Dragonfield by Jane Yolen Page A

breath was ragged and her voice on the edge of despair. “I beg you. Get the midwife. This does not go well.”
    The tree man held her close, but he did not rise.
    “Go,” she begged. “Tell her my name. It is time.”
    He took her face in his hands and stared long into it with his woods-green eyes. He pursed his lips as if to speak, then stood up and was gone.
    He went down the path towards the town, though each step away from the tree drew his strength from him. Patches of skin peeled off as he moved, and the sores beneath were dark and viscous. His limbs grew more brittle with each step, and he moved haltingly. By the time he reached the midwife’s house, he looked an aged and broken thing. He knocked upon the door, yet he was so weak, it was only a light tapping, a scraping, the scratching of a branch across a window pane.
    As if she had been waiting for his call, the midwife came at once. She opened the door and stared at what stood before her. Tall and thin and naked and white, with black patches of scabrous skin and hair as dark as rotting leaves, the tree man held up his grotesque, slotted hand. The gash of his mouth was hollow and tongueless, a sap-filled wound. He made no sound, but the midwife screamed and screamed, and screaming still, slammed the door.
    She did not see him fall.
    In the morning the townsfolk came to Drusilla’s great house. They came armed with clubs and cudgels and forks. The old midwife was in the rear, calling the way.
    Beneath a dead white tree they found Drusilla, pale and barely moving, a child cradled in her arms. At the townsfolk’s coming, the child opened its eyes. They were the color of winter pine.
    “Poor thing,” said the midwife, stepping in front of the men. “I knew no good would come of this.” She bent to take the child from Drusilla’s arms but leaped up again with a cry. For the child had uncurled one tiny fist, and its hand was veined with green and the second and third fingers grew together, slotted like a leaf.
    At the midwife’s cry, the birches in the grove began to move and sway, though there was not a breath of breeze. And before any weapon could be raised, the nearest birch stretched its branches far out and lifted the child and Drusilla up, up towards the top of the tree.
    As the townsfolk watched, Drusilla disappeared. The child seemed to linger for a moment longer, its unclothed body gleaming in the sun. Then slowly the child faded, like melting snow on pine needles, like the last white star of morning, into the heart of the tree.
    There was a soughing as of wind through branches, a tremble of leaves, and one sharp cry of an unsuckled child. Then the trees in the grove were still.
    “Thank you,” said the widow softly. She patted the Dream Weaver’s shoulder. Then she spoke to her child, “Come. We will go to your father’s people. They will take us in, I know that now.” She held out her hand.
    The child took her hand, and as they began walking, he asked, “Did you like it? Was it a good dream? I thought it was sad. Was it sad?”
    But his mother did not answer him, and soon the child’s voice, like their footsteps, faded away.
    The Dream Weaver took the dream from the loom. “They, too, left without the dream. Such a small bit of weaving, yet they had no room for it. But it was not a sad dream. Not really. It had much loving in it. She should have taken it for the child—if not for herself.” And still mumbling, the Dream Weaver snipped the threads and finished off the weaving, stretching it a bit to make it more pliant. Then she put it, with the others, in her bag.
    “Dream Weaver,” came a chorus of voices. The Dream Weaver sorted out three. Three children. Girls, she thought.
    The boldest of the three, the middle child, stepped closer. All three were tawny-haired, though the oldest had curls with an orange tinge to them. “Dream Weaver, we have only one penny to spend. One for the three of us. Can you weave us one dream? To