Dragons of the Watch Read online

  “I agree. It cleared the blur out of my eyes and the fuzz from my brain.”

  “Not the drink, the diary. The diary is good. We’ll learn a lot.”

  “Much more interesting than Old One’s journal.”

  Ellie mumbled agreement, sipped the amaloot, and nibbled the muffin.

  “And there are a dozen of the diaries.”

  Intrigued by the prospect of following the little girl’s life, Ellie said, “We should take them with us to read. We’re going back to the library today, aren’t we?

  Bealomondore looked her over. “Do you feel well enough?”

  She straightened her spine and gave a decisive nod. “I feel wonderful.” She frowned at her wrist. “That itches a bit, but my mother would say that means it’s getting well.”

  “My nanny said the same thing.”

  “How are we going to get the daggarts and diaries all the way to the library? And our bags? That’s a long walk without lugging anything extra.”

  Bealomondore pointed to a red wagon by the garden shed. “I pulled that out this morning. Fortunately it’s a toy. We’d never be able to pull the big wagon or push the urohm’s wheelbarrow.”

  “Do you think we could take some eggs as well?”

  Bealomondore turned to face her, his eyes wide. “We need eggs? We sometimes get eggs with our breakfast.”

  “I was thinking how much my gramps likes a soft-boiled egg on toast at teatime. Not every day, but once in a while as a treat.”

  “So Old One might like the same?”

  “Possibly.”

  “You’re probably right. But he asked specifically for daggarts. And we don’t know what Wulder has provided for him these many years.”

  “Apparently not daggarts.” She frowned in concentration.

  Bealomondore responded cheerfully. “Just so.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Remember we talked about Wulder giving us things just so we have something to enjoy?”

  “Button grain for Tak. Pie for us.”

  “Yes, that discussion. Why doesn’t Wulder give Old One daggarts?”

  “That one is easy.”

  “Easy, huh?” She gave him her best skeptical look. “Then explain it.”

  “A long, long time ago, when Wulder planned this urohm expedition, He knew that there would one day be an almost empty Rumbard City, wild and dangerous little heathens, and a grumpy old man holed up in the library. Wulder also knew that Ellicinderpart would fall into this bottled city and bake daggarts. If He had been feeding the small riffraff and the curmudgeon daggarts all along, then the daggarts the lovely young tumanhofer baked would not be so special and wouldn’t dent the armor of Old One or soften the hearts of the ragamuffins, convincing Old One to come out of hiding and the young ones to be nice and not bite.”

  Ellie laughed. “I’m not convinced.”

  “You will be. Once you accept Wulder as your creator and provider, you will change your tune.”

  “You did say you were going to tell me more about Him.”

  “I will. Maybe as we walk back to the library today.”

  Ellie came in from the kitchen and sat down to fold the linens Bealomondore had washed. “This is my last chore,” she called. “I wish we could iron them.”

  Bealomondore pulled a cushion back into the room and placed it where he’d found it the first night they stayed at the house. “I think I’m done, Ellie.”

  “Good. We can leave soon.”

  He sat down beside her to help. “Have you figured out why we are doing this?” He waved his hand with an unfolded towel in it, indicating the whole room and the house beyond.

  “Respect for someone else’s property?”

  He tilted his head to look at her. “This house is actually no one’s property. They’re all dead.”

  She scrunched her face and continued folding.

  “Well, almost all,” said Bealomondore.

  “That’s right.” She thought for a moment. “So I guess I’m doing it because I was raised to leave things tidier than when I arrived.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.” She put the last folded cloth on the stack. “Why are you doing it? You haven’t exactly been a mule, too stubborn to cooperate. In fact, you’ve done more than I have.”

  He stood and helped her up. “I like your reason. Leave things better.”

  She shook her head. “Can’t have it. That’s my reason, not yours.”

  He shrugged. “Well … in the last few years, I’ve grown to appreciate order. The quest to put the three statues together so Verrin Schope would quit falling apart. Simultaneously, the world unraveling. The war with Baardack. The awful, muddy, bloody battlefields. Wulder opening my eyes again to the beauty around me.”

