by Gabrielle Bleu
in Issue 118, November 2021
Xyrlark Littleknight packed her bag with care in the sorting room of the Hallentrough Post Office. It was a little heavier than normal, since her route was a little longer than normal. She was picking up the second half of someone else’s route, due to unfortunate circumstances. Dragon circumstances. A fellow postal worker in hospital circumstances. But Xyrlark tried to remain cheerful, to keep her head up as she adjusted the strap on her parcel bag. She liked walking, she liked meeting people, and she liked delivering mail. On this route she would just have to walk up a mountain, meet a dragon, and deliver his mail. Simple. Xyrlark fiddled with her bag some more to avoid the pointed gaze of her supervisor. He cleared his throat; Xyrlark decided the bag passed scrutiny and slipped it on over the coil of her horns.
On her way out of the station, the mail satyr chatted briefly with the clerks, blushed heavily at some flirtatious remarks from Harriet the Swordsbane who was in line to mail a mass of packages, and glanced at the “Lost Mail” board. Only big-ticket items made it onto the board, no waylaid letters to grandparents deemed important enough to post. Instead, the board displayed descriptions of expensive and important packages, lost for years in some cases, in the hopes that an enterprising carrier would find and retrieve them. Missing packages currently included an enchanted wrestling belt, an illuminated botanic encyclopedia, and a reliquary with the hair of a saint. All mailed out, all never arrived. A small tragedy, each one, as “The mail always gets delivered!” was the slogan of the capital’s esteemed post office. Xyrlark took that saying very seriously, even for less expensive and less impressive mailings. She steeled herself with the weight of the postal slogan and set out on her route and a half.
Mail delivery always found itself accompanied by the potential for danger. Xyrlark knew her fair share of it. There were of course, the common hazards – cursed 100-year long snowstorms, three-headed guard dogs, brigands and the like all made delivery more complicated for everyone. Then there were the uncommon hazards, of which Xyrlark felt she had seen more than her fair share.
The were-cat bite had been rather unfortunate, and the plague doctor whose mailbox happened to stand above the were-lair had still been in-training. His partially complete degree had at least allowed him to brew a partial cure. Xyrlark walked away from the delivery rather in-between, able to shift at will, but with the telltale signs of her new abilities apparent on her otherwise humanoid face. She found the white whiskers and mutton chops rather handsome, but she would not call the damp leather of a cat’s nose her favorite facial feature.
Then there had been the witch out in the peat bog practicing her hexes without proper spotting just as Xyrlark approached bearing junk mail. Thankfully, the doctor’s botched alchemy and the witch’s spell reacted oddly, so Xyrlark only bore a porcupine’s tail when she shifted into a cat, and the rest of the time kept her charming goat’s tail. Harriet always complemented it.
Xyrlark Littleknight may have been a bit of a jumble herself – a human last name, porcupine quills, and cat whiskers sometimes made it hard for people to recognize her as a satyr, even with her horns and hooves. But in all places, people recognized her as a mail carrier. The canary yellow uniform made it hard to misunderstand. At the town of Copper Springs, children ran to meet her when they heard the sound of her hooves approaching. Xyrlark handed over envelopes stuffed full of letters from distant relatives, and parcels jingling with coin, protected by her hand and postal insurance. At Portevite, she threatened to use her horns to gore two pirates who were rather grabby towards her mailbag, but most ship captains were glad of her presence. It boosted morale for a sailor to receive a good-bye letter the last day in port, and if one of Xyrlark’s letters happened to be a ransom note, the harbormaster thankfully knew it was no fault of the mail carrier.
Had this been a normal route, Xyrlark’s last stop would have been the lindwyrms in Salt Root Swamp. Their large extended family and numerous business partners from their sale of tree gum meant Xyrlark’s carrier bag weighed heavy on her shoulders right till the end.
“The post! The postsatyr is here!” The younger lindwyrms hissed at her approach. They swarmed out of their den, large eel-like bodies sliding through the water and over each other in a great silver wave.
