Dragonfield: And Other Stories

by Jane Yolen

  To the right of the harbor street was a group of shops and, she sensed, a back alley or two. The smell of it—sharp, mysterious, inviting—drew her in.

  She ignored the main street and its big-windowed stores. A small cobbled path ran between two buildings and she slipped into it as comfortably as a well-worn slipper. There were several branchings, and Mrs. Stambley checked each one out with her watery blue eyes. Then she chose one. She knew it would be the right one. As she often said to her group at home, “I have a gift, a power. I am never wrong about it.”

  Here there were several small, dilapidated shops that seemed to edge one into the other. They had a worn look as if they had sat huddled together, the damp wind blowing off the river mouldering their bones, while a bright new town had been built up around them. The windows were dirty, finger-streaked. Only the most intrepid shopper would find the way into them. There were no numbers on the doors.

  The first store was full of maps. And if Mrs. Stambley hadn’t already spent her paper allowance (she maintained separate monies for paper, gold, and oddities) on a rare chart of the McCodrun ancestry, she might have purchased a map of British waters that was decorated with tritons blowing “their wreathed horns” as the bent-over shopkeeper had quoted. She had been sorely tempted. Mrs. Stambley collected “objets d’mer”, as she called them. Sea antiquities. Sea magic was her specialty in the group. But the lineage of the Clan McCodrun—the reputed descendents of the selchies—had wiped out her comfortable paper account. And Mrs. Stambley, who was always precise in her reckonings, never spent more than her allotment. As the group’s treasurer she had to keep the others in line. She could do no less for herself.

  So she oohed and aahed at the map for the storekeeper’s benefit and because it was quite beautiful and probably seventeenth century. She even managed to talk him down several pounds on the price, keeping her hand in as it were. But she left smiling her thanks. And he had been so impressed with the American lady’s knowledge of the sea and its underwater folk, he smiled back even though she had bought nothing.

  The next two shops were total wastes of time. One was full of reproductions and second-hand, badly painted china cups and cracked glassware. Mrs. Stambley sniffed as she left, muttering under her breath “Junk—spelled j-u-n-q-u-e,” not even minding that the lady behind the counter heard her. The other store had been worse, a so-called craft shop full of hand-made tea cosies and poorly chrocheted afghans in simply appalling colors.

  As she entered the fourth shop, Mrs. Stambley caught her breath. The smell was there, the smell of deep-sea magic. So deep and dark it might have been called up from the Marianas Trench. In all her years of hunting, she had never had such a find. She put her right hand over her heart and stumbled a bit, scuffing one of her sensible shoes. Then she straightened up and looked around.

  The shop was a great deal longer than it was wide, with a staircase running up about halfway along the wall. The rest of the walls were lined with china cupboards in which Victorian and Edwardian cups and saucers were tastefully displayed. One in particular caught her eye because it had a Poseidon on the side. She walked over to look at it, but the magic smell did not come from there.

  Books in stacks on the floor blocked her path, and she looked through a few to see what there was. She found an almost complete Brittanica, the 1913 edition, missing only the thirteenth volume. There was a first edition of Fort’s Book of the Damned, and a dark grimmoire so water stained she could make out none of the spells. There were three paperbook copies of Folklore of the Sea, a pleasant volume she had at home. And even the obscure Melusine or the Mistress from the Sea in both English and French.

  She walked carefully around the books and looked for a moment at three glass cases containing fine replicas of early schooners, even down to the carved figureheads. One was of an Indian maiden, one an angel, one an unnamed muse with long, flowing hair. But she already had several such at home, her favorite a supposed replica of the legendary ship of the Flying Dutchman. Looking cost nothing, though, and so she looked for quite a while, giving herself time to become used to the odor of the deep magic.

  She almost backed into a fourth case, and when she turned around, she got the shock of her life.

  In a glass showcase with brass fittings, resting on two wooden holders, was a Malaysian Mer.

  She had read about them, of course, in the footnotes of obscure folklore journals and in a grimmoire of specialized sea spells, but she had never in her wildest imaginings thought to see one. They were said to have disappeared totally.

  They were not really mermen, of course. Rather, they were constructs made by Malaysian natives out of monkeys and fish. The Malaysians killed the monkeys, cut off the top halfs from the navel up, and sewed on a fish tail. The mummified remains were then sold to innocent British tars in Victorian times. The natives had called the mummies mermen and the young sailors believed them, brought the Mers home and gave them to loved ones.

  And here, resting on its wooden stands, was a particularly horrible example of one, probably rescued from an attic where it had lain all these years, dust-covered, rotting.

  It was gray-green, with the gray more predominant, and so skeletal its rib cage reminded Mrs. Stambley of the pictures of starving children in Africa. Its arms were held stiffly in front as if it were doing an out-of-water dogpaddle. The grimacing face, big-lipped, big eared, stared in horror out at her. She could not see the stitches that held the monkey half to the fish half.

  “I see you like our Mer,” came a voice from behind her, but Mrs. Stambley did not turn. She simply could not take her eyes from the grotesque mummy in the glass and brass case.

