An Unscheduled Interview above Draycott

I had intended to spend the afternoon examining a cutting above Draycott, where the railway company claimed to have uncovered the remains of a marine reptile. Their engineer had sent me a drawing of such remarkable anatomical economy that I suspected a drain. Nevertheless, the strata deserved attention, and I left the posting-house after luncheon with my measuring case and a hired steam carriage. The driver, a Dwarf named Mrs Thrane, had expressly included waiting time in her fee. I mention this because her subsequent account of the afternoon made much of her steadfastness and comparatively little of the hourly rate.

We stopped where fallen shale narrowed the road. Mrs Thrane remained with the carriage while I walked round the bend to determine whether we could pass. A Dragon occupied the rest of the road. His head lay beside the outer parapet, and his body continued uphill through a stand of larches which had evidently accommodated him under protest. I first mistook his folded wing for a tarpaulin covering roadworks. This error lasted until the tarpaulin breathed and a quantity of gravel moved beneath my boots. His nearer eye opened. I was close enough to see my own pale coat reflected in it, absurdly small and altogether too conspicuous.

Retreat appeared desirable, although its manner required consideration. I had approached briskly; a sudden reversal might supply information I did not intend to convey. Equally, remaining beside his mouth solely to preserve my dignity would leave dignity with an unreasonable share of the decision. I stepped backwards once, slowly. His eye followed me. I stepped again, and his head rose until the road disappeared beneath it. There was no accompanying cry. I could see the nostril widen and a small movement beneath the scales at the corner of his jaw. These observations established that he had noticed me; they did very little towards establishing whether he approved.

‘I am passing along the road,’ I said, with a clarity I have seldom obtained from witnesses under examination. ‘If my approach is unwelcome, I shall withdraw.’ He regarded me for several seconds, then said, ‘You have brought … the underneath.’ The last word came quickly and with considerable emphasis. I had hoped for an answer permitting at least a provisional division between welcome and objection. Instead, I had acquired a grammatical problem. His pronunciation was excellent. His choice of where to pause suggested that he regarded a sentence as something one might set down while attending to other business.

Mrs Thrane called from the bend to ask what was obstructing us. I told her. She asked how large he was. ‘Large enough for the distinction to be immaterial,’ I replied, which she later described as unhelpful. She nevertheless shut off the carriage’s burner without being asked. The Dragon turned towards the diminishing hiss, and I took the opportunity to move another pace away. He immediately looked back at me. I stopped. Thus far he had permitted movement while observing it, then interrupted movement attempted during a distraction.

His shoulder spines were low. This would have reassured me more had I been able to see his throat properly, or determine whether the breeze carried anything from his cheek glands towards me. It carried warm resin and the much less agreeable smell of my driver’s fuel. I had once criticised a correspondent for describing a Dragon’s expression as ‘thoughtful’, and now found myself wanting to use the word. I deserved the embarrassment. A face which supplies little interpretable information readily acquires profundity in the observer’s account. I could at least record that his jaws remained closed between remarks, and that he had ample opportunity to injure me without improving his position.

‘When you say underneath,’ I asked, ‘do you mean something I am carrying?’ I lifted the measuring case slightly. His pupil narrowed. I lowered it again. ‘I can put this down.’ He said, ‘The wheel has it. You … also. Less.’ He was distinguishing degrees and placing the carriage ahead of me. I called to Mrs Thrane to remain where she was and asked whether she had driven through anything unusual. ‘Apart from Draycott?’ she answered. I requested greater precision. She had crossed the new railway yard that morning, where crushed blue stone had recently been spread. The same stone dust covered my boots after my inspection of a culvert below the inn.

I looked down. There was blue dust on the case as well, where I had set it beside the culvert. My first coherent hypothesis was that the Dragon objected to this material, perhaps through an association inaccessible to us. I explained this to him in considerably fewer words and asked whether he wanted it removed. He lowered his head until his nostril was near my boots. The warmth reached through the leather, and I discovered that the Human impulse to hold one’s breath in danger survives circumstances in which it can have no conceivable utility. ‘Still underneath,’ he said. I could not tell whether he was correcting my account of the stone or reporting its continued presence.

