Ephemera looked after him, grinning. “Lizards are not really cut out for glaciers. They like warm places.”
“Maybe he’ll have to befriend the dragons,” Toby said. “If they’ll have aught to do with him.”
Chapter 35
Queenston Again
Verity’s mother was the Gypsy Molly again once she had shown the spellbound Queenston elite out the door and they had returned to the train, Malachy Sieke carrying Sophronia, who had fainted, having witnessed Briciu’s transformation. Verity, Toby, Uncle Nic, and Captain Louisa Lewis remained behind to await the next train on the Velasco/Queenston run.
Verity stood still while her mother walked counter-clockwise circles around her and recited in dramatic tones the warding words from Ephemera’s books.
“I hope this works,” Verity said. “Nobody has believed in magic for a very long time.”
“They do now,” Romany replied. “Your little demonstration will stick with them for a while. Malachy Sieke has been spell-bound to work with Toby on rehabilitating the dragon breeding and training program as well. Taz was excited. She seems to have acquired an interest in a young male the last time Toby was employed there.
“I have one more thing to say to you, daughter. Your objections to seizing power right now, well, I understand them. At least until you build your own alliance. But promise me you will do so as quickly as possible. You will know I speak the truth when I tell you this country has need of you and you must take up the wand of power soon. The very fact that you are reluctant to do so until you are prepared proves to me as nothing else might that you have the qualities it takes to rule. No, no. Don’t object. You lack confidence now because the time is not quite upon you. But soon.”
Verity felt so shaky after her near strangulation and partial possession by the wraith of a wizard that she pleaded. “Can you not stay with me for a while?”
“I cannot. I’m needed elsewhere. Nic will keep watch on you and from time to time I will be watching, too. Don’t worry. You are from my bloodlines. You are destined to rule. Farewell.” And with a last embrace and kisses on both cheeks, she was gone.
Verity, feeling unsettled and dissatisfied, glanced at Uncle Nic.
“Yes,” he said. “I hate it when she does that, too.”
The train back to Queenston was full of other passengers and left no privacy to discuss the preceding events. Uncle Nic curled up on one of the benches to sleep with his coat over him like a blanket.
Captain Lewis, still in the ornate Admiral’s uniform, said a little shyly, “Come to the Changelings tonight, will you, sweetie? You look like you could use a little fun.”
She wanted to demur, but no one was at her home except for the servants. The events of the last few months had distracted her from her grief, but as she passed her father’s workshop, she was once more overwhelmed with sadness.
Uncle Nic had left the train to catch the northbound for Our Lady, where he would set about recruiting the one teacher she had liked and felt could advise her. Changelings didn’t open for another hour and a half, so she hired a cab to Madame Marsha’s stall, where several other women also were sewing on new treadle machines. Madame had returned on the earlier train from Wormroost. Verity commissioned another wardrobe, since she had had no time to search for her luggage since escaping Vitia’s cavern. The bright fashion chatter and the fabrics, trims, and colors diverted her for a moment from her sadness.
Her head was still spinning when she walked up the pier to the Changelings. Madame Louisa was in the middle of a number and waved at her from the stage. The octopus bartender waved, too, in an eight-armed wave.
Some of the people were dancing.
She sat at a table to the side of the stage and sipped a sweet cider drink. When Louisa’s number ended, she floated over to Verity in a cloud of ostrich feathers and with one hand swept her skirts back as she sank into a very deep courtesy, one finger at her chin. “Your Highness!”
“Belay that, Madame,” Verity said. “I abdicated for the moment.”
“A good decision. You wouldn’t be able to have any real fun if you had to hang ’round decreein’ things all day.”
“I quite agree.”
“Let me slip into something more practical,” she said. When she emerged she wore a simple divided skirt and striped sweater under a peacoat. Her hair was pulled back and up so only the back curled against her coat collar.
Tucking her arm through Verity’s, she led her out onto the pier’s promenade. “Do you trust me, dear?”
“Should I?”
“Oh, my yes. I have grown very fond of you.”
“Just checking.”
“I quite understand what with all of the skullduggery lately.”
“I do trust you,” she said, feeling not the slightest pang at the lady captain’s assurance.
Moonlit Mer
“We need to take a little boat ride. No, no, not the ship. Just my little skiff I use to paddle about. There’s something you must see.”
In the moonlight and shadows cast by the gaslights on the pier, Captain Louisa Lewis’s eyes were shining with suppressed excitement and Verity wondered what on earth they were to see, since the crew had already recovered the fatal chain.
