“My twin is a boy,” Jennifer said.
The dog gave a short, sharp laugh, an uncomfortable sound, as if he was not used to laughing.
“Himself will nae be pleased at that. Oh no. Twins be nae easily unpossessed.”
“But it explains everything,” the dragon said in his rumbly way.
“Nae at all, nae at all,” whined the dog. “My poor head. My poor dowp.” He lay down on the ground and looked miserable.
“It explains,” the dragon said patiently to the dog, “why we are still the very color and feel of iron, though free of it. We must find the boy as well, I fear, before we can go from this bounden place as we once were.” Turning his great head to the sky, he remarked, “What time is it, child? Neither night nor day, by the looks of it.”
“Actually afternoon, I think,” said Jennifer. “Or it should be.” She looked up at the grey sky, which indeed gave no hint of time.
“In the world of magic there be all time and no time,” said the dog. “Michael Scot maks it so.”
“Time was and is and will be more,
Ere we walk free out of this door,” the unicorn added mysteriously.
“Does she always do that?” asked Jennifer.
“Do what?” rumbled the dragon.
“Talk in rhyme.”
The dragon smiled, which showed an enormous number of teeth. “All unicorns rhyme. It’s in the blood.” A small breath of smoke escaped between two of his bottom teeth.
“Ne’er mind the time. That boy—be he sprack or toustie—we need him,” the dog said, standing.
“Will ye tak us to him?”
That was when Jennifer finally burst into those long-held-back tears.
Fifteen
The Dark Trio
There, there,” said the dragon to Jennifer. He was trying to be comforting, but that grumble of a voice allowed for little comfort. “There, there.” Jennifer kept on crying.
“I hate it when humans do that!” exclaimed the dog, lying down again. He put his paws over his ears. “Greetin’ and carrying on. Canna ye stop her?”
“A tale can melt the hardest heart,
And make the softest feel the part,” sang the unicorn.
“The only tale I have,” the dragon said, “is about being bound by the iron. And to tell it would only remind the child of what she does not want to hear.”
Jennifer shoved the map into her pocket and wiped away the tears with the back of her hand. “No—tell me,” she said, then snuffled. “I won’t cry anymore. But tell me everything. Then maybe I’ll know what to do. There’s only me now, you see, to rescue them all from the wizard. Peter and Molly. And Mom and Pop. And Gran and Da.” The list was so long, it ended up being a kind of plaintive wail that caused the dog to put his paws even tighter over his ears.
“Ah, child,” said the dragon, “none of us knows what to do about that. We could not even rescue ourselves without your help. But if past is prologue, then you shall have it.” He sat on his great black haunches, closed his eyes, and threw his head back. “I was born on a fine morning in—”
“Not that far past,” growled the dog, taking his paws off his ears and sitting up. “Or the wizard will have her family dead and buried before we get to yer first teeth.”
“I was born with all my teeth,” said the dragon.
“Och—gae on with yer tronie, then, for all I care,” growled the dog. “I was only trying to help, mind.”
“I will get to the meat of the matter, then,” said the dragon. “I was a red dragon, the color of flame. Born at the beginning of this world’s turning.”
"History always makes its start
Inside the storyteller’s heart,” the unicorn said in an aside to Jennifer.
“Please, Dragon,” Jennifer said. “The dog is right. Get to the important part. Quickly. I haven’t all that much time.”
The black dog wriggled his rear with the compliment, his long, slim tail beating against the ground.
“IwasareddragonthecolorofflameandMichael Scotboundmeincoldiron,” said the dragon, in an offended tone.
“Not quite that quickly,” said Jennifer, unable to keep the exasperation out of her own voice.
“I’ll tell it plain. We were all bounden by the wizard,” said the dog, standing and walking slowly to where Jennifer sat. He put his long muzzle in her lap. His liquid eyes stared up at her, as if memorizing her face. “I for disobedience, the unicorn for treachery, and the dragon”—he picked his head up and stared over at the dragon—“and the dragon for being bloody boring.”
