The Keeping Place

by Isobelle Carmody

  “Who are you?” the smaller of the two men demanded, seeming untroubled by Maruman. But then the man held on the end of a leash an enormous muzzled black bear with a great silvery ruff at its neck. The bear did not look up, and I wondered if the poor thing had been drugged to keep it docile. Even at that distance, I could see whip scars all over its back and flank, and there was a cluster of scabs over one of its eyes, covering what looked to be a deeper wound.

  “I am Elspeth, and I am a traveler on the road just as you are.”

  “I have never seen you before,” retorted the younger of the men.

  “Do you know all travelers on the road?” I asked, deciding I might as well be aggressive. The man shrugged and did not respond, but the old woman clacked her teeth irritably.

  “I don’t suppose you want to sell your beast,” the other man called to me, goggling at Maruman.

  “The tyger is not for sale,” I said firmly.

  Maruman gave a low, rumbling growl and eyed the threesome as if he was considering his hunger. When his tongue swept out and along his teeth, they skittered back nervously.

  “You will excuse us, mistress,” said the woman. “It has been pleasant speaking with you, but we have important business in the town.” She glared pointedly at her companions, and all three hurried away, tugging the bear’s leash to make it follow. It went meekly, and I wondered what had happened to the poor thing.

  I tried to reach it, but its mind was utterly closed. “Maybe we should have made them let it go,” I murmured.

  “It is not a truecreature but a dreamsymbol,” Maruman sent. “Everything here is part of Mornirdragon’s dreamings.”

  We let a little gap open up between us and the strange group before continuing along the road.

  Before long, we came to the town, and a strange place it was. The majority of the buildings were square and composed of reddish stone. I was irresistibly reminded of the place in my dreams where I had seen Matthew. But mixed in among these buildings were streets that reminded me of Sutrium and even of parts of Obernewtyn. Steam rose in plumes from holes in the ground, and the heat grew ever more intense. A multitude of people swarmed about, clad lightly in a bizarre assortment of clothes. I was fascinated and relieved to see that there were all manner of beasts walking about, many of them free from restraint as Maruman was. Far from appearing out of place, I realized we would have no trouble blending with the strange inhabitants of the town.

  The trouble was going to be finding Dragon and Rushton in such a teaming throng, especially when they were not likely to look like themselves.

  For a time, we simply went with the main flow, drawn hither and thither by our curiosity. Maruman was as fascinated as I, though he sent he could smell something bad underneath the city. “Something rotten,” he corrected.

  Many of the animals I saw were completely unfamiliar to me. There was a plump skittish horse with black tyger stripes and some sort of beast with an incredibly elongated neck covered in velvety, spotted fur. I tried to greet them, but most of their minds were closed to me. Finally, I was able to beastspeak a tawny-eyed elk with a magnificent rack of antlers. Thinking of the conversation I’d overheard among the little people on the road, I asked if he had met the queen of this place.

  “Of course,” he responded somewhat distantly. “When I first came to the town, I requested an audience with the Red Queen.”

  I stared after the elk, openmouthed. The Red Queen?

  My mind reeled, until I realized that Dragon could have absorbed the Red Queen from our dreams of Matthew, incorporating the figure into her disturbed mental universe.

  “I think this Red Queen might be the key,” I murmured.

  I stopped a plump, round-faced man with oiled curls and asked him politely how I could arrange an audience with the queen.

  He gave me an incredulous look. “Go to the center palace, of course. Where else?”

  Where else, indeed, I thought. And if the center of a dream is its dreamer, then Dragon would be there, too.

  As we penetrated the strange town more deeply, the mist grew steadily lighter. At last we came to a cobbled road that ran along a red stone wall. I could see treetops beyond it and could hear enough birdsong to guess it was some sort of park, enclosed at the very center of the town. We followed the wall until we reached an ornate gateway with beautiful wrought-metal gates touched here and there with gold.

