Nebula Awards Showcase 2017

by Julie E. Czerneda

  He’d already gone on, though. The short hallway was empty. It had the same cold hard marble underfoot, illuminated with an unfriendly pale white light from hanging lamps. They weren’t real lamps, just big chunks of clear polished stone that glowed from inside. There was only one door, and then an archway at the end that led to stairs.

  I pushed the door open and looked in, nervously, because that was better than going past it without knowing what was inside. But it only opened into a small bare room, with a narrow bed and a small table and a wash-basin. There was a large window across from me, and I could see the sky. I ran to it and leaned out over the sill.

  The Dragon’s tower stood in the foothills on the western border of his lands. All our long valley lay spread out to the east, with its villages and farms, and standing in the window I could trace the whole line of the Spindle, running silver-blue down the middle with the road dusty brown next to it. The road and the river ran together all the way to the other end of the Dragon’s lands, dipping into stands of forest and coming out again at villages, until the road tapered out to nothing just before the huge black tangle of the Wood. The river went on alone into its depths and vanished, never to come out again.

  There was Olshanka, the town nearest the tower, where the Grand Market was held on Sundays: my father had taken me there, twice. Beyond that Poniets, and Radomsko curled around the shores of its small lake, and there was my own Dvernik with its wide green square. I could even see the big white tables laid out for the feasting the Dragon hadn’t wanted to stay for, and I slid to my knees and rested my forehead on the sill and cried like a child.

  But my mother didn’t come to rest her hand on my head; my father didn’t pull me up and laugh me out of my tears. I just sobbed myself out until I had too much of a headache to go on crying, and after that I was cold and stiff from being on that painfully hard floor, and I had a running nose and nothing to wipe it with.

  I used another part of my skirt for that and sat down on the bed, trying to think what to do. The room was empty, but aired-out and neat, as if it had just been left. It probably had. Some other girl had lived here for ten years, all alone, looking down at the valley. Now she had gone home to say good-bye to her family, and the room was mine.

  A single painting in a great gilt frame hung on the wall across from the bed. It made no sense, too grand for the little room and not really a picture at all, just a broad swath of pale green, grey-brown at the edges, with one shining blue-silver line that wove across the middle in gentle curves and narrower silver lines drawn in from the edges to meet it. I stared at it and wondered if it was magic, too. I’d never seen such a thing.

  But there were circles painted at places along the silver line, at familiar distances, and after a moment I realized the painting was the valley, too, only flattened down the way a bird might have looked down upon it from far overhead. That silver line was the Spindle, running from the mountains into the Wood, and the circles were villages. The colors were brilliant, the paint glossy and raised in tiny peaks. I could almost see waves on the river, the glitter of sunlight on the water. It pulled the eye and made me want to look at it and look at it. But I didn’t like it, at the same time. The painting was a box drawn around the living valley, closing it up, and looking at it made me feel closed up myself.

  I looked away. It didn’t seem that I could stay in the room. I hadn’t eaten a bite at breakfast, or at dinner the night before; it had all been ash in my mouth. I should have had less appetite now, when something worse than anything I’d imagined had happened to me, but instead I was painfully hungry, and there were no servants in the tower, so no one was going to get my dinner. Then the worse thought occurred to me: what if the Dragon expected me to get his?

  And then the even worse thought than that: what about after dinner? Kasia had always said she believed the women who came back, that the Dragon didn’t put a hand on them. “He’s taken girls for a hundred years now,” she always said firmly. “One of them would have admitted it, and word would have got out.”

  But a few weeks ago, she’d asked my mother, privately, to tell her how it happened when a girl was married—to tell her what her own mother would have, the night before she was wed. I’d overheard them through the window, while I was coming back from the woods, and I’d stood there next to the window and listened in with hot tears running down my face, angry, so angry for Kasia’s sake.

