The Whim of the Dragon

  “Oh, he did burn her house and she inside,” said Randolph. “So the story goeth in some quarters that he did kill her. But look you, Melanie’s original crime was that she did conspire in the death of a unicorn, and that meaneth immortality. She’ll die when she wills it, and the Lords of the Dead will have her.”

  “Oh, splendid,” said Ruth. “Why—”

  Randolph held up a long hand, smiling. The smile did not reach his eyes with their dark circles underneath, nor his voice. “Ask not me,” he said. “These answers will come only from Claudia.”

  “How do you propose to find her?” said Ruth.

  “Why should you want to find her?” said Ted. “Why should she want to answer any questions from us, and how could we make her?”

  “For the first,” said Randolph, still smiling, and in a lighter voice, “these events tend all to a purpose; and when it is accomplished, she will find us. For the second, I give less than the scrapings of an indifferent banquet for what she wants; and for the third, th’event will show us.”

  “You’re just giving in?” said Ted.

  “She will not come out,” said Randolph. “We must needs walk in where we may find her.”

  “If the purpose is to kill us all,” said Ted, hollowly, “won’t the opportunity for questions come too late?”

  “If that is the purpose, aye. But I think ’tis not so. She’ll want a fate that hath some relish in’t.”

  He sounded as if he were talking about a recipe, not his own fate. “How can you sit there and say things like that?” said Ruth.

  Randolph looked at her. She could not tell if he was trying to frame his answer properly, or only to decide whether to answer at all. She remembered what Fence had said to Ted, in response to a similar question: “What is the matter with you? We will do our best in the battle, and live or die as it falls to us.”

  But Randolph, when he answered her, did not quite say that. “I do not hold my life,” he said, “at a pin’s fee. As for yours, my dear children, I hold them something higher. But that, see you not, shall serve very well.”

  Ruth had some trouble catching her breath. “Don’t you dare sacrifice yourself for us,” she said at last, in rising tones. “We’re not your dear children! And what the hell good do you think our lives would be to us without—” She stopped, horrified. Ted was staring at her. Randolph merely looked resigned; he either had not understood or didn’t care.

  “Isn’t this a little premature?” said Ted, also rather breathlessly. “Let’s just wait ’til we get there.”

  “Get where?” snapped Ruth, venting her anxiety and all the hideousness of her new discovery on her cousin’s innocent head, and feeling a fresh flood of irritation because she could not keep herself from doing it.

  “We have an embassy to accomplish,” said Ted.

  “Andrew doesn’t look in any case to accomplish anything,” said Ruth. “Lady Ruth must have been a—” She stopped for the third time. “Boil my brains!” she said. “Boil them and mash them and serve them up for turnips, for it’s damned well all they’re good for!”

  Randolph actually laughed, which was perhaps more alarming than everything else. “Don’t trouble yourself,” he said. “She’s naught to me; but do you school yourself in Andrew’s hearing.”

  “Was she ever anything to you?” asked Ruth; and wished she had stopped for a fourth time, before she ever started the question.

  Randolph said, “What was she to me in thy game?”

  Ruth was so relieved to be spared any direct consequences of her own question that she answered at once. “Not a great deal,” she said. “We didn’t pay much attention to that part of it. The romances were just flourishes that we put in because they’re expected in stories.”

  “I thought,” said Ted, “that Lord Randolph had a soft spot for Lady Ruth that he didn’t indulge because he thought it would be better if she married Edward.”

  “As well he did not,” said Randolph, apparently exclusively to Ted, “for she was not what she seemed.”

  That was an uncomfortable remark, thought Ruth, no matter how you interpreted it. “If this discussion isn’t going to get us anywhere,” she said, “why don’t we go see how Andrew’s doing?”

  Ted and Randolph got up promptly. They all went upstairs, past the three landings and their little square windows, each having a border in red stained glass alternating with clear and with an occasional clump of grapes or wildflowers, to the wide hallway lined with open doors on the fourth floor.

  In this house, those open doors led to rooms full of books. In the largest of these, they found Andrew, leaning on the window frame as if he would have liked to climb out and fall four stories. Randolph thumped the woodwork and Andrew turned around.

