A Book Dragon

by Donn Kushner

Nonesuch’s scales bristled as this came home to him. His flight was slowed, and he almost flipped over in the air. For one glorious moment, he thought of facing the cannon below and dying nobly in combat. Then he remembered the force of the cannon balls. Humans might cast themselves vainly against unbeatable odds. This seemed to be their nature, his grandmother had said with disgust. But their ways were not his. Here was a new problem, and there was no one to guide him. What would he do?

  While thinking of this, Nonesuch flew in great sweeps above the earth. Below, fearful people pointed to heaven and crossed themselves. They were sure that, in these evil times, a flying dragon was a portent of yet more evil days to come.

  And Nonesuch looked down on the earth too: on the tiny huts of the peasants; on the castle, which from this height was no bigger than his toenail; on the besieging troops which resembled wood lice. He widened the circle of his flight. He soared westward, over the great beech forest, unchanged since his childhood. At one instant a round blue pool winked up at him, but he thought, proudly, that he was far too big and far too wise to fly down amid the trees. He flew north. The city of

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  Salisbury appeared below; the spire of its cathedral, already two hundred years old and weathered with time, seemed no bigger than a scrub pine. As long as he stayed high above the earth, humans and their works seemed puny enough. But he could not stay up there forever, looking down on them. He had to see to his treasure. Thoughtfully, Nonesuch glided back to his hill and into his cavern.

  A glance showed him that the treasure was still undisturbed. But Nonesuch regarded it with a feeling ofstrangeness. It had looked familiar and comforting when his grandmother spread herself over it, so that the pieces of gold made patterns on her patterned scales. Or when his father or his grandfather had slept off their feasts in the cavern. They had always seemed more comfortable if their bellies rested on the treasure heap - and they scattered the coins about with their sleepy twisting and writhing so that his grandmother had to sweep them back with her tail in the morning.

  Once, Nonesuch remembered, after she had put the pile into particularly good order, she told him again, “Always guard your treasure!” But then, after a time, she had added, ‘ ‘Remember, be as light on your feet as on your wings. A wise dragon is always poised for departure.”

  ‘ ‘But Grandmother,” Nonesuch could not help protesting after he had thought over these words, ‘ ‘how will I guard my treasure then?”

  “That you must decide for yourself,” his grandmother replied haughtily. And then, to preclude any further argument, “Consistency is a human virtue, of little account to a dragon.”

  Nonesuch thought of his grandmother’s words. He thought so long that darkness fell, then another day passed, and darkness fell again while he crouched motionless. When day broke again, he rose stiffly and thrust his head into the tunnel,

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  behind the heap of treasure. Then he withdrew his head, turned to the treasure heap, and filled his mouth with coins.

  It was hard work, the hardest he had ever done or heard of: he carried the treasure down into the tunnel, the coins and jewels in his mouth, the shields and his one reliquary balanced on his back, between his wings. He went almost as far as he had gone before into the tunnel, and it took three trips, or perhaps four, for at the end he had lost count. He made one last trip to be sure that no fragments of treasure had been left along the way to tempt adventurers to go further. Now he was certain that he had brought the treasure to a part of the tunnel so hot that no humans could live. Before he returned for the last time to the world outside, he spoke into the glowing darkness of the tunnel’s depth, “There, Grandmother, I’ve brought all the treasure to you. Guard it well.”

  He spent another day staring at the mouth of the tunnel. Then he piled all the loose boulders in the cavern into its entrance and fetched others from the hillside until the entrance was sealed off. No human would now suspect that the tunnel existed. Even though Nonesuch knew that the heat would kill any men who approached the treasure, he wanted to keep them as far away as possible.

  Now, he thought, he was indeed a dragon without a treasure. Perhaps he had no more dignity than a turtle or a toad-or even a butterfly. But, since there were no members of his family left to mock such simple creatures, he did not feel inclined to do so either.

  In the world outside, the siege of the castle continued. The defenders valiantly drove the enemy away again; then they were defeated by treachery when a disaffected knight let the besiegers in at night through a secret gate. The castle was taken, and destroyed.

