Dragonfield (12 page)

“Has Death been here already?” asked Karl of a weeping woman.

“Death has been here many times,” she answered. “But today she has taken my child.”

“She?”
said Karl. “But surely Death is a man.”

“Death is a woman,” she answered him at once. “Her hair is long and thick and dark, like the roots of trees. Her body is huge and brown, but she is barren. The only way she can bear a child is to bear it away.”

Karl felt her anger and sorrow then, for they matched his own, so he joined the line of mourners to the grave. And when the child’s tiny box had been laid in the ground, he sang it down with the others. But his voice lifted above theirs, a small bird soaring with ease over larger ones. The townsfolk stopped singing in amazement and listened to him.

Karl sang not of death but of his village in the valley, of the seasons that sometime stumble one into another, and of the small pleasures of the hearth. He sang tune after tune the whole of that day, and just at nightfall he stopped. They threw dirt on the baby’s coffin and brought Karl to their home.

“Your songs eased my little one’s passage,” said the woman. “Stay with us this night. We owe you that.”

“I wish that I had been here before,” said Karl. “I might have saved your baby with a song.”

“I fear Death would not be cheated so easily of her chosen child,” said the woman. She set the table but did not eat.

Karl left in the morning. And as he walked, he thought about Death, how it was a hollow-eyed prince to the priest but a jealous mother to the woman. If Death could change shapes with such ease, how would he know Death when they finally met? He walked and walked, his mind in a puzzle, until he came at last to a plain that lay like a great open wound between mountains.

The plain was filled with an army of fighting men. There were men with bows and men with swords and men with wooden staves. Some men fought on horseback, and some fought from their knees. Karl could not tell one band of men from another, could not match friend with friend, foe with foe, for their clothes were colored by dirt and by blood and every man looked the same. And the screams and shouts and the crying of horns were a horrible symphony in Karl’s ears.

Yet there was one figure Karl
could
distinguish. A woman, quite young, dressed in a long white gown. Her dark braids were caught up in ribbons of white and looped like a crown on her head. She threaded her way through the ranks of men like a shuttle through a loom, and there seemed to be a pattern in her going. She paused now and then to put a hand to the head or the breast of one man and then another. Each man she touched stopped fighting and, with an expression of surprise, left his body and followed the girl, so that soon there was a great wavering line of gray men trailing behind her.

Then Karl knew that he had found Death.

He ran down the mountainside and around the flank of the great plain, for he wanted to come upon Death face to face. He called out as he ran, hoping to slow her progress, “Wait, oh, wait, my Lady Death; please wait for me.”

Lady Death heard his call above the battle noise, and she looked up from her work. A weariness sat between her eyes, but she did not stop. She continued her way from man to man, a hand to the brow or over the heart. And at her touch, each man left his life to follow the young girl named Death.

When Karl saw that she would not stop at his calling, he stepped into her path. But she walked through him as if through air and went on her way, threading the line of dead gray men behind her.

So Karl began to sing. It was all he knew to do.

He sang not of death but of growing and bearing, for they were things she knew nothing of. He sang of small birds on the apple spray and bees with their honeyed burden. He sang of the first green blades piercing the warmed earth. He sang of winter fields where moles and mice sleep quietly under the snow. Each tune swelled into the next.

And Lady Death stopped to listen.

As she stopped, the ribbon of soldiers that was woven behind her stopped, too, and from their dead eyes tears fell with each memory. The battlefield was still, frozen by the songs. And the only sound and the only movement and the only breath was Karl’s voice.

When he had finished at last, a tiny brown bird flew out of a dead tree, took up the last melody, and went on.

“I have made you stop, Lady Death,” cried Karl. “And you have listened to my tunes. Will you now pay for that pleasure?”

Lady Death smiled, a slow, weary smile, and Karl wondered that someone so young should have to carry such a burden. And his pity hovered between them in the quiet air.

“I will pay, Karel,” she said.

