Dragonfield: And Other Stories Read online

  But she was the only one to hold out such hope and to no one’s surprise but May-Ma’s, the healer did not return. The priest marked his passing with the appropriate signs and psalms, then returned to help with the harvest. The girls wept quietly: Rosemary by her loom, dampening the cloth; Sage by the window, gazing off down the path; Tansy alone in the woods. May-Ma sobbed her hopes noisily and the villagers, as befitting their long friendship with the healer, spoke of his Gift with reverence. It did not bring him back.

  The healer’s disappearance became a small mystery in a land used to small mysteries until after the harvest was in. And then Tam-the-Carpenter’s finest draft horse was stolen. A week and a half later, two prize ewes were taken from Mother Comfy’s fold. And almost two weeks after that, the latest of the cooper’s twelve children disappeared from its cradle in the meadow when the others had left it for just a moment to go and pick wild trillium in the dell. A great fear descended upon the village then. They spoke of ravening beasts, of blood-crazed goblins, of a mad changeling beast-man roaming the woods, and looked at one another with suspicion. The priest ranted of retribution and world’s end. But none of them considered dragons, for, as they knew full well, the last of the great worms had been killed in the dragon wars. And while none had actually seen a goblin or a beast-man, and while there had not been wild animals larger than a goldskin fox in the woods for twice two hundred years, still such creatures seemed likelier than dragons. Dragons, they knew with absolute and necessary conviction, were no more.

  It was a fisherman who saw Aredd and lived to tell of it. In a passion one early morning he had gone over the side of his boat to untangle a line. It was a fine line, spun out over the long winter by his wife, and he was not about to lose it, for the mark of its spinning was still on his wife’s forefinger and thumb. The line was down a great ways underwater and he had scarcely breath enough to work it free of a black root. But after three dives he had worked it loose and was surfacing again when he saw the bright water above him suddenly darken. He knew water too well to explain it, but held his breath longer and slowed his ascent until the darkness had passed by. Lucky it was, for when he broke through the foam, the giant body was gone past, its claws empty. All the fisherman saw clearly through water-filmed eyes was the great rudder of its red tail. He treaded water by his boat, too frightened to pull himself in, and a minute later the dragon went over him again, its claws full of the innkeeper’s prize bull, the one that had sired the finest calves in the countryside but was so fierce it had to be staked down day and night. The bull was still twitching and the blood fell from its back thicker than rain.

  The fisherman slipped his hand from the boat and went under the water, both to cleanse himself of the blood and the fear. When he surfaced again, the dragon was gone. But the fisherman stayed in the water until the cold at last drove him out, his hands as wrinkled as his grandpap’s from their long soaking.

  He swam to shore, forgetting both boat and line, and ran all the way back to the village leaving a wet trail. No one believed him until they saw the meadow from which the bull—chain and all—had been ripped. Then even the priest was convinced.

  The healer’s wife and her three daughters wept anew when they were told. And Tansy, remembering the patch of dragon’s bane, blamed herself for not having guessed.

  May-Ma raised her fist to the sky and screamed out the old curse on dragons, remembered from years of mummery played out at planting:

  Fire and water on thy wing,

  The curse of god in beak and flight.

  The priest tried to take the sting of her loss away. The cooper’s wife was inconsolable as well, surrounded by her eleven younglings. The village men sharpened their iron pitchforks and the old poisoned arrows that hung on the church’s small apse walls were heated until the venom dripped. Tansy had to treat three boys for the flux who had put their fingers on the arrows and then on their lips. The beekeeper got down an old book that had traveled through his family over the years called Ye Draconis: An Historie Unnaturalis. The only useful information therein was: “An fully fledged draconis will suppe and digeste an bullock in fourteen days.” They counted twelve days at best before the beast returned to feed again.

  And then someone said, “We need a dragonslayer.”

  So the fisherman’s son and the beekeeper’s son and three other boys were sent off to see who they could find, though, as the priest thundered from the pulpit, “Beware of false heroes. Without dragons there be no need of dragonslayers.”