The captain rowed expertly out into the bay, until shore was no longer visible, then stopped as the calm sea washed them gently back and forth. The night was clear with a gibbous moon and no clouds. And quiet. Very quiet.
Until the singing began, sounding far away at first but gradually drawing a little nearer. It was the most beautiful singing she had ever heard and she reached for the oars to row closer to hear it better, but the captain held them firmly and would not row.
“Just listen,” she whispered. The singing was so compelling, she knew it must be the siren song of the mer, and she wondered where they were. There was something unusual about this singing, too. It issued not from a lone female with a mirror and comb. No, this was an entire chorus of thrilling silken voices—with one taking up a low velvety harmony.
The reflection of the moon in the water outlined five heads and shoulders against the rest of the sea. All seemed to have long, water soaked hair, but one also seemed to have a beard.
“There are—mer men?” she whispered.
“Sometimes. Occasionally. Listen.”
She did. The song segued into something more familiar. Very familiar.
It was a melodious recitation of the railroad timetables, a lullaby her father once used to sing her to sleep. “How did they… ?”
By then they were close enough that she heard something else.
“That’s Papa!” she cried.
“Shhh,” she said. But it was too late. Tails smacked the water and the heads disappeared, leaving only ripples.
“He’s alive! Pa—”
Captain Lewis shushed her. “I doubt he’ll remember you, Petal. He’s a merman now. I’m told by those who saw it that the mer found him drowning and recognized the kinship. So they turned him. He can never return to land again, but he is, as you see, alive. Now that you’re back, we can work on getting a reunion, but he’s been brought back from the dead and undergone a profound change. He may not remember you.”
“He must! He used to sing me that song.”
“Perhaps. But he belongs to them now, and they are seldom so friendly to men—or women either for that matter. They gave me the chain and told me about the strange kinsman who arrived with it, but when I showed interest in him, they became a little hostile.”
“I don’t care. It’s Papa!”
Her heart lifted and longed at the same time to find him again.
But the songs had gone still and the slight murmur of the waves beneath arms and tails had likewise faded to the soft hiss of the calm sea.
“I thought as much, but I waited to tell you because I wasn’t sure.”
She wanted to dive in after him, but she felt the estrangement the captain hinted at. This was not the night to pursue it, and it w
as enough to know that he was alive and magic was afoot (or rather a-tail) in Argonia.
Family Reunion
Vitia and the hatchlings graduated from their quarters inside the glacier to a high perch upon it from which they terrified the villagers when Loveday and Copperwise swooped down on the herds for dinner. Every day, Vitia’s wings grew a little stronger, and the twins knew how much their mother yearned for her lair. Now that Beadspinner was gone, they longed for their own mountains, which they had yet to explore properly.
One day as they were out picking up pork for supper, the animals ran harder than ever and the people in the nearby village shrieked and ran for cover. The pounding of great wings drummed over the railroad tracks as a magnificent drake flew in from the eye of the sun. “Vitia! Light of my life, I heard you were nearly slain and captured and came to take in our children if it were true, but I burn with joy to find that it is not now. My lady yet lives!”
“Oh, Bunjil, seeing you flutters the wind beneath my tattered wings. My heart, if not the rest of me just yet, soars. Assist me, my heart’s fire, and our whole family will fly homeward once more.”
Two pigs gratefully ran for their lives that day as the dragon family winged away, gaseous with love and joy, deciding to pick something up when they broke their flight in Brazoria.
About the Author
Elizabeth Ann Scarborough is the author of 25 solo fantasy and science fiction novels, including the 1989 Nebula award winning Healer’s War, loosely based on her service as an Army Nurse in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. She has collaborated on 16 novels with Anne McCaffrey, six in the best selling Petaybee series and eight in the YA bestselling Acorna series, and most recently, the Tales of the Barque Cat series, Catalyst and Catacombs (from Del Rey). Recently she has converted all of her previously published solo novels to eBooks with the assistance of Gypsy Shadow Publishing, under her own Fortune imprint. Spam Vs. the Vampire was her first exclusive novel for eBook and print on demand publication, followed by Father Christmas (a Spam the Cat Christmas novella) and The Tour Bus of Doom. The Dragon, the Witch, and the Railroad is her newest exclusive novel in The Seashell Archives series.
WEBSITE: http://www. eascarborough.com
DEDICATED BOOK SITE: http://scarbor9.wix.com/beadtime-stories
BLOG: http://spamslitterature.wordpress.com/
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/KBDundee
FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/elizabeth.a.scarborough
OTHER: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4811383.K_B_Dundee
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