The Dragon, the Witch, and the Railroad

by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

  Fortunately, Ephemera’s song distracted them and after a while, the continual clickety clack lulled all of them into silence, and conversation gave way to staring out windows and napping.

  As the train pulled into Border Station, he got off when his companions did, but told Verity, “I think it’s best if I stay out here.”

  “But there’s no cars to ride in so far,”

  “Maybe not, but Taz is around. We’ve a bit of a system between us for following the rail.”

  Ephemera told him, “Please stay close. We’ll need your help and your dragon’s if we’re to free the mother and take her to safety at Wormroost.”

  Verity said, “Although it is doubtful, if we take Vitia with us, how safe Wormroost will be.”

  Toby saw her point, but without knowing exactly how he was going to pull it off, he promised, “We won’t be far.”

  Ephemera squeezed his hand. “Your Taz is a very nice dragon. I can tell she thinks a lot of you.”

  Toby ducked his head, embarrassed. “We’ve grown up together.”

  Lovejoy and Copperwise plotted with Taz. “How do we free Mother?”

  Vitia said, “Water.”

  Taz said, “She’s wounded and the men know where she lives now.”

  “They also know her hoard doesn’t live up to their standards,” Verity, still listening to the dragon chatter around the train, chimed in. “They might just leave her alone. A wild dragon involves a great investment of time and a lot of risk.”

  “It certainly does! She unbalances the entire load!” Gem the train dragon said.

  “It’s undignified to have a dragon strapped to our train, not pulling her own weight. Not to mention you lot buzzing overhead like so many troublesome insects. How are we to concentrate on delivering an even temperature and volume of flame with all that going on?”

  “There are bound to be regulations you’re in violation of!” another voice, dragonly and as officious as the first one added.

  “You call yourselves dragons?” This was Taz. “I am a dragon. She is a dragon. You are pieces of this snake-machine carrying the men who did this to her.”

  Dragon Brain

  Darkness had fallen as they rode toward the border. Craning her neck, Verity could see bursts of light against the night from the dragons flying directly over the cars. Two smaller ones and, more erratic, Taz’s zigzagging from one side to the other.

  “You two! Get off of our train!”

  “Not while it carries our mother!” Copperwise declared.

  “Yeah!” Loveday said. “If our mother rides, we ride for free! Look that up in your regulations!”

  “Where did that come from?” Verity asked. She was certain this was the first time the twins had seen a train. What could they know about regulations?

  “You were thinking it—about mums riding and children riding for free,” Loveday said.

  “I wasn’t thinking it at you,” she replied.

  The thought train from the engine dragons broke off as they both blew audible Wooo-Wooo sounds, and intermittent hissings followed by staccato clacks like gunfire. The bell clanged and a whistle shrilled as brakes squealed and the train lurched to a stop, sending everyone sprawling.

  “Whatever you are doing, stop it this instant!” Verity commanded, sure that whatever mischief was occurring was instigated by the twins.

  “We didn’t do anything,” the hatchlings protested.

  From a funnel shaped horn in the upper right hand corner of the car, a man’s voice said, “In the event of sudden deceleration, passengers are instructed to hang on to something to keep from ricocheting off the saloon car’s interior walls.”

  But the passengers weren’t the only thing bouncing off the walls. Many miles ago, the train had left the meadows and forests and once more it climbed mountains so that from one side they could see sheer rock wall, while on the other side a precipice plunged away from the tracks, into a valley invisible in the blackness of the night. For the second time on Verity’s somewhat extended round-trip journey, rocks and boulders thudded off the roof and clattered down the far side, joining the snow. Windows shattered and cold rushed in.

  “Avalanche,” sighed one of the engine dragons.

  “Mother!” the twins cried in unison. Of course, Vitia would be getting some of the stones directly on top of her exposed and helpless body.

  A thump atop the end of the car bent the door frame so the locked door popped open. Briciu slipped through before the conductor could prop the door shut.

  The train dragons grumbled.

  “I’ll be fried if I’m going out there to melt that snow off of the tracks in this weather!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Gem. We must. It’s in the rules.”

