Dragon's Teeth (54 page)

“Wot’s a Gray?” Nan asked.

“She’s a Polly, a gray parrot with the beautifullest red tail; the medicine man gave her to me when she was all prickles, he showed me how to feed her with mashed-up yams and things. She’s
so
smart, she follows me about, and she can say, oh, hundreds of things. The medicine man said that she was to be my guardian and keep me from harm. But Mum was afraid the smoke in London would hurt her, and I couldn’t bring her with me.” Sarah looked up at the fat, stone bird on the gatepost above her. “That’s why Mem’sab gave me
that
gargoyle, to be my guardian instead. We all have them, each child has her own, and that one’s mine.” She looked down again at Nan, and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Sometimes when I get lonesome, I come here and talk to her, and it’s like talking to Gray.”

Nan nodded her head, understanding. “Oi useta go an’ talk t’ a stachew in one’a the yards, ’til we ’adta move. It looked loik me grammum. Felt loik I was talkin’ to ’er, I fair did.”

A footstep on the gravel path made Nan look up, and she jumped to see the tall man with the head wrap standing there, as if he had come out of the thin air. She had not sensed his presence, and once again, even though he stood materially before her she
could not.
He took no notice of Nan, which she was grateful for; instead, he handed the basket he was carrying to Sarah Jane, and walked off without a word.

Sarah passed the basket to Nan; it was heavier this time, and Nan
thought
she smelled something like roasted meat. Oh, if
only
they’d given her the drippings from their beef! Her mouth watered at the thought.

“I hope you like these,” Sarah said shyly, as Nan passed her the much-lighter empty. “Mem’sab says that if you’ll keep coming back, I’m to talk to you and ask you about London; she says that’s the best way to learn about things. She says otherwise, when I go out, I might get into trouble I don’t understand.”

Nan’s eyes widened at the thought that the head of a school had said anything of the sort—but Sarah Jane hardly seemed like the type of child to lie. “All roit, I s’pose,” she said dubiously. “If you’ll be ’ere, so’ll Oi.”

The next day, faithful as the rising sun, Sarah was waiting with her basket, and Nan was invited to come inside the gate. She wouldn’t venture any farther in than a bench in the garden, but as Sarah asked questions, she answered them as bluntly and plainly as she would any similar question asked by a child in her own neighborhood. Sarah learned about the dangers of the dark side of London first-hand—and oddly, although she nodded wisely and with clear understanding, they didn’t seem to
frighten
her.

“Garn!” Nan said once, when Sarah absorbed the interesting fact that the opium den a few doors from where Nan and her mother had a room had pitched three dead men out into the street the night before. “Yer ain’t never seen nothin’ loik that!”

“You forget, Mum and Da have a hospital, and it’s very dangerous where they are,” Sarah replied matter-of-factly. “I’ve seen dead men, and dead women and even babies. When Nkumba came in clawed up by a lion, I helped bring water and bandages, while Mum and Da sewed him up. When there was a black-water fever, I saw lots of people die. It was horrid and sad, but I didn’t fuss, because Nkumba and Da and Mum were worked nearly to bones and needed me to be good.”

Nan’s eyes widened again. “Wot else y’see?” she whispered, impressed in spite of herself.

After that, the two children traded stories of two very different sorts of jungles. Despite its dangers, Nan thought that Sarah’s was the better of the two.

She learned other things as well; that “Mem’sab” was a completely remarkable woman, for she had a Sikh, a Gurkha, two Moslems, two Buddhists, and assorted Hindus working in peace and harmony together—“and Mum said in her letter that it’s easier to get leopards to herd sheep than that!” Mem’sab was by no means a fool; the Sikh and the Gurkha shared guard duty, patrolling the walls by day and night. One of the Hindu women was the “ayah,” who took care of the smallest children; the rest of the motley assortment were servants and even teachers.

