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- The Chimeriad - Tome I : Peryton

By Dissident Love

_ _

Commissioned by and

Dedicated to my Inspiration

Saracidal

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Part One

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For two days, the collective eyes of the Township of Dramamore had been peeking surreptitiously at the little mound of activity that had conquered the fallow cornfield on the south side of town. Three days previous, from dawn until after dusk, the long, scattered wagon train had been arriving, colored wooden carriages of all colors loaded down with boxes, crates, bags and sacks, and rolls upon rolls of heavy fabric. A ratty-looking fence had gone up with surprising speed, and the shabby hand-lettered sign hung prominently on a roadside post:

Stardust Travelling Carnivale Amazements, Wonders, Miracles And More!

Though it was easy to see through the copious gaps in the fence, it wasn't nearly so simple to ascertain what, exactly was going on in the grand scheme of things. It looked like a shanty town had collided with a junkheap, and conquered a sizeable amount of good, arable land in the process, but no-one was willing to offend the carnivale-workers by asking. Everyone knew the rules, and everyone abided by then.

And so while there was shock and surprise on the dawning of the third day, it was the shock and surprise that accompanied every snow-covered Crimbo morning, and every butterfly-filled Spring Harvest: everything that transpired was fully expected, but gloriously welcome nonetheless. It was the Twentieth Day Of Spring as the locals counted the time, and every tenth day was a day of rest. The carnivale had clearly chosen their days carefully.

Sara fairly skipped down the narrow wooden stairs into the kitchen, pastel skirts flying around her shapely legs. Her mother, a plump and matronly woman of almost forty, looked up in surprise at her gaily-clad daughter, but there was a smile on her face. "Goodness, dear!" she said, setting out a stack of freshly baked buns on the small table, "I've not seen you move like that in weeks!"

Sara swept through the kitchen, and gave her shorter mother a peck on the forehead. "Oh, Ma, I've not felt much like dancing," she said, a little out of breath from her mad dash to get dressed. For many long months she had worn her functional woolens in shades of white and beige and grey, looking forward to some sort of special reason to wear her colorful blouses and petticoats. They'd been airing out on her wall for a week, and she'd nearly gone mad waiting for the carnivale to open its gates...

"It's that young scamp Moren, isn't it?" her mother continued, returning to the heavy iron stove and poking at the sausages with a fork. Sara paused in the middle of sitting down, bottom hovering above the seat, and sighed.

"Well, it was, ya," she admitted, settling into the chair and nibbling at a warm bun, momentarily brought low by the boy's name. "But then I thought, what good am I to anyone if I just spend my time moping? Today, I'm going to enjoy myself, or die trying."

Her mother laughed loudly from the stove, returning with the sizzling sausages. "Can you find a happy medium in there somewhere, dear? We've a lot of chores around here, and I'm getting on in years."

"Oh, Ma, surely Dani can tend the garden."

"Dear, Dani can barely tend to her blasted cat."

Said cat was currently perched on a windowsill, soaking up the early spring sunshine, and snoring quite loudly now that the sausages were no longer spitting in the pan. Realizing she had inadvertently become the center of attention, Mew lifted up her head and stared quizzically at the humans for a moment, before she realized that she'd shifted her center of gravity, and fell rather ungracefully to the floor with a loud 'thump'.

"Don't cats usually land on their feet?"

Sara shrugged. "Mew's not like other cats, Ma. Other cats have at least some sense of self-preservation." There was another thump as Mew's forehead cracked into the table leg, and the salt cellar tipped over. "Or direction."

The obvious hung unspoken in the cozy, delicious-smelling room. Sara knew that the carnivale was open, perched on the edge of town, gates swung invitingly wide, and as much as she wanted to slip on her boots and charge breathlessly into it's midst, there were niceties to be observed.

"So what are you going to do today, Ma?" she asked innocently, stuffing a sausage into another bun and searching the table for the little mustard pot. "Airing out the laundry, I'd expect? Weather seems fine for it."

Sara's mother settled into the other chair, sighing exaggeratedly. "Oh, I imagine. Seems to be quiet outside, I've hardly seen anyone walking around." She buttered a roll and started to eat, looking pensive. "Is your sister coming down for breakfast?"

She tried not to smile. "Oh, I, uh, think that Dani's already eaten and gone, Ma. She was up quite early."

"Indeed," her mother repeated with another sigh. "Well, I expect I should go look for her, then. There's many chores that need doing, and I'll be buggered if I'm going to do them all myself!"

They shared a knowing glance as they finished their light meal, and started to pack the leftover food into a small basket. They didn't want to fill up on the mundane fare leftover from winter storage, when they knew there were a dozen purveyors of exciting tastes and smells waiting just outside of town.

Outside it seemed that the world was crackling with spring lighting, the early morning air heavy with warmth and moisture despite the cloudless sky. The small hamlet was not nearly as crowded as even the trading post towns to the south, and they had enough time to walk and discuss finding Dani and meeting up at lunch to plan the rest of the day before they encountered the next house along the well-worn dirt path. Sara and her mother peeked in the windows as they passed, and were not surprised to discover the house empty.

"Hmm," her mother said conversationally, "Michaela and Samwise seem not to be at home. How odd."

"Very odd."

All around Dramamore the forests of the Low Fen were kept at bay by meticulously cared-for fields, half of which were already tilled and planted for the upcoming growing season. Sara thought it was akin to living in an enormous green saucepan. The towering wall of green was broken to the east and west by the wide and well-traveled Butterfly Road, and to the north and south by the considerably less-used Hollow Way. As the years went by, though, even young Sara noticed that traffic on the Butterfly seemed to be waning, and most people who came through spoke of things political and religious that she could never fully comprehend.

"There's always happenings in other places," her mother would say, seeming to fill the words 'other places' with equal parts scorn and indifference. "When you don't have to worry about the necessities, you start fighting over everything else."

Other places, it turned out, referred to absolutely anywhere outside of the Low Fen, even outlying hamlets that differed from Dramamore only in the number of feral housecats and nosy grandmothers. Only once had Sara been as far as Seer Gorge, nearly a full day's wagonride to the east, and she had been rather disappointed that it wasn't a thriving metropolis full of lords, ladies and quaffing ruffians. She wasn't entirely sure what quaffing or ruffians were, but she'd hoped they'd be exciting.

As they walked, the houses began to appear closer to one another, until the wide dirt path didn't so much wind its way in between them as it was bounded and guided by them. Houses gave way to small shops, many of which had been open for business since sunup, and then they found themselves at the center of Dramamore society.

"Shameful," her ma said, glancing away from the doors of the pub which was already doing a brisk business. Sounds of music and carousing came from within, and faintly acrid smoke crept out from the cracks in the black-painted windows. Located kitty-corner to the town hall, the only stone structure in the entire region, more local business was conducted within the beer-stained walls than anywhere else. "Can't even wait until mid-day."

"Well, ma, they seem pretty happy," Sara teased, knowing full well that the older woman had, on more than one occasion, been brought home singing bawdy songs in the wee hours of the morning by her slightly-more-sober friends and family. Sara herself wasn't allowed in until her seventeenth, which would be just before the snow flew that year, and she could hardly wait.

The pub, the livery, the town hall and the blacksmith bracketed the Square, which was the wide and poorly-named circle at the center of town. Large enough to contain the entire sparse population of the Low Fen region, a massive wooden platform stood at the center and was used for official proclamations and celebrations. The rest of the time, it was the prime location for the youth of the town to loiter and try to act interesting. Sara waved at some of her yearmates, young girls of roughly the same age. She noticed with a little wry chagrin that their mothers were also all present, nonchalantly hovering like hawks.

"Come along, dear," her ma said, guiding her past the shade of the dais and out the other side of the round Square.

Rather like viewing the previous ten minutes in reverse, the hamlet gradually dissipated until the houses were merely within shouting distance of each other, but any shouting in the area would have been drowned out by the myriad din that came from the fenced-off field. Several different songs seemed to be competing for attention above the laughs, cries, hoots and screams of the carnivale-goers. The entrance proved to be a remarkably solid-looking pair of stone columns with a brightly-colored set of immense double doors between them, and standing just outside was a genial-looking fellow of indeterminate age in an even-brighter-colored velvet doublet. He smiled the wide, inviting smile of the trusted family friend and beckoned them over.

