The Dragon Charmer (10 page)

She was watching a vintage horror film. Pseudo-Victorian costumes, men with sixties sideburns, a heroine with false eyelashes and heaving bosom. It was low camp, reassuringly familiar, unalarming. Improbable plastic bats circled a Gothic mansion that had loomed its way through a hundred such scenes.

Presently one of the bats came too close to the screen, thrusting its wing tip into the room…

Fern and Will woke to the sound of screaming.

*  *  *

The room was full of bats. They blundered into the passage when Will opened the door, ricocheted to and fro as he switched on the light. Gaynor was covered in them, her pajamas hooked and tugged and clawed, her hair tangled with wildly threshing wings. She beat at them in a frenzy, irrational with terror, but her fear only served to madden them, and they swarmed around her like flies on a corpse. Their squashed-up snouts resembled wrinkled leaves, their blind eyes were puckered, their teeth needle pointed. More flew out of the television at every moment, tearing themselves free of the screen with a sound like lips smacking. Miniature lightnings ran up and down the power cord.

“Help her,” Fern said to her brother, and raced back to her room, extricating the box from under her bed—the box she never looked at, never touched catching the scent of the long-lost forest, fumbling inside for the gloves she had always refused to wear. Upstairs, Will was trying to reach the figure on the bed, arms flailing in a vain attempt to disperse the bat cloud.

When Fern reentered, the gloves were already on her hands. The scales grew onto her flesh, chameleon patterns mottled her fingers. She reached for the socket with lizard’s paws; the plug spat fire as she wrenched it out. There was no explosion, no noise, just the suddenness of silence. The screen reverted to blank; the bats vanished. Gaynor drew a long sobbing breath and then clung to Will, shaking spasmodically. Fern gazed down for a minute at the hands that were no longer hers, then very carefully, like a snake divesting itself of its skin, she peeled off the gloves.

   They deposited the television outside by the dustbins after Will, at Fern’s insistence, had attacked it with a hammer. “What about the mirror?” he said. “We can’t leave it there.”

“Swap it with the one in the end room,” Fern suggested. “It’s even dirtier, I’m afraid,” she apologized to Gaynor, “but at least you know the nastiest thing you’ll ever see in it is Will, peering over your shoulder.”

Gaynor managed an unsteady laugh. They were sitting in the kitchen over mugs of strong, sweet cocoa, laced and chased with whiskey. Mindful of the shuddering cold that so often
follows shock, Fern had pressed a hot-water bottle on her friend and wrapped her in a spare blanket. “If you want to leave,” Fern said, “I’ll understand. Something, or someone, is trying to use you, victimize you … perhaps to get to me. I don’t know why. I wish I did.”

“Ragginbone might know,” Will offered.

“Then again he might not.” Fern opened a drawer and fished out a crumpled packet of cigarettes, left behind by a visitor months or even years ago. They were French, their acidic pungency only enhanced by the passage of time. She extracted one, remolded its squashed contours into a vaguely tubular shape, and lit it experimentally.

“Why on earth are you doing that?” Will demanded. “You never smoke.”

“I feel like making a gesture.” She drew on the cigarette cautiously, expelling the smoke without inhaling. “This is disgusting. It’s just what I need.”

“It has to be Azmordis behind this business, doesn’t it?” Will said after a pause.

“Don’t name him,” his sister admonished. “Not if he’s around. Ragginbone said he would be seriously weakened after Ixavo’s death, maybe for a long time—but how long is that? Twelve years? And what
kind
of time—real time or weretime, time here or elsewhere?”

“Do you think what Gaynor saw was really Alison?” Will pursued. “Alison returned from the dead?”

“N-no. The dead don’t return. Ghosts are those who’ve never left, but Alison had nothing to stay for. I suppose
he
might use a phantom in her image, possibly to confuse us.”

“I’m confused,” Gaynor confirmed.

“Will you be okay for the rest of the night?” Fern asked. “We could change rooms if you like. I’ll drive you into York in the morning: there are trains for London every hour.”

