Frau Beck tucked in on herself. She hadn’t felt this young and ignorant in years. Probably since before Karl was born, before Allen died, when she had always had someone to take care of her and mistakes weren’t life and death. These last few years without Karl, first when he’d gone into the army and then after he died, meant she had become accustomed to her role as the meddling old widow lady, beholden to no one.
The sausages began to spit and hiss, and she turned them over without really seeing them. Once they were done, she offered them to Herr Lindworm. She’d been afraid he might refuse and retreat into the cave, but he accepted with sincere-sounding thanks. The delicate way he gulped them down one at a time, rolling them slowly back on his tongue so that despite their tiny size compared to his enormous maw he managed to enjoy their taste before swallowing, helped relax her.
“You’re very deft at that,” she said when he caught her watching him.
“This used to be easier when I was smaller,” he remarked. “In my first few years of life, one of these sausages would have satisfied me for a day or more.” Frau Beck once again tried to picture him small enough to fit on her shoulder and failed.
“When did you grow to be this size, or are you still growing? Do you shed your skin?” she asked. One of the town library books on reptiles that she had perused for lack of anything more relevant stated that some types of creatures, such as crocodiles and snakes, never stopped growing their entire lives. There were wild reports of crocodiles that were over twenty feet in length in distant Australia and in the remote heart of Africa; nowhere near as big as Herr Lindworm who had to be fifty feet at least including tail, but it was all she could find.
“No.” He shook his head. “My skin grew as I did. I have been this size since…oh, my twenty-fifth summer, I believe. I may have added an inch or two to the tail since then, but if I am still growing, it is slow enough that I haven’t noticed.” He switched his tail around until it circled her camp and nearly touched him again, as he had done the last time she’d spent the night.
“I suppose at that size, another few inches here and there wouldn’t make much of a difference,” Frau Beck said consideringly. She wondered if she had anything at home large enough to measure him nose to forked tail-tip, just to see how long he really was.
He nodded. “I grew slowly in the beginning. I was fortunate my father was still living when I began to grow in earnest, around my twentieth summer. He made certain I had enough to eat and that I knew to remain hidden through the worst of it. At least I had his example before me, so that I had an idea of how much territory I would need to hide in once I reached my full size.” He glanced back at his bulk, grunted, and faced the fire again.
“What happened to your father? Where is he now?” she asked.
He was silent for a long time. “He is dead,” he said shortly.
“I’m sorry,” she replied. She knew better than to ask for any more—even with his much deeper voice she recognized the tone. She herself got that edge to her voice if someone asked about a husband or if she’d ever had children. A sting of old pain lingered there.
Instead, she spent a few moments of grasping for a completely different subject. Most of her usual innocuous topics would not mean much to an enormous lizard who lived by himself in the mountains. In desperation, she asked, “Do you know any songs?”
“Songs?” he repeated.
“Do lindworms make music, as humans do? Surely if you’re from Vienna you must love music.”
His mouth twitched in a smile. “We don’t make music, though there are some old songs my father taught me passed down in our line. I am deeply envious of human music. When I was small enough to hide in the attics and cellars of the concert halls, I used to watch musicians rehearse for hours. The last concert hall I made my home, I was so reluctant to leave that I almost outgrew the hole I used to get in and might have gotten trapped in there for good—at least until the inevitable day I became powerful enough to knock another hole in the wall.”
“I think they might have noticed that,” Frau Beck said with a smile of her own.
“No doubt,” he answered gravely. “But it would not have been the worst place to be trapped for a few years, at least not for me. I used to think that if I had been born a human I should have liked to learn to play the flute.”
“I never learned an instrument, but I did learn to sing in the taverns my husband took me to when we were courting.” Frau Beck grinned at the memories. Heedless of any embarrassment, she launched into a song from one of those long-ago days, surprised how much she remembered given the time that had passed. After a few verses, she felt a rumbling vibration and looked up in surprise. The rumbling continued, and gained enough tone that she could tell Herr Lindworm was humming along. The sound was such a rich, melodious bass that she could feel it all the way down to her toes. If a mountain could sing, she thought, this is what it would sound like.
When she finished, he said, “You have a fine voice. It reminds me of one of those flutes I used to admire.”
“Thank you,” she replied, glad the firelight hid the color on her cheeks. “Will you sing me one of your father’s songs?”
“It isn’t very much like yours, but if you wish to hear it, I will try.” At her nod, he began.
He was right in that it sounded nothing like anything a human might recognize as a song, but then no human ever had such a range of sound available. And yet there was a rhythm to it, enough that about midway through Frau Beck found herself nodding her head and tapping one toe along, leaning into it as if her whole body needed to be involved in order to fully experience it. She clapped when he finished, and he nodded his head low in an approximation of a bow.
They spent the rest of the night exchanging songs, ending with Frau Beck crooning a lullaby she used to sing to Karl when he couldn’t sleep. By the end of it tears were pouring down her face, but she wasn’t even sure Herr Lindworm could see them since she didn’t know how good his night vision was. Whether he noticed her face was wet or not, he said nothing, for which she was grateful.
