The Deavys (23 page)

Why don't you just relax?
he chided himself. This
was
New York. With all that implied and promised, as N/Ice had defiantly put it. What were the girls doing, after all, but having a bit of fun with their magic? He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Of all people, when charged with making the model sailboat suitable for use, he more than anyone ought to have expected his sisters to go a little—overboard.

What more was wanted than what they had produced? As well as hewing to a steady course, the enlarged toy boat floated sufficiently high in the water to keep them nice and dry and well above any shallow patches. He did not understand how this could be so, given the apparent weightiness of its transformation. Idly, he wondered which of his sisters had succumbed to the notion of making the hull solid gold. Probably Amber. Of them all, she was the one most prone to garishness.

Though daylight was fading and the heavy fog reduced the ambient light still further, Simwan still found himself having to squint occasionally when a stray shaft of light bounced off a diamond fitting to temporarily blind him.

“Really now,” he asked N/Ice, and by inference her sisters, “even for New York, don't you think that as a piece of fey this is maybe a little bit over the top?” With a wave of his left hand he indicated the boat's interior. “I mean, come on now: diamond bolts and silk sails?”

“Hey,” Amber protested from where she was relaxing on the silken center bench, “like N/Ice said, we've never worked with a boat before, y'know?”

Since they could no longer see the southern edge of the Reservoir, Simwan felt it reasonable to assume they were at least halfway across. Though there wasn't much in the way of wind, or even a breeze, he kept the boat moving steadily forward by sculling back and forth with the rudder. There being neither current nor wave action, their situation was comparable to going for a peaceful sail in a bathtub.

They landed on the far north shore of the Reservoir without incident. Night made the air seem colder, though in fact there was as yet little change in the temperature since it continued to be moderated by the heavy cloud cover.

Their first order of business upon setting foot on dry parkland was to retransmogrify their sturdy but entirely too flamboyant little craft. It wouldn't do to have some idle Ord runner come jogging along the path that paralleled the Reservoir's north shore and stumble upon a full-size sailboat fashioned of gold and platinum and precious stones. Awkward questions might be asked. If more than one Ord happened across the craft, fights over discovery could well ensue. Worst of all, lawyers could become involved. Having determined to recover the Truth, the Deavys were not about to leave behind a creation of their own that would invariably generate less of that rare and valuable commodity.

Once again Simwan was able to stand back and play spectator as his sisters proceeded to deconstruct their magic. Gold vanished, platinum evaporated, silk turned back to cotton, and within a couple of minutes their garish vessel had been reduced to its original size, shape, and status. They left the toy craft there, by a bench, with nothing to indicate the remarkableness of the short but eventful journey it had just concluded. Hopefully, its young owner would return and recover it.

Their fight with the Madoon and the stress of crossing the Reservoir, coupled with the lateness of the hour, had left everyone famished. The north shore, however, proffered no invitingly illuminated, convivial snack wagon of the kind that had supplied drinks and nibbles to them prior to their watery crossing. There was nothing in the way of an evening restaurant or fast-food booth, nor did the rolling reaches of the North Meadow that lay spread out before them offer guarantee of anything more nourishing.

To the west lay the Upper West Side and the temptation of upscale neighborhood bistros and fast-food eateries. But getting there would mean having to recross the Bridle Path, a prospect no one cared to contemplate. To the east lay the culinary environs of the Upper East Side. But leaving the park meant, as they had already determined, having to abandon their search and start all over again another day. There was nothing for it, it was decided without argument, but to press on.

But not until something had been done to alleviate their hunger.

Simwan didn't argue. As badly as he wanted to hurry onward to the Crub's lair and maintain as much of an element of surprise as possible, he had to admit that to rush into what could be a potentially serious situation on an empty stomach was downright foolish. In the absence of restaurant or pushcart, they would have to find a way to feed themselves. Remembering the stories Grandpa Deavy used to tell of crossing the Tibetan Plateau on foot in the company of only a single Yeti, Simwan decided he and his sisters would find a way to get by.

That didn't mean any of them were happy about it.

“I'm cold.” Rose flopped down on a nearby bench, her scrunched expression illuminated by the soft glow of the overhead streetlight. “And my leg hurts.”

“I want a hamburger.” Amber pulled her coat tighter around her upper body and tugged the lip of her hood further down over her forehead. “With everything.”

N/Ice could not keep from commenting. “Better be careful what you wish for. This being New York, no telling what you might get on a hamburger if you ask for it with ‘everything.' In Australia, you'd get it with a slice of beetroot and a fried egg.”

