Chasing the Dragon (29 page)

He looked into the fire. Nothing happened. He tried to create shapes,
figures, monsters from the id, but all he could see was flame leaping on
the glowing rock, dancing merrily, never repeating, quite without
meaning. If there was more to this than providing a bit of hackneyed
light entertainment for Mr. V, it was not obvious to a naked elfin eye.

Not that he had one of those to throw around. He saw quite well as
it happened, and he could move all right, so much so that he was still
surprised sometimes to look down and find that he was made of cloth.

A glance in any mirror-and there were many at Lily's houserevealed the truth of his current existence. He was shorter than he used
to be, but with the old proportions so that his limbs were long and
lean, his torso verging on skinny, his face squared at the jaw with a
chin that had been difficult to sew and had ended up pointed when Lily
pricked her finger on the needle and lost her temper. His ears were
satin with fringed edges, supported by fine wires that ended somewhere in his head. His hair was combed-out horsehair, flaxen but as
thick as straw. His eyes were stitched in brightly coloured thread with
a painted black slash in each centre that somehow functioned perfectly
as a pupil even though he had never seen it move.

The shadows of his true form showed as purple-black ink stains on
the surface of his white cotton body, giving the illusion of contours. His
hands were thick fingered and heavy and his limbs bent where they
were stitched at the joints. That was what came of being stuffed with
Mina's old ends. She had quite a lot of these unused bits of lives that she
said just couldn't be fitted in-the whole subject was guaranteed to make her cross-but she hated just burning them up on the fireplace
and had been glad to spend a few years' collecting in order to find
enough of them to pad him out and make him useful. For that's what
he was at the end of it all, a servant-a toy who had ceased to be terribly interesting about thirty years ago and was now passing the remnants of eternity doing little jobs that he was fit for. They didn't intend
to be unkind. Lily had promised, after all, to mend him if she could.

Zal was fed up with what they intended. He watched for a few more
minutes and then straightened up. "I don't see anything but the fire."

Mr. V nodded brightly and rested his book on his legs so that he
could pick up his pipe and take a draw. "Just humour an old man and
look again, would you? I used to love seeing things in the fire. Can't
really do it so much now. Bothersome."

"Mina needs her stuff," Zal objected weakly. Mr. V rarely asked for
a second go. He wondered if something was troubling the old guy.

Mr. V beamed at him, rosy cheeks like small red apples. He had a
winning smile and perfect teeth, despite the amount of tobacco he got
through. Only the whites of his eyes had taken on a slightly nicotinic
colour, like the uncleaned ceiling of an old-time inn. He patted the
pockets of his tweed waistcoat and found his tobacco pouch, showing
no sign of impatience as he began the lengthy ritual of emptying and
refilling the pipe bowl.

"Okay." Zal let his slight rebellion leak through but moved back
for another look. He felt that it was good to still have resentment. At
least it was something.

"There's a good lad," Mr. V said, scraping the pipe bowl out with
a little tool from his pocket.

"I wish you'd tell me what I'm supposed to see." One of Zal's regular complaints.

"Oh but I can't, or you won't see it." Mr. V's standard reply. "You'll
see something like it made up by your mind."

"I'm not psychic, you know." One of Zal's standard grumbles.

"If you were it would be very surprising because you have lint for
brains, my dear fellow. But I have high hopes for you." One of Mr. V's
under-the-top-ten answers.

"Are you sure you aren't called Gepetto?" A standard Zal shot
across the bows.

"I am very sure." Mr. V chuckled and paused in his pipe deconstruction to lift and wave the duster. "I've never had the hands for carpentry." The light gleamed off his perfectly buffed nails. They were
thick and as yellow as horn, a sign, he claimed, of his extreme old age.

"What does V stand for?" Zal sometimes asked this.

"Well," Mr. V mused amiably. "Not Vendetta."

"Venice?"

"No."

"Veronica?"

"No."

"Verifiably insane?"

"No."

Zal had run out of Vs for the time being but then some more came
at him in a rush. "Verisimilitude, victory, vanquish, vivify, viper,
vector, vehicle?"

"No. I do like Vanquish though."

Zal stared at the flames. They danced, mindless and evanescent.
"This is so pointless."