  The gates stood open, but a very tall, bald man stood before them, clad in magnificent red robes edged in gold braid. He was smoking a long, thin pipe from which dribbled purple smoke. His eyes were slitted against it; this and a complex set of whorls and dots adorning his cheeks accentuated the hawkish cast of his features. He was enough to gawk at, but my attention shifted immediately to the people before him, for it was the trio we had met on the road.

  In the real world, I would have put our arrival together at these gates down to coincidence. But this was a false reality constructed on mad dream logic. Kella had speculated that behind the walls of her mind, Dragon was reliving over and over whatever memory she had repressed, seeking to resolve it. She had been only half right. This surreal place was less a true memory than some tapestry of symbols, but whatever Dragon had repressed lay beneath it, and so there was a reason for every flourish, every strange feature of what was unfolding. This grotesque trio and their bear were part of it; of that I was sure.

  The robed man was clearly some sort of elite gatekeeper, for he told them, “Your beast is badly marked and sullen-looking. Her Majesty loves beauty, and this bear lacks it. I suggest—”

  A bell sounded a questioning note from somewhere within the walls, and a look of intense irritation flickered over the gatekeeper’s face. He stepped to one side and indicated a path running from the gate into the trees beyond. “Her Majesty will see you. Go along the path.”

  The trio exchanged glances, then bowed and went past, jerking the bear’s leash to make it come. The robed man watched until they had vanished from sight before turning to Maruman and me.

  “You bring the beast as an offering to the Red Queen?”

  “No,” I said. “I do not own the beast. We are companions and wish to pay our respects to the queen.”

  A brilliant but humorless smile lifted the man’s thin lips. “The queen will be delighted.” He reached over and rang a tiny bell suspended from a chain. It rang out a clear, lovely peal, and within moments, a slender woman wearing a simple red shift hurried forward.

  “My Lord Gatekeeper?” She made a graceful curtsy to the robed man.

  “These travelers wish to pay their respects to Her Majesty. Escort them to her.”

  The girl curtsied again and gave me a shy smile before gesturing for us to follow her. I did so, wondering why we had warranted an escort.

  Beyond the gate lay a truly lovely garden with ancient trees and great banks of vivid flowers. A path wound through them, bringing us to a small pavilion where a woman sat upon a golden throne, her long red hair unbound and falling to the ground about her like a veil. She was clad in a flowing white dress with sleeves slashed in red. Suspended from a white ribbon about her neck was a crimson jewel shaped as an immense droplet.

  “The Red Queen,” the girl murmured unnecessarily, cautioning us to wait until the previous supplicants were dismissed before approaching.

  The Red Queen looked very much as Dragon might in thirty years. In fact, she looked like the sleeping princess the coercers had summoned up during the moon fair. I tried to probe her mind. Though it was shielded, I was certain this was not Dragon. Whatever she had repressed had happened when she was a very small child, and children were seldom the center of anything.

  “We would offer this bear for your collection, but the gatekeeper did not see fit to approve him,” the old woman was saying in a wheedling tone.

  The queen’s face was grave. “My gatekeeper is a dear friend and my faithful protector, but he is wrong in thinking I love only the beauty that is in perfection. There is beaut
y in that which is pitiable as well. Even ugliness has its own radiance.” She looked at the bear. “You have been treated ill, but no one shall ever harm you again. Be welcome to my garden.”

  The bear only stared at the ground.

  The queen rose from her throne and approached it, her eyes shining with tears. “Poor thing.” She began to remove the bear’s muzzle, and the old woman backed away hurriedly.

  “You…uh, Your Majesty, perhaps the muzzle…”

  But it was off. The bear looked at the queen for a long time, then shambled away into the trees.

  “Go now,” the queen said to the woman and the little men. “The girl will reward you for your troubles. Enjoy my city.”

  Bowing and cringing, the three left, and the queen nodded for me to approach. I had no plan whatsoever. I curtsied as best I could in trousers and introduced myself and Maruman.

  “You do not come from here,” the queen said in her lovely voice.

  “I…we’re travelers,” I said.

  “We?” Her eyes fell to Maruman.

