The Iron Dragon's Daughter (46 page)

She entered a room the size of a basketball court, and empty. Half a dozen dwarves sat on the floor in one corner, huddled about a portable television set. At her entry, they snapped it off and scattered through several doors. Two returned, wheeling in an old hand-cranked console record player. A third hurried after them with a wax cylinder. He snapped it in, spun the crank, and lowered the needle.

Scratchy waltz music came on.

Ladders slammed up against the walls. Strings of crepe-paper bells were stretched across the hall with dazzling speed. There was a clatter on the stairs as the remaining three dwarves returned.

They led in the Baldwynn.

The Baldwynn was dressed in formal evening wear. His suit was classically expensive, and just worn enough to indicate that it wasn't rented. His step was weak and faltering. His porcelain hands, mottled with brown, hung down motionless. But his head swung slowly from side to side like a turtle's, its gaze disconcertingly unfocused, as if he were staring into another universe.

I'm not afraid, Jane told herself. I won't be afraid.

The Baldwynn's head swiveled toward her. It stopped.

He looked directly at Jane.

Grinning, the dwarves swarmed about her. One removed her mask. Another took her cloak. They tugged her forward, placing her left hand on the Baldwynn's shoulder. One of his dead white hands was put into hers and the other around her waist.

Then they were dancing. The tinny waltz propelled them about the gym. They both moved clumsily, shuffling in response to the pokes and prods of their attendants. Awkwardly they spun around and around.

At first Jane stared fixedly at the Baldwynn's chest. But then a dwarf darted between them and knocked her chin up with his small fist. She looked into his pale gray eyes.

A spark of something glimmered briefly there. His lips trembled, as if he were trying to remember how to perform some long-forgotten task with them. Once. Twice.

The third time was the charm. Slowly he puckered his lips, like a little girl begging for a kiss. He released them with a faint
tchk
noise.

Jane shook her head. "No."

Again his lips puckered. He moved his head down toward hers. She could smell his breath, maggoty and sweet. Life came to his hands. His fingers plucked feebly at her.

"
No
!" Jane pushed back against the Baldwynn's chest with all her might. But she could not break free. It was impossible for one so frail and infirm to hold her, and yet he did. His arms were like metal bands. Slowly, inexorably, they tightened, crushing her against the aged elf-laird. His mouth closed on hers. When she tried to turn away, dwarves held her head in place.

He poked out his tongue and pushed it into her mouth. It entered her like a key gliding into a lock.

She opened at its touch.

At the prodding of his tongue, everything changed. The ballroom, dwarves, even the Baldwynn himself, all warped and melted away like wax in carbolic acid. Jane's stomach lurched. She experienced a bewildering dizziness unlike anything she had ever felt, as if she were being rotated through a dimension impenetrable to her senses. The room resolved into someplace else.

"Jane?"

She did not turn. She was staring at the window, mesmerized by the horrible thing there. The panes were streaked and filthy, and there were the blown husks of dead houseflies on the sill. The paint on the wood was white and chalky and broke away in sharp flakes if you pushed down on it hard enough with your thumb. Doing that pricked the flesh hard enough to hurt, but never enough to draw blood.

But none of that was the horrible thing.

"I brought you some nice fruit," Sylvia said. "Apples and bananas. And a carton of Salem Menthols, hundreds this time, just like you like. I gave them to the nurse at the station, and I wish there was some way you could tell me how many you actually smoke. I'm sure she's been stealing some."

The sky was low, but it didn't look like it was going to rain. It looked like it was going to stay gray and overcast forever. The view was ugly here, though it was not supposed to be. The rolling grounds existed only to be mowed, every other day it seemed, cropped so close that from up here the dirt could be seen through the stubble. They were afraid, she supposed, lest a blade of grass might briefly rise up and grow freely. To Jane, the lawn was the perfect symbol of oppression. But that wasn't the horrible thing either.

"Sit down on the edge of the bed and I'll do your hair."

