The Dragon Charmer by Jan Siegel

cannot call it holy now, and… it won’t stay hidden. Not long.”
    “We shall see.”
       “What’s happening?” Will asked the darkness. “Even allowing for circumstances, I’ve never known Fern so on edge.”
    “I dinna ken,” said the darkness, predictably. “But there’s Trouble coming. I can smell him.”
    * * *
    The smoke thins, swirls, re-forms, showing us great events and small. The moor unrolls like a carpet beneath a sky tumbling with clouds. The valley opens, the hillside plunges, the wind rushes in from the sea. And there is the house, lifting blind windows to the rain. Behind closed curtains there is firelight and lamplight, the murmur of conversation, the smell of roasting meat uncoiling from the oven. The sunless evening blurs gradually into night. When dinner is long over, feet climb the stairs to bed. A glass tumbler stands alone on a sideboard in the kitchen, containing a small measure of golden liquid. Not discarded or forgotten but placed there deliberately. A gesture. Presently the house-goblin materializes, sitting on the end of the table. He samples the leftover roast and drains the tumbler, declaiming an incomprehensible toast, probably to the red-bearded laird who swatted his foes with a tree trunk. Then he roams through the house, patrolling his domain.
    In a bedroom on the second floor a girl is seated in front of an antique dressing table, studying herself in the mirror. There is no vanity in her contemplation: her expression is grave and unusually detached. She stares at her reflection, you feel, simply because it is there. Yet she might be termed beautiful, if mere youth is beauty, clarity of skin and eye, elfin slenderness of body. I was beautiful once, I and Morgun, my twin, but beauty alters with time, as all else, and in a different age Helen wears a different face. So maybe she is beautiful, this pale, dispassionate girl, with her gravity and her small breasts. Fashion is a poor judge of such things. The adjacent lamp puts a gloss on her short hair that it may not merit and shades the molding of invisible bones. But as we look closer I see
something
in her face, or in its reflection, something beneath the unblemished exterior. Imperceptible. Almost familiar. A secret too well hidden, a scar too perfectly healed. It shows in a certain fragility, a certain strength, a trace element of pain. But the image begins to withdraw from her, and the flicker of not-quite-recognition is gone.
    The goblin, too, is watching her, just inside the door, his crouched body only a shadow in the corner to the discerning eye. Even the mirror cannot see him. She is still staring at her reflection but now the direction of her gaze switches to apoint beyond her shoulder. Her eyes widen; shock or fury expels the hint of color from her cheek. To us, the glass is empty, but
she
sees the intruder.
She sees him in the mirror
. “Get out!” She rounds on him, screaming like a virago. “Toad! Contemptible little sneak! Creeping in here, spying on me—how dare you! How
dare
you! Get out, do you hear? If I see even your
shadow
again, I’ll I’ll squeeze you to pulp I’ll blast you into Limbo—I’ll blow your atoms to the four winds! Don’t you ever—
ever!
—come near me again!” The unleashing of power is sudden and terrifying: her hair crackles with it, the air thickens around her outstretched fingers. The goblin vanishes in a flash of startled horror. She is on her feet now but her rage ebbs as rapidly as it came, and she casts herself facedown on the bed, clutching the pillow, sobbing briefly and violently. When the storm is over she lifts her head; she is red eyed and tearless, as if tears were a rain that would not come. Her expression reverts to a wary stillness: her gaze roves round the room. “It’s gone,” she murmurs, “I know it’s gone, but… there’s someone… somewhere… watching me.”
    “She feels us,” says Sysselore. “The
power
. Did you see the power in