“Give her space, she’s small,” one of the older wyrms admonished. The younger ones swirled around Xyrlark like an excitable whirlpool. Xyrlark paid them no mind and sorted through their mail.
“Ups, Re, here’s some letters for you.” The two youngest serpents snatched their letters in grasping forelegs and broke off from the circle. “Red, this one’s got your name on it.” The manticore came forward and politely took the letter in a large paw. Xyrlark liked Red. He was adopted, same as she was.
The older lindwyrm called again from deep in their den. “Littleknight, is that everything? Would you care for some tea?”
Xyrlark fussed with her whiskers and mulled over the offer. Normally she would love to join the expansive lindwyrm family for some of their famed stinging nettle tea at the end of her route. But this, unfortunately, could no longer be called the end of her route.
“Apologies, Elder, I have one more delivery than normal. Got to get a move on.” The younger lindwyrms continued to scramble in circular paths around her, and the elder wyrm poked their head out of their burrow.
“One more? Quite unusual. Where to?” They itched idly at a patch of dry scales.
“Up in the Elspa mountains,” Xyrlark answered. The young lindwyrms stopped their capering, and the elder gasped, their scratching abandoned.
“Surely not the dragon in the Elspa mountains? Who else would dare live there?” The elder lindwyrm revealed their yellowed teeth in a frightened snarl.
“The very same,” Xyrlark admitted. The younger lindwyrms all began to whine and hiss, and the elder retreated into their den. “Oh no,” they moaned, as they pulled their long body back into the safety of the earth. “Oh no, Xyrlark.”
“Must be off!” Xyrlark puffed, as she tried to remain unrattled. Red wordlessly walked with her to the edge of the Salt Root Swamp.
“Welp,” he said, once they’d reached less watery ground, “be careful.”
“Thank you, Red, I will. Not to worry, the mail always gets delivered!” Xyrlark made sure to end the slogan with a chipper inflection. Red nodded empathetically, and returned to the swamp, leaving Xyrlark alone.
With the bulk of her mail delivered at the lindwyrm’s den, only one letter remained, addressed to the dragon of the Elspa mountain range, affixed with numerous heavy pennants and seals of the Elected and Exalted Premiere and Deuxieme of the kingdom of Hallentrough. A very official letter. As she scaled the peaks, Xyrlark daydreamed of being home, finished with her route. She would kiss her moms, get a nice home-cooked meal and a hot bath, and go to sleep under her favorite quilt. All the things every good satyr gal dreamed of.
At least, she hoped she could head home.
Xyrlark could hardly imagine herself delivering to a dragon. In her mind’s eye, she could picture herself in all her details. Smartly dressed in her canary yellow uniform, standing proudly at five feet two inches. Coiled horns and a bushy mane of goat’s hair. A cat’s padded nose, white mutton chops, and long elegant whiskers sprouting from her cheeks – all that showed of her second cat-form. She could picture herself, all her tumbled-together details in place, standing atop a glimmering dragonmound, hand outstretched, clutching a letter.
But when it came so far as to picture who she handed the letter to, she was suddenly eight years old again, struggling to play “horses” with her sisters, because she could not imagine her hands as hooves. Or her regular hooves as horse hooves. So too she failed to imagine the hand that would reach for the letter she offered. When she tried to picture what the dragon must look like, she got about as far as imagining a very large frog. She supposed there would be no offers of tea at this stop.
The regular carrier for this route was laid up in the burn ward of the capital’s hospital after dragon fire burned their village down. They were a very fine individual, Xyrlark doubted they would have done anything to antagonize the dragon. Some folks were just mean. And one of her mothers remembered when a dragon from the Elspa mountains had gobbled up the hircocervus herds of the Red Reed Wanderers. The loss of their herds caused scores of cynocephali refugees to stream into the village, their source of food and clothing and trade et up. That had been before Xyrlark’s time, but dragons lived long lives, and only one dragon lived in the Elspa mountains.
