The Dragons of Babel

by Michael Swanwick

  The village was a shabby and corrupt place, and he the worst of all of them: irredeemable.

  And so, having no destination, he wandered by whichever ways were easiest, and so found himself confronted by the open door of Auld Black Agnes's cottage. The interior was dark and inviting. Enter.

  Lost in thought and self-recrimination, Will had let his legs carry them where they would. So it was that, they being under compulsion, he found himself facing the open door of Auld Black Agnes's cottage. The interior was dark, mysterious, inviting. With a wrench, he started to turn away.

  Where else do you hove to go?

  He hesitated. Before the door opening into the dark, inviting, and mysterious interior of Auld Black Agnes's cottage.

  Come in.

  He did.

  Sit down. Auld Black Agnes was sunk deep into a chintz chair with lace doilies on the arms. Her face, as wrinkled and soft as an apple left too many days in the sun, rested on her knees like a pallid spider. She gestured toward a too-small chair at the center of the parlor. Will sat uncomfortably.

  The other elders of the village moot were scattered about the room, some standing, several on folding chairs, three stiff and unblinking as owls on the divan, and one perched shoeless on the upright of the sideboard. On an ottoman at Agnes's feet sat Jumping Joan, still for once in her life, eyes spooked and hands folded. It only made sense. With Bessie Applemere a hag no longer, somebody would need to be trained as a truth-teller in her place. She would not speak at this moot or for many a moot to come, of course. Yet her place was important nevertheless, for without a full coven of thirteen, the village moot would not be legal.

  The village elders were always true to the letter of the law.

  "Tea?" Black Agnes asked.

  Mutely, Will accepted a cup. He let her add milk and two lumps of sugar.

  "You were late in the coming. I'd almost given up on you entirely." "I ... I was looking for my aunt."

  The old crone lifted her beak of a nose from her cup and pointed it into the darkest corner of the parlor, where an archway led into a lightless kitchen. "Well, there she is."

  With the slightest shift of Will's attention, the darkness assembled itself into his aunt. Blind Enna cringed back, as if sensing his attention, and held her head as she did when listening intently. It seemed to him that her ears pricked higher. "Auntie..." Will said.

  Blind Enna wailed in fear. She flung her apron over her face and fled into the interior of the house.

  Bewildered, Will stood. "Wait," he said. "I didn't... I wouldn't... He had no idea what to say.

  To his intense embarrassment, he burst into tears.

  As if this were what she were waiting for, Auld Black Agnes said,

  "All right, the male elders can leave now. We'll handle this as a lady-moot."

  "Be ye sure?" the Sullen Man rumbled. "Ye haven't the right of coercion without us."

  "He cried." she said. "So we'll do this by persuasion."

  So with sighs, mutters, and scrapes of chairs, Daddy Fingerbones and Spadefoot, the two Night Striders, and Ralph the Ferrier, followed the Sullen Man out of the room. Annie Hop-the-Frog took the forgotten teacup from Will's hand. "I don't think you want this," she said kindly. "You haven't touched a drop."

  He shook his head hopelessly.

  "Look at this darling boy." The matron stroked his hair. As blond as a dandelion and every bit as foolhardy. It's always the heroes who break your heart, the seventh sons and holy fools. All those who march out to solve the woes of the world without ever asking themselves whether the world wants saving or who has the advantage of weight."

  The ladies of the moot clucked in agreement. "It's a pity that we must exile him." Shocked, Will said, "What?"

  "There's no place for you here dear," Annie said. "You saw your aunt. The poor thing is terrified of you."

  "Everyone is," the yage-witch muttered sourly. Nobody contradicted her.

  "I killed the dragon!" Will cried. "I did for you a deed that not all the village put together could have done." "That is neither here nor there." Annie said. "I fail to see why it isn't."

  "Well, exactly, dear. That's the problem in a nutshell." "I didn't—"

  "It is not what you did that is in question here, but what you are," Auld Black Agnes said. "You despise us and our ways. You cannot see our virtues anymore; our foibles and follies fill your sight. You are filled with anger and impatience and a restless urge to be doing things. Yet you are young and without wisdom, and there is nobody here who will teach you it. Nor would you accept their teaching if it were offered you. So there is no choice. You must leave the village."

