The Whim of the Dragon (6 page)

“We keep being rescued by cardinals.”

Fence let his breath out and shook the fold of the cloak a little. “What art thou?” he said.

“Ask Claudia,” said Ted.

A maniacal barking made itself apparent, the persistent yap of a collie. A black-and-white streak, flapping behind it a long yellow leash, shot down the hill and halted three feet away from them, growling like a cageful of tigers. Laura stared. Shan was a lazy dog who wouldn’t even run races with you.

Fence stood quite still, keeping hold of Ted’s cloak. “Is this thy rescue?” he said.

“It’s just Shan,” said Ted. “Good dog, Shan, good boy.” The dog, a nondescript, sharp-nosed, shaggy creature who had looked much more like a collie when he was a puppy, wagged his tail and went on growling. Laura supposed he remembered her and Ted, but didn’t care for Fence.

Fence said, “Thy dog’s called Shan?”

“It’s Ruth and Ellen and Patrick’s dog.”

“They weren’t allowed to call him Prospero,” offered Laura.

Fence turned and stared at her; Shan growled louder and Fence took no notice.
“Prospero?”
said Fence.

“Prospero,” said Laura, bravely, “is a magician in a play.”

“Thy play? Thou hast made him up also?”

“No, William Shakespeare did.”

“Shan!” yelled a distant and familiar voice.

“Here they come,” said Ted.

Three figures came over the hill, two short and one tall. Ruth was not wearing a skirt, as had been her wearisome custom when they played together, but she was, to Laura’s eyes, very oddly dressed in gray corduroy pants, pink legwarmers already splotched with mud, pink-and-gray running shoes, and many layers of shirts of pink or gray or white whose tails hung out at varying lengths and made her look as if she were wearing a jester’s costume. Laura thought she ought to tie bells to all the hems.

Patrick and Ellen, on her heels, were dressed reassuringly in brand-new jeans—Aunt Kim must have noticed that the old ones were too small—battered red corduroy jackets, and dirty tennis shoes. Ellen had found, somewhere, a black wool beret like the velvet caps the pages wore in High Castle. Patrick had a blue stocking-cap falling out of his jacket pocket. Ellen’s and Ruth’s cloudy black hair tangled in all directions in the wind. Patrick’s pale brown, straight hair was only a little ruffled. All three of them wore bulging knapsacks.

Ellen caught Laura’s glance immediately, with a look half of greeting and half of alert bewilderment. Patrick was so expressionless Laura knew he was upset. Ruth looked the way she used to if you burst into her room without knocking when she was writing her journal.

“What are you
doing
here?” demanded Ruth, stopping next to the dog. Her harried glance brushed Fence, faltered, and settled firmly on Ted.

Patrick got down on his knees in the wet grass and laid an arm across the dog’s back. Shan stopped growling. Ellen grinned at Fence, but Patrick did not look at any of them. Laura supposed that seeing Fence in his own back yard was upsetting all Patrick’s theories.

“That’s a fine greeting,” said Ted to Ruth.

“We’re going to miss the school bus.”

“Ruth,”
said Ellen. “They brought
Fence
. Forget about the school bus.”

“You have to come back,” said Ted.

“No way in hell,” said Patrick, still without looking up.

“There’s a fine, open spirit,” said Fence. All three of them jumped at the sound of his voice.

“Fence, is it really you?” said Ellen, peering at him from under her hat.

“Turn that question on thyself,” said Fence, rather sharply.

“Oh,
hell
,” said Ruth. “You read my letter.”

“Wherefore writ, if not to be read?”

“Well, but I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

“It sounded fine,” said Ted.

“It sounded
stupid,
” said Ruth. “I was in a terrible hurry.”

“It was well enough,” said Fence.

“Fence,” said Ruth, “I’m sorry.”

“Thou hast said so already, in the letter,” said Fence, and smiled. “Be of good cheer. The fault’s not yours. But in good earnest we desire you back, to play your parts yet for a little while.”

“Ellen has now missed her bus,” said Patrick, “and Ruth and I will miss ours in ten minutes.”

“You’d better tell us,” said Ellen.

It was beginning to rain, but nobody suggested finding shelter. They stood there with misty drops gathering on them while Fence told Ted and Laura’s story.

