onto the sand.

  The brown cliff there rose impossibly high and steep. But the face was runneled and cleft with caves and seams. She ducked into the nearest of hollows and went back as far as it went, only a few feet of a narrow twisting gorge that pinched together into nothing.

  Far enough, she thought. It can’t reach me here. She crept cautiously up nearer the beach, to see out.

  The dragon had lain down right in front of her, only about ten feet of sand between her cave and its head. So it knew she was there. But it stretched out, relaxed, well fed, half-asleep. She leaned against the rock wall behind her and looked it over.

  The red, horned head lay half-turned toward her, the eyes closed, rimmed in gold, the wide curled nostrils also gold-trimmed, oddly delicate. The long red neck led back into ridged shoulders with scales as big as a house. At ease, the beast sprawled between its forepaws, their curved claws outstretched. The massive bulk of its body curled away, its tail half in the water still, a net wrapped around one spine.

  She watched it until the daylight was gone. Once, in its sleep, its jaws parted and gave a soft greenish burp, and a little round stone rolled out. As the beast still slept, its long red tongue licked over its lips, and it settled deeper on the sand.

  The sun went down. In the night, she thought, she could escape, and she edged closer to the beach. Just as she reached the mouth of the crevice, the dragon’s near eye opened, shining in the dark, fixed on her. Perla scuttled back into the deep of the crevices, all her hair on end. She thought she heard a low growl behind her.

  She wept; she wept for Marco and Lucco and the other men, and for herself, because she knew she was lost. At last, she slept a little. When she woke, it was morning, and she was so hungry and thirsty she went back to the mouth of the crevice.

  The dragon was still there. It stood looking away from her, the sun blazing on its magnificence, the red scales, darker at the edges, and the shining spines along its backbone. Then the narrow-jawed head swung toward her, high above her on the long, arched neck. On the broad space between its eyes was a disk of gold. Its eyes were big as washtubs, brilliant red, flecked and edged with gold.

  It said, in a voice so deep and huge that she imagined she heard it through the bones of her head, not her ears, “Why don’t you come out so I can eat you?”

  “Please don’t eat me,” she said.

  “Why shouldn’t I? You’ll just die in there anyway.” It gave a cold chuckle. “And by then you’d be too thin to bother digging for. Tell me what you’ll give me if I don’t eat you. Will someone ransom you?”

  She stood at the mouth of the crevice, her hands clammy and her throat thick with fear. No one from her village had anything to ransom her with, if the village even still survived, with all its men gone. She thought desperately of what she herself could do: weave, sew, cook, haul water.

  “Can you dance? Sing?”

  “I—”

  The dragon said, “Tell me a story.”

  A cold tingle went down her spine. “A story,” she said.

  “If it’s good enough, I won’t eat you.” The dragon settled himself down, his forepaws curled under him like a cat’s, waiting.

  She gulped. The village’s stories were old and worn, which was why the villagers told them, and retold them, like the imperishable favorite about how old Pandan had his eye put out while looking through a knothole in the bathhouse at the women bathing. She knew at once such stories would not satisfy the dragon, much less save her life.

  He was waiting, patient, his jeweled eyes on her. She realized that since he had begun speaking to her, she had thought of him as “he.”

  That gave her a wisp of an idea. She sat down in the mouth of the cave, her heart thundering, and began, “Once there was a King. An evil King.” Like the Duke. Her mind sorted through the possibilities. “He stole everything from his people, and he killed many. But he did have one thing he loved, his beautiful daughter.”

  She spent some time describing the beautiful daughter, so that she could plan the next part. The dragon was utterly silent, his eyes steadily watching her, his long lips slightly smiling.

  “He was so jealous of her that he put her in a tower by the sea.” The story was growing stronger in her mind, and she let her voice stride out confidently, telling of the tower, and the wild storms, the sunlight, and the birds that came to sing to her in her window. “There she lived lonely, singing to the birds, and grew even more beautiful, but no man saw her except her father.

  “But one day a Prince came by.” She made the prince like Marco, solid and honest and brave. Dead now, probably, dead in this dragon’s belly. Her voice trembled, but she fought herself back under control. She gave the Prince a red charger and red hair, which she saw amused the dragon. “The Prince heard her singing and climbed up the tower wall to her window. They fell in love at once, because she was beautiful and good, and he was handsome and brave and good. But before he could carry her off, the King burst in on them.”