  “What have you found?” said Ted. Andrew gestured at the table, which was covered with coarse paper densely written over. “Melanie’s journals,” he said.

  Ruth noticed that he did not call her Claudia. Maybe he was good at facing facts, once you had put them where he would have to notice them or fall over them.

  “Have you read anything useful?” said Ted.

  He walked into the room; Ruth and Randolph followed. Randolph sat down on a red velvet sofa with its arms carved like dragon’s heads. Ruth wished she could see a good honest lion, or even a griffin, for a change. She looked at the sofa again, and perched herself on a ladder probably intended for reaching the upper bookshelves. Andrew was still leaning in the window, which was convenient, thought Ruth, because it meant his face was in shadow.

  Randolph pulled out the grapefruit-like object they had used to light their way to this house, and said to it, “Strike a light or light a lantern.” It lit up, and the gray, neglected room was suddenly warm and pleasant, as if the writer had just stepped out for a cup of tea.

  Ruth, startled into a burst of laughter, completed the quotation. “Something I have hold of has no head!”

  “Oh, no,” said Ted, laughing too. “I hope that hasn’t happened here.”

  “It had a happy ending,” said Ruth.

  “More of your fictions?” said Andrew.

  “How do you know about that?” said Ted.

  “She hath writ much of them, and of you,” said Andrew. “It seems that you are ignorant and presumptuous, but not evil.”

  “But the fictions?” said Ted.

  “The idea did give Melanie some little trouble,” said Andrew. “But she did gnaw at the nut till it did crack for her.”

  Ruth marveled at how dryly he spoke. He sounded like Patrick expounding materialism; except that Patrick loved materialism, and Andrew must hate what he was saying. But he had come to understand it in the few hours he had been in this room. And after that display in the land of the dead, you could not accuse him of having no feelings. You had to admire him.

  He said, “This is the way of things. Both your fictions, and all our sorceries, have their origins in the same impulses: the desire to make things; the lie told not to scape consequences, but as its own art. Now in your country, these impulses do grow to fictions; but in ours, mark you, they do grow to sorcery.” Andrew made a sound that was probably supposed to be a chuckle. “We know our wizards young, by the greatness of their falsehoods. Wherein we who call them liars only have our excuse.”

  “That seems very odd to me,” said Ruth, taking refuge from her thoughts in this theoretical discussion. “Don’t children play games of make-believe? And how do you ever teach them anything, if everything you make up has to come true?”

  “It has not so,” said Andrew. “The games of children trouble no one; they may have the strength, but they have not the skill. As indeed the five of you had not the skill, though Melanie saith, you had the strength of five Shans amongst you. You troubled her sleep for ten long years fore she did see that you were not within the boundaries of the world.”

  “And Melanie, I suppose, had the skill,” said Ted.

  “Wait a moment,” said Ruth. “I still don’t understand.
Does everybody who pretends as a child grow up to be a wizard?”

  “No,” said Andrew. “Some cease to make believe; some make little tales; but all the great ones do turn to wizardry. All our great tales are true.”

  “Wizards made them happen by making them up?” said Ruth. A voice in her mind that was not Lady Ruth’s said to her, Poetry makes nothing happen.

  “Wizards do make them happen by living them,” said Andrew. “And do write them down afterward. Also—” He hesitated, and said, “I do not well understand this. Melanie did believe that your play-makers, your poets, did make some events to happen, long ago; but that in the end the Outside Powers did appoint the unicorns guardians, that not every tale should burst in and jostle with every other. And she did believe that the unicorns do suggest the tales to the minds of wizards and plain folk here, who do then choose them, or not, as they will. And what Melanie did was to take from them their means of choosing.”

  “And how do we come into all this?” asked Ruth, with a sinking stomach.