  As the boys left the village, their neighbors gathered to bid them godspeed. The sexton rang Great Tom, the treble bell that had been cast in the hundredth year after the victory over dragons. On its side was the inscription: I am Tom, when I toll there is fire, when I thunder there is victory. The boys carried the sound with them down the long, winding roads.

  They found heroes aplenty in the towns they visited. There were men whose bravery extended to the rim of a wine cup but, sober the morning after, turned back into ploughboys, farmers, and laborers who sneaked home without a by-your-leave. They found one old general who remembered ancient wounds and would have followed them if he had had legs, but the man who carted him to and from town was too frightened to push the barrow after them. And they found a farmer’s strong daughter who could lift a grown ewe under each arm but whose father forbade her to go. “One girl and five boys together on the road?” he roared. “Would that be proper? After such a trip, no one would wed her.” So though she was a head taller than her da, and forty pounds heavier, she wanted a wedding, so she stayed.

  It was in a tosspot inn that the five village boys found the one they sought. They knew him for a hero the moment he stood. He moved like a god, the golden hair rippling down his back. Muscles formed like small mountains on his arms and he could make them walk from shoulder to elbow without the slightest effort. He was of a clan of gentle giants but early on had had a longing to see the world.

  It did not occur to any one of the five why a hero should have sunk so low as to be cadging drinks by showing off his arms. It was enough for them that they had found him.

  “Be you a hero?” breathed the fisherman’s son, tracing the muscles with his eyes.

  The blond man smiled, his teeth white and even. “Do I look like one?” he asked, answering question with question, making the muscles dance across his shoulders. “My name is Lancot.”

  The beekeeper’s son looked dazzled. “That be a hero’s name,” he said with a sigh.

  The boys shared their pennies and bought Lancot a mug of stew. He remembered things for them then: service to a foreign queen, a battle with a walking tree, three goblins spitted on his sword. (Their blood had so pitted the blade he left it on their common grave, which was why he had it not.) On and on through the night he spun out his tales and they doled out their coin in exchange. Each thought it a fair bargain.

  In the morning they caught up with him several miles down the road, his pockets a-jangle with the coins they had paid for his tales—as well as the ones they thought they had gone to bed with. They begrudged him none of it. A hero is entitled.

  “Come back with us, Lancot,” begged the beekeeper’s son, “and we can promise you a fine living.”

  “More coins than ten pockets could hold,” added the fisherman’s son, knowing it for a small boast.

  They neglected to mention the dragon, having learned that one small lesson along the way.

  And the hero Lancot judged them capable of five pockets at best. Still, five was better than none, and a fine village living was better than no living at all. There was bound to be at least one pretty girl there. He was weary of the road, for the world had turned out to be no better than his home—and no worse. So he shook his head, knowing that would make his golden hair ripple all down his back. And he tensed his muscles once more for good measure. They deserved something for their coin.

  “He is almost like … a god,” whispered one of the boys.

  Lancot smiled t
o himself and threw his shoulders back. He looked straight ahead. He knew he was no god. He was not even, the gods help him, a hero. Despite his posture and his muscles, he was a fraud. Heroes and gods were never afraid and he was deadly afraid every day of his life. It was so absurd that he found himself laughing most of the time for, by holding himself upright and smiling his hero smile, by making others party to his monstrous fraud, could he keep most of the fears at bay.

  And so they arrived home, the fisherman’s son, the beekeeper’s son, and the three other boys alternately trailing the golden-haired hero and leading him.

  They were greeted by a sobbing crowd.

  The dragon, it seems, had carried off the church bell ten days before. The sexton, who had been in the act of ringing matins, had clung to the rope and had been carried away as well. Great Tom had dropped upside-down with a final dolorous knell into the bay, where it could still be seen. Little fish swam round its clapper. The sexton had not been found.