Jane turned then to face her mother. How worn Sylvia looked, how unhappy, how old. She had that brave little look she always wore on entering, that reassuring everything-is-okay smile that was more then contradicted by the weary misery of her eyes.

Jane walked to the bed and sat down. Her body felt heavy, lumpish, awkward. It was the starchy diet, the lack of exercise, the fact that there had never been any reason
not
to let herself go.

Sylvia sat down beside her, took out a brush, and began putting Jane's hair in order. How her hands flew! Contemplating them, Jane could imagine how graceful her mother must have been in her youth, how gay and flirty back before Jane had happened to her. "I saw your Aunt Lillian the other day," Sylvia said lightly. "She said that young Albert is going back to his wife again, can you imagine that? That's what—the third time? There's something off about that relationship if you ask me, something more than meets the eye." She paused to light a cigarette, eyed Jane critically. "How would you like it if I braided your hair in cornrows?"

Mom, she tried to say. I want to come home.

But nothing came out.

Nothing ever did.

She raised her head slightly and stared at the window again. Though it was not visible from this angle, in her imagination she could see the horrible thing she had been staring at when her mother entered. It was her own reflection. The round, puffy face, the carelessly applied makeup, the dark, resentful eyes. The cast of expression that said her attention was a million light-years distant.

Suddenly it came to Jane that things weren't going to get any better. She was trapped. She was going to stay in the institution forever, slowly growing older and heavier, draining off the sap of her mother's life a shriveling drop at a time until it was all gone. Then there would be no more visits. She would be alone, decaying, growing ever more silently bitter, creeping toward zero.

She began to cry.

Astonished, her mother dropped the brush. It clattered loudly on the floor.

The Baldwynn's tongue withdrew from Jane's mouth.

He released her.

In a panic she whirled and, dwarves scattering and falling away from her, fled the room. The door resisted her tugging, shuddering in its frame, until she thought to push. It opened onto the front office.

When she emerged, her party was gone.

Only the goblin remained. He waddled toward her, grinning effusively, holding out her mask and cloak. "Nice and filthy—you like, right? Just what you want, disgusting. Come back again."

Elves were fickle. They'd pick you up at a thought and drop you for no reason at all. They weren't to blame, really; it was just their nature. You didn't go out with one unless you were willing to take the chance of suddenly discovering yourself standing alone in a puddle in the dark with a pocket full of dried leaves, abandoned.

Those were the facts. Jane kept reminding herself of them, over and over, for all the long and fearful hour that it took her to make it back to Caer Gwydion. But what she really wanted was to feed the lot of them, with all their cousins and relations, to the mouth of the Teind. If she could have shoved them one and all through Hell Gate, she would have done so gladly.

By the time she got to the party, Jane had largely recovered from her encounter with the Baldwynn. But she was tired and sullen, and in no mood for one more instant's lighthearted revelry. Why am I here? she asked herself. If she hadn't promised Melanchthon he'd feed tonight, she could be home now.

She discarded her mask and surrendered her cloak to a servant. Apollidon materialized in the foyer.

He saw her and headed straight for her boobs. "I'm nobody here," the parvenu said without preamble. "They all treat me like trash. Nobody here respects me for my ancestry."

"Well, they're pretty stuffy I guess," Jane said indifferently. He was still staring at her outfit. She could go home and change into a sweater and jeans, and he'd never recognize her.

"If I disappeared tonight and never showed up again, nobody would even miss me. I must be the most universally loathed individual in all creation."

"Really!" Jane was startled. Was it possible the answer had been staring her in the face all night long?

She resolved to find out.

Touching Apollidon's arm she sent a surge of desire up his nervous system. It was the same trick that Fata Jouissante had played on her earlier, and if she did not use it half so well, still, it was her first time. At any rate, to judge by the parvenu's reaction, she used it well enough. He shuddered and for the first time his eyes looked up and into hers. They connected. His pupils were wide with desire.

Then Apollidon flushed with awareness of what she had done.

"You're perfect," Jane assured him before he could look away. "Come home with me."

