The Dragon, the Witch, and the Railroad

by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

  “You’ve lived with dragons all winter and you’re afraid of rats?”

  “Not afraid. I just don’t like them.” She reached out to stroke a cat and got a hiss and a scratch for her trouble. Two others climbed on her lap. One rubbed its face against her chin and the other tried to burrow into her armpit.

  Toby leaned his ear against the door. “Can’t hear anything for the cats. If it’s alive or making noise, it isn’t making much. Even with this thick door, we ought to be able to hear something.”

  “I think they do,” she said, nodding toward the cats.

  “Whatever is in there, they must have worried that it might escape,” he said. “Or feared someone would try to take it. Look at this iron bolt! It’s welded solid to the frame.”

  As he touched the bolt, the cats went mad, jumping and leaping and crying more loudly than ever. Why should they react that way, almost as if it were something to eat?

  The cats stopped mewling for a moment and scattered into the trees as Taz landed on the path leading to the door.

  Ephemera, right behind him said, “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to open that.”

  “Aunt Ephemera! Where did you come from?” Verity cried and gave her aunt a hug. She was happier to see her than she’d have thought possible when they set out on the journey. Wintering in a dragon’s den did make the heart fonder.

  “I’m here to rescue you, of course,” Ephemera said. “I’m just not certain from what. But, but I seem to remember something about a door into rock similar to this one and it wasn’t good.”

  “There can’t be a lot of those around,” Toby said.

  “True,” Verity said. “Are there any magical wards or anything like that on the door, aunty?”

  “Not that I see. They probably wouldn’t work anyway with all of that iron.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Iron is anathema to magic and magical creatures. It would nullify any spells in the vicinity.”

  “Ah. Well, the cats don’t seem to mind it.”

  Unmolested by Taz, the cats had decided this was apparently not one of the cat-eating dragons and many had returned to scratching and mewling at the door. Some of the more timid among them kept watch with wary coin-bright eyes.

  Toby scratched Taz behind her ruff, which was soft, though not furry. “What do you think, girl? Can you open it?”

  Before Ephemera could dredge up the difficulty from her memory or say another word, Taz, hotter than she had been when she left Queenston, swept cats away with a backward twitch of her wings and roared a blast of flame straight at the door, which collapsed in a mass of charred wood and melted iron.

  “I wish you hadn’t done that, dear. Really,” Ephemera said, as it rapidly became clear that the mass of nauseating dark smoke curling from the cave was far too much for the aftermath of the door’s destruction. The dark cloud rolled over and through all of them infecting them with fear, rage, pain, loss, and hunger. Very deep hunger. The cats turned on each other and Taz expelled another huge gout of flame as if burning the effects of the miasma from herself.

  Verity fell into a coughing fit and Toby yelped as the nearest cats, formerly friendly, bit and scratched him.

  He swung on them, not to hurt them, but to rid himself of their claws and fangs.

  Ephemera cried out once, her eyes rolled up into her head and she fell backwards. Verity caught her with one arm. The churning darkness flowed around Verity, but through Ephemera. Above the hissing, growling, roaring, and the shrieking of shadows, the shells sewn to her dress vibrated and emitted whirring sounds.

  Taz’s flame cast writhing grotesqueries all around them. Toby kept his head and grabbed a piece of the ruined door frame, using it as a weapon against the cold, shuddery shapes.

  “Stop it, Taz. You’ll fry one of us or the cats and you can hardly burn shadows out of the darkness.”

  But the cats, though their eyes had glowed like embers only a moment before, had disappeared. A great many of the shadows seemed to flee with them.

  Ephemera sat up.

  “What just happened?” Toby asked.

  “I don’t know, but Aunt Ephemera looks like she’s been trampled by ghosts,” Verity said.

