Dragons in the Waters

by Madeleine L'engle

  Charles stared up at the sky, watching the movement of the clouds, and left Poly to answer.

  “Well, you know Daddy’s a marine biologist, and we used to live on Gaea Island off the south coast of Portugal, and now we’re living on Benne Seed Island …”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, this isn’t for general information, Simon. As a matter of fact, you might call it classified. But Charles and I decided last night that we could trust you.”

  “Thank you.” Simon bowed with grave formality.

  “The Venezuelan government asked Daddy if he would come spend a few weeks at Dragonlake and study what’s happening to the lake. It’s a big source of oil, and you know how important oil is right now.”

  “Well, no, I didn’t.”

  “What do you and Aunt Leonis heat your house by?”

  “Firewood.”

  “Oh. Well, oil is important. People thought it would sort of keep spouting out of the earth forever and ever, and suddenly there’s not enough, and Americans are used to having more than enough. So places that have oil are important. But at Dragonlake the oil wells are in the lake, the way they are in Lake Maracaibo, and in Dragonlake the fish and other marine life are dying, and if they can’t find out what’s causing it, Dragonlake is going to be a dead sea. Some people are saying that the dragon has been angered by the oil wells, and is drinking the oil. And maybe that’s just a way of saying that if we don’t take care of the earth, the earth is going to rebel. Anyhow, when the Venezuelan government asked Daddy, he decided he’d go, and take Charles and me out of school for a month and bring us with him. The reason that it’s all top secret is that the oil companies might get upset, so you won’t say anything?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Daddy’s purportedly going to get some unusual specimens of marine life, and of course he’ll do that, too, and Charles and I can help him there. He and Mother say that the trip and working with Daddy that way is an education in itself for Charles and me, and fortunately the principal of our school agreed. And Charles and I are due a proper vacation, aren’t we, Charles?”

  “Definitely.”

  “You two are the eldest?”

  Charles’s face lit up with his slow smile which began with a quirk at the corners of his lips and spread all over his face, focusing in the deep blue of his eyes, the same gentian color as his father’s. “We have five brothers and sisters—well, you saw them in Savannah—all younger than we are. If you’re used to being with Aunt Leonis, we’re usually surrounded by infants, and because we’re the eldest, we do try to help out.”

  Poly added, “It would be impossible for Mother, otherwise, though she was the one who thought of having us go along with Daddy. Say, Simon, what about your Cousin Forsyth, and why didn’t you think maybe he was an impostor?”

  Charles looked sharply at Poly, but she was looking at Simon.

  Simon answered, “He had all kinds of credentials, but I don’t think Aunt Leonis would just have accepted them if he didn’t have the Phair nose and chin. If you had looked at him, and then at some of the old daguerreotypes Aunt Leonis kept because they weren’t salable, you’d know he was kin. He has a swarthy complexion, but otherwise he looks like the Phairs.”

  “You don’t look like him, not one bit. You’re blond as Jan ten Zwick.”

  “My hair comes from the Reniers. My father’s family.”

  “Did Aunt Leonis open her arms and embrace Cousin Forsyth, like the long-lost son, and so forth?”

  “Not exactly. She wasn’t entirely happy about Cousin Forsyth because he comes from the branch of the family which collaborated after The War.”

  “Way back with the Nazis?”

  “No, no, with the carpetbaggers.”

  “Simon, what war are you talking about?”

  “The War between the States.” Simon looked surprised.

  Charles and Poly exchanged glances. Poly said gently, “Simon, there have been several wars since then. When you said ‘The War’ you sounded as though it were the only war.”

  “Maybe its effects are still felt more at Pharaoh than the other wars …”

  “But slavery was bad.”

  “Sure it was bad. But mostly that wasn’t what the war was about. Anyhow, we didn’t have slaves at Pharaoh.”

  “You sound as though you’d been there. Why didn’t you have slaves?”

  “Quentin Phair. After all, he spent a long time with Bolivar fighting for freedom. He could hardly have slaves on his own plantation. It was what might be called a commune today. Everybody worked together, black and white. All the slaves were given their freedom by Quentin Phair when he built Pharaoh, and then they could choose whether to stay as part of the family, or to go. And it was the same way in my father’s family, the Reniers. Their plantation was called Nyssa, and there weren’t any slaves there, either.”

