Dragonfield: And Other Stories

by Jane Yolen

  It was Janney Hyatt at the press conference who posed the question Gabe had hoped not to have to answer.

  “Do you consider Thomas Eddystone a hero?” she asked.

  Gabe, conscious of the entire staff, both yellow and green smocks, behind him, took a moment before speaking. At last he said, “There are no heroes in Hydrospace. But if there were, Tommy Eddystone would be one. I want you all to remember this: he died for his dream, but the dream still lives. It lives Down Under. And we’re going to make Tom Eddystone’s dream come true. We’re going to build cities and farms, a whole civilization, down under the sea. I think—no, I know—he would have liked it that way.”

  Out in the ocean, the herd members chased one another through the corridors of the sea. Mating season was over. The female drifted off alone. The bulls butted heads, then bodysurfed in pairs along the coast. Their lives were long, their memories short. They did not know how to mourn.

  The Girl Who Cried Flowers

  IN ANCIENT GREECE, WHERE the spirits of beautiful women were said to dwell in trees, a girl was born who cried flowers. Tears never fell from her eyes. Instead blossoms cascaded down her cheeks: scarlet, gold, and blue in the spring, and snow-white in the fall.

  No one knew her real mother and father. She had been found one day wrapped in a blanket of woven grasses in the crook of an olive tree. The shepherd who found her called her Olivia after the tree and brought her home to his childless wife. Olivia lived with them as their daughter, and grew into a beautiful girl.

  At first her strangeness frightened the villagers. But after a while, Olivia charmed them all with her gentle, giving nature. It was not long before the villagers were showing her off to any traveler who passed their way. For every stranger, Olivia would squeeze a tiny tear-blossom from her eyes. And that is how her fame spread throughout the land.

  But soon a tiny tear-blossom was not enough. Young men wanted nosegays to give to the girls they courted. Young women wanted garlands to twine in their hair. The priests asked for bouquets to bank their altars. And old men and women begged funeral wreaths against the time of their deaths.

  To all these requests, Olivia said yes. And so she had to spend her days thinking sad thoughts, listening to tragic tales, and crying mountains of flowers to make other people happy. Still, she did not complain, for above all things Olivia loved making other people happy—even though it made her sad.

  Then one day, when she was out in her garden looking at the far mountains and trying to think of sad things to fill her mind, a young man came by. He was strong enough for two, but wise enough to ask for help when he needed it. He had heard of Olivia’s magical tears and had come to beg a garland for his own proud sweetheart.

  But when he saw Olivia, the thought of his proud sweetheart went entirely out of the young man’s mind. He sat down by Olivia’s feet and started to tell her tales, for though he was a farmer, he had the gift of telling that only true storytellers have. Soon Olivia was smiling, then laughing in delight, as the tales rolled off his tongue.

  “Stop,” she said at last. “I do not even know your name.”

  “I am called Panos,” he said.

  “Then, Panos, if you must tell me tales—and indeed I hope you never stop—tell me sad ones. I must fill myself with sorrow if I am to give you what you want.”

  “I want only you,” he said, for is errand had been long forgotten. “And that is a joyous thing.”

  For a time it was true. Panos and Olivia were married and lived happily in a small house at the end of the village. Panos worked long hours in the fields while Olivia kept their home neat and spotless. In the evenings they laughed together over Panos’ stories or over the happenings of the day, for Panos had forbidden Olivia ever to cry again. He said it made him sad to see her sad. And as she wanted only to make him happy, Olivia never let even the smallest tear come to her eyes.

  But one day, an old lady waited until Panos had gone off to the fields and then came to Olivia’s house to borrow a cup of oil.

  “How goes it?” asked Olivia innocently, for since her marriage to Panos, she had all but forsaken the villagers. And indeed, since she would not cry flowers for them, the villagers had forsaken her in return.

  The old lady sighed. She was fine, she explained, but for one small thing. Her granddaughter was being married in the morning and needed a crown of blue and gold flowers. But, the crafty old lady said, since Olivia was forbidden to cry any more blossoms her granddaughter would have to go to the wedding with none.

