A Book Dragon Read online

  A Book Dragon Donn Kushner Copyright 1987 by Donn Kushner

  CHAPTER I

  DRAGON AND HIS GRANDMOTHER

  WE SELDOM HEAR OF DRAGONS NOWADAYS. IT IS EASY to believe that they never existed at all. But many years ago people knew that there were dragons, just as they knew there were angels and devils, witches and gnomes, and, on occasion, banshees and leprechauns. Even if they saw no dragons in their own neighborhoods, they were sure that some could be found in far, unknown, fearful places. So that, in old maps of unexplored lands we can still see blank areas with the warning words, “Here there bee dragons.”

  The maps are all filled in now; the empty spaces bear names like Caracas, and Vladivostok, and Chicago. Dragons aren’t mentioned at all. But there are dragons alive today, at least one of them. This is his story.

  NONESUCH WAS - AND STILL IS. FOR THAT MATTER-THE last of a family of dragons that lived over five hundred years ago in a limestone hill, honeycombed with caverns, above the village of Serpent Grimsby near the south coast of England. The dark mouth of the family’s cavern opened towards an ugly tangled scrub forest that ended, at the lap of the hill, in an evil bog: land which few men entered by choice and still fewer left. From the cavern, the dragons could see the tip of the village church spire over the crest of the next hill and, past this, the square towers and crenellated walls of the Earl’s castle.

  The castle had been built in the time of Nonesuch’s great-grandfather. While lurking in the forest above the building site, he had become so interested in watching the walls of the donjon rise that when he came down for a snack of fat cattle, he found the circle almost completed. The drovers were able to herd the cattle inside and drop a crude gate, strong enough to keep out the dragon, who was of a peaceable disposition and too lazy to break it down. Later, he could only sniff sadly at the roasting meat as the guards and the workmen feasted on three of the cows. They had a fine time, with their ale

  barrels, and the smoke rising in the clear air, and their songs rising too, in praise of their own cleverness. When they were full, at the bidding of good Father John, the Earl’s chaplain, they all knelt to thank the Lord for saving their animals from the evil dragon, whom they took to be the Devil himself.

  Such setbacks often seemed to happen nowadays, Nonesuch’s grandmother told him. In the past, dragons, especially those of her own family, had been quicker, fiercer, subtler, more wily than they were now. The young dragon — he was not quite fifty years old at this time, of a clear luminous green, and his scales moved over each other with scarcely a squeak-listened to his grandmother with rapt attention, gazing at her with eager yellow eyes.

  Nonesuch had never known his mother. Shortly after his birth, she was seized with a great longing for solitude and dryness and flew south, to brood over the sands of the Sahara Desert. Sometimes her vast form could be seen by the fearful Egyptians, sprawled atop the Pyramid of Cheops. She crouched before the Sphinx, both motionless for days, until the stone monster’s patience had, at last, won. Then Nonesuch’s mother had flown off towards the sources of the Nile. Who knew where she was now?

  Whatever she herself had done in the past, the grandmother now stayed indoors. Nonesuch never tired of hearing her recount his family’s history. He would sprawl on the flat floor of the cavern, by the entrance, sometimes raising a wing to keep the least ray of sunlight from his grandmother’s eyes, while she lay as far from daylight as possible, by her pile of treasure.

  His grandmother told Nonesuch of the legendary founder of their race, the great Gorm, who, it was said, lumbered up

  from the black swamps when men still lived in caves. Gorm used to lie down among these cave-dwellers and let them pound him with clubs and try their flinty spears on his tough hide, much as a dog enjoys his master’s scratches. Then, when they were worn out with their useless efforts, Gorm would lazily select a few of his attackers for lunch.

  She told of cunning Hraftiagel, who would crouch in the brown grass of Salisbury Plain within sight of the pillars of Stonehenge on summer evenings, picking off the blue-painted Druids as they whirled in ecstasy among the shadows.