“Arrrrrrrrrrgh!” the dragon said, which was both a sound and a flame, black and hot. The flame licked at the dog’s ears and he scooted around the back of the oak to hide there.
“Don’t,” said Jennifer, standing and shaking her finger at the dragon. “Don’t be a bully. I can’t stand bullies.”
“It will take more than a finger shake to best Michael Scot,” said the dragon.
“And more than a blaze of fire,” replied Jennifer, “or you’d have done it before.”
“He did do it before,” said the dog, sidling out from behind the tree to stand next to Jennifer. “And that’s why he was bounden. He’s nae got an ounce of control. If the fire had seared the wizard instead of the wall, we had all been the better for it.”
“Fire and water and wild” sang the unicorn,
“And the pearly heart of a child.”
“I suppose,” Jennifer said, turning to the unicorn, “that you mean the fire is the dragon and”—she guessed—“you are the water?”
“A unicorn’s horn maks all water pure,” explained the dog.
Without thinking, Jennifer’s hand went down to the dog’s head and rested there. “Then you are the wild?” she asked.
“Only when I am wi’out a master,” said the dog, pushing his head up against her hand.
“And that makes me the child.” Jennifer nodded. “I’m not so sure about that pearly heart, though.”
“Just unicorn-talk for an innocent, a pure one,” the dog said. “Don’t tak a bit of notice. It’s just blether. Nonsense.”
“So what comes next?” Jennifer turned her gaze from one animal to the next.
“What way is next the map shall show,
As underground we all must go.” The unicorn pranced on her little hooves and spun around.
“Underground? You mean like in caves?” Jennifer shuddered. “I hate that sort of thing.”
“You must go,” explained the dragon, “because a hero always goes underground in his journey.” He looked at Jennifer. “Or her journey.”
“Who says?” Jennifer asked.
“Everyone knows,” said the dragon.
“Every dragon knows,” the dog amended. “Because it’s in caves that every dragon meets a hero.”
Jennifer refrained from reminding them what usually happened to the dragon in such a scenario. She didn’t think that blurting that out would be at all polite. Or safe. “Are you sure?” she asked the unicorn. “I mean, about the underground part.”
The unicorn did not speak but, slowly and with great resolve, nodded her black head up and down three times, the ebony horn making a graceful ellipse with each pass.
Jennifer thought for a minute. She wasn’t sure she trusted them completely. They were an annoying, quarrelsome trio. But if they hated Michael Scot for binding them, then they had to be on her side. She started to nod her agreement back, then suddenly remembered something.
“Treachery,” she said slowly, “and disobedience.”
“Dinna forget,” the dog said, “lack of control.” He bared his teeth at the dragon.
“Not much in the way of a hero’s companions.” Jennifer was beginning to change her mind.
“Do you have any other choice?” asked the dragon, who for once was refusing to be baited by the dog.
It is, thought Jennifer, a question with no good answer. “Come on, then,” she said.
As if her permission was
all they’d been waiting for, the dark trio surrounded her and, a bit warily, herded her back toward the spot in the forest where the summer hoose used to stand.
Sixteen
Underground
The going was easier this time because the dragon went ahead, with the unicorn right behind, and together they cut a huge swath through the underbrush. Jennifer stepped where they had stepped, in the dragon’s enormous footprints and the smaller hoofprints made by the unicorn. On either side of the trail the two large creatures left a hash of broken vines, trampled flowers, and mangled plants.
“Dinna fash yerself. Dinna worry,” the dog told Jennifer over and over. “Dinna be distressed.” After a while, it became a whining litany.
Finally she turned on him. “How can I not be distressed, you silly mutt?”
He bowed his head but continued walking, mumbling, “I be silly. I be indeed. A silly, stupid dog. I be, however, nae a mutt. Whate’er a mutt may be.”
Jennifer was immediately contrite. “Don’t listen to me, Dog. I am just a bit—”
“Afraid? ’Tis all right to be afraid. I have ne’er known a hero who was not a bit afraid. A bit is all right. A lot is not.”
