The Language of Spells

by Garret Weyr

  “Doesn’t it feel strange?” she asked.

  “Sometimes it does,” he said. “Kator hates being ignored, but I find it somewhat useful.”

  “I know this many people are not blind,” Maggie said, pointing to everyone in London rushing here and there. “How can they not see you?”

  “They don’t want to,” Grisha said. “We don’t really belong in the world of men, and no one likes to waste time on things that don’t belong.”

  Every bit of Maggie bristled to think the dragons felt they didn’t belong. But she had to consider that perhaps it was as simple as dragons being too slow for a fast world. It did take a lot of time to notice Grisha; of course it did. He moved slowly, changed his size, had a voice filled with music, and the smell of fire hovered about him. He was the most unusual person Maggie had ever met.

  After his scales had cooled sufficiently, Grisha put her on his back again and clambered up into the streets of the city. Maggie slid off onto firm ground and Grisha stuck out his tongue to inhale deeply. She loved watching him when he was at his most dragonlike, and smelling the world was one of those times.

  Grisha and Maggie went left and then right and then straight, depending on the smells he recognized. Some smells were very familiar to Grisha and some of them were shockingly new. London was certainly very different from when he’d last lived there, but like all cities, it kept its essential qualities—the things that made it London instead of, say, Paris or New York.

  He kept following the familiar smells, and soon they arrived outside the building where Yakov and his family had lived. It was just off Eaton Square and once had been a pleasant, although not overly fancy, place to live. Now, however, it was a small neighborhood in which only the very richest people had homes.

  Grisha took a breath into his mouth and could smell the scents of lonely children, leather bags, champagne, fresh flowers, stewed tea, and sadness. “The girls aren’t here,” he said. “There’s no trace of them.” Grisha sounded as sad as bagpipes at a funeral.

  “I thought you’d be able to smell them,” Maggie said, feeling as sad as bagpipes.

  “They’re so much older now,” Grisha said. “Their smell must be different than when I left London.”

  “Does that mean you won’t be able to find me when I grow up?”

  “I think I would prefer not to lose you in the first place,” Grisha said. “That way I won’t ever have to find you.”

  “That’s an excellent plan,” Maggie said. “Don’t lose me and I won’t lose you.”

  “Agreed,” he said.

  “If Ella and Rachel still live here,” Maggie said, “they’ll be listed in the phone book.”

  “So we need a bookstore?” Grisha asked, and Maggie realized that of course he had never used either a phone book or a phone.

  “We want a hotel,” Maggie said, thinking of a lobby with pay phones.

  They walked until they found a nice hotel, and, in the lobby, Maggie located a pay phone with a phonebook. There was a listing for a Merdinger, E., and with the help of a map, she and Grisha found their way to the street where Merdinger, E. lived.

  Once-elegant homes, now converted to flats, competed for sidewalk space with small squares of dirt in which tired flowers and skinny trees tried to grow.

  “I think I can smell them,” Grisha said, for a faint hint of the scent he had followed out of London so many years ago hung in the air. “But it might just be that we’re close to the Royal College of Music.”

  Where Esther taught! They had to be close, Maggie thought. They just had to be.

  Grisha drew some more air into his mouth. He could smell books, sheet music, biscuits, hot tea, hands worn out from years of work, and lemon thyme.

  “They’re here,” he said, standing before number 64. “Right here.”

  A girl about Maggie’s age opened the door. Her face held such a mixture of alarm and delight that it seemed they had found someone in London who could see Grisha.

  “Yes, may I help you?” the girl asked, still staring.

  “I hope so,” Maggie said. “Does Ella or Rachel Merdinger live here?”

  “Ella Merdinger does,” the girl said. “She’s my gran. May I say who is calling?”

  “Maggie Miklós,” Maggie said. “But she won’t know me.”

  “Maggie Miklós and—?”

  “How do you do,” Grisha said politely, as soon as he realized that the girl could see him. “I am Benevolentia Gaudium.”

  “I’m Nadia,” the girl said.

  “Oh, thank goodness you can see him,” Maggie said.

  “Well, he is rather large,” Nadia said, looking a bit puzzled.

