Dragons in the Waters

by Madeleine L'engle

  “In cahoots,” Hurtado said. “An American idiom. It is possible. But why do you say ‘the murderer’ that way?”

  “I am not at all convinced that you have arrested the right man.”

  Hurtado’s dark eyes sparked. “As you tried to trap Gutiérrez, so have I tried to trap the murderer. Jan has everything against him. But I am convinced of his innocence.”

  At Dragonlake, Miss Leonis and Canon Tallis tried to hide their anxiety about Simon. Tallis lay on a chaise longue made of young trees and vines in the same way as Miss Leonis’s chair. It had been placed on the porch of Umar Xanai’s dwelling. The crude couch was amazingly gentle to his tired and aching body. His leg wound had been cleaned and dressed and he had quickly withdrawn his first request to be taken immediately to a hospital. The agonizing pain was gone and if he did not attempt to move he was quite comfortable. The hectic flush had left his face.

  Miss Leonis’s chair had been placed so that they could talk easily. The life of the village flowed about them like a cool stream. Birds sang. On the porch of one of the Caring Places they could see a young Quiztano male in a bright, belted tunic, helping a little boy to walk. At the far end of the porch a young Quiztano woman, in softly patterned, flowing robe, tended an old man.

  “I have muscles I never even knew existed,” Tallis said. “Why didn’t they put me in one of their hospitals?”

  “Caring Places,” she corrected. “You have a wound, but it’s not that serious, now that it’s been cleaned and the infection controlled. Umar Xanai says that you were absolutely right not to touch the water in the stream. It’s full of lethal amoebae.”

  “What have the Quiztanos used on me? I cannot tell you how much better I feel.”

  She smiled. “They have ministered to me, too. They have ointments and powders which have been used by them as far back as the Memory goes. I would guess that what they put on your wound must be some equivalent of an antibiotic. After all, penicillin comes from bread mold.”

  “It was like a dream,” he said, smiling. “There I was, my leg being cleaned and dressed by a gorgeous young creature who told me that she has her M.D. from the university in Caracas. Quentin Phair would be pleased.”

  “Yes. I think he would. I hope that Niniane would be pleased, too.”

  He changed the subject. “I noticed that the young men who rescued me carried bows and arrows, or spears, not firearms.”

  “The Umara and Umar Xanai do not permit firearms, and those who wish to use them leave the tribe.”

  “The Umara and the old chieftain—they rule together?”

  “I believe the Umara carries the ultimate authority. They are a strange and fascinating people, and I hope that I am not putting too much trust in them when I expect them to find Simon.”

  “They found me.”

  “But this is not the first time on this journey that Simon has come close to death.”

  “It would seem to me,” Canon Tallis said, “that Simon has been saved for a purpose. And if he has been saved for a purpose, he will be all right now.”

  “He should not have run away from you.”

  “I ordered him to.”

  “But you were wounded and helpless.”

  “He couldn’t have helped. What use two of us dying? And your lad is no coward. He was extraordinarily brave and resourceful about the boar.”

  She shook her head slowly. “He shouldn’t have run.”

  Canon Tallis said gently, “Miss Leonis, all we must concentrate on now is having Simon found and brought here to us.”

  “He will try to get back to the clearing. Once he comes to himself he will know he shouldn’t have run, and he will try to get back.”

  “The Quiztanos have returned to the clearing, and they will ray out from there. They will be able to follow his tracks no matter how quickly the jungle covers them for untrained eyes.”

  “It will be night in a few hours.”

  Tallis corrected her. “It will not be night for a few hours. We will pray that during that time Simon will be found.”

  She sighed. “Sometimes I think I am prayed out.”

  “I doubt that.”

  She looked at him, at his bald head, his warm, dark eyes, at the lines of pain on his face, pain which did not come only from his injury. “I have learned that no is an answer to prayer, and I have come to accept a great many noes. I cannot accept a no about Simon.”

  “You will accept what you have to,” the priest said quietly. “Meanwhile, you must hope. Simon is to be saved for a purpose. That is the best help you can give those who are looking for Simon. Prayers of hope.”

