Dragon Mage, Page 3

  Her grandmother had been talking, and Shilo was so caught up in the unfamiliar memories that she missed part of it.

  “… Ras, why he claimed that his name was Sker … Sherkar … ah, yes, Sherkarer of Meroe, and that the puzzle whisked him away to … well, that was all back almost forty years ago, Shy. I’m surprised I remember what I do. Kim, I think he was Korean, and he said he went to the Far East. Actually, all the boys went to Anthony Wayne School, and I don’t think they went any farther than the playground. Certainly not to the Far East or to the Far North. And there was Artie, he was my favorite of your father’s childhood friends, even though he wasn’t the best of influences. A real scallywag! He told some whoppers, too, close to rivaling your father’s. He said the puzzle took him to Old England and that there were tribesmen, Picts, Romans, and some famous folks—Artos Pendragon, Modred, Vortigen. Quite colorful.”

  “Pendragon, the man who was a dragon,” Shilo whispered. “The red dragon on the box.”

  “Arthurian, Artie’s tale was. History was never my strong suit. Your father loved history, though. Surprised he never taught it. He would have been good at it. Now antiques are another matter; those are pieces of history that I can manage.” Her grandmother’s eyes were watery. She pushed a strand of gray hair behind her ear and picked up the Etch-A-Sketch and other things Shilo had taken out of the chest. She carefully replaced them, then plucked the puzzle box off Shilo’s lap.

  “Quite the tale-spinners those boys were. Artie’s stories about the High King and the Saxons, and three beautiful goddesses guarding a hidden grave. Maybe the goddesses are watching over your father’s grave now.” She put the puzzle back in the sea chest and closed the lid. “All of those things that belonged to your father, they’re yours now, Shy.”

  She brushed at a spot on her dress, a tiny piece of potato salad from the fish boil. “Don’t stay up too late. I want to open a little early tomorrow. Got a carload of women from Racine coming by to look at our Beatrix Potter figurines.” She patted Shilo on the head, then made her way to the stairs. The floorboards didn’t creak under her feet. Shilo wondered if her grandmother knew just where to step or if the old building liked her so well it didn’t protest her passing.

  “Meemaw…”

  Shilo’s grandmother stopped and looked over her shoulder.

  “Why did you keep the puzzle? Since some of the pieces are missing?” There, she finally asked the question.

  A smile played at the corner of the old woman’s lips. “Why did I keep any of it, Shy? Your father thought there was something special about that puzzle. Said after he and his friends put it together in that old man’s house, and then went back to get it, they couldn’t find it. Funny, but it turned up some years later. Bill, your uncle Bill, he was six or seven, and he found it in your father’s closet. Your father was in high school at the time, and he was so surprised … and a little nervous … to see it. He said Bill was too young to play with it. But Bill wouldn’t give it up, and he never could get it together right. He lost quite a few of the pieces. Your father was very upset. I don’t think your father ever quite forgave Bill.” She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “I should have thrown it out, Shy. It’s no good without all the pieces. Your father said it was a magic puzzle, but there’s no magic in this world. I shouldn’t’ve kept it. Shouldn’t’ve kept a lot of things. Maybe next week you and I will go through that old chest and start pitching.”

  Shilo’s grandmother started down the stairs. “I want to open early tomorrow.”

  “I’ll only be up a little while longer,” Shilo said. She glanced at her watch. Nine! Where had the time gone? She stood and yawned, deciding to pass on the old western tonight and go straight to bed.

  “Sigurd Clawhand.”

  Shilo whirled, looking into the corners of the attic. She’d forgotten to tell her grandmother about the voice.

  “Where are you? In my head?” Shilo demanded. “Who are you?”

  The floorboards creaked when she shifted her weight back and forth on the balls of her feet.

  There was no answer.

  “Sigurd’s not here!” And he never was, she added to herself. He was a make-believe persona of her dead father.

  She took a step toward the stairs, then stopped, thinking she saw something over by the Hula Hoops. Nothing, she decided after a moment, just a cobweb moving.