  He pinched his lower lip. “All right. I’ll make a stab at it.” He placed his hands on her shoulders and looked straight into her eyes. “Wulder created this world and everything in it. He expects us to take care of it. When events occur that put things in disarray, He appreciates our trying to right wrongs and do the best we can to restore order, His order.” He gestured with his head, looking at the room around them. “Someone built this home. They created it. It’s fitting to restore their home as closely as we can to the original state.”

  Ellie smiled. “Minus several dishes, ingredients for daggarts, a stack of diaries, and one small wagon.”

  “We only took what we needed, like a hunter takes the life of an animal only if he needs the meat for his family.”

  “Or if the animal is a marauder who does harm and can’t be reasoned with.”

  He paused for a moment. “Oh dear, I think you’ve hit on the only reason for war.” He kissed her forehead. “Let’s go. This conversation has gone too deep.”

  He picked up the stack of linens and walked away. Ellie put her hand lightly to her brow as if she might tarnish the warm spot left by Bealomondore’s kiss. A smile broke out on her face, and she brought her hand down to cover her mouth. She gave herself a shake and willed composure. She would enjoy the long walk to the library. She had an excellent companion.

  Ellie stood beside the loaded wagon. She still would have liked to bring some eggs but recognized that they would not survive the journey. That irritated her, and the fact that Bealomondore had on that sword as if they might run into crazed vagabonds instead of six-year-old children also pinched her patience. Laddin landed on her shoulder, and she felt a rush of contentment.

  Ah! So that was it. The healing dragon informed her that although she looked physically fit, her core still suffered from fatigue, both from the injury and from the body’s work getting well. She eyed her tumanhofer friend again and didn’t feel quite as snappy anymore. He worked hard to keep her comfortable and out of harm’s way. He’d be pulling this wagon all the way back to the library.

  “Maa,” said Tak.

  Ellie raised her eyebrows. “Is there a harness in that shed?”

  Bealomondore looked from the wagon to the goat to the shed. “Not a harness that would fit Tak. Does he pull a cart at home?”

  “Most definitely. My father does not believe in having animals for pets. So I had to train Tak to pull the goat cart or give him up. It would be convenient to have Tak help.”

  Bealomondore rubbed his chin. “I could go look in the barn where the chickens are. That place seemed to have just about everything.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  Leaving the daggarts and diaries in the wagon, Ellie, Bealomondore, and Tak made the short trek to the mansion. The chickens squawked their disapproval at strangers poking around their outbuildings. Ellie found harnesses for a pony trap. Bealomondore found much larger leather straps that must have been for a very big carriage. Tak stood beside one of the empty stalls, watching their every move. Occasionally he bleated, sounding impatient with their efforts.

  “I guess we will have to pull the wagon ourselves,” said Ellie when they’d looked through each small sh
ack and the barn.

  Bealomondore slapped his hands against each other, knocking off some of the dirt and straw that clung to them. “Rigging a harness to the wagon might have been difficult anyway.”

  “Let’s go,” Ellie gestured to Tak for him to follow.

  The goat lowered his head and stayed where he was.

  “Oh no,” said Ellie. “Don’t go all goaty on me. Just come on.”

  Tak turned his head away in his typical I’m-ignoring-you pose. Ellie started toward him, but he leaped in the air and darted into the empty stall.

  “There is nothing for you here. No button grain. No nannies to impress.” She followed him into the boxed enclosure. “Bealomondore?”

  “Coming.”

  He stood behind her and laughed. In a dark corner of the stall, a red harness with bell trimming hung on a hook.

  “That’s what I think it is, isn’t it?” He put his hand on her shoulder.

  “Yes.” Her face warmed. The goat had shown her up many times before, so it wasn’t his antics that caused her to blush. The desire to lean back just enough for her back to rest against Bealomondore’s chest did a lot to make her uncomfortable. Uncomfortable in a very pleasant way. She cleared her throat. “Well, let’s see if we can figure out a way to hitch it to the wagon.”

