Dragonfield (25 page)

The sealskin was gone.

“Sel!” he cried then as he ran from the house, and he named his sons in a great anguished cry as he ran. Down to the sea-ledge he went, calling their names like a prayer: “James, John, Michael, George, William, Rob, Tom!”

But they were gone.

The rocks were gray, as gray as the sky. At the water’s edge was a pile of clothes that lay like discarded skins. Merdock stared out far across the cove and saw a seal herd swimming. Yet not a herd. A white seal and seven strong pups.

“Sel!” he cried again. “James, John, Michael, George, William, Rob, Tom!”

For a moment, the white seal turned her head, then she looked again to the open sea and barked out seven times. The wind carried the faint sounds back to the shore. Merdock heard, as if in a dream, the seven seal names she called. They seemed harsh and jangling to his ear.

Then the whole herd dove. When they came up again they were but eight dots strung along the horizon, lingering for a moment, then disappearing into the blue edge of sea.

Merdock recited the seven seal names to himself. And in that recitation was a song, a litany to the god of the seals. The names were no longer harsh, but right. And he remembered clearly again the moonlit night when the seals had danced upon the sand. Maidens all. Not a man or boy with them. And the white seal turning and choosing him, giving herself to him that he might give the seal people life.

His anger and sadness left him then. He turned once more to look at the sea and pictured his seven strong sons on their way.

He shouted their seal names to the wind. Then he added, under his breath, as if trying out a new tongue, “Fair wind, my sons. Fair wind.”

O
NCE A GOOD MAN
lived at the foot of a mountain. He helped those who needed it and those who did not.

And he never asked for a thing in return.

Now it happened that one day the Lord was looking over his records with his Chief Angel and came upon the good man’s name.

“That
is a good man,” said the Lord. “What can we do to reward him? Go down and find out.”

The Chief Angel, who was nibbling on a thin cracker, swallowed hastily and wiped her mouth with the edge of her robe.

“Done,” she said.

So the Chief Angel flew down, the wind feathering her wings, and landed at the foot of the mountain.

“Come in,” said the man, who was not surprised to see her. For in those days angels often walked on Earth. “Come in and drink some tea. You must be aweary of flying.”

And indeed the angel was. So she went into the Good Man’s house, folded her wings carefully so as not to knock the furniture about, and sat down for a cup of tea.

While they were drinking their tea, the angel said, “You have led such an exemplary life, the Lord of Hosts has decided to reward you. Is there anything in the world that you wish?”

The Good Man thought a bit. “Now that you mention it,” he said, “there is one thing.”

“Name it,” said the angel. “To name it is to make it yours.”

The Good Man looked slightly embarrassed. He leaned over the table and said quietly to the angel, “If only I could see both Heaven and Hell I would be completely happy.”

The Chief Angel choked a bit, but she managed to smile nonetheless. “Done,” she said, and finished her tea. Then she stood up, and held out her hand.

“Hold fast,” she said. “And never lack courage.”

So the Good man held fast. But he kept his eyes closed all the way. And before he could open them again, the man and the angel had flown down, down, down past moles and molehills, past buried treasure, past coal in seams, past layer upon layer of the world, till they came at last to the entrance to Hell.

The Good Man felt a cool breeze upon his lids and opened his eyes.

“Welcome to Hell,” said the Chief Angel.

The Good Man stood amazed. Instead of flames and fire, instead of mud and mire, he saw long sweeping green meadows edged around with trees. He saw long wooden tables piled high with food. He saw chickens and roasts, fruits and salads, sweetmeats and sweet breads, and goblets of wine.

Yet the people who sat at the table were thin and pale. They devoured the food only with their eyes.

“Angel, oh Angel,” cried the Good Man, “why are they hungry? Why do they not eat?”

And at his voice, the people all set up a loud wail.

The Chief Angel signaled him closer.

And this is what he saw. The people of Hell were bound fast to their chairs with bands of steel. There were sleeves of steel from their wrists to their shoulders. And though the tables were piled high with food, the people were starving. There was no way they could bend their arms to lift the food to their mouths.

The Good Man wept and hid his face. “Enough!” he cried.

