The Big Book of Classic Fantasy

by The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  The miller’s boy shook his head. “No, I don’t know of any at all.”

  “Then I suppose we must just hunt for one,” said Baladina.

  They asked several carters whom they met if they knew where a Prince was to be found, but they all laughed so that Baladina grew quite discouraged. She stopped one boy on horseback and asked if he were a Prince in disguise, but he indignantly denied the charge.

  So they went up the road and down a country lane that ran under the willow trees, and when they were both very tired and hungry Baladina opened her handkerchief and gave the miller’s boy a bun. He refused the raisin cake, although he looked longingly at it, for he saw there was scarcely enough for two. Baladina sat down and ate it in the shade while he pulled some grass for the donkey. After their lunch they went on again. Just at the top of a hill they met a young man riding a black horse with a pack of hounds running beside him. “I know he is a Prince out hunting. You must stop him,” whispered Baladina. So the miller’s boy ran on ahead and shouted to the horseman.

  “Are you a Prince, sir?” asked Baladina as she approached.

  “Yes, miss, I am,” he replied curtly.

  Nothing daunted Baladina as she told her story. The young man laughed and said impatiently, “You foolish child, have you stopped me all this time to tell me a fairy tale? Go home to your parents and let me follow my dogs, I have no time to be playing with silly little girls,” and rode away.

  “How unkind of him to talk so,” said the Princess, “besides, he is very little older than I.”

  “If he were here, I’d thrash him!” declared the miller’s boy stoutly, clenching his fist.

  They went on for a little while in a spiritless sort of way, but the boy hurt his toe on a stone until it bled and the Princess was hot and dusty and ached in every bone of her body. Suddenly she stopped the donkey and began to cry.

  “There, there,” said the miller’s boy kindly, “don’t do that. I’ll find a Prince for you. You go home and rest and I’ll hunt until I find one, if it takes for ever.”

  Baladina dried her tears and spoke with sudden determination.

  “You shall be my Prince yourself. I know you are one, really. You must be a changeling left at the mill by some wicked fairy who stole you from your palace.”

  The boy shook his head stubbornly. “No, I wish I were, but I am only a miller’s boy.”

  “Well, you are the only nice person I have met all day; you have walked till your feet are sore and have let me ride your donkey, and your face is all scratched by the briars and you have had no dinner, and if you are not a Prince, you ought to be one. You are Prince enough for me, anyway. But I am so tired and hungry now, we will go home to the palace to-night and I will be enchanted in the morning. Come, get on the donkey and take me in front of you.”

  In vain he protested that the donkey could not carry them both, the Princess said that a Prince could not walk.

  “I wish you had on shoes and stockings, though,” she said. “I think a Prince should always have those.”

  “I have some for Sunday,” said the miller’s boy, “if I had only known I would have brought them.”

  As they turned slowly out of the lane they met a party of horsemen who were hunting for the Princess, and the king himself was among them.

  “Ha there, you precious run-away, so here you are, and who is this you have with you?”

  “He is my Prince,” said the Princess, “and he is to have half the kingdom.”

  “Oh-h, he is, is he? Who are you, my man?”

  “Please, sir, I am only the miller’s son, but the Princess was hunting for a Prince and couldn’t find one, so she asked me to be one.”

  “Hear, gentlemen, the Princess is out Prince-hunting early. Come here you little baggage.” He lifted her on the saddle in front of him.

  “He must come too, for he is my Prince!” cried the wilful Princess.

  But the king only laughed and gave the boy a gold piece, and rode away followed by his gentlemen, who were all laughing too. The miller’s boy stood by his donkey, looking wistfully after them, and the Princess Baladina wept bitterly at the dearth of Princes.

  Kenneth Grahame (1859–1932) was a Scottish author best known for his children’s book The Wind in the Willows (1908), which was dramatized in 1930 by A. A. Milne as Toad of Toad Hall. What many do not know is that the book came out of stories he wrote to his son in letters and that when Grahame tried to publish the book, he was rejected by numerous publications. Before Wind in the Willows, Grahame wrote stories about an orphaned family and published his first collection The Golden Age (1895), which consisted of eighteen stories. Three years later, Grahame published his second collection, Dream Days (1898), the first chapter of which is the wonderful “The Reluctant Dragon.” Although largely unknown today, these collections were popular in their day.

