Tales of Older Days (2/8)
Title: Tales of Older Days (2/8): The Patter of Tiny Feet
Author: Clodius Pulcher *cough*
Characters: Erestor, A Heroine, An Urchin, A Villain, A Dragon Cub, HenchDwarves and Others.
Rating: K+
Book/Source: LotR
Disclaimer: I am not J.R.R. Tolkien and I make no money from this.
Note: Still flocked! Many thanks again to gogollescent and ignoblebard for the original inspiration, the ongoing encouragement and (of course) for beta-reading. :'D
Summary: Gogol surveyed her options. This did not take long. She cringed and gave up. “Uh... a dragon’s egg.” MEFA 2010 Second Place in Genres: Humor: Incomplete.
Back to It Was a Dark and Stormy Night
~ the patter of tiny feet ~
Extracted from the urchin’s tattered coat, the stolen object seemed at first no more than a bulky bundle of dirtyish woollen cloth. Unravelling the layers revealed a smooth and convex surface that was for the most part a polished bluish shade. In places the icy colour paled almost to translucency. A distinct suggestion of compressed limbs and coiled appendages could just be made out through the cloudy shell.
It was definitely an egg. And it was too big to belong to any bird.
“Although there was that one in Near Harad -” began Erestor, and broke off. “The shells were white, though.”
“It’s too heavy,” said Melinna. “Those aren’t feathers.”
They contemplated the monstrous egg with shared misgivings. It lay gleaming in its nest of woollen wrappings, glossy by firelight. Occasionally it wobbled.
Melinna reached out and touched the shell. “It’s cold. Maybe the thing’s dead.”
As if in response, the egg gave a little twitch. Movement was visible through one of the translucent patches, along with the metallic tip of something alarmingly talonlike. The worrying possibility occurred to both of them that the thing had scratched at the inside of the shell.
She snatched her hand away. “Maybe not.”
Erestor shook his head. “I think the girl’s right,” he said. “It’s a dragon’s egg.”
“Hey -” said the urchin, unable to keep quiet any longer. She bounced onto her toes, peering at the egg with eager curiosity. “’Course it is! Said so, didn’t I? Is it gonna hatch? What’s a baby dragon like, can I keep it? Can I? I stole it! Fair ’n’ square!”
“No, you can’t,” said Erestor shortly. He drummed his fingers on the scarred and pitted wood of the table, ignoring the urchin’s indignant wail of protest. “Baby dragons grow into adult dragons, which is the last thing Bree needs. What were you doing stealing it anyway? Who is this Lady Inez and what’s she doing with a dragon’s egg?”
“Ain’t no reason I shouldn’t -” muttered the urchin and caught Melinna’s eye. She subsided sulkily. “Was up at The Pony mucking out horses...”
The urchin, it transpired, garnered occasional employment as a stablehand at The Prancing Pony. It went unsaid (but generally understood) that opportunities for petty thieving were much improved in that part of town; there were additional reasons, but Gogol felt no particular need to elaborate on her currently prickly relationship with her aunt. A large party of Dwarves had arrived by the Greenway the previous afternoon, travelling from the North and giving every indication of being a heavily armoured war-party. Naturally this had caused Gogol to prick up her ears. Dwarves were well-known to be excessively fond of jewels; their pockets were often all the better for a little lightening; and what had such a warlike lot been doing up North amid the ruins of ancient cities anyway, if not prospecting for lost treasure? And then there was the cloaked and hooded woman who travelled with the Dwarves and seemed to be giving them orders...
At any rate, Gogol had restrained herself until well after nightfall, before creeping into the Inn to satisfy her curiosity. The Dwarves had been carousing merrily in the common-room; the woman was nowhere to be seen. Right before the great hearth, glowing cherry-red by firelight, sat a massive iron chest.
With a massive iron lock. The corresponding iron key must be in the possession of the mysterious woman.
Dwarves were good at carousing. It had been well past midnight by the time the last of them slipped contentedly under the table, leaving Gogol free to attempt the chest.
(“You never picked a Dwarven lock,” said Melinna at this point. “I wouldn’t have thought it possible!”
The urchin scowled. “Did too!”
Both Elves regarded her in disbelief. The evidence rocked gently in front of them.)
The iron of the chest had been hot to the touch. Wrapping her hands in her tattered coat-sleeves to avoid scorching her fingers, the urchin had gingerly lifted the lid. She had been disappointed to find only layer after layer of carefully packed woollen cloth, rather than the expected treasure-trove.
