Floating Dragon

by Peter Straub

  “God help us if it’s some rock-’n’-roll thing,” Graham said.

  “Won’t matter,” Richard said. The image of Tabby Smithfield singing, and then of the rest of them joining his song, was still echoing in his mind with the mysterious rightness he had felt a moment before. Graham looked at him oddly, but said nothing more.

  “Sing us a song, Tabby,” Patsy whispered again.

  Then, as Tabby told them later, the boy reached back into his memory and found something—an old childish song from the house on Mount Avenue. It was a song his mother had used to sing to him, back before anything bad happened and Tabby Smithfield was a small boy with a pretty mommy and a daddy who played tennis and a grandfather who loved him. That the song would have its own associations for Richard Allbee never occurred to him. He was back in his grandfather’s house.

  Weakly at first, and then with a little more strength, Tabby sang: “When the red, red robin goes bob, bob, bobbin’ along, along. . .”

  Richard gaped at the boy; this was the unheard song.

  “There’ll be no more sobbin’ when he starts throbbin’ his old sweet song,” Graham Williams surprisingly bawled out in an off-key bass.

  The shotgun resting in Richard’s arms suddenly trembled with the urgency of a pheasant taking off out of a cover, and he closed his fingers around it to keep it still. Patsy sang out, joining the other two, “Wake up, wake up, you sleepyhead.”

  Richard had never heard the lyrics of the song during all his years in Daddy’s Here. So when he chimed in, it was with “Cheer up, cheer up, cheer up, the sun is red,” making an unconscious allusion to Poor Fox Road.

  The shotgun suddenly flared with white light.

  “You’re a genius,” Richard said to Patsy. “What made you think—”

  “It could have been anything, anything,” Graham said. “It’s that we’re doing it together, all four of us.”

  “Well, don’t stop now,” Patsy said. “Tabby! Louder this time.”

  And the four of them huddling together sang that verse all over again, this time remembering to add the forgotten line:

  When the red, red robin goes bob, bob, bobbin’ along, along;

  There’ll be no more sobbin’ when he starts throbbin’ his old, sweet song.

  Wake up, wake up, you sleepyhead

  Get up, get up, get out of bed

  Cheer up, cheer up, cheer up, the sun is red . . .

  Richard stood up, still hearing the words sing in his mind. He was holding a long double-edged sword, though he had not been conscious of any transformation, nor of any specific moment when the object in his hands had ceased to be a shotgun. His mouth was very dry. “Sleepyhead,” he said aloud but to himself, not knowing why. The voices of the others stuttered into the song again, then failed. An immense heavy body pushed itself back and forth down there, restlessly pacing like the giant black dog in Graham’s backyard . . . Richard stepped toward it, imitating a much braver man.

  Behind him Patsy alone sang: “Dum da dum de dum, Now I’m walking through, Field of flowers: Rain may glisten, But still I listen, For hours and hours . . .”

  The little valley itself had altered, and where the dragon was so deeply hidden now resembled an arch into the earth, a leafy cave. Some of them, Richard hoped, would get off Kendall Point alive.

  “I’m just a kid again,” Patsy and Tabby sang, “Doin’ what I did again, Singin’ a song.”

  4

  Singing, Patsy stood up and watched Richard approach the cut in the earth which had become the dragon’s cave. He was walking with a kind of matter-of-fact assurance that Patsy found very moving—he could have been going out to check the bird feeder. If Richard Allbee had to walk to the gallows, it would be with that same apparent and unconscious confidence. She knew that he would not look back when he passed between the two large boulders that stood at the rim of the gorge and seemed to mark the entrance to the cave, and he did not. Richard walked between the man-sized boulders as if he did not see them and began to edge down the slope. Unexpectedly, Patsy heard Richard’s mind speaking in hers—as she thought she had heard it earlier, when she had been rocking Tabby in her arms. He wanted to turn and look at them again: that was what she heard, and only Tabby’s presence beside her kept her from crying.