  Remnants of Revenants

  Ephemera knew about what came boiling out of the cave, but she did not know them as ghosts. Their essences were now so contorted and merged that they were hardly recognizable even by someone with the best of memories, but once each had been more than distinct—he (or she) had been distinguished among the wizards, magicians, and magical folk of Argonia. That they had come here to this cave in the Crystal Mountains of Glassovia was a shameful matter, a betrayal by the countrymen they had once walked among, in some cases serving and in others terrorizing, but at least they had been local and their ways known to those around them.

  The spells and stories she had sewn to her dress had originated with some of these sorcerers back in their heyday, before and during the early part of the Great War. Their work had been considered brilliant and a credit to the war effort, but one day, following one major battle, according to legend they all went poof! and people just assumed they had died during the magical portion of the hostilities.

  Her shock was not so much being assaulted by ghosts as that these great magical intellects had been murdered in such a way in one highly fell swoop. Given their natures when alive, it was unsurprising that after they’d been murdered, they should emerge from their imprisonment and death as mangled spirits.

  Ephemera had shells telling of how this happened to the old mages of Frostingdung. They had not all been evil, or even annoying in life. Their power was a force that could not be reckoned with by ordinary men and even the best of them was therefore a great threat to those who would control the country. So the power was taken from them, even though those who took it had no idea what to do with it. Trapped in a foodless, waterless, airless cave, they had been parted from their power. Their end had been horrifying.

  No wonder they were angry enough to attack the first people they encountered. Not the first living beings, because the evil that swarmed this place appeared to harbor no ill will to the cats, faithful familiars who had followed them to the forest, helpless to save those to whom they were bonded, able only to remain haunting the swamp near the cave until their other halves would be released.

  All of this realization struck her as the spirits boiled over her, attaching themselves to the stories about their deeds or the spells and songs associated with them she wore in the shells on her dress.

  Standing again at Verity’s urging, Ephemera felt as if her dress was much heavier from the weight of the occupied shells with their burden of sorrow, suffering, and pain.

  Spirits and cats seemed to have dissipated, however, which was a problem since she knew it was her duty as archivist to chase them and record their stories. Until she recovered, she could begin by listening to the ones that had lodged in her shells.

  All that power—the great Wizard Raspberry, Princess Pegeen the Illuminator, Sir Rychard Clocke the founder of the legendary Clockwork Brigade, Baldric the Bard and his band of fellow musicians, Sir William of the Blue Moss, and Timoteo, author of the epic Gypsy musical and some suspected, foster father to the lost Princess Romany. Dame Anninez Dragonspeaker had been among the first to go, and it was following her disappearance that the dragons were degraded, Sybil the Seer of the Gingerbread Cottage had been very old of course, but was known to be occasionally active right up until the time the others disappeared.

  Their power was the stronger for the grief their loss engendered. Now it was all turned wrong side out, and they were faceless, bodiless wraiths without form or a true will of their own.

  Verity touched her aunt’s face, “Why are you crying?” she asked.

  Ephemera mopped her eyes on the unembellished hem of her skirt. “No matter,” she said. “I’ll tell you later. We must flee this place now.”

  No one was more anxious to leave th
an Taz, who loved the open sky and was much less enthused about the dank and murky swamp.

  “You go ahead,” Verity said suddenly. “I have to go back.”

  “What?” Toby asked. “Why? We’ve only just rescued you.”

  “No, you haven’t. I rescued Skronk and Screech—I mean, Loveday and Copperwise—and then I hurt their feelings and they flew away goodness only knows where.”

  “Probably to find their mother,” Ephemera said. “Which would be a mistake since she’s been flying in circles for hours feigning injury to draw the searchers away from them.”

  “She’ll protect them,” Toby said. “I think at least one of those men was sent to kill you actually, Verity, if the dragon hadn’t done his work for him. He’s the one I’m sure who sabotaged your balloon and killed your father and the captain.”

