Dragonfield

by Jane Yolen

  One day the old woman caught a chill, grew sicker, and likened to die. She called Tom and the cat to her bed. The village elders came, too, for they went to deathbeds as cats to mackerel; the smell, it was said, drew them in.

  “Promise me, Tom,” said the old woman in a voice as soft as down.

  “Anything, Mother,” said Tom as he sat by her bed and held on to her hand.

  “Promise me you will marry the marmalade cat, for that way she will remain in our family forever. You are a good boy, Tom, but she is the best mouser in the land.”

  At her words, the elders cried out to one another in horror.

  “Never,” cried one.

  “Unheard of,” cried the second.

  “It is against the law,” declared the third.

  “What law?” asked the old woman, looking over at them. “Where is it written that a boy cannot marry a cat?”

  The elders looked at one another. They twisted their mouths around, but no answer came out, for she was right.

  “I promise, Mother,” said Tom, “for I love the marmalade cat as much as you do. I will keep her safe and in our family forever.”

  As soon as Tom had finished speaking, the cat jumped onto the bed and, as if to seal its part of the bargain, licked the old woman’s face, first one cheek and then the other, with its rough-ribbed tongue. Then it bit her softly on the nose and jumped down.

  At the cat’s touch, the elders left the room in disgust. But the old woman sat up in bed. Color sprang into her faded cheeks, and she let out a high sweet laugh.

  Tom’s heart sang out a silent hallelujah. He rose to shut the door. When he turned back again, there was an orange-haired girl with green eyes standing where the cat had been, but the cat was nowhere in sight.

  “Who are you, and where is the cat?” asked Tom.

  “Why, I am the cat,” said the girl. “But if we are to be wed, it is best that I wear human clothes.”

  “I liked you well enough before,” said Tom, looking at the floor.

  “Well, you will like her well enough after,” said his mother sensibly. She got out of bed, toddled to the door, and called out to the village elders who were already more than halfway down the road.

  Smelling a miracle, the elders turned back. And though they did not like it all the way through, they agreed to marry Tom and the girl at once. “For,” said one to the others, “a girl with orange hair and green eyes and the manners of a cat should not be left to wander the village on her own.”

  Several days went by before the elders returned for a visit.

  “We are glad to see you are still well,” the first said to the old woman as she sat and nodded by the fire.

  “Some miracles are but a moment long,” said the second. He tried not to stare at Tom’s new wife who lay dozing on the hearth, her skirts tucked up around her long slim legs.

  But the third leaned closer to the old woman and whispered in her ear. “I have been wanting to ask—how is she as a bride?”

  “Cat or girl, I love her still with all my heart,” said the old woman. “And she is the perfect girl for Tom. She is neat and clean. She is quick on her feet. She has a warm and loving heart.”

  “Well,” said the third elder, twisting his mouth around the word, “I suppose that is good.”

  “Well,” said the old woman, smiling up at him, “if that were all, it would be good enough. But there is even better.”

  “Better?” asked the elder.

  “Better,” said the old woman with a mischievous grin. “She is neat and clean and quick on her feet and has a warm and loving heart. And,” she paused, “she is still the best mouser in the land.”

  The three girls laughed their thanks and walked away, chattering. They left the dream behind.

  The Weaver began to remove the dream when angry steps caused her to pause.

  “You again,” she said.

  “It might not be a minstrel’s dream. You said that. So, for the coin I gave you already, finish the dream.”

  “I cannot finish that one,” said the Dream Weaver. “The fragment is already packed away.”

  “Do not try to wheedle another penny from me,” the man shouted. He moved as if to turn away.

  The Dream Weaver shook her head. “I want no more from you,” she said, “though I would not turn down another penny.”

  “Here,” he said, and threw a coin at her feet.

  The Dream Weaver found it and tucked it away, then added, “I will pick threads that are close to the first ones. But they might not be a match. Will you stay through this time and listen to your dream?”

  The man grunted his answer and watched as the old woman finished off the girls’ dream and rummaged in her thread basket. She pulled out several.

  “How can you be sure those are near the color of the last when you cannot see?” asked the man.

  The Dream Weaver was silent as she finished sorting the threads.

  “Well?”

  “By the feel, man. Just as I can tell, from your voice, the look of your face, though I have no eyes.”

  “And what is that look?” he asked.

  “My answer would not flatter you!” she said. “So hush, for the dream is beginning.” She threaded the warp and began.

  The Boy Who Sang for Death

  In a village that lay like a smudge on the cheek of a quiet valley, there lived an old woman and the last of her seven sons. The oldest six had joined the army as they came of age, and her husband was long in his grave. The only one left at home was a lad named Karl.

  Even if he had not been her last, his mother would have loved him best for he had a sweet disposition and a sweeter voice. It was because of that voice, pure and clear, that caroled like spring birds, that she had called him Karel. But his father and brothers, fearing the song name would unman him, had changed it to Karl. So Karl he had remained.