  With all the sobbing and sighing, no one had noticed that the hero Lancot had turned the color of scum on an ocean wave. No one, that is, except Tansy, who noticed everything, and her sister Sage, who thought that gray-white was a wonderful tone for a hero’s skin. “Like ice,” she whispered to herself, “like the surface of a lake in winter, though his eyes are the color of a summer sky.” And Rosemary, who thought he looked big enough and strong enough to train to the farm, much as a draft horse is measured for the plow.

  As there was no inn and May-Ma had first claim on heroes, her husband having been the great worm’s earliest meal, Lancot was put up at the healer’s cottage. He eyed the three daughters with delight.

  Their first dinner was a dismal affair. The healer’s wife spoke of raw vengeance, Rosemary of working, Sage of romance, and Tansy of herbs. Lancot spoke not at all. In this place of dragons he knew he dared not tell his tales.

  But finally Tansy took pity on his silence and asked him what, besides being a hero, he liked to do.

  It being a direct question, Lancot had to answer. He thought a bit. Playing a hero had taken up all his adult time. At last he spoke. “When I was a boy …”

  Sage sighed prettily, as if being a boy were the noblest occupation in the world.

  “When I was a boy,” Lancot said again, “I liked to fly kites.”

  “A useless waste of sticks and string,” said Rosemary.

  Sage sighed.

  But as May-Ma cleared the table, Tansy nodded. “A link with earth and sky,” she said. “As if you, too, were flying.”

  “If we were meant to fly,” reminded Rosemary, “we would have been born with a beak …”

  Sage laughed, a tinkling sound.

  “And a longing for worms. Yes, I know,” interrupted Tansy. “But little worms are useful creatures for turning the soil. It is only the great worms who are our enemies.”

  Rosemary’s mouth thinned down.

  Lancot said uneasily, “Kites …” then stopped. Dinner was over and the need for conversation was at an end.

  In the morning the boys, backed up by their fathers, came to call. Morning being a hero’s time, they came quite early. Lancot was still asleep.

  “I will wake him,” volunteered Sage. Her voice was so eager the fisherman’s son bit his lip, for he had long loved her from afar.

  Sage went into the back room and touched the sleeping hero on the shoulder. Lancot turned on the straw mattress but did not open his eyes.

  “Never mind,” said Rosemary urgently when Sage returned without him. “I shall do it.”

  She strode into the room and clapped her hands loudly right behind his left ear. Lancot sat up at once.

  “Your followers are here,” she snapped. “Tramping in mud and knocking the furniture about.” She began to fluff up the pillow before the print of Lancot’s head even had time to fade.

  Reluctantly he rose, splashed drops of cold water on his cheeks, and went to face the boys.

  “Do we go today?” asked the fisherman’s son, quick to show his eagerness to Sage.

  “Is it swords or spears?” asked the innkeeper’s son.

  “Or the poisoned arrows?”

  “Or rocks?”

  “Or …”

  “Let me think,” said Lancot, waving them into silence. “A dragon needs a plan.”

  “A plan,” said all the boys and their fathers at once.

  “Come back tomorrow and I will have a plan,” said Lancot. “Or better yet, the day after tomorrow.”

  The boys nodded, but the beekeeper spoke timidly. “The day after tomorrow will be too late. The great worm is due to return to feed. The sexton was …” he swallowed noisily, “… a puny man.” Unconsciously his hand strayed to his own ample waist.

  Lancot closed his eyes and nodded as if he were considering a plan, but what he was really thinking about was escape. When he opened his eyes again, the boys and their fathers were gone. But Rosemary was holding the broom in a significant manner, and so Lancot put his head down as if in thought and strode from the house without even worrying about breaking his fast.

  He turned down the first wooded path he came to, which was the path that wound down towards the river. He scarcely had time for surprise when the wood opened into the broad, meandering waterway, dotted with little isles, that at the edge of sight opened into the sea. Between him and the river was a gentle marsh of reeds and rice. Clustered white florets sat like tiny clouds upon green stems. There was no boat.

  “There you are,” said Tansy, coming out of the woods behind him. “I have found some perfect sticks for a kite and borrowed paper from the priest. The paper has a recipe for mulberry wine on it, but he says he has much improved the ingredients and so could let me have it. And I have torn up Da’s old smock for ribbons and plaited vines for a rope.”

