The Dragon Griaule

by Lucius Shepard

  Their first days together passed uncomfortably for Hota. Magali left the room only to visit the bathroom down the hall and spent much of both day and night asleep, as if, he thought, she were acclimating to her new form. When awake she would peer at the boards or sit on the bed silently. Their infrequent conversations were functional, pertaining to things she needed, and if he was not off running errands for her, he sat in the chair and waited for her to wake. The town’s seamstress delivered two dark green dresses and Magali, without thought for modesty, would change from one to the other in full view of Hota and he would feel stirrings of desire. How could he not? He was not used to this sort of display. His wife had gone to bed each night swaddled in layers of clothing, and even the prostitutes with whom he slept would merely hike up their skirts. With its high, small breasts and sleek flanks and long, graceful legs, Magali’s body was a sculptor’s dream of unmarred sensuality. But desire would not catch in him. He was still afraid, his mind too full of questions to permit the increase of lust, and he never ventured near her, sleeping on the floor or in a chair. What, he wondered, was the road they were to travel? Was she truly a dragon recast as a woman, or was this all the result of a trick, a conspiracy of event and moment? And, most urgently, why had any of this happened? How could it be happening?

  Sitting beside her day after day, week after week, Hota grew discontented with his surroundings and thought this might be because Magali’s presence pointed up their shabbiness. He became assiduous in his cleaning, brought in flowers, new cushions for his chairs, and purchased prints to hang on the walls, brightening the long gray space. The footsteps and voices that sounded from the hallway irritated him and to mute them he hung blankets across the door. He dispersed the room’s stale odor with sachets he bought in the market. None of these improvements registered with Magali. For no reason he could fathom, she seemed interested only in the boards. Then one night while she slept, as he was pacing about, he noticed that the grain of the planking looked sharper than before, considerably sharper than could be expected as a result of his daily dusting. Curious, he examined them in the light of an oil lamp and found that the patterns of the grain were, indeed, more pronounced, forming intricacies of dark lines in which it was possible to see almost anything. This was his initial impression, but as he continued to peer at them, certain shapes came to dominate. He saw narrow wings replete with struts and vanes, sinuous scaled bodies, fanged reptilian heads. A multiplicity of dragons. Every plank bore such images, all cunningly devised. And it seemed more were emerging all the time, as if they had been buried beneath gray snow that was now thawing. Holding the lamp above his head, he studied them and began to think he was not looking at many dragons, but at countless depictions of one. There were similarities in the architecture of the scales and the birdlike profile, the . . .

  ‘What do you see?’

  Given a start, Hota yipped and spun about to face Magali, who had padded up behind him. Her dress was unbuttoned to her navel, exposing the swell of her breasts, and though her hair was tousled from sleep, her usual neutral stare was not in evidence. She looked animated, excited, and this acted to suppress the anxiety her nearness inspired in him. She repeated her question and he said, ‘Dragons . . . or maybe one dragon. I’m not sure. Is that what you see?’

  She ignored the question. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No. Is there more?’

  ‘There’s no end of things that can be seen.’

  She stepped up beside him and ran a hand along one of the boards, as if caressing it, then pointed at one of the images. ‘Here. Do you see the way this fang juts out at an angle? What does it remind you of?’

  Uncomprehending, he gazed at the board for the better part of a minute and then he saw it. ‘Griaule! Is it Griaule?’

  ‘All this’ – she made a sweeping gesture, her voice quavering as with strong emotion – ‘it’s his life. Ingrained within the trees that sprouted from his back. The entire inn is a record. All his days are written here.’

  So, Hota thought, Benno had not lied. It was difficult to believe. In Hota’s experience, Benno had never exhibited an ounce of physical bravery, and the idea that he would chop down trees on Griaule’s back was laughable. It was equally unlikely that he could have found anyone to do the cutting for him. Those few who claimed to have set foot upon the dragon spoke of climbing onto the tail – none had trespassed to the degree that Hota himself had. And yet he remembered the way Benno had gaped at Magali. Might that have been a recognition of sorts, evidence that Benno, being more familiar than most with dragons, had sensed her hidden nature?

