Inside the dragon, Werrit raised his left heel half an inch.
“Less coy,” said Nalla from the front.
He raised it another half inch. The dragon's hindquarters acquired an air of wounded innocence.
“There. Stay like that.”
Nalla worked the head's sneeze lever. The jaws opened, the feather whiskers trembled, and Werrit bent both knees just as she jerked her end upward. To anyone outside the green cloth, the dragon had sneezed so hard that its bottom was considering leaving.
“Nothing to do with me,” Werrit said in his smallest, most injured voice.
Nalla laughed. Seven years inside the same dragon, and he could still get her.
“That's it. Tonight we keep that.”
She ducked out through the loose flap at its waist, auburn braid emerging before the rest of her. Werrit followed. His shirt had come untucked, and he had lost a shoe again. The dragon sagged over two dressing-room chairs, looking like an unwise purchase.
At the mirror, Bessa held her crown steady while Nalla fastened its last pin. Tib was practicing the expression with which he would discover that he had stabbed his own boot. His knight always promised to slay the dragon; instead it knocked him flat, and Bessa's queen came out to rescue him. Varlo stood at the stove, warming the handkerchief he liked to die holding.
The Lantern Company had played for three kings, a flesh-eating countess who had sworn off flesh for the duration, and the God of Small Mercies, who had required an aisle seat. Outside, the usual queue ran around the theater and past the pie seller. Someone was singing the dragon song. Someone else, less beloved by Werrit, was singing the dragon song's second verse.
Nalla put the pin between her teeth, checked the little sandglass on the mantel, and said around it, “Five minutes.”
An enormous gold eye filled the window.
“There you are,” said Werrit's mother.
Werrit sat down between the two chairs, in what he had thought was a seat. His foot went straight through the dragon's open mouth.
“Mother?”
“Your father is in the box. I told him not to start clapping until you finish your speech.”
Behind Bessa, Nalla's hands stopped moving. Tib's practice expression became permanent.
“You are a very difficult son to surprise,” Mother continued. “The porter kept trying to put me in the street. Is this the window you meant in your letters? It hardly seems safe for a great leading actor.”
Werrit pulled his foot out of the dragon's mouth.
“I didn't mean this window.”
“Well, you said the dressing room had a view.”
A claw came through the opening. Hanging from it was a gilt frame. Inside the frame, beneath an elaborate engraving of Werrit with a sword, stood the words:
WERRIT AND HIS LANTERN PLAYERS
FAREWELL PERFORMANCE
Werrit snatched the frame. He tried to say several things at once, drew the breath for all of them, and scorched the center of his own face out of the engraving.
Nalla removed the pin from her mouth.
“Oh,” she said.
“Not near the paper, dear,” said Mother.
Nobody moved. Werrit held the smoking notice in front of the unburnt portions of his reputation.
Tib looked from the gold eye to Werrit. “You're a dragon?”
“Yes.”
“All this time?”
“I make myself this shape. I've been doing it for years.”
Varlo put down his handkerchief. “You once told me I was doing the wings wrong.”
“You were.”
“You let me demonstrate.”
Mother's eye moved across the room. “I shouldn't keep you. We know how much work goes into your dragon-slaying. I'll watch with your father. Do remember to look toward the box when you give the speech. He's been practicing.”
Her claw withdrew. The eye vanished, followed by the scraping of scales against the outside wall.
For a moment Werrit could hear her telling the porter that she knew perfectly well where the monster box was; he had just pointed it out four times.
Then Tib said, “His players?”
Bessa turned very slowly on her stool.
“Farewell?”
“It's not farewell.” Werrit brushed hot ash off his knee. “I meant it to be the last notice. The last one I'd have to make.”
“You've made others?” said Nalla.
“Some.”
“How many is some?”
“Mother keeps them in an album.”
Bessa shut her eyes.
Then she tried to stand. The hem of her veil was trapped beneath a chair leg, and she sat down again hard.
“Get me out of this,” she said. “Somebody get me out of this.”
Nalla lunged for the veil and stood on the other end.
The first trumpet sounded beyond the wall. Ordinarily, that meant three minutes to curtain. Varlo began folding his handkerchief into smaller and smaller squares. Nobody made for the door.
“Why tell her you were leaving?” Nalla asked.
“So she'd stop asking what I was doing next.”
“And it didn't occur to you she'd come?”
He had imagined the relief of never having to invent another triumph. He had not imagined his mother packing for one.
“It occurred to me just now.”
Tib took the frame away. He examined the surviving sword, then his own sword on the table.
“That's mine.”
“I know.”
“You put my sword in your picture.”
“I couldn't draw a different one!”
“You can fight with the drawing, then!”
“Tib.” Nalla caught his sleeve. “Help or go out.”
“I'm trying to go out. I'm the first entrance!”
“You can have my death,” Varlo told Werrit. “That's the part people remember.”
“Your death takes seven minutes,” said Bessa.
“I've cut it.”