So the Chief Angel held out her hand. “Hold fast,” she said. “And never lack courage.”

So the Good Man held fast. But he kept his eyes closed all the way. And before he could open them again, the man and the angel had flown up, up, up past eagles in their eyries, past the plump clouds, past the streams of the sun, past layer upon layer of sky till they came at last to the entrance to Heaven.

The Good Man felt a warm breeze upon his lids and opened his eyes.

“Welcome to Heaven,” said the Chief Angel.

The Good Man stood amazed. Instead of clouds and choirs, instead of robes and rainbows, he saw long sweeping green meadows edged around with trees. He saw long wooden tables piled high with food. He saw chickens and roasts, fruits and salads, sweetmeats and sweet breads, and goblets of wine.

But the people of Heaven were bound fast to their chairs with bands of steel. There were sleeves of steel from their wrists to their shoulders. There seemed no way they could bend their arms to lift the food to their mouths.

Yet these people were well fed. They laughed and talked and sang praises to their host, the Lord of Hosts.

“I do not understand,” said the Good Man. “It is the same as Hell, yet it is not the same. What is the difference?”

The Chief Angel signaled him closer.

And this is what he saw: each person reached out with his steel-banded arm to take a piece of food from the plate. Then he reached over—and fed his neighbor.

When he saw this, the Good Man was completely happy.

T
HE SHOPS WERE NOT
noticeable from the main street and were almost lost in the back-alley maze as well. But Mrs. Stambley was an expert at antiquing. A new city and a new back alley got up her fighting spirit, as she liked to tell her group at home. That this city was half a world away from her comfortable Salem, Massachusetts home did not faze her. In England or America she guessed she knew how to look. She had dozed in the sun as the boat made its way along the Thames. At her age naps had become important. Her head nodded peacefully under its covering of flowers draped on a wine-colored crown. She never even registered the tour guide’s spiel. At Greenwich she had debarked meekly with the rest of the tourists, but she had easily slipped the leash of the guide who took the rest of the pack up to check out Greenwich Mean Time. Instead, Mrs. Stambley, her large black leather pocket-book clutched in a sturdy gloved grip, had gone hunting on her own.

To the right of the harbor street was a group of shops and, she sensed, a back alley or two. The smell of it—sharp, mysterious, inviting—drew her in.

She ignored the main street and its big-windowed stores. A small cobbled path ran between two buildings and she slipped into it as comfortably as a well-worn slipper. There were several branchings, and Mrs. Stambley checked each one out with her watery blue eyes. Then she chose one. She knew it would be the right one. As she often said to her group at home, “I have a gift, a power. I am
never
wrong about it.”

Here there were several small, dilapidated shops that seemed to edge one into the other. They had a worn look as if they had sat huddled together, the damp wind blowing off the river mouldering their bones, while a bright new town had been built up around them. The windows were dirty, finger-streaked. Only the most intrepid shopper would find the way into them. There were no numbers on the doors.

The first store was full of maps. And if Mrs. Stambley hadn’t already spent her paper allowance (she maintained separate monies for paper, gold, and oddities) on a rare chart of the McCodrun ancestry, she might have purchased a map of British waters that was decorated with tritons blowing “their wreathed horns” as the bent-over shopkeeper had quoted. She had been sorely tempted. Mrs. Stambley collected “objets d’mer”, as she called them. Sea antiquities. Sea magic was her specialty in the group. But the lineage of the Clan McCodrun—the reputed descendents of the selchies—had wiped out her comfortable paper account. And Mrs. Stambley, who was always precise in her reckonings, never spent more than her allotment. As the group’s treasurer she had to keep the others in line. She could do no less for herself.

So she oohed and aahed at the map for the storekeeper’s benefit and because it
was
quite beautiful and probably seventeenth century. She even managed to talk him down several pounds on the price, keeping her hand in as it were. But she left smiling her thanks. And he had been so impressed with the American lady’s knowledge of the sea and its underwater folk, he smiled back even though she had bought nothing.

