The Whim of the Dragon

  “Randolph and I wanted to ask you about that,” said Ted. “Come on.” He asked the mare to catch up with Randolph’s horse, which pleased her, and then held her to Randolph’s slow pace, which she didn’t like at all.

  Ruth rode up between them. “Since I’m to be interrogated,” she said.

  Randolph shook his hood back, and Ted saw Ruth smile at him. Randolph didn’t smile back. He was getting a tan from all this traveling in the sun, so he no longer looked so white and strained; but he still had hollows under his eyes. Oh heavy burden! cooed the voice in Ted’s mind, unkind and ironic. Oh my offense is rank, it smells to heaven.

  “Shut up!” said Ruth.

  Ted and Randolph stared at her, Randolph in simple bewilderment and Ted with uncomfortable surmise.

  “I’m sorry,” said Ruth. “The one who isn’t Lady Ruth is acting up. Smells to heaven indeed!”

  “You’re hearing my back-of-the-head voice,” said Ted.

  “Leave the voices,” said Randolph, patiently. “You did but look upon me and have a like thought. Your blood, your training, your—” He stopped.

  “Exactly,” said Ted. “Wrong blood, no training. So why?”

  “The whispers of your others confound me,” said Randolph. “But those neutral voices that take a chance word in your thoughts and expound on it as sorcerer to his apprentice—those our proximity to the Gray Lake doth explain.”

  “But why can we hear them, without the blood or the training?” said Ted.

  “You have the ear for sorcery,” said Randolph. “Anyone can have it, though few untrained could hear those voices at this distance from their abiding.”

  “Did Edward and Lady Ruth have it?” said Ted.

  “Aye, both.”

  “Yes, that’s an idea!” said Ruth to Ted. “Maybe we’re just hearing what they hear.”

  “Not if what you hear correspondeth to your inmost thoughts,” said Randolph.

  “But if Edward and Lady Ruth hear our inmost thoughts—”

  “That,” said Ted, ruthlessly interrupting this theoretical discussion, “is what we wanted to talk about. What happened to you last night, when Andrew asked you to play that song?”

  “She sang the tune under her breath, and I recognized it.”

  “Ruthie, you got such a look on your face. Why did you?”

  “Because I—” Ruth stopped. “It’s all muddled,” she said. “She knew that Andrew thought she couldn’t play that song; but she could, because it’s necessary for some rituals of the Green Caves. And I could, and I could play it better than she did. So he was trying to embarrass her and it backfired on him; and it backfired doubly because I’m not Lady Ruth.”

  “That song’s a spell?” said Randolph, seeming to wake up.

  “I’m not sure. Conrad did go to the Green Caves, so it might just be a piece of history.”

  “Do you think she took over your actions?” said Ted.

  “No,” said Ruth. “We both wanted the same thing, to discomfort Andrew.”

  “But would you have wanted to discomfort Andrew if she hadn’t been angry that he was trying to embarrass her?”

  “Yes! He scares the living daylights out of me.”

  “Or out of Lady Ruth?”

  “No,” said Ruth. “As far as I can tell, nothing scares Lady Ruth. If she wants to help me keep Andrew at bay, why should I kick?”

  “Because for all we know, she could take you over.”

  “I’ll be careful,” said Ruth, patiently. “It would help to know what she was up to with Andrew.”

  “When we get to the Gray Lake,” said Ted, “you can ask her.”

  He thought Randolph had stopped listening some time ago, but now that lord remarked, “She may refuse thee.”

  Edward said, I thrice presented him a kingly crown, which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?

  “Did you hear that?” said Ted, sharply.

  “Hear what?” said Ruth.

  “Nay, I heard nothing,” said Randolph.

  Ted looked at him, but he seemed perfectly tranquil. Ted rode on silently, trying to compare the cooing voice they had all heard with the one he thought of as Edward’s.

  Before the sun set, the land had begun to change when Ted looked down at his horse, or closed his eyes for a moment, or put his gloves on. Before the twilight became darkness, the land changed while he looked at it. He would see that the plain he was riding across ended in a steep, forested slope; and the next moment he would be halfway up the slope; and the moment after that, across a brook he hadn’t even seen yet, on the slope’s far side. And yet he and his horse had crossed the brook; the horse’s legs were dripping. It made Ted feel sick, but it didn’t seem to bother the horse at all.