  The dragon twitched, and she leaned toward him a little, intent, knowing now she had him. “The King had his sword, and although the Prince tried to fight back, he had no weapon. So the King got him down quickly.”

  The dragon growled. She kept her voice steady, speaking over the rumble. “But he did not kill him. Instead, he told the Prince that, since he was such a lizard that he could scale a castle wall, he would become the greatest lizard. And he turned him into a dragon and cast him into the sea.”

  The dragon lifted its head and roared, not at her, but to the sky, then quickly sank down again, his eyes blazing.

  “But the Princess. What happened to her?”

  Perla was ready to run for the end of the crevice if this did not suit. She fixed the dragon eye to eye. “Her heart was broken. She fled from her father—”

  “Good.”

  “And now she wanders through the world looking for her Prince. Only her love can change him back from the dragon. But every day she grows older, and every day, the dragon grows more like a dragon, and less like the Prince.”

  She was poised to run. But the dragon’s eyes were shining. His long lips drew back from his dagger-teeth, and he nodded once. Turning, he plunged into the lagoon.

  She went cautiously out onto the open sand. On the beach, water spilled down the cliff in a long fall, and she went there and quenched her thirst, all the while looking for some other way out of the lagoon. The cliff ran all around it like a wall.

  In the lagoon, too soon, the whirling appeared, and the eddy deepened, and the dragon’s head rose through it and he swam to the beach and dragged himself out onto the sand. In his jaws, he held a long, flopping sea bass, which he flung down on the sand.

  “Wait.” The voice was like speaking bronze. He reared his head back and shot forth a bolt of flame, which blasted around the fish for several seconds.

  She went warily up to it, knelt, and touched the carcass. It was nicely cooked. She peeled back the skin and ate the hot, flaky white meat. It was delicious, but it tasted a little sharp.

  The dragon was crouched there, head and shoulders settled above its sprawled forepaws, his long neck curved, watching her. When she was done, and sitting there licking her fingers, he lay down around her, his head stretched along his paws, half embrace, half prison. The great red eye blinked once in a flash of gold. “Tell me another story.”

  AFTER that, the dragon let her roam as she pleased around the lagoon, as long as she told him stories whenever he asked. She made up stories about dragons, about princesses, about evil Kings, good and handsome Princes, about the brothers of Princesses, crisscrossing them, sometimes using the same people in one story after another. She tried to make every one different, but to her they seemed to all be the same, about wanting to go home, to be with whom she loved, and where she belonged.

  Sh
e was sitting in the sun one afternoon, longing for home, and tears began to roll down her cheeks. The dragon said, “What’s the matter?”

  “You ate my brother,” she said bitterly. “You ate all my people. I hate you.”

  He gave one of his throaty chuckles, unperturbed. “You eat the fish. You don’t care about their brothers.”

  She cast off the thought of fish, which she had always eaten. “Do you have no family? No tribe? Where did you come from?”

  He looked surprised. His huge eyes blazed red as the heart of a fire. “I was always here.” But his stare shifted, and as much of a look of perplexity as she had ever seen came over his long, snakelike face. “There were more of us, once. But not many more.” He turned, and flopped away into the lagoon and disappeared.

  During the day, he often slept in the sun, or went down into the lagoon and was gone for a long while. She guessed that he went out the tunnel to the open sea. She wandered the beach, drinking from the waterfall that tumbled down from the top of the cliff and spread its shining skirts across the sand, eating berries growing down the stone wall, and seaweed, crabs, and clams, or anything else she could find. She worked out stories as she walked, saving bits and pieces when she could not make them whole, and remembering it all in a big overstory she would never tell him, about a girl taken captive by a dragon, who was rescued in the end by a Prince.

  When he came back, he always had a fish for her and cooked it with the fire of his breath; no matter what the fish, bass, bonito, or shark, the meat always had a faintly sharp, spicy taste. If he had fed well, he burped up lots of stones, some as big as her fist, most toe-sized, clear lumps of colored crystal, red and blue and green. If he had eaten nothing or little, he complained and glowered at her and licked his lips at her, and talked of eating her instead, his red eyes wicked and his tongue flickering.