“To seven minutes.”
Werrit looked at the sword. Tib had a white plume on his helmet tonight. Bessa had curled it herself because they expected the royal household. Werrit had always thought a white plume unnecessary. Now he could almost feel it moving above his own head.
“I could do the entrance,” he said.
Everyone looked at him again.
“I know the words.”
“Everyone knows the words,” said Tib. “You shout them at us every night.”
Werrit knew where the speech rose. He knew where to turn so the sword caught the light. He knew which of the doctored portraits his mother had framed.
“Just the opening. Through the dragon. Then we can change back.”
“What do I do in these letters?” Nalla asked.
Werrit looked at the heap of green cloth.
“Help me.”
The word sounded worse in this room.
Nalla glanced at the sandglass. She was still holding Tib's sleeve. Slowly she let it go.
“I'll get you through one scene,” she said. “Then I want my partner back. Coat off, Tib.”
“I am not losing my fall.”
“You'll be the palace guard. You can fall later.”
“It's a knight's fall.”
“Then get promoted on the way down.”
The room broke into motion.
Bessa kicked the chair clear and unlaced Tib's shoulder pieces while Varlo shook Werrit's arms into the embroidered coat. Then she fastened the armor onto Werrit. Nalla pulled the low wheeled base from beneath the prop throne. The throne fell six inches with a noise Bessa disliked.
“My entrance,” Bessa said.
“You walk tonight.”
“I don't mind walking. I mind arriving. Don't rush me.”
“Nobody would dare.”
Nalla heaped their ordinary coats on the wheeled base and dragged the dragon's empty hindquarters over them. She tucked the bamboo ribs around the pile, leaving the waist flap open beside her own entrance. Werrit would usually have been inside, holding that bamboo frame against his hips.
“No sneeze,” she told him. “I come on, I threaten you, you stab me. Very noble. Very simple.”
“What happens to the dragon song?”
“It lives to sing another day. Pin that tail in, would you?”
He fixed the feather-duster tail above the coats. It drooped forward. Nalla batted it out of her face.
Tib pressed his helmet down over Werrit's auburn hair harder than necessary.
“Chin up. The plume pulls you over if you look at your feet.”
“I don't look at my feet.”
“That's why you only have one shoe.”
The second trumpet sounded.
“Places,” Nalla said. “Varlo, you pull the curtain and call me on. Tib, left wing. Werrit, don't start until the curtain's clear.”
“I know.”
“You'd be amazed how many heroes don't.”
She ducked into the dragon. Bessa gathered her violet skirts. Varlo retrieved his handkerchief. Tib snatched a plain guard's surcoat off the costume rail, then took the throne's cushion because nobody had told him how a palace guard was supposed to fall, and he intended to be ready.
Werrit stood with the sword in his hand.
He had never understood how much of the world you could see when you weren't looking out through a hole beneath a dragon's tail.
Through the gap beside the curtain, he saw the house: heads in the gallery, the pie seller wiping his hands, two children in paper crowns, the royal steward with his great chain. In the monster box, his father sat upright between the reinforced pillars. Mother had tucked her wings in. Her claws rested against the rail.
Father lifted one claw toward the stage. Mother pushed it gently down.
Varlo pulled the curtain.
Werrit walked into the light.
“Who bars my passage to the captive queen?”
His voice went right to the back. The sword flashed when he raised it. He felt the plume tip, remembered Tib's instruction, and lifted his chin.
From the left wing, Tib mouthed, Slower.
Werrit slowed. It was good advice. The silence grew around him, grand and full. He had thought he wanted to get this over with, but now he wanted to stand there for quite a while.
Varlo swept on as the Usurper, all black hair and blacker intentions. He had apparently decided that the altered opening required a duel.
They exchanged three blows, which Werrit knew from years of watching their boots. On the fourth, Varlo took a wound no sword had delivered and fell to one knee.
“Remember me,” he said, producing the warm handkerchief, “when summer gilds the orchard—”
Behind him, the dragon entered.
Its front advanced with Nalla's familiar sinuous swagger. Its rear rolled after it like luggage. Werrit heard the first little laugh, then another. Nalla turned the head toward the monster box and gave his parents a magnificent snarl.
Father's mouth opened in attentive approval. He wasn't going to clap early. Werrit could have kissed him.
“—and the long road bears the lonely traveler home,” Varlo continued.
The dragon shouldered him gently aside.
“Who dares approach my queen?” Nalla boomed through the brass throat.
Werrit raised the sword. The line waited exactly where it always had.
I dare, foul beast, and with this blade I end thee.
He had said it so often while washing his stockings that the others made him stop. In front of him, Nalla opened the dragon's jaw and lowered its neck. One touch with the blade, one convulsion, and he would stand over the green heap to finish his speech. Mother would see it. Father would clap. Werrit and His Lantern Players.
Nalla backed into the rolling hindquarters. The whole contraption swung around, and the drooping feather tail brushed the dragon's nose.
The whiskers trembled.
