"I was hunting . . . Two mice! And I was invited into a house for supper. Such nice people! They fussed over me as though I belonged to them and had been lost, and in truth it did feel like some place I had been before. There is a girl there, younger than you perhaps, and she can"t walk properly-like me when I had the stone in my paw. The back of their house leads down to the river and it"s there, in their mill, that I caught the mice. And the miller"s daughter, the one who is crippled, was watching him work and he saw me catch the mice and put me on her lap for a cuddle. And he has a little cart to wheel her in, because she can"t walk, and I went back to their house in the cart with her, and they gave me a bowl of cream, real cream! Then they let me out, and the girl was sad. And then I heard you calling and I came . . ."
I had never heard Moglet talk so fast, so excitedly, nor had I been able to understand her so well for ages. At first I was so glad to get her back that the implications of what she was saying didn"t register, but at last I understood: Moglet had found a family, a home- She was the one of them all, perhaps, that I had loved the most, because she had been, then, like I was: small, crippled, female, frightened and tatty. Now she was a full-grown cat, quick, alert, loving and whole, and she wanted a fire to dream by, mice to catch, a bowl of cream and a basketful of kittens to croon over and tell how once she had been on a quest and had carried a dragon"s diamond in her paw. And the kittens would not know what a dragon was, but would listen just the same. But she would be able to catch a spider for them and tell of the one that was as big as a house . . .
But I could give her all that! She could come with me and I would give her cream and shelter. She didn"t need this-or the crippled girl who had to ride in a cart. I opened my mouth and my mind to say all this, to explain to Moglet that she mustn"t be misled by the first family who fancied a mouse-catcher, to tell her that I needed her because I had no one else, but instead I listened to myself say: "Well, I"m glad you"re back, "cos I"ve saved some pie. Tell you what, we"ll all go back and see these people tomorrow, shall we, and you can see that crippled girl again. I"m sure she"ll be glad to see you." And Moglet purred, and lifted her face to my hand and showed her teeth and half-closed her eyes and opened her mouth to take in all my scent, the greatest show of affection a cat can give, and the back of my throat ached with the effort not to cry.
Magdalen was actually a very nice girl; small, pale, with a twisted and shortened leg, but eyes that were loving, and hands that gentled Moglet with a skill I had never achieved. Her parents had married late in life and obviously adored their only child. The home they lived in was one of the more prosperous in town with a large kitchen and eating room on the ground floor, with a solar and three bedrooms above.
I began by resenting the whole idea of the family and ended up by liking them, although I confess I was surprised by the way they had taken to Moglet, until the wife explained.
"It"s like this, my dear; when that little cat appeared it was just like seeing a ghost! You see our mother cat, bless her, lived to fifteen years and only pa.s.sed away last winter. She hadn"t had kits for seven years and the last one she had was stolen off this very doorstep when our Mag was seven years old, and this one is as like as two peas, even to the one white whisker. My husband says she"s a champion mouser, like our Sue that died, and Mag just fell straight in love with her! She cuddled her like she never did with dolls when that kitten was stolen. It were she, though, as knew that the cat belonged to someone else, and insisted we let her go, otherwise I"d have shut that door tight last night, bless me if I wouldn"t! As it was, she cried fit to flood the meadows when the little thing slipped out and was away . . ."
I looked across the solar to where the sun shafted through the windows; Magdalen had rolled a sc.r.a.p of leather into a fair imitation of a mouse, ears and tail and all, and had attached it to a length of her sewing silks, and now Moglet was playing catch-as-catch-can among the rushes, eyes intent, body totally involved. I realized with a pang that I had never played with her like that . . . At last the girl drew the toy up onto her lap and Moglet followed, to settle down in the sunshine with a yawn of delicious tiredness.
"Would you let her have kittens?" I asked.
"First thing," said the father (I never did find out their proper names). "I could do with a good mouser or two in the mill and there"s plenty of the neighbours as could do with one too; been a shortage of good ones since our Sue died."
"There"s a nice ginger tom down the road," said the mother. "He might do."
I glanced again at Moglet; she was purring. Yes, the ginger tom "might do"
very well.
The girl glanced across at me, but her hands did not cease their caressing, I was glad to see. Her speech was slightly impaired, but I could understand her well enough. "But you love her too: we can"t take her away. It wouldn"t be right."
"She is not mine, nor yet Conn"s," and I nodded in his direction. "She is her own creature, and as such is free to choose her own destiny. And if you will care . . . ?"
"Always," and she gently stroked Moglet"s ears the right way so that she sighed happily and settled deeper.
I plucked the c.o.c.k"s feather, emblem of courage, from Conn"s jacket and gave it to the girl. "Let her play with this sometimes . . ."
But we had not reached the turn in the street when there was a cry behind us and Moglet was in my arms.
"You are leaving me!"