  Now that was going to be me. And I wasn’t brave—I didn’t think that I could take deep breaths, and keep from clenching up tight, like my mother had told Kasia to do so it wouldn’t hurt. I found myself imagining for one terrible moment the Dragon’s face so close to mine, even closer than when he’d inspected me at the choosing—his black eyes cold and glittering like stone, those iron-hard fingers, so strangely warm, drawing my dress away from my skin, while he smiled that sleek satisfied smile down at me. What if all of him was fever-hot like that, so I’d feel him almost glowing like an ember, all over my body, while he lay upon me and—

  I shuddered away from my thoughts and stood up. I looked down at the bed, and around at that small close room with nowhere to hide, and then I hurried out and went back down the hall again. There was a staircase at the end, going down in a close spiral, so I couldn’t see what was around the next turn. It sounds stupid to be afraid of going down a staircase, but I was terrified. I nearly went back to my room after all. At last I kept one hand on the smooth stone wall and went down slowly, putting both my feet on one step and stopping to listen before I went down a little more.

  After I’d crept down one whole turn like that, and nothing had jumped out at me, I began to feel like an idiot and started to walk more quickly. But then I went around another turn, and still hadn’t come to a landing; and another, and I started to be afraid again, this time that the stairs were magic and would just keep going forever, and—well. I started to go quicker and quicker, and then I skidded three steps down onto the next landing and ran headlong into the Dragon.

  I was skinny, but my father was the tallest man in the village and I came up to his shoulder, and the Dragon wasn’t a big man. We nearly tumbled down the stairs together. He caught the railing with one hand, quick, and my arm with the other, and somehow managed to keep us from landing on the floor. I found myself leaning heavily on him, clutching at his coat and staring directly into his startled face. For one moment he was too surprised to be thinking, and he looked like an ordinary man startled by something jumping out at him, a little bit silly and a little bit soft, his mouth parted and his eyes wide.

  I was so surprised myself that I didn’t move, just stayed there gawking at him helplessly, and he recovered quick; outrage swept over his face and he heaved me off him onto my feet. Then I realized what I’d just done and blurted in a panic, before he could speak, “I’m looking for the kitchen!”

  “Are you,” he said silkily. His face didn’t look at all soft anymore, hard and furious, and he hadn’t let go of my arm. His grip was clenching, painful; I could feel the heat of it through the sleeve of my shift. He jerked me towards him and bent towards me—I think he would have liked to loom over me, and because he couldn’t was even more angry. If I’d had a moment to think about it, I would have bent back and made myself smaller, but I was too tired and scared. So instead his face was just before mine, so close his breath was on my lips and I felt as much as heard his cold, vicious whisper: “Perhaps I’d better show you there.”

  “I can—I can—” I tried to say, trembling, trying to lean back from him. He spun away from me and dragged me after him down the stairs, around and around and around again, five turns this time before we came to the next landing, and then another three turns down, the light growing dimmer, before at last he dragged me out into the lowest floor of the tower, just a single large bare-walled dungeon chamber of carven stone, with a huge fireplace shaped like a downturned mouth, full of flames leaping hellishly.

  He dragged me towards it, and in a moment of blind terror I real
ized he meant to throw me in. He was so strong, much stronger than he ought to have been for his size, and he’d pulled me easily stumbling down the stairs after him. But I wasn’t going to let him put me in the fire. I wasn’t a lady-like quiet girl; all my life I’d spent running in the woods, climbing trees and tearing through brambles, and panic gave me real strength. I screamed as he pulled me close to it, and then I went into a fit of struggling and clawing and squirming, so this time I really did trip him to the floor.

  I went down with him. We banged our heads on the flagstones together, and dazed lay still for a moment with our limbs entwined. The fire was leaping and crackling beside us, and as my panic faded, abruptly I noticed that in the wall beside it were small iron oven doors, and before it a spit for roasting, and above it a huge wide shelf with cooking-pots on it. It was only the kitchen.

  After a moment, he said, in almost marveling tones, “Are you deranged?”

  “I thought you were going to throw me in the oven,” I said, still dazed, and then I started to laugh.