  Karl was a sturdy boy, a farm boy in face and hands. But his voice set him apart from the rest. Untutored and untrained, Karl’s voice could call home sheep from the pasture, birds from the trees. In the village, it was even said that the sound of Karl’s voice made graybeards dance, the lame to walk, and milk spring from a maiden’s breast. Yet Karl used his voice for no such magic, but to please his mother and gentle his flock.

  One day when Karl was out singing to the sheep and goats to bring them safely in from the field, his voice broke; like a piece of cloth caught on a nail, it tore. Fearing something wrong at home, he hurried the beasts. They scattered before him, and he came to the house to find that his mother had died.

  “Between one breath and the next, she was gone,” said the priest.

  Gently Karl folded her hands on her breast and, although she was beyond the sound of his song, he whispered something in her ear and turned to leave.

  “Where are you going?” called out the priest, his words heavy with concern.

  “I am going to find Death and bring my mother back,” cried Karl, his jagged voice now dulled with grief. He turned at the door and faced the priest who knelt by his mother’s bed. “Surely Death will accept an exchange. What is one old tired woman to Death who has known so many?”

  “And will you recognize Death, my son, when you meet him?”

  “That I do not know,” said Karl.

  The priest nodded and rose heavily from his knees. “Then listen well, my son. Death is an aging but still handsome prince. His eyes are dark and empty for he has seen much suffering in the world. If you find such a one, he is Death.”

  “I will know him,” said Karl.

  “And what can you give Death in exchange that he has not already had many times over?” asked the priest.

  Karl touched his pockets and sighed. “I have nothing here to give,” he said. “But I hope that he may listen to my songs. They tell me in the village that there is a gift of magic in my voice. Any gift I have I would surely give to get my mother back. I will sing for Death, and perhaps that great prince will take time to listen.”

/>   “Death does not take time,” said the old priest, raising his hand to bless the boy, “for time is Death’s own greatest possession.”

  “I can but try,” said Karl, tears in his eyes. He knelt a moment for the blessing, stood up and went out the door. He did not look back.

  Karl walked for many days and came at last to a city that lay like a blemish on three hills. He listened quietly but well, as only a singer can, and when he heard weeping, he followed the sound and found a funeral procession bearing the coffin of a child. The procession turned into a graveyard where stones leaned upon stones like cards in a neglected deck.

  “Has Death been here already?” asked Karl of a weeping woman.

  “Death has been here many times,” she answered. “But today she has taken my child.”

  “She?” said Karl. “But surely Death is a man.”

  “Death is a woman,” she answered him at once. “Her hair is long and thick and dark, like the roots of trees. Her body is huge and brown, but she is barren. The only way she can bear a child is to bear it away.”

  Karl felt her anger and sorrow then, for they matched his own, so he joined the line of mourners to the grave. And when the child’s tiny box had been laid in the ground, he sang it down with the others. But his voice lifted above theirs, a small bird soaring with ease over larger ones. The townsfolk stopped singing in amazement and listened to him.

  Karl sang not of death but of his village in the valley, of the seasons that sometime stumble one into another, and of the small pleasures of the hearth. He sang tune after tune the whole of that day, and just at nightfall he stopped. They threw dirt on the baby’s coffin and brought Karl to their home.

  “Your songs eased my little one’s passage,” said the woman. “Stay with us this night. We owe you that.”

  “I wish that I had been here before,” said Karl. “I might have saved your baby with a song.”

  “I fear Death would not be cheated so easily of her chosen child,” said the woman. She set the table but did not eat.

  Karl left in the morning. And as he walked, he thought about Death, how it was a hollow-eyed prince to the priest but a jealous mother to the woman. If Death could change shapes with such ease, how would he know Death when they finally met? He walked and walked, his mind in a puzzle, until he came at last to a plain that lay like a great open wound between mountains.

  The plain was filled with an army of fighting men. There were men with bows and men with swords and men with wooden staves. Some men fought on horseback, and some fought from their knees. Karl could not tell one band of men from another, could not match friend with friend, foe with foe, for their clothes were colored by dirt and by blood and every man looked the same. And the screams and shouts and the crying of horns were a horrible symphony in Karl’s ears.

  Yet there was one figure Karl could distinguish. A woman, quite young, dressed in a long white gown. Her dark braids were caught up in ribbons of white and looped like a crown on her head. She threaded her way through the ranks of men like a shuttle through a loom, and there seemed to be a pattern in her going. She paused now and then to put a hand to the head or the breast of one man and then another. Each man she touched stopped fighting and, with an expression of surprise, left his body and followed the girl, so that soon there was a great wavering line of gray men trailing behind her.

  Then Karl knew that he had found Death.

  He ran down the mountainside and around the flank of the great plain, for he wanted to come upon Death face to face. He called out as he ran, hoping to slow her progress, “Wait, oh, wait, my Lady Death; please wait for me.”

  Lady Death heard his call above the battle noise, and she looked up from her work. A weariness sat between her eyes, but she did not stop. She continued her way from man to man, a hand to the brow or over the heart. And at her touch, each man left his life to follow the young girl named Death.

  When Karl saw that she would not stop at his calling, he stepped into her path. But she walked through him as if through air and went on her way, threading the line of dead gray men behind her.

  So Karl began to sing. It was all he knew to do.

