The Iron Dragon's Daughter

by Michael Swanwick

  my right hand

  my left hand

  touch the one

  who understands

  touch my knee

  touch the ground

  spin, span, muskidan

  and whirl her

  twirl and

  swirl her a-

  round!

  It was a spell for regularizing her period. The figurine got turned around two, three, or five times, depending on the number of days it had been since first blood. On days when it ended Maiden-side up, she could do anything she wished. When the Mother was upmost, she must remain chaste. It was reliable, Peg assured her, so long as she made no mistakes in counting, remembered to chant the spell every morning without exception, and never got so drunk or besotted she forgot which side was up.

  "That's all," Peg said at last. "Now if you're at all typical, you've got a head full of nonsense and a mouth full of hideously misinformed questions to ask. Well?"

  "I want to know… well, this is more witchcraft than contraception, I guess." Jane blushed. "But I want to know when I start getting in touch with my female wisdom."

  "Female wisdom? No such animal." Peg lit a fresh cigarette.

  "In school they taught us that everything is divided between male and female principles. They said that action arises from the male principle and wisdom from the female. They said that's why girls are discouraged from going into politics."

  Peg snorted. "What a typically male thing to say! That's all a load of horseshit, young lady. There's nothing special about you just because you possess a cunt. She's a pretty little thing and if you treat her well, she'll be a good friend to you, but as a source of wisdom—? Bah! Her needs are simple and few. You learn here"—she touched Jane's forehead—"and here"—she touched Jane's heart. "Boys have heads and hearts too, you know. Not that they ever use them."

  Confused, Jane said, "Well, thank you. Thank you very much."

  "No more questions?"

  "No," Jane said. Then, "Yes. Yes, there's just one more. I want to know about that thing in the bottle."

  Peg's eyes darkened and she smiled. "He used to be my lover. But he dwindled." She reached over to the bottle and whipped off the cloth. "You'll want to be in on this, dearheart. It's your story, after all."

  The homunculus's flat gaze said nothing.

  "When first we met he was a great whiskery, yellow-toothed ogre. Big as a mountain, with shoulders out to there. What a magnificent creature he was! Even his faults were large faults. The smell from his armpits would choke a goat. His farts were like thunderclaps. He'd pork anything that held still for him.

  "Our courtship was rough, but I liked it rough, and when I caught him slipping it up the bottom of some dollymop or curligig, I'd thrash her bloody while he laughed and yanked his pud. We never had a stick of furniture for my smashing it over his thick head. Ah, but what did we care? We were young and in love.

  "But then one night the Tylwyth Teg came looking for him. I forget what it was about—he'd eaten somebody's dog, I think. Must've been somebody important to get the Tegs involved. We were living in an efficiency over a bar then, and the window had burglar bars. No time to rip 'em out. He had no choice but to hide in the closet.

  "They were a pair, the Tylwyth Teg were, fever-eyed and hound-lean. Cheekbones you could slice bread with. One of them raised his head and sniffed the air. He's here, he said. I can smell him.

  "

  "Course you can, said I, pointing to the rumpled bed. We haven't changed the sheets in a month.

  "The smell's stronger than that, he said.

  "It's not him you're smelling then, I said, and gave him a look.

  "They exchanged glances, and one of them smirked. Are you trying to bribe us with your body? said the other.

  "I looked him in the eye and said, Well I sure as hell ain't gonna give you money!

  "So in the end I double-featured them right there on our unmade bed, and it still reeking of their quarry's scent. Eminently corruptible, the Tylwyth Teg are."

  Peg scowled. "You look like you've eaten a green lemon, my lass. But I assure you they were glad to have me. I'm not half so bad-looking as you make me out to be."

  "Oh, no," Jane said quickly. "It's not like that at all." And it wasn't. It was the story itself that horrified her. For all that she'd had no great expectations for it, sex was turning out to be even more squalid, tawdry, and cynical than she had suspected it would.

  "Mmmph. Where was—oh, yeah. We pounded away on that bed for an hour-some, and for me the cream of the jest was that all the time the one they hunted was not three strides distant, watching through the crack in the door, and doubtless with his trousers down around his ankles and playing with himself. How he'd laugh when they were gone, I thought. How he'd roar.