  She concentrated on the song: Patsy was so afraid for Richard, so afraid for all of them, that singing now was a necessary therapy. She had kept herself from breaking down in tears, but she could not stop herself from shaking. Her mind too seemed no longer in control. Since she had brushed against Richard’s thoughts, Patsy had felt her mind alarmingly flex itself—it was as though a new color ran through it, and Patsy did not trust this sensation.

  She put her arm around Tabby’s shoulder. The sword in Richard’s hand gleamed as he took it down into that deep leafy darkness. She could hear Graham Williams rasping out “Get up, get up, get out of bed” in a toneless voice that was half whisper and half mere thought. Patsy trembled violently, feeling goosebumps raise all down her arms.

  . . . the sun is red . . .

  (the sun is red)

  “I can’t stand this,” Tabby said.

  She looked up and realized that what she had taken for two moons were really the sun and moon—one red, one white. That big red open mouth wanted to swallow them down

  (Live, love, laugh and be happy!)

  and take them out of the world forever.

  “I’m going with him,” Tabby said. “I can’t just stand here.”

  “Kid, you’re still pretty weak,” Graham said.

  “I’m okay,” Tabby said, and stepped out from under Patsy’s arm. “I’m going down there with Richard.” He went a few paces forward, then looked back at her.

  have to

  o Tabby

  Tabby turned away and started toward the boulders. Growling, roaring noises came from within the cave. Hadn’t the Dragon warned them, that first night in Graham’s house, not to push it this far? Patsy gave Graham an agonized look. “I have to go with him,” she said. She opened her mouth, then closed it again almost immediately—anything else would be just repetition. Patsy made herself move away from Graham’s protective largeness. After the first step she was able to run.

  “God damn, guess I’ll join the party too,” Graham said. “Just don’t expect me to jog.”

  Tabby stopped walking, put his hands in his pockets, and waited for them. Patsy stopped running, and when Graham was beside her, the two of them walked up to Tabby’s slight form in the darkness. “Good,” Tabby said.

  Heat blasted toward them as soon as they reached the boulders. Patsy put her hand on one of the standing rocks as they looked down the slope and felt warmth beating out of the stone. Half of the bank down to the black entrance of the cave was on fire. All the clumpy little bushes were burning, and the earth too blazed in random patches. Richard Allbee was dimly visible far down the slope, picking his way around the fires toward the bottom.

  Pale smoke belched out of the cave. Patsy saw Richard hesitate for a second, then continue making his way to the flat boulders.

  Tabby jumped down over the edge and slid five or six feet, sending a cascade of pebbles and loose dirt rolling into a wide belt of flames. Graham followed the boy immediately, moving much more slowly and making sure both feet were solidly set before taking another sideways step down.

  Patsy turned sideways and took a careful step over the edge. Holding her arms out for balance, she dug her left foot into the bank and lowered her right another eight or nine inches. Loose stones rolled away under her shoe, and she tottered. Then she noticed that the cloud of smoke which had emerged from the cave was neither drifting away nor dissipating—it moved upward almost purposefully, as if it had a mind. When it reached the top of the cave, Patsy took another half-step down, trembling as though she stood in a freezing wind.

  (damn!) she heard from Graham as he lost control of his footing for a second and slipped downward in a shower of dirt.

  With
in the stationary cloud something huge and many-armed stirred, pushing out bumps and angles of the pale smoke. The thing in the cloud whirred and rattled, impatient with its prison. As Patsy opened her mouth to call to the others, the cloud broke apart and another, darker cloud hung in its place: then it instantly exploded into movement. Particles the size of robins spun away, reformed, spun away again. Not one creature but many had been trapped in the cloud. Patsy saw leathery wings and flinched, thinking the creatures were bats. A rattling knot of them swirled over a flat boulder the size of a sheepdog, and rivery fire instantly flowed across the top of the boulder, forming a liquid yellow stream that sheeted down the side and began to trickle toward the bottom through the stones. As they swirled up the bank Patsy saw their tiny snouts, their long reptilian necks. Baby dragons—they were baby dragons, not bats.

  we’ll be all right Tabby sent her.

  you’d better not die twice on me, buster

  Part of her shaking, she realized, was not fear—it was the effect of her relief that Tabby had survived his kidnapping by Gideon Winter. Without quite being aware of it, she had been party to Tabby’s thoughts ever since he had opened his eyes: not just the messages he had sent her, but all of his thoughts, every spark that flew across his mind. All of these birds of thought had fed her relief—though they had been quiet, almost in fact inaudible, their singing had pulled her closer to Tabby.