  Grisha, who had not scaled down to a proper size for the house, immediately did so.

  “Neat,” Nadia said.

  “It’s just that no one has been able to see us,” Maggie said. “Grisha—I mean Benevolentia Gaudium—said no one in London can see a dragon.”

  “Well, I’m kind of odd,” Nadia told them, with no trace of embarrassment. “Gran says I’m like her, so she’ll probably be able to see Mr. Gaudium too.”

  “Please call me Grisha,” Grisha said. “I knew Ella and Rachel even before they were your age.”

  “Then you’d best come in and have some tea,” said Nadia.

  The particular British habit of offering a cup of tea at every occasion (waking up, coming home, reading the paper, and, apparently, greeting a strange dragon and his friend) was one that Yakov had often remarked upon to Grisha. The clients he liked best, Yakov would say, were the ones who asked for whiskey instead of tea.

  “We would love some tea,” Grisha said, smiling at the memory of his old friend. “How very kind you are.”

  “My great-aunt is here as well,” Nadia said.

  “Rachel!” Maggie exclaimed. “Grisha, Rachel!”

  “You might want to call her Dr. Merdinger,” Nadia said. “She’s more formal than my gran is.”

  A doctor, Grisha thought, remembering the mischievous girl he’d known who’d come back to London after the Blitz so dedicated to her studies.

  “And what, may I ask, does your gran do?” Had Ella remained serious and quiet?

  “She’s a music teacher and a pianist,” Nadia said. “I’m actually named after my great-gran’s piano teacher.”

  Little Ella had followed in her mother’s footsteps. All those hours practicing the piano had paid off. How wonderful.

  They walked with Nadia down a narrow hall lined with photographs and paintings. Next was a sitting room large enough for a grand piano. They entered the kitchen, which was small but cozy. At a round table by the window sat two elderly ladies, a Brown Betty teapot, cups, and saucers between them.

  One of them—thin and regal—stood up immediately, saying, “Oh, my, oh, my.”

  There was no mistaking her. It was the serious girl from long ago, the one who had followed her older sister into each day with a little caution.

  “Ella,” Grisha said, feeling a bit awkward. “Hello.”

  “What is it?” asked the other woman, who was short and plump, with a face full of laughter. She did not get up, and, studying Maggie, asked, “Who are you?”

  “I’m Maggie,” Maggie said. “Maggie Miklós.”

  Ella had crossed over to Grisha and took hold of his front paws, not caring that his scales might scratch her. “I never thought I’d see you again,” she said. “I was so cross that you had left before Rachel and I came home. The minute you were gone, I knew you had been real.”

  “Ella, are you ill?” Rachel asked. “Nadia, help your grandmother to sit down. I think the heat may have gotten to her.”

  “I’m sorry about your parents,” Grisha said to Ella. “I loved them so. I can’t imagine how hard it was to lose them.”

  “It was hard,” Ella said.

  “Ella,” Rachel said, getting up and pushing past Maggie and Nadia. “Are you having a stroke? Who on earth do you imagine you are talking to?”

&nbs
p; Ella wiped her eyes and turned toward her sister with a sad smile. “It’s Grisha,” she said.

  “Aunt Rachel, you can’t see him?” Nadia asked. “He’s right in front of you. Here.” She took hold of Rachel’s hand and tried to place it on one of Grisha’s scales, but he moved back a bit. The last thing he wanted was to give Rachel a shock.

  “Sometimes people can’t remember how to see me,” he said.

  “The dragon is here?” Rachel asked.

  “Yes, it’s Papa’s teapot,” Ella said to her sister. “He’s come back.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rachel said to the space where she thought Grisha might be. “It’s been such a long time. . . .”

  “It’s been just as long for Gran,” Nadia said.

  “I’m out of practice, is all,” Rachel said. “Too much time as a scientist and not enough as a musician like your gran.”

  “You were and are a marvelous doctor,” Ella said.

  “What do your jobs have to do with seeing a dragon who almost hits the ceiling he’s so tall?” Nadia asked.

  “To see a dragon or any magic requires that you think of what might be,” Ella said. “Music is all about possibility, while medicine very practically asks you to find what is.”

