Eastlick and Other Stories Page 4

  Granletten would patiently explain to them that they had nothing that was of any worth to her, and if they had, she would take it without doing them any favors, other than leaving them alive. If she felt generous.

  This never seemed to please the humans all that much. But it would make them leave off bothering her a while, anyway.

  Until the next generation came along, in a heartbeat, as they did; and they would forget the lessons of the last time. Oh well, at least it made for an interesting distraction, every once in a while.

  Long life could be tedious.

  ~o0o~

  “Of course I would ask that. Who gives a gift to a dragon without asking for something in return?”

  She tried not to snort too violently; the flames would crisp the man-child’s face, and then he would only be screaming, incapable of further conversation. And she really did want to hear what he had to say next.

  The thought helped draw her attention from the astonishing sapphire, anyway. She hadn’t even known there were such stones in the world—so large, such concentrated masses of pure earthly essence.

  So much passion.

  “Well.” Now the man-child drew himself up, self-important. “I do. I need nothing from you. I am merely offering up the most impressive jewel mankind has ever known to the most impressive beast in the land.”

  Now she did snort with all the gust of her fire-breath, turning her head slightly to spare the life of the foolish creature before her. “And did your holy man not warn you about excessive flattery? Did he not tell you how clever I am?”

  The man-child danced away from the edge of the fire, a small ember smoldering at the edge of his pointy boot. “Of course he did, your grace. He told me you are the cleverest dragon in all of the land. Cleverer than your sister, Persille. Cleverer than the he-dragons who perished in the last turning of the aeons. Cleverer than even the great dragons of the Antipodes, whose very sweat can ignite ancient forests as they sleep.” He watched her carefully as he went on.

  Too bad for him that dragon-emotions did not play out across dragon-faces.

  “I suppose you fancy yourself clever as well.” She was playing for time, and she knew it. Because she could not take her eyes off the padparadscha sapphire. It was … awakening something in her. Something she could not explain, could not define.

  Yes, it was lovely—all jewels were, in their own way. And large, well-cut, flawless jewels were lovelier. And the jewels of fire—rubies, sapphires, the yellow diamonds—were lovelier still. All this was perfectly understandable, perfectly reasonable.

  So this, being the biggest stone she’d ever seen—it made sense that this jewel would stir her passions.

  But still, there was something more at work here…

  Then she heard the words of her own thought. “Passion,” Granletten whispered. “This is a stone of passion.”

  The man-child gave a hesitant grin. “Yes, your highness: it is a very pretty stone.”

  “No.” Understanding dawned on her. The humans had no idea, no concept of what minerals meant to the earth, though they were drawn to them all the same. They didn’t grasp why they—humans—felt compelled to collect and refine, purify the gems. Clever though they might be, they lacked this fundamental awareness.

  Which was why dragons were the true keepers of gems.

  But dragons were meant to be immune to their stirrings. And yet Granletten could not deny the quick beating of her heart, the steaming of the fires in her belly … the heat in her loins.

  For the first time in centuries, Granletten felt aroused.

  Close on the heels of this discovery was the terrible knowledge that this was something she was not meant to feel. There was no purpose for this arousal, no possible outlet for it. It was as the man-child said: there were no male dragons, hadn’t been in many centuries. Never would be any more.

  All the dragons that would ever exist in the world were here already. When and if they died, they would not be replaced.

  This was the bargain dragonkind had made, ages past. One can have long life, or one can propagate, leaving one’s children behind to carry on.

  Not both.

  Something broke inside Granletten at that moment—her soul, her will, her resolve—something vital, something sharp. She cried out, sending flames and fire everywhere, scorching the cheaper jewels and melting great gobs of gold, thrashing her long tail back and forth. The man-child had fled; he was halfway down the mountain by the time she recovered enough sense to even wonder about him.

  But he had left the bedamned jewel.

  It sat in the entrance to her cave, glistening, glimmering. Inflaming her. Lust poured through her loins once more at the sight of it. “Throw it away!” she bellowed to herself, reaching out a long claw to grab it.