  The Reluctant Dragon

  Kenneth Grahame

  FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW have been unfailing provokers of sentiment ever since snow was first a white wonder in this drab-coloured world of ours. In a poetry-book presented to one of us by an aunt, there was a poem by one Wordsworth in which they stood out strongly with a picture all to themselves, too—but we didn’t think very highly either of the poem or the sentiment. Footprints in the sand, now, were quite another matter, and we grasped Crusoe’s attitude of mind much more easily than Wordsworth’s. Excitement and mystery, curiosity and suspense—these were the only sentiments that tracks, whether in sand or in snow, were able to arouse in us.

  We had awakened early that winter morning, puzzled at first by the added light that filled the room. Then, when the truth at last fully dawned on us and we knew that snow-balling was no longer a wistful dream, but a solid certainty waiting for us outside, it was a mere brute fight for the necessary clothes, and the lacing of boots seemed a clumsy invention, and the buttoning of coats an unduly tedious form of fastening, with all that snow going to waste at our very door.

  When dinner-time came we had to be dragged in by the scruff of our necks. The short armistice over, the combat was resumed; but presently Charlotte and I, a little weary of contests and of missiles that ran shudderingly down inside one’s clothes, forsook the trampled battle-field of the lawn and went exploring the blank virgin spaces of the white world that lay beyond. It stretched away unbroken on every side of us, this mysterious soft garment under which our familiar world had so suddenly hidden itself. Faint imprints showed where a casual bird had alighted, but of other traffic there was next to no sign; which made these strange tracks all the more puzzling.

  We came across them first at the corner of the shrubbery, and pored over them long, our hands on our knees. Experienced trappers that we knew ourselves to be, it was annoying to be brought up suddenly by a beast we could not at once identify.

  “Don’t you know?” said Charlotte, rather scornfully. “Thought you knew all the beasts that ever was.”

  This put me on my mettle, and I hastily rattled off a string of animal names embracing both the arctic and the tropic zones, but without much real confidence.

  “No,” said Charlotte, on consideration; “they won’t any of ’em quite do. Seems like something lizardy. Did you say a iguanodon? Might be that, p’raps. But that’s not British, and we want a real British beast. I think it’s a dragon!”

  “ ’T isn’t half big enough,” I objected.

  “Well, all dragons must be small to begin with,” said Charlotte: “like everything else. P’raps this is a little dragon who’s got lost. A little dragon would be rather nice to have. He might scratch and spit, but he couldn’t do anything really. Let’s track him down!”

  So we set off into the wide snow-clad world, hand in hand, our hearts big with expectation,—complacently confident that by a few smudgy traces in the snow we were in a fair way to capture a half-grown specimen of a fabulous beas
t.

  We ran the monster across the paddock and along the hedge of the next field, and then he took to the road like any tame civilized tax-payer. Here his tracks became blended with and lost among more ordinary footprints, but imagination and a fixed idea will do a great deal, and we were sure we knew the direction a dragon would naturally take. The traces, too, kept reappearing at intervals—at least Charlotte maintained they did, and as it was her dragon I left the following of the slot to her and trotted along peacefully, feeling that it was an expedition anyhow and something was sure to come out of it.

  Charlotte took me across another field or two, and through a copse, and into a fresh road; and I began to feel sure it was only her confounded pride that made her go on pretending to see dragon-tracks instead of owning she was entirely at fault, like a reasonable person. At last she dragged me excitedly through a gap in a hedge of an obviously private character; the waste, open world of field and hedge row disappeared, and we found ourselves in a garden, well-kept, secluded, most undragon-haunted in appearance. Once inside, I knew where we were. This was the garden of my friend the circus-man, though I had never approached it before by a lawless gap, from this unfamiliar side. And here was the circus-man himself, placidly smoking a pipe as he strolled up and down the walks. I stepped up to him and asked him politely if he had lately seen a Beast.