  "But when they left and I opened the closet door he did not laugh. No, not at all.

  "What did you do that for? he asked me. I said, If you didn't like it, why didn't you stop it? Said he, How could I? I'd've been caught.

  "What is it you're telling me, I asked—that you let them do what they wanted with me because you were afraid?

  "He looked away. Well, we'll forget it ever happened, he said.

  "But forget it I could not. For he was not so large in my sight as he had been a moment before. He had shrunk a little.

  "In my eyes he had fallen from grace, you see. So many things happened. I'll tell you just one more, the time I came home to find all my pharmaceuticals gone and half of my clothing. So I grabbed up the baseball bat we kept by the door for intruders and went looking for him.

  "He was down by the incinerator in a crap game with a crowd of trolls and a red dwarf. He was as drunk as three boiled owls. The dwarf was wearing my best black lace brassiere as a scarf.

  "I screamed and ran at them. They scattered like pigeons, all but him, snatching up bets and bottles as they went. I never saw that bra again. But when I brought that bat down on him, he flinched. He flinched. That was what I found unforgivable."

  "Why?"

  "When you've had a few men under your belt, you'll understand. Well, he grabbed the bat and we fought for it. Neither of us could take it away from the other. He had dwindled down to my own size.

  "It went quickly after that. He became furtive, slipping around to Koboldtown to see a mountain ape of a lass with knuckles that brushed the ground where once he would've had her in our very bed while I slept. He began sneaking money from my purse where once when I told him I'd nothing to give, he threatened to put me out on the street to earn it. He lied, he sniveled, he would not meet my eye. I'd've thrown him out, but we had shared our true names and had no choice but to see this thing through to its end. Day by day and month by month, he withered away in my esteem, smaller and smaller, until he was a thing no larger than a hedgehog. Finally I had no choice but to put him in that bottle. And there he remains."

  She leaned low over the homunculus and crooned, "Don't you worry, little snugglebunny. Someday your fairy princess will come. She'll be young and beautiful and she'll look you in the eye. You won't have to beg, she'll know what you want. She'll lift the hammer from the anvil and swing it through the air faster than mortal sense can follow. You'll be dazzled, astounded, unable to think. The hammer will descend like a thunderbolt to shatter your narrow little world into a million shards and set you free." She straightened and glanced at Jane.

  "But not today."

  * * *

  By the third day in a row that Salome didn't show up for school, it was obvious to all that something was up. In homeroom Grunt announced that she'd had a dirt bike accident and was hospitalized. He said this proved how dangerous unsupervised fun could be and suggested they all think long and hard on this lesson.

  But word in the corridors was different. Between classes, Trotteranstinch came lurching up to Jane with their stiff, three-legged walk. Their middle eye was all but swallowed up in flesh now and had a haunted look to it. They grinned cockily. "Heard about Salome?"

  "
No," she said. "Only what they've told us."

  "She's pregnant. They sent her away to a baby farm, and she's never coming back. And guess who's to blame—none other than Hebog!"

  "How do you know all this?"

  "It's no big secret—Strawwe's been blabbing it to anyone who'll listen."

  That afternoon Jane found Hebog standing out behind the school, off by the soccer field. He'd picked up little bits of gravel from the walk and placed them in a neatly spaced line. Holding an old stick as if it were a golf club, he was one by one knocking them into the air. He told her he'd been summoned to appear before the Low Court.

  "What will they do to you?"

  Hebog shrugged, addressed another bit of gravel and went into the backswing. He knocked it up and away. "I don't know. Probably indenture me to a factory. It's a serious offense, consorting with you tall buggers is. No offense intended."

  "Hebog, listen, I want you to know—"

  "I don't want to hear it. Fuck your sympathy. This is real and I don't want anybody mucking it over with cheap sentiment, okay?"

  So Jane went home and patched herself into the dragon. She had given up trying to get him to talk, but she still liked to watch the meryons at work.