  Instead of calling out a warning, she started to sing. All those birds of thought flexed again in her mind, adding another band of color (or so it felt) to the first. She started to sing softly, uncertain of herself: a part of Patsy was still capable of feeling foolish about singing out loud on a burning hillside leading down to a dragon’s cave—a nonexistent cave, a nonexistent dragon.

  And anyhow, didn’t women in this situation just keep their mouths shut and wait to be rescued?

  Wasn’t that exactly what she had done during most of her marriage, month by month after Les had turned sour and insecure, poisoned by his own success? Kept her mouth shut and waited to be rescued?

  A grumpy, frightened, but still tenacious sliver of thought flew toward her, and she recognized in it the texture, the color, the taste of Graham Williams; either it was wordless or she could not hear the words, but she did not need words to identify him.

  “When the red, red robin goes bob, bob, bobbin’ along, along . . .”

  Her high, pure voice sailed up out of her, becoming stronger with every word. Five feet down the slope and trying to avoid being forced into doing the splits, Graham Williams looked back up at her in astonishment; initially, fury too. He had been taking pains to be as silent as he could, thinking that apart from the sword, surprise was their only weapon. Patsy’s singing was like an announcement to Gideon Winter that all four of them waited outside the cave. “There’ll be no more sobbin’ when he starts throbbin’ his old sweet song.” Then, as Patsy’s voice grew and strengthened, he felt it take hold of him: almost as if Patsy’s voice had physically wrapped around him. He easily went down another four feet, his legs working like a twenty-year-old’s. Graham started to mouth the words along with Patsy, suddenly sure that she could hear him even if he did not actually sing anywhere but in his mind.

  Because in that instant he felt her right beside him: he felt all the barriers of age and sex, of homeliness and beauty, of all the differing lessons taught by experience, fall where they had stood.

  Graham understood even before Patsy herself that no matter what Richard did with that sword, it was Patsy who could save their lives. He felt enlarged—in the midst of his real terror, whatever Patsy was sending toward him, whatever she was doing to him, increased him. Though he still only mouthed the words, he could hear his rusty rumbling voice singing in his mind.

  And Patsy, up above him, knew all that Graham had just experienced.

  sing, Tabby, sing! she poured out toward the boy:

  and instantly heard his two voices, his inner voice and his physical voice, pick up her song.

  Now she could hear all of them in her mind, Graham’s unmusical chanting, Richard’s rush of anxious thought which had picked up the rhythm of her singing, and Tabby. Tabby’s mind was moving in perfect sympathy with her own. Just as she herself felt that sense of enlargement she had met in Graham, Tabby had it too.

  A kite-shaped arrangement of the baby dragons skirled toward her, igniting a four-foot-long strip of hillside, then circled away.

  The song didn’t matter, she thought, the song was ridiculous, it was the fact of singing that was powerful, and she sent the absolutely inappropriate words “Live, love, laugh and be happy” sailing out into the air. Patsy took herself halfway down the hillside, watching Richard getting nearer the mouth of the cave and for a second felt herself begin to find the conclusion toward which her energies and gifts had been moving her. Her personality almost physically stretched and widened within her. Patsy felt blood rushing up into her face: her heart surged: whatever Graham Williams had thought he had seen in her—whatever had given him that feeling of increase—almost surfaced in her.

  For an instant Patsy saw herself as a net suspended beneath her friends: a Patsy who was a giantess, hovering beneath their exploits to catch them if they fell. Their different voices rang through her. She felt herself blushing even more feverishly—then instead of the odors of fried weeds, burning dirt (which smelled the way ginseng tasted), and smoke, she smelled fish. That relentless inner movement ceased, as shockingly as if contractions were suddenly to cease during childbirth.

