Dimwater's Demons (3 page)

“Yeah, but not everyone can just wander out into the woods and find a dragon egg to raise up.” The two of them stood for a moment in silence. “Well, I won’t keep you,” Kathair said suddenly. “If you ever want to study together in the library sometime, maybe I can help you out. I have learned a lot with the dragon slayers, you know. I’m decent with a sword too.”

Kyra nodded and smiled. If it were any other boy in Kuldiga Academy, she would think he was boasting to be impressive, but she knew better in this case. She remembered clearly the trouncing he had dished out to the group of students –not to mention their instructor— that had caught him in the courtyard last year.

“Maybe I’ll see you there soon. Cyrus gives me a lot of materials to read.”

“Excellent,” Kathair said with a widened smile and bright eyes. “Try to stay out of trouble, will you?” With that, Kathair Lepkin disappeared behind the tree again and was gone.

Kyra tried to see which way he went, but there was no sign of the boy anywhere. It was as if he vanished into the air. The young sorcery apprentice moved around the tree and scanned the area for him, but she never saw so much as a wiggling branch. Kyra thought it must have been a trick he learned from the elves who raised him, for she had never seen a human so easily disappear into a forest before.

She waited for a few moments, just to ensure that Lepkin had actually gone and was not hiding somewhere just to follow her to Leatherback. She knew better than that though. Kathair wouldn’t want to risk Leatherback being discovered by the dragon slayers any more than she did.

Taking one last look around to ensure that there were no prying eyes, Kyra opened the magical portal that Njar had taught her to use as the surest way to the aspen wood and smiled when she finally saw the green and golden leaves flittering about in the summer breeze. After quickly closing the portal behind her, the young woman turned sideways as she slithered through the tangled mess of white trunks and grinned wide when Leatherback noticed her coming into the secret glade.

His tail flicked up and thumped the soft grass as what could only be described as a joyful grin stretched his lips over his fangs. His sky-blue eyes twinkled and his nostrils flared as he lifted his head.

“Hello Kyra,” Leatherback greeted.

“Hello, dear friend,” Kyra replied. “Is Njar around today?” she asked.

Leatherback shook his massive head slowly. “Already gone.” A wisp of smoke slithered out from his nostrils as he spoke. The dragon stretched his neck forward and rested his head down upon the ground in front of his forelegs. “Story?”

Kyra shook her head and crossed the grassy ground to pet the top of his scaly snout. “I’m afraid not today. I just came to see you, and ask how you were feeling.”

“Priests today?” Leatherback asked, his grin diminishing somewhat.

“Not today,” Kyra answered. “Just me.”

“Good.” Leatherback closed his eyes and let Kyra scratch the area of his neck just behind his jaw.

He emitted a sound akin to a cat’s purr, only it was much louder and vibrated throughout the glade.

“I know it’s been hard having those priests around all the time,” Kyra said as she ceased stroking the dragon and curled up next to his head, leaning back into the sturdy neck. “I think I might have a great idea of how we can just forget about them for a day.”

The eye closest to Kyra popped open as Leatherback asked, “What idea?”

“I thought we might find out whether or not you have any of Gorliad’s talent in the water.” At this suggestion, both of Leatherback’s eyes opened wide and he stood so abruptly that Kyra had to twist quickly to avoid being swept up by the large horn which protruded from the side of his head. Kyra had read Gorliad’s story, Ascension, to Leatherback while he had still been in his egg, and again after he was old enough to understand the story. Having received it and its companion volumes from her mother for her fourteenth birthday, she had worked hard to translate it from the Old Peish it had originally been written in.

“Swim?” He cried, a hint of a roar escaping from the back of his throat in his excitement.

“Well, yes. We will have to get a bit creative to make a place for you, but the trout stream in the forest over there does have a deep eddy that we might be able to widen,” she smiled mischievously and ignited a small fire ball in her hand, “and deepen. We are far enough away from the school. What do you say to a little target practice?”

Leatherback snatched up Kyra’s aspenwood staff and dropped it into her waiting hands. “Go now!” he said eagerly. Kyra made her way through the aspens as Leatherback, now entirely too big to wind his way through the close-growing trees, flew up and over the outer ring of the aspen wood, and landed to wait for her amongst the oaks and pines that generally made up the rest of the forest. They walked the short distance together to the stream and then followed it until they came to a waist-high waterfall where the terrain descended for a short distance, and then levelled out again, causing the stream to have naturally formed a wider, deeper section that Leatherback had discovered early on was an excellent place for catching trout.