  “Sigurd’s not here,” she repeated. Then she turned back to the sea chest and opened it again, retrieved the puzzle, and shut the lid. She hurried from the attic, flicking off the lights and scampering down the stairs, forgetting the flashlight and deciding not to go back up and get it when she finally remembered it. Maybe she’d get it tomorrow, when it was light out. Maybe she’d get it the day after.

  Why had she grabbed the puzzle?

  She set it on her bed and slipped into the bathroom, taking a cool shower and washing her hair and dressing for bed. Her nightgown was too short; at one time it came down to her ankles, but now it hit just below her knees. It was old, and all the pink flowers were faded and the fabric was worn thin. But it was her favorite, and it was the lightest thing she had.

  It was still so intolerably hot.

  She ran her fingers over the top of the puzzle box, then slid it under her bed. Shilo turned on the fan and raised the window higher. It had stopped raining, but it was still wet outside, the lights from the pub reflecting on the wet blacktop road out front. The grass and leaves smelled sweet.

  She turned off the light and lay on top of the covers, the fan ruffling the hem of her nightgown and her damp hair. Shilo was tired, but she had a hard time drifting off to sleep. She kept thinking about the puzzle, wondering why she’d put it under the bed, why her grandmother had kept it, why her father had taken it from the old man’s house, and why her fingers had felt so cold when she touched one of the pieces. The memory of the chill wind that had whipped around her helped cut the heat.

  She closed her eyes and half expected the mysterious voice to call for Sigurd Clawhand again. But all she heard was a moldy country-western tune, playing so faintly on the pub’s jukebox that she couldn’t catch all the words. It took a half-dozen more songs before sleep finally claimed her.

  Then the dreams came, and though they played out in her mind, they belonged to someone else.

  Shilo saw an oriental boy in raggedy clothes bleached from the sun. At one time the clothes had looked fine; she could tell that by their cut and by the traces of embroidery around the neck and ankles.

  “The Slumbering Dragon, Shui Mien-Lung, golden dragon, imperial dragon, the Son of Heaven of the House of Han,” the boy recited.

  Shilo looked close and saw more embroidery on the back of the boy’s jacket. It was a dragon similar to the yellow-gold one on the puzzle box. Was the boy Kim? The friend of her father’s that Meemaw had mentioned?

  “There are three kinds of courage,” the boy said. Shilo couldn’t tell whom he was talking to. “Courage in the blood.” A face appeared in the air above him, becoming red with anger. “Courage in the veins.” The face turned blue and lost some of its ire. “And courage in the spirit. The face did not change color this time, but its eyes sparkled intensely, and the boy’s voice became stronger. “I have the three kinds of courage, the virtues of a hero. You’ll have to find them, too.”

  Shilo couldn’t make out the details of the buildings behind him. They were hazy on the edges, as if the boy stood in front of a huge watercolor painting where the artist had feathered the lines. There was sweat on the boy’s forehead and circles of sweat under his arms, so Shilo knew he was someplace hot.

  He knelt and combed the sand around his feet with his fingers. She thought the design random, but after a moment she recognized five claws on a curled foot. The leg extending from it was straight like a road.

  “Empty is the clear path to Heaven, crowded the dark road to Hades. When the mantis hunts the locust he forgets the shrike hunts him. Take care what hunts you, Shilo.” She shivered at
the boy’s words and nearly woke up. But sleep held her tight.

  “My dragon was the First Minister and General in Chief to Emperor Liu Pei.” The boy gestured and a sword appeared in his hands, a beautiful curved blade with a sleeping dragon etched on it. “The Slumbering Dragon, mine was called. Yours can never sleep, Shilo, at least not unless you help. And yet if you value your life and want to hold on to your father’s memories—if you don’t want to risk everything you know, you must never heed her call.”

  “Never what?” Shilo whispered in her sleep.

  “Sigurd Clawhand…” the mysterious voice said.

  4

  Missing Pieces

  The next morning, Shilo heard the voice again. It was gusty outside and she’d opened the window all the way. The sounds of rustling leaves and clacking branches from the oak in the front yard, and from the hammering—Big Mick was on his roof replacing some shingles—made it difficult to hear the call for Sigurd. Too, she tried to ignore it and started humming to add to the noise.

