“She’s very observant, you see,” laughed Phoebe, giving the little girl a warm hug and sending her inside to fetch the carrot cake for dessert. “I believe she saw what she says. She has a marvelous imagination and often pretends to see things—like Dragons. I’ve scolded her for it at times, I’m afraid.”
“Which may explain why she didn’t tell you about the Dragon she actually saw this morning,” Tom guessed.
He remembered his own childhood fancies very well. When Katy returned from the house she was quite as certain that the Dragon she had seen that morning had been heading due west.
“He came toward me with the sun shining through his big bat wings. I could almost see right through ‘em,” she insisted. “And the gold tip of his tail flashed like...like gold, I guess...when he flew away across our lake.”
“I’ve no doubt of it, then,” said Retruance with a sigh. He explained to the mother why they were seeking this Dragon.
“Don’t tell Katy, please,” he begged her. “She seems to have a good opinion of Dragons and it might disappoint her to learn that one has been so wicked.”
“Oh, I’m most sorry that it’s your own papa you’re searching for!”
cried the farmer’s wife. “Surely, he’s enchanted by some wicked wizard!”
“We believe so,” said Tom.
“We must be on our way,” said Retruance, “thanking you for the wonderful lunch. I tend to forget that Elves and Humans like Tom require frequent feeding. I’m afraid I forgot to allow him breakfast—or dinner last night, either.”
“I can stand it,” said the Librarian.
While Katy led Retruance off to see her lambs, Tom asked Phoebe,
“Have you sought treatment for the child? I’m sure there are doctors who could restore her hearing.”
“We found it would cost a great, great deal to see a proper doctor, and we’re not that rich. We asked the help of Lord Peter of Gantrell, our liege lord in Rainbow. He didn’t answer our letter—and shortly after he was exiled.”
“You’re richer than anyone I know!” said Tom sincerely. “To have such a wonderful child! Mistress, tell your good husband that he is to bring Katydid to Overhall as soon as he can. There’s a wizard-doctor named Arcolas there who’s as kind and able as any in the kingdom. If he can’t restore the girl’s hearing, he’ll certainly know who can. Do you think you could make the journey?”
“Yes, oh! I am sure we can!” cried Phoebe, glowing with happiness and looking quite young herself. “My Martin carries his fall produce to Lakehead in a week’s time. He borrows a wagon from a neighbor, you see. Usually the child and I stay behind, but we could easily go on from there to Overhall, I would think.”
“If we’ve not yet returned from our quest for Arbitrance, for Retruance’s father,” Tom added, “tell them at the castle gate that I sent you. Tell Katy’s story to my wife, Princess Alix Amanda. Something will be done, be assured, mistress!”
Katy noticed tears on her mother’s cheeks as they said good-bye, and asked what troubled her.
“Nothing at all, little Katydid. Your mother is happy that you have at last seen a truly, truly Dragon,” Tom told her. “And it’s possible we will see you again soon, if all goes well.”
Katy kissed the Librarian on the cheek and the Dragon on the end of his nose. The searchers flew off westward, waving until the child, the mother, and the cottage itself fell too far behind to see.
Neither traveler said anything for a long time afterward.
The ground beneath them that evening had changed from well-watered, black-dirt farmland to wetlands alive with thousands of south-ward-migrating birds settling down for the night. When Retruance tried to engage them in conversation for news of the rogue Dragon, they scattered away and filled the air with hysterical squawking and screaming.
“Brainless birds!” snapped Retruance irritably.
“They’ve been frightened,” guessed Tom. “They’re flighty at the best of times, of course. But it may be they’ve been stirred up lately by your papa.”
The thought cheered Retruance considerably.
“The scent of Dragon is as strong here as it has ever been in years of searching,” he exalted. “Papa
is
nearby, I’m sure of it!”
“But there’s all kinds of places he could hide. It’s so vast! I’ve looked at the maps! It goes on for miles and miles.”
“More important, it goes on for days and days, at the rate we must fly now!” Retruance now sounded discouraged.
“Well, we’ll plug away at it, old friend. For the sake of the Princeling and Arbitrance, too.”
“Of course!” choked the Dragon, and he banked sharply, still quartering over the wetlands, checking the direction his renegade papa had carried the Crown Prince of Carolna over what appeared to be endless, empty swampland.
