The Little Dragons

by Rowan Starsmith

  “You mean, if something goes wrong?”

  “Even if he expects more than I can give, like restoring his daughter’s virginity.” Peg held her walking stick up to the firelight. “Thank goodness I can still hobble along the paths on my stick. The King’s daughter can’t hear what is said in other People’s cottages.”

  “But I thought you wanted to do less traveling. You said you might start asking the People to come to you when it’s possible for the ill person to travel at all.”

  Peg laughed. “Good thing I’m not that far gone yet. And now it’s the only way. I will visit as many People of the Land as I can, especially Elders, whether they need Healing or not, to search for the lost knowledge. You will come with me and we will let our resident Princess think we are called away to Heal.”

  “Which will often be true.”

  “Of course.”

  “We will have to be so, so careful what we say in front of her,” said Maida.

  “Of course.”

  “When you need to talk to me, perhaps you can come to the barn with me when I milk the goats.”

  “Goddess forbid.” Peg looked glum at this prospect. “But at this point, I guess it can’t be helped.” She brightened. “And meanwhile, we’ll learn what we can from her. There might be important clues there too.”

  Between the lemon balm tea and the comfort of her own bed, Peg slept soundly and woke refreshed. The cabin smelled of fresh-baked bread. Rafe scurried across from the barn as soon as the light faded, searching the sky in all directions as he ran. “You should wait until it’s darker,” Maida scolded him. He mimed looking up and shook his head. “I know,” she said. “There were no Dragons in the sky. But you must always be very, very careful.” She frowned at him to reinforce the message. Rafe nodded seriously.

  Maida allowed him to serve Mother Peg a meal of soup, cheese and the warm bread at the table by the window. He pulled up his stool and sat at her feet watching her, his long arms and legs sticking out at awkward angles, an expression of delight on his big round face. “Stop staring at me!” Peg barked at him. Chastened, he retreated to the hearth, carrying his stool, then took up exactly the same position. “Well, at least you’re a bit easier to ignore a few feet away,” Peg said.

  In a minute he was distracted by the metal bowl Maida handed him. Ignoring the spoon Maida set beside him on the hearth, he lifted the bowl and drank. “I’ll give you more if you use your spoon,” Maida told him. He eagerly held out the bowl. The spoon slowed him down enough that Maida could serve a bowl for herself and bring it to the table opposite Mother Peg.

  “Now you’ll have to clean up the hearth,” Peg remarked.

  “I know.” Maida glanced over her shoulder at the mess Rafe was making as he struggled to use the spoon. “But he has to learn these things.”

  “One thing I’ll say, you have patience,” Peg said. Maida looked up at her, startled by the praise. Peg’s eyes stayed on her meal. “So, when can we expect our princess to arrive?”

  “’Cess?” Rafe said, momentarily pausing to respond to a word he obviously knew.

  “Yes, Rafe, we’ll be having a princess come to stay with us for awhile,” Maida said. To Peg, under her breath, she muttered, “Shouldn’t have told him that.” Peg rolled her eyes.

  “’Cess!” exclaimed Rafe, yet another delighted grin breaking out across his face.

  “You must not stare at her or bother her,” Maida told him sternly.

  Rafe nodded. “’Cess!” he repeated, then returned to his messy work with the spoon.

  “Oh dear,” Maida said quietly to Peg. “I’d forgotten about our ‘condemned criminal.’ What if the princess tells the King’s Men we have a man escaped from the execution grounds hidden here?”

  “Can we hide him? Tell him to stay in the barn?”

  “All the time? Perhaps we can hide his background, tell her he was abandoned here when he was a baby. The King’s People don’t like the fact that we keep people like Rafe in our homes, but they know we do.”

  Rafe was by now looking at the two women with a worried expression, hearing his name repeated. Maida reassured him. “It’s all right Rafe. You’re safe here.”

  He returned to his food and Maida turned back to Peg. “You asked when the princess will come. I don’t know exactly, but soon, I gather. They’re anxious to get her out of sight.”

  “Perhaps we can do a little searching for information before she comes.”