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  All that could be burned was burned, and the walls were blasted away with gunpowder. Nonesuch watched from greater and lesser distances, gliding through the maze of caverns in his hill, Hying out at night - for at this time, he felt it more seemly not to show himself—to survey the scene at dawn from a distant vantage point. And now the castle had stopped smoking; a few scorched and meager peasants were setting up huts in the shadow of its ruined walls.

  During all this time, Nonesuch ate very little. In fact, he had eaten nothing since removing the treasure; but strangely, he did not feel hungry. His stomach didn’t shrink, as it used to do when food was scarce. In the past, even if his insides didn’t tell him so, he had always known it was time to eat when, without craning his neck, he could see his large hind toe with its gold nail, normally hidden by the swell of his belly. But now his toe didn’t appear at all. He had to crane his head to see it;

  and he did this so often his neck became sore.

  Nonesuch realized the cause of this curious change when he stopped to scratch his back against a sharp rock ridge with a hook-like projection that, in the past, had just fit his shoulder. Now he felt nothing. He looked back: it seemed that the hook was a foot higher than it used to be! Not believing his own eyes, he next compared the size of his foot to that of his footprint, dried in the mud at the cavern’s threshold from a rainy spell two weeks before. He measured the length of his tail by dangling it over the ledge before his cavern’s mouth. Before, his tail would reach exactly down to the forest floor;

  he knew this from the many times he had hung it over that ledge to beat out the twigs caught in the scales, for Nonesuch was a tidy beast. All these measurements confirmed that he had shrunk proportionately all over.

  Nonesuch soon decided that he had changed because he

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  had not been eating. He was able to test this quickly: though most of the regular flocks had been eaten or driven away, the wild boars had become bolder and were roaming out of the forest and invading former pasture-land. Nonesuch had some good chases and some delicious meals afterwards on the gamy flesh. His long fast had not weakened him. On the contrary, he found that he hunted with more vigor, that he was more agile for being smaller. After he ate, he grew again. And when he stopped, he shrank. He took his measurements carefully: there was no possibility of a mistake.

  What could have caused this? We will never know for certain, but in time Nonesuch became convinced that the great heat to which he had been exposed while following his grandmother down the tunnel had worked a change in all his tissues, so that their overall dimensions altered with his food supply. As far as we know, he was the only dragon to whom this happened, for no other dragon went so close to the molten rock at the core of the earth, and then returned in a fleshy form.

  But Nonesuch found that as he grew smaller, he grew livelier, more alert. It wasn’t only his fighting skill that improved:

  the air tasted better, colors looked brighter, he breathed more quickly and thought more quickly too.

  He had already come to the conclusion that there was little profit in being a very big dragon. Now, he realized, nothing stopped him from becoming a small one. Perhaps then he would find the world more to his taste.

  Since neither hunger nor weakness troubled him when he went without food, he decided to forgo eating altogether; just a quick snack now and then so he wouldn�
��t forget how. Otherwise, he would continue fasting until he reached a size that really suited him.

  CHAPTER V

  POOL IN THE FOREST

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  WHAT A STRANGE IDEA, YOU WILL SAY: WHAT A DISL grace for a dragon to choose to grow smaller! At first it appeared so to Nonesuch himself. A short way into his change, he did not seem to fit into any dignified description at all. He was just a large dragon, still the largest creature around, but smaller than he should be, considering his age. If he had not been even more obstinate than most dragons, he would have eaten his nil and grown again. But, once having started to grow smaller, he was unwilling to stop until he saw a clear reason to do so.

  When he was only fifteen feet long, Nonesuch became aware of his first source of danger. His cousin, Cauchemar, began eyeing him with unusual interest. Cauchemar’s eyes shone and his mouth watered unpleasantly. He had always turned up in unexpected places before, but now this seemed to be happening more often. When Nonesuch was only two-thirds the length of his cousin, Cauchemar became bolder. Till now, he had kept strictly to his own side of the hill and had never entered Nonesuch’s family cavern. He still did not cross the cavern’s threshold, but he waddled or slithered past it every day, more slyly arro-gant each time.

  Nonesuch began to suspect that his cousin was planning to add cannibalism — and of a close relative at that! - to his other crimes. But the violent times prevented this from happening.

