How did he know our names? Mourra’s own voice was thin, but steady and clear, as she answered, “I’d never ever touch a dirty old spiderweb. I hate spiders.”
“Mmm.” The stranger nodded thoughtfully. “Oh, but you should have seen my friend in those gowns and capes and dresses that the spiders made for her. I promise you, Mourra, when she walked out in the moonlight, when she spun on her heels with her arms straight out, the same way you spin and dance when no one is watching —” Mourra flushed angrily — “oh, then you would have thought that she carried the moon inside her, so that it shone right through her. That is just the way those spider-clothes made her look, and that is one reason why you should always be good to spiders, among many others.” He reached for her hand, but she sidled a step away, and he did not press the issue. He said, “You should always be good to anyone — any thing — that can create such beauty. Do you understand me, Mourra?”
“No,” she said, and nothing more. He walked on, matching his stride to Findros’ short legs; even slowing down a little to accommodate Mourra’s sulkily dragging pace. It seemed to her that he was beginning to look a trifle anxiously from side to side; now and then he made an odd, twisting gesture with his free right hand, or mumbled something under his breath that she could not catch. By and by he said, “I am very sorry your father died. How did it happen?”
Findros looked at Mourra, for once waiting for her to speak. She muttered, “The dragon.”
“Dragon?” Schmendrick wrinkled his forehead. “This is not dragon country. Far too low and wet. Dragons hate wet.”
“It was lost, too,” Mourra said. “It didn’t belong here.” She bit back the impulse to say, like you, and only continued, “It was going to eat us, but Papa fought with it. Papa killed it.”
“A rogue dragon,” the magician murmured, as though to himself. “I suppose that could be.”
He had not questioned the story, but Mourra bristled as though he had. “I was there! I was little, but I was there! Papa killed it, all by himself, but it killed him too. I remember!”
“Me too,” Findros said to no one in particular. “Me too, I member.”
Mourra turned on him scornfully. “You do not! You were a baby, you were in your cradle — you never even saw the dragon!” Seeing his eyes grow large with tears, she yet could not keep herself from adding, “You don’t even remember Papa!”
A sound came out of Findros that might have started out to be you take that back, but had dissolved into a wordless screech of outrage by the second word. Schmendrick caught him round the waist in midair as he lunged at his sister. Studying her over the boy’s struggling body, he said, mildly enough, “That was a cruel thing to say.”
Mourra had known that before the words were out of her mouth, but she would have dared Willaby’s bull before apologizing to Findros in this man’s presence. The magician set Findros on his feet with some caution, saying, “Come, we must walk faster if I am to have you home before dark.” Findros took his hand again without question.
Brooding behind them as they walked, Mourra heard the boy announcing, “You could have killed the dragon. Gicians can kill dragons, can’t they?”
“Some of us can,” the tall man answered absently. “Myself, I usually try to talk to them. You learn more that way.” He was silent for a moment, and then asked, “What sort of a dragon was it?”
Findros looked confused for only a moment. “It was black. All black and normous, and with big orange eyes. And horns, and things all over it. Bumples.”
Mourra said tonelessly, “It was gray. A kind of purply-gray, like a storm cloud. Like thunder. And its eyes were silver, and it didn’t have any horns or anything — it just had fire. Fire and teeth and claws.”
The magician said, “Your father must have been a very brave man. I never knew even a knight or a soldier dared face a dragon alone.”
He was not looking at Mourra now, but she felt his eyes on her even so. She said, “He was the bravest man in the world.” When Schmendrick did not reply, she continued fiercely, “There’s going to be a statue of him in the town, on the green. Him fighting the dragon. It’ll be finished soon.”
“And I wish I could be here to see it properly dedicated,” the magician responded heartily. “But I must deliver you to your mother and be on my way, for I’ve a long journey yet to go. Yes…” The last word was uttered in a different, softer tone, almost a whisper, as though he had not meant to say it, or for the children to hear. Mourra still did not take hold of his hand, but she moved slightly closer.
Findros said stubbornly, “It was a black dragon. I was there.” Mourra did not answer him. Findros peered cautiously into his closed left fist. “I like turtle eggs. You can bounce them.”
Schmendrick halted, no longer attempting to conceal the fretful, mysterious movements of his long hands, nor to disguise the fact that he was looking apprehensively in every direction. Mourra said, “You’re lost.” It was not a question.
The magician looked embarrassed. After a moment, he said, “Yes. I have taken you even further out of your way than you were, and I haven’t the slightest notion of how to bring you home. I am very sorry.”
Mourra had expected her brother to burst into frightened tears a second time — the horizon was definitely growing transparent with approaching sunset — but Findros only said confidently, “But you’re a gician. You can do a trick.” He leaned against Schmendrick’s leg.
Schmendrick said, as though to himself, “I thought I had that much magic in me. At least…that much. I was wrong.”
Findros looked up at him, and began to sniffle again. Mourra said, “Maybe if we go left, just up there, maybe…” But her voice trailed away, and she could do no more than point diffidently to a path further ahead. The magician shook his head.
“There is one more…trick I can try, but I will need your help. I cannot do it without you.” He held his hands out, reaching silently for theirs. Surprisingly, it was Mourra who — after a long moment — took firm hold of his left hand, while Findros hesitated until his sister nudged him sharply. The boy’s grip on Schmendrick’s hand was more than tentative, barely making contact with all five fingertips. But the tall man smiled at him, saying, “Very good, thank you. Now close your eyes, and repeat everything — everything — I say. We will get home together.”
He closed his own eyes and began to chant softly and musically. The syllables meant nothing to the children, but their sound was curiously comforting, though Mourra could not imagine why that should be. She kept her eyes tightly shut and repeated the words as clearly as she could, half-singing them as the magician did. When I open my eyes again, I’ll be home. I’ll be home with Mama.
But when her eyes did open, they saw nothing at all different. The countryside around them was as unchanged as the stones under her feet and the pale-gold clouds over the distant red-oak hills. Schmendrick had let go of her hand and her brother’s, and his face was so despairing that Mourra would have felt sorry for him if she had not been so concerned to forestall a second tearful panic on Findros’ part. She said, “I think we ought to turn around. There’s a cowpath we always take, we must have missed it.” The magician neither answered nor looked at her.
They had started to turn back — Schmendrick offering neither leadership nor resistance — when they saw a farm wagon emerging from the narrow path Mourra had pointed out earlier and swinging toward them. The driver recognized them, as did the horse; it stopped before he had even touched the reins. He was a big man with a white hair topping an amiable red face, set in its turn above broad shoulders and a cheerfully aggressive belly. He grumbled, “Sairey’s lot — I know you. Whatever be you doing, so far from home at dinnertime?”