The child catcher sighed then, as if profoundly disappointed in her. "I come from the North. We hunt monkeys there with a widemouthed bottle and a stick. Do you know how that's done?"
"No," she squeaked.
"It's very amusing. We drop a single sweet cherry into the jar and then withdraw a distance. The monkey comes along. He sees the succulent in the jar, reaches within, and grasps it in his fist. But the jar is so shaped and sized that he cannot withdraw his hand when it is clenched. He could easily escape the jar by letting go of the cherry, but he wants that little treat too dearly. He cannot bring himself to let go. Even when the hunter approaches whistling and twirling the stick, he cannot bring himself to surrender his prize.
"So up comes the hunter and bashes his brains out with the stick."
The child catcher drew an ostrich-hide memorandum book from an inside jacket pocket. He handed her a piece of chalk. "Now, Jane, I want you to write in your very best hand the words I tell you. Write them in five even columns as straight and neat as you can." He waited until she was in place. "Recurvor," he said. "Recusable. Recusacao. Recusadora."
Jane was so frightened that she was halfway down the board before she recognized the words she was printing as the operational lock-codes for Moloch-class dragons.
Trying hard not to show she knew what they were, Jane printed out the words as he gave them. Maybe, she thought, they wouldn't work. The landfill was a good quarter-mile from the school after all.
When she reached the bottom, she looked at what she had made:
Recurvor
Recusable
Recusacao
Recusadora
Recusamor
Recusancy
Recusative
Recusaturi
Recusavel
Recuser
Recuserati
Recussion
Recussus
Recutio
Recutionis
Recutitos
Recutitum
Redaccao
Redaccendo
Redactadas
Redactamos
Redactaron
Redadim
Redadinar
Redambules
Redamnavit
Redendum
Redibitar
Redictor
Redivamat
Redocculla
Redoctar
Redoctamos
Redombulas
Redorradio
"That's a good start," the child catcher said over her shoulder. His breath was sweet and tickled her ear. "Now take up the eraser."
His hand closed about hers and gently guided the eraser over the blackboard, like the planchette of a Ouija board. It glided above the surface, not touching, then abruptly dipped down to erase a word. Up and down the board their merged hands moved, seemingly at random, wiping out the lock-codes one at a time.
Finally the child catcher released her hand. "There," he said in a pleased voice.
Recurvor
Recussus
Recusadora
Recusamor
Redaccendo
Redactamos
Redadim
Redambules
Redamnavit
The temperature in the room dropped. A tremendous sense of presence darkened the air, like an iron cloud passing before the sun. Voiceless words said, What do you want?
It was Melanchthon.
Jane tried to turn around, but could not. Her neck muscles seized up tight and unswiveling as if she were held in steel claws. Nor would her legs respond. She stared at the blackboard while the child catcher said, "Your name."
What does it matter what my name is, little doggie? The dragon sounded gentle, almost sad. You can call me Death, if you wish. I killed your kind by the thousands in Avalon.
The floor creaked as the child catcher walked to Grunt's desk, slid open the drawer and removed something. A second later, he held that something sharp and slim against her throat. It was Grunt's silver letter opener. "Did you want to discuss death?"
Paralyzed, Jane felt like an egg held in the grasp of two hands and contested for by each. Melanchthon's presence was overwhelming, like the gravitational tug of a mountain that had suddenly materialized in the schoolyard.
Yes, let's. Tell me: Living I am worthless, until death gives me value. Dead, that value is gone. What am I?
"A hostage." The child catcher removed the letter opener from Jane's throat. She felt a dreadful itch where its point had pricked her. "You like riddles, do you? Try this one: Johnny-a-locket hides in my pocket. Yet when he shouts, whole armies turn out."
I do not think your beeper will work. My turn: See, see! What shall I see? A bow-wow's head where his feet should be.
The forces holding Jane captive weakened, and she turned to see the child catcher grimly confronting an empty room. For all that the dragon's aura was everywhere, a cold reptilian understench of malice, he was not physically present. He was waging this fight entirely by electronic countermeasure technology.