"Marry and good day, sweet lasses," he said with such grandiose pomposity that Sara was nearly overcome by the sudden urge to giggle. "May it please me to-"

"I think we'll be pleasing ourselves, thank you very much," her ma said, stepping around the official greeter without a second glance and slipping between the colorful gates, Sara in tow. Sara smiled apologetically to the barker who seemed unflustered by the uncouth behavior, but the irresistible yanking on her sleeve drew her on.

"Shameless," her ma repeated once they were safely inside. Sara rolled her eyes, but said nothing. She had learned long ago that there was very little point in arguing with her elders, since it had already been pre-established that she was wrong, no matter what. Dani still struggled against the natural hierarchy, and had earned a bit of a reputation as a hellion, but the sort of hellion that people chuckle about after her exploits become public knowledge.

Sara recalled being at a carnivale when she was considerably younger, but her only memory of the entire day had been consuming vast quantities of strange, exotic and mostly-fried food, and regurgitating said food in Ye Halles Of Feare when a powder-coated ghost leapt out of a closet in front of her. The ghost had screamed, cursed profusely and generally became quite a bit scarier, but by that point she was empty.

Her ma clearly remembered that day as well when she turned an admonishing glare at Sara and said "Please try to exert some self-control today, all right sweetie?"

Sara sighed. "I was something like four or five back then, ma. I can say no to a sausage."

Her ma seemed on the verge of saying something potentially embarrassing, but decided against. "Well, then, just pass along what I said to your sister if you see her."

"Aye, ma."

"And don't 'aye, ma' me, young lady."

"Aye, ma."

"That's better. Where would you like to go first?"

Sara looked down and realized that her ma was still holding on to her sleeve. She sighed dramatically. "Ma, I just said I'm not four or five." She lifted her arm meaningfully, her ma's arm trailing like a faithful sheepdog.

They both looked down at their hands for a moment, and then at each other's eyes. "My dear, these carnivales can be considerably more dangerous to young ladies like yourself, moreso than when you were a wee pip."

Sara looked around. Half the town seemed crammed into the field, weaving in and out of the colorful stalls, smiling, laughing, passing strange prizes and knick-knacks back and forth. She knew that by the time the sun had risen fully into the sky, the entire town would be here, even those who typically spent their lunchtimes at the pub.

"Ma, if you've raised such a milksop that you think she can't handle herself for a few hours in a public place surrounded by the entire bloody town, then you should probably be having a good long talk with yourself."

The stare intensified, and for a second Sara expected a rebuke, but her ma's eyes softened, and the stern glare became a relieved smile. The young girl was a little surprised to find herself suddenly being embraced.

"Ye'r a good girl, Sara," her ma said thickly, "and ye'll be fine. Just don't spend all your money, ok?"

Sara patted her skirts reassuringly. "I'll be fine, ma."

"And just because Moren's no longer in your good graces doesn't mean you need to be lettin' anyone else into them..."

She rolled her eyes. "Maaaaa..."

Her ma laughed. "Oh, I trust you, lass," she said, patting her daughter on the hand, "but what sort of mother would I be if I didn't point out the bleedin' obvious at every occasion?"

"The... best mother ever?"

"Hush."

They embraced again, and then carefully stepped away from each other. "I'm going to check out the shops," her ma said, edging sideways. "There's bound to be something tasty we can stock up on."

"Oh, aye," the young redhead replied, inching the other way, "and I'm going to see if Lyssa and the others are here yet."

Strains of music flitted between them, and the overpowering panoply of colors was intoxicating to a family used to pine-green and hay-brown the rest of the year. Trying to retain as much dignity as they could muster, they hiked up their skirts and scattered into the crowds. Sara could have sworn, just for a moment, that she heard her mother giggle.

One hand moved up to tug at her bodice slightly, yanking it down a little bit now that her mother's perpetually disapproving gaze was elsewhere. Sara's bosom was certainly respectable, but not nearly as eye-catching as she would have liked. Cursing her luck once again, she thought of Dani's wardrobe, and her mother's efforts to let out Dani's tops and blouses to properly fit her magnificent curves, while at the same time trying to hide them from prying eyes. She tugged in annoyance once more, feeling the laced front slipping a little lower, exposing a couple inches of soft flesh.

"Well, you girls will have to do," she said with a rueful chuckle, mingling with the crowd. She recognized a good number of the locals, but there were also many who had come in from the outlying parts, and probably had to leave their homes at dawn to get to the carnivale so early. She waved at the schoolmistress, who was striking a strange dichotomy with her stern, raptor-like face and severely-tied bun of hair adorned with a ring of pink posies. Her small bunched mouth thinking about the slight possibility of smiling, the teacher returned the wave.

For nearly an hour, the sun rising higher into the sky and the shadows slowly shrinking, she flitted from colorful booth to colorful booth, covered wagon to covered wagon, smelling the strange exotic smells and taking in the strange exotic people. People with skin colors she normally only associated with autumn produce or rare hardwoods were commonplace here, and there were a hundred styles of clothing in a hundred different shades. It was just like that time she had tried her mother's 'special cider' and been found naked in the woods the next morning, perched on a high tree branch, insisting she was an albatross and demanding to be called Florence The Amazing.

She wanted to have her palm read and her future told by Madame Kaleden And Her Eye Of The Hidden. She wanted to try whatever the squiggly brown things were with the red sauce that came on skewers with strange foreign vegetables. She wanted to buy the unusual spices and heady perfumes that fought to overwhelm her better judgment, and there was a wagon filled with frilly undergarments that she'd never even THOUGHT would exist anywhere. Some looked rather painful, but there were others that she knew would be in her closet by the end of the night. Hidden far, far at the back of her closet, where her mother would never find them. She hoped.

"But first," she said, walking with a determined glare up to the imposing structure that dominated the wide grassy circle at the heart of the carnivale, "there's something that I have to do."

---

At the far end of the public circle, staying out of the way of the crowds and enjoying the shade beneath the boughs of an ancient oak tree, a tall man with a shock of red hair watched the wooden structure with interest. Looking for all the world like a vastly oversized and overcomplicated set of children's building sticks, the rollercoaster shook and wobbled alarmingly, but he had noticed that several important-looking sections were virtually immovable and that the instabilities had been carefully engineered and implemented with years of practice.

Right now, his eye was watching the little collection of tiny metal-wheeled wagons that was whipping through tight turn after tight turn, up hills that were slightly shorter than the previous descent, giving the impression that they might never stop. The rear car had four brave young men who were waving their arms and screaming, never letting it slip that they were obviously terrified. The middle car had smaller children who looked terrified, but were clearly having the time of their life. The front car had two nearly-identical straw-haired girls up front, hands clasped together and laughing with their eyes clenched shut, and on the narrow bench behind them, a raven-haired girl in the early bloom of womanhood was staring with the sort of grim determination normally reserved for people facing an executioner's axe. It was only the wild gleam in her eye that betrayed her joy, and he doubted anyone else at the carnivale could see her the way he did.

He finished his apple, core and all, and leaned back against the tree, chucking as the roller coaster ground to a halt, several swarthy workers struggling dramatically to hold the ropes that snagged on the hooks on the rearmost wagon. More theatrics, he knew, but theatre was the truest form of magic: it was upfront about its lies.

The black-tressed girl got off of the roller coaster, legs hardly wobbling, smile also hardly wobbling, and made her way unsteadily to the edge of the clearing where several food wagoneers were clustered. He had to chuckle again at her bravery, forcing herself to eat after a ride that h ad left her so shaken. She certainly had... well, guts and gusto, at least. That was halfway there. The other half he suspected, but had yet to be proven.

Heading for where the crowds were thickest, he moved to follow her.

---

Sara was using the well-adorned stick more to gesture at things of interest than as a source of sustenance, but the sizzling smells coming from it did help to settle her stomach; she just wasn't sure she wanted to eat any of it just yet. She recognized some of the bits as onions and potatoes and what she thought might be deer, but some orange and purple things were completely foreign, and she wanted her stomach to recover before she tried them.

She drifted in and out of conversations with people that she knew from town. Well, realistically, she knew EVERYONE in town, but she spoke more than a few token words with those that she was closest with. Most girls of a certain age tended to group together for safety and gossip, but she had never really felt at comfortable around them. Dani, who could pass for older when required simply by tightening certain articles of clothing, told Sara some of the things that were said about her, and it wasn't making socializing any easier.