  Every word she said rang true. Will could gainsay none of it. "But where will I go?" he asked despairingly.

  "Alas," she replied, "that is of no concern to me."

  4

  Scythe song

  The first several days alter leaving the village were peaceful. Will traveled south along the river road and then, where the marshlands rose up, followed that same road eastward and inland among the farms. Now and then he got a ride on a hay-wain or a tractor, and sometimes a meal or two as well in exchange for work. He fed himself from the land and bathed in starlit ponds. When he could not find a barn or an unlocked utility shed, he burrowed into a haystack, wrapping his cloak about him for a defense against ticks. Such sleights and stratagems were no great burden for a country fey such as himself.

  His mood varied wildly. Sometimes he felt elated to have left his old life behind. Other times, he fantasized vengeance, bloody and sweet. It was shameful of him. for the chief architect of his ruin was dead at his own hand and the others in the village were as much the war-dragon's victims as he. But he was no master of his own thoughts, and at such moments would bite and claw at his own flesh until the fit passed.

  Then one morning the roads were thronged with people. It was like a conjuring trick in which a hand is held out. palm empty, to be briefly covered by a silk handkerchief which, whisked away, reveals a mound of squirming eels. Will had gone to sleep with the roads empty and that night dreamed of the sea. He woke to an odd murmuring and. when he dug his way out of the hay, discovered that it was voices, the weary desultory talk of folk who have come a great distance and have a long way yet to go.

  Will stood by the road letting the dust-stained travelers stream past him like a river while his vision grabbed and failed to seize, searching for and not finding a familiar face among their number. Until at last he saw a woman whose bare breasts and green sash marked her as a hag, let slide her knapsack to the ground and wearily sit upon a stone at the verge of the road. He placed himself before her and bowed formally. "Reverend Mistress, your counsel I crave. Who are all these folk? Where are they bound?"

  The hag looked up "The Armies of the Mighty come through the land," she said, "torching the crops and leveling the villages. Terror goes before them and there are none who dare stand up to their puissance, and so perforce all must flee, some into the Old Forest, and others across the border. Tis said there are refugee camps there."

  "Is it your wisdom," he asked, touching his brow as the formula demanded, "that we should travel thither?"

  The young hag looked tired beyond her years. "Whether it is wisdom or not, it is there that I am bound." she said. And without further word she stood, shouldered her burden, and walked on.

  The troubles had emptied out the hills and scoured from their innermost recesses many a creature generally thought to be extinct. Downs trolls and albino giants, the latter translucent-skinned and weak as tapioca pudding, trudged down the road, along with ogres, brown men, selkies, chalkies, and other common types of hobs and feys. After a moment's hesitation, Will joined them.

  Thus it was that he became a refugee.

  Late that same day, when the sun was high and Will was passing a field of oats, low and golden under a harsh blue sky, he realized he had to take a leak. Far across the field the forest began. He turned his back on the road and in that instant was
a carefree vagabond once more. Through the oars he strode, singing to himself a harvest song:

  "Mowers, weary and brown, and blithe, What is the word methinks ye know..."

  It was a bonny day, and for all his troubles Will could not help feeling glad to be alive and able to enjoy the rich gold smell that rose from the crops and the fresh green smell that came from the woods and the sudden whirr of grasshoppers through the air.

  "What is the word that, over and over, Sings the Scythe to the flowers and grass?"

  Will was thinking of the whitesmith's daughter, who had grown so busty over the winter and had blushed angrily last spring simply for his looking at her, though he hadn't meant a thing by it at the time. Later, however, reflecting upon that moment, his thoughts had gone where she'd earlier assumed them to be. Now he would have liked to bring her here at hottest midday with a blanket and find a low spot in the fields, where the oats would hide them, and perform with her those rites that would guarantee a spectacular harvest.

  A little girl came running across the field, arms outstretched, golden braids flying behind her. "Papa! Papa!" she cried.