  “If only I could make her just one small crown,” thought Olivia. She became so sad at the thought that she could not give the girl flowers without hurting Panos that tears came unbidden to her eyes. They welled up, and as they started down her cheeks, they turned to petals and fluttered to the floor.

  The old lady quickly gathered up the blossoms and, without a word more, left for home.

  Soon all the old ladies were stopping by for a cup of oil. The old men, too, found excuses to stray by Olivia’s door. Even the priest paid her a call and, after telling Olivia all the troubles of the parish, left with a bouquet for the altar of his church.

  All this time Panos was unaware of what was happening. But he saw that Olivia was growing thin, that her cheeks were furrowed, and her eyes rimmed with dark circles. He realized that she barely slept at night. And so he tried to question her.

  “What is it, dear heart?” he asked out of love.

  But Olivia did not dare answer.

  “Who has been here?” he roared out of fear.

  But Olivia was still. Whatever she answered would have been wrong. So she turned her head and held back the tears just as Panos wished, letting them go only during the day when they would be useful to strangers.

  One day, when Olivia was weeping a basket full of Maiden’s Breath for a wedding, Panos came home unexpectedly from the fields. He stood in the doorway and stared at Olivia who sat on the floor surrounded by the lacy blossoms.

  Panos knew then all that had happened. What he did not know was why. He held up his hands as if in prayer, but his face was filled with anger. He could not say a word.

  Olivia looked at him, blossoms streaming from her eyes. “How can I give you what you want?” she asked. “How can I give all of you what you want?”

  Panos had no answer for her but the anger in his face. Olivia jumped up and ran past him out the door.

  All that day Panos stayed in the house. His anger was so fierce he could not move. But by the time evening came, his anger had turned to sadness, and he went out to look for his wife.

  Though the sun had set, he searched for her, following the trail of flowers. All that night the scent of the blossoms led him around the village and through the olive groves. Just as the sun was rising, the flowers ended at the tree where Olivia had first been found.

  Under the tree was a small house made entirely of flowers, just large enough for a single person. Its roof was of scarlet lilies and its walls of green ivy. The door was blue Glory-of-the-snow and the handle a blood-red rose.

  Panos called out, “Olivia?” but there was no answer. He put his hand to the rose handle and pushed the door open. As he opened the door, the rose thorns pierced his palm, and a single drop of his blood fell to the ground.

  Panos looked inside the house of flowers, but Olivia was not there. Then he felt something move at his feet, and he looked down.

  Where his blood had touched the ground, a small olive tree was beginning to grow. As Panos watched, the tree grew until it pushed up the roof of the house. Its leaves became crowned with the scarlet lilies. And as Panos looked closely at the twisted trunk of the tree, he saw the figure of a woman.

  “Olivia,” he cried, for indeed it was she.

  Panos built a small hut by the tree and lived there for the rest of his life. The olive tree was a strange one, unlike any of the others in the grove. For among its branches twined every kind of flower. Its leaves were covered with the softest petals: scarlet, gold
, and blue in the spring, and snow-white in the fall. There were always enough flowers on the tree for anyone who asked, as well as olives enough for Panos to eat and to sell.

  It was said by the villagers—who guessed what they did not know—that each night a beautiful woman came out of the tree and stayed with Panos in his hut until dawn.

  When at last Panos grew old and died, he was buried under the tree. Though the tree grew for many years more, it never had another blossom. And all the olives that it bore from then on were as bitter and salty as tears.

  Dryad’s Lament

  I FEEL MOST ALIVE just before the dark

  when I can touch the underside of leaf,

  the back of graven names,

  (a knife’s valentine, now unremembered grief);

  or feel along the bellyside of bark

  some insect’s green attempt at art.

  I am trapped here by the sun

  within my leafy prison, my fortress glade.

  Only at night can I depart,

  a shadow among shadows,

  a shade amidst shade,

  less alive than my own tree

  though human-seeming and seeming-free.