For the last time I hugged her. "But you want to stay. So, we were only leaving you without saying goodbye because we thought it was best. Besides, I hate goodbyes . . ."
She looked up at me. "You don"t mind? I thought . . . I thought . . ."
"Of course we mind! Don"t be silly!"
"But I always said . . ." she hesitated.
"That you would never leave us," I supplied. "But-but she definitely needs you. She-she hasn"t a dragon to cure her of that poor leg, and because you were crippled once you will be able to understand her better. And I am cured, and I-I have Conn."
"I still promised never to leave you . . ."
"And I said all sorts of things. And meant them, at the time. Circ.u.mstances change, my dearest one, and so do we."
"You won"t cry, and call me back?"
"I can"t promise not to cry, but I will try not to call you. But if I do, and you hear me, just ignore it . . . You may miss us too, you know."
"Oh, I will, I will!" and the little wet nose touched mine. "Always . . . But it was fun, wasn"t it?"
I nodded, not trusting myself further.
"Even the bad times . . . I"ll never forget!" She purred anxiously. "Are you sure?"
"Oh Moglet! You"re grown-up now, so am I! Yes I"m sure. Go, and live your life, and kittens and mice and cream be yours always!" I spoke the formal words. "And all creatures that walk the earth shall be my concern and that of my children and theirs for evermore . . ."
She licked my right ear, briefly, rough-tongued, and then sprang down and away, back to where her new mistress waited hopefully by the open door.
"I love you!"
"Me, too," I whispered.
"Remember me . . ." and tail up, little pale dot-and-dash under her tail the last things I saw, she went happily to her new life.
"Oh, I will, I will!" and I turned to Conn and cried into his leather jacket until the front was all damp with my tears.
But from then on it was as if I had forgotten how to speak to her kindred, and I could never again, as long as I lived, converse with them as once I had done .
The Loosing: Dragon The Journey Home It was a long journey, that last one, the longest he had ever made in one haul.
At first the very flush of enthusiasm, the knowledge of his quest ended, the eager thought of Home, carried him hundreds of miles with ease, helped by a fresh westerly. Initially, too, it was easy to forget the hunger, the thirst, the scorching heat as he flew nearer the sun by day, the searing cold of brittle nights, but he had forgotten how low his reserves had become over the bitter seven years of waiting. At first he had thought the sudden dizzy drop of a thousand feet or so, the giddy turns of a hundred-and-eighty degrees, the retching and nausea, were due to the weather and his inevitable weariness but at last, after an unplanned and disorientated plunge into the black cold of a northern fjord, which almost extinguished his fires forever, he realized that part of his trouble was lack of nourishment. Then, also, he remembered Precept No. 137 of Dragon-lore: never forage in a northern winter.
There was no food: berries, a pitiful few; nuts, a mere clawful; moss and cones a bland taste, no more, and the icy waters of the tarns and rivers gave him stomach-cramps and hiccoughs. Vainly he searched for frog, toad, newt, fish: they were all hibernating and sifted easily through claws grown desperate with famine as they scooped the silt of sc.u.mmy, half-frozen ponds.
And all the animals were crowded too deep in safe burrow or fled too fast to catch, and the domestic ones were close-byred or cottage-stabled for the winter.
Somehow he kept going, though his flights became shorter and lower, so that fanged mountains with glaciered saliva reached hungry jaws to sc.r.a.pe his belly. His tired eyes were forced to follow the slow, silver snake-wind of rivers instead of a higher scan for the headwaters and a shorter route, and all the while a north-falling dragon-shadow kept pace on the earth beneath, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, depending on sun or moon. And then came the snow, borne in from the north in goose-feather flakes, striking across his path in cruel, blinding flurries that weighted his back and iced-up the trailing edge of his wings till he was forced to lie-up in a convenient pine forest for a few days, pondering his mistake in not taking the longer, southerly route home; but it was too late for him to change his mind for the detour would cost him precious weeks, and he doubted whether he would now have either the strength or the memory. His enforced stay in the forest brought him some sort of luck, however, for he found a cache of frozen meat left by some hunter, and managed enough heated breath to thaw out the chunks to an acceptable chewy stage, though he suffered from indigestion for days afterwards.
But there were many, many hundreds of miles still to go and the weather, if anything, grew worse. It was a mere shadow of a dragon that turned due south for the last few leagues and drifted down like a spent leaf into his own, welcoming valley. There was a cessation of singing wind in his ears, no more rattle of sleet on his stretched skin, no creak and flap of shedding wings. His breath no longer rasped painfully in his throat. It was suddenly warm in this sheltered valley, though the towering mountains that surrounded it seemed to touch the sky, their snow-covered tips tapering to the sun.
