The Whim of the Dragon (48 page)

“We will lose Patrick,” said Randolph.

“I’m afraid you will,” said Patrick. “I find I prefer the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It doesn’t talk back.”

“What about the civil war?” said Laura. “If Prince Patrick turns up missing?”

“It’s time for truth,” said Fence. “Andrew, mark you, who was to begin this war, is away, and hath had in the interim an education. Fear us not.”

“I don’t think,” said Ellen, “that anybody needs time for cogitation.”

“Wait just a moment,” said Ruth. “Is all this glumness justified? Who says we can do this only once?”

“The Dragon King,” said Fence.

Ted put his head in his hands. The three particular kinds of provocation, impossible of occurrence.

“The use of these mirrors,” said Fence, “as the use of all of the magical artifacts of Melanie, doth awake the Outside Powers. The first use troubleth their sleep; the second maketh them to stir; and the third doth send them roaring.”

Apsinthion had told them that, thought Ted; and they had not understood him.

“So,” said Patrick, “we can all go to Australia, and everybody except me can say good-bye to parents. And then everybody except me can come back. And the Outside Powers will have but stirred in their sleep.”

“One only,” said Fence. “Three uses, to awaken one. But they have been so recently roused, ’twere folly to—”

“But the next time you use those mirrors,” said Patrick, disregarding him, “be it in two years or two hundred, the Outside Powers will emerge roaring. Give me strength. You couldn’t pay me to stay here.”

“I don’t hear anybody offering,” said Ellen, absently.

“There aren’t any magic mirrors in our house,” said Patrick. “How do you propose to get there?”

“There will be,” said Fence. “One magic mirror maketh another, by their property of reflection.”

“Never mind,” said Patrick. “Can we get this over? Can we just go and do it now?”

“Of a certainty,” said Fence, and got up.

The five of them followed him along the drafty passages of High Castle, to the Mirror Room. Fence and Randolph would be coming to Australia with them, to lend what Ellen, or possibly Princess Ellen, called verisimilitude to an otherwise drab and unconvincing narrative. “Not drab,” Patrick had remarked, “but about as unconvincing as you can get. Do you really think a short guy in a wizard’s robe and a tall one got up like Hamlet are going to put any twentieth-century parent’s mind at ease?” Ted thought of this, trailing behind his shorter cousin’s vigorous stride; watching the way Ruth and Randolph walked close together without touching; and the way Ellen stuck next to Laura and talked incessantly at her. If they could
see
us come out of that mirror, it should help, he thought. He plunged forward and caught up with Patrick.

“Pat? Where
is
the mirror in your new house?”

“Well, there’s one in the bathroom,” said Patrick, as if he had been expecting the question. “But we wouldn’t most of us fit through it. There’s a full-length one on the back of my parents’ closet door; and a mirrored wall in the dining room. And a full-length one in Ruthie’s room. Take your pick.”

In the Mirror Room, three black cats slept in an untidy heap on Agatha’s sewing table. Ellen scratched them all behind the ears. Fence made for the Conrad tapestry, and twitched it aside.

“Fence?” said Ted. “Can we choose which mirror we come out?”

“Maybe,” said Fence. “You might hold in your mind’s eye the room you think best suited to’t.”

“The dining room, Ruth and Ellen,” said Patrick.

“Join hands,” said Fence. “Now.” He laid his hand on the mirror. “Castle Coriander.”

And he stepped through the mirror, drawing Ruth, Randolph, Patrick, Ted, Laura, and Ellen after him.

The surface of the mirror gave before Ted’s hand like cloth. He stepped through, and the feel of cloth tattered and diminished. He saw a high-ceilinged, handsome room, flooded with early sunlight and furnished with a table and chairs he recognized. It was warm and smelled pleasantly of coffee and pancakes. The table was laid for four. Three of them sat there already: a tall abstracted man with dust-colored hair and a vague face, Ted’s Uncle Alan; a little black-haired man with very blue eyes, his father. Ted’s uncle had not noticed them yet. His aunt, who was sitting directly across the table from the mirrored wall they had walked out of, dropped her knife with a clatter and said, “Mother of God!”

“Angels and ministers of grace defend us!” said an ironic voice in the doorway; and there, in her old green bathrobe with her long brown hair falling over it in rats’ tails, just like Laura’s, stood their mother, her hands full of mugs and in her face a kind of horrified delight.