  The meryon civilization had fallen on hard times. With the onset of cold weather food was no longer easy to obtain, and with no farms of their own they had grown reliant on raiding their neighbors for provisions. They had no granaries or warehouses to speak of. Their armies had scoured the surrounding land halfway to the schoolhouse. Their supply lines were thus overextended, their patrols more vulnerable to guerrilla action. Their sorties were far less productive than previously.

  With the collapse of their economy had come a corresponding physical deterioration. Snug tin houses had become shanties. Starving meryons wandered aimlessly in the streets. Military police in armored cars were everywhere, tense soldiers sitting behind cunningly small machine guns. Jane saw a riot in miniature, followed by a house-by-house sweep of the slum neighborhoods in which hundreds of tiny enemies of the state were hauled out of doors and executed.

  Jane watched them for a long time, pondering the random cruelties of life.

  * * *

  Samhain was not long distant when Gwen caught Jane between classes and pressed two pasteboard tickets into her hand. "Hot off the presses. They're front row seats right on the forty-yard line, two of them," she gushed happily. "I really believe you should take a date, Jane, you're old enough. I know you're a little shy, but it really is all right to invite a boy out. Just to get things started."

  "Yeah, well, that's very nice of you, but—"

  "You could invite Ratsnickle. I know he likes you."

  Jane's body went cold. It felt exactly like the prickly sensation that sweeps through the flesh an instant after being stung by a wasp, just before the pain registers. "I don't want your damned tickets!" She thrust them back into Gwen's hands and stormed away.

  Gwen caught up to her, seized an arm, and when Jane shook it off, grabbed her by the shoulders and swung her into an empty classroom. She kicked the door shut behind her. "All right, what's all this about?"

  "You know what it's about."

  "No, I do not."

  "Well, you ought!" Jane began to cry.

  This melted Gwen. With a gentle, shushing noise, she tried to take Jane into her arms. Jane wrenched herself away violently, and Gwen retreated, baffled. "Well, I don't know what's gotten into you, I really don't."

  It was raining outside, a gray drenching rain driven by winds that rattled the windows and covered the glass with sheets of water. The inside of the classroom, almost silenced by soundproofing spells and lit with fluorescent fixtures, seemed a raft of bright unreality in a universe of storm. All of its own accord Jane's hand dipped into her blouse pocket. She removed the piece of paper she had been carrying with her ever since her encounter with the Principal and unfolded it.

  "'Peter of the Hillside,'" she read aloud, "'has been examined by the undersigned practitioners of hermeneutic medicine on this Day of the Toad, Axe Moon, in the one hundred seventy-third year of the Descent of the Turbine, and found to be and is hereby certified as a virgin, innocent of carnal knowledge and a fit sacrifice to the glory of the Goddess and for the aversion of Her dread disapproval and wrathful desire.'" Eyes blazing, she said, "A virgin!"

  "Where did you get that?"

  "What does it matter where I got it? It says that Peter's a virgin."

  "Well, Jane, you have to understand that the Goddess doesn't want—"

  A bolt of lightning struck a distant tree on the far horizon, and Gwen gasped. Jane, though, didn't even flinch. She felt the storm's energy flow through her veins like wrath, buoying her up, filling her with power. Every hair on her body tingled. Gwen seemed smaller now, and she shrank from Jane like a shadow bending away from the light.

  Thunder filled the room.

  She shook the paper in Gwen's face. "All I want to know is, if you don't sleep with him, what do you do?"

  "He's my consort."

  "Yes, but what does that mean?"

  "Peter… eases my pain. He makes things easier for me."

  With a thunderclap of shock, Jane felt half a dozen scrips and scraps of information fall together into a single blinding insight. "He's a sin-eater, isn't he?"

  Gwen hesitated just long enough that she couldn't convincingly deny a thing. "Well, what if he is?"