  He sang not of death but of growing and bearing, for they were things she knew nothing of. He sang of small birds on the apple spray and bees with their honeyed burden. He sang of the first green blades piercing the warmed earth. He sang of winter fields where moles and mice sleep quietly under the snow. Each tune swelled into the next.

  And Lady Death stopped to listen.

  As she stopped, the ribbon of soldiers that was woven behind her stopped, too, and from their dead eyes tears fell with each memory. The battlefield was still, frozen by the songs. And the only sound and the only movement and the only breath was Karl’s voice.

  When he had finished at last, a tiny brown bird flew out of a dead tree, took up the last melody, and went on.

  “I have made you stop, Lady Death,” cried Karl. “And you have listened to my tunes. Will you now pay for that pleasure?”

  Lady Death smiled, a slow, weary smile, and Karl wondered that someone so young should have to carry such a burden. And his pity hovered between them in the quiet air.

  “I will pay, Karel,” she said.

  He did not wonder that she knew his true name, for Lady Death would, in the end, know every human’s name.

  “Then I ask for my mother in exchange,” said Karl.

  Lady Death looked at him softly then. She took up his pity and gave it back. “That I cannot do. Who follows me once, follows forever. But is it not payment enough to know that you have stayed my hand for this hour? No man has ever done that before.”

  “But you promised to pay,” said Karl. His voice held both anger and disappointment, a man and a child’s voice in one.

  “And what I promise,” she said, looking at him from under darkened lids, “I do.”

  The Dream Weaver’s voice stopped for a moment.

  “Is that all?” asked the man. “That is no ending. What of the coins I gave you?”

  “Hush,” the Dream Weaver said to him. “This is strange. This has never happened before. There is not one ending but two. I feel that here,” and she held up her hands.

  “Then tell them to me. Both. I paid,” he said.

  The Dream Weaver nodded. “This is the first way the dream ends,” she said, and wove.

  Lady Death put her hand in front of her, as if reaching into a cupboard, and a gray form that was strangely transparent took shape under her fingers. It became a harp, with smoke-colored strings the color of Lady Death’s eyes.

  “A useless gift,” said Karl. “I cannot play.”

  But Lady Death reached over and set the harp in his hand, careful not to touch him with her own.

  And as the harp molded itself under his fingers, Karl felt music surge through his bones. He put his thumb and forefinger on the strings and began to play.

  At the first note, the battle began anew. Men fought, men bled, men suffered, men fell. But Karl passed through the armies untouched, playing a sweet tune that rose upward, in bursts, as the lark and its song spring toward the sun. He walked through the armies, through the battle, through the plain, playing his harp, and he never looked back again.

  The Dream Weaver hesitated but a moment. “And the other ending,” the man commanded. But she had already begun.

  “And what I promise,” Death said, looking at him from under darkened lids, “I do.”

  She turned and pointed to the field, and Karl’s eyes followed her fingers.

  “There in that field are six men whose heads and hearts I will not touch this day. Look carefully, Karel.”

  He looked. “They are my brothers,” he said.

  “Them, I will spare.” And Lady Death turned and stared into Karl’s face with her smoky eyes. “But I would have you sing for me again each night in the small hours when I rest, for I have never had such comfort before. Will you come?” She held out her hand.

  Karl hesitated
a moment, remembering his farm, remembering the fields, the valleys, the warm spring rains. Then he looked again at Lady Death, whose smile seemed a little less weary. He nodded and reached for her hand, and it was small and soft and cool in his. He raised her hand once to his lips, then set it, palm open, over his heart. He never felt the cold.

  Then, hand in hand, Karl and Lady Death walked through the battlefield. Their passing made not even the slightest breeze on the cheeks of the wounded, nor an extra breath for the dying. Only the dead who traveled behind saw them pass under the shadows of the farthest hills. But long after they had gone, the little bird sang Karl’s last song over and over and over again into the darkening air.

  “I liked the other ending best,” said the man. “It was the better bargain.”

  “Bargain?” The Dream Weaver’s mouth soured with the word.

  “A bargain, old one,” he said. “The boy bought a salable talent with his song. He got better than he gave and that is always, a bargain. I like that.” The man chuckled to himself and went away, his footsteps tapping lightly on the street.

  “A bargain was it?” the Weaver mumbled to herself, finishing off the tale and its two separate endings. “A bargain!” she said again, shaking her head. She thought for a moment of taking the first ending apart, saving the threads for another time. She knew the man would not be back for it, and it had not pleased her, that ending. Still, she could not bear to unravel her work, so she put it with the others in her bag.

  The Dream Weaver fingered the coins in her pouch. Five already, no, six, and the sun was on its downward swing. It had been a good day. She could begin her slow dark trip home.

  “There she is, the Dream Weaver,” came a voice. “Stop her. Oh, stop!”

  The Dream Weaver, half standing, heard the voice and running steps as one. She turned and waited. Another coin to put in the pouch, to hold against the rains or the long, cold winter days.

  “You are not through, Dream Weaver?” It was a young voice, a girl just become a woman. She sounded only slightly worried, stuttering a bit from the run.