As quietly as she could, Jane edged sideways, toward the child catcher's blind spot, behind his head, between the blackboard and the desk.
A swirling formed about the child catcher, like swarms of gnats flying too fast for the eye to get a fix on them. A warping magnetic field, it spun about his head, but could not close upon it. "Idle threats!" he scoffed. "Did you think I would be sent up against a dragon without protection? You cannot decapitate me as easily as that."
Carefully he unfolded a pair of reading glasses and hooked them over his ears. He opened his memorandum book again, skipped over the page of locking codes and began to read. "The stuff of substance, the substance of thought…"
No!
"The matter of life, yet matter I'm not. A grain of me feeds you, live you never so long. A gram will destroy you, be you ever so strong!"
A howl filled the air, screaming up into the supersonic. Jane fell to her knees, clutching at her ears in pain. The sound was a steel needle through her skull. Her hands could not mute it. The dragon's presence faded, dwindled…
And was gone.
"There," said the child catcher. Shakily, Jane stood. She was directly behind him now, out of sight. She reached for the heavy stapler atop Grunt's desk. "Don't try it," the child catcher said casually. He folded his glasses up and carefully replaced them in his pocket. "Now, child, it's time you were put back where you belonged." He reached for her hand, unwillingly frozen just above the stapler.
Cold gusts of laughter filled the room. They grew and swelled until Jane felt like a cork bobbing on top of an ocean of scorn. Stupid little puppy! One of the first things I did on arriving here was to ground my electrical systems. Your electromagnetic pulse weapon is useless.
For the first time the child catcher looked startled. One hand jerked free of his trousers pocket, grabbing hastily for something in his jacket. "How…?"
But the dragon had already begun his next riddle:
Silent, unseen, small cousin of death,
Born this instant, closer than breath,
The killer of thought, assassin of dreams,
Memory's surgeon, the end of your schemes.
"You're bluffing!" the child catcher cried. "I've studied your systems from top to bottom. There is no such weapon." The dragon's laughter gushed up afresh. "You have no such weapon. You have no such capability. If your riddle has an answer, then what is it?"
For a long, still instant, the dragon did not answer, savoring his triumph. Then the words came, so quietly they seemed to float in the air:
An aneurism.
Abruptly, Jane found herself back in her seat. She could breathe again. There was a normal stir and bustle in her ears; her classmates were back in their places. To the front of the room the child catcher looked puzzled. His gaze moved blindly back and forth over the back row, but did not connect with hers. He could no longer see her. The scrap of blanket fell unnoticed from his nerveless hand.
The dragon had won.
When school let out, Jane was among the first out the door. She pushed outside and was free. The sky was wild and blue. A light breeze reached out and touched her gently, welcomingly.
The cherry trees were shedding their blossoms. A warm, gentle snow of petals swirled about her.
The other children were running and shouting, or slogging stolidly through the petal-storm, each according to their nature. The flower girls were in their element, moving graceful as ships under sail, while lesser sprites ran jeering circles about them and were ignored. Jane walked wonderingly through the cries and flurries of white, stunned by the perfect beauty of existence.
She was overwhelmed by a mingled sense of liberation, joy, and possibility. She was free and anything could happen. All she had been through, the years of forced labor in the steam dragon works, the petty persecutions of her teachers and classmates, the boredom and loneliness, the fact that she was still indebted to a dragon whose interests, today notwithstanding, were not hers—life was worth it.
This one moment paid for all.
— 8 —
OVER THE SUMMER THE SMALL CIVILIZATION OUT BACK OF the dragon grew and flourished. A behemoth laden down with coal got lost after taking an unscheduled detour, unwisely tried to make up time by cutting across the landfill, and ended up overturning. Only half its load was recovered. The other half enabled the meryons to industrialize. They had factories now, and the gaslights lining their streets like constellations of fireflies brought down to earth had been replaced by electrical lighting. At night their streets and boulevards were bright lines in a pattern as complex with hidden logic as an occult circuit diagram. By day a permanent gray haze clung to their territories. Their warriors carried rifles.