  A burly naked man with a black beard was standing beside her. He smiled, not pleasantly. Patsy saw the long scar which ran from hip to hip across his belly. The concentrated odor of fish leaked from his skin, from his pores. Bates Krell stepped nearer Patsy. She felt a sick wave of passion, stronger than the fishy smell, emanating from him: passion gone black and twisted, more powerful because of its sickness.

  Behind Bates Krell’s threatening body Patsy saw the horned head of the dragon emerge from its cave.

  Krell’s smile became more genuine and even less pleasant. His eyes glittered blackly; they were the same eyes, shot with iridescent green threads and veins, she had seen following the peeling spike up from the pages of a book.

  Then an unseen movement caused a huge displacement of air, a stream of fire three feet wide ripped across the ground before her, and the head of the dragon in the cave had swung toward her. Bates Krell had vanished into smoke, and the dragon coming out of the cave looked straight at Patsy with the fisherman’s eyes.

  “When the . . .” The words died in her mouth. Patsy was too terrified to sing, and the other voices in her mind, which seemed like aspects of a single voice, diminished. The dragon crawled another step nearer Patsy, suddenly seeming much larger.

  “Red!” Tabby shouted. “Red red robin!”

  Graham’s booming monotone half-shouted, half-sang, “goes bob, bob, bobbin’ along—ALONG!”

  And she heard Richard singing it too—singing it desperately in her mind.

  “ROBIN!” Tabby shouted. “ROBIN!”

  The dragon’s head swung away from her, and a small winged body fell out of the sky and landed at her feet. The dazed baby dragon hitched its wings under itself and scrabbled a few inches down the slope. It was no larger than a mouse. Revolted, Patsy stepped on it. Its wings squirmed. She raised her foot and stamped down on the little dragon, and felt it crack open like a beetle.

  “There’ll be no more sobbin’!” Tabby screamed. “When he starts throbbin’!”

  All of their voices flooded back into her, and she saw that image of herself and Tabby on the road before the old Smithfield house—the image was not enigmatic. Patsy felt the stirring of a power within herself, and knew that it was this she had almost come to unreflectively before Bates Krell had appeared to frighten her out of her wits. Now one of the others would be in the danger from which they had rescued her, and when she twisted her hands together and looked for Richard Allbee she saw that he was
only twenty feet from the dragon. “Sweet song!” he yelled—

  —and that pushed her shamelessly over the edge. Patsy opened her mind to all of them: she spread her wings, and they went farther than the fire-bat’s. It was like opening her body, her essence spilled out to each of them, and for a moment she was so physically responsive that she thought she could see the map of her arteries and veins printed on her skin. Once half in despair she had written a list of the men with whom she imagined she might want to make love; but as Patsy’s mind accepted Tabby Smithfield and Graham Williams and Richard Allbee into itself, as her wings spread over them, they were the only men on the planet. They melted into her; this was unbearably strong and sensual, and the strength was hers.

  All around Patsy, the baby dragons came tumbling out of the sky. She squashed as many as she could, and saw more of them falling to the ground, as the birds had at the end of May.

  When she touched her foot to them now, they burst apart, leaking smoke and sparks.

  She brushed her foot against another crawling mouse-sized dragon, and it split down the ridge of the spine. A little puddle of fire poured out of the crack, and the creature’s wings sizzled into gossamer, then into black lumps.

  5

  Richard stood twenty feet from the mouth of the cave and heard Patsy singing in his mind even more strongly than before. Her voice had gone beyond being only a voice, it was the very sound of his own body, the traveling of the blood through his veins, the hammering of his heart. The huge greenish-black head of the dragon dipped toward him almost in confusion; he felt as much as heard its children plopping down onto the rocks. Richard raised his sword, calculating that he might have about a fifty-fifty chance of getting close enough to its neck to use the sword before the monster recovered.

  Richardrichard

  Then he felt Patsy McCloud slam into him—into his head and into his body, his heart and his ribs and lungs and eyes and hands—with such force that he was almost pushed over. He could taste her: for a vivid moment, her voice swelling in his mind, the tastes in his mind were hers. Richard felt almost as if he were levitating—as if Patsy’s presence inside him freed him from gravity.