Milo and the Dragon Cross

by Robert Jesten Upton

  “Good business, nice folks,” Einter commented as the cart swung onto the road.

  Maybe it was the heat, his full stomach, the rocking of the cart, or the lumbering cadence of the oxen that made Milo sleepy. He fought the stupor, but his eyes glazed over and his lids took on a will of their own. He flopped this way and then that, struggling not to fall off the box. He didn’t know how long this battle with the sandman went on, or if he actually lost the struggle and his consciousness, but a cessation of motion woke him up. The cart was standing still, and the oxen were swaying and slinging their tails at the flies. They were under some huge willow trees beside a bright, friendly river.

  “Good place for a camp,” Einter announced as he uncramped himself before he tried to climb down.

  Bori was well ahead, jumping onto the sandy bank, tail in a playful arch to bat at a fuzzy seedpod before dashing off. Senster and Dexter stood in patient, swaying repose, waiting for Einter to unhitch them and lead them into the clear water for a deep, long drink.

  After the oxen had been watered and staked out to chew grass in the adjacent meadow, Einter and Milo unloaded the gear for their camp and set it up, and then enjoyed the simple supper that Einter prepared from the provisions the farmers had given them. Then Einter and Milo rested in the deepening twilight. They watched the dancing embers of the dying fire that had heated their supper, and eased into relaxed conversation, Einter picking his teeth with a twig.

  After idle talk about the farm they’d visited that afternoon, and other farms that Einter knew from his circuit, Einter asked Milo, “How did yuh come to be in the Magical Scavenger Hunt?”

  Since he hadn’t said a word about the Hunt to Einter, Milo was taken aback by the tinker’s inquiries about his affairs.

  “For a person who likes to keep out of other people’s business,” Milo blurted, “you seem to know an awful lot about mine.”

  Einter shrugged as if it were a matter of common knowledge, and picked his teeth again before answering. “Savoy thought I ought to know what I needed to know if I was to look after you proper.”

  “How did he tell you all that?”

  Einter shrugged again. “Ol’ Savoy must think pretty good of yuh to have clued me about yuh. We has our own way of keepin’ in touch. He wanted yuh to get all the help yuh need for whatever it is yuh need to get done.”

  “And what would that be?” Milo wanted to find out just how much this traveling stranger knew about him, and was just a little piqued about what he knew already.

  Einter picked at an especially difficult tooth. “Reckon you got to know that yerself. I’m to help yuh find it out. Somethin’ to do with ol’ Samuel down there at the library in Inverdissen, I reckon. That, an’ to make sure yuh don’t go hungry tryin’ to get there.”

  Milo, glad to have his stomach filled, decided to leave it there, at least for the time being. “What can you tell me about Inverdissen and the library?” he asked, deciding a less personal subject was in order. Besides, it was a topic he needed information about.

  “Well, Inverdissen’s all about the university what’s there. It’s the place where the bards an’ the scholars want to go to learn the deep stuff. All the priests an’ lawyers, them what holds high office in the government, the teachers an’ the scribes, an’ just about anybody that needs the sort of education to do what they do. Even yer wizards and yer mages is goin’ to visit the university in Inverdissen. An’ there’s reason for it, ‘cause that’s where the library is. That library’s been there just about as long as dirt, so that’s where everything is. The story I got from my pap, what he got from his pap, what came to him by way of his pap—which would be my great granpappy, what he got from his great granpappy...well, see, back then my family wasn’t tinkers like I am now. They was masons, an’ it was my great, great (Einter counted it out on his fingers) great, great granpappy who built the tower of what’s nowadays the main library. There was a library back then, too, but the librarian of Inverdissen at that time wanted a new building for all the books they was gettin’. An’ he wanted a scriptorium for the scholars. My pap told me that his pap told him”— Milo sort of zoned out while Einter went through his genealogical line for the second time, until Einter got to the next portion of his story—”that the library’s got books in there so old that there’ nobody left what can read ‘em. That’s where our friend Samuel comes in. See, Samuel’s special on old languages. Why, back in our carousin’ days, me an’ Savoy an’ ol’ Samuel would hang on a real snorter, and there’d be Samuel a’cussin’ out some poor hitch ‘n’ snitch in some tongue what hadn’t been heard in a regular pub since the time of Abracadabracus’s granpappy. Me an’ ol’ Savoy knowed that when Samuel started in like that, it was time to haul him off, ‘cause sure as dirt the hitch ‘n’ snitch he was cussin’ was gonna take offense, even if he didn’t have no more than blue sky what it was Samuel was callin’ him. There’d be trouble, an’ the constable would come, an’...well, it’d get complicated.”