  To his astonishment, Will saw that she was heading toward him. Some distance behind, two stickfellas and a lubin ran after her, as if she had just escaped their custody. Straight to Will the little girl flew and leapt up into his arms. Hugging him tightly, she buried her small face in his shoulder.

  "Help me," she whispered. "Please. They want to rape me."

  Perhaps there was a drop of the truth-teller's blood in him, for her words went straight to Will's heart and he did not doubt them. Falling immediately into the role she had laid out for him, he spun her around in the air as if in great joy, then set her down and, placing his arms on her shoulders, sternly said, "You little imp! You must never run away like that again — never! Do you understand me?"

  "Yes, Papa." Eyes downcast, she dug a hole in the dirt with the tip of one shoe.

  The girl's pursuers came panting up. "Sir! Sir!" cried the lubin. He had a dog's head, like all his kind, was great of belly but had a laborer's arms and shoulders, and wore a wide-brimmed hat with a dirty white plume. He swept off the hat and bowed deeply. "Saligos de Gralloch is my name, sir. My companions and I found your daughter wandering the roads, all by herself, hungry and lost. Thank the Seven we..." He stopped, frowned, tugged at one hairy ear "You're her father, you say?"

  "Good sir, my thanks," Will said, as if distracted. He squatted and hugged the child to him again, thinking furiously. "It was kind of you to retrieve her to me."

  The lubin gestured, and the stickfellas moved to either side of Will. He himself took a step forward and stared down on Will, black lips curling back to expose yellow canines. "Are you her father? You can't be her father. You're too young."

  Will felt the dragon-darkness rising up in him, and fought it down. The lubin outweighed him twice over, and the stickfellas might be slight, but their limbs were as fast and hard as staves. He would have to be cunning. "She was exposed to black iron as an infant and almost died." he said lightly. "So I sold a decade of my life to Year Eater to buy a cure."

  One of the stickfellas froze, like a lifeless tree rooted in the soil, as he tried to parse out the logic of what Will had said. The other skittishly danced backward and forward on his long legs and longer arms. The lubin narrowed his eyes. "That's not how it works." he rumbled. "It can't be. Surely, when you sell a fraction of yourself to that dread power, it makes you older, not younger."

  But Will had stalled long enough to scheme and knew now what to do. "My darling daughter," he murmured, placing a thumb to his lips, kissing it. and then touching the thumb to the girl's forehead. All this was theater and distraction. Heart hammering with fear, he fought to look casual as he took her hand, so that the tiny dab of warm spittle touched her fingers. "My dear, sweet little..."

  There was a work of minor magic that every lad his age knew. You came upon a sleeping friend and gently slid his hand into a pan of warm water. Whereupon, impelled by who-knew-what thaumaturgic principles, said friend would immediately piss himself. The spittle would do nicely in place of water. Focusing all his thought upon it, Will mumbled, as if it were an endearment, one of his aunt's favorite homeopathic spells — one that was both a diuretic and a laxative.

  With a barrage of noises astonishing from one so small, the sluice gates of the girl's body opened. Vast quantities of urine and liquid feces exploded from her nether regions and poured down her legs. "Oh!" she shrieked with horror and dismay. "Oh! Oh! Oh!"

  Her abductors, meanwhile, drew back in disgust. "P'faugh!" said one of the stickfellas, waving a twiggish hand before his nose The other was already heading back toward the road.

  "I'm sorry." Will smiled apologetically, straightening. "She has this little problem..." The girl tried to kick him, but he nimbly evaded her. "As you can see, she lacks self-control."

  "Oh!"

  Only the lubin remained now. He stuck out a blunt forefinger, thumb upward, as if his hand were a gun, and shook it at Will. "You've fooled the others, perhaps, but not me. Cross Saligos once more, and it will be your undoing." He fixed Will with a long stare, then turned and trudged heavily away.

  "Look what you did to me!" the little girl said angrily when Saligos was finally out of sight and they were alone. She plucked at the cloth of her dress. It was foul and brown.