Jennifer didn’t tell him that she had gone past “a bit” back when Molly had first been taken from the house, and past “a lot” when the rest of the family had disappeared. She didn’t tell him she wasn’t a hero. “I just don’t like caves.”
Up ahead the dragon suddenly stopped and raised his great head, the long neck bending and straightening as he looked around. Beside him the unicorn stopped as well, then spun about three times on her hind legs before settling back down on all fours.
“Are we almost there?” asked Jennifer.
“Patience,” cautioned the dog. He sounded so much like Mom, Jennifer’s eyes got teary.
Instead of answering her question, the dragon stepped aside and Jennifer could see that his great bulk had been hiding the entrance to a cave—an entrance that was blocked by a massive wooden door.
“Well,” Jennifer said in an overly bright voice.
“A locked door. Too tight to crawl through, too big to break down.”
“There’s a keyhole,” said the dog sensibly.
“My key only opens the summer hoose door,” said Jennifer.
“This be the summer hoose,” said the dog, “in a different guise. Canna ye smell it?” He sniffed the air. “I can.”
Jennifer remembered the black splotch on the map where the summer hoose should have been. Black for dark. Black for evil. Black for Michael Scot’s heart.
“One door for summer, one door for fall,
One door makes winter of them all,” sang the unicorn.
“There are only two doors,” Jennifer pointed out.
The dragon smiled his toothy smile. “Poetic license.”
Slowly Jennifer drew the key out of her pocket and put it in the keyhole. Unsurprisingly, it fit. Slowly she turned the key. There was a shallow clanking sound and then the great door swung open, revealing a long stone passageway. Jennifer pulled the key out and hesitated.
“I’ll go first,” said the dragon, “being that caves and dragons belong together. Even before caves and heroes.”
Jennifer didn’t argue, but she followed close behind. The dragon’s bulky legs offered some protection, though she wasn’t sure from what.
The passageway was unlit, and it wound down and down and down into the bowels of the earth. Walking behind the dragon’s swinging tail, Jennifer could feel the pressure of all that stone and dirt upon her; she felt buried alive. Reaching out a hand to the wall, she recoiled at the damp and slimy feel. She began to sniffle, and she would have begun screaming as well, had the dog not come up by her side and leaned against her.
She put her right hand on his head, and as if he were a guide dog, he led her through the black tunnel of stone.
They seemed to walk forever in the dark. They’d left summer outside, with its flowers and soft breezes, and now were going where it was forever damp and cold, Into a kind of winter, Jennifer thought, with this passage between being the autumn of their trip. In some ways the unicorn had been right after all. Poetic license, indeed.
***
After a few more turns, Jennifer guessed that there had to be some sort of light source ahead, because now she could see a thin grey outline around the dragon’s bulk, like the corona of an eclipse.
Light, she thought, breathing shallowly. Light will help.
The dragon moved forward several steps more, hesitated a moment, then walked through an enormous archway.
Suddenly they were in a large cavern of light, where torches—the real kind, with flames—illuminated hundreds of hanging stalactites and uprising stalagmites. In the torch glow, it looked as if the cavern had a wall of ice glittering cruelly on one side, and a wall of flickering green flame on the other. Only the far end of the cavern was still an inky black, as if a backdrop to the rest.
In the very middle of the cavern rose a stone platform as high and as wide as a bed. On it lay Molly, Gran, and Mom, with the rosy-haired doll beside them. They were all on their backs, eyes closed, looking as if they were asleep.
Or dead.
Jennifer drew in a gasping breath and then felt again the steadying pressure of the dog by her side. Slowly she walked up to the platform and saw the gentle rise and fall of breath in each body, and was comforted by that. A little.
So she left the bedside and walked around the rest of the cave, looking for some sign of Peter and Pop and Da. There—beneath great columns of the ice, she thought she could distinguish the shadows of what might have been bodies, but in the wavering light she could not be sure.
“Third time welcome,” came the hateful drawling voice of Michael Scot from the dark end of the cave. “In the attic, in the hoose, and now here, in my cave. Where I have been bound up too long waiting a hand on the map.”