  “Some misdirection!” he shouted at Ruth.

  Ruth shook her head without looking around; and in front of her, Andrew turned and glared at him. Ted grinned back, and hoped Andrew felt sick too.

  It was almost dark when they rode to the top of a hill, and saw the road running down its other side to yet another little stream. Across the stream there was no road, only a vast gray shadow on the far bank. Ted looked behind him. The hill showed clear against the darkening sky, and one small tree was faintly red in the lingering light. So that gray shadow before them was not darkness only. Ted looked around at his companions. Everybody seemed blank, except for Andrew, who had the dour expression of somebody who has been trifled with long enough, and Ruth, who smiled at Randolph and said, “Well done.”

  “Fence had done it swiftlier,” said Randolph.

  Ruth caught Ted’s glance and rolled her eyes.

  Jerome said, “What now, my lord?”

  “I think some of us must make a camp and wait,” said Randolph. He looked at Ted. “Whom will you have to accompany you, my prince?”

  Oh, wonderful, thought Ted. And after that, said Edward, out of all whooping. Ted ignored him and considered the question. “How many know the way to the Gray Lake?”

  “I alone,” said Randolph.

  “You, then,” said Ted to Randolph. “And Lady Ruth. Do any of the rest of you earnestly desire this journey?”

  Stephen looked hopeful, but Andrew spoke first. “As my next lesson in the sensibility of magic,” he said, “I dare not omit it.” His tone was ironic.

  Ted looked at Randolph. Randolph ran both hands through his hair and said with perfect seriousness, “He hath the right of it, my prince. I would not impede such a progress as this.”

  This made no sense to Ted, but he understood that Randolph either wanted Andrew or despaired of keeping him from coming.

  “Okay,” he said. “Four to go and four to stay. Ought we to camp here also, my lord, and ford the stream in daylight?”

  “No,” said Randolph, “time presseth.”

  There was some complicated trading around of baggage; about halfway through it Ted realized that Randolph meant them to leave their horses with the camp. He put on the pack he was given. It was no heavier than his typical load of schoolbooks for a weekend. He watched Ruth settle hers on her shoulders. She bounced it experimentally and said to Randolph, “How far is it to the Gray Lake?”

  “We can’t get there by candlelight,” said Randolph.

  “Nay,” said Ruth, disgustedly, “nor back again.” Randolph, rummaging through his fourth saddlebag in search of something he couldn’t find, looked up with a startled face. “Whence cometh that?”

  “It’s a nursery rhyme,” said Ruth. “But—”

  “Only in so strange a nursery as thine,” said Andrew.

  Ruth gave him a freezing look of a sort Ted had seen on her face exactly once, when the boy who drove the ice-cream truck past the farm had implied that her father was crazy. Ellen had thrown an unpaid-for ice-cream sandwich at him and followed it up with a handful of gravel; but Ted thought it was the look on Ruth’s face that made the boy drive his truck away without even swearing at them, let alone running them over.

  Andrew was less impre
ssionable than the ice-cream vendor. He smiled, and Ruth looked away.

  “Ah!” said Randolph, and pulled from the fifth saddlebag a dull gray globe about the size of an orange. “Now are we well victualled.”

  Ted hoped he was being metaphorical. The gray globe was less than appetizing. Your worm is your only emperor for diet, said Edward, with a nasty chuckle. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots.

  Ruth shivered suddenly, and Ted caught her hand and pulled her away from the others, onto the gravelly edge of the stream. “What’d Lady Ruth say just now?” he said.

  “It was the other one. It said, ‘Your worm is your only—’ ”

  “ ‘Emperor for diet.’ ”

  “And so on. Edward said it too?”

  “Maybe it isn’t Edward in the back of my mind after all?”

  “How would you know?” said Ruth. “I can only tell mine apart because Lady Ruth has an accent.”

  “Lucky you,” said Ted, gloomily.

  They looked back at the others. Andrew was talking to Jerome; Randolph was addressing the rest of them. It was cold down here by the stream. Ted started to move back toward the others, but then Randolph came down the slope, Andrew behind him.

