The Redundant Dragons

by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

  “North of here,” the woman said. “Up Little Darlingham way. My family’s been there since before the war.”

  “Would you happen to know if any of your ancestors were said to be magical sorts? I’ve a good reason for asking,” she added, in case the woman was one of those people who felt magic was something tacky that did not happen in respectable families.

  “As a matter of fact, well, yes. A long time ago, one of my great-grandads was said to live in a little castle on an island in the middle of the Everclear branch of the Troutroute River. His name was Raspberry. I’m Pearly Raspberry-Smythe. They say the brambles completely covered the Raspberry Castle during the war, and my Gran who was one of his daughters slept through the whole shebang. These very pies are her recipe, according to me mum.”

  Verity fished the bouncing bead from the pouch along with the shells rattling in time with it. They stilled as she handed them to the woman, whose palm was open waiting for her coin.

  “A gift for you,” she told the woman, “your legacy.”

  “Very pretty, dearie,” she said, trying to hand them back. “But I’ll be needing proper coin for your food.”

  She looked pointedly at Casimir, who seemed to be inspecting a cloud.

  Verity handed her one of the coins from the sunken treasure chest. It was gold and the woman bit it.

  “Keep the change,” Casimir said grandly. “Lady?” he added to Verity and offered her his fingertips, supposedly to help her rise.

  “Be sure and listen to the shells,” she called back as they walked away. “They’ll explain anything—odd—that may happen. You might want to wear the bead around your neck at all times.” Or not, she thought privately, since she had no idea what powers it conferred.

  Back on the tracks, she and the minstrel exchanged weary glances and climbed back aboard the handcar. Smelt was right behind him, the dog unwisely snapping at his tail.

  “No,” Verity told him firmly, as he glared at the dog while his jaws began to glow.

  “I wasn’t going to,” Smelt said, giving Verity a twinge behind her right eyebrow.

  Pearly Raspberry-Smythe called the dog, who whined, but ran to the back of the station with a last bark to tell Smelt that the station’s guard dog still had his eye on the oversized interloper.

  Casimir grumbled, “I hope once we get to this Fair I will be able to accompany Devent.” He displayed the blisters on his palm.

  Smelt climbed onto the tracks and gave the handcar a push with his nose that sent them clanking quickly past the station. “If it will get us out of here and somewhere that a fellow can find a decent meal, I’m driving. Sit still for a bit. I’ll push.”

  Troll Bridge

  Verity expected to see Grudge at the Troll Bridge and was interested to see if the female troll warrior had discovered which magical powers her ancestor’s bead bequeathed her.

  Grudge, however, was not at the bridge.

  The other trolls, instead of lurking under the bridge and popping out to extort things from them as was bridge keeper custom, stepped timidly out from their lurk below the overpass, brandishing flyers. Perhaps their diffidence was because of Smelt, but it was definitely abnormal behavior.

  “Taking your own dragon, are you, Missy?” asked the particularly slimy specimen who shoved a paper into her sore, red hand.

  “Watch your handcar, Lady?” A smaller troll offered, sticking out its palm.

  The river was bright and beckoned with shady banks and sparkling cool water that she could imagine pouring over her as she watched it.

  “Thank you,” she said politely, and didn’t drop anything in the extended hand. Smelt waded into the water and smacked his tail in it, soaking her, making her laugh.

  “Hey, you there, we has to drink from this river! You’re mudding it up.”

  “Yeah, you commuters! Mudding the water for your elders and betters.”

  Smelt, revived by the water, was in quite a good mood, very playful for such a venerable elder. He gave what was for him a slight hop, scooped the water with what was left of his wings, which appeared to be larger than when Verity had first met him. He turned around so his back was to the bridge and smacked the water several more times with his tail.

  Verity badly wanted to join him, but didn’t trust the trolls not to run away with her pack, which contained items she needed.

  After a bit she scooted higher on the bank. A sign was nailed to one of the sparse trees growing next to the water. Even at a glance she could tell it had more words on it than the one in Zeli’s shop.

