Dragons! Read online

  Here he tells a bittersweet tale of mutual apprehension and discovery, all played out against the deceptively small and simple compress of an English country garden. . . .

  * * *

  The garden was elongated and small, paved for much of its area. The irregular slabs were laid without benefit of

  cement; between them, rock plants had been encouraged to grow. Camomile, decorative thymes; and a shamrock-like affair with dark maroon leaves. In late summer its seed pods, like the small shell cases they resembled, became explosive; let the breeze but stir them and they jerked in unison, there was a sound like the tiny clatter of musketry as the barrage was discharged. It startled the Dragon once when he sniffed at it; he fled hissing, vanished beneath the garden shed. He turned in his own length, lay glaring with his lovely dark amber eyes; but he was not pursued. In time, his breathing became more regular.

  At the sides of the garden, between the paving and the low walls that enclosed it, narrow beds had been invaded by the flat rosettes of the London Pride. In their season, the plants sent up a host of delicate flower stalks; the many tiny blooms made a mist of palest pink, interspersed by the blue of the forget-me-nots that still maintained a foothold. Mrs. Byres had been tempted to thin out the invasive saxifrage; in the end she had allowed it to remain. It belonged there; as indeed did the Dragon.

  In the center of the place, a round, raised pond held koi; it was Mrs. Byres' pleasure of an evening to sit on the stone coping, drop crumbs of biscuit to the clumsy, gentle fish. The multicolored shoal moved slowly, rising faster to snap and gulp, then resuming its slow circling. The patterns it made were endlessly repeated, never twice the same. The air pump gurgled gently, drops pattered from the bowl of the tiny fountain; she would find her thoughts drifting far off, aimless as the fish, to distant folk and lands. Till the cooling air impinged on her awareness; she would pull at the cardigan round her shoulders, walk to the house and gently close the door.

  The fish intrigued the Dragon, too. He would crouch, neck weaving and tail lashing, eyeing the parapet above him. Nerving himself for the spring and clatter with which he finally gained the vantage point. Once arrived he would stare intently, golden eyes flicking as he followed the movements in the water. Once, greatly daring, he reached to dabble with a claw, some vague thought of hunting maybe

  formed in his mind; but the biggest of the fish turned quickly. The great mouth globbed and plopped, sent him scurrying for his refuge once more. The hissing sounded from beneath the shed; wisps of vapor escaped from his nostrils. It was some time before he was calm again.

  He was a small Dragon; perhaps some twenty inches from nose to tail. Though the flexibility of his neck was deceptive, as were the length and dexterity of his tongue. This he used to take the black and brown beetles that scurried from time to time across the flags. He would crunch them with quick movements of his jaws, spitting out the hard wing cases. These he brushed into the cracks between the paving slabs, anxious it seemed to leave no trace of his presence; though Mrs. Byres in fact knew the whereabouts of each tiny hoard. The beetles, with the pill bugs he nosed from beneath the rosettes of the London Pride, comprised his major diet. Plus earthworms when the need arose, though the latter he disliked; for their fustiness of flavor, their slow, shining movements, their faster looping when attacked and caught. He would snort with disgust, rubbing at his slender jaws and nose, spitting out the fragments of dirt and mold with which their intestines were crammed; he was much relieved when he found the first plate of cereal tucked beneath the shed. Though for some time he was afraid to approach the strange object. Instead, he eyed it from a distance. It lay directly in his path; the track worn by the passage of his body, the deeper hollow he had scooped out for himself and in which he slept. He approached finally, by cautious, six-inch rushes. His neck snaked, unsure; his nose moved from side to side, skimming the surface of the bowl, savoring the delicate, unknown odor. Finally his tongue flicked out to touch the milk; next instant he was drinking and snapping, unsure how best to cope with the strange food. He didn't stop till the offering was licked clean. He slept contented that night, and with a full belly; for the first time, it seemed, in his life.