To continue after dark seemed fruitless, for they were close enough now, Retruance said, for his father to become aware of their presence.
“And if we stumble on him in the dark,” Tom agreed, “there’s no telling what the...your papa...might do to the boy. At best, he’d fly off somewhere else and leave us to do all our slow searching over again.”
Retruance agreed reluctantly and set about finding a bit of higher and drier ground on which to spend the night.
“Hammocks or hummocks,” said Tom with a yawn. “That’s what they’re called where I come from.”
“Swamp islands, rather,” said Retruance. “Look! That one’s big enough for a Dragon and must rise ten feet out of the water in the center. Perfect!”
When Tom looked over the Dragon’s brow, he saw a tiny point of light on its westernmost edge.
“Careful!” he warned. “It might be Arbitrance!”
“No,” the Dragon disagreed. “It’s a campfire like no Dragon would ever need.”
He alighted softly a hundred yards downwind of the fire and Tom called out, so as not to frighten the campers by appearing suddenly out of the deep dark under the tangled trees.
“Hoy!” came a reply. “Come up to the fire, neighbors! Supper’s just about ready and I don’t think I can eat it all myself.”
A tall, gangly young man dressed in plain leather leggings and fringed shirt that covered him from neck to knee, despite the humid warmth of the night, jumped to his feet when he saw one of his callers was a Dragon.
“Holy mackerel!” he exclaimed. “The Dragon!”
“Not
the
Dragon, probably,” chuckled Retruance, stopping just across the fire from the camper, “but a Dragon very interested in any other Dragon you might have seen recently.”
“We’re searching for a certain Dragon said to be hiding in these parts,” explained Tom.
“Come and sit by my fire! Spend the night, if you will. I haven’t had company or any news at all for weeks!” cried the young man. “My name is Findles of Aquanelle.”
Tom shook his hand and told him their names and origins.
“I teach agriculture and hydroponics at Queen’s College in Aquanelle—that’s in Waterfields,” the scholar told them.
“We’re good friends of Queen Beatrix, your patroness,” Retruance said. “In fact, we’re here on her behalf, in a way.”
He let Tom explain their mission while the scholar busied himself about the campfire, dishing up a savory crawfish stew on tin plates, and slicing bread baked on a metal sheet slanted before the hot coals.
“Yes, I’ve seen both the Dragon and signs of him hereabouts,” he said as they sat down to eat. “I saw him fly over low, just this noontime. He didn’t see me, I think. Mostly I work under the trees at the water’s edge. I’m tracing the sources of the waters that flow through Waterfields to learn if they are safe and perpetual.”
“Ah!” said Tom, his ears perking up with interest. “What have you learned?”
“It would immeasurably harm the whole kingdom if Waterfields should become too dry or the waters were dirtied. Swamp drainage is not always a good idea, but most of our good country people wish to do it to make new fields, as you might imagine.”
“Ah, about the Dragon?” asked Retruance to steer the conversation back to his papa. “Where is he now, do you know?”
“Oh, in his redoubt, I imagine, unless he’s flown out some other way. In the morning we can look and see if he is venting smoke. He smokes a lot, usually.”
“Redoubt?” asked Tom. “He’s built a fort here in the swamp?”
“Of a sort, yes,” replied Findles. “More bread? It won’t keep long in this damp.”
“Explain the redoubt, please,” asked Retruance patiently.
“Well, this area is called Sinking Marsh, as you may already know.”
“I didn’t know. Stinking?” Tom asked.
“No,
Sinking
—it’s a vast quagmire. The quicksands won’t bear the weight of a child, let alone a grown man—or a Dragon. Goes on for miles and miles to the south and west. Actually, it’s a welling-up place where underground springs come to the surface to form a very shallow, very broad river.”
“We have something much like that at home,” said the Librarian, thinking of Hidden Canyon Lake.
“I’m measuring the flow as part of my study,” the scholar went on.
“A fabulous lot of water is filtered through the sand here. Also this marsh serves as a natural reservoir upstream from Waterfields.”
“Interesting,” said Retruance politely. “How could Papa...this Dragon you’ve observed...have landed there, then, without sinking into the quicksands?”
“I’m not sure, for I’ve never seen him on the ground,” admitted Findles. “However, I’ve a theory he’s found or constructed a hummock in the center of it all. Would
have
to be something like that. Pile up logs and brush and anchor it with rocks brought from elsewhere, eh?