  She dressed quickly and took the old western downstairs, putting it back on the sale rack in the store before breakfast and deciding there was really nothing there she wanted to read. So she decided a long bicycle ride to the little library next to the Laundromat would be in order this morning—if she could convince her grandmother she wasn’t needed in the antique store for a while. In truth, she wanted to look through the abysmal history section and see if she could find anything on Norse mythology and dragons, and failing that, Pendragon and Britain.

  Shilo’s grandmother gave her the entire morning off, and though Shilo loved books, she perused the shelves in the library in less time than it took her to ride the dozen miles to get there. “Could’ve fit most of this in a bookmobile,” she muttered as she filled out the application for a library card and put her selections on the counter. The return trip was longer, the sun higher and hotter and the books in her backpack slowing her a little. She’d checked out one book on Leif and Thorvald Eriksson, a book on Arthur Pendragon … the only books they had on either subject, plus two somewhat recent best-sellers she’d forgotten the titles of by the time she made it back to the antique store.

  She’d picked up the best-sellers so she could set them out on her desk. Let her grandmother spot them and not the others. Let Meemaw think she was reading fiction rather than looking into Norse and English dragon mythology—though she couldn’t say why she didn’t want her grandmother to know that.

  Besides, she told herself she might actually read the best-sellers.

  After making her grandparents chicken salad sandwiches and a pear salad her father had liked, she spent the afternoon working in the antique store. There wasn’t a single customer for her to wait on, though her grandfather said a man came in shortly after they’d opened and bought the largest collection of Bowman baseball cards on display, including a mint Babe Ruth. They’d all be going out for steak dinner on a paddleboat cruise this coming Friday night to celebrate.

  Shilo looked forward to that, pleased she wouldn’t have to come up with another excuse for missing the fish boil.

  She helped her grandmother close the store and fix a stew for dinner. Grandfather coaxed her into a few games of backgammon before she excused herself for a date with her books from the library. She closed her bedroom door, and for the first time clicked the latch.

  “Maybe I’ll start with Leif Eriksson,” she said to herself. Except she didn’t crack open a single book. Instead, she tugged the puzzle out from underneath her bed, sat on the floor, and studied it.

  It wasn’t a woman who’d been calling for Sigurd Clawhand, though the voice was female. And it wasn’t a ghost. It had been the puzzle talking—Shilo knew that now. Perhaps she’d known it from the instant she’d taken the box out of the sea chest in the attic. The puzzle or something in it was responsible for the voice. She carefully lifted off the lid and then unceremoniously dumped the pieces on the floor. Nothing called to her at the moment, and nothing felt odd about the pieces as she turned them over and separated them by color.

  She hadn’t intended to look at the puzzle today … or maybe for several days. She just wanted it nearby in case her grandmother really did go back into the attic and started pitching.

  “So why shouldn’t I let Meemaw throw this out? It’s obviously not all here.” But the box might be worth something because of its age, she thought, even though there wasn’t any printing on it. She looked closer at the lid, just to be certain. Maybe she’d missed some fine print in the attic last night under the fluorescent lights. No, nothing. Nothing anywhere on the lid or on the bottom. Nothing on the back of the pieces that she could see. Meemaw had said the old man who’d originally owned it was a world traveler. So perhaps the puzzle came from some foreign country that in those long-ago years didn’t print copyright or artist statements.

  Or maybe the print was on the puzzle itself, down in one of the corners. And while all the pieces weren’t there, maybe enough of them were so that she could find the words. But why was that important to her? Why did she care where this worthless old puzzle came from?

  Because her father had thought there was magic in it? Was that why?

  Or maybe she cared simply because it had belonged to her father … well, belonged to him after he’d swiped it from the old man’s house.

  “I shouldn’t care at all,” she said, reaching out to scoop up the pieces and put them back in the box. But she didn’t scoop them up. She stopped herself and leaned back on her hands and sighed, stuck out her lower lip and blew out a breath that traveled up her face and teased the curls against her forehead.

