The Dragon, the Earl ,and the Troll

"Mnrogar's den fights for Mnrogar!"

  As if they had been activated by a single impulse, all the trolls around the clearing turned and plunged back toward and into the forest. The twins stared—then ran after them, calling to the other trolls to come back.

  But none returned, and the twins slowed and stopped at the forest edge. For a long moment they stared into the darkness between the trees, then turned about and looked at Mnrogar.

  Mnrogar was still and unmoving as a statue.

  "You!" screamed the twins; and, arms aloft, talons arching, teeth bared, they charged toward him, this time without hesitation crossing the middle distance between them, then three-quarters of the way—finally almost to collision with Mnrogar. Only just out of Mnrogar's reach, at last, did they slow abruptly and come to a halt. They and Mnrogar faced each other, their eyes glittering.

  For a long moment they stood; and the whole clearing held its breath. Nothing moved, nothing made a sound. Only, overhead, the northern lights moved ceaselessly, now painting three-quarters of a sky in which a few stars were beginning to be seen in the east.

  Mnrogar had not moved and he did not move now.

  Suddenly, the twins took a step backward. Then another, then another—then two more. Abruptly they whirled as one and ran from the field, to the edge of the forest and into it. A chorus of jeers and boos went up from the stands, and a voice spoke from behind Jim.

  "The others are gone; and now those two are gone as well," said the voice of Aargh. "It is over."

  Jim jerked out of the near-trance into memory of the unfinished play; also the last thought he had thought, that those in the stands might be thinking of Angie and him not as Lady Angela and Lord James, but as Mary and Joseph.

  "Mary!" he said to Angie; and Angie turned her eyes sharply from the forest to meet his—and he saw she understood and was back in the play, herself.

  "Mary," said Jim again, "I have heard the voices of dragons. And I am looking into the trees now. I fear me that dragons come!"

  "Is this so, Joseph?" said Angie.

  "I fear so," said Jim—and, indeed, he could see Secoh and the other four beginning to move from between the nearer trees on their way to the manger right now, Secoh leading. "Mary, the faithful beasts who came with us to guard us this far, cannot guard us now. I am afraid!"

  Secoh and the four dragons with him solemnly emerged from the trees, waddling on their hind legs. Under other circumstances, it might have been a somewhat comic sight. But, caught up in the play as Jim was, he actually felt a thrill of the fear that any single human might feel, facing so much lethal tonnage coming toward him. Hastily, he made his voice come from the manger in the best approximations he could manage of the high tones of a child.

  "Fear not, Joseph," he said in that voice, directing it across the field to those in the stands, "for remember what the Prophet David hath said: 'Praise the Lord from the earth. Ye dragons, and all deeps' These dragons have only come to be blessed. Let them approach, that I may bless them."

  "Our Son has spoken!" Jim cried in his own voice to the audience. "Let us do what he says, Mary, for he is no common son!"

  "Yes, let us, Joseph!" echoed Angie.

  Jim turned toward Secoh, who was now quite close, and the four behind him.

  "Dragons, our Son, who is more than ordinary sons, has told us you have only come to be blessed. Is this true?"

  The four dragons behind Secoh looked thoroughly confused. They had not been prepared for this. But Secoh had the wit to nod.

  "Yes, m'Lord," he said.

  Oops, thought Jim. That "m'Lord" could have spoiled everything. He sneaked a glance at the audience in the stands; but they were all still silent as if hypnotized. Maybe nobody noticed, then. I'll talk fast, he told himself.

  "Approach, then," he said—unnecessarily, as it turned out, since Secoh and the dragons were already doing this. "Still!" he added, hastily directing the command toward the ox and the ass, for these two were already beginning to strain at their tethers and roll the whites of their eyes on the approach of these huge and dangerous-looking predators. But he immediately remembered that the command would not work on such animals.

  Before he could think what else to try, the two domestic beasts seemed to calm by themselves; and the dragons came on.

  "But no closer than the stall of the ox," commanded Jim. The dragons stopped. "Now, if you will stand reverently silent, our Son will bless you."