  Touching it was worse, though. As she drew it to her face, she knew she’d never, ever be able to let it go.

  It would stay here, in her sight, torturing her. Forever tempting, forever withholding. Forever promising something she could never have.

  ~o0o~

  A dragon is always alone.

  But until this terrible gift, she had never been lonely.

  Granletten lay in her cave, staring at the padparadscha sapphire. Large tears rolled down her face as a dragon-sized heat boiled through her body.

  Unquenchable. Intolerable.

  Forever burning.

  Night without Darkness

  Shannon Page and Mark J. Ferrari

  I love collaborative writing, as you’ll notice throughout this collection. To me, collaboration combines everything I love best about writing (creation, imagination, that indefinable spark) with everything I love best about editing (figuring out another creative person’s mind and working out how best to express it). Plus, it’s just fun to play together. This story was written for Gears and Levers Volume 1, from Sky Warrior, April 2012.

  _______________

  In which the lamentable Wendell Shrewsbury, Esq., proffers his astonishing recollections regarding the spectacular events which transpired on the evening of December 7, 1886, in the Cambridge manor laboratory of Rupert Collin, Baron Frost.

  … The laboratory in flames, generating ever-larger flashes of blinding light and searing heat. The terrible din of exploding bottles and jars assaulting his ears. Tinctures and potions combining as they were never meant to do, filling his lungs with noxious fumes. The high, choking screams of Lord Frost… suddenly silenced.

  Shrewsbury stands, frozen as always, held within this horrifying scene by guilt and remorse—real or imagined, he no longer knows—unable to avert his eyes as Lord Frost bursts from the conflagration, a man aflame. The doctor’s nearly vanished lab coat is a shriveling, blackened wick, billowing up on gusts of heat as it is consumed. His sizzling skin sends a cloying stench into the air… “Shrewsbury!” With that anguished, accusing croak, Lord Frost pitches forward, perishing for the thousandth time at the feet of his horrified protégé.

  A dark, flitting presence begins to mock Shrewsbury from within the flames and smoke, from behind Lord Frost’s ruined face—from inside Shrewsbury’s very mind. As it whispers sins—of commission, and omission—he is appalled to realize that it has been there all along, hiding in his thoughts, his dreams, slyly driving him … to this.

  “Officious fool!” it hisses triumphantly, as if borrowing voice from the flames themselves. “What would England be without its dreams—and us to shepherd them?”

  ~o0o~

  An insistent knocking brought Shrewsbury to what remained of his senses. He bolted up in bed, gasping for breath, pulling the covers up against the chill of the deep February night. Had he been shouting? Very likely; his throat felt dry and sore.

  He looked around, blinking in the dimly lit room. It was not his own; he was abed in a well-appointed guestroom at the home of barrister Ian Rutherford, Esq.

  An old friend from college days, Rutherford had made significantly better progress in the world than had Wendell Shrewsbury s
ince their graduation together some twenty years before. Rutherford’s warm if unexpected letter inquiring into Shrewsbury’s strange elusiveness these past few years, and inviting him to come and rekindle their old friendship, had drawn Shrewsbury hesitantly out of hiding, hopeful that a change of scenery and some social interaction might relieve his ... difficult condition.

  Apparently not.

  “Shrewsbury? Shrewsbury! Are you quite all right in there?” The knocking grew a little gentler, if no less insistent.

  It was the first night of Wendell’s visit—and, he feared, after this display, his last.

  ~o0o~

  A quarter of an hour later, the two men sat downstairs in Rutherford’s book-lined study. A coal fire had been laid and lit by Rutherford’s aged, live-in housekeeper, Mrs. Sapphira Lamblittle, and was now begrudgingly bestowing some small warmth upon the room. This elusive comfort had been augmented by the half-drained snifter of brandy at Wendell’s elbow. He took another sip and adjusted the belt and lapels of his dressing-gown self-consciously. He could not meet his old friend’s eyes, choosing instead to watch the low flames, despite their dreadful evocation of his fiery dream.