  Next day he found the tall door of the shed left open a little. Previously it had always been securely locked; though it is doubtful if his brain had registered the fact. He sniffed

  at the crack, cautious as ever, weaving his head, blinking his brilliant eyes. The darkness attracted with its promise of a lair, concealment; yet also he sensed danger. A trap maybe. He was a creature built largely of instincts; now they conflicted, hopelessly. He ran in small circles, claws tapping, growling a little; backed off, moved forward, backed away again. He sat on his haunches, propping himself on his tail like a small green and gold kangaroo. Finally, greatly daring, he extended a claw to the edge of the door. He pulled at it a little. A long creak from somewhere; he tensed, but nothing further happened. He jumped inside, spun round instantly to make sure his way of escape had remained clear. A further period of immobility; and he began to explore, timidly and with many backward glances. Nothing happened however; and soon he was trotting round busily, snuffling at the board floor of the place, snorting from time to time at the dust that entered his nostrils.

  The shed was mostly empty. Some garden tools leaned against the wall; to one side was a small wooden bench. On it, inaccessible to him, stood paint tins and the like; a roll of plastic netting, stacks of old magazines, assorted seed trays and flower pots. The sprays and cans of weed-killer, usual appurtenances of suburban culture, were absent; but Mrs. Byres hadn't studied with the Theravadians for nothing.

  At the rear of the place, immediately below the one small window, was a round, flat bag filled with some crunchy substance. He climbed onto it, was alarmed afresh by the unsure, yielding surface. He turned round several times; finally he settled, eyes fixed warily on the crack of light from the door. He crossed his forelegs, dropped his muzzle to them. Despite himself, he felt secure and comfortable. He started once or twice, at half-imagined sounds; finally his lids drooped. The orange glow faded, was eclipsed.

  He was roused, finally, by the light that streamed in from the square of glass above him. The yellow patch angled across the boards; above it, specks of brilliance swirled and were lost. He was off the beansack in an instant, claws scrabbling; but the door was still ajar, showing its tall strip of sky. Just inside it stood the bowl, blue patterns round its

  edge. He stared, long neck snaking suspiciously. But nothing had been moved; the tools stood by the wall, there was the same scent of dry earth and dust. He hurried to the bowl. He buried his muzzle, drank thirstily; once more he didn't stop till the china gleamed.

  He was late for his first patrol. Though it is doubtful if the notion would have held meaning for him. Rather, it was a habit formed; and in habit lies security. He nosed the door a fraction wider, pausing carefully; but the fountain still tinkled, the flags lay quiet in early sunlight. Beyond the garden the house rose tall, Edwardian and sturdy. Its rear walls had been rendered, though over the years the finish had begun to crack and peel. Mrs. Byres had ordered it renewed, in vivid white; the contrast with the terraces to either side was sharp. From the road beyond came the steady sound of traffic; but the noise was muted, barely impinging on the awareness of the Dragon.

  His tongue flicked from his muzzle, tasting, it seemed, the morning air. He hurried forward, moving as ever in quick diagonal rushes. To one side, the wall was topped by trelliswork; climbing plants shielded the garden and pond from view. On the other, the barrier was lower; but the property had been vacant for some time now. The house stood quietly, moldering a little perhaps, garnering its hourly profit; the profit it attracted merely by existing, here so close to the city.

  By the kitchen drain, a flash of movement caught the Dragon's eye. He snapped at it, but the insect had already scurried into a crack. He probed for it, snuffling; but the thing had gone. He turned back, searched the nearer of the bor
ders. Its edge, where it joined the paving, was marked by tiles of dark, glistening blue, each set upright in the earth. The line of them was crooked; their tops were decorated with wavy indentations. He crunched a small snail that clung to one of them, and hurried on.

  Behind the shed, past the rhubarb clump and the tiny vegetable patch, chestnut palings leaned uncertainly, rotted here and there and patched vividly with fungus. He eased through one of the gaps thus formed and stopped, claw

  raised. Close to the fence grew the remnants of an old gnarled hedge. Its roots twisted and writhed; sprays of small green leaves burst up, making an overarching canopy. Here the biggest worms of all came, sudden and unexpected, spurting from the carpet of damp humus; and here too he had once encountered a cat. The animal stared at first, as if unable to believe its eyes; then it approached stiff-legged, fur bristling. A threat rumbled deep in its throat; and the Dragon backed, his own tail lashing. A flurry of paws, brief scuffle of black and white; and the cat fled squalling, gained the roof of an outhouse with a single galvanic bound. It crouched there an hour or more, glaring; from time to time it scrubbed at its face with a paw. The fur of its jaw was singed, its whiskers shorter on that side and curling at the tips. Since when, at sight of a flicker of green and gold, it had turned away, staring into distance with the fixity only a discomforted cat can achieve. In the tomcat's world, Dragons had ceased to exist; they were figments, obviously, of another imagination.