  “Now,” Randolph said. “This is the Owlswater. ’Tis neither deep nor strong, but ’tis otherwise treacherous. Do we hold to one another.” He held out a hand to Ruth, who hesitated, then took it and quickly gave her other hand to Ted. Ted was therefore obliged to offer his hand to Andrew; Andrew didn’t seem to mind. Everybody was wearing gloves or mittens anyway. Ruth was too picky.

  “Come on,” said Randolph, and stepped into the stream, followed by Ruth.

  Ted held tightly to Ruth’s hand and went after them. The water was less than knee-deep and as cold as snow. The bed of the stream was rocky and uneven, but none of the rocks shifted as he stepped on them. The mist slid around him; he could no longer see Ruth, or even hear her splashing, though her hand still pulled him on. The water is wide, said Edward, if it was Edward. I cannot get o’er. “You’ve been o’er,” muttered Ted. That undiscovered country from whose bourn / No traveller returns, said Edward, in the tone of one answering an argument.

  Ted bumped suddenly into Ruth, who dropped his hand and said, “Watch it!” The mist cleared ahead of them. Ted moved to one side quickly, and let go of Andrew as Andrew came out of the water. They stood on a wide beach of round, smooth pebbles, beside a wider stretch of running water whose far side was veiled in gray mist. It was quite dark; the sky on this side of the stream was overcast. How is it, said Edward, that the clouds still hang on thee?

  “Ruth?” said Ted.

  “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, / Bears all its sons away,” she said.

  “No. How is it that the clouds still hang on thee?”

  “Oh, no, my lord,” said Ruth, her voice all lit up with mischief, “I am too much i’th’sun.”

  “Don’t you start!”

  “Order, if you please,” said Randolph, mildly. “We must walk yet awhile tonight.”

  They walked beside the stream, sliding a little on the round stones. The stream grew wider and noisier, and wound about so much that Ted wondered why they bothered to follow it. Maybe there was no straighter way. On their right a profound darkness topped with pale points stood up against the dim sky: mountains. One wouldn’t want to climb among those in the dark.

  Ted was lagging behind. His legs ached. He made an effort to catch up, and saw Ruth stumble. Andrew caught her. Ted came panting up in time to see her thank him politely, and remove her arm from his grasp after a decent interval.

  “Randolph, we seem to be getting tired,” said Ted.

  “I am not,” said Ruth, a little raggedly. “I just can’t see.”

  “That can we remedy,” said Randolph. He pulled something out of the front of his cloak, held it up in both hands, and said thoughtfully, “The morn in russet mantle clad walks o’er the dew of yon high eastward hill.”

  A dim red light filled his hands, and warmed and lightened and spread until he held a glowing golden globe the size of a grapefruit. Ted recognized the color, and repressed sternly a desire to ask Andrew what misdirection he thought had produced such an effect.

  “That’s better,” said Ruth.

  “Do you carry’t, then, and lead the way,” said Randolph.

  Ruth took it promptly in her mittened hands. “It isn’t warm,” she said.

  “That’s a second spell,” said Randolph, reaching for the globe.

  “No, don’t bother,” said Ruth.

  Edward said, The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold. “Maybe where you are,” said Ted, under his breath.

  They followed Ruth along the stony shore. It was a very quiet night; or maybe, thought Ted, everything in that circle of golden light had fallen silent. The little globe lit up the landscape for an amazing distance all around. Ted could see on his right where the tumbled rock gave way to grassy slopes, and on his left how the river widened and widened, while the mist slowly dispersed from its far shore, which was revealed as a narrow, stony beach overhung by crumbling dirt banks with the grass hanging over them like uncut hair.

  They went on. The dark, irregular shape of a clump of trees loomed up against the left-hand banks. Randolph, who had been walking next to Ruth, turned around and held up his hands to the rest of them.

  “We must cross the water again,” he said. “Here ’tis no sorcerous boundary, but a shallow water merely.”

  He turned around and splashed into the river. They followed him. This water was not so cold, and under it was firm sand. Ted trudged along next to Ruth. The dazzling globe turned the rippled water and the air itself to gold, and shone in her hair and eyes like the shining from shook foil.