  COME ONE COME ALL TO THE FIRST ANNUAL DRAGON FAIR.

  FUN FOR ALL SPECIES. JOBS FOR DRAGONS AND FREE FOOD!

  Dragons: Get off the Northbound train at the Hydden Valley feeder track to proceed to the grounds for Dragons-only events and opportunities.

  Humans: Continue to the Little Darlingham Station to enjoy spectacles and reenactments such as Dragons and Damsels! Monsters and Maidens! Visit our vendors’ market for unique souvenirs and gifts. Ride in a dragon balloon! Join a treasure hunt for your own dragon hoard!

  “There doesn’t seem to be a list of attractions for the dragons,” Verity said, flipping over the paper for the dripping Smelt to see.

  “That could be because very few of us can read or write your lingo,” the old dragon said with inescapable wisdom Verity did not quite believe covered the entire issue.

  I wonder what Toby and Taz make of this, she mused to herself.

  Smelt grunted sparks and ashes. “I wonder what’s become of 33—the lad,” he said. “Hope he hasn’t lost his head.”

  The trolls were back under the bridge, preoccupied with throwing knives into the bank. Verity and Casimir climbed back onto the cart. “We could take over the pumping again,” she told Smelt.

  He leaned forward, lowering his head to push again. “It’s not heavy and gives me sommat to do while I walk. You might as well save your strength. You may have need of it. I mislike the sound of this Fair.”

  Casimir grunted in assent. “I concur. The beheaded dragons are an ominous portent.”

  The sun was low in the sky by the time they left the river. Shortly after they left, the tracks began to vibrate, rattling against the handcar’s wheels. Shimmering in the ever-decreasing distance, an engine barreled toward them, the drone of the engine dragons turned to a high-pitched moan, then a warning scream. Verity and Casimir leapt from the handcar and down the bank. The train roared by, barely missing the end of Smelt’s tail as he rolled down the hill past them. He roared indignantly back at the engine dragons, snatching his tail up around his body. The handcar flew off the tracks to land in pieces at the bottom of the embankment. Casimir ducked as an iron handle flew past his head.

  When the train had passed, they continued along the tracks, although no longer on them.

  Relieved, Casimir and Verity trudged on in comfortable silence. Since the minstrel joined them, the silences had been fewer, at first, as he sought to entertain a new audience. Her winces and cringes every time he told one of his more colorful stories discouraged and puzzled him, and once Devent departed, to Verity’s relief, he’d stopped trying. She was grateful for his presence, nonetheless, since she missed her father and found the company of an older man reassuring, as long as he was not actively trying to keep her company.

  She scanned the tundra beside the tracks, looking for more headless dragons and some of the low life scum who were collecting the ‘trophies.’ She thought she saw two more in the distance, and shook her head, feeling sad and disgusted, but did not go to investigate further. She began to worry about Devent, who had not returned in a very long time.

  If Smelt was concerned, he didn’t mention it. On the other hand, he took a professional interest in the tracks, claiming that he recognized some of the steel he had once made in the manufacture of the gleaming rails. “I remember a bit coming out like this—can you see the blue-gray wave in the metal here, lass? That’s fine sturdy stock, that is. You got to keep the heat
even is the trick to it, you see.”

  Hours later, while she was gazing into the distance looking for Devent and Casimir was humming a tune he kept repeating bits of and revising, Smelt cried, “Oh! Oh! The tracks are rumbling again. Can you hear?”

  Verity listened and after a beat said, incredulously. “That was quick. They must have put on even more special runs for this Fair. Didn’t the stationmaster say there were two daily? This will be the third today.”

  Smelt surprised her by saying, “Let’s flag ’er down. I’ve had me a hankerin’ to ride one of them, see what the fuss is about. Probably won’t find many more trains as accepts my kind for passengers after all this Fair business is over.”