  “A Malaysian Mer,” Mrs. Stambley whispered. One part of her noticed the price sticker on the side of the glass—three hundred pounds. Six hundred American dollars. It was more than she had with her… but. …

  “You know what it is, then,” the voice went on. “That is too bad. Too bad.”

  The Mer blinked its lashless lids and turned its head. Its eyes were black as shrouds, without irises. When it rolled its lips back, it showed sharp yellow-gray teeth. It had no tongue.

  Mrs. Stambley tried to look away and could not. Instead she felt herself being drawn down, down, down into the black deeps of those eyes.

  “That really is too bad,” came the voice again, but now it was very far away and receding quickly.

  Mrs. Stambley tried to open her mouth to scream, but only bubbles came out. All around her it was dark and cold and wet, and still she was pulled downward until she landed, with a jarring thud, on a sandy floor. She stood, brushed her skirts down, and settled her hat back on her head. Then, as she placed her pocketbook firmly under one arm, she felt a grip on her ankle, as if seaweed wanted to root her to that spot. She started to struggle against it when a change in the current against her face forced her to look up.

  The Mer was swimming towards her, lazily, as if it had all the time in the world to reach her.

  She stopped wasting her strength in fighting the seaweed manacle, and instead cautiously fingered open her pocketbook. All the while she watched the Mer which had already halved the distance between them. Its mouth was opening and closing with terrifying snaps. Its bony fingers, with opaque webbings, seemed to reach out for her. Its monkey face grinned. Behind it was a dark, roiling wake.

  The water swirled about Mrs. Stambley, picking at her skirt, flipping the hem to show her slip. Above the swimming Mer, high above, she could see the darker shadows of circling sharks waiting for what the Mer would leave them, but even they feared coming any closer while he was on the hunt.

  And then he was close enough so that she could see the hollow of his mouth, the scissored teeth, the black nails, the angry pulsing beat of the webbings. The sound he made was like the groans and creaks of a sinking ship, and came to her through the filtering of the water.

  Her hand was inside the pocketbook now, fingers closing on the wallet and into the change purse for the wren feathers sh
e kept there. She grabbed them up and held them before her. They were air magic, stronger than that of the sea, and blessed in church. It was luck against seafolk. Her hand trembled only slightly. She spoke a word of power that was washed from her lips into the troubled water.

  For a moment the Mer stopped, holding his gray hands before his face.

  The seaweed around Mrs. Stambley’s ankle slithered away. She kicked her foot out and found she was free.

  But above, a Great White Shark turned suddenly, sending a wash of new water across Mrs. Stambley’s front. The tiny feathers broke and she had to let them go. They floated past the Mer and were gone.

  He put down his hands, made the monkey grin at her again, and resumed swimming. But she knew—as he did—that he was not immune to her knowledge. It gave her some slight hope.

  Her hand went back into the purse and found the zippered pocket. She unzipped it and drew out seven small bones, taken from a male horseshoe crab found on the Elizabeth Islands off the coast near Boston. They were strong sea magic and she counted heavily on them. She wrapped her fingers around the seven, held them first to her breast, then to her forehead, then flung them at the Mer.

  The bones sailed between them and in the filtered light seemed to dance and grow and change and cling together at last into a maze.

  Mrs. Stambley kicked her feet, sending up a trough of bubbles, and holding her hat with one hand, her purse with the other, eeled into the bone-maze. She knew that it would hold for only a minute or two at best.

  Behind her she could hear the hunting cry of the Mer as it searched for a way in. She ignored it and kicked her feet in a steady rhythm, propelling herself into the heart of the maze. Going in was always easier than coming out. Her bubble trail would lead the Mer through once he found the entrance. For now she could still hear him knocking against the walls.

  Her purse held one last bit of magic. It was a knife that had been given up by the sea, left on a beach on the North Shore, near Rockport. It had a black handle with a guard and she had mounted a silver coin on its shaft.

  The sea water laid shifting patterns on the blade that looked now like fire, now like air, the calligraphy of power. Mrs. Stambley knew better than to try and read it. Instead she turned towards the passage where the Mer would have to appear. The knife in her right hand, her hat askew, the purse locked under her left arm, Mrs. Stambley guessed she did not look like a seasoned fighter. But in magic, as any good witch knew, seeming was all important. And she was not about to give up.

  “Great Lir,” she spoke, and her human tongue added extra urgency to the bubbles which flowered from her mouth. “Bull-roarer Poseidon, spear-thrower Neptune, mighty Njord, shrewish Ran, cleft-tailed Dagon, hold me safe in the green palms of your hands. Bring me safely from the sea. And when I am home, I will gift you and yours.”

  From somewhere near an animal called, a bull, a horse, a great sea serpent. It was her answer. In moments she would know what it meant. She put her right hand with the knife behind her and waited.

