The Dragon, the Witch, and the Railroad

by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

  “You haven’t heard the last of this,” was the best exit line she could manage, sweeping back up the dungeon stairs as best she could without tripping on her train.

  Drag-ons

  So much for appearances making any difference in her reception by the city’s officials. Meanwhile, the corset and train were extremely annoying and she needed to divest herself of them. Her feet were telling her they had had about all of the new shoes they could tolerate and to get back to the theatre from the castle required her to pass the warehouse district.

  The warehouses were near one of the questionable-to-bad neighborhoods sprinkled indiscriminately throughout the city. She had never had cause to notice this in the past, since she usually accompanied her father. It was broad daylight for another few hours or so, being about one o’clock in the afternoon, so she could see perfectly well who was about, and hardly anybody was.

  She plodded up a raised boardwalk, a necessity to keep feet and skirts mud free during breakup and easier to keep free of snowdrifts in the winter. The main thoroughfare was two more long warehouses distant. Three streets beyond that lay the railway yard and from it issued the ever-escalating hiss and clank of the train, the rumble of its wheels, and the chugging sound it made as it pulled away from its platform. The boardwalk shimmied and bounced with the distant vibrations.

  So she really should not have felt quite so vulnerable, but she’d had the feeling since leaving the castle that she was being watched, followed. Was there a mind reader on the magistrate’s staff who informed him of her half-formed intentions? Unlikely since mind-reading was hardly a scientific practice and the progressive Argonian government frowned on talents that had no rational root or explanation.

  As long as it stayed a creepy feeling, she could disregard it, but as she passed the alley between the two warehouses, she grew absolutely beyond a doubt dead certain that something lurked there just out of sight.

  Nevertheless she was unprepared when something took the liberty of snagging her arm. She whirled, but her arm was wrenched in the opposite direction while her assailant remained beyond the range of her peripheral vision.

  She ought to have been frightened, but perhaps because she came from a long line of frost giant warriors several generations back, she reacted with anger and indignation instead.

  “Unhand me at once,” she bellowed at the unseen entity. “I may seem to be a mild-mannered maiden, but I assure you, it is a grave error on your part to trifle with me now.”

  She had a sense of extremely unpleasant laughter issuing from the area posterior of her left scapula. Although she was already perspiring from walking so far in the fancy dress, goose bumps rose on her skin as well and a chill scampered down her spine.

  “What a bully!” she yelled at it. “Grab a person and then hide where you can’t be seen!” In answer, her assailant yanked her hair free of its pins and pulled it hard.

  But no matter how she flailed about, she could neither break free nor catch so much as a glimpse of her attacker. Once it had her hair, it did not release it, but dragged her backwards, into the shadowy alley.

  A bolt of heat blasted past her, followed by a scuttle and a rush of cooler air, and a fast whapping kind of noise. At the same instant, the searing pressure on her scalp ceased, and her hair sprang free so abruptly she landed on her back in the filthy alley. She jumped to her feet, swinging her reticule around her like a bolo.

  But the alley was empty, as was the grimy street and the boardwalk. She couldn’t say her invisible enemy had vanished, but it was definitely no longer there. She had nothing to fight.

  “That’s right,” she muttered, bewildered as she stopped swinging and adjusted her clothing. “Run. Coward!”

  Her hair pins were scattered all over, some of them having flown into the street. She hopped down, picked up two pins, and whirled, once more sensing a presence, this time from beneath the walk. “Skulking down there, are you?” She demanded angrily.

  Golden eyes glared back at her from the shadows and a yowl rising in volume and ferocity told her that some other creature, probably a stray cat, was as disturbed as she was, although possibly more because of her presence than because of the invisible assailant’s incorporeal attack.

  “I beg your pardon, kitty,” she said. She started to hold out her hand to pat it, thought better of it, and stuck the shaking hand in her handy skirt pocket to steady it before remounting the boardwalk.