So, she needed to deliver a letter from the Premiere and Deuxieme of Hallentrough to a dragon with a winning personality. She would do her best of course, as the mail always got delivered. And maybe the dragon had undergone a change of heart since her mother was a child. Maybe the other postal worker had tried to carry away some loose gold. Maybe the dragonhoard was under new management, a son or niece taken over the job of roosting on rubies, and they had made a nervous error. It wasn’t Xyrlark’s place to judge, in any case, only to deliver the mail.
Hardened snow crunched under her specifically goat hooves as she clambered to the top of the mountain. At last, stark against the mountainside, the mouth of a large cave loomed. No snow lay nearby, the ground charred and black all around the entrance. Several long bones were strewn about, and the odd breastplate or pauldron, similarly burned. Xyrlark paused in her ascent to straighten her muttonchops and whiskers, to give herself a moment to think. Among the bones, Xyrlark saw no letterbox present at the front of the dragon’s domicile. If the dragon could not follow mail ordinances, Xyrlark could circumvent the rules and search for a back door to leave her delivery at. Perfectly allowable. The mail had to be delivered but also had to be left in a safe and secure location. If she merely left the letter at the front of the cave, she risked a gust of wind, an enterprising crow, or a particularly stupid squire whisking it away.
Xyrlark interlocked her fingers and pushed her hands out in a stretch as she took a deep breath of air. When she released it, the flutter of air leaving her lungs continued through her whole body, skin and bones shifting with it. Her fingers popped, and then so did her knees, her spine, and her hips as her skeleton reoriented. Goat hooves split into feline claws. Her white whiskers and perfectly coiffed mutton chops bristled and spread, as white fur erupted through her skin. She fell forward, a perfect white cat, save for the stubby porcupine tail. Xyrlark crept forward on silent paws, satchel swinging against her feline body. She avoided the main entrance to the cave and climbed further up the mountain to search instead for a small off-shoot tunnel or crack into the cavern below.
Her paws left little prints in the snow as she picked about, at last coming upon a patch of melt from steam rising out of a small fissure in the ground. A handful of blue and yellow flowers grew in the heat and absence of snow by the crevice, their colorful faces angled towards the sun. Deceptively idyllic, as it was the dragon’s hot breath puffing upwards through the vent.
Xyrlark’s cat senses reeled as she crawled head-first down the vent. She could see glimmering light reflected off the treasure below, but it was far below where the vent ended. It looked like she would have to drop to the bottom, but she would land on her cat feet. As she neared the final descent, however, the straps of the mailbag caught on the sides of the rocky vent. She tried to back up, and reorient herself, claws raking at the stone for purchase, but the bag was thoroughly snagged.
Xyrlark considered her options. She could dislodge the bag and let it fall without her. It only held a single letter, but the heavy aurochs leather of the bag was sure to make a cacophony as it hit the dragonmound below without her nimble cat feet to soften the landing.
Xyrlark huffed, frustrated, and began to transform from her white cat self back to her normal horned satyr body. Her bones elongated in places, shortened in others, her arcing horns pushed forth from her skull, and the cat fur began to recede until all that remained were her mutton chops and whiskers. Before the transformation finished, she shifted her shoulders, and as her claws pulled back from the stone wall and turned back into fingernails, she dropped. The bag caught safely on her horns, and before they left her, the last of her cat senses urged her body to turn as it fell.
The dragonmound shifted only slightly below her as she landed, fully in her satyr body, and fully on her feet. A few coins, bedecked with the faces of ancient monarchs, began to tumble away, but Xyrlark snatched them up before they could cause a chain reaction of slippage. She carefully set the coins back down, and then furiously itched her arms. Staying between forms on purpose always caused her to break out in a rash, where the half-erupted cat fur irritated the skin as the body tried to figure out which direction it was evolving. Xyrlark huffed again, pouting. The salve her mothers made for her itching was forgotten at home, probably rolled under her bed.
Frustrated, Xyrlark smoothed her sideburns back into immaculate points, after their dishevelment from her transformation. The points split apart as soon as she stopped preening.
A short distance away, atop a rolling hill of coins, Xyrlark spotted a massive emerald, big as a giant’s tooth. Her own face peered back at her from its many facets. Not a regulation mailbox, certainly, but it would do in a pinch.