  Maida’s eyebrows went up. “But surely you need more rest from your trip.”

  Peg waved her hand dismissively. “I’m fine. I rested very well.”

  “What do you have in mind then?”

  “I’d like to pay a visit to old Peyoter. His mother’s line was full of Members of the Orders, including two great-aunts who were Dragon Priestesses. If anyone has any information passed down through family, it will be him.”

  “Well, if you think you’re up to it,” Maida said. “Peyoter will probably be running low on that salve for his arthritis anyway.”

  Chapter 10: Tess

  Mother Tess woke, gasping for breath. Where was she? She peered around her at the scant furnishings of an unfamiliar cabin, lit by sunlight falling through cracks in rough shutters. The Apprentice traveling with her was curled up under the blanket beside her, and on a pallet on the floor, a double bump.

  Oh yes. That young woodcutter and his wife, so nervous in presence of one of the Old Ones. Tess relaxed, smiled to herself. They offered the best food they had in the house. Tess had insisted that they all share it.

  They had also given up their bed. This Tess had accepted, her bones too achy now for a hard pallet on the floor unless there was no choice, which sometimes on this endless journey, there wasn’t.

  Then Tess remembered what had awakened her, the dream, again. She closed her eyes, tried to drift back into the dream state. If only she could figure out what the young King’s People Dragon Priestess was trying to say. She had not had time to return to the Library and search the Dream Journals. She would have to figure out what it meant on her own.

  Tess worried about the dream until the light faded toward dusk and the young couple on the pallet on the floor began to stir.

  Chapter 11: Gleve

  Gleve grieved over Maida. He had promised her. Bad enough that when the time came to ask Mother Sarah for a word, he had lost his nerve. It was even worse that he had been a coward about telling Maida, too ashamed to even look at her. Their friendship was surely broken now. She would never forgive him. He would not expect her to.

  As he journeyed, though, the image of Maida’s hurt eyes faded. He began to look forward rather than back. During the previous night’s journey, as he had begun the climb into the foothills, it had been as if his spirits were rising with the land.

  Finally he spotted the glimmer of lantern-light through the trees. He began to run, calling out Father Mallory’s name. As he broke into the clearing in front of the small cabin, the old man opened the door and carefully stepped out onto the front stoop, peering into the darkness with his half-blind eyes. The light behind him shone through a wild halo of wispy white hair around his head. No one to brush it and tie it back, thought Gleve as he threw his arms around his beloved Teacher.

  “My lad, my lad,” Father Mallory laughed, kissing Gleve’s cheek, tickling him with a white beard as skimpy and wild as the hair on his head.

  “Father, I’m home! Home to stay!”

  “What is that?” the old man asked, holding Gleve away far enough to peer into his face.

  “I’m going to stay here. They have assigned me to co-practice with you.”

  Father Mallory pulled his former Apprentice to his chest once more. When he held him away again, his eyes were wet.

  Gleve suddenly noticed how drawn and tired his Teacher looked. “Father, are you all right? Did the food I prepared last the whole time I’ve been away?”

  “Yes, yes, it did and I am well—just tired.”

&
nbsp; “Then I will prepare a feast to celebrate our practice as co-Healers.”

  Gleve took a step toward the door, but stopped when Father Mallory put a fragile hand on his chest. “Yes, but quietly. We have a patient.”

  A young man, one of the King’s people, lay unconscious on a pallet near the hearth. He was covered with a blanket, carefully tucked under his chin. The face above it was grotesquely swollen, the pale skin coloured red and purple, the eyes barely visible slits in the puffy flesh. Father Mallory had cleaned the wounds and stitched the cuts. He had had to shave off some of the young man’s curly dark hair to stitch cuts on his scalp.

  “Is the rest of him beaten like that?” Gleve whispered, glancing down the length of what was obviously a very tall body. The patient’s feet hung over the end of the pallet.

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “I don’t know. A couple of drovers stopped at the Foothills Spring. They heard someone groaning in the woods behind the meadow where they camp. They found him there, unconscious and nearly naked. He couldn't have been there long, probably since just the night before, or he would have frozen to death. Their wagon was empty, so they loaded him on and brought him here.”