  “I do not well understand that either,” said Andrew. He looked, furthermore, as if he didn’t want to. But he went doggedly on. “Think on this. In the natural way of things, tales made by thy poets do present themselves herein; the unicorns do choose or banish them; any with an ear to hear may choose or banish them from’s own life. But Melanie did turn all these matters upsodown; she did present the history of the Hidden Land to your several minds; and you did choose or banish, and add your own embellishment, which did in the ordinary way return to us, to choose or banish as we did wish, according to our several natures, our inclinations, and the keenness of our inward ears.”

  “Jesus!” said Ted.

  “Don’t swear,” said Ruth. “All right, I guess I’ll accept that for now. But why did she do it?”

  “I have said before,” said Randolph from the depths of the sofa. “We can but ask her.”

  “Can but ask is easily said,” said Andrew.

  “I’m glad somebody here has some sense,” said Ruth, frowning at Randolph’s long form sunk in the red cushions. With his coloring, and more especially with the spectacular lack of it that had afflicted him since the King died, he looked better in red than in blue.

  “There’s sense,” said Randolph, without rancor, “and there’s authority.”

  “Which, in this matter,” said Andrew, pushing himself away from the window, “is still mine. We’ve tarried enough. The court of the Dragon King awaiteth us.”

  “It’ll be dark in an hour,” said Ruth. Randolph had closed his eyes, as if to show that, whoever’s authority Andrew thought he was challenging, it wasn’t his. His lashes were longer than hers, blast him. She turned quickly to Andrew, who didn’t look very healthy either. “Why don’t we get some rest and have an early start in the morning?”

  There was a difficult silence. Then, “Practical as ever,” said Andrew, with no particular expression; and walked out of the room.

  Ruth waited for his footsteps on the bare boards to die away. Then she sat down on the floor. “Whew!” she said.

  “That,” said Randolph, “was the triumph of sense o’er pride. Do you give him the credit for’t, an he chide in the morning.”

  “I will so,” said Ruth. She leaned her head against the arm of the sofa and closed her eyes. “Is anybody hungry?”

  “The first rule of erratic travel,” said Randolph, drowsily, “is this: eat when you may.”

  Ruth stood up. “Well, come on, then,” she said to his recumbent form. “Or shall we come and drop it into your mouth?”

  “I thank you,” said Randolph, sitting up hastily and looking as if he had managed to make himself dizzy, “not with our rations.”

  “We could find some nice worms,” said Ruth, tartly.

  Ted was staring at her. She said, “Let’s to the oatcake, then,” bolted precipitately out of the room, and dived into the first open door she saw. She heard the rest of them, a few moments later, clatter downstairs. This room was the double of the one she and Ted and Randolph had had their conference in, back in the Secret Country. Ruth sat down in one of the carved chairs, on a gold cushion, and pressed her fists to her eyes.

  What was the matter with her? No; she knew that. But why did she have to act this way about it? Ruth the contained and careful, whose father called her Elinor after the character in Sense and Sensibility who embodied the first of those traits. Ruth thought she would like to die. “Oh, you would not,” she said to herself. “Think of where you’d end up. Well, at least you couldn’t make a fool of yourself down there. My God, I’ve got to travel with those people for another week. I can’t stand it.” Men have died from time to time, said the voice, and worms have eaten them; but not for love.

  “Who asked you!” yelled Ruth.

  She jumped to her feet and paced furiously around the red and gold rag rug, trying not to think, trying to think of something else. The odious voice said musically, Sing we for love and idleness, / Naught else is worth the having. / Though I have been in many a land, / There is naught else in living.

  “Irresponsible hedonist,” said Ruth, breathlessly.

  The voice continued unperturbed. And I would rather have my sweet, / Though rose-leaves die of grieving, / Than do high deeds in Hungary / To pass all men’s believing.

  It had drowned the sound of footsteps on the bare wooden floor of the hall. Ruth heard only the first step in the room itself, before the newcomer trod on the carpet and stood still. She flung herself around. It was Ted. Ruth was enormously relieved, and even more enormously disappointed.

  “Ruthie?” said Ted. “What’s the matter?”

  “I,” said Ruth, between her teeth, “am a jerk and an idiot.”

  “What?”