That said, she had a handful of close friends, and at the moment she was trying to convince one of them, a statuesque redhead by the name of Millini, to try the roller coaster.

"It's not scary at all!" she said, laughing gaily and feeling her stomach flip as she nibbled at the mystery meat which now tasted more like quail. "You go fast, but you don't need to be such a big baby about it."

"I'm hardly being a baby! Didn't you hear about the carnivale in Hallenbeck last year? That poor boy got beheaded!"

"There wasn't a carnivale in Hallenbeck last year, it was in Hallenbrooke."

"Hallenbrooke then!"

"So what makes you think they haven't fixed the decapitator?"

"Because they... uhm... what?"

The two girls glared at each other briefly, and then burst into laughter, startling a small clump of teenage boys that scattered like field mice. Millini made as if to chase one, not helping her reputation as a rapacious and easily-bored lover, but stopped after a few steps.

The pair rounded a corner that was little more than two wagons butting up against each other, and saw a wide boulevard lined with hastily-built but colorfully-painted wooden booths. In front of each one stood a man wearing roughly the same colors as his booth, urging one and all to try their skill and dexterity at what was obviously a very simple game with no hidden tricks. Some of the booths (those with significantly larger crowds) also had a scantily glad female out front whose entire job seemed to consist of gesturing to the games and waving.

"Oooh! I saw these earlier," Millini said, bouncing excitedly. "You just throw hoops at bottles, or darts at wooden ducks, or things like that! These look easy, and ohmygoodness look at how cute that is!!!!"

She clutched Sara's arm and pointed wildly at what, to Sara, looked like a rather poorly-assembled stuffed kitten, hanging among a dozen other plush animals. There was something about it, though, that appealed to the part of Sara's mind that still dreamed of pink princess gowns and frilly unicorns. Millini knew her friend well, and when Sara's gaze grew stony, she smiled to herself.

"Stand back," the shorter girl said, striding forwards to the booth with the large, round targets. The barker saw her determined stance and smiled widely, sweeping one arm out to scatter the lingering looky-loos and provide room for what was clearly a paying customer. He took two copper coins from her, and pulled a child-sized birch shortbow from behind the counter.

"Two coins, two arrows," he said thickly around a moustache that was threatening to suffocate him. He handed Sara the tiny bow and some rather used-looking arrows with tiny metal tips, and she had suddenly wished she'd practiced more. Like most women in the region, she was a capable hunter and forager, simply out of necessity, but she had never stood out as exceptionally skilled. Still, she thought, the bull's eye targets aren't that far away, and they're bigger than Dani's boobs. How hard could this be?

A few moments later she handed over two more coins. The second arrow was embedded in one of the posts that held the targets aloft, while the first had simply bounced awkwardly and nearly skewered one of the plush dolls. The next two arrows didn't fare much better, but her sixth stuck firmly in the outermost circle ringing the target. A weak cheer went up from the small crowd, and Sara allowed herself an annoyed victory smile.

The smile vanished when the barker picked up a small crate from behind the booth, filled with what at first she took for dust bunnies. Closer examination revealed them to be little balls of fabric, filled with some sort of limp stuffing, and adorned with stitched smiley faces. She looked up again, and gestured to the much larger, and now much more glamorous-looking, stuffed kittens. "No, I wanted one of those."

"Must make two bull's-eyes, pretty girl."

Her eyes widened briefly, and her nostrils flared. "You didn't tell me that at the beginning," she said with the sort of calmness usually associated with nurses in sanitoriums.

"Pretty girl did not ask."

"You can stop calling me..." she started, her voice rising, when a sharp clap of metal on wood stopped her. Sara and the barker turned to look at the tall man with the red hair that stood out even in this gaudily-colored place, who had just slapped two coins down on the counter with more force than absolutely necessary.

"He's merely pointing out the obvious," the man said smoothly. He held out his hand for the bow that was still clutched in one small fist, and Sara grudgingly handed it over. She turned to leave before the urge to kick the stranger overwhelmed her urge to bury her anger in sweets, but was again stopped in her tracks by a strange sound.

When she turned, the arrow was still vibrating dead-center in the bull's eye, and before she could draw breath the second arrow joined it, so close the shafts rubbing together could have been used to start a campfire. The barker looked briefly annoyed, but he had been in the business long enough to know that arguing with the customers was poor practice, especially when said customer had just showed a dozen people how EASY it was to win.

The man pointed up, and the barker handed over the stuffed kitten.

Sara was walking back to the booth, Millini being dragged along like a goose tied to a mule. The dark-haired girl was already visualizing her foot lifting the stranger right off of his feet, freakish red hair and all, but seeing his broad grin above the proffered kitten derailed her mission. He bowed slightly, still holding the plush toy out.

"I apologize if I upset you, but I was merely trying to help," he said, the very picture of gallant innocence. Millini was already preening and wishing she could casually adjust her corsetry without making it too obvious, but Sara's brain was still trying to hold onto the desire to kick. Eventually it gave up in the face of the stranger's onslaught of nobility, and she relented. She took the kitten, took a deep breath, and handed it to Millini.

The stranger looked at the two of them, and chuckled. "Ah, you were trying to win it for your friend here! You just looked so upset, I had to lend a hand."

"No-one asked you," she said, trying hard not to feel grateful. She had planned on spending the day at the carnivale playing the games, eating the food, and getting angry at anything that even slightly frustrated her, before going home to sob into her pillow and fervently wish that she'd never met Moren. Emotional exhaustion, she found, helped the recovery process, and now this kind, stupid man was attempting to turn her day into something delightfully enjoyable. Her foot twitched, ready to fly.

She sagged, shook her head once, raven tresses flying, and then smiled at him, a genuine smile. Brief, to be sure, but genuine. "Thank you. I should apologize, too, I am... not always like this. Right, Millini?"

Millini's hands flew from her dress, where she had been trying to surreptitiously tighten her corsets through the fabric of her bodice. "Right!"

The man smiled again. He smiles too much, Sara thought, a little distrustful niggling thought. People who smile that much want something that you're not willing to part with easily, and unless he was after the kitten, it didn't leave many options. If he had half a brain in his head he'd have set his sights of Millini, who was practically inviting him over to examine her petticoats after sunset, but he still seems to be focusing on me.

Before the silence could expand to become a full-fledged awkward moment, his smile dampened itself several degrees and he stuck out his hand. "My name's Dirk. I've been lodging with Lady Silton for a few days, and I was about to keep on my journey this morning when... well, suddenly I had good reason to stay an extra day."

Sara looked at the clean, possibly manicured hand, and then back up to the handsome face. His age was difficult to determine. He seemed older than her, surely, but he didn't seem old enough to be able to make a good guess. If he was staying with old lady Stilton then he certainly had money, at least by local standards. She knew Millini had reached the same conclusion; Sara could practically hear the coins clinking in her friends mind. Millini was a sweetheart, she thought, but she also saw more for her future than being stuck in a town this small. One more summer and she'd have run through all of the available male stock, and would need to seek greener pastures just for variety.

Sara shook the offered hand firmly, vigorously, not wanting to make a first impression as a winsome milksop, and nodded once. Dirk chuckled again, one eyebrow rising. "Are you going to tell me your name, or should I just start calling you 'pretty girl', too?"

His impersonation of the barker was remarkable, and she found herself giggling in spite of herself. She chastised herself for being so easily swayed. "Sara."

"Millini!" came the too-perky accompaniment.

"Charmed."

"Stop that."

"Stop what?"

"The whole 'handsome charming ooh-look-how-polite-I-am' routine."

Dirk paused. "You think I'm handsome?"

Sara managed the remarkably difficult physiological feat of simultaneously paling with fear and blushing with embarrassment. She opened her mouth, ready to flay him alive for whatever he had done wrong, but she only managed a faint squeak before turning on her heel and storming away. The villager's whom she'd grown up with recognized the look on her face, if not the intensity, and smartly moved out of her path.

Dirk and Millini watched her go. "Is she... always like that?"