  “Yes.” She shut her eyes. For a long time the two of them, the middle-aged priest and the old woman, remained in silence. The sounds of the village mingled gently with their quiet. From the lake came splashing and the laughter of children. From somewhere behind them came a woman’s voice raised in song almost as clear and high as a bird’s, and her song was joined by bird song. The breeze lifted and moved through the trees with a sound like rain.

  After what seemed an eternity, Miss Leonis opened her eyes.

  Canon Tallis was looking at her, his dark eyes compassionate.

  She asked him, “Do you know who murdered the man who called himself Forsyth Phair?”

  “Yes. I think I do.”

  “It was not Jan?”

  “No. Not Jan.”

  The afternoon sun beat down on the Orion. Dr. Eisenstein nodded in her deck chair.

  Dr. Wordsworth poked her. “Ruth. Come look at this.” She pointed down at the dock.

  Dr. Eisenstein pulled herself out of her chair and went to the rail; she laughed with pleasure as she saw a man asleep in a rope hammock which was slung under the side of a large truck, so that the man slept in the shadow of the truck as comfortably as between two trees.

  “We should take a nap, too,” Dr. Wordsworth said.

  “But Englishmen detest a siesta.”

  Dr. Wordsworth stretched slowly, languorously. “My English blood grows thinner by the hour. I have discovered that I love my country. Why doesn’t Hurtado let us leave the ship? Vermeer said that permission should come through any moment.”

  Dr. Eisenstein moved to the shade of the canvas canopy. “It does seem odd. I understand that Dr. O’Keefe has been allowed off.”

  “Official business,” Dr. Wordsworth said. “He’s here at the invitation of the Venezuelan government, and now that Jan has been apprehended I guess it was easy enough to relax regulations for him. He went off with several pompous-looking officials.”

  “Where did you learn all this?”

  “Vermeer. Oh, Ruth, I wish there was something we could do.”

  “Do you want to play cards?”

  “I mean about finding Simon. Let’s go take a siesta.”

  Dr. Eisenstein leaned back in her chair. “I was having one when you woke me up.”

  “Sorry. Go back to sleep.”

  Dr. O’Keefe returned to the Orion hot and depressed. Charles and Poly were not in their cabins. Poly, he assumed, would be with Geraldo. He undressed and took a cold shower. His preliminary investigations of the lake had not been encouraging, and the Head of Department who accompanied him had not been optimistic. Most worrying was a chemical plant from which O’Keefe guessed that a dangerous amount of mercury was escaping into the lake, although “Any amount is dangerous,” he said to his guide, a distinguished-looking man from Caracas with the incredible name of Geiger, pronounced Hay-hair.

  Geiger told him that to keep the poison from infecting the lake would be enormously expensive. He himself was highly alarmed because the chief of public health had reported cases of mercury poisoning.

  “And I very deliberately drove you through the barrio,” Geiger told O’Keefe. “You have seen for yourself what conditions are like there, and you will guess that there may well have been other cases which have not been reported. Life is less important to the business barons than their profit sheets.”

>   It was going to be difficult to shake up this greed so that a beautiful lake would not be destroyed, taking along with it a great many human lives.

  “What about the water by the Quiztano settlement?”

  “It is unpolluted thus far, but unless the industrial effluents are expelled elsewhere it is inevitable that the whole lake will suffer. We are further handicapped by the fact that there are many people in high official positions who consider that the people of the barrio are themselves pollutants, and that if a great many of them should happen to die off, it will be helping to curb the population explosion.”

  “I gather that you do not sympathize with this view?” O’Keefe asked.

  Geiger shook his head. “No, but it makes it more difficult for us to impress the business barons with the seriousness of the situation. Add to this that many foreign powers have interest in our oil wells and chemical plants, and you will see that our efforts could be turned to provoke an international incident.”

  “But you will make the efforts anyhow?”

  Geiger nodded. “This is why we asked you to come. Words from a man of your reputation will hold more weight than anything one of our own scientists could say.”

