Hunting of the Last Dragon by Sherryl Jordan

eyes, half lost beneath the wrinkles, were the same shape as Lizzie’s eyes.
    â€œSweet Jesus save me,” I said. “I’ve died and gone to Lizzie’s heaven.”
    The old woman cackled like a hen, and I saw she had but two yellow teeth. “By all the powers, ’tis no heaven!” she said. Then, looking behind her, she called, “Come and see him, child. The boy’s awake.”
    I looked beyond the woman’s shoulder and saw a doorway with bright sunlight shining through. And through that light came Lizzie, transfigured, wearing a dress of crimson and green, and with her hair brushed and braided smooth as ravens’ wings. Right lovely she was. And she was walking, wearing ordinary shoes, though small ones.
    â€œI have died,” I said, and fainted again.
    Then someone was pouring cool water onto my tongue, and washing my hot face. After a time I woke fully, and began to look about me. I was lying on a pile of straw, a blanket over me. Between my bed and the open door crouched the old woman, lighting a fire in the middle of the floor. The air was still and hot, and the blue smoke rose about her, ascending to the rafters where hung sacks of grain, beside two pigs and several fish on hooks, smoking. There were bunches of herbs hanging on the walls, and strings of onions and garlic. My eyes travelled around the walls, and I saw more clearly the mail armour on its hook, with its helmetnearby in a little alcove, and a great sword shining across two pegs above. There were shelves too numerous for me to number, laden with freakish things. Through the smoke’s blue veil I made out jars of feathers and claws and oddly shaped sticks, shadowy carvings, and whitish objects that might have been bone. There were wizened roots, glowing stones, carven boxes such as I had never seen before, and other things, foreign and mysterious, I could not name. And in the sun on the step, and at the foot of my straw bed, were two cats, both black as coal.
    The old woman came over to me, lifted the blanket at my feet, and pressed something hard against my sore ankle. I tried to pull away, but she was strong, for all her littleness.
    â€œâ€™Tis an arrowhead, boy,” she said. “’Twill ease the swelling, and your pain.” Then she sang a charm: “Come out, worm—out from the marrow into the bone, from the bone into the flesh, from the flesh into the skin, from the skin into this arrow.”
    I whispered amen, to cover the spell with the Church’s blessing, just in case.
    No need to snort like that, Brother, nor to frown so disapprovingly. I know what you are thinking, and that you must blame me for staying in that house. But I had no choice about it. When I asked Lizzie laterhow I came to be there, she said that when I had fallen in the lane she saw firelight in a house, and went to it. I suppose the flickering flames were what I had mistook for wolves’ eyes. Anyway, the old woman came out to the lane with Lizzie and together they dragged me to the house. Once there I could not move for the pain in my head, nor could I have walked for the soreness in my ankle, and I was forced by fate to stay for good or ill. And that’s the naked truth, as God is God.
    The crone was called Old Lan. She was Chinese, the same as Lizzie, and she too had had bound feet. Hers she had straightened, and could walk almost normally, except that she hobbled with age. She must have been near ninety, but from what I could tell, there was nothing wrong with her hearing or her sight, and her mind was sharp as a knife. She was a scold, too, and I soon learned not to argue with her, even when she poured her nasty potions down my throat. She dosed me up right well, in those early days, and I have to say that her concoctions gave great ease. My ankle, that I had twisted bad, she mended with the arrow. I had a bad cut on my head, which she put cobwebs on and healed.
    Brother Benedict, will you please