And there, nestled snugly in the midst of all this material, the urchin had uncovered the monstrous egg.
Whereupon she had heard footsteps. Bundling the egg under her coat, she fled The Pony...
“... an’ then I ran inna you two!” finished the urchin, beaming at them. The hollowness of her grimy face was accentuated by her hair, a dripping mess of slick black spikes. Her eyes were grey as a nightingale’s breast-feathers and bright with enthusiasm. “Is it gonna hatch? Whatcha gonna do wiv it?”
“Good question,” said Erestor. He glanced at the monstrous egg. “What are we going to do with it?”
Melinna shrugged. “Destroy it? It’s a dragon.”
The urchin squeaked and made a protective lunge. “You ain’t gonna -!”
“Stop that,” said Erestor, rolling his eyes, while Melinna pried the egg out of the urchin’s grubby clutches. Ghostly paw-prints lingered as condensation on the glassy surface of the shell. “Dragons aren’t like dogs, child. Morgoth Bauglir made them, the Valar only know how, and I never saw one dead on a battlefield yet. Worse than Balrogs. Túrin had a madman’s luck. But - I say no. No one’s ever seen a chick in the egg. We can’t destroy it. Elrond would have a fit.”
“And Mithrandir and Curunír and definitely Radagast,” murmured Melinna, “and Círdan, and Celeborn and Galadriel, and Thranduil...”
“Exactly.”
“Point taken. It can’t hatch here, though. I say we head back to Imladris in the morning.”
“All right. I -”
“Hey!” said the urchin, evidently alarmed. “You’re going? What about me?”
The Elves looked at her. “What about you?” said Erestor.
“I stole it!” said the urchin furiously. “’s mine!”
Only Melinna’s restraining hold prevented her from reclaiming the dragon’s egg. “You know,” said Melinna, while the urchin protested her captivity in no uncertain terms, “she has a point. We can hardly leave her here. The Dwarves will tear her apart.”
“That will teach her an important lesson about stealing from Dwarves,” said Erestor. Melinna’s look was reproving; he grinned and relented. “What, you want to take her with us? What about her family -?”
Abruptly the urchin ceased to struggle. “I ain’t got no family! Take me wiv you! Where’s Imladris? Is it an Elf-city? I wanna come!”
She peered hopefully up at them. Erestor raised his eyebrows.
“This is absurd,” he said to Melinna in Sindarin. “Take the child to Imladris? She’ll steal the tapestries from the walls!”
Melinna shrugged. “Maybe we can teach her better manners.”
“You can try!” He turned back to Westron and the urchin. “All right. You can come. But no thieving, understood? That means no rifling through our bags when we’re not looking. Or our pockets!”
The urchin contrived to radiate the aura of an innocent unjustly accused. “’Course not! What’s Imladris like? Is it full of Elves? Are you gonna hatch the dragon there?”
“O Elbereth!” sighed Erestor. “This is going to be a very long trip.”
Attention now returned to the dragon’s egg, innocuous in its heaped-up woollen nest. During the time they had been talking, the translucent patches on the shell had clouded to a uniform blue opacity and the side nearest to the fire was noticeably duller. Striking it lightly with a fingernail produced a sound like china set down on a stone surface. “It’s the heat,” said Melinna. “It’s reacting to the heat. Was it like this when you found it, Gogol?”
The urchin, all smiles, bobbed gleeful assent. “They must have been trying to hatch the beast,” said Erestor. He lifted the egg out of its nest, turning it carefully in his long fingers. His touch left no marks on the increasingly brittle shell. “Absurd. I wouldn’t be up in the North right now for all of Eriador. There must be a very cross dragon-mother up there somewhere. Who’d be mad enough to steal a dragon’s egg and then hatch a dragon out of it?”
Melinna shrugged. “Let’s worry about that once we’ve got the egg off our hands. Gogol, what’s the coldest place around here?”
After some thought, the urchin supposed that this might be the larder. “Why?” she added suspiciously.
“So that it doesn’t hatch, of course.”
The urchin seemed inclined to balk. “Won’t the baby dragon die?”