Millini shrugged, grateful for the opportunity to show how well her bosom jiggled. "Sometimes. Most of the time, really. I think it's one of the reasons her boyfriend dumped her. No sense going after a girl like that." She glanced up at him with carefully-practiced coquettish innocence, hoping to see him captivated by her beauty, but he was, confusingly, still staring after Sara.

"How interesting," he said thoughtfully.

Millini started to ask why he wasn't paying attention to her, but she was surprised to find that, somehow, she was standing by herself.

---

Near the northern end of the wide field that was largely dominated by the carnivale, Sara drummed her heels in the upper branches of a sprawling oak tree. She finished the last of the strange beverage she'd purchased on her angry trip through the fairgrounds, the syrupy-sweet taste lingering on her tongue. It had been touted as a dozen exotic fruits blended together, but she was fairly sure it was mostly apples. Whatever wasn't apple, though, certainly seemed tasty enough.

She pouted, confident that no-one could see her, and punched the tree trunk. She knew she really had no reason to be mad at that man, at Dirk, which made her even angrier. She WANTED a good reason to be mad at him, and none had presented itself. She wanted to be mad at someone, and without Moren present, someone even more handsome seemed like a welcome target, but... but...

"Dammit," she grumbled, leaning back against the trunk and sighing. Millini was no doubt seeing what the mysterious stranger had to offer, and she knew that the blonde had more than enough natural gifts to entice him. Sara glanced down at her body, and sighed again. She knew it was a good body, trim and strong. She could beat many of the local boys at most sports, and a few of them had discovered early on that good-natured wrestling often ended with Sara on top, and not in the fun way. She might not be nearly as curvy as Dani, or as statuesque as Millini, or as memorable as some of the other girls her age, who had flaming red hair, or freckles, or elf-cheeks, whatever the hell those were. She was dark-haired and pale, and had a penchant for brightly-colored knee socks, but she didn't look the way she wanted. Certainly not the way she saw herself in her dreams...

"Excuse me," came a voice from below. Sara's head snapped down, more than a little startled to see Dirk, leaning nonchalantly and eating a carrot. "I couldn't help but notice that you left before I had a chance to ask you a question."

There was a frantic rustling, and Dirk brushed a few errant leaves and bits of bark out of his hair. A moment later, Sara dropped to the ground in front of him, feet sinking into the soft earth nearly up to her ankles. She straightened up, squared her shoulders, and glared at him, happy to finally have a good reason. "You followed me?!"

He chuckled, leaning back against the trunk again, seeming to have not a care in the world. "To be fair, you didn't give me much choice."

"A choice?! What possible reason would you have to follow me that will stop me from pummeling you right now?"

"Well, I could hardly talk to you about dragons if I'm pummeled."

"That's... what?"

The tableau was frozen for a long breath. Dirk stood upright again, flicking the last errant bits of nature from his green shirt, and then waved a hand in front of Sara's face. "Are you all right?"

She shook her head dazedly. "Why... why would you want to talk to me about dragons?"

"Well, you ARE the Sara a'Waters who wrote several letters to the Concerned League of Ancient Magicks, aren't you? As well as letters to several guilds in the surrounding towns and cities, warning them of dragon sightings in the area? To say nothing of the rather surprisingly accurate articles written to Mythical Beasts Quarterly, even though some of them may have been a touch more risqué than was strictly necessary."

Sara's bewilderment became total when he pulled a folded sheaf of papers from a pocket. "And the sketches you sent to Mythical Beasts Quarterly were really quite skillful, I must say, although I don't think the claws and fangs were nearly so prominent."

She glanced down, and sure enough there was one of the sketches she had sent in to her favorite publication. Her mother didn't approve of such silly things, and Sara had been forced to request that delivery be made to Millini's grandmother's house, who never opened anything. The only trick was getting there before the old woman used it as firelighters. "But... but I only sent that in three weeks ago!"

"And it arrived ten days ago, and it was placed on my desk nine days ago, and I began my journey eight days ago."

"But I didn't use my real name!"

"Yes," he chuckled again, a deep sound that reminded her of pebbles bouncing through a cave, "that was the difficult part. Your nom de plume was clever, and the woman at your mailing address was quite startled and confused by my questions."

She snatched the sheaf of papers out of his hands with a sound like a cracking whip, and rifled through them. "This is half the stuff I've sent in! What, none of it was good enough to publish but it was enough to send you on a trip halfway across the continent just to confront a silly farm girl?" Her bewilderment had been replaced by a much more comforting emotion, and she began to hope there was a sturdy oak branch laying around somewhere.

Dirk, infuriatingly, did not seem the least bit perturbed by her outburst. "Sadly, my editors do not seem to be as intrigued as I was. You see, most of the dragon sightings we get are of the traditional folktale sort, with cattle being horribly devoured, virgins being kidnapped, houses being razed, and so forth, all activities which humans have so often shown a much higher aptitude for."

Sara was starting to wonder if the see-saw of emotions she was experiencing today was going to have any long-lasting effects. The anger pooled at the back of her mind, to be replaced with the sort of clinical curiosity that teachers often get when encountering a particularly bright pupil. "Go on."

"Your letter, Miss Opakev, made no mention of any of these things. You describe the beast as drifting through the sky, sometimes as high as the clouds, sometimes as low as the treetops, but always just sort of... looking around. Observing. No animals being eaten, no fire being breathed, no strangely absent virgins."

"I know it sounds boring, but..."

"Actually, it sounds far more accurate than anything else I've read, which is why I travelled here."

She thought for a moment, blowing some stray hairs out of her eyes. Her heart pounded. "What did you mean, about the claws and fangs?"

"Well, here, look," he said, moving to stand next to her, shoulder to shoulder, and pointing to the sketch, "you have the fangs here overlapping the jaws by quite a large distance, and the claws here seem to be so large as to weigh the fingers and toes down. It just seems rather excessive."

She blushed. "Well, to be honest, I... I just drew it like that so it would get published. When I saw him, they were, as you say, quite a bit smaller."

He smiled, and stared down into her eyes, and she was bemused to find herself staring back. "How did you know, though? Have you... seen one, too?"

Dirk sighed. "Sadly, no. I am merely a scholar. There is a vast store of ancient writings concerning the existence of dragons, dating back thousands of years, and nearly all of it contradicts what everyone today thinks they know about them."

She nodded excitedly. "I know what you mean! My father, when I was just a tiny girl, used to read me stories from this old book, and I mean a REALLY old book, where the dragons were always helpful, offering advice and helping people on quests, and things! They never ate anyone!"

Dirk arched an eyebrow at her sudden giddiness. "Indeed."

He glanced down at her left hand, which was still balled into a fist. "Have I earned a brief reprieve from a pummeling at the hands of a pretty girl?"

---

The late afternoon sun had turned the sky a deep indigo, and the well-trampled grasses, normally the washed-out beige of dead straw, glowed like spun gold. For hours Sara and her new friend, who had agreed to postpone the pummeling to a later date, walked through the carnivale, enjoying the foods and trying their luck at the games. Dirk stuck mostly to the fruits, claiming to be something strange called a vegetarian, though he didn't seem to mind watching Sara tearing into the mutton skewers. He had proven himself to be very good at the games of skill, and it was clear to her that on several occasions he had lost on purpose. She didn't mind so much, since he had managed to throw three rings around a single wine bottle and won her a stuffed velour dragon the size of an eagle.

She walked with it cuddled up in one arm, the other holding a smoothie that the pair shared. She had learned quite a lot about him over the past several hours. He came from Abbotsford, a large city a week's easy ride to the west, where he worked as a writer and junior editor for not just Mythical Beasts Quarterly, but a dozen publications on all topics. His family had money, which was obvious from his clothing, but he preferred to spend his days working, though there was no great riches to be made wordsmithing.

"You think there's not much call for it there? Try forming a book club where most members have to ride four hours to make the meetings, and there's only a dozen books between the lot of you. And only one copy of each. I... I know everyone thinks this way at my age, but there's got to be more to life than this village."

They crested a low hill, really more of a slight rise in the general flatness of the field, and they were able to see the roofs of the town proper in the distance. He gestured grandly, taking in the entirety of the bowl valley, the river, the houses and shops and the patchwork of farms stretching off into the distance. "I don't see how you could imagine leaving somewhere so... so idyllic."

"Good word, but try spending twenty years farming tubers."

"Beets?"