Rose and Amber looked at each other and, in perfect unison, responded with a heartfelt “Eewww!” Simwan had to smile. His sisters might be cold and wet and discouraged, but they still had the energy to complain. Clearly, there was no lack of the traditional Deavy spirit among the tired, damp expedition.

“Come on,” he urged them. “We've dealt with everything else that's come our way so far.
Surely
, we can manage dinner.”

N/Ice lowered her gaze warningly. “By ‘we,' I take it you mean
us
? You're not implying, are you, big brother, that we twee three should be responsible for conjuring up dinner just because we're
girls
?”

Simwan met her gaze evenly. “You've tasted my cooking, both Ord and otherwise. Are you
sure
you want me involved in scaring up our supper?”

“Don't provoke him, N/Ice,” Amber interjected hastily. “Remember that time when Mom and Dad were out and he tried to make marshmallow crispies for all of us?”

Rose nodded in remembrance. “Yeah, and he confused the spell for egg whites with the one for a certain other kind of powder, and ended up making them with cement instead of marshmallow.”

“Fine, then.” N/Ice was convinced, if not necessarily mollified. “
We'll
figure out something for dinner.” Suddenly, she brightened. “Actually, I think big brother may already have helped.”

Her sisters eyed her uncertainly. “How do you mean?” Amber asked.

“He said something about ‘scaring up' supper.” Rising from the bench, she turned to gaze out across the misty, dimly lit expanse of the rolling North Meadow. “Maybe that's just what we ought to do. Can you imagine how many cookouts and picnics and barbecues people have scarfed down in this place?” She turned back to face her sisters. “All we have to do is call up their ghosts.”

“What good will it do to call up the ghosts of deceased picnickers?”

“Not the ghosts of the
picnickers
, silly.” N/Ice's fervor warmed the air around her. “The ghosts of their
food
.”

Amber blinked. “I didn't know food could leave behind ghosts.”

“Well, not all food.” N/Ice wavered slightly in her conviction. “Just food that goes unappreciated. A fried chicken that doesn't get eaten, for example, perishes unfulfilled. In that case, the chicken died for nothing. Or take a hamburger that just gets a bite taken out of it and is thrown away. Somewhere, somehow, a steer died to give birth to it, and all that beautiful cud-chewing life is just wasted. I imagine it's also true for vegetables that are cooked but discarded.”

Simwan found that his appetite, which moments earlier had begun to verge on the all-consuming, was fading rapidly. “I dunno about this,” he muttered uncomfortably. “I mean, eating ghost food …”

“Better than eating food intended for ghosts. It's bound not to be very fattening.” Rose was thawing to the idea. “And since it's already been prepared, we wouldn't have to do any cooking.” She smiled at her other sister. “You might even be able to get your hamburger.”

“How do you ‘scare up' ghost food?” Amber looked questioningly at N/Ice.

Finding herself on the spot, N/Ice straightened and declared with more assurance than she actually felt, “I've heard that a good chef always knows how to improvise. So that's what we'll do: We'll improvise.”

Once more, the girls linked hands. Instead of chanting in unison, they allowed N/Ice to take the lead. She did so with inspiration born of appetite. Simwan didn't catch all the words—Amber, for one, sing-songed something about N/Ice being “the hostess with the mostest toastest”—but he was right there when the ectoplasmic egg salad sandwich materialized out of nothingness. It was only half visible and half solid, but it was undeniably an egg salad sandwich.

He was not surprised that it was the first specimen of ghost food to come forth in response to the coubet's chanting. If he had been at a picnic where hamburgers and hot dogs and barbecued ribs were sizzling on a grill and someone had offered him an egg salad sandwich, he would have thrown it away uneaten, too. Present circumstances being somewhat different, however, and having not eaten anything since lunch at Tybolt the Butcher's, he snatched the spectral sandwich out of the night air before it could drift away or dematerialize and unhesitatingly took a big bite out of it.

As expected, there wasn't much to it. The lettuce in particular had little substance and less taste. But the faint, or in this case ghostly, tang of egg salad was unmistakable. Chewing something so insubstantial was almost an afterthought, and it slid down his throat without much effort on the part of his teeth and jaws. Once settled in his stomach, however, it felt right at home.

He finished the sandwich as other wraithlike nourishment started to materialize in response to the coubet's spell-cooking. Only when the girls felt they had called forth sufficient sustenance did they release one another's hands and scramble for their share of the drifting, itinerant bounty.