  “Hang the rules. That’s a sheer drop on my side, that is, and those stones are almost as big as I am! There’s no curb. How shall we get around the engine to free it?”

  “We’ve got wings.”

  “Yes, and they’ve been clipped, i’n’t they? I can fly no further than your average hen.”

  “I can make it high enough to stand atop the engine.”

  “You’ll crush it.”

  “Not if I flap the wings my mama gave me! Are you going to do your job or must I do it for us both?”

  Verity, through second-hand dragon communication, was aware of a wrangler trying to gain control of the situation, though she couldn’t hear his exact words, only Gem saying, “Calm yourself, man. This is part of the job, even when you haven’t yet told us to do it.” Of course, the wrangler heard nothing but saurian grumbling.

  Loveday and Copperwise buzzed the railroad dragons. “Go back into your caves and don’t come out until you set our mother free!” Loveday said.

  “Did you hatchlings make this mess?” Gem asked, flaming to illuminate the wall of stone and snow enveloping the front of the engine.

  Verity knew they had not, but that didn’t keep the twins from puffing up proudly.

  “What of it?” Copperwise demanded.

  “Clean it up at once! You are impeding a locomotive in the performance of its duties.”

  “So what?” Loveday asked.

  “Let’s show them how real dragons act,” her sister growled, shooting sparks. But Loveday was no longer there.

  “Get away from our mother, you dragon-napper!” she cried, shooting fire at a man inexplicably bent over the side of the flat car, next to Vitia’s head.

  “Stop it at once!” Verity said out loud.

  “To whom are you speaking, young lady?” Sir Archibald demanded from where he had fallen beneath his bench. He sounded as startled as if a spittoon had spoken.

  “You’re not our real mother!” Loveday said, continuing the flame. The man beside Vitia had ducked beneath the flat car. Though neither Copperwise nor Loveday could see him well, he seemed too bulky to be Toby. He knocked his hat off on the side of the car.

  “I’d better get out there,” she told Ephemera. “Or those two will start a flame war that will set the train on fire.”

  Ephemera was busy counting syllables to her verse and flicked her fingers in a dismissive farewell.

  As Verity had been watching the events outside the passenger car through dragons’ eyes, she was momentarily startled by the difficulty in adjusting her own—physical—eyes to the darkness. No moon lit the scene, brightened only by will o’ wisp-like random flashes of dragon fire.

  She stumbled as she stepped down onto the narrow bed separating the tracks from the bottomless gorge. At least the avalanche seemed to be over for the time being, but her toe caught on something soft, and then a flap of wings drove her nearly off the edge and she had to catch hold of a handle on the side of the car to steady herself.

  Taz swooped down, squalling in alarm “Boy!” she cried, then, “boy,boy,boy…” She spread her wings over him and bolted a fork of fire over Verity’s head.

  “Don’t flame at me. I certainly didn’t hurt him,” Verity said. Toby sat up, groaning, and g
rabbed hold of Taz’s neck. Verity picked her way around him and his protector, walking with one foot under the bed of the car, until she reached Vitia’s head, the end nearest the passenger car. Chains clanked and rattled around her while Loveday and Copperwise flew madly overhead, trying to keep the man who they now accused of messing with Vitia’s bonds pinned beneath the flat cars while also attempting to deter the engine beasts from unclogging the avalanche-smothered tracks.

  Verity was unprepared for what happened next. Vitia’s head reared up, and the chains clattered to the tracks as she opened her mouth and spouted a cloud of sooty smoke. She coughed and tried again, sitting up further as more chains fell away. This time she ignited the wooden end of the passenger car and roared with triumph, then coughed again.

  “Well done, Mother!” Copperwise said.

  Vitia snapped her wings open and teetered for a moment on the flat car from the pain. Oh yes, the injuries. Both wings bore sizable holes.

  Frustrated, she flamed the back of the passenger car again. The fire crawled along the roof and sides, sizzling when the snow hit it.