Fur sprouted through her skin, and again a cat, Xyrlark crept towards the emerald, legs itching fiercely. Her deft cat paws knocked not a coin nor a crown nor an ornamental dagger out of place, whereas her hooves would have certainly kicked up a terrible din.
Creeping up the hill towards the emerald, Xyrlark, at last, caught sight of the cave’s proprietor: massive black wings scraped the cave ceiling, iron-tipped claws twitched in a dream. The rest of the dragon’s body lay camouflaged, black scales melting into the dark. A dappling of gold scales splashed across its back looked for all the world like a pocketful of coins spilled in a pooled shadow. Xyrlark’s white fur puffed out, and her quilled tail bristled. She choked down a hiss.
At the emerald, Xyrlark shifted back, resisted the urge to scratch her arms raw, and wiped a river of sweat from her brow. It would be fine. She would drop the letter off and scurry away before the dragon woke up. She would be halfway down the mountain range before he smelled her, or even discerned cat smell from goat smell. It would all be fine. Xyrlark rested a hand against one of the emerald’s faces to steady herself as she reached into her carrier bag. As she did, she caught sight of something other than the dragon in the green reflection of the emerald face. Several somethings, in fact.
Scattered amongst the dragon hoard sat pieces of missing mail – all items posted on the hated “Lost Mail” board at the central postal station. Here, nestled in a field of gold nuggets, the wrestling belt of famed frost giantess Brunhilde the Backbreaker, that let her change her size in order to compete fairly, and win, in all weight classes. It had been mailed out on loan to the Wrestler’s Pride Museum for an exhibit on women and shapeshifters in sport, only to never arrive. Xyrlark supposed the courier met a dire fate. There, atop a mound of ornate shields, sat an illuminated encyclopedia on the flora of the island of Telbock, the life’s work of famed troll botanist Dredge Malvacaea. Sent to, but never received by, the Library of Shouted Secrets for preservation after Telbock sank beneath the sea. A reliquary containing the shimmering hair of Saint Antimora – mailed to a village overrun with a spate of early-onset baldness as well as an unlucky run of their fishing boats sinking – now lay tucked away at the base of a gem-encrusted stalagmite.
And among a glittering pile of semi-precious stones, something not on the priority lost list, but nevertheless a vital piece of missing mail. Xyrlark and her sisters’ birthday card to their grandmother, turned 87 that year. She recognized the lazy loops of her sister Flish’s letters. It never arrived at the intended address, and the elderly matron had been quite down about it, as if the family could ever forget her!
Anger nearly overcame Xyrlark; her whiskers quivered, and her hands trembled. She was so furious, in fact, that she almost let the dragon’s letter slip out of her grip and back into the carrier bag. However, her postal training kicked in, and she clutched the letter once more. It simply would not do to waylay one piece of mail in the retrieval of several others. Xyrlark would deliver the letter, and she would also rescue the lost mail pieces to see them to their rightful owners. She steadied herself and leant down, thinking of a plan.
She meant to tuck the envelope under a corner of the emerald, whose many massive, reflecting faces would surely bring the missive to the dragon’s attention. But as she made to slide the letter under a pristinely cut side, her horns knocked against the gem.
The knock reverberated down through the base of the emerald and sent a pearl tumbling down the dragonmound, which knocked aside coins, which dislodged rings, which bounced off of chainmail, which slid into bejeweled goblets, and soon a whole avalanche of treasure careened down the golden hills towards the slumbering dragon.
The dragon’s eyes opened as the shimmering wave broke across his snoring nose. Xyrlark froze, half-bent, letter still clutched in one hand.
“Who dares?” The dragon boomed, swiveling his boxy face around to fix the satyr in his serpentine gaze. The near-translucent fins on the side of his face folded back in anger, and his barbels coiled at the disturbance in the air. Xyrlark quickly straightened to her full height, back popping with the rush. The tallest of her family members, she felt the very smallest she’d ever been. She fumbled with her mail carrier’s bag, straightening the straps and polished buckles as she cleared her throat.
