Here There Be Dragonnes Read Online Free PDF Page B

surprised as snow to find a beautiful lady return by the door some two minutes later, to fling Broom at my head with the remark to it: "No point in taking you, after all: it's not far. There'll be no point in the binding, either," and with a few words she loosened the invisible ties we were bound with, like a soaking in warm water softens dried meat. Broom hustled up next to me and rustled and chattered, so I moved away from my corner to join the others by the fire. Our Mistress paused once more before she left by the conventional door, swirling her long, purple gown: "I shall not be late," she warned. "So, quiet as mice and no tricks or I shall have you all with the cramps when I return . . ."
    She looked very beautiful that night, with long brown hair the sheen of hazelnuts hanging down her back and eyes the colour of squirrel-fur. I wondered what it felt like to be beautiful.
    It may seem strange that we never queried her Shape-Changing, nor questioned where she went in that guise, nor why, but it was so much a part of our lives that we just accepted it, I suppose: I do not remember puzzling over it—I was just glad that she was not there. Afterwards the reasons became clearer, but at the time we all took it as a sort of Holy Day, and relaxed. That night I rustled up some nice bone broth I had hidden away and ate it with freshish bread, sharing it with Corby and Moglet, and shaving a sliver of new-dead moth and slipping it with agonizing patience round the moon-pebble in Pisky's mouth, giving the rest, wings and all, to Puddy. I was comfortably dozing, back against the angle of the fireplace, when the door was flung open and she was back.
    I could see that this time it was going to be different from any time before. She seemed to glow, to expand, to fill the whole room with a musky odour of femininity that scared me. Her eyes were sleep-puffed, satiated, and her lips full as a wasp sting and red as new-killed meat. There were scratches on her bare arms and legs as though she had run through bramble and her gown hung open on her breasts. But she seemed in a singular good humour and did not even ask whether we had behaved but whirled about the room in her ruined dress like the wind in a pile of new-fallen leaves.
    "Now there was a man!" She sighed and yawned. "A village yokel maybe, but hard as iron and full of juices . . . This time there will be a child! And then you, my pets, will be superfluous . . ." We shrank back, for even in the unaccustomed mellowness of her tone there was an implied threat, even though the others could not clearly understand what she said. "I may decide however to keep you as you are for a while, slaves and servants, for Thing there at least is sometimes useful." She ran long, still-beautiful fingers through her hair, for the magic had not yet slipped away. "And of course the babe will need a nurse . . ." She mused. "I shall have to see . . ." and such was our awe of her that I believed in the immediate appearance of some infant witch, a smaller version of herself, and even peered into all the corners when one did not immediately materialize. I told the others what she had said and we huddled round the cheerless fire, trembling at this new threat, but she did not appear to notice and went into her alcove from whence we could hear her chinking glass and pouring liquid. She came out at last and drained a green, smoking mixture with every indication of enjoyment, but as she set down the drinking-flagon a couple of drops spilled on the oaken table and crackled and fizzed in the dark wood, leaving two shallow, smoking depressions.
    She, however, looked more beautiful than ever, and as soon as she had drunk her fill she went over to her couch under the shuttered window. "I shall sleep long during the next few months, Thing, and you will have to keep the place tidy and provisioned. I want no disturbances, no undue noise, and I expect the stock-pot full if ever I wake and am hungry." She