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  He shook his head stubbornly. “Stop debating then. I’m done trying to keep you from risking your life. But I’m certainly not going to risk mine.” He leaned with greater determination against the tree looking, if possible, fiercely dedicated to languishing there for the duration. “I’m sorry, old girl. A lot of people have control over my life. My craftmaster has power over my music, your father and other aristocrats have power over my comings and goings, and your grandmother has power over my shape. You, however, don’t have any power over me at all, and I refuse to allow you to push me into something stupid and dangerous.”

  “Coward.”

  “At your service.”

  With one last glare, she arranged herself in the boat, holding on to the rope for balance. Then she had to stand again, one foot on the basket and one on shore, to push the basket boat out into the water.

  Her arms were almost yanked from their sockets as the tide jerked her and the boat downstream of the rope she clung to. She regained her seat and began hauling herself hand over hand down the rope, thinking stubbornly that she was certainly showing the minstrel that she was not a girl to stand around and wait for the men to do everything, as he obviously thought. Her ruminations were extremely brief, however, for the rope was slick and wet and her shoulders ached horribly with the strain of clinging to it against the current. In no way did the pain lessen as she strove to get enough purchase to pull herself and the boat against the tide, closer to the rope. Her body stretched so far between her lifeline and the boat that it arched, her belly almost grazing the water, her knees barely in the basket, head buried between wrenching shoulders and straining arms as she struggled for a better grip on the rope. A passing log swept the little rush boat out from under the precarious purchase her knees had maintained, and she dropped with a shocking icy splash into the river, the water soaking her to the waist. Inexperienced as she was at rivercraft, she did realize that her most desperate and immediate priority was to retain her grip on the rope at all costs.

  She was actually only a few feet out from the shore, but even her work-hardened hands were not used to supporting her entire weight from slick, cold leather thongs against the force exerted by the river. The icy water chilled her to the top of her head, and she couldn’t feel her fingers after a short time.

  Abruptly she sank to her armpits in the biting cold river. A weight jerked on the rope and it slipped agonizingly in her hands. She could not be sure when one hand slipped from the rope, but suddenly her body was floating on the surface, tossing and turning with the torrent, the arm that kept her from drowning an arrow of pain that felt as though it were breaking her back.

  She was hauled partially out of the water as Colin’s arm caught her clothing, then her waist. “Got you!” he yelled above the river, nearly breaking his own hold on the rope with the shock of her added weight to his own. “Grab on, now!” He had slid along the rope far enough to catch hold of her. Flinging her free arm wildly in his direction as she tried to obey his order, she nearly throttled him, hooking her elbow around his neck.

  He gargled at her.

  They did so much thrashing around themselves that they scarcely noticed when the waves began to break over their shoulders, submerging the rope for a moment. Maggie clung to Colin’s belt, twisting her head to keep the water from her mouth and nose. Colin was finally able to get them back to the shore, and they lay there, half out of the water, just as the tension that had been fighting them for the rope went slack.

  As Maggie clambered out of the water and up Colin’s legs and onto the bank, to lie panting and choking beside him, she heard Ching translate for the big green and turquoise dragon who was drying herself in what little sunlight there was. “Ah hah,” said the cat in his pseudo-dragon voice. “Dinner is served.”

  5

  Fortunately, the dragon was so surprised that they did not incinerate immediately when she breathed on them, that she completely forgot she outweighed them by a few hundred stone, and had sharp claws and teeth as well as fire-breathing potential.

  For a witch, Maggie was very adept at being self-righteously indignant, and when she had spit out the river water, she took advantage of the dragon’s confusion to display her talent for invective. “Ching,” she ordered, “will you tell this foul-mouthed, fetid-breathed, carrion-eating crud that she is the most ungrateful, rude and—and not a very nice creature at all!”

  “I will not.” The cat sat upright, tail curled sedately around his front paws. “So far, she looks on me as not quite bite-sized. I have no desire to jeopardize our relationship by conveying such irresponsible messages.”

  “Some familiar you are. You’re supposed to protect me.”