She heard many stories about the remarkable Gray, who really
did
act as Sarah’s guardian, if Sarah was to be believed. Sarah described times when she had inadvertently gotten lost; she had called frantically for Gray, who was allowed to fly free, and the bird had come to her, leading her back to familiar paths. Gray had kept her from eating some pretty but poisonous berries by flying at her and nipping her fingers until she dropped them. Gray alerted the servants to the presence of snakes in the nursery, always making a patrol before she allowed Sarah to enter. And once, according to Sarah, when she had encountered a lion on the path, Gray had flown off and made sounds like a young gazelle in distress, attracting the lion’s attention before it could scent Sarah. “She led it away, and didn’t come back to me until it was too far away to bother coming back,” the little girl claimed solemnly. “Gray is
very
clever.” Nan didn’t know whether to gape at her or laugh; she couldn’t imagine how a mere bird could be intelligent enough to talk, much less act with purpose.

Nan had breath to laugh with, nowadays, thanks to baskets that held more than bread. The food she found in there, though distinctly odd, was always good, and she no longer felt out of breath and tired all the time. She had stopped wondering and worrying about why “Mem’sab” took such an interest in her, and simply accepted the gifts without question. They might stop at any moment; she accepted that without question, too.

The only thing she couldn’t accept so easily was the manservant’s eerie mental silence.

“How is your mother?” Sarah asked, since yesterday Nan had confessed that Aggie been “on a tear” and had consumed, or so Nan feared, something stronger and more dangerous than gin.

Nan shook her head. “I dunno,” she replied reluctantly. “Aggie didn’ wake up when I went out. Tha’s not roight, she us’lly at least waked up t’foind out wha’ I got. She don’ half loik them baskets, ‘cause it means I don’ go beggin’ as much.”

“And if you don’t beg money, she can’t drink,” Sarah observed shrewdly. “You hate begging, don’t you?”

“Mostly I don’ like gettin’ kicked an’ cursed at,” Nan temporized. “It ain’t loik I’m gettin’ underfoot . . .”

But Sarah’s questions were coming too near the bone, tonight, and Nan didn’t want to have to deal with them. She got to her feet and picked up her basket. “I gotter go,” she said abruptly.

Sarah rose from her seat on the bench and gave Nan a penetrating look. Nan had the peculiar feeling that the child was looking at
her
thoughts, and deciding whether or not to press her further. “All right,” Sarah said. “It
is
getting dark.”

It wasn’t, but Nan wasn’t about to pass up the offer of a graceful exit. “’Tis, that,” she said promptly, and squeezed through the narrow opening Karamjit had left in the gate.

But she had not gone four paces when two rough-looking men in shabby tweed jackets blocked her path. “You Nan Killian?” said one hoarsely. Then when Nan stared at him blankly, added, “Aggie Killian’s girl?”

The answer was surprised out of her; she hadn’t been expecting such a confrontation, and she hadn’t yet managed to sort herself out. “Ye—es,” she said slowly.

“Good,” the first man grunted. “Yer Ma sent us; she’s gone t’ a new place, an’ she wants us t’show y’ the way.”

Now, several thoughts flew through Nan’s mind at that moment. The first was, that as they were paid up on the rent through the end of the week, she could not imagine Aggie ever vacating before the time was up. The second was, that even if Aggie
had
set up somewhere else, she would never have sent a pair of strangers to find Nan.

And third was that Aggie had turned to a more potent intoxicant than gin—which meant she would need a deal more money. And Aggie had only one thing left to sell.

Nan.

Their minds were such a roil that she couldn’t “hear” any distinct thoughts, but it was obvious that they meant her no good.

“Wait a minnit—” Nan said, her voice trembling a little as she backed away from the two men, edging around them to get to the street. “Did’jer say Aggie
Killian’s
gel? Me Ma ain’t called Killian, yer got th’ wrong gel—”

It was at that moment that one of the men lunged for her with a curse. He had his hands nearly on her, and would have gotten her, too, except for one bit of interference.

Sarah came shooting out of the gate like a little bullet. She body-slammed the fellow, going into the back of his knees and knocking him right off his feet. She danced out of the way as he fell in the nick of time, ran to Nan, and caught her hand, tugging her towards the street. “Run!” she commanded imperiously, and Nan ran.

The two of them scrabbled through the dark alleys and twisted streets without any idea where they were, only that they had to shake off their pursuers. Unfortunately, the time that Nan would have put into learning her new neighborhood like the back of her grimy little hand had been put into talking with Sarah, and before too long, even Nan was lost in the maze of dark, fetid streets. Then their luck ran out altogether, and they found themselves staring at the blank wall of a building, in a dead-end cul-de-sac.