The next morning she awoke just after dawn, to find at some point in the night he had curled into a tight ball around the fire with her in the middle. She lay wrapped in her own blanket tucked securely against his ribcage and belly, between his front and rear legs. His neck was long enough that if she looked straight across the firepit her face was about level with his closed eye, and she could see his tail continued on, curled around the other side of his head. She was secure in the center of a lindworm-doughnut, and there would be no getting out without disturbing him until he awoke. Not wanting to be crushed if he startled awake—there was every chance she’d step on some part of him if she tried to extricate herself—she settled back and watched the light golden sky creep to pale blue. There wasn’t as much heat radiating off him as she’d expected from a creature of his mass, and it occurred to her that like other lizards, he might not make his own heat—another thing she’d read in the reptile book. It would explain why he’d gotten so close to the fire, though she appreciated that even in sleep he’d left a little strip of bare ground for her. Waking up with hot coals to the face because he’d tightened his hold on the fire would have been a deeply unpleasant start to the day.
She could tell when he began to wake because his tail gently uncurled even before his eyes fluttered open. He raised his head off the ground a little, blinked a few times, and focused on her. Then he looked around sharply, taking in how they had been sleeping.
Frau Beck raised herself up on an elbow. “Good morning, Herr Lindworm.”
“Good morning, Wilhelmina.” He uncurled entirely from around her and stretched, working first his neck and then his limbs and finally his tail. He yawned widely, displaying every one of his teeth. Then he looked back at her. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yes,” she replied, recognizing the question behind the question—if she was comfortable with how physically close they had been, even without realizing it.
And indeed, looking back, she had slept very well. She had expected to be a bit twitchy after her encounter with the bear, but with Herr Lindworm around somewhere in the back of her mind she had felt safe enough to sleep deeply.
They took care of morning tasks and she ate a cold breakfast in silence. After she had put out the fire and started towards her pack, Herr Lindworm asked, “Did you plan to return to town today?”
“No, I had thought to do some further exploration beyond this valley. I was planning to return here this evening, if that is all right.”
“I am glad to hear it. I have…something to show you that might be of interest, if you would like.”
Frau Beck raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”
“A meadow I think would be inaccessible to a human without a way to climb up a sheer cliff. The view is magnificent, and there may well be some flowers that you might find useful.”
“And how might I reach this inaccessible meadow? I have no climbing gear.”
“I would be willing to carry you, if you think you can manage.”
Frau Beck eyed him. “And you wouldn’t mind?”
“I wouldn’t have suggested it if I minded.”
At least behind his crest he didn’t have any spikes on his back, as she recalled seeing in drawings of dragons. The scales there looked smooth and not too uncomfortable. “Where would I hold on?”
“If you sit right on my shoulders, you should be able to hold on to my crest and grip around the base of my neck with your knees.”
“I suppose it’s worth a try, to see how I fare.” Frau Beck looked at the spot he had mentioned dubiously. It was hard to tell from the ground whether it would be too wide to hold on.
She went and got her pack, and once it was settled, Herr Lindworm lay down with his belly flat on the ground, making himself as low as possible so that she could climb on. She was tentative at first, afraid she would hurt him, but eventually used one of his front legs as a boost to clamber awkwardly onto his back. Her skirts and petticoats bunched up and got in the way, and she thought if she were going to do this more often she should obtain a set of bloomers to wear under everything so that her bare legs wouldn’t be exposed—a style she privately thought better suited to younger, more modern women. But there was no one about to see but Herr Lindworm, and he didn’t appear to notice or much care what unmentionables could be seen as she swung herself into place.
He had been right, and the spot was much more comfortable to perch in than it had looked from the ground. The spikes on his crest began right in front of her and offered a decent enough grip. She clutched them harder than she would have liked when he got his feet under him and hove to standing, and she couldn’t suppress a gasp as the ground retreated abruptly. At his full height, she would guess she now sat fifteen feet in the air. She tried not to squeeze his neck too tightly with her knees.
He stood still for a few seconds to allow her to get used to things, which she appreciated. She leaned forward. “Have you carried humans this way before?”
He winced and shook his head. “No need to shout. I can hear you perfectly well. And no, this is my first time.”
“Oh—” she started to say, and then he was moving forward and the sentence died off into a small shriek of surprise. Once she settled into his gait, which was surprisingly smooth and had more side-to-side and less up-and-down motion that she had expected, she was able to take stock. He seemed to be moving at what for him was a moderate pace. But even this covered a lot of ground given his sheer size; she guessed a galloping horse might be able to keep up with him, but only on flat ground. After a few minutes she relaxed her death grip on his crest.
The landscape unfurled around them, soaring to gorgeous mountain heights in all directions. Frau Beck glanced down once, gulped, and then forced herself to look only at the bigger view. Looking down only made the ground look as if it were rushing by appallingly fast.
The steep cliff he mentioned loomed up before them. “Hold on tight!” he said, but instead of slowing down as she’d expected to pick his way carefully up, he sped up. Frau Beck had an extra second for her eyes to start to get wide with fear, and then everything tilted and they were hurtling vertically up the cliff. She clutched on for dear life, and clenched her teeth to keep in a scream. She didn’t want to distract him at a crucial moment.