  “May I inquire,” he said, with all civility, “what particular sort of a Beast you may happen to be looking for?”

  “It’s a lizardy sort of Beast,” I explained. “Charlotte says it’s a dragon, but she doesn’t really know much about beasts.”

  The circus-man looked round about him slowly. “I don’t think,” he said, “that I’ve seen a dragon in these parts recently. But if I come across one I’ll know it belongs to you, and I’ll have him taken round to you at once.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Charlotte, “but don’t trouble about it, please, ’cos p’raps it isn’t a dragon after all. Only I thought I saw his little footprints in the snow, and we followed ’em up, and they seemed to lead right in here, but maybe it’s all a mistake, and thank you all the same.”

  “Oh, no trouble at all,” said the circus-man, cheerfully. “I should be only too pleased. But of course, as you say, it may be a mistake. And it’s getting dark, and he seems to have got away for the present, whatever he is. You’d better come in and have some tea. I’m quite alone, and we’ll make a roaring fire, and I’ve got the biggest Book of Beasts you ever saw. It’s got every beast in the world, and all of ’em coloured; and we’ll try and find your beast in it!”

  We were always ready for tea at any time, and especially when combined with beasts. There was marmalade, too, and apricot-jam, brought in expressly for us; and afterwards the beast-book was spread out, and, as the man had truly said, it contained every sort of beast that had ever been in the world.

  The striking of six o’clock set the more prudent Charlotte nudging me, and we recalled ourselves with an effort from Beastland, and reluctantly stood up to go.

  “Here, I’m coming along with you,” said the circus-man. “I want another pipe, and a walk’ll do me good. You needn’t talk to me unless you like.”

  Our spirits rose to their wonted level again. The way had seemed so long, the outside world so dark and eerie, after the bright warm room and the highly-coloured beast-book. But a walk with a real Man—why, that was a treat in itself! We set off briskly, the Man in the middle. I looked up at him and wondered whether I should ever live to smoke a big pipe with that careless sort of majesty! But Charlotte, whose young mind was not set on tobacco as a possible goal, made herself heard from the other side.

  “Now, then,” she said, “tell us a story, please, won’t you?”

  The Man sighed heavily and looked about him. “I knew it,” he groaned. “I knew I should have to tell a story. Oh, why did I leave my pleasant fireside? Well, I will tell you a story. Only let me think a minute.”

  So he thought a minute, and then he told us this story.

  Long ago—might have been hundreds of years ago—in a cottage half-way between this village and yonder shoulder of the Downs up there, a shepherd lived with his wife and their little son. Now the shepherd spent his days—and at certain times of the year his nights too—up on the wide ocean-bosom of the Downs, with only the sun and the stars and the sheep for company, and the friendly chattering world of men and women far out of sight and hearing. But his little son, when he wasn’t helping his father, and often when he was as well, spent much of his time buried in big volumes that he borrowed from the affable gentry and interested parsons of the country round about. And his parents were very fond of him, and rather proud of him too, though they didn’t let on in his hearing, so he was left to go his own way and read as much as he liked; and instead of frequently getting a cuff on the side of the head, as might very well have happened to him, he was treated more or less as an equal by his parents, who sensibly thought it a very fair division of labour that they should supply the practical knowledge, and he the book-learning. They knew that book-learning often came in useful at a pinch, in spite of what their neighbours said. What the Boy chiefly dabbled in was natural history and fairy-tales, and he just took them as they came, in a sandwichy sort of way, without making any distinctions; and really his course of reading strikes one as rather sensible.

  One evening the shepherd, who for some nights past had been disturbed and preoccupied, and off his usual mental balance, came home all of a tremble, and, sitting down at the table where his wife and son were peacefully employed, she with her seam, he in following out the adventures of the Giant with no Heart in his Body, exclaimed with much agitation:

  “It’s all up with me, Maria! Never no more can I go up on them there Downs, was it ever so!”

  “Now don’t you take on like that,” said his wife, who was a very sensible woman: “but tell us all about it first, whatever it is as has given you this shake-up, and then me and you and the son here, between us, we ought to be able to get to the bottom of it!”

