Hip Deep in Dragons

by Christina Westcott

  His words painted a picture of quaint villages with thatch-roofed cottages framed by picket fences and gardens, like something out of Middle Earth. “Sounds nice. No rush hour traffic or cell phones. But I’d probably be bored to tears by the second day.” I stirred the sautéing vegetables. “So then, you’re hitch-hiking across America, taking in all the sights?”

  “Nay, I am looking for someone.” His voice tightened.

  “A friend?”

  There was no mistaking the hard tone of his voice now. “I would not say that Shakagwa Dun was a friend.”

  “What are you going to do when you find this, er…whatever Dun person?”

  “I have to convince Shakagwa Dun to return to Mycon.”

  Was this some kind of runaway bride situation? An errant girlfriend? “And if she doesn’t want to come home with you?”

  “It will.” His voice was hard, flat, and it didn’t take much imagination to realize an unspoken or else hung at the end of the sentence. Not an old girlfriend then, but perhaps this Dun person was a criminal, and Robby was some kind of skip tracer, the British equivalence of a bounty hunter. Though it seemed odd that he depersonalized his quarry by using that genderless pronoun. The uneasy silence stretched for a dozen heartbeats, and then he broke it, and his voice was once again a soft purr.

  “Could I have a wee bit more of that wonderful coffee? I do not get a chance to enjoy it as often as I would like, and I do fancy the taste.”

  I refilled his cup and returned to the omelet, the smell of the cooking vegetables and spices filling the kitchen with a comfortable sense of home. The only sound was the clink-clink of his spoon against the mug as he stirred in more sugar.

  I finally broke the silence. “Why don’t you turn on the TV and see what’s happening in the world today?”

  After several minutes, I realized I hadn’t heard anything, so I turned to find Robby standing in front of the set, studying it warily as if he thought it would turn into a bear at any minute. “Isn’t it working?”

  “I canna find the knob to turn it on.” He smiled in chagrin. “I fear I am not very good with mechanical things.”

  I picked up the remote and thumbed on the set. Robby started back a step as the sound came on. I held up the black plastic rectangle and waved it. “Don’t they have remotes in Mycon?”

  “Nay, we do not have many of the technological advances you have here. And I think we are the better for it.”

  He might disagree with that if he had to live through August in Florida without air conditioning.

  Apparently the omelet gods smiled today, as the eggs folded over nicely for me. Dividing it, I portioned out a larger share for my guest.

  “Thank you, mi—Laura.” His eyes lit with gratitude, and he attacked his breakfast with an eagerness that left me wondering if he’d missed a few meals recently.

  A snatch of conversation from the television caught my attention, and I turned to watch a local news reporter interview a bearded man in a cowboy hat and Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt.

  I waved my fork at the screen. “I know this guy. His wife’s a vet-tech at the emergency clinic where I work. She calls him a professional good ole boy. If you have raccoons or opossums in your attic, he’ll come evict them. Last week, she told me he pulled a twelve-foot gator out of a pond at some ritzy golf course. The sheriff must have called him in about all those animal disappearances. At first, they thought it could be a Florida panther or a coyote, but they started getting sightings of a python.”

  Robby froze, a forkful of egg halfway to his mouth, and arched an eyebrow. “This python? ’Tis a serpent?”

  “Yeah,” I snorted. “A really big serpent. Some reports put it at more than a dozen feet. Sightings of these things are happening all too often anymore.”

  He put his fork down and rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, eyes flicking back and forth in concentration. Half to himself, he muttered, “Dragons love to eat serpents.”

  “What?” I sputtered, almost choking on a mouthful of coffee.

  He shook himself. “I do not recall hearing that you had giant serpents in Florida.”

