“I do not know what the Emperor Dragon, Lord of the Dragon Kings, Ruler of the Weather and the Waters of the World was contemplating when he chose a gweilo,” she said in a tone that made it clear exactly what she thought. “But she will be trained.”
“Wan—” I tried to struggle off the gurney.
“Kate—” Wan started to run and launched himself toward me.
The woman clapped her hands twice.
—I stood on the edge of a stone platform, looking down at a classical scene of clouds and mountaintops, a long staircase stretching out below my feet. It was lovely and chilling, mostly because a stiff breeze was blowing up my hospital gown.
Clutching the back together, I turned to see a tall pagoda surrounded by stone walls. In the gateway stood the old lady, surrounded by other elderly women, all glaring at me like I’d offended the very stones I stood on.
My girls were at my feet, once again clad in their silk gowns, now kowtowing toward the women.
“Welcome to the Monastery of the Distant Clouds,” the eldest said with a wicked smile on her lips, her eyes gleaming with sharp satisfaction. “Your training will commence immediately.”
Oh, no. Who’s gonna feed my dogs?
The Mammyth
by Harry Turtledove
The mammyth is out there. Unless, of course, it’s not. First there is a mammyth. Then there is no mammyth. Then there is. Unless there isn’t.
How do you find a legendary, maybe mythical, creature? You may seek it with thimbles—and seek it with care. You may hunt it with forks and hope. You may threaten its life with a . . . Oh, wait. That’s liable to be something else, but there’s no need to get snarky about it.
There’s a high priest’s throne whose panels are supposed to be carved from mammyth ivory. You can see pictures of it in Fallmereyer’s famous tome, Geistkunstgeschichtliche Wissenschaft. They say you can, anyhow. But you know what they say is worth.
And they also say that somebody went through every single copy of Geistkunstgeschichtliche Wissenschaft with a razor and cut out the illo of the mammyth-ivory priestly throne panels, so you can’t see it. Some of them say it was Fallmereyer himself. Since Geistkunstgeschichtliche Wissenschaft had a print run of nine copies (eleven with a tail wind), it’s not impossible. One more time, though, you know what they say it’s worth.
There’s an Emperor who paraded down the main thoroughfare of his very imperial capital wearing a robe woven from mammyth wool. There’s supposed to have been such an Emperor parading down such a thoroughfare in such a robe, at any rate. Such a robe! There’s also a nasty little boy who said rude things about the robe the Emperor was or wasn’t wearing. Or there’s supposed to have been such a little boy who said such rude things. Such a boy!
I could go on. I could go on and on, in fact. After all, I’m getting paid by the word. But we need an Adventure. A Quest! If we don’t find one pretty damn soon, you’ll go read some other story, and then where will I be? That’s right, and without a paddle, too.
So here’s Tundra Dawn, seeking the mammyth with all her strength. She wants ivory. She wants wool. She wants glory. She wants to be able to shuck off her chainmail shirt, which is the questing fashion accessory this year, but which proves fashion and comfort don’t go hand-in-hand, even in jurisdictions where that’s legal.
Tundra Dawn isn’t alone on her Adventurous Quest. No story’s heroine is worth the paper she’ll eventually be printed on without sidekicks. Tundra Dawn has a couple of them. Lucky her. She has Cleveland, for instance. No, not Cleveland, the city with the inflammable river. Cleveland, the sidekick. He’s fuzzy and blue and excitable and not too bright. But he helps the plot along sometimes. If he feels like it. Which is about as much as you can hope for from a sidekick.
And she has Tremendous Ptarmigan—or sometimes he spells it Ptremendous Tarmigan. TP/PT (he calls himself a translettered avian) is, or may be, worth his weight in drumsticks when it comes to hunting mammyths. In fact, he insists he has one for his best friend. That nobody else has ever seen that mammyth doesn’t bother him a bit.
“They’re very shy, you know, mammyths,” he says. “They don’t let just anybody set eyes on them.”
“One of them had better let me set eyes on it, and pretty darn quick, too,” Tundra Dawn