He did not wonder that she knew his true name, for Lady Death would, in the end, know every human’s name.

“Then I ask for my mother in exchange,” said Karl.

Lady Death looked at him softly then. She took up his pity and gave it back. “That I cannot do. Who follows me once, follows forever. But is it not payment enough to know that you have stayed my hand for this hour? No man has ever done that before.”

“But you promised to pay,” said Karl. His voice held both anger and disappointment, a man and a child’s voice in one.

“And what I promise,” she said, looking at him from under darkened lids, “I do.”

The Dream Weaver’s voice stopped for a moment.

“Is that all?” asked the man. “That is no ending. What of the coins I gave you?”

“Hush,” the Dream Weaver said to him. “This is strange. This has never happened before. There is not one ending but two. I feel that here,” and she held up her hands.

“Then tell them to me. Both. I paid,” he said.

The Dream Weaver nodded. “This is the first way the dream ends,” she said, and wove.

Lady Death put her hand in front of her, as if reaching into a cupboard, and a gray form that was strangely transparent took shape under her fingers. It became a harp, with smoke-colored strings the color of Lady Death’s eyes.

“A useless gift,” said Karl. “I cannot play.”

But Lady Death reached over and set the harp in his hand, careful not to touch him with her own.

And as the harp molded itself under his fingers, Karl felt music surge through his bones. He put his thumb and forefinger on the strings and began to play.

At the first note, the battle began anew. Men fought, men bled, men suffered, men fell. But Karl passed through the armies untouched, playing a sweet tune that rose upward, in bursts, as the lark and its song spring toward the sun. He walked through the armies, through the battle, through the plain, playing his harp, and he never looked back again.

The Dream Weaver hesitated but a moment. “And the other ending,” the man commanded. But she had already begun.

“And what I promise,” Death said, looking at him from under darkened lids, “I do.”

She turned and pointed to the field, and Karl’s eyes followed her fingers.

“There in that field are six men whose heads and hearts I will not touch this day. Look carefully, Karel.”

He looked. “They are my brothers,” he said.

“Them, I will spare.” And Lady Death turned and stared into Karl’s face with her smoky eyes. “But I would have you sing for me again each night in the small hours when I rest, for I have never had such comfort before. Will you come?” She held out her hand.

Karl hesitated a moment, remembering his farm, remembering the fields, the valleys, the warm spring rains. Then he looked again at Lady Death, whose smile seemed a little less weary. He nodded and reached for her hand, and it was small and soft and cool in his. He raised her hand once to his lips, then set it, palm open, over his heart. He never felt the cold.

Then, hand in hand, Karl and Lady Death walked through the battlefield. Their passing made not even the slightest breeze on the cheeks of the wounded, nor an extra breath for the dying. Only the dead who traveled behind saw them pass under the shadows of the farthest hills. But long after they had gone, the little bird sang Karl’s last song over and over and over again into the darkening air.

“I liked the other ending best,” said the man. “It was the better bargain.”

“Bargain?” The Dream Weaver’s mouth soured with the word.

“A bargain, old one,” he said. “The boy bought a salable talent with his song. He got better than he gave and that is always, a bargain. I like that.” The man chuckled to himself and went away, his footsteps tapping lightly on the street.

“A bargain was it?” the Weaver mumbled to herself, finishing off the tale and its two separate endings. “A bargain!” she said again, shaking her head. She thought for a moment of taking the first ending apart, saving the threads for another time. She knew the man would not be back for it, and it had not pleased her, that ending. Still, she could not bear to unravel her work, so she put it with the others in her bag.

The Dream Weaver fingered the coins in her pouch. Five already, no, six, and the sun was on its downward swing. It had been a good day. She could begin her slow dark trip home.

“There she is, the Dream Weaver,” came a voice. “Stop her. Oh, stop!”

The Dream Weaver, half standing, heard the voice and running steps as one. She turned and waited. Another coin to put in the pouch, to hold against the rains or the long, cold winter days.