  “We didn’t, until recently. Burmese Pythons were brought in by the pet trade and sold when they were small, but eventually they got big—real big. The owners didn’t know what to do with them, so they just took the snakes out to the edge of the glades and turned them loose. Thank goodness that’s illegal now. Others escaped from a breeding facility during Hurricane Andrew. However they got into the glades, they’re breeding, and some estimates on the population run into the tens of thousands. They prey on native species—bobcats, deer, and water birds; there’s even some disturbing evidence they’re eating alligators. Alligators, for goodness sake! You can’t go around introducing non-native species with no natural checks and balances into an environment without causing untold damage.”

  I stopped to draw a breath. Robby had a stunned look on his face. I held up both hands in surrender. “I’m sorry. I’ll get off my soapbox now. I guess you can tell I’m kind of passionate on this subject.”

  He didn’t look relived my outburst had wound down, rather, he looked horrified. I didn’t recognize the language but felt certain the string of guttural consonants was a particularly biting curse. He drew a deep breath and hissed it out before continuing in English.

  “By Bast’s whiskers, I am a bloody fool. I could not understand why the beast would leave her homeland of Marzinia now. Lammas is the secondary breeding season, but it has already mated, and now it is looking for a safe place to lay a clutch of eggs. What better location than here on Vayron, where it has no natural enemies? No, as you say, checks and balances. If even half the brood survives, your plague of serpents will seem as insignificant as a wisp of smoke before a forest fire.”

  He shook his head and rose from the table. “Can you tell me where this place is? Where the animals are going missing?”

  “I can do better than that. I can show you.” He followed me out of the kitchen, into the living room to the large, framed map that hung over the fireplace.

  “My parents used to do a lot of off-roading. We’d take Dad’s old Jeep out and explore the wetlands. Well, back then we called it the swamp. He taught me all about the land and its animals, how everything worked together in harmony, just the way it was supposed to. I guess that’s where my passion to keep out those invasive species comes from.”

  My fingers caressed the smooth surface. Then, the map hadn’t been under glass but tacked up on my bedroom wall. After each outing, I’d pencil in all the trails we’d taken and place tiny silver stars over the spots where I’d seen wonders. A huge flock of ibis here or a rare ghost orchid there. Just after I’d returned to Naples, I’d had it framed and mounted, to preserve a piece of my childhood.

  “As close as I can figure from the news reports, it’s around this area.” My fingers circled a spot beyond where the paved roads ended.

  “What is out there?” he asked.

  “Not much more than wetlands and cypress hammocks. This is an old map, so it’s grown up a little more, but it’s still sparsely settled—mostly ranchettes, and people who like being out where they can have all the animals they want without their neighbors complaining.”

  “Where are we on this?” He pointed toward the map.

  “Under the red star.” When the map had been new, that star over my home was the first thing I’d stuck on it.

  He placed a finger over that marker and slowly traced a shallow arc, crossing over the city and its outlying suburbs. As he stepped closer to me, I could smell the scent of sun warmed grass and exotic spices on him. His finger stopped, tapping a spot several miles northeast of the place I’d indicated.

  “It should be right about here,” he whispered.

  “Who? This Shakagwa person you’re looking for? What would it be doing out there in the middle of nowhere?” Then I added in a quiet voice, “Laying eggs?”

  “Aye, but it would be better if I told you no more. My master w
ould be peeved that I have allowed you learn this much. So, I shall thank you for your fine repast and all the kindness you have shown me, but I should best be about showing the errant Shakagwa Dun the way back home.”

  As he turned to leave, I grabbed the front of his shirt, stabbing a finger into that hard muscled chest. “Oh, no you don’t. You’re not leaving here without telling me what’s going on. If there’s something out there in the glades that could cause as much damage as you suggest, I want to know about it.”

  He closed his eyes, nostrils flaring as he heaved a deep sigh. When he opened them again, the pupils were so dilated his eyes appeared black. “Shakagwa Dun is a dragon.”

  A headache began to pound behind my eyes. “A dragon?” I hated the tremble I heard in my voice. “As in big and winged and fire breathing?”

  “Dragons do not breathe fire.” He smiled crookedly. “They spit venom.”

  “Well, I’m relieved to hear that.”