  “Copperwise, Loveday, I think you should get your mum out of here before the men and their weapons come out again. Someone will be hurt.”

  “It will be the MEN,” Loveday said.

  “Yes, but I don’t want it to be me because I’m in the middle.”

  “Yes, but we would like to see what they taste like, those men,” Copperwise whined.

  “Probably just like chicken,” Verity said, “I’m told most things do.” Technically of course, the dragons were not supposed to be able to taste much, but she supposed what her young friend really meant was that they wanted to kill them. Verity felt the sentiment was perfectly understandable under the circumstances.

  Vitia fluttered a bit, whipping the flames higher, and the twins supported her from beneath each wing, the wind blowing them all upward and, with a little clawing on the cliff-face, over the top and out of sight. Vitia had lost many of her belly scales trying to escape her bonds and Verity gathered them up. They were the only really protective shield against dragon-fire.

  Toby picked his way through the snow to stand beside her. The wind blew crystals and ash into their faces.

  “What happened to you?” Verity asked.

  “I got thumped. I don’t know who it was.”

  “Neither do I, but he’s hiding under the flat cars. You can come out now, sir. The dragon and her young have escaped, thanks to you.”

  Both of them were surprised to see Briciu crawl out. Taz hissed at him.

  Taz sent messages to Verity that all but included shrilling alarm bells. “Taz says this is the man who tampered with the balloon rigging that killed my father. He is the saboteur, or at least one of them, causing the alleged dragon malfunctions.”

  To her stepmother’s cousin, who was quickly pulling his fur cap back down around his ears, she said, “Give me one good reason why I should not encourage the dragons to satisfy their hunger by fricasseeing you.”

  “You don’t want to do that to me, darling girl,” he said. “They might have to take on the rest of you for additional courses.”

  “I am not your darling girl, but if I were a dragon, I’d fry you myself.”

  “You’re the one who rigged the balloon that killed Verity’s father and my captain. And you clobbered me so I couldn’t sound the alarm when you messed with Vitia’s chains.” Toby said.

  “The poor creature was suffering! I wanted no interference while on my errand of mercy. And I most certainly did not tamper with any balloon!” He looked at Toby more closely now and shook a gloved forefinger at him. “Now I remember where I know you from, my lad. I knew you looked familiar back in Drague, but I couldn’t place you. Your dragon is larger, but her color is distinctive. You are both supposed to be hanged by now for what you did to Verity’s father. Don’t you go trying to blame it on me. I was simply arranging a birthday treat for the young lady on behalf of her stepma-ma.”

  Taz sizzled.

  Toby was distracted from their exchange by the fire attempting to consume the passenger car. He scooped double hands full of snow and threw it at the blaze, ineffectually, and Briciu and Verity followed suit. It did not take long for the other passengers to evacuate and fling snow on the blaze as well.

  When at last the fire was extinguished, Ephemera stuck her face out through the big hole in the back of the car, her mittened hands clutching the charred edges. “This is going to be drafty.”

  By that time Taz was nowhere to be seen.

  The avalanche remained untouched as Wol and Gem watched the mayhem in back of the engine.

  A snow pigeon fluttered out of the engineer’s compartment and flew away in a southeasterly direction.

  Sir Archibald strode briskly among the rescue party—as briskly as he could in a confined space, and said, “You see? The engineer has sent for help, letting the company know that the dragons have gone berserk and torched the passenger carriage, leaving us to die of exposure out here.”

  Wol and Gem exploded in Verity’s brain, “Dragons have gone berserk? What’s he talking about? It was that wild beast they put on OUR train, not us. We are proper railway dragons and are the only ones who can get the train moving again and out of this mess.”

  Before Verity could think what to tell them, Taz returned, flying up to the wall of snow engulfing the engine, and dropped a steaming carcass on the locomotive’s nose. “It’s that man back there making trouble for you as he did for me. You have a lot of work ahead of you. You’ll need to eat, and meat is much more sustaining than that fodder they give us.”

  “It does smell nice,” Wol said, extending a claw to poke at the meat.