The next two shops were total wastes of time. One was full of reproductions and second-hand, badly painted china cups and cracked glassware. Mrs. Stambley sniffed as she left, muttering under her breath “Junk—spelled j-u-n-q-u-e,” not even minding that the lady behind the counter heard her. The other store had been worse, a so-called craft shop full of hand-made tea cosies and poorly chrocheted afghans in simply appalling colors.

As she entered the fourth shop, Mrs. Stambley caught her breath. The smell was there, the smell of deep-sea magic. So deep and dark it might have been called up from the Marianas Trench. In all her years of hunting, she had never had such a find. She put her right hand over her heart and stumbled a bit, scuffing one of her sensible shoes. Then she straightened up and looked around.

The shop was a great deal longer than it was wide, with a staircase running up about halfway along the wall. The rest of the walls were lined with china cupboards in which Victorian and Edwardian cups and saucers were tastefully displayed. One in particular caught her eye because it had a Poseidon on the side. She walked over to look at it, but the magic smell did not come from there.

Books in stacks on the floor blocked her path, and she looked through a few to see what there was. She found an almost complete Brittanica, the 1913 edition, missing only the thirteenth volume. There was a first edition of Fort’s
Book of the Damned,
and a dark grimmoire so water stained she could make out none of the spells. There were three paperbook copies of
Folklore of the Sea,
a pleasant volume she had at home. And even the obscure
Melusine or the Mistress from the Sea
in both English and French.

She walked carefully around the books and looked for a moment at three glass cases containing fine replicas of early schooners, even down to the carved figureheads. One was of an Indian maiden, one an angel, one an unnamed muse with long, flowing hair. But she already had several such at home, her favorite a supposed replica of the legendary ship of the Flying Dutchman. Looking cost nothing, though, and so she looked for quite a while, giving herself time to become used to the odor of the deep magic.

She almost backed into a fourth case, and when she turned around, she got the shock of her life.

In a glass showcase with brass fittings, resting on two wooden holders, was a Malaysian Mer.

She had read about them, of course, in the footnotes of obscure folklore journals and in a grimmoire of specialized sea spells, but she had never in her wildest imaginings thought to see one. They were said to have disappeared totally.

They were not really mermen, of course. Rather, they were constructs made by Malaysian natives out of monkeys and fish. The Malaysians killed the monkeys, cut off the top halfs from the navel up, and sewed on a fish tail. The mummified remains were then sold to innocent British tars in Victorian times. The natives had called the mummies mermen and the young sailors believed them, brought the Mers home and gave them to loved ones.

And here, resting on its wooden stands, was a particularly horrible example of one, probably rescued from an attic where it had lain all these years, dust-covered, rotting.

It was gray-green, with the gray more predominant, and so skeletal its rib cage reminded Mrs. Stambley of the pictures of starving children in Africa. Its arms were held stiffly in front as if it were doing an out-of-water dogpaddle. The grimacing face, big-lipped, big eared, stared in horror out at her. She could not see the stitches that held the monkey half to the fish half.

“I see you like our Mer,” came a voice from behind her, but Mrs. Stambley did not turn. She simply could not take her eyes from the grotesque mummy in the glass and brass case.

“A Malaysian Mer,” Mrs. Stambley whispered. One part of her noticed the price sticker on the side of the glass—three hundred pounds. Six hundred American dollars. It was more than she had with her… but. …

“You know what it is, then,” the voice went on. “That is too bad. Too bad.”

The Mer blinked its lashless lids and turned its head. Its eyes were black as shrouds, without irises. When it rolled its lips back, it showed sharp yellow-gray teeth. It had no tongue.

Mrs. Stambley tried to look away and could not. Instead she felt herself being drawn down, down, down into the black deeps of those eyes.

“That really is
too
bad,” came the voice again, but now it was very far away and receding quickly.

Mrs. Stambley tried to open her mouth to scream, but only bubbles came out. All around her it was dark and cold and wet, and still she was pulled downward until she landed, with a jarring thud, on a sandy floor. She stood, brushed her skirts down, and settled her hat back on her head. Then, as she placed her pocketbook firmly under one arm, she felt a grip on her ankle, as if seaweed wanted to root her to that spot. She started to struggle against it when a change in the current against her face forced her to look up.