  The Inn of the Demon Camel

  IT WAS IN THIS very place, my lords, my ladies, during the reign of the Levar Ozle the Crooked Back, two hundred years to this very day (the year 3117 for those of you whose fingers limit the counting), that the great bull camel, afterwards known as The Demon, was born.

  Oh, he was, an unprepossessing calf, hardly humped, and with a wandering left eye. (You must remember that eye, Excellencies.)

  The master of the calf was a bleak-spirited little man, an innkeeper the color of camel dung, who would have sold the little beast if he could. But who wanted such a burden? So instead of selling the calf, his master whipped him. It was meant to be training, my Magnificencies, but as any follower of the Way knows, the whip is a crooked teacher. What that little calf learned was not what his master taught.

  And he grew. How he grew. From Buds to Flowers, he developed a hump the size of a wine grape. From Flowers to Meadows, the grape became a gourd. It took from Meadows all the way till Fog and Frost, but the hump became a heap and he had legs and feet—and teeth—to match. And that wandering left eye. (You must remember that eye, my Eminences.)

  Without a hump he was simply a small camel with a tendency to balk. With the grape hump he was a medium-sized camel who loved to grind his teeth. With the gourd hump, he was a large camel with a vicious spitting range. But with the heap—O, my Graces—and the wandering eye (you must remember that eye) the camel was a veritable demon and so Demon became his name.

  And is it not written in The Book of the Twin Forces that one may be born with a fitting name or one may grow to fit the same one is born with? You may, yourselves, puzzle out the way of The Demon’s name, for I touch upon that no more.

  It came to pass, therefore, that the innkeeper owned a great bull camel of intolerably nasty disposition: too stringy to eat, too temperamental to drive, too infamous to sell, too ugly to breed. But since it was a camel, and a man’s worth is measured in the number of camels he owns and oxen he pastures and horses he rides, the innkeeper would not kill the beast outright.

  There happened one day, this very day in fact, 195 years to this very day during the reign of Levar Tinzli the Cleft Chinned (3122 for those of you whose toes limit the counting), that three unrelated strangers came to stay at the inn. One was a bald ship’s captain who had lost his ship (and consequently his hair) upon the Eel Island rocks. One was a broken-nosed young farmer come south to join the Levar’s Guard. And one was an overfed mendicant priest who wore a white turban in which was set a jewel as black and shiny and ripe as a grape.

  Was not the innkeeper abustle then in the oily manner of his tribe! He bowed a hundred obeisances to the priest, for the black jewel promised a high gratuity. He bowed half a hundred obeisances to the farmer, for his letter of introduction to the Guards promised compensations to come. And he bowed a quarter-hundred obeisances to the ship’s captain because riches in the past can sometimes be a guarantee of riches later on. Thus did the innkeeper count his profits, not into the palm but into the future. As you know, Graciousnesses, it is not always a safe method of tabulation.

  They ignored the innkeeper’s flatteries and demanded rooms, which he managed to turn up at once, his inn being neither on Rose Row nor favored by such worthies as yourselves. He served his guests an execrable meal of Ashless stew and an excellent mountain wine, the one cancelling the other, and so they passed the night, their new-forged friendships made agreeable by the inn’s well-stocked cellar. Thus lullabied by strong drink, the three slept until nearly noon.

  Now perhaps all that followed would not have, had it not occurred on the seventeenth day of Buds, for it was the very day on which four of the five mentioned in our story had been born, though they recognized it not.

  The captain, who had been birthed that day forty years in the past, did not believe in such birth luck, trusting only to his own skill—which is perhaps why he had fetched up so promptly on the shoals of the Eel.

  The young farmer was an orphan who had been found on a doorstep some twenty years past, and so had never really known his true birth day. His foster parents counted it five days after the seventeenth, the morning they had tripped over his basket and thus smashed the infant’s nose.

  And the priest, who had been born some sixty years in the past, had been given a new birth date by the master of his faith who had tried, in this way, to twist luck to his own ends.