  “Only from—ahem—a fate worse than death. Other perils, up to and including death, were not in my job description, particularly at the cost of my own tail.”

  Maggie threw up her hands. “I’m surrounded by cowards!”

  “I beg your pardon!” bubbled Colin, still dripping from saving her life. “Now who’s the ungrateful crud! My hands will probably take weeks to heal well enough that I can play bar chords again.”

  She shot him a look of simultaneous apology and annoyance. She wished he would not pick such awkward times to be sensitive. If she couldn’t enlist the cat’s help he wouldn’t have to worry about playing his bar chords.

  “Now just how was it you were planning to negotiate with this eternally grateful creature?” Colin pestered. Not having heard the remark about dinner, he remained more unalarmed than he should have been.

  “Ching can talk to him, you see…”

  Colin looked at the cat, who was yawning, and at the dragon beside him, who was concentrating on puffing up and down the scale of dragon puffs, forte to pianissimo, trying to rekindle the fizzled flame. “I’m not sure communication is the key—I can talk to a Brazorian bandit, too, but that hardly means he’ll refrain from skewering me—”

  “Precisely,” she said, hastily returning her attention to the cat. “You ought to be ashamed, Ching. I’ve helped take care of you since you were a kitten.”

  “Yes, wasn’t I cunning?” He licked a paw clean of an imaginary speck.

  “You were. You were the most promising of the litter—your mother, Sacajawea, was the loveliest, loyalest, most magical of all familiars—many’s the time I held you both purring in my lap and fed you dainties from the banquet table and told you…”

  “Oh, very well. You’ve made your point. But I will not insult this discriminating creature. Perhaps if you prepare some food for her which will provide a nutritious alternative to yourselves as a main course, she’ll accept it in your stead. She’s missed her last feeding, she said. She’d have gobbled me up, bite size or no, but says she finds a cat who speaks impeccable dragonese a diverting novelty.”

  Maggie didn’t wait for the cat to finish his long-winded speech before she rummaged into the foodbag and came out with a piece of dried venison that, with a bit of stretching, became a whole deer, considerately roasted for the flameless dragon. After four more such delicacies, the dragon daintily mopped her long, royal-blue snout with a ruby-colored forked tongue, and settled back with a gale-force sigh against a convenient grove of trees.

  Colin released the breath he had been holding during the exchanges that passed from Maggie to cat to dragon. He had watched his companion address the cat, who had of course said nothing in reply, but had flicked his whiskers and twitched his tail tip occasionally. The cat had then turned to rub against the dragon in a most affectionate manner, after which performance Maggie had produced the miraculous venison, the dragon had devoured it, and the dragon had retired to leave the cat gnawing at the meat left clinging to the shards of bone overlooked in the dragon’s glutting. The cat could obviously converse with Maggie, and through the cat, Maggie could converse with dragons. That was all very well and good, but it did make him feel slightly left out, but since he was also evidently to be left out of the dragon’s diet, he found it fairly easy to reconcile h
imself.

  While he and Maggie changed into dry clothing, the cat chatted casually with the dragon.

  “It’s quite a touching little story, really,” Ching informed them as they emerged from the woods, fully prepared to run back to the cover of the trees at any sign of hostility or renewed appetite from the great beast. The cat assured them that they were safe, as the dragon had pronounced herself quite well fed for the time being. “Poor Grizel,” Ching mewed his most plaintive, “has had a simply dreadful time.”

  Dragons are notoriously long-winded, being so full, generally, of hot air, and Ching had begun to fancy himself a raconteur, so what with the cat’s speech having to be translated for Colin after it had already gone from dragon to cat to Maggie, the narrative became somewhat garbled at certain points. Nevertheless, what Grizel actually said was interpreted as the following, in as near to the dragon’s own mode of expression as is possible to relate:

  The Dragon’s Story

  “I never thought of myself as the suicidal type, not even when I found myself tumbling down the river, but I suppose I must have been, a little bit, to have sought a cave so near the river’s bed, when for eons and eons that particular cave has been flooded at the same time every year.