  The Dragon paused again beneath the hedge, glancing upward briefly; today though, nothing moved. A plane flew across the brilliant gap of sky, the sun glinting on its fuselage as it turned for the airport a few miles distant; but it was disregarded. The Dragon scuttled forward, pausing only to take a woodlouse that bumbled aimlessly over the fallen leaves.

  Access to the rest of his domain was gained by a similar gap in the once-stout line of fencing. Here, the Dragon at once felt more secure. The grass in the untended garden had sprouted high; under cover of its drifts and clumps he was hidden from all but the most vigilant eyes. The bases of the old walls yielded a rich supply of livestock; above, buddleias drooped their white and purple cones of flowers. Butterflies came to them through the warm afternoons; he would watch their bright movements, hissing a little, making tiny, futile rushes. Sometimes, when the insects dropped down to the lank-stalked dandelions, he would snap at them. He never missed; but there was little substance to be had. He shredded the wings, irritably; his muzzle became marked

  by pastel tints, brightness added to his own bright scales. Later, tiring of the game, he would curl up in a beaten nest of grass to sleep. As he slept now.

  Mrs. Byres was unsure just when she had become aware of the existence of the Dragon. At first he was a shadow; a hint, a vagueness, a twinkling in the dusk. It was only later, and by slow degrees, that he took on form and color. Though he was best perceived still from the corner of the eye; the glance that, in traveling away, reveals more than the full, ungracious stare. As the mind, lulled by the glidings of the koi, may itself glide off, to light on other things. She smiled at that and took herself upstairs, left him to his sunlit scutterings. She herself had seen much strangeness; seen, and finally accepted. She had seen fires blaze where no fires could be, fires that burned silver against the high snow; she had seen the tulpa, the creature of the mind, glide mysterious through room after strange room. While the priests chanted, the mantras extended themselves; delicate lines of chalk and sand, growing by the hour, the week, in honor of a God who was, and yet was not. Set against that, a Dragon more or less was nothing extraordinary; not in the real scheme of things. He came from the Otherworld, where fact and fable blend; an alien place perhaps, to all right-thinking folk. He was one with the jaguars and pumas that frighten city dwellers, that flourish in the newspapers only to vanish away; the black dogs, born of thunderbolts, that terrorized the folk of former times. Their own fears, given form and substance, come to score displeasure on the stout oak doors of churches, leave the marks for all the world to see. Though there was no fear in the Dragon; not if he had truly sprung from her own mind.

  She took down a book, old and bound in leather. She turned the pages gently, found the place she sought. There is nothing strange, she read, in the fact that I may have created my own hallucination. The interesting point is that in these cases of materialization, others see the thought-forms that may have been created.

  Tibetans disagree in their explanations of such phenom-

  ena; some think a material form is really brought into being, others consider the apparition as a mere case of suggestion, the creator's thought impressing others and causing them to see what he himself sees.

  Mrs. Byres closed the book and set it aside. Madame David-Neel had understood a little; as much, perhaps, as any one person may. She laid her head back, against the dark plush of the chair. In time, the light from the tall windows before her became diffused. Her consciousness drifted away, among ten thousand Buddha-fields.

  There had been much speculation, when she first arrived in the street; the tall, solitary woman, so soberly and plainly dressed, the mane of iron-grey hair always so neatly coiffured, held firmly by great combs. She was old, very old some said; but her great eyes were tilted still and clear, of a color not readily to be described, the skin smooth across her broad, high cheekbones. Wealthy she must be though. The neighbors decided it, watching the furniture carefully carried in; piece after piece, massive, unfashionable, and black. Wife of a planter, a Commissioner; or higher still said some, nodding sagely. Others voiced darker thoughts. England, they said, was for the English, Britannia for the Brits; black lands for the black folk, white lands for the whites. These though were the resentful ones; encountering her in the street, on her way down to the shops, they had found they could not readily meet her glance. Her face was gentle and calm; but she looked into you, through you, in a way that was disconcerting. They repeated their suspicions to their wives; slammed their front doors; settled, relieved, to their suppers and their telly.