  “Tell Grisha to stay a while,” Rachel said. “Maybe I’ll remember how to see him.”

  “Please tell your aunt that it’s perfectly okay that she can’t see me,” Grisha said to Nadia.

  “She’s not deaf, just old,” Nadia said. “Don’t be rude.”

  “He isn’t,” Maggie said. “If Rachel can’t see him, she can’t hear him either.”

  “Oh,” Nadia said. “I see.”

  “You’ll have to translate,” Grisha said.

  “We’ll all translate,” Ella said. “Let’s have tea.”

  “Nadia, open the chocolate biscuits,” Rachel said. “It’s not every day that a strange girl and a dragon come to tea.”

  Nadia and Ella got out extra cups and plates, poured tea, and passed biscuits.

  “What’s brought you all this way?” Rachel asked, after finding out that their guests had traveled from Vienna.

  Maggie and Grisha looked at each other. He wondered where to begin and she worried about discussing a quest with a woman who couldn’t even see a dragon.

  “Your father’s green bottles,” Grisha said, deciding to get right to it. He and Maggie told the story of Leopold Lashkovic, Yakov’s two potions, and the dragons who were buried somewhere in Vienna.

  Nadia, unlike Grisha, loved Once upon a time stories and kept interrupting to say, in the most hopeful voice, “That happened? Really?”

  Ella and Rachel, who had lived long enough to see much of the world’s cruelty, listened in grim silence, breaking it only to say “Horrible” or “Oh, no.”

  “We’ve spoken with the woman who is in charge of Vienna’s dragons,” Maggie said. She’d noticed that Grisha had left out all mention of enchanted cats and did likewise. “If we find a potion, she will help us find the dragons.”

  “We were hoping that there might be some of your father’s potion left in one of the bottles,” Grisha said.

  “Oh, dear,” Rachel said. “And you’ve come such a long way.”

  “There’s nothing in them,” Ella said. “Only dust.”

  Maggie swallowed hard and put her hand on Grisha’s orange scale. Oh, no. No.

  “What do we remember about Papa’s magic?” Ella asked. “It was so important to him.”

  “He had an old friend from those days,” Rachel said. “Whenever he came to visit there was iced fruit cake for tea, do you remember?”

  “Henrik Toov,” Ella said. “He smoked pipes and then the whole house smelled.”

  “Yes, Dr. Toov,” Rachel said. “He and Papa spoke all the time about two rivers. For hours they would go back and forth.”

  “Yes, yes!” Ella said. “They would argue about whether it was even worth mixing a potion or creating a compound if you didn’t use water from one of those rivers.”

  “Didn’t Dr. Toov travel to Germany every year to bring back water for his shop?” Rachel asked. “Imagine, all that way for river water. What were those rivers called?”

  “The Bird and the Bragg?” Ella asked. “Brick and Branch?”

  “The Breg and the Brigach,” Grisha said, with a laugh. “Everyone always argued over which river was the purest.”

  “Everyone?” Nadia asked. “I’ve never heard of either river.”

  “Everyone who lived in the forest,” Grisha explained. “The magic that people thought was in a unicorn was really in those rivers. You could cure everything from a toothache to a fever to a battle wound with their water.”

  Nadia repeated Grisha’s words to Rachel, who nodded and then said, “Perhaps if your sleeping dragons receive water from either river, they will wake up.”

  “That’s exactly it,” Grisha said, rather loudly. He was a bit mortified that he had not thought of the rivers himself and wanted more than anything to hug Rachel. But he didn’t want her frightened out of her wits to find herself embraced by what she could not see.

  “It couldn’t be that simple,” Ella said, pouring another cup of tea.

  “Oh, but it could,” said Grisha, feeling better and better.

  Maggie could feel herself growing flushed with excitement. She had never seen Grisha so confident.

  “Wasn’t that the point of everything Papa believed about magic?” Rachel asked. “It was a simple art that was difficult to practice?”

  “How can you believe in magic if you can’t even see a dragon?” Nadia asked.