  “You must at least come back as far as Wormhaven,” Ephemera said. “Help me sort out what to do about all of these ancient wraiths and whatnot whose revenants have taken up residence in my dress. They will get into ever so much trouble if we can’t find some productive way of dealing with them.”

  “Yes, yes,” she said, “But they’re in trouble somehow, I know it, and so is their mother. I seem to have developed a sort of sense for these things. I should never have let them out of my sight. You go on ahead,” she said, and turned back to the marshy path. Daylight had begun filtering through the trees and, though the air was leaden and droplets laden with snow penetrated the canopy, it was nowhere near as good as cats’ eyes at illuminating her path. “I’ll be along soon.” She strode off as if she knew what she was doing.

  Chapter 28

  Hatchlings’ Rescue Attempt

  “We were right to leave,” Copperwise told her sister.

  “Yes, Beadspinner proved inadequate to her task. She was supposed to care for us, not a nest of nasty little fur-bearing morsels. Why do you suppose our mother left a dolt like her to serve us?”

  “Let’s ask! I want to meet Mother anyway, don’t you?”

  “Of course. I don’t know why she had to hibernate before we hatched.”

  Their wings were tired after their escape flight, but they burst with energy otherwise. They ran back upriver toward the mountain. Sensing no intruders, they flew up and forced their way back through the hole for the waterfall.

  “M-mother?” Loveday asked, as they skimmed just above the surface of the hidden river, flying back in the direction of the hoard.

  But the hoard gleamed coldly in the midst of the river, the pile somewhat smaller than it had looked before. Perhaps, with no dragon to sit on it, it was carried away by the current.

  “She’s not back.”

  “Maybe she’s eating,”

  They saw the hole through which their mother had escaped, but chose to return instead to their shelf, and climb out through the lava tube as they had always done when the girl was there.

  Halfway through the tube, a cry ripped through the dawn. No words, just a terrible sound in a voice they had never actually heard, but knew nonetheless. “Oh, my broken wing!” it cried. “Oh, I don’t think I can possibly move. I sure hope there are no hunters around, because I don’t think I could escape them.”

  “Mother!” they cried and scorched out of the lava tube.

  Their mother was making plenty of noise, they thought crying for her children to come and rescue her, so they didn’t understand when they located her and landed beside her when she demanded, “What are you two doing here?”

  “Saving you!”

  “Leave. You’re spoiling everything. I’m saving you, but men are coming and they will catch us all if you don’t leave. Fly away now.”

  “But your broken wing?” Loveday asked, wounded to the core by her mother’s attitude.

  Vitia flapped both powerful wings, creating such an updraft that her get rose on her wind. “I’m fine. Now, LEAVE ME!”

  “You’d think she might have thanked us,” Copperwise said indignantly as they ascended.

  Dragging Dragons

  But as they departed, men on horses poured from between the trees into the clearing their mother had made when she landed. They surrounded her, approaching her with spears, crossbows, and some long metal tube things. She roared again and blew a mighty gout of flame at the interlopers. While two of the men were putting out her target, another one touched something below the metal tube and it cracked and coughed at her. A ball shot out of the end of it and smoke poured from its muzzle.

  Vitia roared again, this time in pain, as the men closed in on her, three of them squirting her flame with water squeezed from large skins.

  Loveday and Copperwise roared, too, although theirs sounded weak and squeaky by comparison, and their flames were too short to reach the men on the ground. They flew in closer.

  “I told you to LEAVE!” Vitia roared as the one with the metal tube pointed it at her other wing. “YOU WILL OBEY ME!!”

  The men closed in, some pointing upwards. “There’s what we need. Young ones to train and shape to work.”

  The one with the iron tube aimed upward while others, bearing chains of iron, closed in on Mother, who roared again at the hatchlings to abandon her.

  Their feelings were wounded, but thanks to their mother’s orders, their wings were not, and they flew back toward the mountain as a ball flew harmlessly in the air below them and dropped back down to earth.