  “You’re not telling us that this was typical, Simon?”

  “I know it wasn’t typical. But it’s the way it was for the Phairs and the Reniers, and that’s where I come from. And after the war everybody was poor, poor unto starvation.”

  Poly continued to probe. “If you didn’t have any slaves, and everybody worked together, why was everybody so poor?”

  “You forget we were an—an occupied country. Like Israel at the time of Christ, or Norway with the Nazis. Pharaoh wasn’t burned, the way Nyssa was. The Yankee officers took it over for their headquarters, so the house was saved. But they burned the fields and then they salted them. It took years before the land would yield any crops. If you’ve lived off the land, by dint of very hard work on everybody’s part, and the land is destroyed, then things aren’t easy for anybody.”

  “Oh,” Poly said in a chastened way. “That’s something I hadn’t realized. Every time I think I know it all I get taken down a peg, and I guess that’s a good thing. What about Cousin Forsyth’s family?”

  “They had money and food and clothes and luxuries, and people didn’t unless they collaborated with the carpetbaggers. So you see why Aunt Leonis wasn’t entirely happy about him. Maybe it was like collaborating with the Nazis.”

  “But the carpetbaggers weren’t Nazis. They were us.” Poly stopped, then said, “Maybe that’s the point. Oh, dear. So what happened with Cousin Forsyth’s family?”

  “They moved up North, and then out West, and we lost track of them until the evening Cousin Forsyth knocked on our door.”

  “And it was only a month ago that he came?”

  “Yes. He stayed in Charleston at the Fort Sumter while all the arrangements were being made—calls to Caracas, and our booking on the Orion, and everything. And all that month Aunt Leonis tried to make me speak only Spanish.”

  “Have you lived with her all your life?” Poly asked.

  Simon’s face hardened, and he looked older than thirteen, but his voice was calm. “I’ve known her all my life and been in and out of Pharaoh, but I’ve only lived with her all the time for five years—since my parents died.”

  “Oh, Simon!” Poly reached out to touch him gently on the arm. “I’m so sorry!”

  Simon nodded gravely.

  “Was it an accident?”

  “Well, it seemed to me it was a sort of cosmic one. My mother was dying of cancer, and six months before she died my father—my father had a heart attack. He died. So Mother and I moved in with Aunt Leonis, and she nursed Mother until she died.” His voice was stiff and dry.

  Poly’s chest tightened in sudden panic. She thought she would not be able to bear it if anything happened to her parents. Charleston and Benne Seed Island seemed more than a day away by sea, and suddenly she missed her mother and her younger brothers and sisters so badly that it hurt. If only she could run to a telephone and hear their voices, be reassured of their being—but the telephone was one of the aspects of civilization that Dr. O’Keefe had said he would be pleased to do without for a while.

  —No emergency, please, Poly pleaded silently. —Don’t let there be any
emergency.

  Simon’s color came back to his cheeks. “Not everybody would have an Aunt Leonis to take over. I’m lucky.”

  Poly shook herself, shedding ugly thoughts like water. “Let’s go to the promenade deck and see what the grownups are doing.”

  She led the way, and as they passed the door to the cabin with the portrait, she tried the handle. It did not move under the pressure of her hand. “Oh, well, I suppose it would be locked—but if it’s so heavily crated and all …”

  “It’s a nice portrait.” Simon, too, tried the door. “Bolivar looks handsome, and you can actually see energy in his expression, and a sort of excitement. He looks the way a great hero ought to look.”

  Poly pushed the handle of the bathroom door, which opened under her pressure to reveal a long, deep tub, almost the size of her bunk. “Oh, wonderful, wonderful, I’ll have a gorgeous soak this evening. I don’t care if I never see a shower. I love to wallow in a hot tub. In Gaea we had the whole ocean for a tub most of the year round, but it’s been much too cold at Benne Seed Island for swimming.”

