The Iron Dragon’s Mother

by Michael Swanwick

  “I can’t. I’m a criminal. I killed a dragon. I deserted the Corps. I didn’t kill my brother, like everybody thinks, but I’m not able to prove that. I was responsible for the destruction of Ys and just now I’ve probably bankrupted the changeling industry. I…”

  “Milady,” Lieutenant Anthea said, still not rising from her knees, “let me put it simply: You are now Lady Caitlin of House Sans Merci and thus the Sans Merci of Sans Merci.”

  “Which, legally speaking,” Edderkopp expanded, “means you retroactively had a right to do everything you did, from fratricide to dragon-mort. You’re not a fugitive anymore, but mighty among the Powers of Faerie. There are forty thousand individuals in this world who are above the law, and you are very nearly at the tip of the pyramid. Everything you did is now as legal as the April rain. I do not pretend it’s a fair system. But its unfairness is now weighted in your favor.” With a rascally wink, he added, “So I believe I have well earned my fee today.” He plucked the opal-and-silver ring from Barquentine’s corpse and the Horn of Holmdel from the factory floor. Then he scuttled toward the door.

  Cat tried to object and found herself incapable of either sound or motion. Then Edderkopp was gone and her body was her own again. Bewildered, she said, “I have no idea what just happened. I thought you’d come to punish me.”

  Lieutenant Anthea rounded on Cat with a snarl. “Don’t you understand?” she said. “Can you possibly be that stupid? You don’t have the right to be punished. Edderkopp was nothing more than a mask for the Baldwynn. You have been given the blessing of the single most powerful entity in the universe, short of the Goddess herself. It’s like having gravity on your side. Or dark matter. Or mercy. Something like this doesn’t happen all that often. But it has happened to you.”

  “What? Really? No. That’s not possible.”

  “There’s a car outside, with a chauffeur. Our first task will be to find a notarized shaman. There’s an immense amount of paperwork that has to be done to clear up a record as messy as yours, and it’s best we start as soon as possible. We’ll begin by filing a quitclaim for your service with the Dragon Corps. Then you must legally assert your title. Leave the rifle. You won’t be needing it anymore.”

  * * *

  That night Cat had a dream. In it, the Goddess appeared to her in the form of a Singer sewing machine. It was a top-of-the-line model with both a foot treadle and an electric motor and a tensioning dial at the front as well. Though it did not look new, it had no visible nicks or scratches. The black and gold metal housing gleamed with an indwelling light. Cat could not look away from it.

  Has my child been bothering you? the Goddess asked. Somehow, Cat knew that she was referring to the Dowager.

  “Kinda, yeah.”

  I am glad to hear it. Sit down and work the treadle for me, will you?

  Cat did so. The needle moved smoothly up and down and she found herself pushing cloth beneath it. It was an honor to be serving the Goddess so intimately and she found her eyes welling up with tears. It did not matter to her that she was stitching up other people’s lives. Somebody had to do it. Why not her?

  I know you have questions, the Goddess said. It will be a long time before you have such an opportunity again. Ask.

  “I guess … if I had to ask … I’d ask … Why?”

  There was a conspiracy behind the Conspiracy and that conspiracy was me. Changes needed to be made in the operation of the worlds, so I used you to make them.

  “I’m not entirely sure I see. Exactly.”

  This is a terribly indirect way to communicate, the sewing machine said. But you’re all so small and I’m so large. It would burn you to a cinder to look upon me directly. The last person I let gaze on me as I am grew horrible growths on his forehead, and he was much stronger than you could ever hope to be.

  “I understand,” Cat said.

  No, you don’t. But that’s not important.

  Gathering up all her courage, Cat asked, “Then what is?”

  It’s time you returned my daughter to me. Her work here is done.

  This time, the Goddess, Cat knew, meant Helen. It was a vexatious thing to realize that all she had been through, the losses, the sufferings—and, yes, the love as well—had been tangential to the real story. That she had been living through not her own tale but Helen’s.