  Her memory ranged then to the Continental branch of the family: to the mighty Feuerschlange, who ruled in the dark forests of northern Germany. With his tail alone, this fearsome beast once swept a whole phalanx of steel-clad soldiers into a small lake. Then he set the lake boiling with his fiery breath and ate his dinner cooked, picking each soldier out of his steel shell. Nonesuch’s father had seen people do much the same thing with snails, the grandmother added for the sake of information, though she disapproved of her son’s interest in human eating habits. (‘ ‘What good can come of it?” she would remark.)

  And then her mind, which sometimes could not remember events of the same day, took a great leap backwards. In the beginning, his grandmother told Nonesuch, dragons had chosen to separate themselves from the dinosaurs, to whom they were distantly related, except for being so much more intelligent.

  She described that terrible time, millions and millions of years ago, when a huge stone from the sky struck the earth and filled the heavens with dust, so that the vegetation which fed dinosaurs and their prey died, and in time the immense beasts died too. She told, almost as if she were seeing it now, how the ancestors of the dragons flew high above the dust

  clouds, resting only on the mountain tops, feeding on the ancestors of sure-footed mountain goats and other such frugal, hardy creatures. Below them, in the thick murk, the dragons could hear the plaintive groans of dinosaurs, who seemed more ready to die than to admit how their world had changed and seek new food in new places. Occasionally a pterodactyl, a great winged reptile, would swoop up into the sunlight, then, confused by so much clarity, descend again into the dying forests.’ “They were so stupid,” the grandmother said, wagging her head with a sour, disapproving tone, as if she were speaking of creatures alive now, not those dead for millions of years.’ ‘No true dragon could ever tolerate stupidity.”

  “But Grandmother,” Nonesuch said respectfully, for he knew she didn’t like to be contradicted, “some of our ancestors have done foolish things. You’ve said so yourself.” He remembered her past stories. “Most of the time,” he added.

  His grandmother reared back her head and almost rose up on her legs; her dim eyes glowed fiercely. “Foolish? Yes! Improvident? More often than not! Never counting the cost! At times, frankly, insane! But not stupid! Any true dragon could always tally up the costs of its actions, could always foretell that it was heading for disaster, if it chose. But there are more important choices!”

  Then, her eyes sending out pulses of dull light, as pride and sorrow swelled within her, his grandmother told of the valiant, unfortunate Schatzwache, who, from high above the Caucasus mountains, spotted a vein of pure gold exposed by a sudden geological fault. Obedient to the great law of all dragons, “Guard your treasure,” Schatzwache settled down on the shining surface, covering it with his wide wings and long tail, hardly leaving it even to search for food. Finally, when he was so weak that he could no longer fly, he was set upon by scores

  of knights with two-handed swords and hundreds of bushy-bearded peasants with long axes. He gave a good account of himself before his enemies hacked him to pieces, and his green blood mingled with theirs. But the dragon’s blood burned down into the gold itself, giving it a magnificent blue-green sheen: the “dragon-gold” from which the crowns of all the Czars of Russia were fashioned.

  “Yes, guard your treasure,” the grandmother repeated. “A dragon without a treasure is nothing but an ugly flying reptile, with even less dignity than a salamander!” Then, her nostrils pinched together, she added, “With less dignity than a turtle, and with no more than a toad.”

  Nonesuch’s grandmo
ther had many sayings like this, which she brought out at more or less appropriate times.’ ‘Never kiB anything you won’t eat,” she would say, adding in a milder tone, “Why waste the energy?” Or, “Be dauntless, valiant, tragic, whatever you like; but don’t be stupid.” Or, “If you must fight, find a worthy foe.” (Often adding with a shake of her head, “If you’re lucky enough to come across one these days.”) But usually, even if she had said it before, she would end her list of precepts with:’ ‘Always guard your treasure!”

  So, dreaming, remembering her family’s past glory, her cracked, scaly head nodding, her great eyes closing and winking, the grandmother drooled and mumbled over her own pile of treasure: over the gilded sword hilts, the blackened silver arm rings with crudely cut sapphires, the gold coins in rotten wooden chests, the skulls and neck-bones encircled with diadems and jewelled chains.