  On the promenade deck Geraldo had put out some games for the passengers—a set of rings to toss, and pucks for shuffleboard. Dr. Wordsworth and Dr. Eisenstein, wrapped in blankets, their heads swathed in scarves, occupied two of the deck chairs. Poly led the way out the door, across the back of the deck, and then in the door to the starboard passage. “I have a hunch our two professors don’t care much for the companionship of children. You can’t have secrets very easily on freighters, and I heard them talking about us after breakfast.” She assumed Dr. Wordsworth’s voice—strong, pedantic, and with a faint trace of accent. “‘What do you make of those three children?’” Her voice changed to Dr. Eisenstein’s, gentler than Dr. Wordsworth’s, with a touch of Boston. “‘They’re moderately polite, which is a refreshing change. And they do not have the usual moronic lack of vocabulary and the mumbling speech of the affluent American young.’ And Dr. Wordsworth said, ‘At least they are keeping out of our hair.’ And Dr. Eisenstein said, ‘I wish you’d stop reminding me how gorgeous your hair is,’ and changed the subject.”

  Simon and Charles laughed at her accurate mimicry of the two women. They passed Mr. Theo’s single cabin, and came to Poly’s. She ushered them in.

  “I’m hardly affluent,” Simon said.

  Charles climbed up onto the foot of the bunk. “I know you must be poor as far as money goes. But you’re not like most poor people in any other way.”

  “Most poor people aren’t like Aunt Leonis. We’re rich in education, and we’re rich in tradition. We’re very lucky.”

  Charles nodded. “I don’t think we’re affluent, either. We’re not poor or anything, but marine biologists aren’t apt to make millions, and Daddy’s always having to buy expensive equipment. The Smiths like us, by the way. Mrs. Smith keeps trying to pat me on the head and tell me what a nice little boy I am, and that they have a great-grandson in San Jose who’s very much like me. She told me, ‘You’re so courteous and considerate. Not like a little American boy at all.’”

  “I hate that!” Poly said vehemently. “We’re completely American. And anyhow it implies that all American kids are rich slobs and that’s not true.”

  Simon, leaning against the chest of drawers, agreed gravely. “There are quite a few of us poor slobs, too.”

  Poly sat on the small space of floor between bed and chest, leaning against the bed. “Tell us more about you and Aunt Leonis. Why are you so poor, as far as money goes?”

  “I’m not exactly sure. When my parents were alive I guess we were sort of like you—not rich, not poor. But my father had a newspaper and his business was all in his head, and when he died there just wasn’t anything left over, because Mother’s illness had already cost so much. Aunt Leonis says that only the very rich and the very poor can afford to be ill. I guess being poor is a lot harder on her than it is on me, because she grew up in the big house at Pharaoh, and she’s the one who’s gone from riches to rags.” He pushed the fisherman’s cap up on his head. “Everybody’s so nice on this ship,” he said, changing the subject, “the captain letting us watch him up on the bridge, and Geraldo giving me this cap, and all. It’s almost worth having to sell the Bolivar portrait. Not quite, but almost.” He swung around and saw Poly’s icon. “What’s that?”

  “It’s St. George and the dragon. I take it with me wherever I go. St. George looks so kind, even while he’s being fierce with the dragon.”

  “Aunt Leonis and I have a dragon—a make-believe one, but he’s a good dragon, and protects Pharaoh and our garden. Hey, yawl, that’s what we can call our place —the Dragon’s Lair!”

  He looked so delighted that Poly and Charles immediately agreed that the Dragon’s Lair was the perfect name.

  “Because there are good dragons, like Aunt Leonis’s and mine. He eats nothing but Spanish moss, and he sleeps curled around one of the live-oak trees, and whenever there’s danger he spouts fire.”

  Charles asked unexpectedly, “Did he spout fire when Cousin Forsyth came?”

  Simon looked uncomfortable. “Why would Cousin Forsyth be dangerous?”

  “I don’t know,” Charles said flatly.

  “Even the dragon couldn’t keep Aunt Leonis from having to sell the portrait. If it hadn’t been Cousin Forsyth it would have been someone else. And Aunt Leonis says that if it had to go, she’s glad it’s going back to Venezuela where it came from. She says that things know where they belong, and maybe the time had come for the portrait to return to its native land.”

  Poly scrambled up from the floor. “We’ve got St. George with us on the Orion, and he’ll take care of us if we encounter any dragons that aren’t as nice as yours.” She stretched and yawned. “I think I’ll take my bath now, before dinner. Come along and talk to me while it runs. And maybe the cabin with the portrait will be unlocked. I’d like at least to see the case.”