  Still, having no choice, she accepted it.

  * * *

  Then, without transition, Cat was no longer asleep, but sitting up in her hotel room bed, reading a paperback. She put it down, saying, “I just had the strangest imagining.” She could feel the specifics fleeing her memory. But, briefly, she still understood the gist of their meaning. “The Goddess appeared to me and explained that life, death, and dreams were three sides of the same coin. Then she—”

  “It’s time for me to die,” Helen said. “Don’t try to stop me, my mind is made up on this one.”

  You can save somebody’s life, but it’s only temporary.

  —Helen V., notebooks

  Cat and Helen came at last, after long and perilous journeying, to World’s End. The out-of-season and mostly shuttered tourist hotels, candy shops, and pachinko parlors that seemed so obtrusive when they walked among them disappeared the instant they stepped onto the beach and turned their backs on the lot. The wind whipping off of Oceanus was colder than either of them would have preferred. But they endured it without complaint. Here, there was no land beyond the ocean waters, no farther shore where the cold waves might finally find rest. Only the endless sea, rising from nothingness, without destination, forever in motion.

  Standing on the pebbled strand, listening to the waves crash with a boom and then retreat with a hiss and a clatter, salt spray wetting her face, Cat felt Helen gather herself up, as a lady of her generation might have, in her youth, gathered up her petticoats. With quiet dignity, Helen said, “I am just going outside, and may be some time.”

  “What in the name of seven hells is that supposed to mean?” Cat demanded.

  Helen V. sighed. “Nothing.” An abyss of time opened between the two of them. At last, she said, “You’re going to miss me when I’m gone.”

  Inwardly, Cat thought: As if. Outwardly, she said, “Maybe I will.” Once the words were irretrievably out of her mouth, she wasn’t sure whether she had been humoring the old bat or telling her the plain and simple truth.

  “Let me share something with you that I learned when my mother died,” Helen said with uncharacteristic gravitas. “Are you ready? Brace yourself. You won’t ever be free of me. Never. You might as well imagine yourself being free of your dragon or your nightmares or your dreams or your past. Once you get somebody lodged in your head, she never goes away. She becomes a part of you.”

  “Eh?”

  “Just as I said. I leave to you all my worldly and unworldly goods. Good luck finding them and better luck telling one from the other if you do.”

  Mentally, Cat rolled her eyes. “I’ll tell you one thing I won’t miss, and that’s your constant yapping.”

  “Peace, my child. Forget that I said anything. A week from now I’m sure you’ll have forgotten me entirely.”

  “If only.”

  “Hey, what do you want from me? I say one thing, it’s no damn good. I say the opposite, that sucks too. Make up your mind.”

  “Well, fuck you.”

  “Fuck you too.”

  They both laughed.

  “So,” Cat said when she had wiped away the tears, “how do we do this?”

  “Lie down and close your eyes.” Cat did so, though the beach stones were even colder than the wind. “Imagine a greensward, just after a rain…”

  She did. Grass, wet and glistening, sprouted underfoot and stretched gently upslope away from her. Its smell was vigorous and green.

  “In the distance, mountains. Big ones.”

  Mountain slopes, golden with sunshine, shot up before Cat, higher than any she had ever seen or imagined. They were lordly peaks clad in gowns of pu
rple shadow and capped with dazzling white snow. Compared to these, the highest mountains of Faerie or Aerth were dwarfish and low. Something within her thrilled with the desire to climb them.

  “The sky should be overcast, a little stormy, and absolutely free of birds. But leave the land underfoot unshadowed. There should be a bit more of a rise. Not enough that you’d call it a hill, but enough to hide the Black Stone behind it. Not a steep slope, mind! I’m in no hurry and I can walk a goodly distance.”