Herr Lindworm seemed completely confident not only in his ability to navigate the cliff but that he could do it fast enough that she wouldn’t fall. The few seconds felt like hours, but then they popped up on top of the cliff and he paused to let her resettle herself. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“Fine!” she squeaked, then took a few deep, settling breaths. “I’m fine now. We can go on.”
They set off again. She refused to think about how they were going to get back down. But the feeling of shooting up the cliff had left her with a lingering euphoria. The practical part of her brain told her it was probably just the excitement of cheating death, but for a few moments it really had felt as if she were riding a dragon and they were soaring among the mountain peaks.
At last he slowed and stopped. Peering around him, Frau Beck gasped again, this time in delight. The meadow they had come to was comparatively small, tucked into the lee of two towering crags that protected it from the worst of the wind up this high. A snowmelt waterfall trickled down the cliff face at the far end, where the two crags met, and became a tinkling little stream that hugged the edge of the meadow before tumbling on down the mountain. The hardy grass was a vibrant green, dotted here and there with wildflowers.
Frau Beck barely waited for Herr Lindworm to lie down; she was already sliding from his back by the time his belly touched the grass. Her knees complained at how hard she hit, but she turned it into a few stumbling steps forward that became a run once she had fistfuls of her skirt in hand.
“This might as well be paradise!” she exclaimed, turning back to look at him. Even he in his impossibility did not look out of place, instead his presence added to the wonder and otherworldly feeling of the meadow.
He rumbled in his throat. “I thought you’d be pleased. This is one of my favorite places.”
“I see why. It may well be one of mine.” She came back over to join him and admire the sweeping view of the surrounding valleys and mountains. They stood looking over everything for several silent minutes.
When she’d had her fill, at least for the moment, Frau Beck took a slower circuit of the meadow, noting the different flowers, though the only one she picked was a single edelweiss to tuck into her silvery hair near her ear. The meadow seemed too perfect to disturb just yet with so mundane a thing as herb collecting.
It was getting near noon, so she unpacked a few things from her pack—some soft cheese, a hunk of bread, and a wrinkled winter apple. She also spread out her thick wool blanket in a semblance of a picnic. Herr Lindworm curled up beside her, taking up a good third of this little meadow with his bulk, and kept her company while she ate. She offered him an apple but he declined, saying he would soon go hunting if she didn’t mind being left in the meadow for a few hours. She didn’t, and so he set off not long after.
Frau Beck set about collecting flowers from the area that Herr Lindworm had already crushed by lying down—no sense in wasting what couldn’t be saved. She was just finishing up when he returned. She heard him coming before she saw him appear over the cliff; the scratching of his claws on stone in the mountain quiet was distinctive once she knew what to listen for. They settled down near the cliff edge to watch the sunset creep over the Alps.
“I wish Karl could have seen this,” Frau Beck murmured, chin resting on her drawn-up knees. “He would have loved it.”
“Was Karl your husband?” asked Herr Lindworm. “Where is he now? You mentioned being used to being alone.”
“Karl was my son.”
The lindworm did not press her, but something prompted her to say, “He was killed in the war.”
“A grievous loss. My sympathies.�
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“It was just the two of us against the world for so long. I didn’t want him to go off to fight, not after what happened to Allen—my husband—but he had no choice. We had no choice. And he so wanted to do his duty. After he was—after he was gone, I threw myself into making sure the same didn’t happen to other peoples’ sons and sweethearts. I’ve been determined so save as many people maimed by the war as I could, since I wasn’t there for him. For either of them. When they needed me and my magic most, I wasn’t there. Sometimes I wonder—what good is it, if I can’t save the people I love?”
She felt a cool touch across her shoulders and back and looked over to find Herr Lindworm had draped the thinnest part of his tail, which was just about the thickness of a human arm, around her. The forked tip hung down over one shoulder nearly to the ground. It was surprising how much it felt like an embrace.
“What happened to your husband?” he asked. “Was he killed in battle as well?”
“No.” She huffed a bitter, humorless laugh. “It was so stupid, so pointless. He had so much to live for. He died in an accident during a fight in a bar. He was drunk, and they told me afterwards he swung at someone, fell and hit his head on the edge of a table. I was going to give birth Karl within the month. We had our whole lives to laugh and raise a family together. Neither of us wanted anything more than that. And then…” She trailed off.
“You are angry.” It wasn’t a question.
“No!” she said at once. “I loved him then, and I love him now.”
“But still you are angry,” Herr Lindworm said, his voice neutral and uninflected. His tail where it was wrapped around her flexed, squeezing her. She could feel the powerful muscles bunch beneath the scales, and could also feel how deliberately gentle he was being.
“I…no. I couldn’t—” She thought about it. “Yes. I am angry, but it’s pointless to be angry at a dead man. I can scream and rail all I want, but that will change nothing.”
The Dragon & the Alpine Star Page 8