  “Who’d have unlocked the cabin door in the last fifteen minutes?” Charles asked.

  The boys trailed after her, out the door to the aft deck, behind the deck chairs of the two professors, and in through the door to the port passage. Poly opened the door to the bathroom, and leaned over the tub to turn on the taps, then raised her finger to her lips. Simon started to speak, but Poly turned on him. “Shush.”

  There were voices coming from the cabin next to the tub room, the cabin with the portrait. A heavily accented voice said, “ … saw the word Umar.”

  “Nonsense. You are mistaken.” It was Cousin Forsyth’s voice. “And you are spying again.”

  “I do not spy. But the word Umar I saw.”

  “Impossible.”

  “You remember—when we were bringing the portrait into the cabin—there was a loose board which I hammered back into place. That is when I saw it—Umar.”

  “So? A random grouping of letters. It means nothing.”

  “You think that?”

  “Of course. Totally unimportant.”

  The voices stopped. Poly bent back over the tub and turned on both taps, full force.

  “We eavesdropped,” Simon said.

  “We listened.”

  “Aunt Leonis says—”

  Poly held her hands under the flow of water, adjusting the taps until the water suited her. “Your Aunt Leonis is absolutely right for her world. But this isn’t Aunt Leonis’s world.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Simon, this is the end of the twentieth century. Things are falling apart. The center doesn’t hold. We don’t have time for courtliness and the finer niceties of courtesy—and I’ve learned that the hard way. Does Umar mean anything to you?”

  “No.”

  “Is there something written on the back of the portrait?”

  “I don’t know. I never looked. Only at the portrait itself. There was never any reason to turn it around.”

  “That was Cousin Forsyth we heard.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the man with him had
a Dutch accent. Who helped him with the portrait yesterday?”

  “I don’t know. It was while we were getting dry after the fork lift—”

  Charles sat down on the small white stool which was the only piece of furniture in the tiny tub room. “Don’t make too big a thing of it, Pol.”

  “Am I?” She looked fiercely at her brother.

  “I don’t know,” Charles said.

  Darkness fell more quickly at Pharaoh for Aunt Leonis than it did for Simon at sea. In the last of the light she sat on her small, sagging front porch (Simon had kept it from tumbling down altogether) and read her ancestor’s journals. Her heart was heavy, and she was not sure why. His was not an unusual story. A virile young man expending his energies in fighting for the freedom of a beleaguered, overtaxed country could hardly be expected to be celibate. Wherever foreigners fight in a strange land they leave their foreign seed, and leave it probably more casually than did Quentin Phair.

  “My son grows apace,” wrote Quentin. “Each time I manage to get to Dragonlake he seems to have doubled in size. Already he is walking, falling, picking himself up and walking again. Like his Indian cousins he is learning to swim almost more quickly than he is learning to walk. I cannot pretend that he is not mine. I cannot forget Umara and our child. The Quiztanos are not like any of the other natives I have met in my five years here, not like the other Indians, not like the white Creoles, certainly not like the tragic, imported Africans; they are not like anybody. Dragonlake is another world. If I cannot bring my Umara and my son to England—and I cannot; Umara would not be welcomed; she would be insulted, and I will not have that—then it seems to me that when my work is done I must stay here, though I doubt if this battling the royalists will be over before several more years. What is there to take me home to England? I have become used to this country and these people and even this malaria, with which I have been bedridden for the past week. I will go back to Kent brieny—I owe my dearest mama that much. And then I will set sail for the last time and make my home at Dragonlake—if the Quiztanos will have me, and Umara says they will. My fellow officers already think me mad—Simon is the only one who understands, and he only because he is my friend—and so, then, this will be my final madness and I feel cold and strange even while my heart rejoices.” Miss Leonis, too, felt cold and strange and there was no rejoicing in her heart. When Quentin wrote those words he had not yet met Niniane; the future toward which he looked with fear and joy was not the future which was to come. He did not know, as Leonis did, the end of the story—or was it the end? Did such stories end with the death of the protagonist? Or were there further scenes to be acted out before the curtain could fall?