  The landscape assembled itself in Cat’s imagination. There were small white flowers dotting the grass. She caught a faint whiff of their perfume: luminous, like Après l’Ondée. She was about to kneel down and pluck one when a lean, energetic woman strode vigorously past and, with a shock, Cat realized who it must be. She jolted to her feet, watching Helen grow smaller and smaller with distance. Belatedly, it came to her that she had lost her one chance to get a good look at the woman who had been such a major part of her life for so very long. “Wait!” she cried. “Hold on a minute. How did you know all—?”

  Helen half turned and looked back expressionlessly over her shoulder at Cat. Distance rendered her face a pale oval with black dots for eyes, a slim line for a mouth. “Stop imagining,” she said.

  And Cat did.

  You die when your spirit dies.

  Otherwise, you live.

  —Louise Glück, “Averno”

  All stories must end. This is the iron law of existence.

  Helen turned her face to the mountains and she did not look back. She walked toward them without hesitation or doubt and she did not speculate on what might lie beyond. After a time that was neither short not long, she came to the Black Stone and, just as had been prophesied to her so very long ago (for Helen was not above a little dramatic self-editing to her own story), she saw that there were two paths around it. One way was well-trodden and that was the one she understood led to forgetfulness and reincarnation. The other was barely noticeable, and no living person could say where and what, if anything, that led to, for those few who followed it never came back, nor did there return any report or rumor of them ever after.

  She had arrived at last at the end of this bubble of a dream-world, even as she had once arrived at the end of the one before it. Neither had satisfied her. Now Helen was up for something real—even if that turned out to be nothing at all. Whatever may or may not be, she thought—or possibly “prayed” was the mot more juste—I recognize its dominion over me. I am small and the universe is vast beyond my imagining. Since its workings are beyond my control, why should my life, or my death for that matter, be any different?

  Any last words?

  On reflection, I think no.

  Helen bowed to the Black Stone, which she now understood to be an avatar, and possibly the only one, of the Goddess. “Mother,” she said, “I surrender myself to your will. Tell me what to do and I will obey.” It was the single most sincere thing she had ever said to anybody. But there was no response.

  Story of her lives.

  She stood before the Black Stone for a very long time, thinking. At last, she made her choice and passed beyond it.

  … from that day forward she lived happily ever after. Except for the dying at the end.

  And the heartbreak in between.

  —Lucius Shepard, The Scalehunter’s Beautiful Daughter

  It was spring and the air was heavy with hyacinth. Even the limousine had bunches of hyacinth in little vases hung on gimbals for decoration. Caitlin hated the smell of hyacinth. But she endured it for the sake of decorum.

  “It feels strange to be back after all I’ve been through,” she commented.

  “A good strange, I hope,” the chauffeur said.

  “Well, at least this time I’m not throwing up.”

  When she arrived at Château Sans Merci, Caitlin called the servants before her. They gathered, arrayed in ranks, in the grand foyer. (Nettie cringed, blinking and wringing her hands as she tried to pass unnoticed in the very last row.) Slowly, deliberately, Caitlin walked the ranks, looking every one of her employees in the eye, making sure they each knew that she could see them all and would be remembering their names just as soon as she learned them.

  “I am Lady Caitlin of House Sans Merci, by rights of primogeniture, survival, and inheritance the Sans Merci of Sans Merci, and thus your liege employer. If any of you doubt the legitimacy of my claim, you are called upon to challenge me now. First blood, third blood, or to the death, as you choose. Any takers?”

  She waited. After a silence, she said, “Good.”

  Caitlin handed her family’s ancestral sword back to the armorer, who accepted it with a curt bow and retired. Then she said, “There are going to be changes made, many of them. Whether you like them or not is of little consequence to anybody but yourselves. How well you thrive depends entirely on how well you adapt to them.” Then, to brighten the mood, “All those who have been retainers for three years or more will receive ten percent raises, effective immediately, and six bottles of Lemurian wine each Beltaine. For ten-year veterans it will be fifteen percent and a dozen bottles. For those whose service predates my adoption, it will be twenty and two dozen.”