  It wasn’t real laughter—I was half-hysterical by then, wrung out six ways and hungry, my ankles and knees bruised from being dragged down the stairs and my head aching as though I’d cracked my skull, and I just couldn’t stop.

  But he didn’t know that. All he knew was the stupid village girl he’d picked was laughing at him, the Dragon, the greatest wizard of the kingdom and her lord and master. I don’t think anyone had laughed at him in a hundred years, by then. He pushed himself up, kicking his legs free from mine, and getting to his feet stared down at me, outraged as a cat. I only laughed harder, and then he turned abruptly and left me there laughing on the floor, as though he couldn’t think what else to do with me.

  After he left, my giggles tapered off, and I felt somehow a little less hollow and afraid. He hadn’t thrown me into the oven, after all, or even slapped me. I got myself up and looked around the room: it was hard to see, because the fireplace was so bright and there were no other lights lit, but when I kept my back to the flames I could start to make out the huge room: divided after all, into alcoves and with low walls, with racks full of shining glass bottles—wine, I realized. My uncle had brought a bottle once to my grandmother’s house, for Midwinter.

  There were stores all over: barrels of apples packed in straw, potatoes and carrots and parsnips in sacks, long ropes of onions braided. On a table in the middle of the room I found a book standing with an unlit candle and an inkstand and a quill, and when I opened it I found a ledger with records of all the stores, written in a strong hand. At the bottom of the first page there was a note written very small; when I lit the candle and bent down to squint I could just make it out:

  Breakfast at eight, dinner at one, supper at seven. Leave the meal laid in the library, five minutes before, and you need not see him—no need to say who—all the day. Courage!

  Priceless advice, and that Courage! was like the touch of a friend’s hand. I hugged the book against me, feeling less alone than I had all day. It seemed near midday, and the Dragon hadn’t eaten at our village, so I set about dinner. I was no great cook, but my mother had kept me at it until I could put together a meal, and I did do all the gathering for my family, so I knew how to tell the fresh from the rotten, and when a piece of fruit would be sweet. I’d never had so many stores to work with: there were even drawers of spices that smelled like Midwinter cake, and a whole barrel full of fresh soft grey salt.

  At the end of the room there was a strangely cold place, where I found meat hanging up: a whole venison and two great hares; there was a box of straw full of eggs. There was a fresh loaf of bread already baked wrapped in a woven cloth on the hearth, and next to it I discovered a whole pot of rabbit and buckwheat and small peas all together. I tasted it: like something for a feast day, so salty and a little sweet, and meltingly tender; another gift from the anonymous hand in the book.

  I didn’t know how to make food like that at all, and I quailed thinking that the Dragon would expect it. But I was desperately grateful to have the pot ready nonetheless. I put it back on the shelf above the fire to warm—I splashed my dress a little as I did—and I put two eggs in a dish in the oven to bake, and found a tray and a bowl and a plate and a spoon. When the rabbit was ready, I set it out on the tray and cut the bread—I had to cut it, because I had torn off the end of the loaf and eaten it myself while I waited for the rabbit to heat up—and put out butter. I even baked an apple, with the spices: my mother had taught me to do that for our Sunday supper in winter, and there were so many ovens I could do that at the same time as everything else cooked. I even felt a little proud of myself, when everything was assembled on the tray together: it looked like a holiday, though a strange one, with just enough for one man.

  I took it up the stairs carefully, but too late I realized I didn’t know where the library was. If I’d thought about it a little, I might have reasoned out that it wouldn’t be on the lowest floor, and indeed it wasn’t, but I didn’t find that out until I’d wandered around carrying the tray through an enormous circular hall, the windows draped with curtains and a heavy throne-like chair at the end. There was another door at the far end, but when I opened that I found only the entry hall and the huge doors of the tower, three times the height of my head and barred with a thick slab of wood in iron brackets.