"Four kinds."

"Carrots?"

"Five kinds."

"Rutabagas?"

"Ok, think about what you're saying, and if it's a tuber, the answer is 'yes'."

As the sunlight began to fade, the carnivale has begun to transform. The sounds of hooting and laughter grew louder and more raucous, and the surreptitious sharing of bottles and flasks was steadily becoming less secretive. She could tell that very soon the town would be engulfed in the sort of celebration that results in people strenuously denying that anything happened, and she couldn't wait.

Dirk, however, seemed nervous. "Are you all right?" she asked, turning to look at him.

He jerked somewhat, and began to walk down the little hill, pulling her gently along, shadows stretching out behind them. "I'm fine! I just... just wanted to find someplace quieter."

She shot him a meaningful look. "Normally I'd be inclined to agree, but I can't help but notice we're heading towards the noise."

He seemed to relax as they rejoined the crowds. "Well, we'll need supplies, I'm sure," he said with a chuckle, heading for the main gates. Around them the villagers were growing more boisterous, and Sara caught more than a few glimpses of cleavage that she was reasonably sure belonged to people who had never, ever shown it in public. This was going to be quite the party!

She glanced back at the lonely little hill, which was already being overtaken by revelers. There was a wave of shade that passed over the swale, and her eyes reflexively shot upwards, looking for whatever could have made such a shadow... but they saw nothing.

Dirk looked down at her, and then up at the sky. "Did you see something?"

She realized she had been holding her breath, and she let it out. "I thought I saw a shadow. Big one."

He looked back at the hill with wide eyes, but calmed down when he saw nothing. "Surely your dragon wouldn't come out in daylight."

"'My' dragon?"

"Well, you're the only one who has seen him."

"Other people have seem him at night, but they keep telling me it's just a hawk."

"Even when he flies low?"

"Well, I spend a lot of the warmer nights laying on the roof, staring at the stars. I don't think anyone else has seen him when he's flying low. He comes out of the east, from the direction of Golden Field. Sometimes he looks as if he's protecting the village, but other times, it seems like he's looking for something."

"What could a dragon be looking for out here?"

"You think I'm making it all up, don't you?"

Dirk was silent for a moment. "Sara, there is the very good chance that, right now, I'm the only person in the world who really believes you."

She cocked her head, trying to decipher his tone. They reached the main gates, but rather than leaving the carnivale grounds, he walked up to a large tent that had been formed by stretching a huge cloth between two large wagons. He handed the heavyset man guarding the tent flap a little painted wooden tile, and waited while the grumbling wagoneer vanished into the tent. "Just picking up supplies," he said again, winking at her.

A moment later the annoyed man emerged, and handed Dirk a large leather case which seemed to consist of a hundred pockets and pouches all stitched together. He slung it over his shoulder to a chorus of rattling and tinkling, and took her by the hand. "So, pretty girl, I put it to you: what would you like to do?"

She looked down at his hand, brow wrinkling. She looked at the fuzzy dragon, and then at the crowds to their left, and the road just beyond the gate to their right. It was surely going to be an exciting party, and there was every possibility that she would get to drink, and dance, and laugh, but she always felt awkward and out-of-place at events like that. She wished she could enjoy it more, but she often felt that...

"You feel like you don't really belong there, don't you?"

She goggled at him. "What, do you read minds as well as badly-written mythical beast fiction?"

He laughed. "Hardly. But I am good at reading people. I need to be. And you, Sara, have the look of someone who lives life as though it were a storybook, where adventure and romance wait on the next page, but no matter how many times you turn that page..." He left the rest of the thought unspoken, but plainly obvious nonetheless.

In what was becoming a common event for the day, Sara was speechless. Dirk shifted the strange makeshift bag, and she heard the tinkling sounds again. "Come for a walk with me, Sara."

The breeze picked up, and despite the sun hanging low on the horizon they seemed to be standing in a pool of shadow. She glanced again at the revelers, knowing Dani would surely be there, and if she saw Sara with a handsome fellow like Dirk, there'd be no peace for either of them. She also knew Moren would be there, and she would love to rub it in his face that she was linking elbows with someone who had already proven himself to be a kinder, gentler soul. Her ma would be there, her grandma, probably several cousins, and everyone she knew for half a dozen villages around. If she failed to show up, there would be questions, rumors, innuendo, possibly even panic.

She wound her free arm through his, squeezed the stuffed dragon, and smiled her most brilliant smile. "More than anything in the world."

The sun became saw-toothed, beginning it's slow slide below the tree-line. The forests seemed to darken around them as the sky faded to indigo, rich orange sunlight being replaced by the silvery glow of the half-moon. As they walked back up the wide wagon-rutted road towards Dramamore proper, the part of her mind that struggled to keep her out of trouble started wondering about the day's string of coincidences. The much larger part of her mind that had convinced her that she was merely an impetuous heroine tried to ignore it.

Moren decides that he'd much rather be with other girls, and she finds out about it from several people before he attempts to mention it to her. Suddenly, a strapping and wealthy man from a far-away city shows up in her life.

Mere days after her latest sighting of the dragon, as well as the mysterious horned beast that lurked just beyond the edges of the wood, which local people had long since stopped even pretending to politely believe she actually saw, an editor from a publication about mythical beasts shows up with her letters and sketches, insisting she is absolutely correct.

Given the not-terribly difficult decision of choosing between Millini and Sara, the aforementioned stranger not only chooses her but spends quite a bit of money playing games of skill to win her the exact prize she wanted.

And now, in what should have been an extremely suspicious move, he was leading her away from the crowds and the music and the fun, and into the dark and nearly empty village. Alarm bells were ringing loud enough that she was surprised he couldn't hear them. She wanted to tell the mysterious Dirk to go stuff himself, give him a kick in the shins for good measure, and go back to the party. She could get good and worked up, steal a bottle of apple scumble, and go drink her woes away in her bedroom. But every time she thought about doing that, she'd look up at him, and feel somehow... safe.

The part of her mind that tried to keep her out of trouble gave up, being unable to figure out which course of action was stupider, and went out for a smoke, unsure if it should even come back.

"Why are you here?"

The question seemed to catch him unawares. "For you," he said softly. His mouth shut with a snap, and he looked down at her, smiling disarmingly. "Your letters made a very compelling case," he added, a little lamely, she thought.

"Is there anything you're not good at?"

He looked at her curiously, unsure as to her meaning. "Well," she said, "it's just that so far you've proven yourself to be good with words, good with girls, you're a skilled archer, your ring-toss aim is impeccable, and you're certainly one of the best liars I've ever met."

He cocked his head, the very picture of confused innocence, but you could have cut jewels with Sara's glare. For the first time, he looked sheepish, and a tiny blush seemed to creep into his complexion, though that might have just been a trick of the fading sunset. "You truly are more impressive than you give yourself credit for," he said with a chuckle. "Can I ask to which lie in particular you're referring?"

"That depends, which one is the biggest?"

"I'm quite sure you wouldn't believe me, if size is your only metric."

"Should we go chronologically?"

"Probably not a good idea."

"All right then, let's start with whichever will keep me from pummeling you. I do owe you one."

He pursed his lips and seemed to put a lot of thought into it. "Can we start with which parts were true?"

"I get the feeling it's going to be like describing the holes in hard cheese."

"Are you mad at me?"

"Furious. But I'd never dream of interrupting you before you had a chance to explain yourself."

They came to the still-poorly-named Village Square. Some of the local businesses were still in the middle of closing up, and several villagers were still filtering through on the way to the carnivale. Sara sat against the wooden stage that served as the loitering destination of choice for all villagers of a certain age, motioning for Dirk to do likewise. Her tone had been pleasant, even sweet, and any half-sensible male knew when that meant the ice beneath their feet had become thin indeed.

They stared at each other for several long breaths, Sara's face inscrutable, Dirk's still flush with quiet amusement. It infuriated her to think that he wasn't absolutely terrified of being found out. Nothing seemed to perturb him, which just made the whole situation worse. Whatever his tissue of lies had been concealing, he wasn't upset to be found out. She decided to be the first to break the silence.

"Editor?"

"Contributing author. Sometimes. Not published very often."

"How did you get my letters and sketches?"

"Poorly locked doors are quite common in Abbotsford."