  “They had no idea who he was?”

  “No. The bits of clothing left on him and scattered about where they found him told them he wore the uniform of King Anglewart’s service.”

  “It’s not a Dragon attack, is it?”

  “No.” Father Mallory’s eyes were sad. “More like a human attack.”

  Chapter 12: Maida

  By the time Peg, Maida and Rafe returned from Peyoter’s cabin, dawn was approaching behind a thick layer of clouds. A light rain had begun to fall. In order to speed their pace for the last few miles, Peg had allowed herself to be carried piggy-back, like a child, on Rafe’s strong back. He put every effort he could into carrying her carefully, and Mother Peg said that the ride was acceptably comfortable, to her surprise.

  Rafe went immediately to put the goats and chickens in for the day. Maida gathered up the milking pail and a bowl of food. This she would leave with Rafe, knowing it would be too light for him to return and eat at the cabin.

  Peg was anxious to write down what she had learned from Peyoter. She took her new leather-bound Journal carefully from the shelf above the writing table in her room, frowning at the other books on the shelf. Disorderly. She straightened them, then carried the new one to the kitchen and began to write. A little later Maida returned, eggs in her pockets, full milk pail in hand. While Maida poured the milk into pans in the cool room and skimmed the cream from the milk placed there the night before, Peg studied her notes, trying to remember if there was anything more.

  “I should make cheese tomorrow night, or the next night at the latest,” Maida said, returning to the kitchen and wiping her hands on her apron. “There’s quite a bit of milk there.” When Mother Peg did not respond, she revived the fire from coals banked on the hearth before they left the evening before. She filled the kettle and swung it on its metal arm over the growing flame. “Peyoter knows a lot,” she remarked.

  “He certainly does. I just filled seven pages with notes.”

  “Did you know that part about the Dragon Priestesses’ apprenticeships, that they had to go off into the Mountains and have no contact with anyone outside their Order for the first seven years?”

  “I knew it was a good long time, and very secretive.” Peg continued to scan her notes. “You know, though, when I look this over, there is a lot of interesting detail, but not anything really new.”

  “Well, be patient,” Maida said. “As you collect more notes, maybe some of the details will prove to be clues, pointing to something bigger, something new.”

  Peg went back to writing in her Journal and didn’t stop until Maida brought her supper. After supper Mother Peg went to bed but Maida worked into the day, sweeping and scrubbing the small loft where she slept.

  The next night, after darkness fell and the chores were done, Mother Peg and Maida sat at the table, Peg with one of her Healing Journals open in front of her, Maida reading the one book she was allowed to take down, Brother Findlay’s Folk Tales of the Eastlands. Despite refusing her as Apprentice, Mother Peg had insisted that she learn to read. “I’ll have no servant that can’t read a set of instructions or a recipe,” the Old One had said, and Maida had been delighted. Brother Findlay’s Folk Tales had become her textbook. She had been through it many times now, but never tired of reading it again. Part of it was just the sheer joy of reading.

  Suddenly the peace of the little farmstead was broken by heavy boots and men’s voices. Maida rose and went to the door. Lanterns approached from the west. Rafe paused near the stable, a shovel in his hand, then disappeared with a speed and silence that belied his size and usual clumsiness.

  A large man in King Anglewart’s livery came into the clearing, holding his lantern high. Maida recognized him as the Bailiff who had come before. The other men stopped in the shadows at the edge of the forest, their eyes wide with fear of the “witch.” “Is Mother Peg here?” the Bailiff asked, approaching Maida.

  “I am she,” responded Peg, as Maida stepped aside to let the old woman come through the door.

  “I am Aden, Bailiff to King Anglewart. I bring the Princess Liandra, eldest daughter of the King, to assign into your care.”

  “I am expecting her,” said Peg.