  “Magic is like the sun,” Rachel said crisply. “You don’t believe in it. It just is.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE HEART’S SHADOW

  GRISHA’S HAPPY, CONTENTED EYES TOLD MAGGIE they had found what they needed. She had no idea how they would get to Germany, let alone collect the water, fly home, and give it to the dragons. Then there was the whole problem of asking Thisbe to give up another memory to protect them from Leopold on their way to Germany. Maggie wasn’t concerned about any of that yet, because they hadn’t come to London to find a solution to every problem. They’d come for a potion, and somewhere in Germany there were two rivers whose water was the potion.

  She looked at the sisters. “Thank you for the tea,” she said, feeling inadequate and suddenly aware that she could never come close to fully repaying them.

  Rachel asked if they could call her parents, not wanting to let a child back out into the streets of London by herself.

  “She’s not alone, Auntie,” Nadia said.

  “Yes, I realize that, but she will appear to be alone to many, many strangers,” Rachel said. “She clearly has negligent parents.”

  Maggie, who had often heard her father called negligent by other parents, suspected she should be offended on Alexander’s behalf.

  “I promise she’ll be safe,” Grisha said.

  “Thank you so much,” Maggie said to Rachel and Ella. “I . . . I’m . . . we are so grateful.”

  Rachel leaned down and gave Maggie a hug, saying, “Please be careful. It’s possible that waking up a host of drugged dragons will be more dangerous than you think.”

  Maggie nodded without believing her. After all, hadn’t the most dangerous member of Leopold Lashkovic’s dangerous enchanted cats turned out to be the most helpful?

  “Do you think we can get enough water in a single trip?” Maggie asked, once she and Grisha were alone. “Or will we have to go to Germany over and over? Can we go right now?”

  “No, I promised your father there would be no detours,” Grisha said, “and that I would bring you right home from London.”

  Maggie sighed, for of course that was exactly the sort of thing her father would want. Now they would have to go all the way home, get permission from Alexander, and then beg Thisbe for another favor. Not to mention find a huge container for water. How much water would they need, anyway?

  �
��Are you feeling all right?” Grisha asked. “You look a bit paler than usual.”

  “I’m hungry and I have to pee,” she admitted, disappointed that bathrooms, eating, and other mundane details of daily life hadn’t vanished because she was on a heroic quest.

  They found clean bathrooms at a bistro where they ordered a good meal of cheese toast and toffee pudding with whipped cream (for her) and cabbage with fried potatoes (for him).

  “I don’t want to go home,” Maggie said. “Let’s go to the forest and get the water now.”

  “But Thisbe was very clear. Find the potion and then find Tyr.”

  “But we haven’t found it yet,” Maggie said. “That’s why we should go to Germany now!”

  “We know where the potion is, but the magic cat is another matter,” Grisha said. “We’re going to have to ask Kator, but I . . .”

  He trailed off and Maggie stopped scraping the last bite off of her pudding plate.

  “What?”

  “Kator has been on every quest imaginable,” Grisha said, after a long pause. “I want my one quest to be mine that I share with you. Not something that Kator takes over.”

  Maggie understood completely. “We’ll find Tyr without Kator,” she said. “And then we’ll go to Germany.”

  “I’m glad you’re back in one piece,” Alexander said, after hearing the details of how they had tracked down Rachel and Ella. “I hadn’t realized how much I would miss my imaginative girl and her free spirit.”

  “Papa, you can see Grisha, right?” Maggie asked. “You aren’t pretending, are you?”

  “No, of course not,” he said. “Did the pianist in London worry you?”

  “The doctor,” Maggie said. “It’s as if she forgot how to be . . . herself. Will that happen to me if I become a doctor?” She had no interest in medicine, but thought she’d like to eliminate any profession that might mean no longer being able to see or talk with Grisha.

  “You and I are cut from the same cloth,” Alexander said. “We do not forget what is important to us, no matter what we do.”

  Maggie considered her father carefully. Normally, he told her how much like her beautiful, famous mother she was, which she knew was not true. She wondered if she and Alexander really were the same. He had a sharp, elegant face and was tall and thin. Maggie did not think of herself as either elegant or beautiful. Rather she was sharp and not sharp.