Werrit knew how badly she wanted to do the bit. She shouldn't. He hoped she would.
“Ah,” said the dragon.
The children in the front row leaned forward.
“Ah.”
Nalla jerked the sneeze lever.
The head shot up. The coat-stuffed bottom did nothing at all.
The pause belonged to Werrit.
He saw the dragon's jaw open again, offering him its throat. Nalla could still take the sword. She would fall splendidly; she did everything splendidly. They could leave their new bit here, an unfinished noise in the opening scene, and he could have the box full of proud faces.
Werrit took two steps toward the left wing.
“Tib,” he said, and passed him the sword.
Then he grabbed the wheeled base through the loose waist flap and shoved it toward the wing. Their coats rolled out in a heap. He ducked under the cloth before the hindquarters could collapse.
He hit his helmet on the bamboo frame. The plume caught. He bent too far, righted himself by feel, and found the exact old place for his hands.
“Nothing,” he said in his smallest voice, “to do with me.”
Nalla's fingers closed around his wrist through the gap between their frames.
Then she sneezed again.
Werrit made the bottom jump. The feather tail fell out, and his plume poked through the slit and shook indignantly at the house.
The laugh arrived through the cloth, huge and untidy.
He couldn't see the box.
Nalla pulled once at his wrist. He followed. They backed into Varlo, who was explaining why he could never see another midsummer, and the dragon sat on his handkerchief.
“My last remembrance!” Varlo cried.
Werrit worked his heels, giving the dragon a laborious, regretful wiggle.
Varlo abandoned the orchard and died.
Tib came on with his own sword, the throne cushion hidden under his surcoat, and the expression of a man reclaiming his property.
“I dare, foul beast—”
Werrit swung the hindquarters sideways. His borrowed shoulder plate caught the frame; the rear described an unusually wide arc. Tib saw it coming, delayed half a beat for the gallery, and performed the fall he had been protecting all evening.
It began at his eyebrows and traveled down him in installments. His knees attempted a negotiation. His boots lost. He landed on the concealed cushion with the noise of a collapsing armory.
Above Werrit, Nalla said, “Oh, well caught.”
Tib's hand appeared beneath the cloth, patting twice for thanks. Then it withdrew to die on top of Varlo, who objected in a whisper.
Werrit was laughing now. He shouldn't have been; it shook the frame. Nalla pinched him.
From the opposite wing came the first clear note of Bessa's little handbell.
The dragon stopped. Even the tail stood still.
Bessa had refused to be hurried into a room for fourteen years. Werrit knew her entrance better than his own name. Three steps. Bell. Turn. Wait until everyone wanted the next step.
“What,” said the queen, “has happened to my guard?”
“Promotion,” said the dragon's bottom.
Bessa let that pass through the house.
“And my usurper?”
“Summer got him.”
Someone in the gallery screamed with laughter.
Bessa came close. Werrit could see the violet hem through the little hole beside his knee. She tapped the dragon's rear with her bell.
“This end has been talking again.”
He made it shy.
She tapped it once more.
He made it deeply misunderstood.
Nalla began the dragon song, and this time the audience supplied the second verse before she could. Tib rose from the dead to keep time with his sword. Varlo remained dead long enough to be admired, then joined in from the floor.
Werrit held the frame steady and gave Nalla the room she needed for the big turn. They went one way, then the other, then bowed in opposite directions. The helmet plume vanished into the cloth and sprang out again.
For the last refrain, he shut his eyes. He didn't need the hole.
Afterward, Mother came back to the window.
Werrit was trying to get out of Tib's coat. Nalla had already freed the helmet from the frame, using a butter knife and language she had not used in front of the God of Small Mercies.
Mother nodded toward the blackened notice on the table.
“How many?”
Werrit let his arms fall.
“All the notices.”
“And the letters?”
“Not all of those.” He looked at her eye. “Most.”
Father's snout appeared above her. “I didn't clap in the speech.”
“I noticed.”
“There wasn't an end to it.”
“No.”
Father considered this. Behind Werrit, Tib was fitting his sword into its scabbard. Werrit still wanted it. He wanted a portrait with the white plume, too, a real one this time. The wanting had not burned away with the notice.
“Were you always the back?” Mother asked.
“Usually.”
“Do you like it?”
Nalla stopped pulling at his sleeve.
“Yes,” Werrit said.
Mother was quiet for long enough that he began to explain about the sneeze, how it needed two people, how Nalla could tell from his hand whether he was ready. Then he stopped. He was very good at filling a silence with things she hadn't asked him.
“We will talk at supper,” she said. “About the letters.”
“I know.”
Her claw slid through the window. He thought she wanted the notice, but she turned it palm upward.
Werrit laid his hand in it. There was glue on his fingers and a small burn on his thumb. Her claw curled around them, carefully.
Above her, Father was trying the little wounded voice.
“Nothing,” he said, and had to clear his throat and start again.
Werrit laughed before he got to the rest.