  —Greed, Dr. O’Keefe thought angrily, as he stood under the cold shower.—Is the same kind of greed behind the murder of Phair and the kidnapping of Simon and Tom?

  When he was dressed in clean shorts and shirt he went to check on his children. Geraldo told him that Poly had gone back to her cabin, and he found her there, scowling at her little icon.

  She looked up. “St. George isn’t killing dragons any more, is he, Daddy? He’s not going to be able to save Simon and Uncle Father. He’s only a piece of paper pasted on wood. I hate him.”

  Dr. O’Keefe said, “You never thought your icon was a miracle-worker, did you?”

  “No. But it used to make me feel that dragons could be killed if there was a St. George around.”

  “Don’t you still feel that way?”

  “Most of the St. Georges I know have been killed by the dragons. Like Joshua. And Quentin Phair was never a St. George at all. Daddy, if Simon and Uncle Father are all right we should have heard by now.”

  “This isn’t like you, Poly,” her father said. “The worst thing you can do for them is to give up hope.”

  “Okay. I’ll try to hold on. You’d better go look in on Charles. I think he’s upset about something.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In the cabin.”

  Dr. O’Keefe left his daughter and walked up the starboard passage to the cabin. He looked in and saw Charles lying face down on his bunk.

  Dr. O’Keefe touched him lightly on the shoulder. “Charles.”

  Charles turned over and startled his father with his pallor. His eyes were red from weeping.

  “Charles, what is it?”

  “It has been an appropriate time for a man to cry,” Charles said.

  He turned over, and once more buried his face in his pillow. Dr. O’Keefe watched him for a few moments, then left. When his children were very small there was usually something which he could do to ease whatever was troubling them. Both Poly and Charles had moved beyond that stage, and he felt helpless and heavy of heart.

  He went to the salon, looking for Mr. Theo.

  Simon crouched, eyes closed, waiting for the boot to kick him again. It was not going to be an easy way to die, and he was certain that the soldier was going to kill him.

  Then he heard a twing and a shout.

  He opened his eyes and the soldier was dancing about in pain, an arrow through the hide of his boot and into his foot.

  From every direction, it seemed, came bronze young men in bright tunics, carrying spears, and bows and arrows.

  If Gutiérrez knew the jungle, so did the Quiztanos. In single file they walked through what appeared to be impenetrable undergrowth. Gutiérrez was marched between two of the Indians, as was the soldier whose boot had so nearly killed Simon. The arrow had been removed.

  Gutiérrez screamed and howled and cursed. He was the chief of police of Port of Dragons. The Indians would pay for this. Here he was, rescuing Simon, didn’t the fools realize that he, with his helicopter, had found the boy first and was there to save his life? and for this he was treated like a criminal. They would all shortly be behind bars.

  At last he ran out of wind.

  The soldier moved along without emotion. His rifle had been taken from him and left in the copter. If the arrow had hurt his foot he gave no sign.

  Simon walked with a young Indian, who identified himself as Ouldi and told him that Canon Tallis and Aunt Leonis were waiting for him. After that there was little conversation. The trip through the jungle used all their lung power and concentration. Simon followed in Ouldi’s footsteps, and it took every ounce of his failing strength for him to keep up. The heat of the jungle which hardly affected the Indians had Simon streaming with sweat. His mouth was so dry that the dryness was pain. Occasionally Ouldi reached a hand out to help him through a difficult place.

  Simon tried to conceal the fact that he was so exhausted he was not certain one foot would continue to follow the next. His breath came in short gasps. He had a stitch in his side which threatened to double him up. Just as he was about to pant out to Ouldi a plea for a moment’s rest, the undergrowth cleared, the trees and shrubs were behind them, and they faced the deep blue of Dragonlake.

  Two large open wooden boats were waiting on the beach. Ouldi told Simon to get into the first. Gutiérrez and the soldier were hustled into the second, and Gutiérrez again began to scream threats and abuse. Instinctively Simon put his hands over his ears.