  At the very back of the heap, against the ca-vern wall, were layers of stacked shields, elbow-deep in tarnished silver coins, all resting on a massive carved door that seemed to have been torn by its hinges from some

  castle hall. Sometimes she dragged herself up on the pile of treasure and thrust the door aside with her claws. Behind it was a narrow tunnel that slanted steeply downwards. The grandmother would stick her head into the tunnel and withdraw it again. Rarely she entered as far as her shoulders; only once with all her body but the tip of her tail. She let no one else enter.

  When she had looked long enough down the tunnel, she withdrew her head, moodily thrust the door back in place, weighed it down with the shields and coins, and spread herself out so that a claw and a wing, at least, covered part of the pile of treasure; then she would resume her thoughts, and her slumbers, and her tales of the old days.

  Almost always, when she had given her account of her family’s history and a catalogue of the rules by which they lived, the grandmother would heave a sigh that made the cavern’s walls shudder, and remark that their race had declined.

  For several generations now, they had lost the ability to breathe fire. The only traces that remained of this once mighty power were the internal fires that caused their eyes to glow and to give forth enough light for the dragons to find their way in pitch darkness. And, she added, that Kept their blood warm, so that they were active in all weathers, not sluggish in fall and sleeping in winter like the lowly reptiles that sometimes dared to claim kinship with them.

  More important, dragons seemed to have missed their path in dealing with humans. The grandmother’s words were saddest when she spoke of these creatures. She had watched them closely and felt that no good could come of them. They were small, soft, fearful, but resourceful: capable of infinite guile. Sometimes, she suspected, they regarded dragons only as problems, not as catastrophes. She confessed to a terrible foreboding that human cunning would finally triumph over the dragons’ strength and sinewy grace, over their fierce courage and joy of combat.

  And after a silence that might last half an hour, the grandmother would declare that it was not through fear that most dragons now refrained from eating human flesh, but through suspicion. When they spoke of their reluctance to eat people, dragons usually mentioned how difficult it was to separate them from their clothes: the thick leather jerkins; the layer upon layer of petticoats that bunched up so in your stomach; then, the armor, the shin-guards, the chain mail, and all the rest!

  But these weren’t the real reasons, the grandmother said, winking wisely. She had finally decided that dragons did not eat human flesh because they mistrusted it.

  They were wise to do so. She herself had flown over battlefields and seen thousands of human bodies, drying in the

  wind, infecting all the air with their stench. Despite this, she had hovered over the field for hours to watch and learn.

  She had concluded that since humans killed, but did not eat, each other there must be something terribly wrong with their flesh. “And your cousin will leam what it is one day,” she said. “You’ll see if he doesn’t!”

  She was referring to Nonesuch’s mean cousin, Cauchemar, a mud-colored beast who was usually seen out of the comer of one’s eye, slithering away, and who was now the only one of the family who ate humans.

  But even though he was the terror of Serpent Grimsby and its surroundings, Cauchemar probably did humans more good than harm. He ate mainly murderers and other violent criminals, his appetite excited by the scent of evil and terror that rose from their flesh. After such a meal, Cauchemar would lie for hours at the mouth of his own cavern with an expression on his face that showed he had acquired as much knowledge as nourishment from his victim.

  He was also fond of liquor. Sometimes he would eat a. drunkard who had fallen asleep after going out behind the village inn to count the stars. But even a very little alcohol affected Cauchemar powerfully. He would then lie on the ground for hours, staring up at the stars himself, his great eyes like moons come down to earth, crooning uncouth songs.

  “Watch out for Cauchemar,” the grandmother often told Nonesuch, nodding mysteriously. The remark made no sense at all. Nonesuch, who had not yet reached his full growth, measured a good thirty feet from nose to tail, and his wingspan was still greater. Cauchemar, who was smaller, had stopped growing ten years ago. Nonesuch ranged high in the air for the joy of flying; sometimes he would overthrow young pines with his claws as he passed, just to see them fall. He considered

  himself a match for almost anyone, especially his cousin. But his grandmother continued to warn him, looking at him as if there were yet more behind her words.

  And sometimes her words were more puzzling still. She would mutter herself to sleep with ‘ “Turtles and toads; turtles and toads,” in tones of such distaste that it seemed there could be no forms of life lower than these.