  “Everybody is a jerk and an idiot at sixteen,” Ruth explained to him. “I expected it. I figured I could confine it to a diary, or writing bad poetry. My God, how does anybody survive to be twenty?”

  “Slow down,” said Ted, painstakingly. “Have you remembered something vital, or what?”

  “No,” said Ruth, wildly. “I’ve forgotten something basic. I’m too young for this. I don’t want this to happen. My God,” said Ruth, taking Ted by his wool-clad shoulders and shaking him, “no wonder teenage girls are pregnant all over the place.”

  Ted’s face arrested her. He put both his hands, which were exceedingly cold, over hers, and said, “Say it again. Slowly.”

  “No, it’s okay,” said Ruth. “Or at least, it isn’t, but—forget all that. Never mind.”

  “Okay, fine,” said Ted. “Come on down to dinner.”

  “Oh, no,” said Ruth, retreating from him. “I’m not going down there.”

  “What in the hell is the matter?”

  “If you tell anybody I’ll kill you.”

  “On my honor,” said Ted.

  Ruth looked at him.

  “As crowned King of the Hidden Land, may any pain you care to name come upon me sevenfold if ever I reveal this secret without your express permission what the bloody hell is wrong, Ruth?”

  “I’m in love with Randolph.”

  Ted’s jaw dropped. Then he looked as if he were going to laugh, and Ruth prepared to hit him. Then a reflective look came over his face; and then he looked at her as if he were really seeing her, and said, “That’s bad. I’m sorry.”

  “How would you know?” snapped Ruth, ungratefully.

  “Remember I told you Edward was in love with Lady Ruth?”

  “It’s monstrous,” said Ruth. “How can anybody stand it?”

  “Well, it had its moments,” said Ted; his straightforward blue gaze altered momentarily, and became disconcerting. Then he rubbed his eyes and said, “Or at least, it would have if I’d been Edward.”

  “It doesn’t have any God damn moments at all,” said Ruth.

  Ted looked at her thoughtfully. “I know what’s the matter with you,” he said.

  “Oh yeah? Well, please enlighten me.”

  “I di
dn’t know love made people sarcastic.”

  “I’m sorry. What is it that’s the matter with me?”

  “Remember right after we got here, when we were trying to figure out what was happening, and Patrick came up with all his theories about mass telepathic hallucinations?”

  “I try very hard to forget it,” said Ruth, despite herself, “but go on.”

  “And you told Patrick he was crazy, and he said, all right, you could explain it, then. And you said you didn’t want to explain it; you wanted to know what to do about it.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, you want to know what to do about being in love with Randolph. And you don’t know; and I don’t know.”

  “I don’t want to do anything about it,” said Ruth. “First love is a mistake; you just have to get over it. Nobody as idiotic as I am could possibly make a decision like that and get it right. I refuse. I don’t want to do anything about it. But I keep doing things about it. I keep saying stupid things. Did you hear me in there? That was flirting. That was despicable. ”

  “Do you want not to be in love with him?”

  “Of course I—shit,” said Ruth, for the second time in her life; and said it again, three times. The voice said implacably, Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments.

  “I thought so,” said Ted. “Now come on down to dinner.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “You can’t stay up here. Ruthie, look. Randolph probably didn’t even notice. He’s falling asleep on his feet.”

  “This,” said Ruth, after a pause to examine her feelings, “is abominable. Am I relieved that he didn’t notice? No.”

  “He’s going to notice, if you don’t come downstairs,” said Ted, “and that will be worse. Just keep your mouth shut. I’ll kick you if I think you’re going to say something stupid.”

  “That’s a splendid idea,” said Ruth. “I’ll have two broken ankles before we get out of the house in the morning.”

  But she followed him downstairs.

  Ruth did not have any broken ankles when they got out of the house in the morning. Ted had not had to kick her at all, because she had not said a word. He began to wish he’d promised to kick her for sulking too; but she wasn’t really sulking: she just looked glazed. Andrew, on the other hand, appeared to be sulking. Randolph was so tired that nothing else showed. Ted thought he looked as if he had given a great deal more blood than the token three drops. Perhaps in some sense he had.