Laura ran at her, and she obligingly dropped the mugs, one of which broke, and hugged her daughter. “What are you
doing
—” she said, and stopped, and put Laura a little away from her. “Honey. You’ve grown too. What is going on here?” She looked over Laura’s quivering head, found Ted unerringly, and grinned at him. Then she stood up. “I see two strangers here,” she said. “Sirs? What does this mean?”

Ruth walked around the table and tapped her father on the shoulder. “Daddy,” she said.

“Awake, are you?” said Ted’s Uncle Alan. “I think there are some pancakes left.”

“Alan, look at the mirror,” said Aunt Kim.

He looked up. “Ted,” he said, in a pleased tone. “And Laura. You didn’t tell me they were coming,” he said to his wife.

“Oh, God!” said Ruth, and burst out laughing.

“Oh, God, exactly,” said Ted’s father. “Teach me to call names. Mary Rose in triplicate, and Thomas the Rhymer in duplicate. And who are the rest of them? They look halfway responsible next to the bunch of you.”

“Mother,” said Ruth, in a shaking voice where laughter almost met tears, “this is Fence, and this is Randolph. This is my mother, Mistress Kimberly Carroll; and my aunt, Mistress Nora, and my father, Master Alan, and my uncle, Master Thomas.”

Ruth’s mother stood up. “Alan,” she said, “I think we need some more chairs.”

“I think,” said Ted’s father, standing up too, “that we need some more coffee.”

“They drink tea,” said Ted.

“They can drink coffee for once,” said his father, eyeing him steadily. “Let them be a little off balance too.” He held out a hand suddenly, and Ted bolted forward and fell on his neck, like a proper prodigal son.

There was a certain amount of sniveling all around, and an appalling amount of talk, and a staggering interrogation under which Fence and Randolph bore up very well. Ted’s parents, he was relieved to see, believed the story, in the end. His aunt did not, but seemed willing, possibly through mere exhaustion, to let them continue to their conclusion. It was hard to tell with his Uncle Alan, who might not consider disbelief a barrier to, or belief a reason for, anybody’s action. So Ruth explained that all of them except Patrick were going back to the Hidden Land; and the yelling started. Ruth and Ellen and Patrick’s side of the family were great yellers.

Very few speeches into it, Ted and Laura’s side of the family plunged precipitately into the living room, dragging a reluctant Fence, shut the door, fell into whatever chairs were nearest, and stared at one another in a worn-out silence.

“Now let’s try again,” said Ted’s mother.

“No, wait,” said Ted. “Fence. Have you got an immigration quota?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Can they come too?” He had not been able to ask it in the other room. His aunt and uncle would never come.

There was another sort of silence. “Why not?” said Fence. He looked cautiously at Ted’s father, who had been calling him a variety of names Ted had never heard before, and at Ted’s mother, who had been steadily disregarding him, and said, “You’d be heartily welcome; heartily.”

“I can’t think why,” said Ted’s mother.

“If these were mine,” said Fence, gently, “I’d fight as hard as this to keep them.”

“Mom,” said Laura. “They all talk like Shakespeare there.”

“Well,” said their mother, on a shaky laugh, “then there’s no more to be said, surely?”

“Oh, Lord,” said their father. “What time is it in Illinois? We’ll have to call Kathy and Jim and tell them—something.”

“Blame it on us,” said Ted. “They’ll believe anything about us.”

“Do you think they’re going to call the police in there?” said Ted’s mother.

“They’ll think of it,” said his father, “and Randolph will point out that all seven of them can simply step back through the mirror before anybody so much as picks up the telephone.”

“Tom,” said their mother, “are we in fact going to do this?”

Ted’s father put his head in his hands. “If we did,” he said. “Power of attorney. Thank God we signed one before we left. We need to sell the house and most of the contents. Kim and Alan should have some of the good stuff. We’ll have to make a list. Now. Why are we doing this?”

Ted’s mother said, in a tone he recognized, “We’ve decided to emigrate. We’re staying with Kim and Alan until we find a house.”

“Postcards,” said Ted’s father. “We’d better write a series and have Kim mail them at intervals—if she will.”

“Patrick will,” said Laura.

“Yes, of course. You two had better write some too. Friends, relations, teachers.”