"Wealthy family?"

"Ah, that one is definitely true."

"'Dirk'?"

"Yes, and I'll thank you not to make fun of my name."

The corners of her lips twitched up slightly, and he pointed to her face in mock surprise. "Saints be praised, a smile!"

"It might mean I'm about to hit you."

"Good point."

She started to speak again, but he had turned his attention to the strange satchel. He rummaged around in one of the largest pouches, which revealed itself to be full of smaller pouches, and eventually removed a small metal flask. It was tarnished with age, but she could see it was intricately inlaid with etchings of -

"Dragons," she said, peering at it. They were far from the fanged, clawed, fire-breathing monstrosities that were popular with tapestries at the moment. Despite the small size of the etchings and the apparent age, the detail was remarkable. "They look so... sleek."

Dirk nodded, unscrewing the soft copper cap. "Flasks such as these used to be carried by ambassadors, envoys, emissaries of all nations, as a symbol that they were at peace with dragonkind."

One dark eyebrow arched. "Oh, really?"

"Yeah, really," he said with mock severity.

"And what makes them so special, exactly? Except for the fact that the dragons don't look that scary, you can get the same thing at Shoebert's Trinkets."

He produced two glazed pottery cups from the satchel, and offered her one. As she was coming to expect, it was covered in well-crackled black-and-red and distinctly dragon-themed artwork. She looked at it suspiciously, peering inside. "You're definitely picking the wrong girl to get drunk," she said, not so much an objection as a warning.

He laughed, shaking his head. "Truly you are fearsome. This may be wine, but I'm not trying to get you anything."

She eyed the flask as he began to pour. "It's not like there's enough there to even keep you warm on a cold night."

She was beginning to feel like she was being put on when he filled her cup, and then started to fill his own. She eyed the flask again, trying to gauge it's size. Soon his own cup was full, and he righted the silvery container, giving it a little shake, and then handing it to her. "Here, I don't think you'll believe me any other way."

Sara took the flask, and her eyes widened. She looked at her own cup, which was clearly full, and at his, which was likewise topped up. She shook the flask herself, and was greeted with the unmistakable weight and heft of a flask that was still full.

Dirk's hand flashed out and caught the flask as it fell from her fingers. "Can Shoebert's do that?"

"How...?"

He took a sip, and smiled. "I told you, they were given to the emissaries by the dragons. What better way to show their appreciation?"

She stared down at the cup in her hand as if it might suddenly bite her, but her rational sense was overridden by the frantically-waving desire for adventure. She lifted the cup to her lips, and took a small sip of the deep red wine. "Gods, it's chilled!"

"It was the style of wine back then, as I understand it. Personally, I find it quite refreshing."

She took another long draught, the stress and soreness of the day washing away. She'd only ever had chilled wine once, and that had been in winter. Everything had been chilled that night. But cold wine on a warm spring night was a new experience for her, one she found she quite liked. Several questions vied to be first in line. "How in the world did you end up with one of these?"

There was a flicker of emotion she'd have sworn was sadness, but she couldn't be sure. He took another sip, and answered. "It has been passed down in my family, as a reminder of the concord that once existed. When once, there was peace not just among the humans, but among the dragons, and the gryphons, and all the peoples of the world."

The somber tone surprised her. "How... how do you know all of that?"

He was already reaching into the satchel, and he removed a book unlike any Sara had ever seen. Her own books were heavy and bound with leather, with paper made from bleached and pressed rag-ends. They were durable, but they were not fancy. Even the publications she received, made with real paper and bound with cloth and strips of tar paled in comparison to what Dirk handed her. She put down her cup of wine, and reached out with a trembling hand.

The book was small, not much bigger than the flask. The cover was black and glossy, firm but flexible. The only adornment seemed to be an embossed design in red and gold, an ivy-covered oak-tree before an enormous red circle that she assumed to be a setting sun. The paper inside was so thin as to be nearly transparent. Although no thicker than one of her twenty-page quarterlies, this book must have had hundreds of pages, with letters so delicate and dark against the stark white sheets that at first she couldn't even focus her eyes on them properly.

"It's beautiful," she breathed. It took her a moment to realize that, although the recognized the letters, and some of the words, the language was archaic and almost unreadable. She gingerly flipped through the first few pages, trying to determine the nature of the work. "It must be worth a fortune!"

He nodded. "There are not many of them left."

She read for a minute, picking out words here and there, but the grammar and syntax was confusing. She was positive one sentence had been written entirely backwards. She discovered there were some letters she did not recognize, and it seemed to change languages from paragraph to paragraph. She swallowed her pride. "What is it?"

"It is the Concord."

She looked puzzled. "You mentioned that before. Isn't that a sort of bird?"

He smiled. "Not quite. The Concord was... an agreement. A peace treaty. It was the contract between all sentient creatures, a mutually-achieved decision to co-exist." The reverence with which he spoke captivated her, drew her eyes away from the ancient pages. He seemed older than before now, particularly his eyes which seemed locked onto some point in the past that only he could see and she could only scarcely imagine.

"How old is this book?"

He gave a small shrug, leaning back against the timbers supporting the platform and sipping his wine. "None can say. After a while the keepers of these artifacts stop counting the years. But it is... very old. You can keep that, by the way."

Sara squeaked, but managed to stop from dropping it. "You can't be bloody serious! This book is worth more than every farm in the Low Fen, livestock included! My books cost forty coppers, and you could use them to prop up roof timbers. This... this is a work of art. You're not giving it to me."

"I just did."

"I can't accept it!"

"You'd better. It would pain me to leave it here without anyone to care for it."

"You wouldn't dare."

Sara could handle men treating her like a midden heap. She could handle the embarrassment of being found, quite inebriated, naked in the woods and trying to fly away from the humans who would not understand her noble kind. She could even handle Dani and Millini moving in like top-heavy falcons anytime she fancied a boy. But she could simply not abide the mistreatment of books, and this was far and away the most remarkable book she had ever encountered, or even heard of.

She clutched it to her modest bosom, taking great care not to sink her nails into the soft bindings, or bend the spine in any way; women of a certain age would recognize it as the manner in which new mothers held their first swaddling babe. She desperate wished for another drink, but she didn't dare risk spilling magical wine on an ancient tome, something she'd never had to worry about until now. She decided on a solution, and slipped the slender volume into her bodice, casting a sidelong glance at Dirk to make sure he didn't try to sneak a peek. She was a little dismayed when he didn't. The next gulp of wine did help to steady her nerves, though.

"You know, most liars aren't hiding a truth that's even MORE incredible. They're usually trying to aggrandize something that's less than impressive."

He chuckled. "If I showed up here today, waving millennia-old books and telling you that I believed in dragons, what would you have done?"

She thought about it, tapping her lip. "Probably hit you with an oak branch."

"There you go, then."

"But why come here at ALL? Sure, one believer in a small Low Fen town. There must be dozens of people like me in the cities, and you could make more believe you with what you've shown me. The flask alone is, if not incontrovertible proof, at least something that can't be IGNORED! Speaking of which, can it make more?"

He smiled helplessly, shaking his head and producing the flask again. "I may have bitten off more than I can chew with you," he said, filling up her cup again with the pink, sparkling liquid. "You keep me on my toes more than anyone else I've met, and it's only been one day."

"Wait till I get going! Where was I?"

"The city."

"Right! There must be universities, philosophers, academics, learned people there who could confirm what you say!"

She could tell from his face that she was clearly making some erroneous assumptions. "The men of the cities do not go to universities to learn anything new, they go to be told that what they already know is correct, and perhaps learn better ways to go about it. Any knowledge I have tried to spread there has been at best ignored, and at worst laughed at. The cities of men are not places for dreamers, not anymore."

In her mind she had always seen cities as bastions of knowledge and justice, all polished marble and nobles in finery, but as he spoke her imaginings grew tarnished and curled around the edges. She found it was a bitter pill to swallow, having one's dreams destroyed so casually.

It took her a moment to realize that the Square had emptied out, and the sun had slipped completely below the treeline. The sounds of the carnivale were drifting down the street, and she could already hear the popping and screams as someone discovered fireworks, but her and Dirk were completely alone amidst the vague lighting of the guttering lanterns that overhung the nearby doorways.