“I’m not leaving.” Behind the dark curtains of her hair Gaynor achieved a twisty smile. “I’m frightened’—of course I am. I don’t think I’ve ever been so frightened in my life. But you’re my friend—my
friends
—and, well, you’re supposed to stand by friends in trouble…”

“Sentimentality,” Fern interjected.

“Hogwash,” said Will.

“Whatever. Anyway, I’m staying. You invited me; you can’t disinvite me. I know I wasn’t very brave just now but I can’t help it: I hate bats. I hate the way they flutter and their horrible ratty little faces. That’s what they are: rats with wings. I’ll be much braver as long as there are no more bats.”

“We can’t absolutely guarantee it,” Fern said.

“Besides,” Gaynor continued, ignoring her, “you’re getting married on Saturday. I’m not going to miss that.”

For an instant, Fern looked totally blank. “I’d forgotten,” she said.

They went back to bed about half an hour later, warm with the twin comforts of chocolate and alcohol. Will bunked down in the room next to Gaynor’s, wrapped in the ubiquitous spare blanket. Worn out by events, reassured by his proximity, she fell asleep almost at once; but he lay with his eyes open, staring into the dark. Presently he made out a hump of shadow at the foot of his bed that had not been there before.

He said softly: “Bradachin?”

“Aye.”

“Did you see what happened?”

“Aye.”

There was an impatient silence. “Well?” Will persisted. “Did you see a woman come out of the mirror?”

“I didna see ony woman. There was a flaysome creature came slinking through the glass, all mimsy it was, like a wisp o’ moonlicht, and the banes shining through its hand, and cobwebs drifting round its heid. Some kind o’
tannasgeal
maybe. It was clinging round the maidy like mist round a craig. She seemed all moithered by it, like she didna ken what she was doing.”

“Where did it go?” Will asked.

“Back through the glass. I’m nae sure where it gaed after, but it isna here nae mair.”

“But how could it get in?” Will mused. “No one here summoned it, did they?”

“Nae. But a
tannasgeal
gangs where the maister sends it—and ye asked
him
in long ago, or sae ye seid.”

“You mean Az—the Old Spirit sent it?”

“Most likely.”

“Yes, of course … Bradachin, would you mind spending
the night in Gaynor’s room? Don’t let her see you, just call me if if anything happens.”

“I’m no a servant for ye tae orrder aboot.”

“Please?” Will coaxed.

“Aye, weel… I was just wanting ye tae keep it in mind. I’m nae servant…”

The hunched shadow dimmed, dissolving into the surrounding dark. After a few minutes Will closed his eyes and relapsed into sleep.

In the room on the floor below, Fern was still wakeful. She was trying to concentrate on her marriage, rerunning a mental reel of her possible future with Marcus Greig. Cocktail parties in Knightsbridge, dinner parties in Hampstead, all-night parties in Notting Hill Gate. Lunches at the Ivy, launches at the Groucho. First nights and last nights, previews and private views, designer clothes, designer furniture. The same kind of skiing trips and Tuscan villas that she had experienced as a child, only rather more expensive. In due course, perhaps, there would be a second home in Provence. Her heart shrank at the prospect. And then there was Marcus himself, with his agile intelligence, his New Labor ethics, his easy repartee. She liked him, she was even impressed by him though it is not difficult for a successful forty-six to impress a rising twenty-eight. She knew he had worked his way up from lower-middle-class origins that he preferred to call proletarian, that his first wife had been a country type who left him for a farmer and a horse. Fern had contemplated marrying him on their third date. He fulfilled the standards she had set for her partner, and if his hair was thinning and his waistline thickening, he was still generally considered an attractive man. She was nearly thirty, too old for fairy tales, uninspired by casual love. The more she thought about it, the more she had wanted this marriage and she still wanted it, she knew she did, if only she could keep hold of her reasoning, if she could just remind herself what made those scenes from her life-to-be so desirable. She should never have left London. Away from the polluted air and the intrusive voices of traffic, telephones, and technology, her head was so clear it felt empty, with too much room for old memories and new ideas. She had done her best to fence them out, to fill up the space with
the fuss and flurry of wedding preparations, but tonight she sensed it had all been in vain. The future she had pursued so determinedly was slipping away. She had worn the witch’s gloves, opened her heart to power. Trouble and uncertainty lay ahead, and the germ of treachery in her soul was drawing her toward them.