“We’ll make a fantastic mess, but I think that if we can carve out a place right in here,” she indicated the section of stream from the waterfall to a spot downstream,” and pile the rock and dirt around as we go, we just might be able to make enough of a pond for you to use. At least until you grow to your full size,” she added, looking up to his head which already towered over her.

She paced back and forth on the bank of the stream for a few moments, trying to decide the best way to get started on the project. She had just taken a step back to try and visualize where the edges would be when Leatherback suddenly let loose a fireball that blasted into the opposite bank, sending mud and water flying everywhere. She was so surprised she jumped back half a foot while emitting a shriek. She shot a reproving look at Leatherback as she put a hand over her thumping heart. Leatherback gurgled in his throat, laughing at her.

“You said, ‘fantastic mess.’” And with that he shot twice more in rapid succession, causing a small amount of mud to rain down on her hair. Kyra lost no time to retaliate. She sent a large fireball of her own right into the water nearest to where Leatherback was standing and laughed heartily when the water caught him full in the mouth as he had opened up to release another blast of his own. He shook his massive head in displeasure as smoke leaked out of the side of his mouth and his nostrils, apparently having been quenched quickly when Leatherback had abruptly snapped his mouth closed.

After that, any thought of analytically approaching the project and completing it in a calculated fashion was lost entirely. The two of them took turns blasting new sections of bank away in turn, trying to shower the other with as much debris as possible. It was fortunate that Kyra was so proficient at ward spells, as several times there had been large chunks of rock blown up from the bottom of the stream bed, and she had quickly needed to protect herself from certain damage.

Once she began to feel tired from the expenditure of magic, she held her hands up to him in surrender. “We really should take a break. The water isn’t even remotely pooling in the way we need it to.” She looked about them and realized they had come closer to creating a miniature swamp than anything that resembled a swimming hole. “Why don’t we try to deepen what we have here? Or rather,
you
can start digging to deepen it while I,” she started wringing mud out of her hair, “see if I can get any of this muck out of my hair!” With that, she playfully tossed a handful of the sticky stuff at Leatherback, succeeding only in catching the outside of his wing as he blocked her. “Even Gorliad was willing to get his claws dirty excavating his home, remember?”

Leatherback happily stepped to the center of what had, only an hour before, been a quiet mountain stream, and began pulling out chunks of water logged mud and rock with his claws. Kyra laughed as she headed upstream to where the water still flowed clean, and bent down to wash her long, black hair in the stream as best she could. Whoever lived downstream would not be happy about the disruption in flow for the day, but this was the most fun she had had since she had come to school. She and her mother had often enjoyed silly activities together as her mother tried to find inventive ways to teach Kyra spells and creative applications for them.

The first time Kyra had successfully cast a simple ward at age six, they had been in the large kitchen at Caspen Manor. Her mother had sent the servants out for the day, and had spent the afternoon helping Kyra to hand mix a warm, sticky mess of any ingredient Kyra chose to add to the large batch of bread dough the cook had left behind to rise. When the dough was so discolored, and so full of strong, spiced aromas that her mother assured her it was completely inedible, her mother had begun tossing bits of it at her, giving her instructions before each throw to help her try and deflect the sticky blob with a ward. They had been laughing so hard, tears had been making their way out of her mother’s eyes, but when Kyra unexpectedly conjured the ward, she had dropped the entire bowl of dough on the floor in her motherly excitement. Kyra’s hair had been full of sticky substance that day too.

The memory brought a smile to her lips, but also made her whole chest ache. How would she ever stop missing her mother? At this moment, it felt like that empty feeling in her chest would be there forever, and the thought made her angry all of a sudden. She was going to find the shade who had killed her mother. She was going to find him, and she was going to destroy him and any other creature that might have been working with him. In answer to the anger inside of her, she inadvertently conjured a little spark of lightning and gave herself a little shock when she closed her fist as she imagined pummeling anything that got in her way. She jumped a little at the sensation and then stood up and decidedly wrung her hair out.