  “The beast is a free creature as I am,” I said.

  The queen’s blue eyes widened. “From whence do you come, young woman, that you speak of free beasts?”

  “I came from beyond the wall that surrounds your land,” I said, deliberately referencing the fortress to see how she would react.

  “I do not know of this wall,” she said lightly, returning to her throne and waving her hand to a chair. “I would wish all folk would see that beasts are no less than humans. If I did not rule here, beasts would be slaves and chattels.”

  “You have never been beyond the wall about your land?” I persisted, but the queen’s attention was now on Maruman. I was stunned to hear her mind reach out to his.

  “You are very beautiful,” she sent.

  Maruman made no response, but he purred deep in his throat when she reached forward to stroke his head.

  “Mami!” a voice cried.

  I looked up to see Dragon hurtling across the grass toward the pavilion.

  33

  “MAMI, DID YOU see the bear?” Dragon cried.

  The queen rose and turned to her with gentle reproach. “My dear, you are interrupting an audience.”

  “I am sorry, but, Mami, the bear. It has been whipped, and it is proof that the arena exists.”

  The queen sighed. “My dear child, no such thing exists outside nightmare. But you are right that the bear has been abused. It is not forbidden beyond this city, though someday it shall be. Perhaps you can reach it with food or physical kindnesses. Its mind was closed to me.”

  “But, Mami—”

  “Go now,” the queen said gently but with regal firmness.

  Dragon’s shoulders slumped in dejection as she walked off into the garden. How odd, I thought, that her dream self should be the daughter of some mythical, faraway queen.

  The queen turned to me with a sigh. “My daughter is as headstrong as I was, and as filled with imagination. But she will grow and become wise.”

  “What is it that she fears?” I asked carefully.

  “There is a foolish myth that within my city, where beasts are welcome and protected, is an arena where they are forced to kill one another for the pleasure of an audience. Of course, it is madness, for my gatekeeper knows every street and canal running through this place. If such a thing existed, he would know of it.” She shook her head. “But I do not wish to trouble you. I am pleased to have met you, and I bid you welcome to the city.”

  “Uh…Your Majesty, I wonder if we might walk awhile in your garden? The road has been long and the city, though fair, is not so to Maruman.”

  The queen smiled graciously. “Why not. My gatekeeper will disapprove, but I have seen into the beast’s heart, and no harm lies there.” She waved us away, and as we went, I heard the bell ring out again.

  “I wouldn’t trust that gatekeeper as far as I could throw him,” I muttered as soon as we were out of earshot. “I’ll wager that arena does exist, and he knows about it. Look at the way his eyes devoured you.”

  “Let us seek out Mornirdragon,” Maruman sent.

  I sighed and tried farseeking her, but as before, I could find nothing.

  “I can sniff her out,” Maruman sent, and proceeded to do so.

  The garden became more wild and dense as Maruman led us deeper. I realized we were walking steeply downward and thought of the wall we had followed—there had been no dip in it. I reminded myself that the physical rules of the real world did not necessarily apply here, but just the same, I felt a deep unease when Maruman brought us to the lip of a hollow where mist lay thick and heavy as soup in a bowl. The only hint of what lay beyond were the very tips of trees protruding above the mist.

  I hesitated, thinking that the mist looked almost exactly like the purplish smoke that had straggled from the gatekeeper’s pipe, and then I heard Dragon’s voice coming from the misty depression.

  “O, Bear, why can’t you let my mother into your mind? I know you have escaped from the arena. If you could just show her! Her sweetness makes her blind. When I am queen, I shall not be so good nor so blind.”

  I took a few careful steps into the clinging mist, and then I saw them: Dragon and the bear, standing in a clearing. I had made no noise, but the bear lifted its head in my direction and sniffed.

  “Who is there?” Dragon demanded. She spotted me and frowned. “My mother’s visitors. But what are you doing spying on me?”

  “Not spying,” I said. “Your mother gave us leave to enjoy a walk about her garden.”