  The train stopped, and the conductor leaned down from the platform to tell Casimir, “No room inside. This run is special for the Fairgoers, and it’s crammed with people craving an outing. The dragon could ride on the roof if you like but…”

  “I’ll join him,” Verity said and scrambled up the ladder, followed by Casimir.

  Smelt mustered enough altitude from his regenerating wings to make it to the top of the car.

  From their new vantage point, Verity could see the Majestic Mountains far in the distance. Small tributaries of the Majestic River flowed from both the mountaintops and the ice fields of the Wormroost glacier. Soon these sources would begin freezing again, after a brief spate of freedom. This far north, even the summer months were interrupted with occasional snowfalls.

  Lulled by the rattling and rumbling beneath her, Verity was surprised an hour later when a gleaming apparition danced in the twilight. Flame spurted from it at regular intervals, and when the train’s headlamps caught it, Verity hollered, “Look, it’s a dragon automaton!” and pointed.

  Smelt, who had been facing her, turned carefully on the curved surface of the train car and said, “Why, so it is, so it is indeed. Perhaps it is a child of mine, do you think, born of my steel?”

  “It isn’t alive,” Verity told him. “It’s a thing of science and technology, a machine. It only seems alive.”

  “Nonsense, lass,” the old dragon told her. “Everything is alive until you kill it.”

  Verity was neither inclined nor compelled to dispute that. No splitting headaches. So it was either true or the old dragon believed it so profoundly that to him it was indisputable.

  The train chugged to a halt and the conductor said, “Third class passengers and dragons are to disembark here. Third class passengers, your campsites are available on the far side of the tracks, around the pavilions previously erected for second-class passengers. Second-class passengers are invited to stay in the pavilions or proceed to the northern Fairgrounds for similar accommodations there. Dragons, please board the feeder car to take you into the southern Fairgrounds where your special events will take place.” It was a mouthful, even for a practiced conductor. Smelt shifted uneasily but made no immediate move to disembark.

  “What’s the man jabberin’ about?” he asked. “What’s a special event?”

  “Something they are making happen particularly for this occasion.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then I don’t like the sound of that.” Smelt said and Verity, no longer distracted by the wind and the rattle and clack of the train, found that she did not particularly like it, either. There was something wrong here—well, there were the beheaded dragons. Not a coincidence that both the Fair and the beheading of dragon corpses were occurring at the same time. “I didn’t come for that. I thought we’d find the lad.”

  “We will,” she said. “But…”

  “Your dragon must get off here, lady,” the conductor was saying to another passenger. He had removed his uniform jacket to show a waistcoat with a dragon patch on the shoulder.

  “But I am a vendor and he is a part of my business,” said a low earthy voice Verity recognized.

  “Clodagh!” she said, and half climbed, half slid down the ladder and leapt off onto the platform. She landed with an ‘oof’ and buckling knees, alerting her that she’d been sitting in an awkward position far too long.

  Clodagh bobbed a perfunctory curtsy. Kiln was hitched to a little wagon laden with the tools of their trade. They clattered as he twitched his tail.

  “Milady,” the former golem said to Verity. “Could you explain to this person why Kiln and I must go together?”

  Verity told the conductor, “She is a potter and Kiln is her—well, kiln. He does not need a job. He seems perfectly happy working in tandem with this woman.”

  “All vendors belong at the northern Fairgrounds, but all dragons belong here,” the man said stubbornly.

  “Not this one,” she said. “Better get back aboard, Clodagh.”

  “We’ll walk,” the earthen girl replied.

  “We’ll join you,” Verity said, looking up, but Smelt was no longer atop the train car. “How did you learn about this?” she asked, sweeping her arm to encompass the Fair.

  She, Clodagh and Kiln turned away from the man who was now busy directing other passengers to campsites.

  “Everyone was talking about it. I traded some of my dishes for passage on the train from the southern arm through the Mountains of Morn to Queenston,” she said. “I thought we would do well in the city, where no one knew my history, but then we heard of this Hiring Fair and it seemed a good place to sell our wares. Kiln has been uneasy. I wish we had not come.”