  Aden turned and signaled the others to come forward. Eight large men, dressed identically to Aden, struggled into the yard. Two bore a curtained sedan chair. Two more followed, carrying a large wooden chest. Behind them another pair carrying a decorated trunk. Lanterns bobbed on the corners of the sedan chair and the two chests, erratically lighting the path beneath the men’s feet. They glanced around, wary and unhappy. Normally they would take a member of the Royal Family wherever he or she needed to go by horse-drawn carriage, but the path to Mother Peg’s cabin was too narrow and rough for that.

  One of the men stumbled and a sharp voice called out from behind the velvet curtains. “Ouch. Did you never learn to walk? Bumbling idiots!”

  As soon as the chair stopped in the yard, a curtain twitched open and a pale young face glared at Aden and the two women on the step. It was topped with piles of carefully arranged blond hair and a sparkling tiara. “I present to you Princess Liandra,” announced Aden, a touch of irony in his voice, Maida thought. Or was it relief?

  Before Aden could continue the introductions, the Princess cried “No!” and tugged the curtain shut again. Aden nodded at the men carrying the chest and the trunk. “The box contains food supplies for the Princess,” he told Peg. “The King is aware that it would be a hardship for you to feed the Princess. He will send food supplies every month while she is here.”

  “Thank you,” muttered Peg. “My servant will show you where to put it.” She stepped aside to allow the two men to maneuver the large wooden box through the door. Once inside, they followed Maida through the hearth room and into the cool room behind the kitchen where Maida quickly made room for it among the jugs and crocks that held their food.

  She arrived back in the yard in time to hear Aden tell Mother Peg that the decorated trunk contained the Princess’s clothing and other personal items she wished to bring with her. A brief smile flitted across Aden’s face and just as quickly disappeared. Maida led the pair of men carrying the trunk to the bottom of the steps leading to the loft and left them to struggle upstairs with it.

  At first Aden coaxed the Princess to leave the sedan chair. “No!” she insisted. “I’ll not set foot in this mud-hole! It will ruin the hem of my dress!”

  “I hope she brought something other than court dresses,” Maida whispered to Peg.

  “What else would the silly thing own?” Peg muttered back.

  “You tell my father that he can’t send me away like this!” Liandra wheedled Aden. “He always listens to you.”

  “Not this time,” Aden
said. “If you won’t step down on your own, I’ll have to ask my men to carry you into the house.”

  “Don’t you let any of them lay a dirty hand on me!” shrieked the Princess.

  “Then you must step down on your own,” Aden told her.

  Finally, Aden looked at the sky. “Your Highness,” he addressed the Princess, “The stars are moving toward morning. We cannot afford to be caught by dawn and it is a distance back to Tummel. I’m afraid this is your last chance to step down on your own.”

  Greeted by silence from behind the closed curtain, Aden nodded at the men waiting beside the sedan chair. One pulled back the curtains and another hoisted the reluctant Princess over his shoulder. She was not tall, but very large and round.

  Maida gasped. Peg looked at her sharply. “Ah yes,” she whispered. “You’ve never seen anyone who is not half-starved, have you?”

  The Princess shrieked and kicked every step of the way into the house. When the man deposited her in a chair beside the hearth, she leaped at him, trying to claw at his face. He easily grabbed her small, plump hands in his large ones and held her in place. “I’ll tell my father,” she sputtered at Aden. “I’ll have you hung from the Castle walls. I’ll, I’ll … “

  “I’m sorry to have to do it this way, Your Highness,” Aden told her, calmly. “There is no choice. These are your Father’s orders.” With that, he nodded respectfully to Peg, then gave a signal to the man holding the Princess. He released her and both men left quickly. Liandra ran to the door after them. “Don’t you dare go!” she shouted. “Don’t leave me here!” She gathered up her skirts to run out into the yard, but a glance at the packed dirt in front of the door changed her mind. She shouted at the men until their lanterns disappeared down the path, then turned, her face scarlet, and scowled at Peg and Maida.

  “Where is my room?” the Princess demanded.

  “You will be sleeping in my bed in the loft. It will take me a few minutes to make it up. Why don’t you sit down and …”

  “Loft? Your bed? I want a room of my own, a proper guest room!” The Princess’s voice rose into the register it had occupied when she was shouting at the departing men.