  He hastily changed his voice back to the squeaky, childish version. To his own ear it sounded completely unbelievable; but those in the stands seemed to be accepting it. It came to Jim that they would probably accept anything. The magic that lent reality to this scene was in them, not in him.

  "May you be blessed from this moment forward, all ye dragons," he said from the manger. "Go forth to be better and wiser dragons, to play your part in this earth that we all share and that my Father in Heaven hath made."

  It was hard to believe, Jim thought, but the dragons actually seemed to do something very much like glowing, once the blessing was said. In an entirely different way, they drew deep breaths and appeared to inflate, but with happiness and pride.

  "And let this blessing be for all dragons, henceforth!" said Jim, in his manger voice. "Return now to your own kind and live in harmony together!"

  Privately, Jim had as little hope of the dragons ever living in harmony as any species of creature on earth. He was sure that within a matter of hours they would be back to their regular wrangling and disputing, arguing and counterarguing and disagreeing with each other's account of the blessing. But that did not matter; because now Secoh had turned around, the other dragons had turned around, and they were heading back into the woods.

  A cheer rose from the stands. Jim turned to look, and saw Mnrogar was loping without undue haste off the field toward the woods. The Middle Ages loved a winner; and among those standing up and cheering, Jim was interested to see, was the Earl himself.

  Jim turned back to Angie.

  "Mary!" he said, pitching his voice to the audience. "Now the dragons have been blessed and left, doing us no harm. All has ended well."

  Mary picked up the cue immediately.

  "You are right, Joseph," she said, and faced the audience. "Our play is over."

  She turned to face the stands squarely.

  "Would our gracious Lord Prince, our Lord Earl and our Lord Bishop wish to honor us by coming forward and looking closely at the place where this story has been told, and this play has been performed?"

  An invitation like that, thought Jim, was something of a two-edged sword. It was a gracious way of asking the most important people there if they wanted to be favored with a close look at the stage area; at the same time it was something of a challenge—in that the three people invited were being asked to come forward into an area where wondrous and magical things had been taking place.

  Naturally, none of the three could turn it down.

  The Earl was already on his feet. The Prince stood up. The Bishop did the same. They made their way down from the stands and across the snow to the scene, approaching firmly enough, but not in any particular rush to get there.

  Jim glanced again to the ox and the ass—or mule, or whatever it was. They were as calm as he had ever seen such animals. He also glanced at the sky; and the northern lights were still doing remarkable things up there, even more impressive and brighter now that the sun was all but below the horizon.

  Jim sidled over until he was standing closely side by side with Angie, and spoke to her out of the corner of his mouth.

  "They'll be thinking we're still Joseph and Mary—the characters in the play," he said, without taking his eyes off the three approaching figures. "You go on being Mary and I'll go on being Joseph until we have a chance, and then we'll duck around behind, take off these outer robes and come back as ourselves. I'll give you some kind of a signal to let you know."

  "All right," said Angie.

  It was only another moment or so b
efore the Earl, the Bishop and the Prince came up to them. Jim risked a glance off toward that part of the forest where the dragons had been waiting. Happily, he saw, they were waiting to take to the air until the audience was gone, evidently; for he saw no winged figures mounting from among the trees.

  This was, in its own way, a remarkable tribute from the dragons to their recent experience; for with the exception of Gorbash and himself and Secoh, now, most of the local dragons disliked flying by night—even on bright nights—for fear they might lose sight of the ground, or make a bad landing. This, however, was going to be a very bright night.

  The moon was just beginning to rise; but it could be seen clearly over the clearing, in spite of the magic light Jim had arranged to be shed from the surrounding trees. The light coming from them, of course, did not glow the way an electric light bulb would, but illumination simply emanated from them. So far, none of the audience seemed to have recognized how they were illuminating the clearing.

  The Earl, Bishop and Prince came up to them. Their approach was so diffident that Jim felt confirmed in his idea that they were completely lost in the play and were approaching not Lord and Lady Eckert, but Joseph and Mary.