As the last of the lonely lunch meat faded back to nothingness, they cleaned themselves as best they were able and headed out across the damp greensward that comprised the gentle rolling hillocks of the North Meadow. They were in the northern quarter of the park now: the home stretch of their quest. Surely, Simwan felt, it could not be long before they encountered someone or something that could point the way straight into the Crub's lair.

Turns out he was right.

Unfortunately.

XX

By now they were—all of them, coubet, cat, and boy—mightily encouraged. They had made their way northward through most of the park and must surely be closing in on their quarry. True, dusk had fallen (or more accurately, given the steady mist and drizzle, seeped), catching them out later than they originally planned. But having made as much progress as they had in the course of a single day, Simwan was feeling more and more confident they would be able to catch the Crub by surprise. With luck, they would recover the Truth and be out of the park and back in the Ord part of the city before the repulsive thieving rat-thing knew what had hit him.

It was dreadful dark out on the meadow. A group of Ord youngsters would have huddled together uneasily and hurried toward the nearest well-lit paved pathway. Not the Deavys. They were not afraid of the night. There is a very real difference between being wary and being intimidated by something. Simwan was alert, but he was not scared. From time to time the coubet would break into a skip and a song, though they kept their voices down. Any hint of moon was pillowed behind the persistent rain clouds. Patches of denser fog danced and ebbed around the advancing Deavys like waltzing wraiths. The appearance of sentience was a coincidence only. Fog did not think. A foog, now—that was a different matter entirely.

“I smell something.” Slightly in the lead, N/Ice slowed her pace until she had fallen back between her sisters.

“Take more baths,” Rose suggested snidely.

Ordinarily, this response would have provoked an ancillary comment from Amber as well as a suitably snotty comeback from N/Ice, but this time neither girl replied. That, in turn, piqued Rose's interest as well as that of their brother.

“I smell it, too.” Head tilted slightly back, Simwan sniffed at the damp night air.

What he was smelling was all wrong. It smacked of something burning. Aside from the fact that there was no source in sight, the odor was all wrong for where they were. He struggled to identify it. It did not arise from burning newspapers or cardboard, as might have been expected if a couple of resident tramps had built an illegal campfire somewhere nearby. It did not reek of charcoal, as it would if a bunch of college students were toasting marshmallows around a fire-filled metal barrel. There were no overtones of pasteboard or plaster, wallboard or cured wood, so it couldn't be coming from a burning structure.

It took him a few more minutes before he could place it. More than anything else, the burning smell reminded him of the special desserts they enjoyed on their all-too-infrequent visits to Great-Aunt Erica's house up in the mountains of Vermont.

Cherries Jubilee.

Or maybe it was more like Bananas Foster. Or Crepes Suzette. It bothered him that he couldn't identify it precisely. Strawberries Romanoff, maybe, or Baked Alaska. In addition to adding to his ongoing frustration, these particularly toothsome remembrances were making him even hungrier. Then it hit him. What all those splendiferous desserts had in common. They were all
flaming
desserts.
That
was what they were smelling. Burning alcohol. As the pungent tickle in his nostrils intensified, he found himself looking around more and more anxiously.

Then the girls let out a simultaneous scream, Pithfwid threw sparks as he yowled a warning and jumped backward, the ground erupted in front of Simwan, and though they could not immediately identify the thing that emerged from the bowels of the earth directly before them, of one thing they were all right away certain. It was not a forgotten dessert.

If it
was
a dragon, it was surely the most peculiar representative of its kind Simwan had ever seen. Not that he had actually
seen
more than a dragon or two (there was that time several years ago when the family had vacationed in China), but they had been part and parcel of his after-school studies ever since he was old enough to peruse the special books in the family library. Yet what else could it be but a dragon?

The gaping mouth was huge and lined with appropriately vicious-looking, hooked teeth—but the jaws narrowed almost to a point. The eyes were set low down on the skull, which was as smooth and aerodynamic as the business end of a guided missile. For a moment, Simwan thought the apparition was wingless. Then the wings—two pairs, not one—extended from where they had been folded flat against the creature's flanks. Instead of being dark and bat-leathery, they were veined and iridescent, like those of an immense dragonfly.

The four of them were also each twenty feet in length. Fully unfolded, they beat the air like long, thin propellers, lifting the rest of the coiling, twisting, muscular body completely out of the ground. Slim fore and hind legs were tipped with talons so gracile they looked as if they had been manicured in one of Fifth Avenue's finest beauty salons. Except for the iridescent wings and red eyes, it was a bright, shining silver all over, as chrome-hued as the hood ornament on a luxury car.