  So that was three. But I did say four. And it is not of the innkeeper I now speak, for he knew full well his luck day was the twenty-seventh of Wind. But he had forgot that the bull camel, The Demon, humped and with the wandering eye (you must remember that eye, Exultancies) had emerged head first and spitting five years ago to that very day.

  An animal casts no luck, neither good nor bad, you say, my Supremacies? And where is that bit of wisdom writ? Believe me when I tell you that the seventeenth day of Buds was the source of the problem. I have no reason to lie.

  So there they were, three birth days sequestered and snoring under the one inn roof and the fourth feeding on straw in the stable. Together they invented the rest of my small tale and invested it with the worst of ill luck, which led to the haunting of the place from that day on.

  It happened in this manner, Preeminencies and, pray, you must remember that wandering eye.

  The sun glinting on the roof of the Levar’s palace pierced the gloom of the inn and woke our five on that fateful day in Buds. The camel was up first, stretching, spitting, chewing loudly, and complaining. But as he was tucked away in the stable, no one heard him. Next up was the innkeeper, stretching, grimacing, creaking loudly, and complaining to himself. Then in order of descending age, the three guests arose—first the priest, then the captain, and last the farmer. All stretching, sighing, scratching loudly, and complaining to the innkeeper about the fleas.

  They gathered for a desultory breakfast and, as it was a lovely day, one of the lambent mornings in Buds when the air is soft and full of bright promise, that meal was served outdoors under a red-striped awning next to the stable.

  The camel, ignoring the presence of ox and ass, chose to stick his head into the human conversation, and so the concatenation began.

  The three guests were sitting at the table, a round table, with a basket of sweet bread between them, a small crock of butter imprinted with the insignia of the inn to one side, and to the other a steaming urn of kaf, dark and heady, and a small pitcher of milk.

  The talk turned to magic.

  “I do not believe in it,” spake the captain.

  “I am not sure,” said the farmer.

  “Believe me, I know,” the mendicant priest put in and at that same moment turned his head toward the right to look at a plate of fresh raw shellfish that had been deposited there.

  Now that placed his head—and atop it t
he turban with the jewel, black and shiny and ripe as a grape—slightly below the camel’s nose, and it, great protuberance that it was, sensitive to every movement and smell carried by the soft air of Buds.

  Well the turban tickled the nose; the camel, insulted, spat; the priest slapped the beast who snapped back at the priest’s hand.

  But you did not—I hope, Ascendencies—forget that wandering eye?

  For the camel’s eye caused him to miss the offending hand and snap up the black jewel instead.

  At which the priest fainted. Then rallied. Then fainted again, clutching his chest and emitting a scream rather like that of a Tichenese woman in labor: “Ee-eah, ee-eah, ee-eee-ehai.”

  The captain leaped to his feet, upsetting the table, bread, butter, shellfish, milk, and kaf, and drawing his knife. The farmer simultaneously unsheathed his sword, a farewell gift from his parents. The innkeeper hovered over the priest, fanning him with a dirty apron. And the camel gulped and rolled his wandering eye.

  At that, the priest sat up. “The jewel,” he gasped. “It contains the magic of my master.”

  To which sentence the captain responded by knifing the camel in the front. This so startled the farmer, he sunk his sword into the camel up to its hilt from behind. The priest fell back, screamlessly, into his faint. The innkeeper began to weep over his bleeding beast. And the camel closed his wandering eye and died. Of course by his death the luck—such as it was—was freed.

  And do you think, Extremities, by this the tale is now done? It is only halfway finished for, in the course of the telling, I have told you only what seemed to have happened, not that which, in actuality, occurred.

  The priest at last revived and offered this explanation. The master of his faith, a magician of great power but little ambition, had invested his luck in a necklace of ten black jewels which he distributed to his nine followers (it was a very small sect). He kept but one jewel for himself. Then each year, the nine members of the faith traveled the roads of Liavek letting the master’s magic reach out and touch someone. But now, with a tenth of his master’s luck swallowed and—with the camel’s death—freed, there was no knowing what might happen.