  “I am terribly sorry for waking you—and Mrs. Lamblittle,” Shrewsbury ventured at last.

  “Not at all!” Rutherford cried, too cheerfully. “I am only glad that you happened to be here and not alone while suffering so terrible an episode.”

  “Ah…” Wendell gazed into the fire. “Well... Yes. It can be quite troubling…”

  “You’ve had such fits before?” his friend asked gently.

  “I have.” Wendell took another sip, nearly finishing the snifter, and set it down on the mahogany table beside him, only to have Rutherford reach for the decanter and pour him another generous glass. “Almost … every night.”

  “Every night?” Rutherford blanched and took a healthy draught of his own brandy, then shook his handsome head. “What devilish torment! Is there no one of sufficient expertise in such matters to offer you hope of relief?”

  “There was,” Wendell lamented. “There was…” The liquor was beginning to affect him; that, and the terrible paucity of sleep. Despair crept ever closer. “But he is lost forever now—and ... I fear this torment I endure is all too richly deserved.”

  “The devil you say!”

  “The devil, indeed.” Wendell teetered on the brink of indecision. He could make his excuses and leave tonight—or on the morrow, more politely—to continue bearing this burden alone. Or…

  A sudden resolve prodded him to speak before he quite knew he’d decided to. “Oh, Rutherford, dear friend, I cannot contain it any longer. I must tell someone, though it leave me in as much need of your legal assistance as of any medical counsel. Yet, confess I must, if only in the desperate hope that guilt acknowledged and justice satisfied may rid me at last of this endless nocturnal scourge. May I burden you, old friend, with a dreadful tale—from which I dare hope our long friendship might emerge intact?”

  His friend stared back, blue eyes glinting in the firelight. “After such an introduction, how am I to sleep now without hearing it?”

  “I fear you’d best not count on sleeping either way,” said Wendell. “Does the name Rupert Collin—Baron Frost—mean anything to you?”

  “I’ve heard of him, of course. Who hasn’t? Such a titillating catastrophe!” Rutherford leaned forward, keen interest on his ruddy face. “Did you know him?”

  “More than that,” said Wendell. “I was his research assistant for some years.”

  “You jest! How can I have failed to hear of this before?”

  “I have taken pains to see the fact unadvertised.” Wendell did not entirely succeed in keeping his voice steady.

  “Surely,” Rutherford said, “you weren’t there when…”

  “Oh yes,” Wendell whispered, lost in painful memory. “I was there. I am not sure I have ever truly left that night behind. It has not left me. That much is certain.”

  Wendell accepted another refill of his brandy, cleared his throat, and set out to confide at last the lurid truth of Lord Frost’s spectacularly fatal attempt to rid England forever of nightmares.

  ~o0o~

  “You know, of course, that Lord Frost was a brilliant man of science.”

  “Of course,” Rutherford murmured. “Sleep research, was it?”

  Wendell nodded. “And not merely sleep—he was also enquiring into the anatomy and possible uses of dreams.”

  “Yes,” said Rutherford. “I read his Systems and Practices of the Nocturnal Mind with great interest. A seminal tract. Quite revolutionary.”

  “You cannot begin to know ... how revolutionary,” said Wendell.

  “Do tell.” Rutherford settled more comfortably into his chair. “I am awash with curiosity.”

  Wendell knew that he was stalling for time, considering his approach, as though just the right combination of words might somehow sanitize the awful truth.

  He took another swallow of brandy, then stared again into the fire as he spoke. “Though it’s been scarcely more than whispered beyond certain inner circles since his ... horrific demise, Lord Frost believed that nightmares might not be merely dreams at all, but invasive psychonomic parasites—an entirely new and utterly uncatalogued form of life which preys upon, or engenders some malevolent symbiosis with, the dreaming human mind.” He kept his eyes firmly upon the low flames, anxiously awaiting his friend’s response to this outlandish assertion.