  This was not so noticeable with the Prince, who, being a Prince, was not used to being diffident; but it was remarkable to see two burly, normally commanding individuals like the Earl and the Bishop almost shuffling as they got close.

  "Welcome, my Lord Prince, my Lord Bishop and my Lord Earl!" said Jim in his normal Jim Eckert voice. He had hoped the sound of it would build a sort of bridge between the character of Joseph and himself. But apparently it did not work. The three still looked at him rather like altar boys approaching the Bishop, himself. "Willingly, we'd have invited all here to come and see our scene up close, but there's not much room. In any case you, my Lords and Prince, would be invited first."

  They still looked at him as if tongue-tied.

  "This way, my Lords," said Angie crisply. "Let me show you the manger and the Christ child."

  They followed her within the mockup of the manger, their feet crunching on the snow that had drifted within since Jim had set the stable in place.

  "But it is warm here!" exclaimed the Bishop in surprise, as they entered.

  Jim thought quickly.

  "Here," he said in his Joseph's voice, "in these lands, it warms quickly, when the sun rises as it has just done. Am I not right, Mary?"

  "You are right, my husband," answered Angie in the words and tone that suited her character. She turned her attention back to the three men, who had stopped, still about ten feet from the manger itself. "Come forward, your Grace and my Lords. Come!"

  Almost reluctantly they came right up to the edge of the manger and looked within.

  "It is He!" exclaimed the Bishop in a tone of wonder.

  "Actually not, my Lord," said Angie in her normal best no-nonsense voice as Lady Eckert. "It's just young Robert Falon, who's being honored by being allowed to play the part of the Christ Child."

  The three visitors looked at her with a strange doubt.

  "Nonetheless," said the Bishop, and sank on his knees with his hands clasped in prayer on the edge of the manger above the sleeping infant. The other two followed his example.

  Angie looked at Jim and Jim looked at Angie. There was evidently nothing to be done. At the very least, the roles of the actors and their actual selves were being hopelessly confused by the three, even up close. Jim beckoned Angie silently to him, and she stepped a couple of long steps back as quietly as she could on the crunchy snow to stand close to him.

  "Look," said Jim in a whisper in her ear, "unless the Bishop has had some miraculous change of his own, he's going to be praying for more than just a minute or two. Besides, they aren't paying any attention to us. I don't think they even heard you step back here. Let's go around behind the set now, take off these Joseph and Mary robes, and come back to be here in our normal clothes—me, with sword belt and sword, even—when they finally get up and turn around and see us."

  She nodded. They turned and went.

  It did not take them more than a minute or two to strip off the robes covering their ordinary clothes. Angie took both costumes and stuffed them into a cloth sack she had waiting there. She smoothed out her own dress and tweaked Jim's clothes a little. They started back around to the front of the set again—and stopped.

  Carolinus, red-robed and beaming, had appeared in front of them.

  "Callooh! Callay!" he shouted. "Don't worry, those others in there can't hear me—Come to my arms, my beamish boy!"

  And he embraced Jim, which was absolutely unlike Carolinus. Jim had never seen him even touch another person. But then, Carolinus also turned and embraced Angie, who accepted it more naturally. Nonetheless, when he had stepped back, she spoke to him in a sharp voice.

  "How do you happen to know that?" she demanded.

  "It's part of Jabberwocky, a poem from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass."

  "I know it's part of Jabberwocky!" snapped Angie. "I asked you how you came to know it!"

  "I'm a AAA+ magickian, my dear," said Carolinus. He turned to Jim. "Jim, my boy! You've done it. Created new Magick!"

  "New magic?" asked Jim. "What new magic?"

  "No time now to explain," said Carolinus. "I'll tell you later! Farewell!"

  And he vanished, leaving only a momentary faint echo of another "Callooh! Callay!" lingering on the air behind him.

  Jim and Angie looked at each other.

  "We'd better get back out front to the Prince, the Bishop and the Earl," said Angie.