  ‘Whatever else there is to see . . .’ Hota said. ‘Will I see it?’

  ‘Who knows?’ She returned to the bed and as she settled upon it, smoothing out her skirt beneath her, she said, ‘You’ve seen what’s necessary.’

  ‘Why’s it necessary for me to see this much and no more? What’s the point?’

  She reclined upon the bed, braced on an elbow. ‘So you’ll understand the extent of Griaule’s dominion. So you’ll accept it.’

  This rankled him, but he was not sufficiently confident with her to express anger. ‘Why is that important? I already know he shapes our lives to some extent.’

  ‘Knowing a thing is far from accepting it.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  She put an arm across her eyes and said nothing.

  ‘Are you saying I need to make an acknowledgment of some sort? Why? Explain it to me.’

  She would say no more on the subject and, shortly thereafter, she asked him to bring food from the tavern. Hota did not care to be treated like a child, given answers that suggested there were things he was better off not knowing – that was how he interpreted her responses – and as he waited for Magali’s food to be prepared, standing by the kitchen door, gazing through smoke and steam at the hubbub generated by two matronly cooks and several grimy children, he thought angrily about her. How could he doubt she was who she claimed to be? For all her good looks, the woman behaved like a lizard. Torpid the day long. Rising only to piss and stare at the boards. And the way she ate! She brought to mind geckos back in Port Chantay, clinging to the walls for hours, motionless, before finally flicking out their tongues to snag a mosquito, lifting their . . .

  One of the serving boys, carrying a plate of rice and shredded pork into the tavern, brushed against Hota’s hip. Hota snapped at him, then felt badly for having frightened the boy. What was he doing here? he asked himself. Cohabiting with a woman who had some mysterious plan for him. Languishing in a room where pictures of dragons manifested upon the walls. He should have done with her. With Teocinte. The next time she asked for food, he should take his bag of gems and cash, and head inland. Make for Caliche or cross the country altogether to Point Horizon. But could he leave? That was the question. Would he wander the valley, confused, unable to find his way out, always winding up back in Teocinte? The answer to this question, he decided, was probably yes. He was still caught in the snare Griaule had set for him the day he met Magali. If he were ever able to escape it, he supposed it would be because the dragon was done with him.

  Despite his annoyance, that conversation marked a turning in their relationship. Though she remained less than talkative over the next month, now and then, in addition to asking him for things, she would inquire as to how he felt or, standing at a window, would offer comments on the weather, the unsightliness of the town, or laugh at, say, the misery of a carter whose wheels had gotten stuck in the mud. It appeared she was developing a personality. Mean-spirited, for the most part. Minimal. But a personality nonetheless. She continued her habit of disrobing in front of him and he noticed changes in her body: a faint crease demarking the lower reach of her abdomen; a hint of crow’s-feet; the slightest sag to her breasts. Changes that would have been imperceptible to anyone else, but that to someone who had observed her for seven weeks, whose only occupation had been that observance, they stood out like mountains on a plain. He won
dered if these marks and slackenings signaled the ultimate stage of her transformation, and he found himself, against the weight of logic, thinking of her as a woman more often than not. As a consequence, his desire burned hotter, despite an apprehension that such feelings were touched with the perverse.

  During the eighth week of her stay at Liar’s House, Magali became more active, sleeping less, enjoining Hota in conversations that, though brief, served to grow the relationship. One night, rather than sending him for food, she suggested that they eat in the tavern. Her suggestion did not sit easily with Hota. Under the best of circumstances, he preferred solitude. Further, he worried that Magali might not react well on being exposed to a crowd. But when they entered the tavern, a low-ceilinged room with the same gray weathered planking, furnished with long benches and tables, lit by lanterns of fanciful design, each consisting of frosted panes held in place by ironwork dragons, they found only five patrons in the place: two prostitutes and their clients dining together, and a burly blond man with a pink complexion and a pudgy, thick-lipped face who was drinking beer from a clay mug. They stationed themselves well away from the others, close to the wall, and ordered wine and venison. Magali sat without saying a word, taking in the scene, and Hota watched her with more than his usual fixity. The din and angry shouts from the kitchen, the laughter of the prostitutes, all the sounds of the tavern receded from him. It seemed a heartbeat was buried in the orange glow of the lamps, contriving a pulsing backdrop for the woman opposite him, whose bronze skin was in itself a radiant value. He gazed at her thoughtlessly, or else it was a single formless thought that uncoiled through his mind, imposing what seemed an almost ritual attentiveness.