The sun! The golden sun that tinted the yellow skin of the villagers who crept out to look, to touch him, to wonder as he lay at last in the dusty square under the green Heaven-Trees that sheltered the temple. A tonk! tonk! of bells heralded more people still and there was the smell of cedar and sandalwood.
A silken robe was slipped beneath his tired limbs. Warm, scented oils washed away the crusted tears of effort from his eyes and the dried saliva from jaws grown strangely slack. There was rice, too, in flat wicker baskets, but suddenly he was hungry no longer. Hunger and tiredness had no place here.
All he wanted was the friendly sc.r.a.pe of scale against wing-tip, the intimate caress of spade-tail, the warm, ashy smell. He opened his eyes and there they were: gold upon silver upon red upon green upon yellow upon purple, breathing a fiery welcome from the steps, the walls, the doors of the temple.
He lurched forwards crying his greeting, a clashing of cymbal and rattle of drum- But there was no answering greeting, no surging forward to welcome him.
The dragons were not real dragons, they were stone, they were wood, they were plaster, they were paint. He tore his claws reaching for them and swung round and round in his dismay until he was circled by his own disillusionment. The villagers fell to their knees at the sight of his distress, their pigtails bobbing in the dust. At last there was one brave, or wise enough, to come forward and explain: an old, old man with a moustache that hung like white string to his knees, and who lisped in the faded, once-familiar sing-song that the dragon remembered from his childhood. He told how the last of the dragons had left the valley in his father"s father"s time, taking their treasure back with them to the mountains from whence they came, but leaving gold to gild the temple and memory to make their likenesses.
And the tired dragon lifted his eyes to the distant peaks and he sighed.
After a little while he took out his pearl and looked at it for a long, long time.
Then he took out the diamond, the ruby, the emerald and the sapphire and looked at them. He rolled the pearl on his tongue and then he put all the jewels back in the pouch under his jaw and sighed again and then seemed to fall asleep and all the people tiptoed away, shushing each other to let him sleep in peace.
But in the morning he was gone, leaving only the shallow depression where he had lain and several baskets of uneaten rice. So they painted his picture on the temple, in the one s.p.a.ce above the doors that was left: a small blue dragon with a red belly and a pearl the size of the moon curled on his tongue. And they pointed out to visitors the high peaks where he must have gone and told of his last visit, until the paint faded from the temple in the time of their children"s children and the dragon pa.s.sed into legend.
The Gleaning: Dog Wolf-fog "Where the h.e.l.l are we?" said Conn.
"How do I know? You"re the one who"s supposed to be guiding us."
The fog lay like a dense, m.u.f.fling blanket all around. When we stopped all we could hear was our own breathing, the c.h.i.n.k of Beauty"s harness, the stamp of her hoof.
"I"m sure I heard . . ."
"What?"
"Something. It sounded like a dog howling. Yes, there it is again!"
"I can"t-"
"Shut up, and listen!"
We were near to quarrelling. Over the past few days our relationship had worsened, and now, with the added uncertainty of direction, the baffling fog, the hint of something crying in the mist, I felt I hated everything and everybody, including Conn.
For nights I had lain awake mourning my lost ones and he had wearied of my sullenness and misery and told me so. And I had snapped back at him that he was unfeeling, uncaring, a man without sensitivity-and so it had gone on.
Vanished was the comradeship, the warmth there had always been between us; instead there was a tension, a bitterness, a resentment on my part and irritation and arrogance on his. No longer did I wake early from sleep just to wonder at his resting form, nor watch his lithe movements during the day, nor tease a smile from those curving lips. No longer did he pay me little compliments, pick me a flower from the hedge, glance at me sometimes with an unfathomable look in his eyes that made me turn away, suddenly embarra.s.sed. No, it had all gone as sour as yesterday"s milk and every moment we spent together drove us farther and farther apart- There it was again, a high, plaintive keening, a dog mourning. I shivered.
Conn sighed with relief. "We must be near a farm, a village, some habitation.
That dog is tethered, not roaming. Come on." He pulled at Beauty"s bridle and started off in the direction of the sound, me trailing miserably behind, damp and cold. Who would have imagined weather like this in high summer?
The howl came again, but apparently from another direction, more to the left.
We stopped.
"This d.a.m.ned fog," muttered Conn. "It distorts everything . . ." We listened, and again came the keening. "Left it is," said Conn.
We found the village, if you could call it that, after another half-hour of tripping and stumbling. The fog, if anything, was worse. There were some half-dozen hovels, single-roomed, and a somewhat larger farmhouse. Doors were closed, tallow-dips flared at midday through c.h.i.n.ks in the shutters, but no one, not even dog or cat, was abroad. We groped our way towards the gate to the farmyard, for none but funerals or weddings went to the front door, and all the while we heard the keening of the dog grow louder.