  “So, Samuel can speak the old languages that nobody else knows?” Milo asked, wanting to keep the conversation on track.

  “Yep.”

  By now, Milo was feeling decidedly less anxious about Einter knowing his business, or at least some of it, and about his participation in the Magical Scavenger Hunt. In fact, it was a relief to know somebody that he might be able to think of as a friend in this place where he knew not another soul. He dug around in his rucksack until he found the flat piece of slate with the markings he’d copied from the cross.

  “I came across these markings,” he told Einter, showing him the slip of stone. “I think it may help me figure out the next clue in the Hunt.”

  Einter looked at the piece of slate in the firelight, then passed it back to Milo.”We’ll jest have to ask Samuel. Still, there’s another side to all this. See, some of that old stuff’s been forgotten so’s there’s nobody left what understands it even if it can be read. I never seen letterin’ like this, what suggests it just might be that sort of stuff. Samuel will know. If Savoy recommends yuh to Samuel, I’ll back yuh, too. That should convince him to help yuh out, even if it’s some of that secret stuff.”

  The two of them rolled themselves into their blankets soon after that. Bori was off tomcatting at the next farmstead as the stars wove their patterns across the firmament above, wheeling their way to bring on the next dawn.

  11

  What Was in the Cards

  They reached Inverdissen shortly before noon, the first place Milo had seen that could really be called a city. It stood behind a wall, like the kind that a castle would have, with towers over its gates. The houses, like the ones in Kingdom of Odalese, were built right up together with common walls, but they seemed bigger and there were more streets crowded with shops and shoppers. The street was wide enough to accommodate Einter’s oxen and his cart, although it might have required some tricky driving had they met a similar cart coming the other way. Senster and Dexter plodded forward into the crowds with no more perturbation than they showed for the usual swarms of flies that surrounded their muzzles.

  It was clear that the oxen knew the way, because they turned off the main road into a cross street without direction from Einter, and then again. They stopped on their own before a tall double-hung gate and Einter got down to open it and lead the brothers through a tunnel-like passage into a courtyard lined with three-stories of windows. Once inside, Einter took the two out of their yokes.

  “This’ll be where we’re stayin’,” Einter told Milo. “Belongs to a lady friend of mine. Help me see to the boys, an’ then we’ll clean up a bit ourselves. After a spell, when it’s cooler, we’ll go on down to the inner city t’ find Samuel.” Just then, the lady of the house came out and Einter swept her up in his bear-like arms to twirl her around.

  Einter was big and stocky, and this woman was small and compact, of an age to place her in Einter’s generation. Her costume was a swirl of red, yellow, and brown, her bare arms and face were the h
ue of coffee-with-cream, and the yellow-and-red headscarf was tied on so snuggly that it seemed part of her head. Gold bracelets and bangles adorned her arms, rings her fingers, and bright glass beads hung in strands around her neck. Big gold hoops peeking out from under the headscarf gave her a gypsy look. When he put her down again, she turned on Milo.

  “An’ who may be this young pup?” she demanded.

  “Milo,” Einter told her, then turned Milo’s way. “Milo, this would be the Dame Reyna Renee.”

  She reached a hand out. Milo couldn’t say if it was to be kissed or to be shaken. Feeling more familiar with the hand-shaking form of greeting, he reached out his, but just as he touched hers, she drew a card, apparently from his palm, and held it up to study it quickly.

  “Ah!” she said, as if the card was more an introduction than Einter’s had been. “An’ ‘ow did you come by him?” she asked Einter.

  “Savoy sent him,” Einter replied.

  “Ahh! That explains this,” she continued, waving the card in her hand. “ ‘The Wanderer.’ It iz also known by some by another name: ‘The Fool’.”