  I turned and went back through the hall to the stairs, and up another landing, and here found the marble floor covered in soft furry cloth. I’d never seen a carpet before. That was why I hadn’t heard the Dragon’s footsteps. I crept anxiously down the hall, and peered through the first door. I backed out hastily: the room was full of long tables, strange bottles and bubbling potions and unnatural sparks in colors that came from no fireplace; I didn’t want to spend another moment inside there. But I managed to catch my dress in the door and tear it, even so.

  Finally the next door, across the hall, opened on a room full of books: wooden shelves up and up from floor to ceiling crammed with them. It smelled of dust, and there were only a few narrow windows throwing light in. I was so glad to find the library that I didn’t notice at first that the Dragon was there: sitting in a heavy chair with a book laid out on a small table across his thighs, so large each page was the length of my forearm, and a great golden lock hanging from the open cover.

  I froze staring at him, feeling betrayed by the advice in the book. I’d somehow assumed that the Dragon would conveniently keep out of the way until I’d had a chance to put down his meal. He hadn’t raised his head to look at me, but instead of just going quietly with the tray to the table in the center of the room, laying it out, and scurrying away, I hung in the doorway and said, “I’ve—I’ve brought dinner,” not wanting to go in unless he told me to.

  “Really?” he said, cuttingly. “Without falling into a pit along the way? I’m astonished.” He only then looked up at me and frowned. “Or did you fall into a pit?”

  I looked down at myself. My skirt had one enormous ugly stain, from the vomit—I’d wiped it off best as I could in the kitchen, but it hadn’t really come out—and another from where I’d blown my nose. There were three or four dripping stains from the stew, and some more spatters from the dish-pan where I’d wiped the pots. The hem was still muddy from this morning, and I’d torn a few other holes in it without even noticing. My mother had braided and coiled my hair that morning and pinned it up, but the coils had slid mostly down off my head and were now a big snarled knot of hair hanging half off my neck.

  I hadn’t noticed; it wasn’t anything out of the usual for me, except that I was wearing a nice dress underneath the mess. “I was—I cooked, and I cleaned—” I tried to explain.

  “The dirtiest thing in this tower is you,” he said—true, but unkind anyway. I flushed and with my head low went to the table. I laid everything out and looked it over, and then I realized sinkingly that with all the time I’d taken wandering around, everything had gone cold, except the butter, which was a softened runny mess in its dish. Even
my lovely baked apple was all congealed.

  I stared down at it in dismay, trying to decide what to do; should I take it all back down? Or maybe he wouldn’t mind? I turned to look and nearly yelped: he was standing directly behind me peering over my shoulder at the food. “I see why you were afraid I might roast you,” he said, leaning over to lift up a spoonful of the stew, breaking the layer of cooling fat on its top and dumping it back in. “You would make a better meal than this.”

  “I’m not a splendid cook, but—” I started, meaning to explain that I wasn’t quite so terrible at it, I’d only not known my way, but he snorted, interrupting me.

  “Is there anything you can do?” he asked, mockingly.

  If only I’d been better trained to serve, if only I’d ever really thought I might be chosen and had been more ready for all of it; if only I’d been a little less miserable and tired, and if only I hadn’t felt a little proud of myself in the kitchen; if only he hadn’t just twitted me for being a rag, the way everyone who loved me did, but with malice instead of affection—if any of those things, and if only I hadn’t run into him on the stairs, and discovered that he wasn’t going to fling me into a fire, I would probably have just gone red, and run away.

  Instead I flung the tray down on the table in a passion and cried, “Why did you take me, then? Why didn’t you take Kasia?”

  I shut my mouth as soon as I’d said it, ashamed of myself and horrified. I was about to open my mouth and take it back in a rush, to tell him I was sorry, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean he should go take Kasia instead; I would go and make him another tray—

  He said impatiently, “Who?”

  I gaped at him. “Kasia!” I said. He only looked at me as though I was giving him more evidence of my idiocy, and I forgot my noble intentions in confusion. “You were going to take her! She’s—she’s clever, and brave, and a splendid cook, and—”