  Perhaps Mrs. Byres heard the rumors, perhaps not. Either way, it made little difference. She was not rich; a little saved, from a lifetime of quiet service, a pension from a Government that at the end had recognized her worth, but that was all. Bringing her belongings back, the belongings collected over so many years, had strained her slender resources; but that had been in accordance with the Sahib's wish. Unspoken perhaps, but nonetheless keenly felt. As for the rest; there had once been a time for anger but that was

  in the past, too distant almost for recall. Then, certainly, her eyes had flashed, the color risen to her cheeks; but it was all so long ago. She had seen too much of human frailty since; her own, and that of others.

  She relaxed deeper into the chair, in the study she had made for herself and where, surrounded by familiar things, she still felt most at home. Here were the square dark cupboards with their ornate, once-gilded handles, the great sideboard, mirror-backed, standing on its many tiny legs; the bookcases with their black, carved tops, fashioned with such crude care. Brass trays shone softly from the walls; Hanuman, the monkey god, gestured above the hearth, trampling his tiny enemy. The sacred cobra spread his seven hoods; while in an alcove were the old coffee pots, with their bulbous bellies, their long, incised spouts. All but valueless, as she was well aware; but she wouldn't willingly have parted with them. They spoke of another life, another land, both gone now into the past. Somewhere though the blades of fans still whispered, their sound mixed with the rustling of garden trees; the sun burned through the slats of white-painted jalousies. Mrs. Byres smiled slightly to herself. When they placed the infant Buddha beneath the rose apple tree, its shadow became fixed; it was Earth, and the cosmos, that circled round it. Shadows, perhaps, became fixed in memory, too.

  She shook her head, eyes closed. There had been good times, in those far-off days; when she was young, before she learned of pain. They glimmered in the mind, like the scoured wards of the hospitals to which she came, the uniforms of
the young men who paid court, in their scarlet and blue and gold. Though it had been difficult, she supposed, to see things in their proper light; difficult at least for one so fresh from home, so eager. Her mother's whispered warnings, the insinuations, hints; sudden anger with which she clattered kitchen things, pounded at the bowl held in her lap. She who was normally so gentle. "Never smile for them," she said once, bitterly. "Never show your teeth. That way they can tell . . ." It had all seemed pointless, in the bright environment, in the bright new life,

  vague as nursery fears. Though children's fears were often sharp enough; the shadow-beasts had teeth and claws and eyes. They existed of course, and had their being; but their realm lay beyond the bedroom walls.

  The flowers, calling cards, brought new responsibilities; impossible to refuse, gross, in that climate, to accede. She swung, helpless, between unreachable poles; lowered her eyes uncertainly, feeling herself besieged. It made her suitors the more ardent.

  One young man had become special. She resisted; but despite herself the dreams had come. The voyage, over so much ocean; the house she would come to as a bride, the great house in a land she had never seen. She didn't blame him, hadn't blamed him then; but it had been hard. He should have been warned, by the averted eyes, the whisperings; by the raven-gloss of hair, the skin that tanned too readily, however she might seek to avoid the sun. She should have warned him; but her throat seemed blocked, the words refused to form. She twined her fingers in her lap; till the monstrous revelation came, the moment that could no longer be avoided. "Open your mouth," he said in disbelief. "Open your mouth . . ." Shocked, she obeyed; and the sounds of the little orchestra, the chatter of the diners, faded quite away. He took her jaw, turned her head as he might the head of a colt, before he started back. Her legs unfroze then so that she ran from the place, left her wrap, her purse, ran into the hot, stinging night. She wrenched the flowers from her dress, the bouquet that had turned all eyes; worn at the waist, like the romances she had read. But romance was over now. A pin tore her finger. The blood that ran was red enough, bright as a white girl's blood; the rest of her was chichi, and disgraced.