"No, no it isn't. You must never say that!" Mr. V cried, sitting forward and reaching out to close his book and put it to one side. There
was an almost desperate tinge to his voice.

"Yes, it is. I am stuck here forever until I moulder, or fray, or rot,
or get forgotten by them, or even by you," Zal felt a surge of anger, but
it quickly died back into misery. "There's no way out. I might as
well ..." And then he stopped.

"You might as well ... ?" Mr. V said encouragingly, as if to a sobbing child.

"I might as well throw-"

"Don't say it." Mr. V held up a stubby finger quickly to stall Zal
and then used it to point upwards, upstairs, to the main room where
Mina was working. Then he pointed towards the kitchen, where it was
possible that Tubianca the white cat was lurking.

Zal sat back on his heels and stared at the dwarf. He'd never thought
Mr. V had a nasty bone in his body, but suddenly he wasn't sure.

"Now you know," the dwarf said quietly, his emerald stare intent
on Zal, holding him in place. He smoothed his long silver white beard
and curled it around his fingers. "You know something important. So
don't forget it."

"But I'll die," Zal said.

"Will you?" Mr. V bounced forwards a little more until his feet in
their soft striped socks overhung the edge of the chair. He was serious.
"I don't think so."

"Easy for you to say." Zal felt an urge to move away from the
chance of being pushed into the flames. He would certainly go up in
smoke in seconds.

"Don't forget where we are," the dwarf said, and winked. His
cherubic smile returned. "Now," he said, pulling his book forward.
"Now that you understand one thing, I need you to do me a little
favour. Maybe afterwards you will understand another thing."

"Oh." Zal was curious, in spite of what had just happened. He felt
strangely lightheaded, so much so he almost forgot to be wary and
listen carefully to the words. He didn't forget to wonder why Mr. V
was being so apparently kind, though he wasn't about to ask right out.

Mr. V cleared his throat lightly and whispered. "Yes. I want you to
take this book over to Lily's house next time you go there and when
she is busy you are to take it into the attic."

Zal pulled a face. "Oh I've been there, it's full of-"

The dwarf's finger was suddenly pressed against the stitches of his
mouth. He stopped. The green stare in Mr. V's merry eyes was sud denly firm and not a little hypnotic. It would have been comical,
except nothing in Zal wanted to laugh.

"The book will show you where to go. When you get there, pick up
what you find to bring to me and put the book in its place. Come
straight back and do not speak to anyone on the way, no matter what
happens. You promise me?" His eyes became mild again, almost rheumy.

Zal looked at the book. It was very ordinary, hardbacked, covered
in a moss-green canvas, without any lettering on the cover. "Are you
in some kind of trouble?"

"What? No. No, lad. I just mean to borrow something for a little
while and I need to put something in its place you see, so as it isn't
missed. We'll put it back after. I promise you won't be in any trouble."

Zal had heard promises of this kind many times. They were the
kind of promise that set peals of alarms ringing. They were scurvy and
called to the pirate in his spirit. He was intrigued, and that was as
much of anything interesting as had happened to him since he had
been here. He was cheered. "All right." He took the volume and
slipped it into the inside pocket of his long felt jacket.

"Excellent!" Mr. V bounced back in his seat, happy as a spring
lamb. He resumed cleaning his pipe. "Now there's no rush. But don't
forget, no talking on the way back. No matter what."

"Sure." Zal could go days without speaking to anyone anyway. "I
have to get the sacks...."

"Yes, yes! To the mistress. Lovely. You're a good lad."

Zal frowned and went to do as he had to.

Mina was in the upstairs apartment. Zal opened the door after
knocking and went inside. There were no dividing walls up here, just
the one door, and then a large open space of scrubbed wooden boards and
plain walls beneath the open sky. In the centre a large fireplace supported
the glowing form of the most curious firedogs. They were in the form of
serpents and shone hot from the fire, but each one a different colour and
unique shade. Atop their backs there were no logs or any fuel, just a ball of white-hot flame, bobbing lightly as an apple in a water barrel. Zal had
long figured this for a fire elemental of a high order, but its shape and
particularity were confusing. Around this fire Mina paced.