  “A kite?” Lancot said wonderingly. He stared at the girl, at her river-blue eyes set in a face that seemed the color of planed wood. Yesterday she had seemed no great beauty, yet here in the wood, where she reflected the colors of earth, water, sky, she was beautiful, indeed. “A kite?” he asked again, his thoughts on her.

  “Heroes move in mysterious ways,” Tansy said, smiling. “And since you mentioned kites, I thought perhaps kites were teasing into your mind as part of your plan.”

  “My plan,” Lancot repeated vaguely, letting his eyes grow misty as if in great thought. He was having trouble keeping his mind on heroics.

  Suddenly he felt a touch on his hand, focussed his eyes, and saw that Tansy had placed her green-stained fingers on his. Her hands are like a wood sprite’s, he thought suddenly.

  “Being a hero,” Tansy said, “does not mean you need to be without fear. Only fools lack fear and I believe you to be no fool.”

  He dared to look at her and whispered, “No hero either.” And having admitted it, he sank down on his heels as if suddenly free of shackles that had long held him upright.

  Tansy squatted next to him. “I am no hero either,” she said. “To run away is by far the most sensible thing that either of us could do. But that will not stop this great worm from devouring my village and, ultimately, our world. The very least the two of us poor, frightened un-heroes can do is to construct a plan.”

  They sat for a long moment in silence, looking at one another. The woods stilled around them. Then Lancot smiled and, as if on a signal, the birds burst into full throat again. Little lizards resumed their scurrying. And over the water, sailing in lazy circles, a family of cormorants began their descent.

  “A kite,” said Lancot. His eyes closed with sudden memory. “I met a mage once, with strange high cheekbones and straw-colored hair. He spoke in a language that jangled the ear, and he told me that in his tongue the word for kite is drache, dragon.”

  Tansy nodded slowly. “Correspondences,” she said. “It is the first rule of herbalry. Like calls to like. Like draws out like.” She clapped her hands together. “I knew there was a reason that you spoke of kites.”

  “Do you mean tha
t a kite could kill a dragon? The dragon?” Lancot asked. “Such a small, flimsy toy?”

  Tansy laced her fingers together and put her chin down on top of her hands. “Not all by itself,” she said. “But perhaps there is some way that we could manipulate the kite …”

  “I could do that!” said Lancot.

  “And use it to deliver a killing blow,” Tansy finished.

  “But there is no way a kite could carry a spear or bend a bow or wield a sword.” Lancot paused. “You do not mean to fly me up on the kite to do that battle.” He forgot to toss his hair or dance his muscles across his shoulders, so great was his fear.

  Tansy laughed and put her hands on his knee. “Lancot, I have not forgotten that you are no hero. And I am no kite handler.”

  He furrowed his brow. “You will not go up the kite string. I forbid it.”

  “I am not yours to forbid,” Tansy said quietly. “But I am no hero either. What I had in mind was something else.”

  He stood then and paced while Tansy told him of her plan. The river rilled over rocks to the sea, and terns scripted warnings in the sky. Lancot listened only to the sound of Tansy’s voice, and watched her fingers spell out her thoughts. When she finished, he knelt by her side.

  “I will make us a great kite,” he said. “A drache. I will need paint besides, red as blood and black as hope.”

  “I thought hope a lighter color,” exclaimed Tansy.

  “Not when one is dealing with dragons,” he said.

  The cooper supplied the paint. Two precious books of church receipts were torn apart for the paper because Lancot insisted that the kite be dragon-size. The extra nappies belonging to the missing babe, the petticoats of six maidens, and the fisherman’s son’s favorite shirt were torn up for binding. And then the building began.

  Lancot sent the boys into the woods for spruce saplings after refusing to make his muscles dance. They left sullenly with his caveat in their ears: “As the dragon is mighty, yet can sail without falling through the air, so must the wood of our kite likewise be strong yet light.”