  “The heart, alas, knows no season when it’s breaking, and I heeded neither spring nor flood—I almost wish your violent agitation of that branch out there had not freed my wings and claws. For though I was able, having recovered my senses, to swim here, where I encountered this charming little furry friend and was given the benefit of your hospitality,” (she licked her snout in remembered appreciation) “you have freed my body, but not loosed the chains that bind my heart.

  “Of course, I might at any time prior to my entanglement in that tree have swum to shore. But I was asleep when the floodwaters filled my cave, and before I had quite gathered my faculties, I was struck behind the ears with a portion of a nearby mountain, which must have become dislodged in the flood. At least, I suppose it had to be something as substantial as that, for I am quite well armored, you know.

  “Oh, yes, we dragons are almost completely protected externally, but ah, the searing pain that can burn within! I see you appear puzzled, but it is true, my friends, it is indeed true that we, too, have feelings that cannot be shielded by our scales, and bear passions hotter than our own fires. Though the flood has extinguished one flame, that other within me burns like a torch I carry—for him. And I had always considered myself to be such a cool-headed sort!

  “Ah, but that was all before I met—him. If only you could see him! A dragon is surely just a dragon, you may say. How quickly your preconceptions would melt away if only you could see my Grimley! Brilliant red-orange scales glittering in the sun! The liquid reptilian grace of him as he sails through the Southern Aurora! The sensuousness of his slither when he turned to sear me with that earthquaking smile from those hypnotic garnet eyes of his! Ah, Grimley, Grimley, my heart, my flame, my own!”

  (For a moment she seemed quite overcome, but was finally able to proceed in a calmer fashion.)

  “We were very happy for a while—he scarcely left my side, nor would he allow me to hunt for myself, but fed me from his own snout the choicest morsels. We were so blissful! How could we have quarreled and parted over such a small thing? I tell you, I am quite, quite bereft! Absolutely bereft. I simply felt, you know, that it was demeaning to my darling to let that MAN choose what he ate from our range, instead of raiding the herds and villages at the dictate of his dragonly will. He took my concern amiss, and called me a little hothead who had no concern for the security of our future offspring. And I—oh, the terrible things I said—still… I feel, you know, that I must resolve in my own heart this matter of dragonian dignity. On the river, as it all flashed before me in the extremity of my need, I decided that if I should be freed, I would fly to the east to consult our great queen. Perhaps her wise counsel could heal those harsh words. If our queen agrees with me, then I shall return with her to my love in a blaze of glory, and how can he deny me then? If not, I shall crawl all the way back home and beg his forgiveness.”

  (Another flood impended, as the great dragon tears rolled off her snout and down her stomach, further saturating the sodden ground surrounding her. She sniffed a giant sniff and continued.)

  “At any rate, I drifted unconscious downstream after the mountain hit me, until I became entangled in that tree, as first you beheld me. Although I possessed the strength to free myself, I was afraid of injuring my wings, which are ever so fragile. Then, when you people were playing about on that rope, you jarred the tree loose that had pinioned my wings, and set me free, and—and here I am—flameless, loveless wretch as you see me!”

  Colin, his poet’s sensitivity aroused, had quietly drawn his fiddle from his bag and was playing a little lament for the creature as she finished her tale.

  Uncomfortable with the surfeit of sentimentality, Maggie squirmed a bit, but did feel sorry for the beast. She was actually, objectively speaking, an attractive thing. From royal blue snout to spiked and slender tail tip, her color altered many times to blend from blue to turquoise, aquamarine, and other blue-green distinctions, to sea green, and mist green, and forest green, and emerald green, to finally tip her membranous wings and frost her spikes with a chartreuse of the same beautiful shade as her big, limpid eyes, pools of misery that were, as has been mentioned, quite overflowing.

  Maggie let out a long breath and rolled up her sleeves. “I can do something about the flameless part of her problem, at least, if she will promise to help us,” she told Ching. “Tell her that if she will fly us across the river, I can help her by restoring her fire.”