She languished in the borderland of sleep, too tired now to succumb. Her mind planed: recollections long buried resurfaced to ensnare her, jumbled together in a broken jigsaw. Alimond the witch combing her hair with a comb of bone like a Lorelei in a song, her lips moving in what Fern thought was an incantation, until she heard the words of an antique ballad:
Where once I kissed your cheek the fishes feed
. And then the siren dived into deep water, and there was the skeleton lying in the coral, and she set the comb down on its cavernous breast, and Fern saw it slot into its place among the ribs. And the head looked no longer like a skull: its eyes were closed with shells, and its locks moved like weed in the current.
Sleep well forever there, my bonny dear
. A ship’s foghorn drew her out of the depths no, not a foghorn, an albatross, crying to her with a half-human voice. They said in Atlantis that albatrosses were the messengers of the Unknown God. It was very near now, almost in her room. How ridiculous, thought Fern. There are no albatrosses in Yorkshire. It must be the owl again, the owl Gaynor talked about…

She was not aware of getting up but suddenly she was by the open window, leaning out into the night. She heard the sough of the wind in the trees although there were no trees anywhere near the house. The owl’s cry was somewhere in her dream, in her head. And then it came, hurtling out of the dark, a vast pale blur too swift and too sudden to see clearly. There was a rushing tumult of wings, the close-up of a face a mournful heart-shaped face with nasal beak and no mouth, black button eyes set in huge discs, like a ghost peeping through the holes in a sheet. She thrust out her hands to ward it off, horrified by the impression of giant size, the predatory speed of its lunge. The power came instinctively, surging down her arms with a force dream-enspelled, unsought and out of control … The owl reeled and veered away, gone so fast she had no time to check if its size had been real or
merely an illusion of terror. But its last shriek lingered in her mind, haunting and savage. She stumbled away from the window, her body shaking with the aftermath of that power surge. When she touched the bed she collapsed into it, too exhausted to disentangle herself from the blankets, helpless as with a fever. Dream or reality faded, and in the morning when she finally awoke, late and heavy eyed, she was not sure if it had happened at all.

VI

Weddings have their own momentum. Once the machinery has been set in motion—once invitations have been issued and accepted, present lists placed with suitable department stores, caterers conjured, live music laid on, flowers, bridesmaids, and multistory cakes all concocted—once male relatives have hired or resurrected morning suits and female ones have bought outfits in the sort of pastel colors that should be worn only by newborn infants—the whole circus rolls on like a juggernaut with no brakes, crushing anything and anyone who may get in its way. The groom is sidelined, the bride traumatized. Couples who are madly in love lose track of their passion, floundering in a welter of trivial details, trapped by the hopes and expectations of their devoted kith and kin. Those less in love find in these chaotic preliminaries the wherewithal to blot out their doubts, giving themselves no leisure to think, no leeway to withdraw. So it had been with Fern. She had made her decision and intended to stand by it, obliterating any last-minute reservations; and now, when she felt a sudden need to stop, to reconsider, to take her time, there was no time left to take. It was Friday already, and although she had overslept she did not feel rested, and the morning was half-gone, and the phone was starting to ring downstairs. Someone answered it, and Fern stretched and lay still, temporarily reprieved, and for the first time in more than a decade she opened her waking mind to memories of Atlantis. A villa on a mountainside, a room golden with lamplight and candlelight, the blue evening deepening outside. The echo of a thought, bittersweet with pain:
This is how I shall remember it, when it is long gone
… She got up in a sudden rush and began rummaging furiously in her dressing-table
drawer, and there it was, tucked away at the back where she had hidden it all those years ago. A skein of material, cobweb thin and sinuous as silk, so transparent that it appeared to have neither hue nor pattern, until a closer look revealed the elusive traces of a design, and faint gleams of color like splintered light. As Fern let it unfold, the creases of long storage melted away, and it lay over her arms like a drift of pale mist. She was still holding it when she went down to the kitchen in search of coffee. Will frowned: he thought he had seen it before.