  “I warned that you would be happier not knowing.”

  “This dragon,” I began, taking a deep breath to steady myself. “You think it…it’s built a nest in the glades.” He nodded, and I asked the question at the fore of my mind. I didn’t think I’d like the answer. “What happen when those eggs start hatching?”

  “’Tis only a Marzinian marsh dragon, so it is smaller, but because they have so many natural enemies in their homeland, they reproduce quickly. The clutch could contain from twenty to thirty eggs, and if only half of them reach sexual maturity—which can be in as little as a year with a good food source, and no natural predators—in about three years…”

  “We’re going to find ourselves hip deep in dragons,” I finished for him.

  “It will, I suspect, solve your python problem. A serpent to a dragon is like chocolate to you or me, but when the snakes have all been eaten, the dragonlings will start in on the local wildlife: deer and panthers, even wild hogs and alligators when they get larger. After that it will be livestock, and then I fear humans will be next. So you can see why I have to stop that bloody great worm, now.”

  “Dragons have natural predators where you come from, don’t they?”

  “Aye, gryphons. A pride of gryphons can take on all but the largest dragon. And they burrow into the nests, their beaks sharp enough to break open the eggs and feast on the contents.”

  “Couldn’t you just import a couple of gryphons to take care of this?” I asked. “ No, that wouldn’t work, would it? Then you’d have to bring in the gryphon’s natural enemy… Gryphons do have enemies, don’t they?

  “Oh, aye, manticores, but pray you don’t get any of those in your world.”

  “What makes you think the dragon will be there?” I pointed to the map.

  “It would not stray far from the Gate and the out-flow of magic coming from it.”

  “Gate?”

  “On the Road.”

  “That line you traced? There’s no road there.”

  “Not a road, the Road. The Wizard’s Road. The Road Between the Worlds.”

  I remembered the quote about believing impossible things every day before breakfast. Well, I’d already had breakfast, and here I was on to my second impossible thing. I had a strong feeling the third one wouldn’t be far behind.

  “Worlds,” I asked. “You mean like parallel universes?”

  “Aye, if I understand your science correctly, although I must admit reading your tomes on physics makes my teeth ache. I am more comfortable with the analogy of worlds within worlds, much in the way an onion has layers around layers.”

  “An onion? You couldn’t find a less pungent example?”

  He laughed, a joyous outpouring of mirth that caused velvet shivers to flow up and down my spine.

  “I said much the same thing to Master Procyon Bey when I was but a youngling, and he rapped my knuckles with his cane for it.” His smile faded. “Perhaps I have been unwise to involve you in this.”

  “No,” I said, perhaps a bit too loudly, then continued in a more level tone. “No, I’m glad you did. It just seems like somewhere in my childhood, I stopped believing in all the magical things in the world and since then, my life has been just a bit, uh…grayer for it. I like the thought that there can still can be dragons.” I snorted a wry chuckle. “Even if one is nesting practically in my back yard.”

  He cocked his head at me, his pale eyes narrowed, and then he nodded, the decision he’d been pondering apparently reached. He held up his hands, one above the other, his palms bracketing a space of about a foot and a half. Air began to flow into it, pulling all the sunlit motes out of the room and into a spiral that wheeled between his fingers like a newborn galaxy. It condensed into a ball of golden fire, nestled within shell after shell of lights from a deep orange to a blue so dark it was lost against the blackness that surrounded the illusion.

  It resembled a computer generated wire frame model, a 3-D display rotating in an immense cosmic mainframe. The shells closest to the orb were ginger hued, fading almost imperceptibly to yellow until, half way to the outer darkness, one world flickered and sputtered like a dying neon tube. I was surprised how quickly I’d come to think of those, not as lines drawn on a magical canvas, but as worlds populated with living, thinking beings. Beyond the flickering world, the lines faded to first a cerulean, then cobalt and finally to a blue so dark, I could no longer see it, although I had a subliminal impression that the worlds did continue onward into blackness.