“I do not feel very welcome,” Jennifer replied, trying to spot the wizard in that vast blackness, and failing.
Under her hand the dog began to tremble, and this time it was Jennifer who did the steadying, her fingers tangled in his long black hair.
“Oh, ye are welcome, indeed, if ye ha’e brought me my map,” said Michael Scot. “For it protected ye in the summer hoose but brought ye surefooted to me in my cave.”
Suddenly a shadow amid the shadows moved out into the light. Michael Scot stood next to the raised platform. Black hair, dark cape, high cheekbones, hawk nose. He was still incredibly handsome, and he smiled that snake smile, which—in the tremulous light of the cave—was even more frightening than before.
“I brought the map,” said Jennifer, taking several steps backward, and stopping only because she had bumped up against the bulk of the dragon. “Or maybe it brought me. But you shall not have it.”
“Oh, I shall ha’e it, lassie, I shall ha’e it very soon. And there is naught ye can do to stop me.”
“My three friends shall stop you,” she said, but her own voice betrayed her doubt.
Michael Scot put his head back and laughed. “These three treacherous, cowerin’ beasties? I am surprised ye could unbind them at all—but they’ll be as little use to ye as they were to me.” He held up his right hand and counted off on his fingers. “One—a dragon so filled wf anger he canna direct his flame. Two—a one-horn so treacherous, she canna be trusted to speak the truth. And three—that misbegotten dog that now trembles at yer side. Could ye count on such a coward? I could not. Och, lass—ye would ha’e done better on yer own.”
Secretly Jennifer agreed with him. But she would not let that show. The animals had already come this far with her, showing themselves beholden for their unbinding. Besides, they were all that she had. So she said, much more boldly than she felt, “Perhaps they are..."and then stopped. She wasn’t sure what word she wanted. Suddenly she saw a reflection of herself and the creatures in the wall of ice and knew what to say. “Perhaps they are mirrors of their master.”
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The dog made a noise, a low, throaty sound, not exactly a growl. It took a moment for Jennifer to realize he was chuckling.
“Enough of this blether,” the wizard said petulantly. He snapped his fingers, and another shadow stepped out of the darkness to stand by his side. “Redcap, for yer hunger, tak the dragon.”
The figure now in the light was something out of a nightmare: a muscular man-creature with skinny fingers that ended in eagle talons, large fiery red eyes that glowed in the dark, and grisly grey hair that lay lank upon his shoulders. He wore iron boots laced up with wire, a stained leather loincloth, and an odd red cap that perched on top of his head. A pikestaff was gripped tightly in his left hand.
“Ye’ll like this, lass,” the wizard said, once more smiling. “He delights in keeping his cap red by dipping it in blood.”
“The demon,” she whispered to herself, remembering that Michael Scot had said he liked to eat boys. “The last figure in a corner of the map.”
As if he had heard her, Redcap grinned. His teeth were long and pointed, like a tiger’s. He lifted the pikestaff and looked toward her—but he seemed to be looking through her to the dragon, who stood behind Jennifer, trembling.
Seventeen
Wizard’s Power
Tak him!” ordered Michael Scot.
At his master’s voice, Redcap leaped forward and, with the staff, swept Jennifer to one side. She tumbled head over heels and crashed against one of the ice columns, shattering it.
Out stumbled Peter, who, white and cold, collapsed at her feet. The turban, which had been in his possession, fell to the cave floor, spilling out the red jewel.
Jennifer was about to put her arms around him, to warm and comfort him, when an awful scream made her look up.
Redcap had stuck his pike, the cruel knife part of it, up under the dragon’s chin and with a mighty shove had tom an enormous hole in the creature’s throat. Then he had casually taken off his red cap and dipped it in the waterfall of blood.
The dragon was still screaming, a horrible bubbling sound, and in his agony he let go a great gout of flame that crossed the cave and seared the columns of ice. At the same time, the unicorn was stamping its hooves on the cave floor, making a rat-tat-a-tatting like a funeral drum.