They whirled around, hoping to escape before they were trapped, but it was already too late. The bulky silhouettes of the two men loomed against the fading light at the end of the street.

“Oo’s yer friend, ducky?” the first man purred. “Think she’d loik t’come with?”

To Nan’s astonishment, Sarah stood straight and tall, and even stepped forward a pace. “I think you ought to go away and leave us alone,” she said clearly. “You’re going to find yourselves in a lot of trouble.”

The talkative man laughed. “Them’s big words from such a little gel,” he mocked. “We ain’t leavin’ wi’out we collect what’s ours, an’ a bit more fer th’ trouble yer caused.”

Nan was petrified with fear, shaking in every limb, as Sarah stepped back, putting her back to the damp wall. As the first man touched Sarah’s arm, she shrieked out a single word.

“Gray!”

As Sarah cried out the name of her pet, Nan let loose a wordless prayer for something,
anything,
to come to their rescue.

Something screamed behind the man; startled and distracted for a moment, he turned. For a moment, a fluttering shape obscured his face, and
he
screamed in pain. He shook his head, violently.

“Get it off!” he screamed at his partner. “
Get it off!
”

“Get what off?” the man said, bewildered. “There ain’t nothin’ there!”

The man clawed frantically at the front of his face, but whatever had attacked him had vanished without a trace. But not before leading more substantial help to the rescue.

Out of the dusk and the first wisps of fog, Karamjit and another swarthy man ran on noiseless feet. In their hands were cudgels which they used to good purpose on the two who opposed them. Nor did they waste any effort, clubbing the two senseless with a remarkable economy of motion.

Then, without a single word, each of the men scooped up a girl in his arms, and bore them back to the school. At that point, finding herself safe in the arms of an unlooked-for rescuer, Nan felt secure enough to break down into hysterical tears.

Nor was that the end of it; she found herself bundled up into the sacred precincts of the school itself, plunged into the first hot bath of her life, wrapped in a clean flannel gown, and put into a real bed. Sarah was in a similar bed beside her. As she sat there, numb, a plain-looking woman with beautiful eyes came and sat down on the foot of Sarah’s bed, and looked from one to the other of them.

“Well,” the lady said at last, “what have you two to say for yourselves?”

Nan couldn’t manage anything, but that was all right, since Sarah wasn’t about to let her get in a word anyway. The child jabbered like a monkey, a confused speech about Nan’s mother, the men she’d sold Nan to, the virtue of Charity, the timely appearance of Gray, and a great deal more besides. The lady listened and nodded, and when Sarah ran down at last, she turned to Nan.

“I believe Sarah is right in one thing,” she said gravely. “I believe we will have to keep you. Now, both of you—sleep.”

And to Nan’s surprise, she fell asleep immediately.

But that was not the end to the story. A month later, Sarah’s mother arrived, with Gray in a cage. Nan had, by then, found a place where she could listen to what went on in the best parlor without being found, and she glued her ear to the crack in the pantry to listen when Sarah was taken into that hallowed room.

“—found Gray senseless beside her perch,” Sarah’s mother was saying. “I thought it was a fit, but the Shaman swore that Sarah was in trouble and the bird had gone to help. Gray awoke none the worse, and I would have thought nothing more of the incident, until your message arrived.”

“And so you came, very wisely, bringing this remarkable bird.” Mem’sab made chirping noises at the bird, and an odd little voice said, “Hello, bright eyes!”

Mem’sab chuckled. “How much of strangeness are you prepared to believe in, my dear?” she asked gently. “Would you believe me if I told you that I have seen this bird once before—fluttering and pecking at my window, then leading my men to rescue your child?”

“I can only answer with Hamlet,” Sarah’s mother said after a pause. “That there are more things in heaven and earth than I suspected.”

“Good,” Mem’sab replied decidedly. “Then I take it you are not here to remove Sarah from our midst.”

“No,” came the soft reply. “I came only to see that Sarah was well, and to ask if you would permit her pet to be with her.”

“Gladly,” Mem’sab said. “Though I might question which of the two was the pet!”

“Clever bird!” said Gray.