  “It began some nights ago,” said the shepherd. “You know that cave up there—I never liked it, somehow, and the sheep never liked it neither, and when sheep don’t like a thing there’s generally some reason for it. Well, for some time past there’s been faint noises coming from that cave—noises like heavy sighings, with grunts mixed up in them; and sometimes a snoring, far away down—real snoring, yet somehow not honest snoring, like you and me o’nights, you know!”

  “I know,” remarked the Boy, quietly.

  “Of course I was terrible frightened,” the shepherd went on; “yet somehow I couldn’t keep away. So this very evening, before I come down, I took a cast round by the cave, quietly. And there—O Lord! there I saw him at last, as plain as I see you!”

  “Saw who?” said his wife, beginning to share in her husband’s nervous terror.

  “Why him, I’m a telling you!” said the shepherd. “He was sticking half-way out of the cave, and seemed to be enjoying of the cool of the evening in a poetical sort of way. He was as big as four cart-horses, and all covered with shiny scales—deep-blue scales at the top of him, shading off to a tender sort o’ green below. As he breathed, there was that sort of flicker over his nostrils that you see over our chalk roads on a baking windless day in summer. He had his chin on his paws, and I should say he was meditating about things. Oh, yes, a peaceable sort o’ beast enough, and not ramping or carrying on or doing anything but what was quite right and proper. I admit all that. And yet, what am I to do? Scales, you know, and claws, and a tail for certain, though I didn’t see that end of him—I ain’t used to ’em, and I don’t hold with ’em, and that’s a fact!”

  The Boy, who had apparently been absorbed in his book during his father’s recital, now closed the volume, yawned, clasped his hands behind his head, and said sleepily:

  “It’s all right, father. Don’t you worry. I
t’s only a dragon.”

  “Only a dragon?” cried his father. “What do you mean, sitting there, you and your dragons? Only a dragon indeed! And what do you know about it?”

  “ ’Cos it is, and ’cos I do know,” replied the Boy, quietly. “Look here, father, you know we’ve each of us got our line. You know about sheep, and weather, and things; I know about dragons. I always said, you know, that that cave up there was a dragon-cave. I always said it must have belonged to a dragon some time, and ought to belong to a dragon now, if rules count for anything. Well, now you tell me it has got a dragon, and so that’s all right. I’m not half as much surprised as when you told me it hadn’t got a dragon. Rules always come right if you wait quietly. Now, please, just leave this all to me. And I’ll stroll up to-morrow morning—no, in the morning I can’t, I’ve got a whole heap of things to do—well, perhaps in the evening, if I’m quite free, I’ll go up and have a talk to him, and you’ll find it’ll be all right. Only, please, don’t you go worrying round there without me. You don’t understand ’em a bit, and they’re very sensitive, you know!”

  “He’s quite right, father,” said the sensible mother. “As he says, dragons is his line and not ours. He’s wonderful knowing about book-beasts, as every one allows. And to tell the truth, I’m not half happy in my own mind, thinking of that poor animal lying alone up there, without a bit o’ hot supper or anyone to change the news with; and maybe we’ll be able to do something for him; and if he ain’t quite respectable our Boy’ll find it out quick enough. He’s got a pleasant sort o’ way with him that makes everybody tell him everything.”

  Next day, after he’d had his tea, the Boy strolled up the chalky track that led to the summit of the Downs; and there, sure enough, he found the dragon, stretched lazily on the sward in front of his cave. The view from that point was a magnificent one. To the right and left, the bare and billowy leagues of Downs; in front, the vale, with its clustered homesteads, its threads of white roads running through orchards and well-tilled acreage, and, far away, a hint of grey old cities on the horizon. A cool breeze played over the surface of the grass and the silver shoulder of a large moon was showing above distant junipers. No wonder the dragon seemed in a peaceful and contented mood; indeed, as the Boy approached he could hear the beast purring with a happy regularity. “Well, we live and learn!” he said to himself. “None of my books ever told me that dragons purred!