“Xyrlark Littleknight, sir, carrier number 712 with the Hallentrough Postal Service, by the grace of the elected Premiere and Deuxieme.” The dragon stared, and she stared back, both unsure how to proceed. Xyrlark had never delivered on a dragon route before and suddenly felt the training woefully inadequate.
“A mail carrier? A thief, you mean!” The dragon struggled to find his voice, nearly whispering her job title. The following accusation, however, Xyrlark felt with the full anger of the disturbed dragon, as a column of smoke erupted from his nostrils in punctuation. His neck snaked long as he drew closer to her, six legs crept his stout body forward, and his teeth bared in a snarl.
“What kind of thief are you and your cohorts, in those glaring yellow costumes?” The smoke coiled around Xyrlark as the dragon sneered. Remembering the regular carrier, Xyrlark hoped she could avoid their fate. Whether they truly had been a thief or were simply trying to recover misbegotten parcels did not matter in the moment, only that the dragon now thought extremely ill of the uniform she currently wore.
“It is the yellow of a mail carrier, sir, not a thief,” she corrected him instinctively. She had worked hard for this job and the canary yellow outfit. Not to say that thieves didn’t work hard, as surely they had extensive trainings, but she was not part of the thieves’ union. She was part of the postal service, which had its own union, of course.
“A lie! You are here to finish the job that other fellow failed at. You have even given me a pseudonym in an attempt to trick me. A satyr with a human surname. Preposterous!” The dragon stared down its pug nose at her.
Xyrlark’s whiskers quivered in exasperation. She struggled against the impulse to straighten her mutton chops again. “It is not a trick! I am happily adopted! I have seven human siblings, and all of us share the same last name, as families sometimes are known to do. And as I said twice already, I am a mail carrier, appointed by the Premiere and Deuxieme of Hallentrough themselves! They gave my paperwork their seal and everything.” Xyrlark fumbled about in her pockets for her carrier card, thrusting it triumphantly towards the dragon, seal and all.
“Seven siblings?” The dragon appeared to suffer from selective hearing and remained wary, accusatory. He did not even bother to look at her proffered paperwork. Instead, his eyes roved the corners and side passages of the cave. “I suppose your brothers are all skulking about, waiting to rob me when my guard is down?”
“None of my siblings – all sisters –” Xyrlark began to correct the dragon, only for him to speak over her.
“Sisters? Stay close to home then, do they?” The dragon’s muscles relaxed, and his hackles lowered.
Xyrlark caught what he meant, and her own shoulders tensed in anger. But she continued to talk rapidly, hoping to soothe the situation. “Oh no, sir. Una is a sailor, gone all the way to Myrdon and back several times. And Flish is attending the Academy down in River’s Toll. For Unseen and Unknowable Maths. We’re all very proud of her.” Xyrlark counted her sisters off on her fingers. “Oh, and Jhorr is training at one of the glassworks guilds in the capital, they want to make stained glass windows, I think they’ll be really successful at it, and –”
“A very well-traveled family, I’m sure.” The dragon interrupted in a snarl, his lips drawn back, teeth sharper than pikes. “And how many of the eight of you are thieves?”
Xyrlark paused her ramble just long enough for her brain to catch up with her. “As I was saying, before the interruption, I can’t say any of us are. Bora used to nick my toys when we were little, but she’s long since stopped.”
“Well, perhaps you are not a thief after all. A humble satyr postman. Rather a beast of a different flavor, if you catch my drift.” The dragon puffed another ream of smoke in Xyrlark’s direction and chuckled at his own joke.
“Oh, it wouldn’t make much of a difference, sir.” Xyrlark kept her voice cool and flat.
“Being eaten would not make much of a difference? Never heard a meal say that.”
“The mail always gets delivered!” Xyrlark chirped, even as the dragon began to move towards her, his six legs cascading like a centipede’s as his serpentine body rolled out into its full length. “So, it won’t much matter if you eat me or not.”