“You are not through, Dream Weaver?” It was a young voice, a girl just become a woman. She sounded only slightly worried, stuttering a bit from the run.

“No, child, not if you want a dream.”

“We want a dream. Together, Dream Weaver.” It was almost a man’s voice, just out of boyhood but already gone through its change. “We made our pledges to one another today. We will be married by year’s end. We have saved a coin to celebrate our fortune and we have decided together on a dream. Give us a good one.”

The old woman smiled. “I have already spun one true love dream today. I do not know if there is another in these old fingers.” She held them up before her eyes as if she could see them. She was proud of them, her clever fingers. She knew that they were strong and supple despite their gnarled appearance.

“Oh, we do not need a true love dream,” came the girl’s quick response. “We have that ourselves, you see. Our parents would have married us to others—for gold. But we persuaded them to let us wed. It took a long time, too long. But
…”
She stopped as if to let the boy finish for her, but he was silent, simply staring at her while she spoke.

“Well, give me the coin then, and we shall see what the threads have to say,” said the Dream Weaver. “They never lie. But sometimes the dream is not easy to read.”

The young man handed her the coin, and she slipped it into the pouch. She heard not even a rustle of impatience. They simply waited for her to begin, confident in their own living dreams.

The Dream Weaver picked out the threads with more flourish than was necessary. She would give them their penny’s worth.

“Watch as I thread the warp,” commanded the Dream Weaver, knowing they might need prompting to look at her rather than at one another.

At her command, they turned to watch. And this was the dream that she wove.

In the days when woods still circled the world and heroes could talk with beasts, there lived a princess whom everyone pitied.

She was the most beautiful girl imaginable. Her hair was the color of red leaves in the fall, burnished with orange and gold. Her eyes were the green of moss on stone, and her skin the color of fresh cream. She was slim and fair, and her voice was low. But she had a heart of stone.

When she was born, the midwife had grasped her firmly and slapped her lightly to bring out the first cry. But the first cry was the midwife’s instead.

“Look!” the woman gasped, pointing to the child’s breast. And there, cold and unmoving under the fragile shield of skin, was the outline of a heart. “She has a heart of stone.”

Then the child made a sound that was neither laugh nor cry and opened her eyes, but the stone in her breast did not move at all.

The king put his right palm on the child’s body, nearly covering it. He shook his head.

The queen turned her face against the pillow, but she could not weep until she heard the king weep. Then they wept as one.

The midwife was paid twice over in gold to stop her tongue, but it was too late. Her cry had already been heard. It went round the castle before the child had been wrapped.

“The princess has a heart of stone.”

“The princess has a heart of stone.”

The child grew up, hearing the whispers. And knowing her heart was made of stone and could feel neither sorrow nor joy, she felt nothing. She accepted the friendship of birds and beasts who asked neither smiles nor tears of her but only the comfort of her hand. But she stayed aloof from the companionship of people. And that is why she was called Princess Heart O’Stone—and was pitied.

Her parents would have done anything for her, but what could they do? They called in physicians who examined her. They thumped her bones and pulled at her skin and looked at her ears and eyes. They gave advice and said what was already known. “She is perfectly fit, except—except that her heart is made of stone.”

The king and queen called in poets and painters and singers of songs. They told of love never plighted, of wars never won, of mothers whose children all died.

The princess did not cry.

“If we can not move her, nothing can,” they said and left.

The royal couple called in clowns. And the courtyards of the kingdom filled with jongleurs and jesters, jugglers and jokers, who fell over one another in their efforts to fill the princess with delight. But as she had never cried, so she never laughed.

“What a heartless creature,” said the clowns. And they went away.

At last the king and queen gave up hope for a cure. Indeed they had lived through so many false promises and so much useless advice that they declared no one was ever again to speak of changing the princess’ condition. To do so was to invite a beheading.