  “It is all right,” Ouldi assured him. “He cannot hurt you now. He will be taken directly to Port of Dragons where Mynheer Vermeer and the police from Caracas will be waiting.”

  “Señor Hurtado?”

  “His men. Señor Hurtado is at Dragonlake. And we have the information he and Mynheer Vermeer were seeking. Gutierrez”—Ouldi spat the syllables—“he was not born with that fine name. One look at him and I could tell that he is an Indian from across the border—”

  “Not Quiztano—”

  “No, no, a tribe of short stupid people who have almost completely vanished because they have betrayed their own ways. They have no Memory. As for that Gutiérrez, he is a smuggler.”

  “But he’s a policeman.”

  “So? Not all policemen are Hurtados, any more than all consuls are Vermeers. Being a policeman simplified his dirty work—very dirty.”

  Simon looked at Ouldi with respect. “Canon Tallis suspected he might be into something like that.” He gazed somberly as the boat with Gutiérrez and the soldier was rowed away.

  Four Indians were in the boat with Simon and Ouldi. They rowed swiftly, in the opposite direction from the other boat. Ouldi sat in the prow, his back turned to the water so that he was facing Simon. “We are glad you have come, little brother.”

  “I’m glad, too. You saved my life. Gutiérrez wasn’t rescuing me. That soldier was going to kill me and Gutiérrez wasn’t about to stop him. You came just in time.” His throat was so parched he could scarcely speak.

  Ouldi took a small skin bag from his belt and handed it to Simon. “There are only a few swallows, but that is all you should have right now.”

  The swallows were sheer bliss, and Simon handed the empty skin to Ouldi with gratitude.

  The Indians rowed strongly and swiftly but it seemed a long time before Simon saw ahead of them the round dwellings on high stilts stretching out into the lake. It was exactly as Charles had described it, exactly like the picture he had seen in Jan’s book.

  “Uncle Father—Canon Tallis—is really there? And Aunt Leonis?”

  Ouldi smiled slightly. “How many times do I have to tell you? Yes, they are there.” The boat swept past the dwelling farthest out in the lake. Ouldi pointed toward it proudly. “That is my dwelling. That is where I will bring my betrothed on the night when we two are
made a new one.”

  When the boat neared the beach he held up his hand for silence.

  A large group was assembled. Simon looked about eagerly, but at first he could not see Aunt Leonis or Canon Tallis. Hurtado was clearly visible standing a little apart from the Indians, with his dark hatchet face and city suit.

  Ouldi jumped from the boat and helped pull it ashore, then held out his hand to Simon, who jumped out onto the soft sand.

  From the clearing a young girl came running out of the large central building, her patterned dress flowing like butterfly wings. She carried a goblet which she offered to Simon. It was half filled with a pale liquid.

  “We know that you are still thirsty,” Ouldi said, “but you have been very long without enough water, and so you must drink only a little at a time. This will help.”

  He drank thirstily, and the golden liquid cooled and healed his throat far more than water would.

  “Thank you,” Simon said. “It has helped.” He gave the goblet back to the girl.

  “Now,” Ouldi said. “It is the moment.”

  The group on shore had turned away from Simon and the boats and were looking back to the greensward. Simon followed their gaze, past an enormous stone-grey statue of a beatifically smiling woman, to a litter being carried by two young Indians. A small figure was crouched on the litter; at first he thought it was a child. Beside the litter walked two women, one middle-aged, one young. When the litter came closer he realized that the small figure was not a child but a very old woman, much older than Aunt Leonis.

  A man in a long white tunic, with white hair down to his shoulders, detached himself from the group and went up to the litter and spoke briefly to the occupant, who raised her hand imperiously, and spoke in a cracked, almost whispering voice.

  The man returned a few words, and Ouldi whispered to Simon, “Umar Xanai and the Umara.”

  The litter bearers carried the old woman up to Simon.

  He felt a strange constriction in his chest. He held his breath until he thought his lungs would burst, but his grey eyes met the probe of her dark ones. He felt that he was moving out of time and into eternity, that this meeting of eyes would never end, that time had stopped and would never begin to flow again.