Xyrlark spit into the hand not clutching the mail and reached up once more to smooth her sideburns back into neat lines. Her hand did not shake, even though it did matter a great deal if she got to see her mothers again, and her sisters, and got to lie down in her own bed and eat a bowl of soup before dozing off. It mattered very much, but her hands did not shake.
“Rather insipid a saying,” the dragon huffed. His claws made a sound like an approaching army as all thirty of them scratched towards her.
“Oh, no, I think it’s very important. And true.” Triumphantly, Xyrlark waved the letter in front of her. “You see, that’s what I’ve been telling you. That’s why I’m here. To deliver the mail. Your mail. And I will deliver it, no matter what.”
The dragon halted his approach and reached across his vast horde to snatch the letter from Xyrlark’s hand. The wind the movement caused blew her sideburns out of place yet again. She paid it no mind, eyes forward, fur beginning to prickle and itch just beneath her skin.
The dragon fumbled to wield a massive claw at the end of a wing like a letter opener and began to read, necessitating he take his gaze off the satyr. The moment he did, Xyrlark shifted, quick as a cat, and began to clock overtime hours.
Dear Exalted Sir,
The kingdom of Hallentrough has conducted its quinquennial census of the kingdom. The census has been enacted by royal decree from the Elected and Exalted Premiere Ildriim Iroka the Tenth, and the Elected and Exalted Deuxieme Harra Renryme. In the course of this census it has been found and documented, that not only have you devoured 117 civil servants in the course of conducting their duties but that you have also failed to pay taxes for the past 1,589 cycles. As such, you are being ordered to pay back taxes as well as a fine to be determined – the sum not to exceed 58.73 percent of your total holdings.
In order for the collection of said taxes to be undertaken with accuracy and safety, a team of auditors, accompanied by a contingent of troll war troubadours, and an assorted team of kobolde sappeurs and harpy bombardiers have been deployed to your estate. We trust –
The dragon stopped reading as an enraged snort sent a flaming ball of snot through the letter.
“You dare deliver this to me?” In a rage, he sought about for the mail carrier, thinking her hiding amongst the rubies, cowering behind the garnets, burying her head in a hill of gold. The dragon began to rake his claws through his hoard, hoping to turn her up like a particularly belligerent mole. However, he searched for the wrong animal and turned up nothing. The nothing weighed on him, and the absences in his hoard became a burning presence in his throat. As he took stock of the missing belt, the disappeared encyclopedia, and the strangely vanished knot of hair in its golden box, he released a column of acrid fire from deep in his belly. But his fire was too slow, a little white cat with a stubby tail full of quills and a now brimming mailbag hanging at her side already darting out of the cave mouth. Xyrlark silently thanked the bog witch for her curse, as surely the long flowing tail of an ordinary cat would have been singed on her way out.
Xyrlark careened down the mountainside, away from the dragon’s fire. Steam rose from the ground around her. Snowmelt dripped from the pine trees as she dashed underneath them. Thankfully, the thick leather of her mailbag kept her packages safe.
The dragon did not chase her. Xyrlark supposed, as she paused to shift back and catch her breath beneath a still-dripping poplar copse, that perhaps he was tired from his recent village-burning. Or too embarrassed by the theft at the hands of a not-thief to show his face. She would report the successful mail retrieval to the post office and mail out a nice thank-you letter to the witch. If the supervisor tried to send her out again, she would report him to the union. She had done enough, with her route and a half, plus additional mail recovery. Xyrlark once more smoothed the cat-like puff of her mutton chops into fine points as she readjusted the packages in her bag. Of course, she would run one extra leg of delivery, to her grandmother’s house.
The mail always got delivered.
©November 2021, Gabrielle Bleu
Gabrielle Bleu spent a brief period of her life working as a mail carrier, during which time she faced down angry dogs and obstructive herds of deer more often than she did dragons. Her work has appeared in Dose of Dread, Mythaxis Magazine, and Utopia Science Fiction. This is her first appearance in Swords & Sorcery. Follow her on twitter @BeteMonstrueuse, and find more of her work at gabriellebleu.com.