When she returned to the place where she had left Leatherback to work, she was amazed at the progress he had made in such a short amount of time. Piles of mud and rock as tall as she was had been thrown up all around the place where the eddy had been. She came up on Leatherback from the middle of the stream, rather than trying to scale the slippery mounds of streambed that would otherwise have separated her from his work space.

“Been having fun?” She asked with a sweep of her arm, indicating the area which now seemed expansive enough to accommodate Leatherback’s length twice over, and, if it held water, would allow him to swim a little as long as he tucked his legs up under him.

“I could ready my own mountain. Like Gorliad,” he said proudly, stretching his wings out and shooting a single flare of fire into the air.

“I believe that! Maybe someday we will find you a mountain. For today though, we may need to be done.” She looked at the water that was beginning to pool up around Leatherback’s feet and realized that they would have a proper mess if there wasn’t an outlet for the water that would allow it to follow its original path down the mountain. More than that, they might have someone miss the water downstream who would follow the stream back up to them and cause trouble.

“Let’s put our fire to work over here and see if we can’t make a proper outlet for the water. It will probably take it the better part of a week to fill up at this rate,” she looked behind her at the water which was trickling down what was left of the little waterfall, “but then we will need a place for the extra water to go.” She waded through the water to the far end of the pool and showed Leatherback where she thought they should focus their work. When she was satisfied that the water would be able to escape in a controlled manner after filling the pool, she tapped on Leatherback’s leg. He lowered his head to her and allowed her to climb on up behind the crown of horns that grew from the base of his skull.

“I’m frozen, let’s head back to the aspen wood so I can dry out!”

In a dark hovel, a young girl sat at the edge of her mother’s bed. Torn blankets covered the doorway and the dirt floor was littered with the stalks and husks of various plants that had been recommended for a healing poultice that had ultimately proved to be ineffective. Eleanor now cursed the time she had spent gathering the herbs and flowers instead of tending to her mother, and watched as she coughed into a stained, brown rag again and again.

“It’s all right mother, the physician is coming,” Eleanor said. Her thin hand reached out and stroked her mother’s leg over the thickest, best blanket they owned. Her mother was barely lucid. Sweat dripped down her forehead, and her hands shook even when she wasn’t coughing. Small circles of blood soaked into the rag she held in her hand.

Eleanor had gone hours ago for the physician. He said he would be there soon, but no one had come. The young girl of fourteen watched as her mother slipped back into a fitful sleep. Once she was sure the coughing fit had ended, Eleanor stood up and crossed the room in four steps, nearly tripping over the chamber pot as she went to the doorway. She pulled back the blankets and poked her head outside. It was still raining. Gray and black clouds filled the sky above, and mud ran through the streets below.

Across the street, a young boy played in the mud, shaping clumps into balls and stacking them together. Down to the right, a pair of young girls splashed in the puddles along with their dog, a mangy, wire-haired mutt. Up to the left, the street was empty, save for the rainwater rushing down the sides of the street and threatening to overflow into the houses. No matter which way she looked, there was no physician.

“I paid you already,” Eleanor mumbled under her breath as she continued to look up and down the street. Indeed, she had given the man four coppers, the last bit of money she knew of.

He kept it and never arrived.

Eleanor left the doorway when the last bit of light left the sky. There were no lamps in this part of the town. As the shadows crept through the street, so too did the mice and the stray cats, among other things that were much worse. The young girl went back inside and grabbed the rough cloth in her right hand, stretching it back across the doorway and hooking it over a large nail that acted as an anchor for the covering. Then she turned and grabbed the large, hollow crate and pulled it into the doorway behind the blanket. It wasn’t a complete door, but it helped keep some of the animals out.

The burglars and miscreants wouldn’t come into the shelter, so there was no fear from them. They would set in the shadows outside, waiting to pounce upon any fortunate enough to be returning from a day’s labor in the fields or the mines to the east. It wasn’t uncommon for such muggings to end with a body in the street the next day either, and the blankets over the doorway did little to keep her sheltered from the screams in the night.

Still, none of that worried her tonight.

Eleanor looked back to her mother’s pale face, matted with hair stuck to her scalp with sweat. Even in the most peaceful times of sleep now, her mother’s breathing came in short, struggling spurts. She tried to rouse her mother just enough for dinner.

“I made soup, mum,” Eleanor said with a cheery voice as she brought a clay bowl over to her mother. In truth, it was barely more than tepid water with a couple of cubed carrots and a third of an onion, but it was more than they had had the day before.