She was a small girl of about seven years. She wore her dark hair in
two ponytails at the sides of her head, where they stuck out like floppy
hound ears, held fast by pink and gold elastic bands. Her skin was tea
coloured and her eyes as black as black could be so that it seemed like
they had no pupils at all. She was wearing, as usual, a party dress in
dazzling blue and pink, with silver stars and a small red cape at the
back. She'd been at work a while, and the cape was hanging off one
shoulder and her hair was frizzing where strands worked loose around
her face. In one hand she had a fistful of brightly coloured strands of
thread. With the other she worked a strand loose, examined it, talked
to it, twirled it in her fingers, and then tossed it into the fire.

There was no smoke, but after a moment a dart of light would
shoot upwards into the tiny black eye above them in the sky and be
lost to sight. Then she would start working on another one. Beside the
wall near Zal were two baskets. They still had threads in them, but he
emptied the sacks and topped them up again.

Mina noticed him and paused. She frowned and put her hands on
her hips in a scolding manner. "Oh Zal," she said. "What happened to
your leg?"

He looked down but he didn't see anything; then, just below the
hem of his trousers, he noticed the end of a green thread.

"Come here," Mina ordered. She pushed her handful of lengths
into the pocket of her dress.

He went there, reluctantly, and pulled up the leg of the trousers.
What he saw made him feel sick. Mina gasped, and her hands flew to
her face.

Something had nibbled his leg, made a hole in it, and pulled out
the stuffing until it was hanging in a gout, some strands dangling all
the way to his ankle.

After a second Mina regained herself and pushed Zal over onto his
back-a gesture that cost her nothing but would have been impossible
for him to resist had he tried to. She pulled him to her by the ankle and
peered more closely. He tried to see what she was doing as she poked
about, but he felt no pain. Obviously that was how it had happened.
His body did not feel pain, or much of anything. To realise that it could
be easily damaged like this, chewed, savaged, was horrifying. To realise
there was something here that was ready to chew even more so.

"What is it?" he demanded.

"Some's missing," Mina said with angry conviction. She poked the
remains back into place, rather roughly, and reached into another
pocket, where short bits of thread were tangled together in balls. She
added one of these balls and then cursed. "Lily will have to fix you or
it'll fall out again." She stared at the hole and then, still holding his
leg, looked sideways into the corner of the room, clearly thinking hard.

"But what happened?"

"Bit of you been stole," she said. "Must be a rat." She sat down
with a thump and then pulled a couple of long strands out and set to
working them with her nimble little fingers. He saw her shaping a
simple doll out of them, as he'd watched someone else do, a long time
ago. She twirled and tied, making arms, legs, a head. Then she dabbed
the thing on her tongue and set it on the palm of her hand.

It stood attentively, listening, growing before his eyes into a
strong, dark figure with gleaming eyes like dots of jet. It had the long
legs of a satyr and a long narrow tail and a ferocious number of
whiskers about its head.

"Mogu, hunt me that rat," Mina said to it.

The doll creature, imp sized now, leapt off her hand and scampered
away, sniffing. Its tiny claws scratched the boards, pattered, hesitated,
pattered, and then it had gone.

"Stole?" Zal ventured, seeing Mina's look turn thoughtful again.

"Someone making something," Mina said. Her eyes narrowed craftily. "Stealing from under our noses. Someone very clever. Or
thinks they are. Should have been more careful though." She clapped
her hands. "Good games! Get up now and run to Lily. Tell her what I
said and to fix your leg."

"Making something?"

But Mina was already standing up, her expression getting the
glassy look he knew meant she was no longer hearing him. She began
to work again.

Zal suppressed the urge to run to Mr. V and cry. He went carefully
back downstairs, trying not to do much with the damaged leg, though
it felt no weaker than the other one. As he passed the kitchen he felt a
draft of air and saw Tubianca coming out. She eyed him, her plumed
tail twitching.

Tubianca was a very large, pure white cat, with a round face, a tiny
black nose, a tiny pink mouth, and huge lavender-coloured eyes. Thick,
luxuriantly long fur covered every bit of her. "What are you doing?"
Her voice was as smooth as cream with the kind of depersonalised
interest that made Zal think of freezing railway station platforms or
groups of young politicised elves at a rally. She had never taken much
notice of him, except once or twice as a pouncing object, an experience
he heartily longed never to repeat. Lily had sewn him up before.