Summer classes were sparsely attended; students with full-time day jobs were excused for the season. Those who stayed knew that nothing they might learn mattered, since it would all be taught over again in the fall when their classmates returned. The days were drowsy and slow.
Jane welcomed the opportunity to catch up once and for all. She would have liked to get some more hands-on experience in the alchemy lab, but when she applied for extra time, the school secretary turned her down flat. So she worked on her math skills instead.
One afternoon Ratsnickle stopped her by the front door as she was leaving for the day. A granite wheel, higher than the tallest student, was set against the wall there to remind them of their duties, of the need to obey, of futility, and of their future. Leaning against it, he said, "I hear you're stealing things for Gwen these days."
"Yeah, so?" Jane had grown cautious of Ratsnickle. He'd been acting strange of late, wild and kind of crazy-aggressive.
"So what's the story? You going lezzie on us, or what?"
She hit him then, right in the chest, as hard as she could. "You bastard!" she cried. "You evil-minded, foul-mouthed, repulsive… creature!"
Ratsnickle only laughed. "Touched a nerve, eh, Maggie?"
"Oh, shut up!"
"Listen, if you two ever decide you want to include a male in your little trysts—"
Blindly Jane stormed away and walked full tilt into Peter, who was coming up the steps.
"Whoa, careful there!" He steadied her, holding her at arm's length by the shoulders. "Hey, you look upset. What's wrong?"
"It's just—" She looked over her shoulder. Ratsnickle, typically enough, had disappeared. "I just—" She gathered herself together. "Where are you off to?"
"Shop. There's a destrier there I work on for extra credit sometimes."
Jane had homework to do, things to steal, a thousand housekeeping chores waiting for her. The school operated off of a central air-conditioning system, which meant that outlying areas like the shop never got much ventilation. This time of day, it must be like an oven in there. "Can I join you?"
"I guess."
Wordlessly they traced a crooked path through the empty halls. Peter didn't want to talk about Gwen when she wasn't around. Jane could respect that. So usually they talked about machines instead. "Who are you working on?" she asked at last.
"Ragwort. You know him?"
Jane shook her head. "What's he like?"
"Foul-mouthed, loud, kinda stupid." Peter shrugged. "Nice guy, though."
* * *
The school shop was organized more eclectically than those Jane had grown up among. The absolute numbers of tools might be no more than those of a working shop, but the school had a far greater variety. Lathes, planes, and bench saws coexisted with soldering irons, electric grinders, sheet-metal equipment, even a welding bay. Everything had been fitted together with patchwork economy. Yellow lines on a scrupulously clean concrete floor separated the work areas from each other.
There were two work bays. One was empty. In the other, suspended from ratcheted hooks-and-chains was a pitted tin steed. Camouflaged chest panels had been removed to expose its innards. Two black spark plug cables dangled limply down the side. "Yo, old paint!" Peter said. "How's it hanging?"
Ragwort ponderously swung up his head and favored him with an enormous toothy smile. "Hung like a horse," he said happily. Peter had a wonderful way with machines. They responded to him with trust and sometimes even love. Ragwort had clearly been won over long ago.
"Glad to hear it." Peter stuck his head into the open barrel. "Jane, could you hand me a flashlight? And that ampmeter there on the workbench." She gave them to him, and he poked about, muttering. "Anybody locate that short in your electrical system yet?"
"Fuck no. You know what jerk-offs these shithead shop majors are."
"Hey, there's a lady in the room!"
"Aw, she ain't no prude." Ragwort tried to move his head to the side but, held in traction as he was, could not. One eye swiveled toward her on its gimbals. The other stared ahead sightlessly. "Are you, girlie?"
Jane had leaned back against the workbench and was fanning herself with her hat. Startled, she said, "No, fine! Really, it's okay."