CHEEK FLAT AGAINST TOMMY PADDLEFOOT'S THIGH, JANE waggled his penis back and forth. It was such a funny, floppy little fellow, she thought affectionately. She liked penises quite a lot, clownish things that they were, the sort of silly dangles that would look equally at home on a jester's cap or scepter.

It was only at times like this, immediately after sex, that Jane ever felt truly at peace anymore. She cherished this still, calm feeling of content, and prolonged it as best she could, wrapping the moment about her like a blanket that could briefly ward off the harsh shocks and chills of the world. She dreaded the rude instant that must inevitably come to end it.

"Hey. As long as you're down there anyway, how's about blowing a little tune on the mouth organ?"

Jane let it drop.

"That won't be necessary." She scraped up a bit of something from the wet spot and, holding the tip of her nail directly over his cock, whispered a summoning. "Stand up, Mister Bumble. Arise and grow larger." With her other hand she formed the mudra of spiritual expansion. And because she knew his organ's name and the proper techniques, it engorged with blood and stood erect for her.

Playtime was over. Back to work.

She sat up, twisted around, and crouched over Tommy's torpid form. With one hand, she guided Mister Bumble into Little Jane.

"You going to do the thing with the scarf again?"

"I'm going to do something better," she promised. "But to do it, I'll need your true name."

"Aw, no," Tommy Paddlefoot mumbled. "I really shouldn't."

"No?" She brushed her breasts lightly over his face, drawing them back from his questing mouth so that he only got the slightest sweet taste of nipple, and then reached a hand behind her to rake her nails lightly up his balls. He drew in his breath. "But you did like the game with the scarf?"

"Well, yeah, but—"

"You'll like this a whole lot better. I promise."

There was a pantry cupboard off the kitchenette that Jane had no use for. She opened the door and threw Tommy Paddlefoot's clothes inside. The cupboard had amassed quite a pile of silks, cottons, and leathers. Apollidon's plumed hat must surely be crushed flat. She slammed the door. "Ferret was asking questions today," she said.

"Oh?"

"Is that all you have to say—Oh? Doesn't the thought of Ferret sniffing after your trail even bother you?"

"No."

"It should. He knows there's something wrong about my background. It can only be so long before he finds out what."

An angry hiss of steam rattled the walls. But the dragon's voice was cool and aloof. "So you are being pursued! What a weak and pathetic waif I find myself harnessed to! You don't know the least jot of it. We have been more closely pursued than you can imagine and by powers that would freeze your blood to think upon. Eight times in the last year have we come close to discovery. Even now, all sources of flight-octane fuel are being carefully watched. They know I'm out here and they know how much fuel I took with me. They're sure I'll try for more sooner or later. And so I would, if we hadn't worked out this alternative source of energy."

"What powers? Name them!"

"Save for one, their names would mean nothing to you. And that one you surely would underestimate gravely. If I were to say that for three nights running the Baldwynn had stalked the corridors outside this very apartment, you would—"

"Oh, the Baldwynn," Jane said airily. "Did I mention that I went dancing with him? You'd never guess what he tried to do."

"
Don't let him kiss you
!" In his shock, Melanchthon's voice was a roar that shook the steel frame of Termagant down to its foundations. Jane staggered. In the dining room a candy dish fell and broke.

"Why not?" Jane demanded. "What'll happen if I do?" It did not escape her notice that the dragon had known the Baldwynn wanted to kiss her. Nor that he had assumed that he had not succeeded. Well, she was tougher than Melanchthon realized.

He retreated into silence.

"You're still lying to me, damn you! I don't lie to
you
! We're supposed to be partners, right? Equals. In this together. When are you going to stop your stupid mind games and power trips so we can work in concert?"

Still the dragon said nothing. After a while Jane went to take a shower.

When she emerged twenty minutes later, wrapping a towel around her head, the dragon could not be seen. He had drawn the illusion of off-white walls, draped windows, and hanging baskets of English ivy about himself. But the air sang with tension. It trembled with the malice of his regard.