  CHAPTER II

  T URTLES, TOADS, AND BUTTERFLIES

  13

  NONESUCH ALWAYS BECAME UNCOMFORTABLE WHEN

  his grandmother spoke so slightingly of turtles and toads, though he certainly did not contradict her. Her words reminded him of an unimportant event in his childhood, one that he had never thought it worth while to mention to anyone. Whenever he remembered this incident, he told himself that it was foolish even to think about it, let alone bring it into his elders’ important conversation.

  He had just turned ten and was rejoicing in his ability to fly, to travel great distances, to look down on all the petty earth-bound creatures. One day, soaring above a wide beech forest, he saw a wink of blue far below. Circling, he realized it was a small, perfectly round pool shaded among the smooth boles of the beech trees. Nonesuch was still childish enough to be curious at a new, pretty thing, though he was trying to overcome this. He glided down into the forest. This took skill as well as courage, since his wingspan was already greater than the distance between many of the trees. He had to twist and bank to avoid the trunks and slip between the branches. As he descended he thought, with some pride, that all the full-grown dragons were too large to follow him and, with a feeling he could not identify, that soon he would also be too large.

  Nonesuch landed by the pool’s brim. When the surface became still again after the wind of his flight, he looked over at his own face, framed in the reflection of beech trunks. His features were still childlike, without the fierce, proud angles of a proper adult dragon. The water was smooth, the day hot and dusty. He thrust his head in, almost up to the eyes. Then he looked up at the beech trees, down at their crooked reflection in the rippling water, and let his eyes sweep the surface of the pond to enjoy the double image of a bright-yellow butterfly with a blue star on each wing.

  “Well,” a grumpy voice remarked, “I hope you’ll leave some water for the rest of us!”

  Nonesuch opened his eyes wide. Directly before him a head rose out of the water, a homy, disapproving head on a long, wrinkled neck that emerged from a hard greenish-orange shell.

  The dragon took his head completely out of the water. In the wave this created the turtle’s head disappeared for a m
oment, then poked up again by a lily-pad. To show that he had not descended to the pool for frivolous reasons. Nonesuch took a deep drink of water and announced stiffly, “I was thirsty.”

  ‘ ‘I can well believe it, with all those fires inside you,” the turtle replied.’ ‘We were watching you,” he added.’ ‘It’s very rare to see one of your lot so close. Usually you stay above the tree-tops, which is quite close enough.”

  14

  Nonesuch decided not to take offense at the remarks of such a lowly creature. “Our wings are too vast and broad;

  their sweep is too mighty for the confined air of the forests,” he replied loftily. This was how they talked back in the cavern.

  “Yes,” hissed a thin, very high voice, which Nonesuch still heard - for dragons had sharp ears: they could hear a sheep bleat or a maiden scream three valleys away. The butterfly was speaking. Now it continued: “I’ve seen them bouncing from the tree trunks like hailstones. They have no control at all!” Then, as if to show what control was, the butterfly traced an intricate, beautiful pattern round a spiky hawthorn bush on the bank of the pool. Had she touched any of the thorns, it would certainly have torn her frafl wings, but this only made her fly faster.

  High above, the wind stirred the beech leaves. New sunbeams flashed down; the butterfly seemed to be winding then-light among the thorns. For a few seconds she hovered, quite motionless, above the exact center of the pond. Then she glided down towards a bright stone on the bank; but she saw, just in time, that a gray-brown, warty toad had placed his feet on it and was looking heavenwards with a pious, hungry expression. The butterfly soared upwards immediately and lighted on the highest thorn. “So that’s where you’ve got to,” she exclaimed. “You’re so ugly, I tend to forget about you.”

  “That might be a mistake,” the toad replied in a mild, though gravelly, voice. He hoisted himself onto the stone and sat for a moment, panting. “Though I have to admit,” he added,’ ‘that you’re probably not worth the trouble of catching. Too much air and motion in you to make a real mouthful.” Without seeming to move his head, the toad darted out his long tongue and scooped up a fat black water bug from the pool’s surface. “Ugly but substantial,” the toad remarked,