  Bealomondore took a basket down from where it hung on the wall and stuffed it with old hay.

  Ellie grinned. “Eggs?”

  He winked at her. “It can’t hurt to try to take some back to the library.”

  It took them only a few minutes to gather a dozen eggs. Ellie already knew the hens’ good hiding spots. They returned to the house they’d been staying in. Bealomondore managed to rig up a decent apparatus to attach the wagon to the harness, even with Tak sticking his nose as close as possible to the work being done. When the straps were in place, Tak sidled up to the cart’s front end and waited patiently to be connected.

  Bealomondore obliged. “He sure seems to like this idea.”

  Ellie shook her head in bewilderment. “He has always been a friendly goat, but since I found him by the road after we had begun our trip to Ragar, he’s developed an uncanny ability to be useful.”

  “Pushing you into the bottle?”

  She laughed. “Well, not that, but other things.”

  “Considering we are living in an enchanted city, imprisoned in a bottle under some mysterious spell and dealing with children who stay children and an Old One who doesn’t want anything to do with us, I can accept a goat’s sudden propensity to observe, reason, and deduce.”

  “I don’t think I’m ready for that. If he starts mindspeaking to me, you are going to have to lock me up somewhere where I can’t hurt myself or anybody else.”

  Bealomondore raised his eyebrows. “Planning to go berserk?”

  “Fearing the probability, not planning.”

  Bealomondore patted Tak on the rump. The goat understood the signal and started forward. “Let’s go before he asks us to read to him as we go along.”

  The load jostled a bit, and Ellie reached up to balance the basket of eggs more securely in a nest of daggart packages. The diaries lined the wagonload, extending the sides of the wagon bed up a few inches. One was in her hand.

  She and Bealomondore took turns reading aloud, not to Tak but to each other. Ellie took the first few pages of the diary, holding the book open with one hand and resting her free hand on top of the piles of daggarts wrapped in packets of a dozen each.

  “Do you think you can keep them from falling?” asked Bealomondore tilting his head toward the wagon’s load.

  Ellie looked up and laughed. “I think I’m keeping me from falling. I can feel when the road is rough beneath the wheels.”

  “Very clever. You shall be useful to have around.”

  She smiled at him, not quite sure how to respond to that statement. In lieu of saying something clever, she went back to reading.

  They learned the girl’s name in the next entry.

  “Mother says, ‘Tilly, do something useful.’ But when I ask what I can do, Father says, ‘Stay out of the way, Tilly Genejolly.’ ”

  “A couple more syllables and Tilly Genejolly would make a good tumanhofer name,” Bealomondore said.

  Ellie read the part about two women dying on board the ship, one in childbirth, and one just wasting away, too seasick to eat. Ellie cried, and Bealomondore took the book and read a couple more entries. The third entry after the unfortunate deaths revealed that the baby had survived.

  “Now why didn’t she say that right away?” asked Ellie.

  “She’s young,” Bealomondore said. “In all likelihood, it was her first experience with death but not with someone in her circle of friends having a new baby in the family. She wrote about what touched her the most.”

  Ellie stretched out her palm and wiggled her fingers. Bealomondore placed the book in her hand. She turned back a few pages and read again the page that had upset her.

  “Mistress Cannust hasn’t left her bed for over a week now. I don’t really know how many days. My mother says ten days, and Porta’s mother says fifteen. My mother is probably right. Porta’s father says if she doesn’t get up soon, she’ll die, just like when an animal on the farm goes down. He says Mistress Cannust will be the first death we’ve had on the ship. ‘Halfway to Chiril and only now losing one of our own.’ That’s what he said. Those words.

  “My father grumbled at him. Two sailors have died. Though they aren’t one of us, my father says it is uncaring not to count them.”

  Ellie turned the page.