  Amused, Will said, "It got you out of a fix, didn't it? It got us both out of a fix." He held out his hand. "There's a stream over in the woods there. Come with me. and we'll get you cleaned off."

  Carefully keeping the child at arm's length, he led her away.

  The girl's name was Esme. While she washed herself in the creek, Will went a little way downstream and laundered her clothes, rinsing and wringing them until they were passably clean. He placed them atop some nearby bushes to dry. By the time he was done. Esme had finished too and crouched naked by the edge of the creek, drawing pictures in the mud with a twig. To dry her off, he got out his blanket from the knapsack and wrapped it around her.

  Clutching the blanket about her as if it were the robes of state, Esme broke off a cattail stalk, and with it whacked Will on both shoulders. "I hereby knight thee!" she cried. "Arise, Sir Hero of Grammarie Fields."

  Anybody else would have been charmed. But the old familiar darkness had descended upon Will once more, and all he could think of was how to get Esme off his hands. He had neither resources nor prospects. Traveling light, as he must, he dared not take on responsibility for the child. "Where are you from?" he asked her.

  Esme shrugged.

  "How long have you been on the road?" "I don't remember."

  "Where are your parents? What are their names?" "Dunno."

  "You do have parents, don't you?" "Dunno."

  "You don't know much, do you?"

  "I can scour a floor, bake a sweet-potato pie. make soap from animal fat and lye and candles from beeswax and wicking, curry a horse, shear a lamb, rebuild a carburetor, and polish shoes until they shine." She let the blanket sag so that it exposed one flat proto-breast and struck a pose. "I can sing the birds down out of the trees."

  Involuntarily, Will laughed. "Please don't." Then he sighed. "Well, I'm stuck with you for the nonce, anyway. When your clothes have dried, I'll take you upstream and teach you how to tickle a trout. It'll be a useful addition to your many other skills."

  There were armies on the move, and no sensible being lingered in a war zone. Nevertheless they did. By the time the sun went down, they had acquired trout and mushrooms and wild tubers enough to make a good meal, and built a small camp at the verge of the forest. Like most feys, Will was a mongrel. But there was enough woods-elf in his blood that, if it weren't for the War, he could be perfectly comfortable here forever. He built a nest of pine boughs for Esme and once again wrapped her in his blanket. She demanded of him a song, and then a story, and then another story, and then a lullaby. By degrees she began to blink and yawn, and finally she slid away to the realm o
f sleep. She baffled Will. The girl was as much at ease as if she had lived in this camp all her life. He had expected, alter the day's events, that she would fight sleep and suffer nightmares. But here, where it took his utmost efforts to keep them warm and fed, she slept the sleep of the innocent and protected.

  Feeling sorely used, Will wrapped his windbreaker about himself, and fell asleep as well.

  Hours later — or possibly mere minutes — he was wakened from uneasy dreams by the thunder of jets. Will opened his eyes in time to see a flight of dragons pass overhead. Their afterburners scratched thin lines of fire across the sky, dwindling slowly before finally disappearing over the western horizon. He crammed his hand into his mouth and bit the flesh between thumb and forefinger until it bled. How he used to marvel at those fearsome machines! He had even, in the innocence of his young heart, loved them and imagined himself piloting one someday. Now the sight of them nauseated him.

  He got up, sourly noting that Esme slept undisturbed, and threw an armload of wood on the fire. He would not be able to sleep again tonight. Best he were warm while he awaited the dawn.

  So it was that he chanced to be awake when a troop of centaurs galloped across the distant moonlit fields, gray as ghosts and silent as so many deer. At the sight of his campfire, their leader gestured and three of them split away from the others. They sped toward him. Will stood at their approach.

  The centaurs pulled up with a thunder of hooves and a spatter of kicked-up dirt. "It's a civilian, Sarge," one said. They were all three female and wore red military jackets with gold piping and shakos to match. "Happy, clueless, and out on a fucking walking tour of the countryside, apparently."

  "It's not aware that there's a gods-be-damned war on, then?"

  "Apparently not." To Will, she said. "Don't you know that the Sons of Fire are on their way?"