  When the food arrived, Magali picked up her venison steak and nibbled a bite, chewed, threw back her head and swallowed. She repeated this process over and over. Hota shoveled down his meal without tasting it, his attention unwavering. Like the icon of some faded gaiety, an old man with wisps of white hair fraying up from his mottled scalp, wearing a ratty purple cloak, entered the tavern and played a whistling music on bamboo pipes; he stopped at the other tables, begging for a coin, but veered away from Hota after receiving a hostile look.

  Hota understood that something was wrong. The ordinary grind of his thoughts had been suppressed, damped down, but he had no will to contend against the agent of suppression, whatever it was, seduced by Magali’s face and figure. He derived a proprietary pleasure from watching the convulsive working of her throat and the fastidious movements of her fingers and teeth. Like an old man watching a very young girl. Greedy for life, not sex. Lusting after some forbidden essence. Although he perceived this ugliness in himself and wanted to reject it, he found he could not and tracked her every gesture and change in expression. She gave no sign that she noticed the intensity or the character of his vigilance, but the fact that she never once engaged his eyes told him she knew he was looking and that all her actions were part of a show. The inside of his head felt warm, as if his brain, too, were pulsing with soft orange light.

  More customers drifted into the tavern. The conversation and laughter outvoiced the kitchen noises, but it seemed quiet where Hota and Magali sat, their isolation unimpaired. Then two bulky men in work-stained clothes came to join the blond man at his table. They drank swiftly, draining their mugs in a few gulps, and began casting glances at Magali, who was now devouring her second steak. They leaned their heads together and whispered and then laughed uproariously. Typically, Hota would have ignored their derision, but anger mounted in him like a liquid heated in a glass tube. He heaved up from the bench and went over to the men’s table and glared down at them. The newcomers appeared to know him, at least by reputation, for one, adopting an air of appeasement, muttered his name, and the other fitted his gaze to the tabletop. But either the blond man was only recently arrived in Teocinte or else he was immune to fear. He sneered at Hota and asked, ‘What do you want?’

  One of the others made silent speech with his eyes to the blond man, as if encouraging him to be wary, but the man said, ‘Why are you afraid of this lump of shit? Let’s hear what’s on his mind.’

  Through the lens of anger, Hota saw him not as a man, but as a creature you might find clinging to the pitch-coated piling of a dock, an unlovely thing with loathsome urges and appetites, and a pink, rubbery face that was a caricature of the human.

  ‘Can’t you talk, then? Very well. I’ll talk.’ Smirking, the blond man settled back against the wall, resting a foot on the bench. ‘Do you know who I am?’

  Hota held his tongue.

  ‘No? It doesn’t matter. The thing that most matters is who you are. You’re a man who needs no introduction. Useless. Dull. A clod. You might as well carry a sign with those words on it. You announce yourself everywhere you go.’

  Hota felt as if his skin were a crust that was restraining some molten substance beneath.

  ‘I suppose it would be easiest for you to think of me as your opposite number,’ the blond man continued. ‘I employ men such as you. I turn them to my purposes. I might be persuaded to employ you . . . if you’re as strong as you look. Are you?’

  A smile came unbidden to Hota’s face.

  The blond man chuckled. ‘Well, strength’s not everything, my friend. I’ve bested many men who were stronger than me. Do you know how?’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Because I’m strong up here. I could take things from you and you wouldn’t be able to stop me. Your woman, for instance. Beautiful! I gave some thought to taking her off your hands. But I’ve concluded that she’ll feel more at home with you.’ He gave a bemused sniff. ‘For your sake, I hope she fucks less like a pig than she eats.’