Normally it wasn’t as bad as all of this. Eleanor’s mother had a friend who sent them money each week. It was never much, but it had been enough to buy food and clothes through the years. Unfortunately, Eleanor’s mother had taken ill in late spring, coughing up blood and riddled with fevers. That ate up the money they had been saving. Eleanor’s mother had always said there would be a special surprise on Eleanor’s fourteenth birthday.

That day had come and gone over a month ago, but her mother was too sick to disclose what the surprise was.

Then, two weeks ago, the money stopped. Eleanor stretched it as best she could, but she wasn’t old enough to earn money with the day laborers, nor could she leave her mother alone for long.

“Mum, come on, we have to keep your strength up,” Eleanor said as she settled in at her mother’s bedside with the soup.

Her mother opened her green eyes and smiled lucidly for the first time that day.

“My little bumblebee,” she said softly. “You made dinner?”

Eleanor beamed proudly. “I did,” she said. She raised the bowl to her mother and helped her drink the broth.

“It’s good,” her mother said. “But, where is yours?”

“I already ate, while you were sleeping,” Eleanor lied.

Her mother nodded and continued drinking the soup from the bowl, stopping to chew the bits of carrot and onion as they came into her mouth. Then, once it was gone, she pushed herself up on shaking elbows.

“Mum, you should rest,” Eleanor said as she moved to block her mother.

“I’m all right. Listen to me for a bit.”

Eleanor scooted in close and her mother stroked her hair. “I never got to give you your present,” she said as she reached under her pillow for a white comb and moved to separate the tangles in Eleanor’s sandy hair. “I have it ready now, but before I give it to you, I want you to promise me something.”

“Anything, mum,” Eleanor said. She winced as her mother pulled at a knot in her hair with the comb that yanked on her scalp.

“I want you to promise to do whatever Horace Bagman tells you to do tomorrow.”

Eleanor’s brow drew into a knot above the bridge of her narrow nose and she pulled away to look at her mother. “Why should I do that, mum?”

“Uh-uh, you promised to do something for me. You can’t go back on it now.”

“I had my fingers crossed, you know, in case I didn’t like it.” Eleanor hurried to cross her fingers and then triumphantly display them to her mother. “So, I can change my mind now if I want to.”

Eleanor’s mother sighed and shook her head. She opened her mouth to speak, but was cut short by a fit of four coughs, each one more intense than the last until the woman was nearly doubled over.

“Are you okay?” Eleanor asked.

Her mother nodded her head and wiped her mouth. Eleanor didn’t miss the new, bright spots of blood on the rag.

“Promise me you will do what Horace says.”

“All right, mum, if it means that much to you. I will do what he wants me to do.”

Her mother nodded appreciatively. “That is as it should be. Now, take this to him tomorrow in the morning, and he will give you your present.”

“Your comb?” Eleanor asked as she looked at her mother’s comb. “But you said this was a gift from my father.”

Her mother winced at the mention of her father, and tried to hide the oncoming tears in a cough as she looked away before replying.

“It’s made of ivory,” she said. “This comb is going to Horace Bagman so that your father and I can give you one last birthday gift. You are fourteen now, and you deserve a proper gift. Something fitting a young lady. You be a good girl and do whatever Horace tells you, you hear?”

Eleanor nodded and took the comb when her mother pressed it into her chest. “All right, mum, I’ll do as he says.”

Her mother reached out and caressed her cheek with her hand. A single tear dripped down her bony cheek and she smiled once more before lying down upon the bed. “I love you, Eleanor, my little bumblebee. Remember to keep your chin up.”

“I will mum,” Eleanor said.

Her mother closed her eyes and drifted back to sleep.

Eleanor slid off the bed and pulled a smaller blanket out from under the bed. She curled up on the floor next to her mother. She reached out and extinguished the candle, casting the room into near-total darkness, and went to sleep.

The next morning, Eleanor woke to the sound of a crowing rooster. Unfortunately, imagining the rooster made her stomach growl angrily. As she pressed up from the dirt floor, she rubbed her tummy and thought whether it was worth chancing Farmer McKnought’s wrath to try and steal a chicken, or maybe just an egg or two.