"Yeah, well, I don't like it," Peter said. "Horns of Cernunos! Lookit what they did to your carburetor. Old paint, it's a flat-out miracle that you're still alive, you know that?"
"It's my engine block," Ragwort agreed melancholily. "The fucker's fucked. What the fuck—fuck it, that's what I say. Just fuck it."
Jane giggled.
"What did I say about that kind of language?" Peter emerged from the interior shaking his head. "Well, I give up. I've spent three days going over your wiring and I can't find that short anywhere. The only thing I can think to do is rip it all out and start over again."
"It won't hurt him, will it?" Jane asked anxiously.
"See, I told you girlie here was okay," Ragwort said. "Not like that prissy-ass little bitch you—"
Peter slammed a wrench against Ragwort's hood. "You talk like that and it will hurt. I'll make sure of it."
"I'll be good, boss." Ragwort winked at Jane. "Don't get a burr up your ass."
Peter got out a reel of wire, an adjustable wrench, and a pair of wire cutters. He winched Ragwort two handspans higher into the air. Several of the bolts holding on the belly panels had rusted. He gave them each a shot of graphite and hammered on their sides to loosen them up. Jane helped hold the panels while he worked out the last bolts; otherwise they would have warped.
"Who designed this mess?" Peter grumbled. "This wire loops right behind your exhaust system. I'm going to have to yank the muffler just to get at it." He was silent for a time, then said, "Ragwort, your exhaust system is in horrible shape."
"When I fart, birds fall from the sky."
"Terrific." Peter concentrated on his work for a while. When he spoke next, it was to Jane: "Hey, tell me something. How come all of a sudden everybody's calling you Maggie?"
"Ratsn—the guys gave me that nickname. It's short for Magpie."
A corroded length of pipe clattered to the floor. "I thought you were a wood-may."
"It's just a nickname. Because—you know—magpies are such good thieves."<
br />
"Oh yeah." Peter didn't approve of her stealing things. He thought that sooner or later she was sure to be caught. But having said so once, he wouldn't mention it again. Peter was good that way. "Well, I'll just stick with Jane, if that's okay with you."
Five minutes later, the muffler came down. Peter whistled, and motioned to Jane. "Come take a look." He poked at a bit of black wire. "See how gummy the insulation feels here?"
"Yeah?"
"We've got our culprit. Some idiot was replacing this section of wire and didn't want to bother welding another hanger to the underbody, see? So he just threaded the wire between the exhaust pipe and the bottom of the cabin and chocked it in with this." He tossed a scrap of wood in his hand. "So next time the engine's running hot, the pipe melts the insulation and the whole system shorts out. That's the straightforward part. But then, when the engine cools down again the insulation flows back over the wire and resolidifies, so the short doesn't exist anymore. That's why I couldn't locate it with the ampmeter. Pretty sneaky, huh?"
"Wow." Jane was seriously impressed. For all the time she'd spent around and inside machines, this was the first time it had ever occurred to her that working on them might be fun. That rebuilding a motor could be as intellectually engaging as the challenge of setting up and running an experiment in alchemy. "Peter, this is really something. It's flat-out wonderful."
"It only took him three days to locate too," Ragwort said. "What a fucking genius."
"Niceums horsey," Peter said. "How'd you like a sugar cube in your gas tank?"
"Aw, go piss up a rope."
* * *
It was a scorcher outside, but the mall was kept so cool that Jane was sorry she hadn't brought a sweater. The place was jammed with fugitives from the heat. They were recreational rather than serious shoppers, most of them. Their hands were empty and their eyes were clear.
Hebog, Salome, and Jane sat on a bench by the holy well watching the world flow by. "I saw Gwen the other day, at that supermarket opening," Salome remarked.
They were waiting for a hudkin who was in the market for a pair of white kid gloves. Jane had wrapped them in a plastic Tir na-n'Og Video bag and stashed it in a nearby trash receptacle. If the deal went through, they'd have enough for burgers and fries all around. If not, at least they wouldn't be stuck with the gloves.
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