After they gathered their boats and as many supplies and specimens they could manage, the surviving members of the expedition worked their way down the river to a place where the cliffs rose far enough from the banks to leave space for a camp. In the curved recess and overhang of stone, they also had a defensible position in case they should face another magical attack. As the darkness gathered and they huddled next to several small campfires, trying to dry their sodden clothes before the full cold of night set in, Meriwether kept listening for the sound of wings or big trampling feet.
They had brought Sacagawea’s displaced and dazed husband along with them, still trying to learn answers. She squatted by the fire, attempting to tend to Charbonneau. He looked wrung out and pale, like an old threadbare rag. Many other members of the expedition were similarly in shock after the attack of the river monster, and now they gathered their shreds of sanity about them.
Meriwether approached her. “You were right about the dragon, Madame Charbonneau.” She nodded, absorbed in trying to get soup into her husband’s slack mouth. He was thin, with hanging skin folds, dark and deeply sunk eyes, and had a haunted look as if he’d been dragged through the gates of Hell.
Charbonneau had shown no interest in his son, nor even asked the sex or age of the baby. Pompy, in turn, had refused to go near him, instead crying so shrilly that Sacagawea had handed him to Captain Clark, who had offered to hold the child, while she tended to her husband.
And she clearly did so with great devotion, which elicited a strange twinge of jealousy in Meriwether. Ever since she had come to Fort Mandan, he had done his best to distance himself from Sacagawea and not think of her as a woman. In fact, if he thought of her as a woman, the whole scene of her patiently spooning soup into her husband’s mouth hurt. Not only because she was married to a bigamous, no-account trapper, but because she obviously cared for the man, no matter what he had done. And though Meriwether knew that no spark of romance could ever happen between them, no alliance or link be permitted, he could not help the way his mind protested the thought.
“She is so different from us,” he told himself. “After all that has happened to her, she seems perfectly happy, so long as she has food and shelter for herself and her child.” Charbonneau’s child.
Leaving her, he went to join Clark, who was feeding Pompy spoons of soup and talking to him, as though the child were an adult. When Meriwether sat next to him and the baby, Clark said, “Sacagawea was right enough in her warnings this morning. I should have listened. She knew that the unexpected ice on the river was an indication of some big magic.” He stared at Meriwether a long time. “And while we were being attacked I thought I saw a dragon. I knew it had some connection to you. How do you explain it?”
“I am trying to find explanations of my own, but as yet I have none to give.” He gazed into the smoky fire, but felt little warmth from his clammy clothes. “What matters most is that Sacagawea knew. She was correct that the dark force that has lain dormant throughout the winter is beginning to awaken again and gain strength. And she was correct that I would find some unexpected strength inside me that could fight it.”
Pompy made complaining noises when Clark forgot to keep feeding him, and the man gave him another spoonful. “What can you tell me about this dragon you summoned? And the eagle that Sacagawea controlled? I certainly know the tale of how you fought beside the wizard Franklin, but I didn’t know you were a wizard yourself.” He gave his friend a wry smile. “Such great magic could have been useful to our expedition all along the way.”
Meriwether let out a deprecating laugh. “I am no wizard. The dragon that appeared to fight the river monster seems to be a part of me, some extension of my spirit or my dreams, which I can’t fully identify or control.” With a sigh, realizing that this was no time for secrets between him and his close companion, he told the story of his relationship with the dream beast, from earliest childhood.
We will meet again, son of Wales.
Clark looked intrigued, and not the least bit skeptical. “Why did you not tell me before this?”
Meriwether looked down at his hands in the crackling firelight, then back up at Clark. “Tell you what? That sometimes I dream of a dragon? I had no idea the thing was real in any sense until Sacagawea said she saw it as she was trying to reach Fort Mandan. She explained to me that it is a dragon of the spirit, something connected to me from my European heritage where such legends originated. And if I use my spirit dragon to fight the great magic, I can die—here, in my physical body.”
Clark spoonfed the baby to give him a moment to think. “A dream dragon would have been of great use scouting the countryside. Could you not summon it earlier, if you’ve known about it all your life?”
Meriwether fidgeted. “I have had the dreams, but I never understood them. They started the night I learned my father died, and I always thought that it was a boy’s way to cope with bereavement. I feared that if I spoke about it, people would think I’d gone mad. My neighbors in Virginia already considered me eccentric if not insane because I went hunting in the dead of night, in the dark of winter, sometimes having forgotten to put my shoes on. So I allowed them to think I was just a boy, unhappy at home, rather than a man haunted by a dragon.”
Clark got down to business. “Now we do need to talk about it and decide what we’re going to do. And how your power could possibly help us. We lost Peter Weiser—that monster devoured him whole. We can’t afford to have more of our men eaten by some magical horror, and we can’t proceed with the survey if our steps are dogged by infernal creatures doing the bidding of some unknown enemy.”
“You’re right,” Meriwether agreed. “I wish we had indeed brought the wizard Franklin along. Sacagawea insists that we should fight the great magic first, before pressing on to find the Pacific Ocean.” He paused. “She had a different priority, though. She wanted to break her husband from the thrall of the evil force. And now…” He looked across the camp to where Sacagawea was pulling a moist blanket over the seemingly insensible Charbonneau.
Clark frowned. “You think she may no longer have the incentive to battle that great magic, now that she has the man back? If he really is back. He seems like little more than an empty shell. My God, the horrors he must have experienced.”
Meriwether tried to convince himself that his suspicion was not in any way caused by jealousy. “Though I do wonder at the coincidence of his appearance, here and now. It seems too much like a hunter baiting a trap.”
“That fact has not escaped me,” Clark said. “Though it is possible that when your spirit dragon killed the river serpent, you weakened the evil force…weakened it sufficiently to make it lose its hold on Charbonneau.”
Meriwether nodded, though he wasn’t convinced. “That sounds perfectly reasonable. I do not know the rules or the energy required to animate serpents or revenants, or giant reptiles. Even so, I suggest we remain on guard. I don’t fancy being the mouse in a game of cat and mouse.” He stared over at the huddled, unresponsive man, and Sacagawea sitting close beside him. “And yet, all the reasons we chose not to attack the source of the evil still stand. The great magic is too powerful for us to make any impression at all, even if Sacagawea could guide us to it. We would be sacrificing ourselves in vain.”
Clark inclined his head. “And yet we must find a solution.”
The two men went to sleep in the makeshift tent of tall saplings and salvaged buffalo hides. Sacagawea collected her baby from Captain Clark and said that she and her husband would sleep by the side of river, under some branches.
In the middle of the night, Meriwether was awakened by the sound of a baby crying, enhanced by a sudden sharp scream from Sacagawea. He was bolting out of the tent, half dressed. He was halfway to the source of the alarm before he realized he had instinctively grabbed his air rifle.