  “I don’t care about this stupid puzzle.”

  … But those words were a lie. She glanced at the library books and told herself she should be reading one of them. Or maybe she should go to the living room and see if the aluminum foil-covered rabbit ears were miraculously bringing in one of the channels out of Milwaukee or Chicago.

  “Waste of time, a puzzle is.”

  She leaned forward, hands fluttering over the pieces, her fingers lingering on the silvery ones, as they’d felt icy to the touch last night. Now they just felt like paper and wood, and nothing looked metallic about them under the light shed by her desk lamp.

  Closing her eyes, she listened, waiting to hear the voice calling for Sigurd. She heard the faint clacking of branches, the breeze outside slight now, the wheezing whir of her oscillating fan, the chime of one of the grandfather’s clocks from the antique store below, and soft, soft music drifting across the street from Big Mick’s. The latter was a bubble-gummy song about catching a train to Clarksville, and the rhythm was quirky enough to distract her. When it was over she listened even harder, hoping to find the whiskey-tinged voice in the gap between records.

  But there was nothing, and Shilo was both relieved and disappointed. While the voice frightened her a little, and while a part of her didn’t want to hear it ever again, the voice also made her curious … a puzzle she wanted to solve.

  Her dad had seen the silver dragon, or so his tale to Meemaw claimed. So those were the pieces she started with and within several moments she’d put together its head and hind haunches. There were a few pieces that looked like they belonged on the dragon’s underbelly, but nothing that quite went together, with pieces missing in between. And she couldn’t find a single piece of its tail. There was a green background behind the silver dragon, and most of those pieces were there. None of the border had the writing she was looking for, so she took the green pieces apart and put them back in the box. Next, she tried to put together the red dragon, finding it much more difficult to work with than the silver. There were more pieces to it, however, and she eventually put it all together, except for a chunk of its neck and its left front claw.

  The color was amazing, bright and shiny despite its age. She’d thought the ink on the paper would have faded some. Maybe it had … maybe at one time it was even more vivid. Next came the yellow-gold dragon, which appeared to
be missing about half its pieces.

  “I see why Dad got mad at Uncle Bill,” she said. “Would’ve been pretty all put together.”

  She heard the muted chime of the grandfather clock again, and she counted the “bongs.” Eleven! She glanced at the small clock on her desk to confirm the time. She should dress for bed and throw her shorts and tank top in the hamper. A shower was out of the question now, as the water running might wake up Meemaw and Grandfather. This wasn’t that big of a puzzle that it should take so much time! Where had the hours gone?

  “Enough,” she said. “Gotta get to bed.”

  She pried the red dragon apart and put it in the box, then she took apart the silver. But she didn’t put those pieces away. She stared at them, like she was staring at something under a microscope. Then she glanced to the yellow-gold pieces and took apart the few she’d managed to hook together.

  A moment more and she mixed the silver and yellow-gold pieces, finding that they fit together.

  She didn’t expect to make a picture out of it, but there was something compelling about the puzzle, and she just couldn’t put it away yet. Maybe she was intrigued simply because it had belonged to her father. But there were other things up in that old chest she could have brought down, like the pinewood derby car or the G.I. Joe.

  “Now this is odd.” By rearranging some of the pieces and turning a few she’d put together, a leg had taken shape. She kept going, moving things this way and that, and only faintly registering the “bong” of the grandfather’s clock downstairs. It was midnight.

  Past midnight when she’d managed to create four legs and the start of a belly, the silvery and yellow-gold pieces blending together under the light of her desk lamp and looking a shiny beige.

  She was pleased with her success, but a little upset that she was spending so much time on this worthless thing. Her father might only have been in the single digits of age, nine likely, when he’d found this puzzle. At the very outside he would have been eleven or twelve, she figured, doing the math in her head. He’d put together the puzzle in Georgia, and he moved to No-wheres-ville, Wisconsin, when he was in junior high. So, no more than twelve, and here she was three years older and it was taking her forever to play with these pieces.