If ever a dragon had evolved to commit both butchery and ballet, the beast hovering high in the moist night air before them was it.

Struggling to remember the right spells, Simwan forced himself not to run. This dragon might not be as physically impressive as some, he told himself, but it would be very fast, very quick. They would have to deal with it directly, and without panic. He could tell from the tempo of its wing beats that there would be no second chances.

“WHO TRAMPLES UPON MY SLEEP IN THIS PLACE OF REFUGE?” it hissed like a braking locomotive.

Amber spoke up immediately. “We're sorry. We didn't know it was a place of refuge.”

Rose nodded swift agreement. “We thought it was North Meadow.”

“ORDS CANNOT BE EXPECTED TO KNOW—EVEN THOUGH I SPORADICALLY RISE UP TO SNATCH THE OCCASIONAL SLOVENLY ONE.
YOU
HAVE NO SUCH EXCUSE.” The arrow-shaped head flicked toward them on the end of its long, snakelike neck. “YOU REEK OF LEARNING. AS SUCH, YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER.” A long, triple-forked tongue flicked out to almost touch N/Ice. She held her ground with remarkable poise. “WHEN CONSUMED, YOU WILL HAVE THE FLAVOR OF KNOWLEDGE, THOUGH NOT OF WISDOM.”

The great tapering jaws parted to expose razorlike rending teeth as a burst of white-hot flame shot forth from the depths of the cavernous maw. The fire was tinged with pale blue and smelled of—it was the bright, sharp stink Simwan and his sisters had detected just before the creature had surfaced. The aroma of flaming alcohol, rather than the expected and more customary burning sulfur.

This was a different dragon indeed.

As it swooped toward them on gigantic dragonfly wings, however, its tastes were plainly of the traditional kind. Being boiled in alcohol instead of sulfur would not matter to the boilee, Simwan knew. As the girls hastily linked hands, he threw up both arms and tried to assume one of the more defiant sorceral stances he had practiced. A long white beard and massive, crystal-crowned staff would have rendered the pose more impressive, but he could only work with what he had. At least, he reflected as he prepared to defend himself and his sisters, his acne had receded during the past year.

“Drakon begone, firedrake shake! I command you to flee! Go back to the depths that gave you birth!”

Semi-transparent wings beat close before him and the arrowhead-shaped skull was so close he could smell the creature's body odor as well as its alcohol-fueled breath. Nearby, Pithfwid was doing something ineffective with his paws while the girls were chanting softly and intently, but to no apparent effect.

The head turned slightly to its left and a great blood-red eye fixed on Simwan's own. “KNOWLEDGE, NOT WISDOM. THE IGNORANCE OF YOUTH. YOU WILL BE LESS FILLING, BUT HAVE MORE TASTE.” The svelte yet powerful jaws started to part once again.

“Wait!” A desperate Simwan threw up both arms anew. “By the Laws Draconian, I demand to know who it is that threatens!” There, he thought, finding that he was sweating profusely despite the chill and damp. That should buy them a little time, if nothing else.

Affronted by the conceit, the dragon-thing drew itself up to its full height, which was very impressive indeed, and extended its four wings full out to left and right into the mist, and they were equally impressive.

“I AM SLYTHROAT THE SLAUGHTERER. KNOW, CHILDISH INTERLOPERS, THAT THIS ISLAND HAS BEEN MY HOME FOR LO ON THRICE THREE THOUSAND YEARS, AND THAT I DO NOT SUFFER CALCULATING INTRUDERS TO PASS MY PLACE OF REST UNBIDDEN.” Swift as a striking mamba, the sharp-pointed skull struck forward and down until it halted less than a yard from Simwan's face. It was all he could do to hold his ground and not flinch. “I DO, HOWEVER, SUFFER THEM TO BE SUPPER. OR IN YOUR INSIGNIFICANT INSTANCE, AT LEAST TO BE APPETIZERS. PREPARE YOURSELVES!”

It was then, most unexpectedly, that Pithfwid stood up on his hind legs and pointed with one paw. “
Now
I know you! You're the wyrm—the wyrm in the Big Apple!”

Annoyed by the interruption, Slythroat jerked his head around to his right to focus on the Deavy pet. “IN YOUR CASE, CAT, YOU ARE LESS EVEN THAN AN APPETIZER. YOU BE NOT EVEN A MORSEL. BARELY, I SHOULD SAY, A LESSEL. BUT I WILL NOSH YOU NONETHELESS, ALONG WITH YOUR LARGER COMPANIONS.”