"Whatever you're planning to spring on me," she said, buoyed by the courage-enhancing effects of the wine, which was surely weak since it had none of the fiery burn her mother's wine had, although she was positive her lips had not been quite so numb a minute before, but she made herself ignore that for now and focus on finishing the increasingly difficult sentence, "you had better do it quick, or I'm going to have a hard time staying away from the party."

He finished his own drink, seeming none the worse for wear, and leaned in close. The flickering light from the lamps was playing tricks on her eyes, she decided, ignoring the strange shadowy silhouettes that contrasted his angular features. "There are few people in the world who believe what some of us know to be true," he said softly, red hair not nearly so fiery as his eyes, "and even fewer who are willing to make the leap from one reality to the other, but you, Sara... I believe that you can do that, and more."

She stared into his eyes, body frozen, while his words percolated through her mind. His expression was bemused, however, when her first response was to laugh, a girlish giggling laugh, right in his face. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she said, covering her mouth with one hand and hiccupping, still grinning and giggling, "I really didn't mean to do that, but I just, I really, I didn't, you weren't supposed to say THAT. You were supposed to say something about being captivated by my beauty, or my eyes, or my smile, or my breasts, or something silly like that, not... not whatever you said."

The giggling subsided, though, when he did not smile back.

"If you're serious," she said, brows furrowing, "you're going to have to make a little more sense."

"Sara," he said, an urgent note entering his voice for the first time, "I can't explain it all, not now. It's too early, you've seen not nearly enough for the whole tapestry to make sense, but I can show it to you. I can show you everything, the whole world, if you but tell me one thing: will you come with me tonight, to see the dragon?"

Halfway through his sentence Sara had begun to analyze why drinking spirits always seemed to make her delicate regions tingle with pink electricity, but she was yanked out of her reverie by the import of the rest of his proclamation. "Come with you? Tonight? To see a dragon?"

"Not 'a' dragon. The dragon. Your dragon."

The urge to giggle again bubbled up from within her, but it died long before reaching her lips. Her heart pounded, her stomach flipped, and her mind's eye was filled with the memory of watching the dragon twirl, once, in front of the full moon, enormous and menacing but somehow sleek and gentle, and she'd always suspected that it had twirled like that, in that precise location at that precise time, just for her.

"Where is he?" Her words were barely a whisper.

He tilted his head briefly, gesturing north. "The woods. Quite a ways towards Broken Spike Mountain."

"But that's so far! We'd never get there tonight, or even tomorrow..."

Dirk shook his head. "There are ways."

"But there is... is something else in the woods. I've seen it. I think the dragon is protecting us from it. It's a great beast, with great horns, but it's never set foot into the Fen."

His eyes widened again. "A beast, with horns? Great wide horns?"

"Yes! Gods, don't tell me you've seen THAT, too?"

Dirk seemed to be staring off into space, a frustrated look on his handsome face. The strange, impossible shadows were gone, Sara was relieved to see. "I'm not entirely sure," he said slowly, "but I do not think it is dangerous, or it surely would have made it's presence known to more than just you."

She shivered, the cool night air penetrating the warm blanket of wine. "It looks menacing," she continued fearfully. "Can't we leave in the morning?"

His face seemed to be fighting to remain impassive. "I... I think that might work," he said slowly.

Sara looked down at her cup. The magic she had felt a moment ago seemed to have dissipated like early morning ground fog. She could remember Dirk staring into her eyes, and she into his, and had been willing to agree to almost anything, but now the hard realities of her life were making themselves known again. "I'm a farmgirl," she said, mostly to herself, "and I'm always going to be one."

They sat there for a moment longer, until Dirk reached out and took her hand. "Would you like me to walk you back to the carnivale?"

She shook her head. "I think that... that I'd best get home. This has been a very strange day."

He nodded sadly. "I think that might be for the best."

Leaving the Square plunged them into mid-evening darkness, the deep indigo sky not providing illumination so much as simply casting the world in differing shades of black. They walked arm-in-arm, Sara requiring a little bit more help balancing than she was ready to admit. She had to admit to herself, though, that she did enjoy the feel of his arm, and when she began to tilt sideways, the feel of his entire body against hers. He was slender, but stronger than he looked, and parts of her mind began to wonder just what he must look like beneath his expensive clothes. Other parts of her mind were still focusing on dragons, some were thinking decidedly un-chaste thoughts about both dragons and the flame-haired man on her arm, while still others were drinking and playing cards, taking bets on what would happen when the pair finally found their way to Sara's house.

"I wonder which of us will say something first?"

"I think you said that out loud."

"Oh." She hiccupped, and sighed. "I guess I'm probably a disappointment."

"Not in the slightest. It was unfair of me to come to you like this, but I did it with the best of intentions."

"I've heard that before."

"That's not what I meant."

"I've heard that, too."

They turned off of the main thoroughfare and onto the much narrower trail to Sara's neighborhood, if a half-dozen timber-thatch homes could be described thusly. "Those stories you wrote to the magazines," he started a little hesitantly, "did you really mean what you wrote?"

"Which stories? I wrote several for Mythical Beasts Quarterly."

"No, not those. Ah. The ones you wrote for The Beastiary. Oh, are you all right? Here, let me help you up."

She stood up on her own, dusting off her clothes even though it was far too dark to see any stains. "I'm sorry, I... how did you know about THOSE stories? Do you work there, too?"

He nodded, and then realizing she couldn't see him, said "Yes, sometimes. It was a different pseudonym, but I recognized the style. Your heroine is really something."

She was suddenly glad for the darkness. She felt as if she would be able to read from the glow of her burning face. Her eyes tingled with embarrassment. "Gods, you've known about those all this time? I'm surprised you could even look at me without sniggering."

She found her hands in his. "Did you mean what you wrote?"

The stories flashed through her mind. She had written a pile of stories about a brave warrior-woman named Sarah who had started life as a humble pumpkin farmer, until one night she was kidnapped from her home by a great and terrible dragon. She had been held captive for weeks, until the night she was to be devoured, where she was rescued by another great dragon, a wise and noble beast of red and gold. After a monumental battle, where Sarah helped her savior defeat the vicious and cruel lizard, he offered to fly her back to her village, but she refused, insisting that the world held too many wonders for her now. She returned to his home, a great aerie atop the cloud-wreathed slopes of a volcano, where the pair fell in love. The tales then took a decidedly more graphic turn, as the characters consummated their love, often and vigorously, and quite creatively.

"It was a shame Sarah had to leave her dragon," Dirk said, moving closer.

"Her world was still too small," she said softly, eyes down, wishing she could be anywhere else other than baring her soul and her darkest fantasies to a stranger on a dirt track in the middle of good tuber-farming country. "She had discovered her bravery, and she needed to explore it."

"She certainly met some interesting people on her journeys."

She had written eleven such stories over the past several years. The fifth story was where Sarah struck out on her own, determined to find the adventure of her life, and encountering all sorts of interesting and fearsome beasts on her travels. Nearly every such encounter ended in the throes of passion, and by the end of the series her imagination was taxed as to how creative her characters could be.

"I thought the stories were very good," he continued. "You have a gift, Sara. You have a rare way with words, to say nothing of the lost quality of being able to imagine such beasts in your mind, and see them as more than vague monsters used to scare children. You believe not just with your mind, but with your heart."

She squeezed his hands, their bodies separated by mere inches now. "You really are the best liar I've ever met," she said with a brief chuckle. The parts of her mind that had been playing cards were now standing on their chars and screaming at her to kiss him. The parts that had been imagining him naked were giving her much more graphic suggestions, and the parts that had been idly daydreaming about dragons were reliving the best bits of Sarah's Wild Life, Part Four.

"You have no idea," he whispered back. He leaned forward and she closed her eyes, parting her lips and melting against his body. It was a little bit of a shock, then, when he kissed her almost chastely on the forehead. "I believe this is your house."

She looked behind her, and sure enough there was the small lamp burning atop the little stone kitten that guarded their front door. Her insides were churning wildly again, unrequited hormones flooding her body. She started to invite him in, offering to show Dirk her bedroom, but when she turned around, there was no-one there.

"What the bloody... hello?"

She was alone.