  “Beadspinner, help!” Copperwise cried and Loveday echoed it, their insult at being deprived of their former feline prey totally forgotten in their desperation. Beadspinner was human. She could make the other humans unhand their mother, the hatchlings were sure. She would fix it. That’s what she was for.

  As they flew away, vowing to each other to return, the candle-like trees beneath them grew flames, pulsing smoke and the pleasant fragrance of burning evergreen resin.

  “Oh, look! Breakfast!” Loveday cried, seeing five deer, a swarm of rabbits, three wild pigs and a mother bear with two young running from the fire into the meadows.

  Before they could pop down so much as a field mouse, however, their mother’s roars were overlain with the clank of chain and dull thudding, dragging sounds. As these drew nearer, the young dragons forgot to eat, watching the raging fire as shouting men and horses whinnying in terror dragged their mother’s chained body from the pyre lit by her own flames.

  A man cried, “There are the little demons!” and before Loveday and Copperwise could think to fly away, he dropped his end of Vitia’s chain to urge his horse forward, holding his spear as if to skewer one or both of them.

  Fortunately for them, his horse had better sense than he did and reared and threw him off before running down the meadow, away from the men and all of the dragons. Loveday and Copperwise blazed to the far side of the mountain, the river, and the safety the Beadspinner would provide.

  Wizardly Residue

  After a harrowing tromp through the swamp, Verity arrived at the foot of the waterfall wondering how she was going to find her charges.

  She was looking up at the hole spouting the river when she was knocked on her rear by the charges in question, shrieking and skronking as if their lives depended on it.

  As it turned out, their own lives were not the ones in peril, but their mother’s.

  When they had stopped buzzing around her head like angry bees, she said. “Well, you’re mistaken. I can’t make them let go of your mother. We need a better plan than that and we need help. So do our comrades, so let us rejoin them.”

  Retracing her own muddy boot prints through the marsh and then the swamp and on to the bog, Verity made better time returning than she had entering or exiting the marsh previously.

  She saw not a single trace of a cat anywhere, but nothing snatched at her or raised goose bumps on her skin either. In daylight, the trail leading from the cave’s entrance up and over the hill was easy to see, as were the footsteps of her aunt and Toby, and quite a few paw prints, along with considerable other evidence and essence of fel
ine presence.

  The things that boiled out of the cave might have been supernatural shadows that vanished in the strong light of day, but the cats seemed quite corporeal.

  As the path descended from the mountains and down into the meadows again, the river from the mountain became a sparkling stream and there was nothing but grassland between them and the glint of the railroad tracks in the distance.

  On the way down the hill, Verity said, “I think whatever those things in the cave are, there are more of them in Queenston.”

  “How do you figure that?” Toby asked.

  “Because one of them tried to grab me when I passed a warehouse. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the cat hiding under the boardwalk might have belonged with it, as these cats seem to belong to whatever is sealed in the cave. You don’t suppose there’s a whole warehouse of them in the city, do you?”

  Ephemera said sadly, “That would explain a lot.”

  “About what?” Toby asked.

  “About all of the magical adepts who went missing during the Great War. There were a couple of accounts from the guards who helped transport them from Argonia to Glassovia. Also, I’ve recalled something from the Records of Prince Rupert about when he and his companions arrived in Frostingdung, long before the Strategic Alliance. They were troubled by these frightening, pestilential creatures called hidebehinds and no-see-ums that attacked you while remaining invisible. They were susceptible only to iron, which has always been anathematic to magic creatures. When Rupert delved into the matter a bit more, he learned that the origin of the creatures seemed to have stemmed from the time when, following a regime change, magic was banned in Frostingdung and noted practitioners, the most powerful sorcerers in the land, were rounded up, subdued by trickery, locked away in a cave without food or water and left to die. A small earthquake some sixteen months later destroyed the seal on the cave and while no living thing was left in the cave, people began to be plagued by the hidebehinds and no-see-ums.”