  The water in the maze began to churn angrily and the Mer came around the final turning. Seeing Mrs. Stambley backed against the flimsy wall, he laughed. The laugh cascaded out of his mouth in a torrent of bubbles. Their popping made a peculiar punctuation to his mirth. Then he showed his horrible teeth once again, swung his tail to propel himself forward, and moved in for the kill.

  Mrs. Stambley kept the knife hidden until the very last moment. And then, as the Mer’s skeletal arms reached out for her, as the fingers of his hands actually pressed against her neck and his sharp incisors began to bear down on her throat, she whipped her arms around and slashed at his side. He drew back in pain, and then she knifed him again, as expertly as if she were filleting a fish. He arched his back, opened his mouth in a silent scream of bubbles, and rose slowly towards the white light of the surface.

  The maze vanished. Mrs. Stambley stuffed the knife back into her purse, then put her hands over her head, and rose too, leaving a trail of bubbles as dark as blood behind.

  “Too bad,” the voice was finishing.

  Mrs. Stambley turned around the smiled blandly, patting her hat into place. “Yes, I know,” she said. “It’s too bad it is in such bad condition. For three hundred pounds, I would want something a bit better cared for.”

  She stepped aside.

  The shopkeeper, a wizened, painted old lady with a webbing between her second and third fingers, breathed in sharply. In the showcase, the mummied Mer had tipped over on its back. Along one side was a deep, slashing wound. The chest cavity was hollow. It stank. Under the body were seven small knobby sticks that looked surprisingly like bones.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Stambley continued, not bothering to apologize for her hasty exit, “rather poor condition. Shocking what some folk will try to palm off on tourists. Luckily I know better.” She exited through the front door and was relieved to find that sun lit the small alleyway. She put her hand to her ample bosom and breathed deeply.

  “Wait, just wait until I tell the group,” she said aloud. Then she threaded her way back to the main street where the other tourists and their guide were coming down the hill. Mrs. Stambley walked briskly towards them, straightening her hat once again and smiling. Not even the thought of the lost triton map could dampen her spirits. The look of surprise on the face of that old witch of a shopkeeper had been worth the scare. Only what could she give to the gods that would be good enough? It was a thought that she could puzzle over all the way home.

  Into the Wood

  Let us enter the wood.

  Take my hand.

  I feel your fear

  rise on your palm,

  a map beneath my fingers.

  Can you decipher

  the pulsing code

  that beats at my wrist?

  I do not need to see

  dragons

  to know there are

  dragons here.

  The back of my neck knows,

  the skin of my inner thighs.

  There, among the alders,

  between twin beeches,

  the gray-white pilasters

  twined with wild grape,

  stands a pavilion,

  inferior Palladian in style.

  Who sleeps on the antique couch?

  I hear a thin scraping,

  a belly through dead leaves,

  a long, hollow good-by,

  thin, full of scales,

  modal, descending sounds.

  In the dark

  there will be eyes

  thick as starshine,

  a galaxy of watchers

  beneath the trailing vine.

  And trillium,

  the red of heart’s blood,

  spills between rocks

  to mark the path.

  Do not, for God’s sake,

  let my hand go.

  Do not, for God’s sake,

  speak.

  I know what is here

  and what is not,

  and if we do not

  name it aloud

  it will do us no harm.

  So the spells go,

  so the tales go,

  and I must believe it so.

  The Tower Bird

  THERE WAS ONCE A king who sat all alone in the top of a high tower room. He saw no one all day long except a tiny golden finch who brought him nuts and seeds and berries out of which the king made a thin, bitter wine.

  What magic had brought him to the room, what binding curse kept him there, the king did not know. The curving walls of the tower room, the hard-backed throne, the corbeled window, and the bird were all he knew.

  He thought he remembered a time when he had ruled a mighty kingdom; when men had fought at his bidding and women came at his call. Past battles, past loves, were played again and again in his dreams. He found scars on his arms and legs and back to prove them. But his memory had no real door to them, just as the tower room had no real door, only a thin line filled in with bricks.

&
nbsp; Each morning the king went to the window that stood head-high in the wall. The window was too small for anything but his voice. He called out, his words spattering into the wind.

  Little bird, little bird.

  Come to my hand.

  Sing me of my kingdom,

  Tell me of my land.

  A sudden whirring in the air, and the bird was there, perched on the stone sill.

  “O King,” the bird began, for it was always formal in its address. “O King, what would you know?”

  “Is the land green or sere?” asked the king.

  The bird put its head to one side as if considering. It opened its broad little beak several times before answering. “It is in its proper season.”

  Color suffused the king’s face. He was angry with the evasion. He stuttered his second question. “Is … is the kingdom at peace or is it at war?” he asked.

  “The worm is in the apple,” replied the bird, “but the apple is not yet plucked.”

  The king clutched the arms of his throne. Every day his questions met with the same kinds of answers. Either this was all a test or a. jest, a dreaming, or an enchantment too complex for his understanding.

  “One more question, O King,” said the finch. Under its golden breast a tiny pulse quickened.

  The king opened his mouth to speak. “Is … is…” No more words came out. He felt something cracking inside as if, with his heart, his whole world were breaking.