  “This is the Continuum of R’hipayon Quar.” He pointed to the star-like object at the center of the miniscule solar system. “And at its heart is the Source of All Magic. From here power flows out to all the worlds along the Wizard’s Road.” At his words, lines blossomed from the orb, arcing and spiraling outward, growing fainter until they too, took on the color of the outer darkness.

  The glow of the magical construct threw colored shadows on Robby’s face as he withdrew his hands, and left it hanging in the air between the two of us. As I somehow knew he would, he pointed at the guttering ring of light. “This is Vayron, your world. Here, magic is dying.”

  “But why?” The thought of the loss left a wound in my heart.

  “Technology. We call it the Blight.” He shook his head sadly. “Magic and technology canna long exist together in a world, and technology always wins. There was a time when your world was as magical as Mycon, with all your own enchanted races and creatures. But man is often too clever for his own good and thought to develop machines to ease his burden. Think of the farmer who must work to prepare his fields every season. He and his family have to labor many long and hard hours for their food. He might hire farm hands to help, but he must pay, or at least feed, those extra workers. He could contract with an earth spirit or a wizard to prepare his fields, but then he would be forced to do the same thing again the following season. He has only to buy a tractor once, and his labors are lessened for many years to come. So the machines slip insidiously into the world, all under the pretense of making life easier.”

  The laptop resting on the desk in the corner of my living room seemed to take on a sinister mien. “You talk about technology as if it were aware—some kind of sentient entity.”

  “It is—every bit as much as magic. It is the darkness beyond the worlds, which we simply call the Void, because to name it would give it more power than it already has. It is not evil, it is just beyond any concept of human morality. Cold, soulless, and empty, but conscious. What you might think of as the ultimate machine mind.”

  “That’s what’s creeping into my world.” I snorted. “Heck, we’re inviting it in. We can’t wait for the newest tablet or next generation smart phone. One day in the future, my world will be as dark as these others, won’t it?” I pointed to the dim outer shells. “Does that mean your world is next?”

  He shook his head vigorously. “Nay. More than three centuries ago the Council decreed that it would hold the line here—that magic would retreat no more. At the time the machines started to become so st
rong here in your world—what you call the Industrial Revolution—we began to place guardians on the Road to prevent that mechanization from spreading down-world any further. All apprentice wizards must spend a span of a dozen years as a guardian, ensuring that nothing of this world’s Blight passes into Mycon. The Accords governing passage up-world, from Mycon to Vayron…” He stopped to scratch his chin. “Now, they are just a bit flexible. A being from Mycon can come into Vayron and then return home. He just canna bring back any object that could be considered technology.”

  “You mean something like trying to get through customs at Miami International Airport?”

  He chuckled. “You might be surprised what happens. The entire Court of the Northern Sidhe spends the winter in a condominium they own over on Gulfshore Drive. I dare say I would too, if the alternative was an ice-locked castle in Caksas Mahr.”

  “Wait,” I began. “You’re telling me there are—what, elves or fairies here in Naples?”

  “Not now. The Court arrives on the autumnal equinox and returns to Mycon on the vernal.”

  Just like the rest of the snow birds. Now I wouldn’t be able to see one of the beautiful people shopping at Saks and not wonder if they were fairy folk.

  “The elves,” he continued, “have a special dispensation because they were originally from this world, and so they are allowed to travel between the two, as long as they obey all the Accords. They canna reveal their presence to any inhabitant of Vayron, nor can they bring even the tiniest bit of technology’s Blight back with them. Elves have long memories and, since they were driven out this world by its growing mechanization centuries ago, they are staunch…nay, make that rampant, supporters of that particular part of the Accords.” He shook his head. “No, of more concern to the Guardians is some minor lord who wishes to conquer his neighbor and so sends a sorcerer here to secure a shipment of automatic weapons.”

  “Does that happen often?” I imagined warriors armed only with swords being cut down in a hail of bullets from an Uzi.