  "Oh, you—viper! I thought you were brave, I thought you were strong. But you didn't have to be, did you? You haven't felt a thing. You haven't suffered at all. It's Peter who's suffered. It's Peter whose feet hurt when yours blistered, Peter who suffered your hangovers and your cocaine jags. It's Peter who's paid for all your pleasures, isn't it? Tell me something. When you mistreat him, who feels the guilt? Hah? It isn't you, is it?" The lightning was coming closer. Against the greenish afternoon darkness the artificial lighting made Gwen's face look overwhite, skin too taut, like a skull. "That's what a consort's for. Maybe nobody talks about it, but everybody knows. I haven't done anything that hasn't been done every year in every community since time began. So what's the big deal? What are you so upset about?"

  "You've had the free ride, but it was Peter who paid the freight."

  "I'm entitled!" she shrieked.

  A wrathful calm came over Jane. She said nothing. She was the focus of the storm, its eye of power. All its bleak strength poured into her. She stared at Gwen with godlike disdain.

  With a small cry Gwen broke away from her gaze and spun to the door. She seized the knob and thus anchored turned back into the room for an instant before fleeing. "Anyway, it doesn't matter what you think, Miss High-and-Mighty Jane Alderberry! I'm still the wicker queen, and Peter is still my consort. That's who we are and what our relationship is. You may not like it, but so what? That's just the way things are and there's nothing you can do about it. Nothing!"

  The door slammed behind her.

  Jane was left alone in a roomful of huddled fiberglass desk chairs, twoscore identical creatures like children with blank, empty faces. They waited patiently for her to speak.

  Not necessarily, Jane said, but silently and to herself.

  — 11 —

  IT WAS ONLY WHEN SHE WENT TO EMPTY OUT HER LOCKer that Jane realized how overgrown it had become. Orchids and jungle vines filled most of the space within and a hummingbird fled into the corridor when she banged open the door.

  "I don't understand," Strawwe said. "Do you want your papers forwarded to the University early, is that it?"

  A mulch of corrected assignments, old tests, and mimeographed syllabuses, had formed at the bottom and sprouted mushrooms and ferns. Some of her books were too moldy for retrieval. A tiny animal scurried away when she reached for her hairbrush, rattling the bamboo like a xylophone.

  "You can have these examination books if you want. I won't be needing them."

  Strawwe danced anxiously from foot to foot, trying to engage her attention more fully. It wa
s pathetic how anxious he was to please. With her reversal of fortunes she had become to him an object of fear and mystery. "It's a little late in the year for a normal transfer, but it might be possible to get you in under Special Status."

  "Do what you like."

  A white rectangle of paper lay atop her things on the book ledge. Somebody had slipped a note through the air vents. Jane opened it:

  I know your mad at me. But I still think we make a pretty good couple. I cant be happy without you. Let's give it another try. Why not kiss and make up?

  It was not signed, but only Ratsnickle could have concocted such a thing. Jane felt an involuntary surge of anger, but forced herself to smile coldly and murmur to her own ears only, "Dream on."

  "The secretary thought we should have a little ceremony. Nothing fancy, maybe an afternoon tea. Just you, me, her, and a few teachers who've been significant mentors to you. I could have a parchment scroll made up, with calligraphy. Or a plaque."

  "We'll see." She closed the locker for the last time ever.

  "That's what I'll do," he called after her. "Okay?"

  On the way out she ran into Trinch, grinning his eighty-tooth grin. He had only two eyes now, though their colors didn't match, and his middle leg had dwindled to such a degree that he had to keep it coiled up in his jeans. His metamorphosis all but complete, he was as frog-ugly as ever. By his satisfied demeanor, though, that was what he'd intended.

  "Jane! Fancy running into you." He put an arm around her shoulder and she knocked it away.

  "None of that! I'm wise to your tricks."

  He took the rebuff with good grace. "Hey, I was just up by your digs, watching the exterminators lay down bait. There's little yellow warning flags all over the place."

  "That so?" Jane wasn't particularly interested.

  "Yeah, I talked with one of them and he said there was a really nasty infestation of meryons thereabouts. Said that if they didn't take to the baits, he'd be coming back in a day or two to flood their burrows with poison gas."

  It made Jane feel queasy to think of the little fellows being gassed. But everyone had their problems, and she had more immediate things to think about. "Thank you for sharing that with me," she said. "I'll be especially careful not to eat anything I find on the ground in the next few days."