Taz Under the Big Top
Taz hated to leave Toby, but the boy seemed determined to stay in the smelly place teeming with loud voices, bad smells, and hard surfaces. She saw nothing to hunt except humans, but they were not, she told herself sternly, appropriate prey. Toby was a human, after all.
Now that she was bigger and stronger, she could do all sorts of things she’d never been able to do in the last city she’d lived in.
She soared above the buildings, and flew right over the ancient wall, and above the sleeping fields, now occupied by tasty sheep and cows. Later, she could hunt wild game in the wild woods and to the mountains beyond where her kind flew free, but first, a snack.
Although people had sometimes in her presence referred to stories in which the preferred diet of wild dragons consisted of gently-bred young maidens and crunchy armored heroes, the truth was that the ability to flame was offset by a loss of any scents less pungent than the smoke lingering in one’s nostrils, or any taste whatsoever, actually, since the flames made everything uniformly hot.
She had no taste buds at all, but found some textures were more pleasing than others in the enjoyment of her kill. Part of the pleasure of consuming wild game was the hunt and chase, but the meat was tougher and stringier, whereas lovely grass-fed grazing animals were tender and juicy.
A great number of cloudlike white blobs dotted the landscape beneath her wings, and she circled them in a mighty swoop. One blob, she noticed, had wandered up over a hill near a grove of trees, where it stood all alone, waiting, though it didn’t know it, for a rendezvous with death.
What she did not notice was the shepherd and his dog dozing beneath one of the trees on top of the hill, or that the dragon-smelling wind her wings pumped toward the herd, alerted them. The sheep bleated and scattered, though the one beneath her simply looked up, chewing, and apparently thinking, “Oh, look, a dragon. How curious.” The shepherd and his dog reacted more violently.
The dog barked and growled, threatening, “Not with my herd, you don’t, sister!”
The shepherd pulled the hook off his crook, revealing a pointy bit at the end.
Taz had never seen such a thing and glided down for a look. The shepherd flung it at her, pointed end first.
Taz was wondering why he would do something like that and watched, fascinated, as the long stick hurtled toward her, until suddenly it struck her. A sharp pain flashed through her as it pierced the membrane of her right wing and then hung there, stuck in her wing with the staff end dangling while its weight tore at her wing. She squalled flame, starting a fire that occupied the shepherd while she escaped, hurt and still very hungry.
The injured wing, impeded by the spear, hampered her flight, causing her to list to one side, unable to fly straight ahead. She staggered over several fields before pain and exhaustion forced her down, rolling on the ground, crying as the spear tore her wing even more.
And even this far from the city, people, frightening creatures that they had become, infringed on the countryside. She had landed within another field’s length of a forest, a small river at its edge. Brightly colored wagons and tents sat upon the river’s banks and brightly clothed people bustled about. They had large animals, too, but she didn’t suppose they’d give her one.
No, they would probably finish her off. Taz cried, tears evaporating almost before they formed.
She would just lie there and die, never to see her boy again.
“Stop!” a voice cried. “You can’t go there, Beebee. There’s a dragon!” Other human voices spoke in a muddle, and Taz knew they were about to attack her, but hung back in fear. “It’ll eat you!”
“I don’t think so,” a woman said.
If dragon’s senses of smell and taste are weak, their eyesight and hearing are acute. Taz had heard this woman before. Her ear perked and swiveled toward the sound.
“This beast is a lot larger, but she looks like one I’ve met before,” the woman said. “A good one. A brave one.” These words were tossed back to the others as the footsteps rustled through the dry grass with the woman’s approach.
“You’re the little one who broke her boy out of the Queenston dungeon, yes?” the woman asked, and without any response from Taz, laid her hand on the young dragon’s aching and weary head and stroked her. “How came you here, my dear?”
Taz gave a very small, very subdued roar of welcome. This was the gypsy woman who had helped the girl help Taz’s boy. She was a friend! In all of this strange country, a friend who was not actually Toby had found her!
Taz broke into the throbbing rumble that dragons emit when they are pleased and happy or when they are trying to comfort themselves.
The woman smiled down at her and said, “What’s the matter, chavi? Why do you lie so still on the ground?”
Taz whimpered and moved a little to show the woman her wing.
The woman clucked over it and touched it very, very gently. “You’ll need care to heal, my friend.”
To the ones who were cautiously edging forward now that they saw Taz hadn’t harmed the woman, she called. “Move the camp! Bring it here! And the big top. Bring it first and build it over her. This dragon is an intelligent and loyal creature who has helped me before. We must help her.”
The big top, a large red tent faded to rose, was big enough to hold the average village—or to conceal one medium sized dragon while her wing healed. The woman sewed the tear in the wing so carefully it almost didn’t hurt. The bravest of men held a metal drum in front of Taz’s snout to contain her involuntary flame while the woman sewed.
“Can’t have you burning down the meadow,” the woman said, stroking her. “Oh, no, my dear, the farmer would not like that.”
While the humans did all sorts of human things, Taz healed. At nights the people often played strange, wild music and she listened, keeping time with her tail, but being careful not to wave it hard enough to endanger the tent.
One night a shadow unlike the shadows of any of the woman’s friends crept into the encampment and appeared against the cloth of the big top. Taz had a sense of danger and gave a mighty hiss and roar. The shadow disappeared. Later that same night, an eerie howl containing the voices of many creatures awakened the camp. Taz howled too, or the closest noise a dragon could make to one.