  Milo wasn’t sure what she meant by this, but it made him uncomfortable to guess, by the way she locked her eye on him.

  “Dame Renee would be what yuh would be callin’ a soothsayer,” Einter explained. “She’s the Mistress of the Cards, that’s for sure. She can finagle the future out of that deck of hers like nobody I ever seen, nor my Pappy nor his pap before him. I bet she could tell yuh what yer up to better than you could say yerself. Why, I bet she could tell yuh about that odd writin’ of yurn as good as ol’ Samuel, or better.”

  He stopped, clearly struck with the brilliance of this realization. “Yuh know, that itn’t a bad idea; no sir! not a’tall!”

  Milo didn’t feel as overwhelmed with the idea as Einter.

  Dame Renee, a keen observer, read him as well as one of her cards. “Perhaps. But that can come in another time. Just now I think a wash and something to eat, followed by the afternoon sleep would be more agreeable.”

  Milo thought that was it.

  “But wait!” she cried, pulling them up. “It’s not done! There’s another card to be read and a reading to be recognized. Who iz this?” she demanded, pointing to Bori, who was sitting patiently at Milo’s foot.

  “Oh, that’s Bori,” Milo answered. “Boriboreau.”

  “Ahh! ‘The Messenger!’” she announced, flicking a card out from somewhere, using her first and middle finger, like an accomplished Vegas dealer. It had the ornate picture in full color of a wing-footed man releasing a dove with one hand and holding out four cards with the other.

  “It...doesn’t much look like him,” Milo ventured.

  “Oh, the cards, they do not work that way,” she said.

  “What she means,” Einter explained, “is that the card what she just showed stands for the way Renee saw the future this morning, which is now.”

  “Every morning,” she told Milo, “I lay out the cards to see what they may tell me about the day. And then I discover what they told me as the day unfolds.”

  “Is that helpful?” Milo asked in innocence.

  “It depends,” Dame Renee answered. “But now, you two wash the grime of the road away; then we’ll have lunch. From the smell, I can’t tell you two from Senster and Dexter.”

  “I hope there’s a saucer of milk for me,” Bori commented as he sat beside the basin where Milo washed his face and hands in his best effort to get cleaned up. Einter had gone somewhere else to do his hygiene.

  “What do you think of that ‘Messenger’ card?” Milo asked Bori as he lathered his hands. “Have you checked your paws for wings lately?”

  “Don’t laugh,” Bori advised. “Maybe I will. Maybe it just hasn’t happened yet. After all, she foretells the future, doesn’t she? I could become something like Ali’s horse.”

  “You aren’t big enough for me to ride,” Milo pointed out.

  “No, but think of the birds I could catch...”

  Milo preferred not to.

  They had lunch with Dame Renee and Einter. Not only did Bori get his milk, but he had some smoked fish as well, and then they all retired for the midday nap.

  Milo was awake when he heard Einter out in the courtyard, whistling as he fiddled with his cart and curried his oxen. Bori was curled in deep sleep. Milo went out to see Einter.

  Dexter was standing calmly, tied to one wheel of the cart, chewing his cud and stringing drool like the complacent bovine that he was. Einter brushed the muck and tangles from his huge sides and flanks.

  “Dame Renee don’t know all that much about where yuh been,” Einter told Milo as he came up, ‘but she probably knows more about where yer goin’ than you do. Yuh might think yuh know and yuh might not, but she’s got one uncanny ability to see what’s t’ come.”

  “Sorry,” Milo apologized. He didn’t want for his earlier comment about doubt in the cards to be an insult.

  “It’s all right. I have to see proven what I’m to believe, too. An’ she just don’t see the future the same way you or I look at it. Well, when we looks about us at this courtyard, we sees the courtyard. What she sees is the shape of things an’ how they be changin’.”

  “How can she do that from those cards?”

  “Hard to say. Part natural talent, I guess, and part havin’ an affinity for the cards. She got it from her Ma, and her Ma got it from her ma before her, an’ her ma before her...an’ so on. Them cards was made way back. Back, long ago when the folks what thunk ‘em up had the ability to make things like that. Which, for the most part, we don’t. Only some people what still has the talent an’ the skill to use ‘em.”