  The cat relayed the message, and Grizel pronounced herself quite amenable to flying them across, all except the horses.

  She would not have been able to provide such ferry service, she told them, if it were not for Maggie’s generous offer. She asked Ching to explain that dragons fly not only by means of their wings, which were insubstantial compared to the rest of a dragon’s bulk. The fire-breathing mechanism created a cavity of hot air within, that served as a buoying agent. Maggie looked down the dragon’s open mouth and concentrated on her hearth-building spell. Soon Grizel was smoking cozily away.

  Colin, meanwhile, unsaddled their horses and gave them a smack on the rump to send them home, so that they might reach safety before Grizel’s next feeding time. Maggie joined him in making packs of their belongings that they strapped to their backs. Ching settled himself on top of the pack Maggie wore, and Grizel knelt, allowing them to mount above her wings upon her neck and shoulders.

  They felt the air rush up at them as they rose faster and faster and higher and higher. Maggie had to catch at her skirts to avoid having them singed by the backlash of the dragon’s flame. Below, the river rushed heedlessly on. They sailed a dizzying height above the trees, and could make out, just beyond them, fields plowed in patchwork patterns.

  Extending her feet, then gradually folding her wings as she damped her flame, the dragon brought them to a safe landing at the edge of a forest clearing.

  “Farewell!” she saluted them. “I cannot go near the town in daylight for fear of my life. You have fed me when I hungered and enflamed me when I languished, and I shall ever be your friend, but I ask you grant me one final request.”

  The people asked the cat to tell the dragon they would be glad to grant the request, and of what did it consist?

  “That if you meet my Grimley before I do, should you survive the experience, you would tell him that his Grizel burns for him still and repents her inflammatory words and—and that I shall return to him anon!”

  * * *

  Aunt Sybil was slogging about in a puddle of syrup, trying to re-shingle her house with fresh gingerbread cookies. Maggie and Colin had smelled the cookie fragrance as soon as they’d left the highway just past the village and turned off onto the path, which a child had eagerly volunteered to show them. The child also volunteered to guide them to
the aunt’s house, but, as it appeared a fairly uncomplicated journey, they declined.

  “Little chap seemed disappointed,” said Colin.

  “His folks wouldn’t like him coming along, I think,” Maggie said. “They surely must remember the previous tenant of Auntie’s house. Great-great-great-Grandma Elspat liked children—but not in the conventional sense. It’s a wonder the rest of the Brown line continued—I believe, you know, that it was no little woodcutter’s daughter that did her in. Gran said it was her own daughter, to save herself. It will be interesting to see the place.”

  “But you—uh—your current aunt—she doesn’t—indulge?”

  “In gobbling children? Oh, no—but she keeps up the original architecture, I understand, so that they’ll come out to see her, and she can treat them. With her specialty, she gets rather lonely.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, she sees the present in her crystal ball.”

  Colin scratched his head and for a moment seemed to accept this, then said, “Huh?”

  “She sees the present in her crystal ball,” Maggie repeated.

  “Why does she need a crystal ball for that? Most of us see the present without one.”

  “Well, yes, but Aunt Sybil, you see, doesn’t have to be present to see the present. I mean, she can see what’s happening to OTHER folk now… not just herself—you understand?”

  “I guess so.”

  “That’s why she has no neighbors. In the old days, I guess, she might have been actually persecuted. People like a witch who can look into their private lives far less than one who eats their children. Though of course, if she accepted all the consultations for that sort of thing that are available to her, from what Gran says I suppose she could have a house of gold, instead of gingerbread.”

  It was then that they rounded a turn in the path and saw the clearing containing a house, which was not charming at all, but appeared to be the victim of some natural disaster, the roof half off, the walls slanting in, and the door ajar on its jamb. An elderly woman, who at first glance looked to Colin alarmingly like Maggie’s grandmother, was occupied with a bowl and spatula, and had a pile of cookies the size of dinner plates on the ground beside her. The entire woods smelled like a bakery.