“Another list,” said their mother. “People you don’t want to have worrying about you. We mustn’t disappear. We must move to Australia and gradually lose touch. Will Patrick mail postcards for a year and a half? It would take that long, really.”

“Patrick will follow a schedule until Armageddon,” said Ted’s father.

“What are we going to do down here to earn money?” said their mother.

“I could help Kim with the farm,” said their father, dubiously.

The rest of the family burst out laughing.

“You’re doing it wrong,” said Ted. “What have you always wanted to do? Tell them you’re doing it.”

“Live where everybody talks like Shakespeare,” said their mother, not laughing at all.

“What’s your second choice?” said Ted.

“Cartography,” said his mother, promptly.

“Does Australia need cartographers?” said her husband.

“The Hidden Land needs them,” said Fence.

They had forgotten about him.

“Well, that’s a relief,” said Ted’s mother. “I don’t imagine being a parasite in a magical kingdom is any pleasanter than being one anywhere else.”

“They’re musicians, Fence,” said Ted.

“That’s well for us. Doth Australia need musicians?”

“Tell ’em you’re taking some courses in computer programming,” said Laura.

“They won’t believe it,” said her father.

“Sure they will. They’ll say, well, finally, he’s fulfilling his potential,” said Laura, rolling the phrase on her tongue with a scorn Ted had not known she was capable of.

There was a great deal more to be said, but it was of a far less awful and enervating nature than what was going on in the next room. Ted was only surprised that somebody or other had not run out in a fit of hysteria or rage or both. But nobody did; and when Ted and Laura and their parents, trailed by Fence, cautiously opened the door and walked back into the dining room, the other half of the Carroll family was quiet, if tear-blotched, and actually looked at them inquiringly. Randolph was the only person present who had not, clearly, been crying; and he looked worse than those who had.

“We’re all going back,” said Ted into the stuffy air. “All four of us.”

“And we are, all two,” said Ruth, foggily.

“I’m staying,” said Ellen, with great clarity.

Her father put out an arm and gathered her in; Ted’s Aunt Kim closed her eyes with her fingers and leaned on the table, saying nothing.

“Somebody,” said Ellen, “has to keep Patrick in line.”

“Mother?” said Ruth, “I’d be going to college in a few years anyway.”

“What you have to do,” said Ellen, her cheerful voice beginning to clog up, “is figure out a way around this idiotic prohibition so everybody can come to the wedding.”

“I don’t see,” said Ted’s Aunt Kim, from under her hand, “that there’s anything we can do or say that we haven’t tried. If you’re going, Ruth, you’re going. You’re too old to be ordered.”

“Ellen,” said Ruth, “don’t do this for me.”

“I’m not,” said Ellen. “I liked it there; but I like it here.”

And that, thought Ted, was perfectly true. Ellen made the best of whatever place received her. He looked at his sister, who was staring at Ellen, stricken.

“Margaret’s nice,” he said to her.

“Margaret’s a demon,” said Laura.

“So is Ellen a demon,” said Ruth. “You’re just used to her.”

“I’m starting to get in your way, Laurie,” said Ellen.

“That’s stupid!” said Laura.

Ellen just looked at her. Ted didn’t think it was stupid. As Laura became less of a mouse, Ellen wouldn’t know what to do with her; Ellen had had eleven years of hauling around her terrified, clumsy cousin. No doubt they would have managed if they had stayed together; but there was no need to say that now.

“What,” said Ruth’s mother, with somewhat more energy, “are we going to tell people?”

“The four of us,” said Ted’s mother, in that same familiar tone, “are emigrating to Australia. Why don’t we settle in Sydney, and take Ruth with us, Kim, because being stuck out in the middle of nowhere doesn’t agree with her?”

“My English teacher’ll worry,” said Ruth, suddenly.

“Write her some postcards,” said Ted’s mother. “Though I don’t know who’s to mail them from Sydney.”

“I will,” said Ellen. “Mom can take me when she goes shopping. I can write some for you too, Ruthie; I can imitate your handwriting.”

“Oh, yeah?” said Ruth, without much force.

“What are you doing about your house?” asked Ruth’s father, who had been hanging about the edges of this discussion with the expression of somebody who likes Bach but has been inveigled into attending a heavy-metal concert. Ted’s parents explained it to him, with relish, adding details as they went along, and finally got him occupied making a list of which of their books he wanted.