  “It sounded like fun, and a place to get answers,” Verity said, agreeing. “But I know what you mean. There’s something wrong.” Almost without her noticing it, the beads around her neck had warmed and begun vibrating while those beads she carried in her pocket also vibrated and the shells on her shirt jerked on the threads that held them there. “There are others here with a claim on the powers of the beads,” Verity said.

  Something brushed her ankles and she looked down to see three ghost cats had returned. They had deserted her while she and Smelt rode atop the train. She supposed even ghostly cats did not care for too much wind in their ears, fur and whiskers.

  Good. If the heirs to the wizards whose familiars the cats once belonged to were at the Fair, the cats would identify them for her and she could reunite them with their ancestral magic. Whatever this event meant for dragons, it seemed that it would be a boon to her mission.

  All along the tracks, tents and pavilions offered shelter and the savory scents of cooked meats and baked bread, sweets, spicy dishes tempted them from their trek.

  Suddenly above all the clamor and the chug of the train as it prepared to depart for the next stop, a familiar voice rang out, clear and melodic, but in the tongue of dragons.

  “Gather ye dragons, be ye near or far

  Come gather if by wing, by foot or railroad car

  Come gather to this place, where your need will be met

  At this wondrous festival no dragon will forget!”

  “Laddie!” Smelt cried in a spew of sparks. He emerged from the far side of the train and at the sound of Devent’s voice jumped up to the coupling and down beside Verity on the platform.

  “No smoking on the platform,” the conductor scolded Verity. “Tell your friend!”

  But by then, Smelt was already headed down the feeder tracks. A large group of dragons had been grumbling among themselves, apparently unsure about whether or not to allow themselves to be funneled into their designated campground. They fell in behind him.

  Verity stepped forward to follow, but a restraining hand pulled her back. “That’s dragon country, that is. You don’t want to go there.”

  “But I do,” she said. “Some of my best friends are dragons.”

  “That doesn’t mean that some of their acquaintances won’t decide to barbecue you. We provide them with meat here, but some might see you in that light, if you take my meaning.”

  “I do, and I’ll take my chances, “she said.

  “We can’t let you do that. Our liability won’t allow it.”

  S
he wanted to say she was technically at least the queen and the only person who had to allow it, but she wasn’t ready to get back to queening yet.

  “You could hire me,” she told him. “I speak a little of the dragon tongue. I could interpret for you.”

  “How are you with the other end?” Another man, this one wearing a gray and black striped coverall, asked. “There’s plenty of dung to be shoveled.”

  She smiled. “I can take care of that.” You didn’t need to shovel it, if you reminded the dragon to incinerate it. She hadn’t been looking for a job when she came to the Fair, but having one as a glorified dragon stable hand would provide cover, at least until she could get the lay of the land. So much travel had not exactly polished her appearance. If there was a pore on her body, a follicle on her scalp or a thread in her clothing that wasn’t filthy, she would be very surprised. She could have competed with Clodagh for the title of ‘Mud Girl.’

  “You’re hired. Report to the maintenance tent within the compound.”

  And with that, she followed the crowd to where young Devent was extolling the virtues of the wonderful event. The organizers ought actually to be paying him for advertising it.

  Devent’s new song was about the food he expected to find at the Fair. She chimed in with some of the treats she had enjoyed early in her life before she attended and was expelled from so many boarding schools.

  “Whole beeves stuffed with hogs stuffed with luscious waterfowl stuffed with delicate fish!” Devent dreamed aloud.

  “Candy floss on a paper cone, fried pastry dusted with sugar and cinnamon, cookies and candies, mutton sausage and tubers, winkles in the shell and fresh salted goobers…”

  The dragons who had wings enthusiastically clapped them over their backs while those without stamped their feet until the very earth seemed to rumble beneath them.

  Smelt could not, of course, show such a human expression as a smile, but Verity fancied she could see pleasure and approval on his saurian countenance.