  As Hota reached for the blond man’s leg, the closer of his two companions threw a punch at Hota’s forehead. The punch did no damage and Hota struck him in the mouth with an elbow, breaking his teeth and knocking him beneath the adjoining table. He seized the blond man’s ankle, yanked him out into the center of the tavern, holding his leg high so he could not get to his feet. The third man came at him, a lack of conviction apparent in the hesitancy of his attack. Hota kicked him in the groin and, taking a one-handed grip on the blond man’s throat, lifted him so that his feet dangled several inches above the floor. He clawed at Hota, pried at his fingers. His face empurpled. A froth fumed between his lips. He fumbled out a dagger and tried to stab Hota, but Hota knocked the dagger to the floor, caught his knife hand and squeezed, at the same time relaxing his grip on his throat. The blond man sank to his knees, screaming as the bones in his hand were snapped and ground together.

  ‘Hota!’

  Magali was standing by the door that led to the street. She appeared, despite the urgency of her shout, unruffled. Hota let go of the blond man, who rolled onto his side, cradling his bloody, mangled hand and cursing at Hota. Several other men had drawn near, their physical attitudes suggesting that they might be ready to fight. Hota faced them down, squaring his shoulders, and, instead of cautioning them, he roared.

  The noise that issued from him was more than the sum of a troubled life, of anger, of social impotence – it seemed to spring from a vaster source, to be the roar of the turning world, a sound that all creation made in its spin toward oblivion, exultant and defiant even in dismay, and that went unheard until, as now, it found a host suitable to give it tongue.

  Quailed, the men backed toward the kitchen. Recognizing that they no longer posed a threat, his anger emptied in that roar, Hota went to Magali’s side. Her face was unreadable, but he felt from her a radiation of contentment. She took his arm and they stepped out into the town.

  By night, Teocinte had an even more derelict aspect than by day. The crooked little shacks, firelight flickering through cracks in the doors and from behind squares of cloth hung over windows; winded and quiet except for the occasional scream and burst of laughter; a naked infant, untended, splashing in a puddle formed by that afternoon’s rain; the silhouette of Griaule’s tree-lined back outlined in stars against a purple sky: it ha
d the atmosphere of a tribal place, of people huddled together in frail shelters against the terrors of the dark, dwelling in the very shadow of those terrors. Hota felt estranged, from the town and from himself, troubled by the presence in his thoughts that had spurred him to such violence. But Magali’s presence, her scent, the brush of her hip, the pressure of her breast against his arm, kept him from brooding. They idled along the down slope of the street that fronted Liar’s House, moving toward the dragon’s head, and as they walked she said, ‘We should be flying now.’

  ‘Flying,’ he said. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s the most wonderful thing, flying together . . . that’s all.’

  He suspected that she was dissembling and knew she did not like being pressed; but he had the itch to press her. She rarely spoke about her life prior to their meeting and, though he was not convinced that she was who she claimed to be, he wanted to believe her. It surprised him that he wanted this. Until that instant he had been uncertain as to what he wanted, but he was clear about it now. He wanted her to be a fabulous creature, for himself to be part of her fabulous design, and, sensing that she might be receptive to him, he asked if she could tell him how it was to fly.

  She was silent for such a length of time, he thought she would refuse to answer, but after five or six paces she said, ‘One day you’ll know how it feels.’

  Puzzled, he said, ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You can’t . . . not yet.’

  That comment sparked new questions, but he chose to pursue the original one. ‘You must be able to say something about it.’

  They walked a while longer and then she said, ‘Each flight is like the first flight, the flight made at the instant of creation. You’re in the dark, maybe you’re drowsy. Almost not there. And then you wake to some need, some urgency. Your wings crack as you rise up. Like thunder. And then you’re into the light, the wind . . . The wind is everything. All your strength and the rush of the wind, the sound of your wings, the light, it’s one power, one voice.’