Читать книгу Between the Monk and the Dragon - Jerry Camery-Hoggatt - Страница 10

III

The summer heat was on them completely before Elspeth saw the dragon again, bigger and more threatening—fully grown. It was as though the dream were somehow becoming a reality to her, as though something within her was struggling to break free of her imagination and confront her face to face, in real life. From time to time she thought she smelled the stench of tar in the hut, hard and offensive, but always it drifted away, the way a dream disappears when one wakes up. The smell of tar always brought the dream back. She did not sleep well. She drew pictures of the creature on the scraps of paper Alcera’s husband Levente had thrown away in the bookbindery.

More than once, while she was in Levente’s shop the older woman had asked her what was troubling her. “Something’s wrong, girl. Something’s troubling you. What is it? You can tell me.”

Usually Elspeth shrugged off Alcera’s questions, or mumbled something about having had a bad dream, and Alcera was a tough, practical woman who did not like to pry into other people’s affairs.

In midsummer the creature was back, emerging from the canopy bed and prowling the hut the way a cat might prowl a room, looking for a place to sleep. Elspeth lay perfectly still in her bed, but with her eyes wide open and her covers pulled up tightly around her chin.

The creature began to come every night, to prowl, to sniff. Once it crept close to her bed and sniffed her bedclothes as though it were looking for a warm place to nest for the night, but it turned away when the girl stared it directly in the eyes. That had given Elspeth courage, and the seed of a hope that somehow she could defeat the nightmare by the force of her will.

She had to do something quickly, though. The creature was getting bigger; it was now bigger than her father, and its wings were more proportionate, and growing more mature. She might have some chance against such a creature when it was young, but she would have great difficulty with one when it was fully grown.

In late July the creature shed its scales. It was a painful thing to see, and for the first time Elspeth felt something akin to pity for the creature. She watched in fascination right from the start. The shedding began almost as a dance, the creature drawing itself back until it stood erect on its hind legs, then whipping forward to produce a superb rippling along the spine. The rippling raised the scales and sent the looser ones skittering across the floor.

It thrust itself up, then back down again, then began turning every which way. As she thought about it later, Elspeth realized that this torturous twisting and turning was a way of loosening the older layer of scales so they could be shaken off or rubbed off against the post of the canopy bed. As she watched, the creature worked itself up into a frenzy or an ecstasy of pain, the rumbling coming up, then receding, then coming back again as the creature rubbed its sides against the canopy post. In that way, in a ritual dance that seemed to take half the night, it shed its skin the way a snake might if it had legs and rigid spines along its back.

As it did so, from underneath, a shiny new layer of scales emerged, each the size of a man’s hand. The new scales were beautiful, with none of the chips or marks such a creature is likely to get in its scales as it grows older. And though they were shinier, they were also darker, a deep green along the back, deepening in hue until the plates on its underbelly were almost black. The edges of the new scales were bright yellow or gold, and in the dim light of the room and the rhythmic glowing of the creature’s nostril flame they seemed to shimmer as it moved.

For a moment, Elspeth thought she loved it. It was as beautiful as it was terrifying, and she watched in fascination as this wholly new form of her dream emerged from its infancy into a new, powerful adulthood.

The creature seemed also to sense its new powers. It stretched its wings, now for the first time fully formed, and began a tentative flight around the perimeter of the room, but the space was too small. It thrashed its tail against the walls as it struggled to free itself from its confinement. The flame became enormous, enlarged by the creature’s frenzy.

Elspeth grew terrified of the flame. What if it engulfed her? Worse, what if it were to catch the thatch of the roof? She and her father would both be engulfed in the flames. The hard stench of tar was now everywhere, and the heat became unbearable. The creature spat, and a sulfurous venom settled into the worn grooves on the floor. Elspeth struggled for breath. In a desperation of her own, she flung herself at the window, clawed at the shutters, then collapsed in a heap on the floor.