“If we’re lucky,” said Erestor, setting the egg down again and beginning to rewrap its woollen layers. “Dragons are practically unkillable, I’d be surprised if a bit of cold hurt it much. So this larder -”
For the second time that evening, the door burst open. This time there was no need for the Elves to reach for their weapons; the intruder was only the alewife Kat Ferny, coming pink and wind-tousled from the blustery night. Her cloak was damp and thick with mud. She saw them sitting there and stopped dead, a curious expression fluttering across her thin face. “I - uh -”
Her gaze fell upon the urchin. “Gogol! Why ain’t you gone yet?”
“She’s with us,” said Erestor, not without a touch of weariness. “Good alewife -”
“She ain’t gonna stay here!” said Kat Ferny, arms akimbo. “Not in my house!”
Melinna’s mouth quirked. “I see the lady knows you,” she said to the urchin. “What did you do this time?”
“Nuffink!”
Kat Ferny threw up her hands. “As if I ain’t done enough for the brat!” she exclaimed. “Brought her up like my own child, didn’t I? If I had a child, which I don’t, not being a fool like my poor sister, maysherestinpeace. Lavished her with love and attention, I did! And how does the brat repay me?”
The urchin appeared to have heard all this before; at any rate, she was rolling her eyes and mouthing along with the litany. The face she pulled during Kat Ferny’s dramatic pause was quite grotesque.
Melinna took the cue obligingly. “How does she repay you?”
“She lies and she steals!” snapped Kat Ferny, which was incontestable. “My own dear sister’s child! After all the trouble I took to bring her up properly! Sarry’s heart would’ve broke from grief -”
“- if she weren’t dead already giving birth to a Ranger’s brat -” muttered the urchin.
“- if she weren’t dead already -” The alewife broke off, glaring at the urchin. She removed her sodden cloak and knelt to untie her bootlaces in a series of short, jerky movements that underscored the sharpness of her next words. “You ain’t got no respect! That’s your problem, missy, and that’s why you ain’t welcome here. That and your stealing. You steal from me and you steal from my customers! And I won’t be having with it! So get out! Git!”
“All right!” said the urchin, aggrieved, and began to button up her oversized coat. Her tone suggested wounded pride. “Weren’t here ’cause I wanted to be. Wouldn’t wanna be where I’m not wanted.”
She slunk towards the door. Erestor sighed and reached out to catch her skinny wrist.
“Enough of this,” he said to Kat Ferny. “She’s staying.”
The alewife swelled wrathfully. “Well, I never -”
Whatever else she might have said was cut off when Melinna unfolded herself from the bench by the fire. Possibly the alewife interpreted this as an implicit threat. Melinna’s smile was as brilliant as an Elf who wanted something could make it; the coins she set down on the rough table held a distinctly golden gleam.
“There’s hardly enough of the night left to argue,” she pointed out. “And she’ll be leaving with us in the morning. I take it no one will complain?”
“Complain?” said Kat Ferny, eyeing the coins. “Ha! Just don’t bring her back!”
The urchin sulked. “Don’t wanna come back,” she muttered, although Melinna’s contribution to the debate appeared to be distracting her attention as well. Luckily for her aunt’s pocket, Erestor was on hand to thwart her wandering fingers. She pushed her dripping shock of spiky black hair out of her face. “’m going to Imladris wiv the Elves! So there!”
Her smugness was unmistakably genuine. “Quite,” said Erestor, evincing very little personal enthusiasm. “Now maybe we can find this larder. And wasn’t there talk of supper at some point?”
This recollection of supper seemed to disconcert the alewife. She mumbled something and retreated hastily kitchenwards; her annoyance when they followed was tinted with alarm. There was bread and butter and a dish of cold meats on the table; the kitchen gave every indication of having been abandoned in the middle of Kat Ferny’s preparations for an impromptu meal. Would this bulky bundle be safe in the larder overnight? Why yes, yes indeed - Kat Ferny was firm, indeed she might even have been relieved, on this point. Safe? Definitely! She brandished a set of heavy keys. Only the presence of her niece (a hard look was directed at the urchin at this point) prevented Kat Ferny’s alehouse from being the safest place in Bree.
The alehouse had only one lodging-room. It was therefore fortunate for the Elves that it was currently unoccupied; they settled down for what remained of the night with some relief. The room was neither elegant nor warm nor particularly clean; but a mattress and a set of moth-eaten blankets was better than another night spent under a bush in the summer rain. In deference to her aunt’s lack of familial feeling, Gogol was given a pillow and a corner of the lodging-room wherein to curl up in Melinna’s cloak. Kat Ferny very much disliked the thought of the urchin being free to roam around her alehouse at night.