  “Please, go on.” Rutherford’s voice was low and calm.

  Wendell risked a glance at the barrister, finding him apparently at ease. “During my employment with him, Lord Frost did, in fact, invent, and was perfecting, a series of ingenious devices capable of extracting these parasites from the minds of numerous tormented subjects. In fact,” he ventured timidly, “we had managed to imprison a fair collection of these ... creatures ... in hermetically sealed glass vacuum bells for study and extermination.”

  “Fascinating.”

  Wendell sighed. “It’s likely treason to be telling you all this. But I don’t care... Not anymore. What can they do to me that could be worse than what I suffer now?”

  “Treason! Good God, man! Why?”

  Wendell considered his worldly friend, wondering how he of all people could fail to grasp the implications. “Imagine our advantage over other nations, were the sleep of all English citizens—and theirs alone—never troubled by such anxieties and terrors; if every head in England woke well rested each morning; if England’s children grew up free of the subconscious fears that so distort and disable young minds elsewhere in the world. How many fewer criminals might we have to cope with? How much more fearless confidence might this country’s future generations take for granted in the course of their endeavours?”

  “You don’t mean that he intended to keep such a boon secret from the wider world?”

  “Indeed. He was commanded to do so by none other than the prime minister.”

  “What of Scotland?” Rutherford asked, a slight resentment creeping into his heretofore encouraging tone. “And Ireland? Would all of Her Majesty’s subjects have so benefited, or only those closest to the throne, if you take my meaning?”

  “I do not know, old friend,” Wendell said, shaking his head. A lump of sorrow—or anger—settled in his chest. “Nor shall we ever know. Not now…”

  ~o0o~

  Rutherford soon proved so engrossed, that, against all expectation, Wendell found himself warming to the task of describing Frost’s ingenious devices. Chief among them, he explained, was a massive piece of sealed headgear rather like the helmets worn for deep sea diving. This ‘extraction bell’, as Frost had called it, was encrusted with smaller mechanisms cleverly contrived to produce, through the highly pressurized release of steam from tiny pinholes, ultra-sonic frequencies inaudible to human subjects but extremely unpleasant to the fiendish parasites. Upon penetrating the subject’s brain, these frequencies had compelled the ethereal creatures to fle
e through various orifices in the victim’s head. From there, sonic devices had moved along tracks attached by a series of minute airlocks, generating a moving pulse which forced the fleeing beasties through a network of complexly valved and insulated vacuum hoses sealed to the headgear. In this way, the parasites had been conveyed into large glass bell jars, instantly vacuum-sealed by pumping out their atmospheric contents through a sonic barrier which the creatures themselves would or could not pass. The gaseous parasites alone were left inside to be observed through various filters and lenses, and experimented upon by numerous other means and mechanisms of Frost’s invention.

  Describing these marvels gradually transported Wendell back to the happier days of his mentorship under Lord Frost. As a man of science himself, Wendell could not help but admire the genius behind such a truly elegant system. He even began to recall some of the pride he’d once taken in his own contributions to their work. “We were going to change the world!” he declared, waving his empty brandy glass expansively. “Top government ministers—I mean top ministers”—he fixed Rutherford with a knowing gaze—“visited our laboratory every week, eager for our latest reports and demonstrations. And rather ready with support, if you take my meaning... Lord Frost’s fortune, though vast, was not inexhaustible, and groundbreaking scientific research is not for the financially faint of heart.”

  “I can well imagine,” his host said, replenishing Wendell’s drink once again.

  Shrewsbury took another fortifying swallow. Confessing himself had clearly been the right decision. He already felt his awful burden dissipating. How much torment might have been avoided had he found the courage to try facing all this sooner? In fact, he wondered what had kept him hiding all this time. Could even that be laid to the pernicious influence of...? But no. Those were the musings of a madman, alone in the dark with his thoughts. He was not that madman, and not alone tonight.