  “Mr. Mellow is right. It’s horrible. Kimbin Erllee screamed a lot. Her baby was coming. I went up on deck so I wouldn’t have to listen. I could still hear her some, so I moved to the stern of the ship. I curled up into a tight ball and put my hands over my ears. The wind wasn’t blowing, the sails weren’t flapping and snapping, and the waves weren’t splashing much against the hull. Sailors called it a doldrum, nothing much happening. But in the belly of the ship, that wasn’t true. I wish it had been.”

  Ellie took a deep, steadying breath and turned another page. “Last night, Mistress Erllee was still screaming when my mother made me go to bed. Porta came to sleep with me because we were both crying. Her mother went to help Mistress Erllee, though she said there wasn’t anything she could do. Not really. My mother went to sit with Mistress Cannust. She said there wasn’t anything she could do either. So it happened. Mistress Cannust died. As soon as my mother got back to our cabin, word came that Mistress Erllee had a puny runt baby. That’s not the words they said, but that’s what I saw in my head and remembered.

  “So one was dead and one was born.

  “I figured the baby would die next. But I was wrong. Mistress Erllee died. She’d quit screaming, even before the baby came. Now Mr. Erllee stood in the hallway. I could see through the open door. He cried. My father hugged him and patted his shoulder. My father looked like he might cry too. I did cry. Porta didn’t. She’d gone to sleep. I don’t think you should sleep when someone is hurting in his heart so very, very bad.”

  Ellie closed the book and stopped walking. Bealomondore stopped as well, but Tak stepped forward without a care. Ellie turned to Bealomondore to see him studying her.

  She pushed a bit of curly hair away from her face. “That last entry was more than her usual one page. She didn’t even write big to fill up the lines faster.” She sniffed, but no more tears fell. “I hope her mother found her crying and scooped her up in her arms and rocked her. That’s what she needed. She needed to be held.”

  Bealomondore and Ellie walked in silence.

  The bells on Tak’s harness jingled softly. He looked striking with red straps, tarnished gold bells, and his pure white coat. He did love to pull the proper goat cart at home, but he seemed to be much more conceited about pulling the toy wagon. He held his chin high, and he pranced. After several hours, he still strutted in a high-step that should have worn him out.

  Ellie
watched him. What was going on with her dear pet? He didn’t act like himself, and she greatly needed him to be good old Tak. She needed someone to hold. She needed to bury her face in his long white hair and whisper all her troubles. She knew it was ridiculous to unburden herself on a “dumb farm animal.” But she’d done it many times. And Tak had never made fun of her disappointments. He didn’t discourage her from dreaming big dreams. He never revealed her secrets to another. He just listened.

  She hadn’t noticed Bealomondore crossing over to her side, where she walked by the wagon. But his arm came around her, and he guided her off the road into a little overgrown park. Tak followed, jingling those ludicrous bells.

  “We all need a break,” said Bealomondore. “We’ll rest in the shade while it’s hot and finish our trip in the late afternoon. We can probably time it to get to the library after the horde has turned in for the night.”

  He gently pushed Ellie down on a bench and sat beside her. With his arm around her, she naturally leaned her head against his shoulder.

  “Ellie, it’s time I told you more about Wulder. You don’t need to whisper to Tak when times are hard or when you’re excited about something. Wulder won’t make fun of you, or discourage you, or tell your secrets to others. He truly listens, but He also has the power to change things. Maybe the circumstances, or maybe you, so you can handle the circumstances.”

  Ellie leaned back. She felt her eyes go wide. “You listened to my thinking. How? Why? I don’t like that. I don’t. How could you do that? Why would you do that? I didn’t know you could mindspeak to me. I didn’t know you could hear me thinking.” She pulled farther away from him.

  His expression surprised her. He looked shocked. He shook his head in a small, steady, and intense motion. “I never have before. I didn’t even know I was doing it. I mean, I heard, but it seemed just like you were talking to me. Only I knew you weren’t. That you were thinking. But it seemed so natural.”

  He paused. He looked so confused and genuinely perplexed that Ellie almost took pity on him. But her outrage at his intrusion sat like a block between them.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, then shook his head. “No, not really. Somehow it was right.”