“Good,” said Ellen, when he had finished. “Let’s do it. I knew it was wrong to leave.”

“Good?” said Ruth. “Claudia can look at a piece of glass and make Randolph do what she likes, Claudia did make us do what she liked, and you say good?”

“So let’s get her,” said Ellen.

“You won’t make Ted fight Randolph?” said Ruth to Fence.

“Stars in heaven, lady, why should I meddle so?”

“
Randolph
’ll make Ted fight Randolph,” said Patrick.

“I’ll strive to prevent him,” said Fence.

“Well, I’m willing to risk it,” said Ted. “Do remember, can’t you, that the red man said everything we were afraid of would happen if we
didn’t
go back?”

“It can’t all happen,” said Patrick. “You can’t kill Randolph if you aren’t there.”

“Ruth’s letter told Randolph how to get here,” said Ted.

Ellen stood up. “Well, let’s go,” she said.

“I’m in the middle of an experiment,” said Patrick.

“Does he
have
to come?” said Ruth to Ted. “If he was missing, wouldn’t that be an excuse to go after Claudia?”

“We have been after Claudia,” said Fence, poking one arm out of his cloak and wiping rain off his forehead. Laura stared at the shift and glimmer of his starry sleeve, waiting for one of the points of light to swell into vision. Nothing happened. Fence went on talking, in a tone of wry patience. “We have accusations. Mind you that she tried to stab me on the stairs.”

“Besides,” said Laura, “won’t your parents miss you and Ellen?”

“Sure they will,” said Ruth, grinning maliciously. “Pat can explain to them.”

“You better watch it,” said Patrick. “Our parents aren’t suspicious, but Ted and Laura’s are.”

“That’s true,” said Ruth, sobering at once. “Mom just thought we’d grown and she hadn’t noticed until now; she’s been awfully busy trying to run this blasted farm. And we’d have to dye our hair green and put safety pins through all our finger-joints before Daddy would notice. But your mother called me Mary Rose, and your
father
called Patrick Thomas the Rhymer.”

Laura thought that Patrick was about as unlike Thomas the Rhymer as anybody could get, and just managed to turn her laugh into a snort.

“It isn’t funny,” said Ruth, undeceived. “
They’ve
read all the right books. They think we’ve been in Elfland, and that’s really not so far off the mark.”

“It is,” said Patrick, in his most annoying voice, “about as far off the mark as you can get. Time stands still in Elfland and goes along as usual here. By that definition,
this
is Elfland.”

“Well, it is for Fence,” said Laura.

“Don’t think about it,” said Ruth, a little wildly, not to Fence but to the rest of them. “I just meant Patrick’s right. They’re suspicious.”

“They were joking,” said Ted. “They do it all the time.”

“Not just joking,” said Ruth. “Believe me.”

“Well, okay, so it’s all or nothing,” said Patrick. “So persuade me to come back.”

“Patrick,” said Ellen, “you can’t get anything done while we’re gone anyway, because we’ll have to fix the time again.”

“I
told
you,” said Patrick, “we didn’t fix it last time.”

“No, that’s right,” said Ted. “Laura and I left home at night, and when we got back home it was afternoon.”

Patrick said, “We left here in the daytime, and when we got back it was night. We’d lost twelve or thirteen hours.”

“Well, that’s not so bad,” said Ellen.

“You’ve got a remarkably selective memory,” said Patrick. “Shall I recite for you what Dad said? And what Mom did?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Ted. “The red man fixed the time for us, and I bet that holds for the whole planet.”

“That’s really persuasive, Ted,” said Patrick.

“What’s the
matter
with you?” said Laura. She had to say something violent to squash her impulse to run over that hill, or in whatever direction was necessary, and find her parents, and forget about adventure and philosophy and riddles. She went on, loudly, “So what if we get in trouble? Isn’t it worth it to save the Secret Country? Why don’t you worry about the rest of this when we’ve done the important stuff?”

Ted looked at her; he knew what was wrong. “Well?” he said to Patrick. “What
is
the matter with us?”

“
You
are soft in the head,” said Patrick. “
I
am practical. Why should I want to save the Secret Country?”

Fence stared down at Patrick, who still knelt with his arm around the dog. “Consider it,” said Fence, in a light and very terrible voice, “the price of thy fencing lessons and thy room and board these three months.”