Dropping back to all fours, a now gray-furred Pithfwid sauntered boldly forward. Simwan looked on aghast while the girls ceased their ineffectual chanting. The cat was not much bigger than one of the dragon's hind talons. He could have made a bed of just one of the creature's gleaming chromelike scales. Now he strutted back and forth just below that steaming cauldron of a mouth as if he had not a care in the world.

“The wyrm in the Big Apple. I knew I'd seen you somewhere before.”

Slythroat's lids dropped lower over his glaring eyes. “ALL CATS SPEAK IN RIDDLES. BUT I WOULD HAVE AN EXPLANATION BEFORE I BITE.”

Halting directly in front of the looming, lethal skull, Pithfwid stopped pacing and turned to face the dragon. “This is truly your home. At night you can go where and whence you wish. But like so many of your kind, you are nocturnal and need a place of safety to sleep out the daylight. You abhor sunshine, yet cannot bury yourself deep enough in this crowded place to avoid the attentions of humans.” He shook his head sadly. “So many humans, these days. Times are different than they used to be.”

The great, fiery head bobbed slowly up and down in agreement. “AT LAST—A LITTLE WISDOM I HEAR FROM THE SMALLEST OF YOU. BUT THOUGH YOU SPEAK TRUTH, IT WILL SAVE YOU NOT.” The toothy mouth parted in a white shark smile that was half Dracula, half Cheshire Cat. “WHEN I AM AWAKENED, I WAKE UP
HUNGRY
.”

Pithfwid did not appear in the least intimidated. “You want to know where I've seen you before? It was in a picture, in a book. A picture of the place where you sleep during the
day
, in full view of the humans who have swarmed over your ancient home. You are at once always visible to them, and yet they never recognize you for what you truly are. It is this hiding in plain sight that helps to keep you safe in a place and times of such tumultuous change.” Turning, he glanced first at Simwan, then at the coubet.

“Slythroat the Slaughterer may sleep here in this ground through the night—but during the daylight hours he takes his ease as part and parcel of the exterior of the topmost floors of the island building called Chrysler. He is as one in spirit with its many architectural decorations, and his natural coloration blends perfectly with the structure's aluminum crown.” He looked back at the fire-breathing monster hovering in front of him and his humans.

“I wonder: Has this always been your natural appearance, or when the building went up did you adopt an art-deco look the better to blend in with your daytime hiding place?”

Drawing back his head, Slythroat let loose a blast of blue-tinted flame that washed directly over the cat. The girls screamed anew and N/Ice had to hold Rose back to keep her from running forward. Simwan's eyes grew wide with shock. But when the conflagration faded, Pithfwid still stood, apparently unharmed by the fire. Turning his head to his left, he grinned over at a stunned Simwan.

“Did you ever notice?” the cat purred as he used his tongue to groom his still unburnt gray-blue coat, “that when it is mined from the ground, raw asbestos has exactly the same color and consistency as gray feline fur?” Returning his attention to the equally startled dragon, he spoke sternly.

“Harken unto me, Slythroat the Stutterer. We Deavys have no quarrel with you. We're sorry if we interrupted your rest, and we would have asked permission to pass if only we'd known you were here. You can go ahead and eat my companions—”

“Hey, wait a minute,” an alarmed Rose began.

“—but you can't eat me. Not in my present configuration. I'd give you one horror of a bellyache. Or asbestosis. You'd end up spitting me back out. Then I'd find a way to reveal your place of daytime rest. Not to the Ords, who do not believe, but to the enemies of your kind, who would be delighted to happen upon a dragon caught asleep out in the sunlight, and would take it apart like a Christmas goose.”

For a moment, Simwan thought that in spite of Pithfwid's warning, Slythroat the Slaughterer was going to charge and live up to his surname. Then, all at once, the bravado (if not the steam) seemed to go out of the dragon. It settled to the ground on all fours, slumped to its belly with its great iridescent wings flapping forlornly at its sides, and dropped its head to the wet earth. A tiny, thin seep of smoke emerged from one corner of its snaggle-toothed jaws to rise rather despondently before dissipating into the night sky.

“WISDOM FROM THE SMALLEST,” it rumbled disconsolately. “I
HATE
WISDOM FROM THE SMALLEST.”

Without another word, Slythroat extended his left front foot. Neither dragon nor cat could properly grip the other's paw, so Pithfwid settled for placing his own against the tip of one of the dragon's sharp talons. The resultant contact represented a meeting of the minds as effectively as it did that of bodies.