Take him some time, even for a Dragon...”
“A matter of five to ten years?” guessed Tom, beginning to understand what Arbitrance had been doing all those years since he’d disappeared.
“Yes, I’d agree with that. I’d have to examine it more closely, to be sure. Impossible to cross Sinking Marsh on foot, of course. And most boats just bog down because it’s too shallow. The sand is entirely satu-rated, you see. If you can fly like a bird—or a Dragon—you could easily reach the Dragon’s hummock, I’d say.”
“Poses us some serious problems,” Retruance said, considering.
“We’ll explore the area tomorrow, Tom. As you said, we can’t afford to startle Papa or he might—just
might
—flee again with the boy. He’s been enchanted to do such wicked things. No telling what his instruc-tions might be.”
Tom ate another slice of Findles’s excellent campfire bread and swallowed a cup of tepid, marshy-tasting tea. The scholar insisted the water from which it had been made was perfectly clean and healthful.
“We may need more than just the two of us to pull this off,” Tom decided as they settled down for the night.
Large, voracious swampland mosquitoes swarmed from the still water but such bugs were repelled by the scent of Dragon, Tom discovered. Their shrill whining and humming lulled Tom at last into a deep, exhausted slumber.
He fell asleep thinking not of the kidnapped Princeling or the rogue Dragon who held him captive, but of the flow of water down from the peaks of the distant Snow Mountains, down through deep canyons like his Hidden Canyon Achievement, and then deep into hidden aquifers beneath the Hiding Lands’ desert.
Chapter Ten
Findles’s Hummock
“If I can smell
Papa,
Papa can smell
me...
if the wind changes to blow east to west...and it will! Winter’s coming on. Right now it’s quite still, but that won’t last,” Retruance muttered, more to himself than to Tom.
“Before we move farther, we must have Furbetrance here, too,”
Tom decided. “And I’d like to have Murdan handy, too. Someone must watch the far side of the marsh, in case your poor Papa decides to flee when we move in on him.”
“Furbie should be here any hour,” his Dragon Mount promised.
They’d broken their fast and were watching as Findles demon-strated the dangers of the quicksands by probing near the tangled edge of his hummock with a ten-foot bamboo pole. There was no firm bottom at that length, even close inshore, although it seemed, when one looked, rather shallow.
“Nor at three times this length, either, I assure you,” the young scientist said, paddling his flat-bottom canoe back to the firm soil of his hummock. “That’s as deep as I can probe with my present equip-ment.”
Tom nodded absently, “I want to walk over to the other side of your island this morning. I may be able to get the birds to tell me something if nobody else is around to scare them off, Retruance. White Shoulders taught me enough bird-tongue to make myself understood.
A lot of them already speak our Elvish, of course.”
“Fine with me. I’ll just stay here close to guide Furbetrance to us.”
Tom said to the scholar, “Tell me, how did you manage to get here yourself?”
“Ten to twelve miles to the east the quagmire is no more. I poled my flat-bottomed boat from drier, higher ground there. I keep my boat moored under overhanging bushes down the shore a way—well hidden. As I said, I don’t believe yonder Dragon is aware of my being nearby.”
Tom made his way through the heavy, thorn-spiked underbrush across the raised center of the island. Although the going was slow and the air was humid, it was not unpleasant as long as he watched his step. Hundreds of birds sang in the moss-draped live oaks, and lizards of bright yellow, red, and blue scurried hastily away at his noisy approach.
Many of the trees and bushes were fall-flowering and the scent of their blossoms was near to overpowering in the close air. In other trees—some sort of walnut, he thought—he saw what he took at first to be tiny monkeys. They turned out to be frisky, daring black-tailed squirrels—nibbling and gnawing at the brown or gold nuts that grew in huge clusters.
From a grove of smaller trees in the center of the island he plucked oranges of brilliant color and deliciously sweet and juicy pulp.
Exploring and quite enjoying this strange island setting, Tom reached the far edge of the hummock after a half hour’s stroll and found a sandy spot of beach among the cypress trunks and knees at the edge of the hummock where he could actually reach open water.
It looked so invitingly cool that Tom shed his clothing without hesitation and took a bracing swim. No birds, animals, or snakes approached him until he climbed out on a mossy-soft, fallen cypress log to let his skin dry in the light breeze and bright midmorning sun.