Mrs Thrane proposed that I return to the carriage and discuss geology from there. I objected that we had yet to establish whether he would allow it. ‘You haven’t asked him that,’ she said. This was accurate and irritating, since I had wrapped a simple practical question in so much investigation that I had neglected to put it. ‘May I walk back to my companion?’ I asked. The Dragon’s gaze moved beyond me. ‘That one stays.’ Mrs Thrane, hearing this, uttered a short Dwarven expression which I shall leave to a philologist with fewer professional obligations. I asked whom he meant. He extended one claw towards the bend, stopping well short of me. ‘The hot wheel.’

The carriage stood on the outside of the road. Beyond it, the parapet overlooked the railway cutting. I called for Mrs Thrane to leave the vehicle by its uphill side. She wanted to know whether this instruction rested on anything firmer than my previous contributions. I admitted that it did not, but added that she could question me equally well from solid ground. She came round the bend carrying the starting handle, an implement whose usefulness against a Dragon I doubted, though I respected her wish to retain some influence over events. The Dragon watched her arrive, then placed his forefoot across the road behind us.

‘If you are preventing us from leaving,’ I told him, ‘I should prefer you to explain why.’ Mrs Thrane gave me a look suggesting that a less administrative tone might be appropriate. I continued, since the alternative was to stand there furnishing my own imagination with examples. ‘We understand you poorly. You may intend assistance. You may wish us to remain for some purpose of your own. Your present conduct permits both interpretations.’ He blinked once. ‘It is going … through.’ At that moment a loaded stone train entered the cutting below. I felt the vibration through my soles. A crack opened across the road between his forefoot and the bend.

Mrs Thrane seized my sleeve before I had properly understood the movement. The outer verge settled with a grinding sound, and the carriage leaned outwards. Its front wheel vanished. The boiler followed, striking the parapet hard enough to throw masonry into the cutting. I caught Mrs Thrane’s coat as she moved towards the carriage; she struck my wrist with the starting handle and told me she was reaching for the brake. ‘The road has gone,’ I said, rather loudly. ‘You cannot brake the road.’ The Dragon pressed his foot down. A slab beneath us tilted, stopped, and held. Below, the train continued out of the cutting while our hired conveyance descended after it in expensive instalments.

We crossed to the uphill bank at the Dragon’s direction, which consisted of the words ‘There. Feet’, delivered with a long interval between them. Once we were clear he lifted his forefoot. More road fell away. Mrs Thrane sat on a rock and examined my wrist, having apparently concluded that it was now safe to resume responsibility for damaging it. I asked the Dragon whether he had known the carriage would fall. ‘The underneath was … loose before the wheel.’ Had he felt movement through the ground? Heard it? Recognised something in the excavated stone? He turned his head towards the exposed bank and said, ‘They have taken the holding out.’ This was an intelligible criticism of the railway works, although it left the means of his discovery unresolved.

I thanked him for supporting the road while we crossed. He said nothing. I asked whether he had kept us there because he expected the collapse. ‘You were there,’ he replied. I could obtain no further explanation. Perhaps he considered the question answered. Perhaps our survival had been incidental to his interest in the cutting. Mrs Thrane maintained that assistance counted as assistance regardless of whether I could persuade its author to supply a paper on the subject. I agreed, but objected to her subsequent description of him as friendly.

I offered to arrange for the railway engineer to meet him, and received my clearest answer of the afternoon. ‘No more … taking. Here.’ I promised to report the objection, carefully making no promise on the company’s behalf. He then drew his head back among the damaged larches and closed his eye. Whether this dismissed us was a question Mrs Thrane settled by walking away. I followed after announcing our departure, which elicited nothing. At the posting-house I sent a telegram requiring the line superintendent to inspect the cutting before another train passed. He replied asking by whose authority. I supplied my full title, the location of the collapsed carriage, and an estimate of the remaining unstable bank. Only the last two particulars appeared in his acknowledgement.

My wrist has swollen, my measuring case is missing, and Mrs Thrane has charged waiting time up to the moment the carriage left the road. I have paid it. Tomorrow I shall examine the cutting with the superintendent, provided our unnamed acquaintance permits an approach. I still cannot place him confidently among the hostile, friendly, or indifferent. The uncertainty is unusually instructive, though I would have welcomed a less costly arrangement for acquiring it. Mrs Thrane has undertaken to accompany me on foot. She says someone ought to be present who will remember to ask whether we may leave, and I find that I have exhausted my grounds for objection.