  Dragon’s stiffness dissolved, and she sighed. “It does not surprise me. She cannot imagine any evil in people, and that is surely a saintly kind of stupidity.” She studied me for a time. “Do I know you? Your face seems familiar.”

  “Perhaps you dreamed of me,” I said, unable to decide what to do now. What would happen if I simply told her the truth: that everything around us was a dream and that she was the dreamer? Kella had said she would never come out of her coma sane unless she resolved whatever had been repressed. Just being told would not achieve that, or else she would never have repressed anything in the first place.

  “I do dream of things,” Dragon murmured. “I dreamed of the bear. I thought if he came, she would see the truth.”

  I tried to ignore the specifics and see the pattern underneath. Here was a mother blind to something that a loved daughter could see and fear. Was that what had happened in Dragon’s past? Had she known about something, some danger, that her mother had not been able to see? And what did her real mother have in common with the Red Queen?

  “Maybe we can help,” I said, the words rising unbidden to my lips.

  Dragon looked at me. “What do you know of the arena?”

  “Only rumor,” I said. “Road gossip.”

  Dragon shook her head. “That’s not good enough. My mother does not believe gossip. I need proof.”

  “Why do you believe it if you have no proof?”

  For a long moment, Dragon looked utterly confused, and I sensed that somehow I had pressed too hard upon the reality of the illusion. To my horror, the mist about us thickened appreciably, and I found it hard to breathe. “What did you dream about the bear?” I asked hurriedly.

  She blinked. “I…I thought she would see in his mind what was happening.”

  “Are you so sure he is from the arena?”

  Dragon looked at me, and again confusion clouded her eyes, but she said, “Nowhere would such hurts as he has suffered be inflicted except within the arena. I have seen whipped animals before, but they are not like this.” As she spoke, she stroked the bear.

  All at once, Dragon shot to her feet, her eyes wide with horror.

  “Mami!” she screamed, and she raced back the way we had come.

  “Quick, let’s follow her,” I sent to Maruman.

  Without waiting to see if he obeyed, I ran up out of the mist and through the forest until I came to the pavilion. There the quee
n was struggling with the robed gatekeeper. Even as Dragon flew across the open space, I saw him lift a dagger and stab the queen. She fell to the ground with a soft moan, blood streaming from her breast.

  Dragon shrieked and threw herself on her mother.

  Maruman gave a growl. He launched past me, but a net flew out to cover him. At the same time, another landed over my own head, and as I struggled against it, men ran from their places of concealment. We were caught.

  Instinctively, I tried to coerce my captors, but their minds were closed. I realized this was because all of their minds were really Dragon’s. I could use the dangerous killing power I possessed, but I didn’t trust my control over it. What damage might it do to Dragon? Better to go with the dream and see what happened next, I decided.

  Dragon, held by two men, was screaming curses and struggling to get to her mother.

  The gatekeeper glanced over at me. “It is a pity you were caught up in this. I should have liked that beast of yours for the arena, but there are enough like the queen to look into its mind and see too much.”

  At that moment, the bear burst from the trees to attack the men holding me. One man fell beneath his claws, screaming; then a bow sang, and the bear fell at my feet.

  “Let’s finish this,” the robed man said in a bored voice. “I want no evidence of any disturbance when the queen’s loss is discovered.”

  Dragon and I were dragged to a shed wherein stood a long, peculiar, windowless coach. It had no stocks or strapping for horses and no place for a driver to sit. Yet it was meant to go somewhere, for its wheels were grooved to sit neatly along two metal strips laid parallel on the ground and running to the entrance to a tunnel going under the ground.

  Dragon and I were forced inside the carriage. I fought, not wanting to be separated from Maruman, but it did me no good, for my captors were strong. The door slammed shut, and the carriage began to jerk and vibrate. A dreadful squeal of metal upon metal rent the air, the noise increasing to the point that it seemed a physical assault. Then there was a thunderous clanging.

  We were moving!

  Clutching my ears and unable to brace myself, I was thrown from side to side until I managed to press myself into a corner using my knees and elbows.