  A rustle passed among the servants, which was an accolade as good as a rousing cheer for anyone who understood their professional reserve.

  “Th’art dismissed.” Caitlin turned her back on the lot and felt them dissolve into their roles and duties behind her.

  The rest of that day and the following week, Caitlin devoted to seizing control of the mechanisms of authority. Lawyers and accountants came and went. The chiefs of staff were questioned closely and one, who could account for neither discrepancies in the household budget nor her own newly acquired youth, was fired. A delegation of hobs came out of the deep woods and, in a ceremony that dated back to the founding of the House, presented her with five blue jay feathers and a single perfect acorn. She repaid them with silver, bolts of jacquard silk, and as many of the best and largest flat screen television sets commercially available as they could carry back to their burrows in a day.

  After that, Caitlin turned her attention to the Conspiracy. Some of its officers could be fired with cause. Others required a buyout. The office in Carcassonne was shut down and all its assets reabsorbed into House Sans Merci’s holdings. That would help offset losses due to the fall of the House of Glass. An employment service was engaged to find comparable work for the clerical staff, and Lolly Underpool was offered early retirement on extremely generous terms. The rest of the employees, Caitlin judged, could fend for themselves.

  In what little free time she had, Caitlin systematically searched the mansion, crossing off each room on a map she had drawn from memory as one by one they came up empty.

  * * *

  In a sunless drawing room, Caitlin found her mother at last. The Dowager had lain down upon a divan to rest and drawn newspapers over herself as a kind of blanket. Doubtless, she had left instructions that on no account was she to be disturbed, for the room had not been cleaned for a very long time. The papers had since grown brown and brittle and were covered with a soft layer of dust that looked for all the world like the mycelium of an imaginary fungus feeding upon the Dowager’s dreams.

  Despite all the time that must have passed since she fell asleep, the Dowager was still alive.

  For a green flash of an instant, Caitlin was seriously tempted to leave her mother there, locking the door behind herself, throwing the key into the koi pond to the south side of the mansion, and setting a geas on the help never to go within. It would have been perfectly legal. But instead, she called in maids to remove the newspapers, dust and clean and vacuum the room, replace the lace curtains and gold velvet drapes, and set out new vases of tulips (which her mother loved) and fresh fruit in cut-glass bowls.

  There was no denying that the Dowager had led a difficult life. Nor had she, as a lady of her standing and generation, ever had the option of deciding on a destiny of her own choosing. Caitlin su
pposed she owed her sympathy for that.

  Not that she felt any. But she tried.

  When all had been made ready, Caitlin dismissed the servants and lightly tapped her mother’s cheek. Then, when there was no response, she tapped again, with more force. Nor did this bring about any results.

  Stop now, she told herself. Before you start enjoying this.

  Caitlin fetched a glass of water and lightly spattered drops from her fingertips onto her mother’s face. Eventually, the ghastly old thing stirred. Crepe-like lids twitched. Eyes reluctantly opened. “Why aren’t I dead?” the Dowager asked.

  “You don’t get to die. I have a lot to do here. I need your advice.”

  “You never took my advice.”

  “I never took your advice seriously. There’s a difference.”

  The Dowager began to weep.

  “Oh, come off it,” Caitlin said. “Nobody’s buying that act anymore. Here. Take this.”

  Sitting up, the Dowager accepted the water glass Caitlin offered, and sipped delicately from it. “You are grown cruel, changeling. I underestimated you.”

  “You tried to kill me.”

  “That too.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not that easy to explain. I’d have to go all around the Green Man’s barn in order to make you understand.”

  “Try me.”

  The Dowager touched the fingertips of both hands together, thumbs down, the rest up, and pushed inward until only a narrow space separated her palms. She stared down into that opening for a long, long time, as if scrying within for something elusive. “When I was young,” she said at last, “I had an affair with my father.”