  The cat crept out from its shelter, watching the girl scurry toward the more public promenade. Licking its paw and then its shoulder, the cat surveyed its surroundings then retreated beneath the boardwalk, curled up, and closed its eyes. It had not been afraid of the girl, of course, and certainly not of her attacker, but the dog-sized dragon now sitting on the roof, head swiveling as the girl turned onto the heavily trafficked thoroughfare, was another matter. That flame had come close enough to singe the cat’s whiskers. It wanted no part of dragons.

  According to Mrs. Eulalia Lockjaw, the geography mistress at the Institute of Information Suitable for the Education of Young Ladies, the school Verity had attended before she was sent to Our Lady, the composition of Queenston had changed mightily since pre-war days.

  “Commerce and Prosperity have changed the face of all Argonia but perhaps, most profoundly that of our great city of Queenston,” Mrs. Lockjaw was fond of saying. “From a fetid field of Superstition and so-called Magic to our modern city in less than a century and a quarter is truly remarkable Progress.”

  Mrs. Lockjaw said that in olden days everything was more primitive and there were fewer houses. The castle was nothing but a stone keep and the city little more than a village.

  Where the warehouses were now had probably been only fields and maybe fishermen’s huts closer to the Bay.

  Back in those days, there would have been no need for the fine horse drawn cabs or the single-dragon commuter trolleys plying the streets. There would have been only a couple of streets, for that matter.

  Someone recently had been so daft as to suggest that the city offer underground trains that would not disturb the street traffic, but the plan was almost laughed out of the city council. Underlying the soil was a thick layer of ice. In cold weather, the ground was too hard to penetrate for the digging of the tunnels, while in the warm weather, when the ice melted it created sinkholes that would destabilize any such construction. The dragon fire would have brought the whole thing crashing down on top of the passengers and crew in no time.

  Verity had no idea what may have once been where the warehouses now stood, or what they might contain, imported from distant lands, to produce the menace that had attacked her.

  She dashed up the street past flower sellers and purveyors of the food pellets acceptable to dragons needing recharging. You could tell when that happened as their flames diminished to dull yellow. Modern dragons had been conditioned so that with a few cups of the pellets, they were good for the rest of the day. Sometimes passengers traveling by dragon-steam ship or train would purchase the kibble to leave as a gratuity for the dragons.

  Among the singers noisily selling broadsheets with the latest news and ballads, an old woman with a hooked nose and chin giving her a quarter-moon profile dangled little bags of goodness-knew-what, touting them as, “Scientifical remedies and cures for what ails ye, none of them magical poultices and such, but guaranteed formulas to make ladies have smoother skin and shinier hair, menfolk have more courage in the parts as needs it, teething babies serene, growths of all kinds shrink and disappear, and childbirth so easy you’ll wonder where you got another brat!”

  The little bags smelled very bad and Verity hurried past, sprinting beyond the tooth surgeon’s chair and the smithy as well, but slowing when she smelled the savory scents of the next booth. “Pasties, fish and fowl!” cried the vendor. “Fresh and hot, get them here!”

  She counted out the change from her pocket. Only a few coppers remained, not enough for a cab ride home, but enough for the food her stomach
growled for.

  Munching her lunch, she trudged onward, halting at last in front of the sign she had seen earlier for Madame Louisa’s performance. An arrow pointed out over the bay to a pavilion at the end, which bore a modest sign identifying it as the Changeling Club.

  Chapter 6

  There’ll be Some Changelings Made

  Verity was glad of her costume when entering the club, which was clearly for adults—most of them apparently male, although considering the surprise Captain Lewis had given her, she would be careful about making assumptions based solely on appearance.

  She dug in her reticule for the ticket Louisa had given her, but the doorman waved her right in with an, “Ooh, very nice, my dear. Very nice indeed,” comment on her ensemble. Between her stature and her outfit, he no doubt thought she might be a disguised pirate like the captain. The club was quite small inside, furnished with five long tables for the audience and a platform about the size of one of the tables for a stage. It was dimly lit with dragon gas lamps, and incense permeated the air to counteract the odor of the dragon gas.