“I’m not at all convinced,” said Patrick, perfectly coolly, “that you roomed and boarded anything except my imagination.”

Laura felt a shiver go over her skin. When all this was only a game, Patrick had played Fence, and he had used just such a tone and just such a level look from cold blue eyes as he was turning on Fence now. Fence had an altogether less alarming face, but his demeanor made up for it.

“The lunatic, the lover, and the wizard,” said Fence, “are of imagination all compact. What art thou, then, that setteth the housing of thine so low?”

“Jesus Christ!” said Patrick, passionately. Nobody reproved him for swearing. “Don’t quote Shakespeare at me! All right. All right. I’ll come back. But I promise you, I am
not leaving again
no matter who doesn’t want what to happen until I
have figured out what the hell is going on.
Is that clear?”

“Abundantly,” said Ruth, in her dryest tones.

“And
also
,” said Patrick, “I want to test whether time stands still here while we’re in the Secret Country.”

“Okay,” said Ellen. “You just take off your nice watch and leave it out in the rain, and we’ll come back tomorrow and see what time it says.”

“It’s good to two hundred meters,” said Patrick, calmly. He unbuckled the strap and laid the watch down in the vivid grass, where it said, in evil red characters, 8:45.

“Is it a bargain, then?” said Patrick, looking up at Fence.

“Oh, of a certainty,” said Fence, still in that voice. “For I most earnestly desire these discoveries also.”

“All right,” said Ted, whom this exchange seemed to have made extremely uneasy. “Send Shan home, Patrick, and let’s go.” Laura remembered other bargains and their outcomes, and didn’t blame him. He caught her glance, and shrugged resignedly, as their mother would do when their father got silly. Then he said to Fence, “Let’s get out of here.”

I
T was dark when they got back to High Castle. They had missed supper. Fence spoke to the yellow-haired boy who was stationed in the stables for just such emergencies, and then hustled them up the two hundred and eight steps to his rooms in the South Tower. Their way was lit by purple torches that made everybody look a little sick.

Fence had added what Patrick would have called security precautions since Ted was last here on Midsummer Eve. Then Fence had used one plain key. This time he had one plain and two jeweled. He was slow with them, as if he were not yet used to the arrangement.

Ted stood pressed against the cool stone wall with Laura and the others crowding the steps behind him, and considered the door itself. Its dark wood was carved with one of the puzzles of High Castle: eight scenes starting at twelve o’clock and proceeding clockwise to an enigmatic conclusion. They showed a young man with decided eyebrows talking to a wizard. Then, wearing a wizard’s robe himself, he captured or cajoled a cat, a dog, a horse, an eagle, and a unicorn. In the last scene, the unicorn was gone but all the other animals and the man stood looking at an object like a stylized sun. This story was repeated all over High Castle in carving and tapestry and even around the border of Fence’s dishes. But sometimes it had this ending, with the sun, and other times ended with an irregular patch like a flaw in the piece in question, from which all the animals were running away.

Ted remembered that he was not playing Edward, who had known this story all his life. “Fence?” he said. “Who is that in the carving?”

Fence pulled the last key out of the door and pushed it open. A rush of warm air laden with the smell of old ashes and snuffed candles slid past them.

“That,” said Fence, leading them into his parlor, “is Shan, as you must well—” He broke off, and made a sign in the air with his hand. Light, good wholesome yellow light, bloomed from three lamps on the walls, and flames crept up under the logs in the fireplace. The fire caught better than it should have; there was no kindling.

“Sorry,” said Ted to Fence.

“I know it,” said Fence. “There’s no help.”

“He looks like Shan, but our story about him is different.”

The others surged into the room behind them, unwontedly quiet. Fence stood in the middle of his parlor, on the bearskin, and looked at Ted with a pained expression that verged on the desperate. “Is there no end to this?” he said.

He ushered them to seats around the table, in the plain dark chairs with their blue cushions, Ruth and Ellen and Patrick on one side and Ted and Laura on the other. He sat down himself at one end of the table, with his back to the fire and his face to the door. Then he looked them over one by one, with the expression of somebody who is searching in the lost-and-found, among a dozen red mittens, for his own with the frayed right-hand thumb and the chocolate stain on the left cuff. Nobody would look at him except Ted.