  Edward said, Ask me no more where Jove bestows, / When June is past, the fading rose; / For in thy beauty’s orient deep / These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

  Ted went on walking through the water, and even scrambled up the opposite shore without mishap; but he did it all staring at Ruth. At the way her hair sprang from a peak in the middle of her high forehead, and wound in hundreds of curling tendrils around her pale face; at her thick black eyebrows arched like the ears of a cat over her huge, black-bristled green eyes; at the severity of her nose and the delicacy of her mouth; at the scar on the back of her thin hand where he had dropped a candle on it, unintentionally, when she tickled him.

  “Ruth,” said Ted.

  “What?”

  “Edward’s in love with you.”

  “Shhh,” said Ruth. “Lord Randolph, of your courtesy, would you carry this globe awhile? My wrists ache.”

  “I’ll take it,” said Andrew, doing so.

  “Thanks,” said Ruth, and fell back with Ted to the end of the procession. They were in among the trees now, on a broad, smooth path. Ruth said, “Now what’s all this?”

  “Edward’s in love with Lady Ruth.”

  “Poor fool,” said Ruth, bitterly.

  “Where’d you get that scar on the back of your hand?”

  “Bumped up against a baby-sitter’s cigarette,” said Ruth. “That was the last we saw of him. Patrick was furious; the guy was reading him Gödel, Escher, Bach. Not that Patrick was old enough to under—” She seemed to shake herself, and said, “Why do you ask?”

  “Lady Ruth’s got one too. Edward spilled candle-wax on it. Edward,” added Ted, on reflection, “is getting to be a nuisance.”

  “He’s got to be better than Lady Ruth.”

  Edward said, Comparisons are odious, and Ted shut his mouth on what he had thought of saying.

  They walked in the woods a long time. Finally they found a huddle of rocks, wrapped themselves up in their bedding, and slept without setting a watch or even consulting about it. Ted hoped that if anything came to kill him it wouldn’t wake him up first.

  CHAPTER 22

  TED dreamt that he was at a school concert with his parents; Laura was playing the flute of Cedric
. She was playing “Good King Wenceslas,” with more flourishes than Ted had thought it possible to wring out of a flute; but the music teacher, who was sitting next to his mother, was extremely angry because Laura had been supposed to play “What if a Day,” whatever that was. The music teacher was explaining all this to Ted’s mother in an angry whisper; Ted’s mother kept trying to shut the music teacher up so she could hear Laura. Then the sixth-grade choir filed onto the stage. Ted suddenly realized that Laura was wearing one of her Secret Country dresses; and he was jolted out of his pleasant dream-state, wherein everything was as it had been before their cousins moved to Australia.

  Then the sixth-grade choir sang not “Good King Wenceslas,” but something that jarred uncomfortably with it. Ted caught snatches of the words. “Cannot a chance of a night or an hour cross thy desires?” Laura’s playing faltered, and then steadied. The choir sang, “All our joys are but toys, Idle thoughts deceiving.” Laura stopped playing and stood looking thoughtful. “None have power of an hour in their lives’ bereaving,” sang the sixth-graders.

  Laura grinned and lifted the flute again. She played a song Ted had never heard; but the words to it rose out of the back of his mind, and covered the sounds of his mother arguing with the music teacher and of the choir still singing. And from the Dragon’s mouth that would / You all in sunder shiver / And from the horns of Unicorns / Lord safely you deliver.

  Edward’s voice rose triumphantly, with the piercing sound of the flute. Light flashed off the silver thing, and hurt Ted’s eyes. He blinked, and opened them again on a dazzling shaft of sunlight. One little ray had found its way into their clutter of rocks, and it had to hit him in the eye. Around him the blanketed forms of his traveling companions breathed gently. Ruth had her head on his knees. Her face was dirty, and her hair was wilting into a semblance of what other people’s hair looked like. Ted remembered vividly the time Ruth had decided that not washing it for a month would make it straight and flat, and the reaction of his aunt Kim to this proposal.

  He was afraid that if he looked at Ruth any longer, Edward would wake up and behave badly. He raised his eyes and considered the rest of them. Andrew lay beyond Ruth, on his stomach, with his face in his folded arms, lank brown hair leaking out from under the blanket pulled over his head. Randolph was sitting up against a rock near the opening of this rocky hollow, his arms around his knees and his head tipped over at an uncomfortable angle, as if he had not intended to sleep at all. His face was scratched and his hair looked like Ruth’s.