  A red brocade curtain trimmed in gold fringe swagged across the stage’s backdrop, a canvas and board arrangement with a painting of the harbor at sunset framing the castle.

  To the left of the stage three people carrying musical instruments arrived at a group of chairs where they set down various bits of equipment before flourishing a violin and guitar while one pulled a fancily scrolled squeezebox from a small case he carried by its handle.

  To the right of the stage was a long bar behind which the bartender busily polished glasses.

  Light flooded the doorway and a cold draft blew in as patrons noisily entered the establishment in large groups.

  Verity tried not to stare as the others sat down, but the longer they sat, the more stare-worthy some of them became. The guitarist seemed to have put on a fox’s mask, while the violinist had antennae sprouting from her forehead and fingers so long and thin they looked like spiders. A dapper looking gentleman, initially the most ordinary looking of the three, wore a top hat and tailcoat until he sat down and started playing, at which point a tail popped up from between the tails of his coat and bobbed around in time to the music, as did a luxuriant bushy appendage to the guitarist.

  When she turned to see if she could order a fizzy drink or maybe a hot chocolate, Verity observed that the bartender had now begun serving drinks, her arms flashing with bracelets and her hands with rings as they virtually whirled around the bar grabbing bottles and filling glasses. There were at least eight of the arms, and those were not polka dotted sleeves beneath the jangling baubles, but suckers that deftly adhered to extra glasses while filling the one curled in her fingers.

  The musician with the squeezebox stepped onto the stage and bellowed, “QUIET!” and the roar of the crowd diminished to a murmur.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of all genders and fellow changelings of all species, the Changeling Club is proud to present, back by popular request, the dazzling, the exquisite, the divine siren of the seven seas herself, Madame Louisa!”

  Applause, whistles, the sound of feet and hooves stomping the floor, and shouts, cries, howls, bellows, hoots, yowls, barks, and roars of approbation caused the club to tremble on its very foundations and dust to sprinkle from the rafters. The crowd had grown, but sounded even larger than it was. What surprised Verity was that in spite of the noise and all of the strange costumes, she had no headache at all. How could that be?

  Madame Louisa swept onto the stage trailing her train of peacock feathers and flittering a peacock feather fan under her chin, before snapping it shut, and as the concertina player rejoined the band and they struck the first note, began singing in a throaty alto, “Oh, You Engineer, Won’t You Kindly Cool Your Dragons Down.”

  Some of her songs were sweet, some sultry, some angry, and some sad, but the audience was with her stamping and clapping and cheering as she sang and strutted across the stage, looking as though she was having a wonderful time. Verity cheered along with the others. As Madame Louisa came to the end of her last number, she looked straight at Verity, winked, and crooked the finger with the huge blue-green stone ring on it. Verity rose and threaded her way through the crowd to the stage, whereupon she saw the last of the peacock train disappear through a hidden door.

  “There you are, Petal!” Madame Louisa said, sounding exactly as if she were a fond auntie. “I do hope you’re enjoying the show!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said without any hesitation at all. “Very much. I came to return your gown, but I’ve nowhere to change so I could…”

  “Nonsense, I’ll just step outside for a pipe and you change in here. That gown looks lovely on you.” She rose and headed for the door, white mermaid shaped pipe in hand. “I’ll be right outside and won’t no one will dare to trouble ye.”

  The room was separated in half by a folding screen of scarlet brocade that resembled the fabric in the theatre curtain. It and the rest of the room smelled of grease paint, perfume, the fragrances of the bouquets occupying every flat surface, and tobacco. Verity changed out of the black dress, which was much easier to free herself from than most dressy clothing she had worn. She supposed Madame Marsha had designed it that way because her client was a theatrical person and needed to change quickly between numbers.