“Mum, what would you do if I stole an egg for us today?” Eleanor asked aloud. “Would you mind much if your little bumblebee turned to a life of crime?” An impish smile crept across her face and she turned to see if her mother had woken and heard her joke.

Her mother was very still, and very quiet.

“Mum? You awake?” Eleanor asked. No answer. She thought it was perhaps better to let her sleep. It was rare these days that her mother could sleep without waking up and coughing every few minutes.

Eleanor got up and went to the doorway. She poked her head outside. The rain was gone and the sun was out. The mud was still thick in the streets, but at least the day would be bright and warm. She moved the crate out of the doorway and then peeled back the wet blanket to let the light in.

It’s going to be a good day today.
Eleanor let her hand wrap around the comb that she had tucked into her one pocket on the side of her trousers. She pulled it out and looked at it in the sunlight. She had heard of ivory before, but had never seen it. Or, at least she never realized that she had seen it. She just thought her mother’s comb was a nice trinket from her father. She had no idea that it was such an expensive item. She smiled as she ran her fingers over the fine teeth.

She was definitely going to take it with her today, but she was not trading it to Horace Bagman for any silly presents. No, she was going to find a real physician, and buy medicine too. She would probably even have enough left over to buy food. Maybe they could buy a chicken from Farmer McKnought!

Eleanor didn’t want to disappoint her mother, but she also didn’t need any silly toys. She was a young woman now, after all. She turned back to give her mother a goodbye kiss. She stepped across the room in four steps and started to bend down, but then noticed that her mother’s face was much paler than ever before. It was a ghastly grayish-white.

Eleanor sucked in a quick breath and shook her head as she bent low to her mother. She couldn’t hear her mother’s breath.

“Mum?” Eleanor said as she dropped her ear down to rest upon her mother’s breast. There was no breath, nor was there any heartbeat.

Eleanor dropped to her knees. Her mouth fell open and tears filled her eyes. If only she had known that last night was going to be the last. She would have stayed awake and rested beside her mother. She would have held her hand. She would have kissed her on the cheek and told her goodnight.

She looked down through her tears and studied the comb in her hand.

Why hadn’t her mother let her sell it long ago? Maybe it could have saved her. Now there was nothing the young woman could do. Her mother was gone, and was never going to wake.

She sat there, in a silent stupor, staring at her mother’s body. She reached up and slipped her hand in her mother’s and then rested her head upon her mother’s shoulder. She didn’t want to move, ever.

There was no way for her to know how long it was. Perhaps an hour or two had passed. Then, a tap came at the doorway.

“Hello to the house,” an old man said.

Eleanor turned and saw the physician she had hired the day before. He used his cane to keep the blanket moved to the side as he ducked low to enter. His black over cloak was caked with mud along the bottom, and water was soaking up past his ankles.

“Terribly sorry, young lady, but the Shiftens had their baby yesterday. It took some time, but they had a nice, healthy baby boy. He and mother are doing just fine, but by the time it was over…” he looked up and saw Eleanor. His eyes flicked to her mother and his pleasant smile faded. “Oh, I see.” He reached up and removed his hat, revealing a head of snow-white hair neatly combed to the side. “I’m terribly sorry.”

Maybe it was the insult that the physician had arrived after it was too late to do anything for her mother. Perhaps it was the cruel joke played by the gods that another family should have life brought into their family on the same night her mother died. Whatever it was, it put her over the edge. The tears fell and the anger rose. Before she even knew what happened she was up, crossing the room, and kicking the physician directly in the groin.

“You should have come!” she screamed as she kicked the man again.

Somehow, she ended up in his arms. The physician hugged her close, holding her tightly and leaning in with his head. She tried to wrestle free, but it was no use.

“Shh, quiet now, child.” The physician held her tighter as he spoke. “It’s all right, you go on and let it out.”

“I hate you!” Eleanor shouted through tears. Then she broke down into sobs and melted into the man. He continued to hold her, loosening his grip just slightly and turning the embrace into a more comforting one.

“That’s all right,” he said softly. “That’s all right.”

After a while, she pushed away and wiped her eyes. Somewhere deep inside herself she knew she should apologize, but the words never found their way to her mouth. She just glared at the man and crossed her arms.

The physician fished in his pocket and pulled out a few coins.

“I don’t have any copper on me, but I have some silver pieces. Take these, it’s the least I can do.”