  The engineer raised himself through the window. “Fireman, get these dragons moving.”

  The Fireman tried. He really did. But Wol and Gem were more interested in eating the food Taz provided than they were in melting the snow and breaking up the avalanche.

  Toby picked his way along the track to the engine, to speak to Taz and reinforce the railroad wrangler.

  Meanwhile the conductor had ripped out the partition dividing his duty station from the rest of the passenger car. He removed the nails and tried to straighten them, without much success. Verity nudged him aside, took the hammer, and with a few deft strikes had a precious handful ready to use to repair the hole burned in the back of the car.

  “That’ll keep the wind out, at least,” the conductor shouted over the wind driving snow into all of their faces. “All passengers take your seats. I still have tea to serve and plenty of kindling for the little heating stove.”

  “Should we not help clear the tracks?” Sir Archibald asked.

  “There is very little room, sir. And the Fireman needs to get his beasts to concentrate on their work again. Normally, we’d be at Velasco Station by now and they’d be fed and watered, so they’re restless and rather agitated.”

  Chapter 31

  The Cats Come Back

  As he spoke, Verity saw points of light flickering and disappearing on the cliff face and the flat cars, then beneath the train. It was difficult to focus on them with the wind and snow, but once the conductor had started the fire and the other passengers had huddled back into the now quite cold car, the phantom cats began closing in, hunkering close to the stove for warmth. Ghosts or not, the cats were cold and they didn’t wish to be, any more than ordinary cats.

  “Where did those come from?” Sir Archibald asked. “Get them out of here! Great Rowan’s ghost, how many are there anyway?”

  Ephemera sat straight up, staring straight into the eyes of the largest of the cats, perched on the back of a bench.

  Sir Archibald kicked at two lolling in front of the stove, but somehow his foot never connected, though they glared up at him with narrowed eyes.

  “These are not just any ordinary moggies you’re dealing with,” she told Sir Archibald.

  “Slippery little buggers,” another member of the party said,
but without rancor.

  The largest cat opened his mouth wide, showing a pitch black interior for a moment before the air in front of the cat blurred and shifted, as with a heat wave, rising toward the ceiling.

  “They’re back,” Ephemera said. “Hello, you lot. Are you traveling with us tonight?”

  The rescue party seated opposite Ephemera and Verity blurred as the air thickened between them.

  The shells on Ephemera’s dress began to shake and dance and sounds came out of them, even the tiniest. Invisible hands snatched at Verity’s clothing. She ran to the door, jerked it open, and jumped down, sinking into the snow again.

  What path there was had become icy with the melted snow pouring from the burning car earlier and the walking was very difficult, but she waded over to the flat cars, where Vitia’s chains lay. She twiddled her beads clumsily between mittened fingers and thumb.

  “Copperwise? Loveday? I have need of your flames if you’re still up there.”

  The twin dragons soared down from the clifftop. “We’re all up there waiting. Mother is resting and telling us how best to cook a man.”

  “That sounds alarming,” Verity said, bending to catch some of the chain still draped over the flatcar in her hand and pulling a long length of it out of the snow.

  “Yes, you have to shuck them first of their husks. She says they are made of things sometimes that are not digestible.”

  Verity nodded and said, “I’m sure that’s true. Now then, which of you can give me a flame hot enough to melt this chain?”

  “I’m the hottest because I’m the oldest,” Copperwise said.

  “You’re too old. You’ve lost some of the spark for your flame. I’ll help the Beadspinner.”

  “You can both help me. I need several melts. You can take turns. Loveday, take the end of this and fly away from me a few feet. That’s it.” The young dragon did as she was bid. Verity showed Copperwise where she wanted a melt and no sooner was it said than done. “Now another,” she said. “Loveday, your turn is coming.”

  When a length of chain long enough to go around her wrist was melted, she had Copperwise melt the ends together. Then Copperwise held the end and Loveday did the melts. She only really needed three bracelets, but had to give the dragons an equal share of turns so she made four, put the cooled first one on her wrist and draped the other three over her hand, climbing on the flat car and heading for the engine.