  That was just what she did when Verity, once more clad in her dull and ill-fitting school uniform, opened the door again. She started to leave, but Madame Louisa said, “No, Ducky, don’t go yet. You haven’t seen the second half of the show. I’ll just pop behind the screen and get into me finery for it and you sit right there. If you like, you c’n watch from the wings. How’d it go with the magistrate? Was ’e impressed by your ladylike looks?”

  “Not impressed enough,” she said sadly. “They’re going to execute Toby tomorrow unless I can miraculously find evidence that the balloon was tampered with and not Toby’s or the dragon Taz’s fault, but that’s impossible. It’s at the bottom of the bay by now. It was rather heavy chain.”

  “Was it indeed?” Louisa’s face, clad in stage make-up as it was, looked very piratical as she peered around the screen. “That’s not a problem if only you had more time.”

  “It’s not?”

  “You just has to know the right folk.”

  She shook her head wonderingly. “I keep forgetting that you are—also—a pirate. Do you know such folk?”

  “Oh, aye, and I hate to disillusion ye, dearie, but I’m not actually a pirate, strictly speaking.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No, such garb with its dreadlocks and beard and that are strictly for effect when I come ashore.”

  “So you are a sea-faring—individual?” she asked.

  “That I am and no finer ever sailed, if I do say so meself. I’ve sailed these waters man and boy, girl and lady, too, and have also shipped aboard yon steamers that ply between here and Frostingdung. But mostly these days shall we say I am somewhat associated with pirates and not actually in the trade meself.”

  “How so?” she asked, but her words were lost as the chanteuse emerged from her screen with a slink of silvery silken scales and a frothy fall of full sea-green skirt and train below the knees. Attached to her shoulders and arms were triangular pleated panels of matching sea-green that gave her the appearance of wings—or fins.

  “What do you think?” she asked, patting her hair, which was now a blue-green wig half piled high atop her head with a little ship stuck in it, and half falling seductively across the clamshell embellished bodice of her gown.

  “You’re a mermaid!” Verity cried.

  “Only on me mother’s side, but I’ve good connections,” Louisa said before sweeping out the door to make her entrance.

  As Verity followed, she saw the white tip of a bushy red tail disappear around the corner of the stage. Had the fox-masked guitarist been eavesdropping?

  Louisa was as entertaining as before, but now Verity could scarcely concentrate on the performa
nce. She was hoping to enlist the singer’s quasi-piratical help in the jail break she had been thinking about since she left the castle.

  “For this last number, I’d like to bring some friends of mine up on stage. You all know Maudeen the bartender,” cheering, stamping and whistling made the room seem even more crowded than it was, “and Ewan, Ailish, and Marvin, if you would join us, please, my dears.” A fellow with an aggressively whiskered face climbed on stage. He looked a lot like an otter. A very pretty lady made up similarly to the captain, but with better results joined them, offering her hand daintily to Ewan so he could help her on stage. They were joined by the octopus/bartender, who had one tentacle wrapped around the wrist of a man wearing a turtle shell on his head. The group of them sang the rousing finale, which Madame Louisa introduced as a camp follower’s ballad from the Great War. It was extremely bawdy, so much so that Verity almost wished she were still in school so she could ask some of the other girls to explain certain aspects of the song.

  They finished with a flourish, Madame Louisa took her final bow, and the band, with the exception of the foxy guitarist, continued to play while the patrons danced.

  Louisa joined Verity at her table. “What do you think?” she asked.

  “You’re a wonderful singer,” Verity said.

  “Not about that, Ducky. The crew. What did you think of the crew? If you want that broken chain from your balloon retrieved from the briny deep, you’ll find no better.”

  “They look as if they might have special qualifications for the job,” she said cautiously.

  “Oh, they do, me duck, they do. Maudeen doesn’t take on salvage jobs much since she’s opened this place, but I told her a bit about your problem before you arrived and she’s willing to help you out. Ewan is a great diver and Ailish is a were-dolphin. Marvin turns sea turtle once he hits the water. There’s another fella would be handy at this—a selkie, but he had to stay home with the pups.