Sleep passed into the alehouse like a shadow, leaving no traces.
And fled two hours later, startled away by a scream.
The scream came from Kat Ferny. It split the stillness like a peacock’s battle cry; the absence of noise that followed was profound and ominous. When the Elves appeared on the scene, followed by the urchin tumbling sleepily down the stairs still wrapped in Melinna’s cloak, they discovered the alewife flat on her back on the kitchen floor, her heavy key-ring lying close by her outstretched hand. She seemed to have fainted. A lantern on the table filled the kitchen with yellow shadows. The larder door swung wide open and a trickle of white mist hung low in the chilly air.
Erestor and Melinna exchanged a glance; the latter put out a hand to prevent the urchin’s immediate forwards rush. “Not a good sign,” she murmured. The mist was thickening around the open larder door.
He exhaled. “No.”
They both carried knives, which evidently caused the urchin some unease. “Is it the dragon?” she demanded, her voice shrill in the quiet dimness. She attempted to lean around Melinna. “Has it hatched? Are you gonna -?”
“Hush. And stay put.”
Erestor padded into the kitchen on noiseless feet, the mist swirling around his ankles. Melinna came a step behind, dropping briefly to check on Kat Ferny while Erestor drifted towards the larder.
He peered inside.
The word he uttered had been considered decidedly indecorous when they were both young beneath the stars. Melinna rose at once. “Is that - has it -?”
She joined him at the open door. By now the mist was knee-high and brushed the skin like a wet blanket.
Inside the larder, the air was freezing. Ice skimmed the stone floor and glittered on the shelves. The wool of the egg’s nest had frozen stiff and lay scattered in shreds and frosty rags across the back of the larder. Glassy shards of shell gleamed on the floor.
A pair of limpid blue eyes blinked up at them. Melinna stared back, dismayed.
The creature was the size of a cat clad in silver scales. It sat like a cat as well, poised neatly with its tail curled around its dainty paws, a crest of spines ruffling up along its long neck. There was little enough light in the larder even for Elven eyes, but they could both make out the softness of its glistening armour and the translucency of its wings, skin stretched thin over birdish bones fanning out to dry in the glacial air. Mist leaked in wisps and icy puffs from the creature’s nostrils, trickling sluggish among the spectral shadows.
It was perhaps unfortunate that the first word the newly-hatched dragon heard from Melinna’s lips was the one that had just been used by Erestor. “Oh dear,” she added in Westron, for the urchin’s benefit. “It’s a cold-drake.”
“What’s a cold-drake?” said the urchin at once. Evidently assuming that there was no longer anything to be worried about, she bounced across the kitchen and squinted into the icy darkness, ignoring her still-unconscious aunt entirely. The shadow-grey cloak trailed behind her through the mist. “Ain’t it a dragon after all? Don’t dragons breathe fire?”
The dragonet in the larder tipped its head innocently to one side and did not set fire to anything. Melinna shuddered. “Wrong sort of dragon. And don’t do that -”
She spoke too slowly. Gogol had already slipped between them. Before Erestor, already leaning into the larder, could retrieve the urchin, she was petting the dragonet and commenting loudly on the coldness of its supple scales and pulling at its tail to see how far it stretched.
The dragonet yawned, displaying an array of exceedingly sharp little teeth, and twitched the tip of its captive tail. Then it gave a soft chirrup and blinked both sets of translucent eyelids.
Then it bit the urchin.
While Erestor dealt with the yelping urchin’s new bracelet of scarlet tooth-marks, Melinna watched the dragonet with foreboding. It stretched cattishly, forepaws scraping on the icy stone and its back arching in a ruffle of spines. The naked blueness of its eyes shone as brightly as an Exile just arrived from Tree-lit Valinor.
It pattered out of the larder. Melinna was caught by surprise and might have used her knife, but the dragonet only coiled around her feet and chirruped again, hopefully. She took the hint. It was light in her hands, and cold, and it laid its silver head smugly on her shoulder, as though it thought it belonged there.
She sighed and scratched one feathery ear.
“You,” she said in a dialect older than Sindarin or Quenya, while the dragon’s purr spilled white mist in cold plumes down her neck, “are going to be a problem.”
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