  “When do we look for Samuel?” Milo asked, changing the subject.

  “Oh, I reckon we’d best wait till after the afternoon pause. He’s a grouchy so-n-so if yuh wakes ‘em up.”

  Milo took over doing Dexter’s legs while Einter led Senster out to hitch him to the other wheel of the cart.

  He started in on Senster’s broad back. “I took the liberty of askin’ Renee to find yuh a proper clean outfit. No offense, but yuh look like yuh been livin’ in them clothes for a spell.”

  “I have,” Milo replied, looking at what he was wearing. He thought it interesting how used he had become to wearing the same clothes all the time, with very little chance to wash them or even himself. Another way his life now was unimaginable to the one he’d always had before. “I don’t think I want new clothes,” he told Einter. “I like these.”

  “Be that as it may, an’ all,” Einter said, “they needs cleanin’. In the meantime, yuh can’t go through the streets of Inverdissen the way yuh was borned into the world. So Renee’s goin’ to give yuh somethin’ proper like.”

  That settled, and as soon as the oxen had been taken care of, Einter took Milo to a big stone trough in a side building. The water wasn’t warm and the soap wasn’t scented, but it did the job. Milo had to think with nostalgia to the luxury of his bath at Crane Castle, and he blushed a little just thinking about Erisa. The way her lips had felt when she passed on the taste of wisdom....

  He was still thinking about that wisdom as he walked with Einter and Bori through Inverdissen’s streets, dressed in the clean clothes that Dame Renee had provided. They were okay. Trousers, sandals, loose shirt, and a tunic over that. Especially the tunic: a bright blue, sleeveless, with silver clasps instead of buttons. Nothing for the roads like the gear that Ayuthaya had given him, but okay for the streets of the city. Renee and Einter had both assured him he looked handsome in it, and he agreed, secretly of course.

  The inner city of Inverdissen was magnificent. Nothing in ancient Rome could have been more imposing. The broad avenues were tree-lined and the buildings were monumental, as if they had been built for a race twice as tall as mortals were now. Grand was the thing. Milo was impressed even before they reached the university, and, at its center, the library.

  The library’s tower soared above everything else
and the blue enameled dome glistened the same blue as the sky above the main body of the building, itself so high that the pigeons wheeling around it looked like gnats.

  “They keep a light burnin’ way up there in the tower for the ships out at sea. It signals ‘em where the city is exactly as they come up over the curve of the horizon.”

  Something in that statement caught Milo’s attention. “You mean...the world’s round?”

  “Why, of course the world’s round!” Einter answered in indignation. “What would it be otherwise, square? Everyone knows that!”

  Milo had assumed that the people in this world would picture the earth as flat. It was an assumption that went with not having electricity or gasoline engines. “Sure, you’re right,” he answered in embarrassment for misjudging Einter’s and this world’s sophistication. “I know the earth’s a globe, but it’s so big that you could think of it as flat.”

  “Well, just you think for a minute. If it was flat, then it’d have to have edges somewhere, wouldn’t it? If you was to go in one direction yuh’d have to reach the edge. Either that or the world would just go on forever. But it don’t! Go in a straight line an’ eventually, yeh’ll come back to the place yuh started. Therefore”—he said with a triumphant flourish, “the world has to be round.”

  He continued, telling Milo how maps were made and how problematic it is to represent them on a flat page of paper that couldn’t take into perspective the curvature of the earth’s sphere. He explained how it wasn’t noticeable for a smaller area, but how it distorted the perspective when trying to represent the entire sphere. Milo was surprised at how knowledgeable Einter was on the topic. Maybe he wasn’t as simple and uneducated as he let on.

  By now they were mounting the flight of steps to the library’s huge bronze doors, decorated with scenes in relief from events that meant nothing to Milo. Passing through into the marbled vastness of the foyer, Milo stopped. Gilded statuary mounted the walls, story after story, like gods. Galleries lined with books radiated away from each of these levels, sort of like at the Library of Congress, which Milo had visited with his fifth grade class, only bigger.