The woman did not return that night, or the next night, or the next. Taz was lonely, and suspected she’d been abandoned now that her wounds were healed enough to support her in flight again. She rose unsteadily at first, but soon was casting a long shadow against the meadow below as she soared toward the city.
The Pirates and Mr. Balgair
Tod
Tod N. Balgair, Attorney at Law, had been raiding hen houses the previous night and was sleeping it off before time to open his office. He had no appointments that morning so he was not expecting anyone. What he expected was that he could curl up in his nest of papers, wrap his bushy tail around his nose, blow the occasional feathery remnant of last night’s repast away when it tickled his nose, and sleep.
Naturally when the very firm knock pounded upon his office door, it startled him. His first thought was that the farmer whose chickens he had eaten had come to make a citizen’s arrest. Transforming to his human self, he called, “One moment please,” in his best lawyerly voice and proceeded to climb into the clothing that always felt awkward after spending the night in his own pelt. He brushed his hair back. His facial hair might need a trim but it was very early and those who came before office hours could hardly expect him to be at his sartorial best.
He was amazed when he opened the door to find a quite striking looking lady standing there, holding a carpet bag in front of her, while a motley crew of what appeared to be pirates arrayed themselves behind her.
“How may I be of service?” he asked, but the lady overrode his question with a statement of her own.
“We found it.”
“Found what?”
She dug in her carpetbag and pulled out two rusty lengths of chain, one end of which was attached to a scrap of brightly colored silk.
“This,” she said. “Don’t you remember, Ducky? Young Verity hired us to salvage this trinket from the bottom of the bay… something about how her old dad met his end.”
“Oh, yes!” he said, accepting the chain. “Do come in. I’ll put the kettle on and you can tell me all about it.”
“I told you ’e’d know,” the lady told the others, sweeping into the room with a peacock feather adorned train trailing behind her. The pirates were careful not to step on it, Balgair noticed.
“Indeed I do, and Miss Brown will be delighted to learn of your success—er—Captain Lewis or is it Madame Louisa today?” The sometimes-guitarist was well aware of the lady’s versatile nature. She and the crew were not acquainted with Balgair’s human form.
“Split the difference and call me Captain Louisa since I’m here at the head of me crew and in a professional capacity. I’d like to see the lass’s face when she sees it and knows how right she was…”
“I wish I could arrange that, but Miss Brown is currently on an extended visit to a relative in the north. I will see to it personally that she receives this and knows of your diligence and good wishes.”
He started to pour the tea, but reconsidered. “Such success demands a more portent celebration. Rum, anyone?”
Later that afternoon, he boarded the train for Dame Ephemera’s home at Wormroost Castle.
At the end of that long journey, after giving up his pocket watch to satisfy the trolls, he was surprised when Cousin Isabelle told him that Dame Ephemera and Verity were not in.
He was flabbergasted when she told him why.
“She received your letter about meeting her mother in Drague and the ladies set out for there at once. Some three months ago it was, sir.”
“I sent no such letter.”
“But I saw it. It was on your own stationery.”
No fox can call himself a fox and not recognize a trick.
“Can you put me up for a bit?” he asked.
She nodded agreement. “I was just fixing something for dinner.”
“Ah,” he said, licking his lips. “Wonderful. If you can show me to my room, I’d like to change before we eat.”
And change he did, before running on foxy feet out to the top of the glacier where he cried his combination bark and scream, which was picked up at once by the dogs of the village and the wolves in the woods, and onward—another Howl reverberating through time and space, summoning the gypsy woman. If anyone knew Verity’s whereabouts, it would be her.
The Rescue Party
When the rescue party returned to Stockyard and swaggered into the pub, Ephemera had to think for a moment to figure out who they were and what they were doing there. She gave a sideways nod in their direction and lifted an inquiring eyebrow at the innkeeper’s wife, Marta.
Marta shrugged and said, “Dunno what them men thinks they’re doin’ here. Your girl will be long gone.”
Ephemera tried to think who she could mean. Isabelle? No, surely not. Another girl. Important girl. Vitia? No, that was the dragon’s name. She’d learned some important information about the dragon recently but would have to find where she’d stored it. She’d been faithfully recording everything that happened or was said to her as soon as possible, before she could forget.
“But if they intend to poke around on Vitia’s mountain,” Marta continued, “best do it before the thaw is all I’m sayin.’ Her won’t be half cranky when her’s wakened before her’s had her nap out.”
Ephemera cheerfully conveyed the wisdom regarding the dragon’s disposition to the searchers.
Uninvited, she skied out with them when they assaulted the volcano.
A herder had showed them the trail up the northern face of the mountain. Meanwhile, a boy set up a hot air balloon in the valley.
The balloon, graceful as a bubble, sailed up into the crater and was swallowed by it without a sound.
Later, while men still clung to the sides of the mountain, it rumbled and belched forth its guardian—the great coppery gilded dragon.
Among the searchers was Verity’s stepmother’s cousin, Briciu.
“Look at the size of her!” he said, seeing the mother dragon take flight. “We could breed some life back into our livestock with a queen like that.”
And they set off, forgetting all about Verity, whom everyone assumed was probably dead, but from their banter Ephemera gathered that although they called themselves a rescue party, what they were actually hoping to rescue was the dragon’s hoard. Apparently there was also a market for the dragon.