  Jim nodded, and they hurried off around to the front of the set. No one had left the stands. Apparently as far as the audience was concerned, what was going on now was as important as the play itself. Jim and Angie stood with their backs to the audience, and still had to wait several minutes before the Bishop slowly stood up, and the Earl and the Prince—who had been clearly waiting for him to lead—stood up with him and also turned.

  "Sir James?" said the Bishop on a questioning note.

  "Yes, my Lord," said Jim.

  The Bishop's face fell, and so did the Earl's and the Prince's.

  "I had been hoping—" said the Bishop hesitantly. "I had been hoping He might bless me as He blessed the dragons."

  This was clearly more a hopeful question than a statement.

  "I'm sure he would, my Lord Bishop," Jim said quickly, "but as you saw, he's now asleep. But I feel sure he'd have given you his blessing, if he could. He'd undoubtedly have blessed all three of you. I'd guess you could consider yourself as good as blessed by him."

  The three faces before him still looked disappointed, but they had lightened somewhat.

  "My Lord," said the Bishop, with some of his old force of voice, turning to the Earl, "I suggest we return as soon as possible, to inform those others here of our glad tidings."

  "Yes. Yes, of course!" said the Earl; and the Prince made an affirmative noise. The Bishop turned back to Jim.

  "Have we your leave to depart, Saint Jo—" He broke off. "That is to say, Sir James, we must leave you now."

  "Of course, my Lord," said Jim. "As my Lord wishes."

  Without another word the three turned and started back across the field considerably faster than they had approached the set.

  "That's one of the wonderful things about little Robert," said Angie. "Not only does he fuss very little when he's awake; but he sleeps like an angel when he's asleep—" She was interrupted by a small, fretful noise from the manger.

  "I shouldn't have said anything," she said. She turned and went hastily back to the manger and examined its occupant. "Jim, we'd better get Robert back up to our rooms as quickly as possible—by magic, if you can do it. I've got a cloth doll up there that Enna made for me to use in the manger, before we thought of using Robert. I can send that back to you, and if anyone else comes looking, that's what they'll see. It was more than enough, the Bishop, the Earl and the Prince seeing a live chil
d there."

  "You're right," said Jim. "You pick Robert up, and I'll stand in front of you as if we were talking, then I'll send you back by magic, both of you, to the castle gate. You'll have to walk up from there. When you get there, find the doll and throw it out the window and say, 'Excelsior!' "

  "Then what'll happen?" asked Angie.

  "I'll have it set up so magic will catch that doll and bring it to the manger, just in case anybody else comes by before I've got the set taken down. Meanwhile, I'll have Theoluf take the ox and the ass off to wherever they came from in the first place."

  He moved with Angie to the manger, Angie picked up Robert, Jim visualized them back at the castle; and they disappeared. Jim visualized a magic net to catch the thrown doll and bring it to the manger; then he turned about, went back out in front of the set and shouted to the nearest man-at-arms.

  "Oh! Edgar! Fetch another lad with you, and the two of you can take the ox and the ass away. Find my squire and ask him where they must go."

  His shout was clearly heard in the stands, because some people began to trickle off; although there was quite a knot of those who were still there, clustered about the Bishop, who seemed to be lecturing, or possibly preaching to them all. The faint sound of his voice floated back, but it was impossible to make out his words, except that they were impassioned.

  The men-at-arms had not shown up to take the ass and ox away yet, either.

  Jim looked once more at the woods where the dragons had been and possibly still were. There was still no sign of any of them taking off, mounting into the night sky and flying together, in a group for company toward Cliffside. Secoh would lead them, if it came to that, he told himself.

  He stood looking again across the clearing and watching for some little time; and then suddenly Angie was back beside him, clutching a cloth doll to her breast.

  "Angie," he said, "you weren't supposed to come back."

  "I wanted to," said Angie. "That's why I held on so tight to the doll. I'll put it in the manger now."

  She took it over, and as he turned to look, she put it in the manger, then came back and slid her arm through his.