Jan Siegel - The Dragon-Charmer

He said softly: ‘Bradachin?’

‘Aye.’

‘Did you see what happened?’

‘Aye.’

There was an impatient silence. ‘Well?’ Will persisted. ‘Did you see a woman come out of the mirror?’

‘I didna see ony woman. There was a flaysome creature came slinking through the glass, all mimsy it was, like a wisp o’ moonlicht, and the banes shining through its hand, and cobwebs drifting round its heid. Some kind o’ tannasgeal maybe. It was clinging round the maidy like mist around a craig. She seemed all moithered by it, like she didna ken what she was doing.’

‘Where did it go?’ Will asked.

‘Back through the glass. I’m nae sure where it gaed after, but it isna here nae mair.’

‘But how could it get in?’ Will mused. ‘No one here summoned it, did they?’

‘Nae. But a tannasgeal gangs where the maister sends it – and ye asked him in long ago, or sae ye seid.’

‘You mean Az–– the Old Spirit sent it?’

‘Most likely.’

‘Yes, of course … Bradachin, would you mind spending the night in Gaynor’s room? Don’t let her see you, just call me if – if anything happens.’

‘I’m no a servant for ye tae orrder aboot.’

‘Please?’ Will coaxed.

‘Aye, weel … I was just wanting ye tae keep it in mind. I’m nae servant …’

The hunched shadow dimmed, dissolving into the surrounding dark. After a few minutes Will closed his eyes and relapsed into sleep.

In the room on the floor below, Fern was still wakeful. She was trying to concentrate on her marriage, re-running a mental reel of her possible future with Marcus Greig. Cocktail parties in Knightsbridge, dinner parties in Hampstead, all-night parties in Notting Hill Gate. Lunches at the Ivy, launches at the Groucho. First nights and last nights, previews and private views, designer clothes, designer furniture. The same kind of skiing trips and Tuscan villas which she had experienced as a child, only rather more expensive. In due course, perhaps, there would be a second home in Provence. Her heart shrank at the prospect. And then there was Marcus himself, with his agile intelligence, his New Labour ethics, his easy repartee. She liked him, she was even impressed by him – though it is not difficult for a successful forty-six to impress a rising twenty-eight. She knew he had worked his way up from lower middle-class origins which he preferred to call proletarian, that his first wife had been a county type who left him for a farmer and a horse. She had contemplated marrying him on their third date. He fulfilled the standards she had set for her partner, and if his hair was thinning and his waistline thickening he was still generally considered an attractive man. She was nearly thirty, too old for fairytales, uninspired by casual love. The more she thought about it, the more she had wanted this marriage – and she still wanted it, she knew she did, if only she could keep hold of her reasoning, if she could just remind herself what made those scenes from her life-to-be so desirable. She should never have left London. Away from the polluted air and the intrusive voices of traffic, telephones, and technology, her head was so clear it felt empty, with too much room for old memories and new ideas. She had done her best to fence them out, to fill up the space with the fuss and flurry of wedding preparations, but tonight she sensed it had all been in vain. The future she had pursued so determinedly was slipping away. She had worn the witch’s gloves, opened her heart to power. Trouble and uncertainty lay ahead, and the germ of treachery in her soul was drawing her towards them.

She languished in the borderland of sleep, too tired now to succumb. Her mind planed: recollections long buried re-surfaced to ensnare her, jumbled together in a broken jigsaw. Alimond the witch combing her hair with a comb of bone like a lorelei in a song, her lips moving in what Fern thought was an incantation, until she heard the words of an antique ballad: Where once I kissed your cheek the fishes feed … And then the siren dived into deep water, and there was the skeleton lying in the coral, and she set the comb down on its cavernous breast, and Fern saw it slot into its place among the ribs. And the head looked no longer like a skull: its eyes were closed with shells, and its locks moved like weed in the current. Sleep well forever there, my bonny dear . A ship’s foghorn drew her out of the depths – no, not a foghorn, an albatross, crying to her with a half-human voice. They said in Atlantis that albatrosses were the messengers of the Unknown God. It was very near now, almost in her room. How ridiculous, thought Fern. There are no albatrosses in Yorkshire. It must be the owl again, the owl Gaynor talked about …

She was not aware of getting up but suddenly she was by the open window, leaning out into the night. She heard the sough of the wind in the trees although there were no trees anywhere near the house. The owl’s cry was somewhere in her dream, in her head. And then it came, hurtling out of the dark, a vast pale blur too swift and too sudden to see clearly. There was a rushing tumult of wings, the close-up of a face – a mournful heart-shaped face with nasal beak and no mouth, black button eyes set in huge discs, like a ghost peeping through the holes in a sheet. She thrust out her hands to ward it off, horrified by the impression of giant size, the predatory speed of its lunge. The power came instinctively, surging down her arms with a force dream-enspelled, unsought and out-of-control … The owl reeled and veered away, gone so fast she had no time to check if its size had been real or merely an illusion of terror. But its last shriek lingered in her mind, haunting and savage. She stumbled away from the window, her body shaking with the aftermath of that power-surge. When she touched the bed she collapsed into it, too exhausted to disentangle herself from the blankets, helpless as with a fever. Dream or reality faded, and in the morning when she finally awoke, late and heavy-eyed, she was not sure if it had happened at all.

IV

Weddings have their own momentum. Once the machinery has been set in motion – once invitations have been issued and accepted, present lists placed with suitable department stores, caterers conjured, live music laid on, flowers, bridesmaids, and multi-storey cakes all concocted – once male relatives have hired or resurrected morning suits and female ones have bought outfits in the sort of pastel colours that should only be worn by newborn infants – the whole circus rolls on like a Juggernaut with no brakes, crushing anything and anyone who may get in its way. The groom is sidelined, the bride traumatised. Couples who are madly in love lose track of their passion, floundering in a welter of trivial details, trapped by the hopes and expectations of their devoted kith and kin. Those less in love find in these chaotic preliminaries the wherewithal to blot out their doubts, giving themselves no leisure to think, no leeway to withdraw. So it had been with Fern. She had made her decision and intended to stand by it, obliterating any last-minute reservations, and now, when she felt a sudden need to stop, to reconsider, to take her time, there was no time left to take. It was Friday already, and although she had overslept she did not feel rested, and the morning was half gone, and the phone was starting to ring downstairs. Someone answered it, and Fern stretched and lay still, temporarily reprieved, and for the first time in more than a decade she opened her waking mind to memories of Atlantis. A villa on a mountainside, a room golden with lamplight and candlelight, the blue evening deepening outside. The echo of a thought, bittersweet with pain: This is how I shall remember it, when it is long gone … She got up in a sudden rush and began rummaging furiously in her dressing-table drawer, and there it was, tucked away at the back where she had hidden it all those years ago. A skein of material, cobweb-thin and sinuous as silk, so transparent that it appeared to have neither hue nor pattern, until a closer look revealed the elusive traces of a design, and faint gleams of colour like splintered light. As Fern let it unfold the creases of long storage melted away, and it lay over her arms like a drift of pale mist. She was still holding it when she went down to the kitchen in search of coffee. Will frowned: he thought he had seen it before.