"What the h.e.l.l-!" I stopped behind Conn, fighting to control Beauty, who was doing her best to dislodge his hold, puffing and snorting and stamping her hooves, trying all the while to sidle away from whatever it was that hung threateningly from the tall farm gate. Peering past Conn"s shoulder I saw snarling teeth, grey hair- "Thank the Lord!" said Conn. "It"s only the skin . . .
Still, one of the biggest I"ve ever seen."
It was a wolf-pelt, torn with rents as if from sword or spear, and those teeth were fighting even in death. "Poor thing," I said. The eyes had gone long since, probably pecked out by birds. I lifted one of the huge, bony feet and the dry claws rattled.
"Poor thing, my a.r.s.e!" said Conn. "A great brute like that could even take a pony, let alone sheep or pig. Villagers were well rid of him. Shouldn"t like to come up against such myself, without weapon."
But still I held the lifeless paw, remembering the wolves at the Castle of Fair Delights, so long, long ago . . . Had he forgotten so easily?
The gate was firmly bolted, and Conn rattled the latch. "Hola! Anyone at home?" For a long while it seemed as though the fog itself held breath, then a door opened and shut and we heard uncertain steps across the yard.
"Who"s there?" It was a woman, the voice thin and quavery with a hint of fear beneath.
"Respectable travellers, Ma"am," said Conn in his most rea.s.suring voice. "Me and-" he glanced at me, "-my wife, seeking shelter and a bite to eat. And with pence in their pocket." He jingled his purse.
"Go away!" came the uncompromising reply. "We want no strangers here!"
Conn glanced at me again, a quick frown on his face. "Strange: a poor village that needs no company and no copper . . ." He raised his voice again. "Bring your lantern nearer and see that we pose no threat to you and yours. We have but one sword and two daggers between us."
There was hesitation, the steps retreated then advanced again, and now I could hear clearly the click of dog"s claws on the stones. I peered through a knot-hole in the thick wood of the gate and saw a middle-aged woman, some forty years old, advancing across the yard, lantern in one hand, a great b.i.t.c.h- hound on a leash in the other. She was an old dog, with thick curly hair, a long, lean body and small ears, obviously built for speed. I wondered if it were she we had heard howling earlier. They arrived at the gate and the woman thrust aside a looking-panel and gazed out at us.
Conn returned her gaze steadily. "We mean no harm, as you can see. Just shelter for the night, for "tis miserable cold and dripping out here. And perhaps a bowl of broth and bread and a handful of hay for the horse?"
"There"s no hay and no broth neither," said the woman, her eyes fearful in the wavering lantern-light. "And no letting-in of strangers. And hasn"t been since that great devil came to the village at the turn of the year." And she indicated the great wolf pelt. The b.i.t.c.h hound reared up, as tall, taller, than the woman, and put her muzzle to the dried pelt. Gently she blew through her nostrils, stirring the skin, making a strange growl-snarl-wail in the back of her throat.
Conn started and cursed. The dog turned her brown yellow-flecked eyes on him, considering.
"By the Saints! "Tis one of the Great Ones!"
"Great Ones?"
"Aye, the Great Dogs of Hirland." As always when he was excited his voice held a singing lilt. "By all that"s Holy! Here, girl . . ." and he placed his hands on either side of the great muzzle that poked out through the looking-panel.
The woman gasped and dropped the wildly flickering lantern, as the dog growled softly in her throat but did not move her gaze from Conn"s nor pull away from his hold.
The woman retrieved the still-burning lantern. "She"s supposed to bite!" she whispered, her eyes large with distress. "She"s supposed to kill!"
"Not this one," said Conn confidently. "Not with me. She"s a princess, this one, and princesses know their own . . ."
The great dog still regarded him steadily, then whined softly and turned to look at me, her muzzle still in Conn"s hold.
"She wants something," I said. "More than anything ever before . . . I don"t know what it is."
"She"s after that pup of hers," said the woman, and I could see by her guilty expression and the hand she clapped to her mouth that she had not intended to speak of it.
Conn released the dog. "What pup? Oh, come on now: you started to tell us."
She hesitated, then made up her mind. "You"d better come in." She unbolted and unlatched the gate. "He"s away hunting . . ." She nodded back at the house, and I presumed she was speaking of her husband. She led the way into the yard and Conn looped Beauty"s reins over a post, loosened her girths and offloaded the saddle-bags.
Inside the hall a cheerless fire burned fitfully, adding smoke to the fog that curled under the door and through the ill-fitting shutters. "You see? Even the fire won"t burn true!"
"Insufficient draught," muttered Conn out of the side of his mouth, then he put some coin on the table, addressing the woman. "Some bread, perhaps?"
She put the coin back in his hand. "What I can give you will be a gift: we have tempted the G.o.ds far enough." From a cupboard she brought stale bread, a rind of cheese, and from the barrel in the corner two horn mugs of sour ale.
""Tis all we have since-" She shivered.