There was a gust of wind that sent her skirts flying, and she hugged herself against the sudden chill. She could feel the reassuring heft of the Concord against her skin, tucked into her corset, a reminder that this evening really had happened, but her mind was dizzy recalling the events in any coherent way. Even at this great distance she could hear the faint strains of music and laughter from the carnivale, but all she wanted to feel now was the warm embrace of her bed, and perhaps to indulge her nethers with some attention, knowing how worked up they were after that kiss.

The kitchen was dark, but she knew her way around well enough from the lean years where they couldn't even afford candles made from the greasy tallow that more often than not extinguished themselves. The narrow stairs were comforting, and the tiny landing with it's three doors a welcome sight. Her ma's door was closed, the pink flowery paintwork all but invisible in the dark, and she knew Dani's door still had the handmade wooden sign proclaiming death to all those who entered. She moved to the third door and ran her hands across the aged and worn etchings in the thin oak planks, the designs of a great and twisting winged serpent her father had carved there on her fourth birthday. The carvings were not skillfully done, but to her childish eyes they were the greatest work of artistry ever made.

She closed the door behind her and threw herself onto her bed with a sigh. Images of her and Dirk on her bed flitted through her mind, still warm with spirits, and she tried to ignore them. Clearly Dirk wasn't interested in her for her body. If she looked like Dani it would have worked, she groused sourly.

One hand slid up her body, fingers trailing in the darkness, and her other hand slid slid down, pressing her skirts flat across her thighs. In her current state she knew she would have shown Dirk that country girls aren't all simple bumpkins, and maybe taught him a thing or two. Granted, things she hadn't tried, but she had heard enough from her friends that she had a general idea of how to accomplish most of them, and she was certainly strong enough to accomplish most of them without assistance.

Her toes curled and she shifted her legs until her sturdy shoes popped off and fell to the floor. She shifted onto her side until she could reach the knots of her corsets, and breathed a grateful sigh as they finally loosened. A well-practiced contortion of her torso and the corset joined her shoes. She paused, feeling that she had forgotten something. She tried to think back through the last couple hours, trying to ignore the directions her wine-soaked thoughts tried to take her, when it struck her like a bucket of cold water. She sat bolt upright in bed, the dim moonlight coming in through the window hardly providing enough illumination to find her own hands, but she could see a small rectangle of inky blackness on her heavy blankets with ease. She picked up the book, hugging it against her chest.

Sara rolled her eyes, hearing the screams and whooping of the carnivale even through her small windows. She regretted not going now, guiltily imagining all the fun she surely WOULD have had. She regretted not going with Dirk to see whatever it was he wanted her to see, and using the dragon as a lure. She regretted not agreeing to Millini's suggestion and pretending the pair of them were romantically involved, just to mess with the boys of the village. Mostly, she regretted not having thicker windows. She was about to bury her head in her pillow and try to block out the sounds of merriment when a strange quality of the screams piqued her curiosity.

She stood, still holding the book to her modest bosom, and walked to her window. Dappled moonlight moved up her disarrayed clothes until she was close enough to reach out and flick the latch. The window swung out slowly, being too small for the frame and always letting in chill breezes in winter unless she nailed up an old sheet. In the distance she could make out the glow of the carnivale, hundreds of lanterns and easily a half dozen bonfires. Were she not paying attention, the sounds would have seemed perfectly normal, but with the window open she could recognize the manic tones of fear.

Leaning out the window, she could clearly hear the shrieks of terror, and she fancied she could even see the tiny specks of the villagers pouring out of the gates. She wondered what could have happened to set them off when one individual word, chanted by a dozen throats, managed to cover the distance between them.

Dragon.

Her eyes widened. Gliding over the carnivale, lit from below by the lights of the celebration, outstretched wings easily spanning the lengths of five wagons, was a dragon. The dragon. Her dragon. The great beast seemed to tense, and then flapped it's powerful wings once, scattering debris like an explosion beneath it. It rose into the air, beyond the tops of the trees, and then leveled out. It seemed to hover motionless until she realized that the illusion of stillness was caused by the fact the dragon was gliding, and gliding quickly, directly towards her home.

It moved across the town effortlessly. Sara's mind reeled as she tried to take in the sheer size of it, four powerful limbs each as big as a quarterhorse, a neck nearly twice as long as she was tall and a great horned head that looked fearsome enough to bite her clean in half. It's wings could easily encircle her home with plenty of room to spare.

In a heartbeat it had reached the edge of her family's land, but in spite of it's speed she could make out the individual scales on it's flanks, the paisley pattern of miniscule curves and spikes standing out in stark relief in the moonlight. It's massive head loomed above, and she was horrified to find herself captivated by how dainty it's curved teeth seemed when compared to the backswept crest of bone that gave it an almost regal air. The powerful wings beat once, the buffeting winds forceful enough to knock her over even through the small window, which slammed shut a moment later.

The room was now utterly dark, the moon blotted out by the impossible beast. She had enough time to wonder what it could possibly want with HER when the entire side of the house was peeled back as easily as she might open a Crimbo present. It stood before her, hind legs on the ground, forelegs gripping what remained of the walls, curved neck as graceful as a swan's swaying back and forth. The wings flapped in the gentle breeze, sounding for all the world like laundry drying on the line.

"Hi," she squeaked, gripping the book so hard that only a tiny part of her mind was worried about damaging it. She wondered if all dragons obeyed the Concord, but that line of thought was abruptly cut off. Head cocked in a manner that made her think it was being apologetic, a clawed hand the size of her kitchen table scooped her up and pinned her to her bed.

Her lungs felt like they were being crushed, and it took her a moment to realize it wasn't from the enormous beast above her, but by the sheer pace of their acceleration. Eyes wide with fear, she was too paralyzed to move her head, but she could see the treeline alongside the bed, and a moment later it was below them. One more flap of it's wings, and the treeline was nor just below them, but so far down as to make individual trees almost impossible to distinguish.

Sara, bed and all, was shuffled among the limbs until it was gripped at all four corners. Icy winds bit at her exposed flesh, and she shivered involuntarily. Again the dragon seemed to read her mind, and slowly the entire bed was lifted until there were but scant inches between her body and the underside of it's belly. The wind still whistled through the space, but it was considerably weaker, and the heat coming off of the scales was more than enough to keep her warm.

Gingerly, afraid of plummetting what seemed like miles to the ground below, she rolled onto her stomach, pinning the book beneath her chest. In the moonlight, there was precious little to see, save a couple lakes in the distance, and the line of the road below, wending it's way around the hills and rocky outcroppings. She arched her back and craned her neck until she could just peek over the edge of the bed and see what was directly beneath them, and instantly regretted it. On and on they flew, the powerful wings no longer causing her stomach to lurch. In fact, the flight was as smooth as gliding on the winter ice.

"Hello?" she called up, not really expecting to get any response. She was surprised when the neck folded, and the dragon's head appeared before her, upside down, golden eyes seeming to glow with inner fire.

"Er... hello," she said meekly. "Did... did Dirk tell you where I lived?"

The head tilted curiously, and she couldn't be certain in the darkness but it seemed to be smiling at her.

"Because he really shouldn't have done that. I... I just wanted to be friends with you."

Despite the inverted view, it was definitely grinning now.

"You're not going to answer me, are you?"

The dragon stared enigmatically at her for a moment, and then vanished again, and despite this being her first flight she had the distinct impression they were accelerating.

"Well, then," she thought, now pinned between her mattress and a dragon's underbelly, somewhere she had fantasized about countless times but had never really expected to encounter, and certainly not under these circumstances.

She could picture the scene back at her village. Her house torn asunder. Her bed missing, and her along with it. The dragon had certainly made an entrance at the carnivale! Quite conspicuous, she thought. Her mother would... her face fell. Her mother would be heartbroken, she knew. Sadness gripped her heart.

High above her, the great toothed mouth murmured softly, reciting words no human mouth could hope to approximate. Snuggled against his underbelly, the dragon could easily tell what was passing through his passenger's mind, and he had a twang of remorse, but there really had been no other way. It was tonight, or possibly never. Arrangements could be made for the mother, he knew. There would be closure.

He spoke the final ancient syllable, and the spell was completed. Sara's eyes glowed softly, and then her head hit the pillow, far more soundly asleep than she had ever been in her life.

"Sleep well, pretty girl," the dragon said, circling wide around a valley and looking for his guiding landmarks, "tomorrow will be a big day."