  Since the destruction of Grimsby Castle, social order had almost disappeared from the surrounding world of men. Small groups of peasants huddled together in clusters of brushwood huts, guarding themselves and their flocks as best they could with crude weapons and farm implements. Around them ranged bands of cruel brigands, some of whom were waiting for the harvest before they descended on their prey. Sometimes the peasants would call for help from travelling homeless knights or men-at-anns. They would exchange food and goods for protection. But the character of the “protectors” was such that, as one chronicler of the times wrote,’ “The poore sheepe did not knowe whych was worse, the shepherdes or the wolves.”

  In the ruins of the castle itself now lived a robber band named “The Undergrowthe.” Led by the bold, hard-drinking Black Miles, they specialized in robbing travellers on the way to the coast from Salisbury. There was good business here, since at this time many of the more prosperous townspeople were trying to resettle abroad, or in the Isle of Wight, which was still relatively peaceful.

  The robbers had put together enough stores and weapons to protect them from any of the human enemies that had appeared thus far. But in their sorties and forays, they exposed themselves sufficiently to provide many tasty meals for Cauchemar. Though they tried, in a simple-minded fashion, to avoid the wfly dragon, their cruel, twisted thoughts and schemes drew him surely towards them. When they spied the mud-48

  colored dragon lurching away with a look of sly satisfaction on his face, the men of The Undergrowthe could be sure that their number had been reduced by at least one more.

  The clerk of the band was named Ambrose, sometimes “Brother Ambrose” because of his pious demeanor. He was the only one of the group who had been born in the village of Serpent Grimsby. He had served as altar boy in the church and later as pot-boy in the tavern. He had known of the dragon since his own childhood; thus far, he had avoided any of the places where Cauchemar might hunt. Since he knew that evil thoughts attracted the dragon, he mixed his ill deeds with thoughts of higher things. His comrades were sometimes shocked to see Brother Ambrose, his dagger and clothing splashed with blood, walk along with pious steps, reciting lengthy prayers. He also remembered the dragon’s taste for alcoholic beverages, or rather for those who consumed them.

  Brother Ambrose reflected long on the dragon’s nature while he sat with his book of records in his accustomed place, behind his bold captain and equally bold lieutenant, the one-legged “Lopped Cedric.” Ambrose’s fresh, smooth face was sorrowful, his blue innocent eyes almost weeping as he recorded the loss of yet another member of the band. From one of their raids he hid a small cask of rare fortified Rhenish wine, for later use.

  A month afterwards, the captain and the lieutenant returned from another raid, leading a pack-train of goods from which all the guardians had fled. Only the fat cook and a slim, pretty kitchen wench remained, tied together on one of the mules. The cook was howling with indignation, the girl was pale with fear. The clerk brought the wine cask out to the victorious warriors and volunteered to lead the mules with their burden

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  of treasure into the ruined castle walls. He also suggested, winking, that he relieve them of the company of the cook, who could be better employed making supper for the band.

  Brother Ambrose stopped to watch the two heroes break open the wine cask and begin to toast each other and the girl with their silver flagons. Then he continued on to the castle. Once inside he saw that the spoils were safely stowed away. He mildly but firmly discouraged any of the others from joining the captain and the lieutenant, who, he said, had quite enough company as it was. The fat cook wailed and lamented. The clerk, bowing in mockery, handed her a great kitchen ladle. She looked at the ladle, then grasped it firmly. She used it to clear away a robber who was sleeping in the cold fireplace. She chased two robbers out to get more wood, made another sweep the floor, and soon had cooked them their first decent meal in months. Brother Ambrose fetched some more wine, almost as good as that which he had given to the heads of the band. He insisted that they take time to savor it properly. So that, when he finally led the men outside with pinewood torches to join their leaders, he found what he had expected: a large, mud-colored dragon with huge shining eyes that dropped giant tears as he listened to the melodious lamentations of the innocent kitchen girl, who was tethered by one foot to a tree. Of the captain and the lieutenant nothing was to be seen, except the hand of the former, too laden with rings to be digestible, and Lopped Cedric’s wooden leg.

  The dragon was quite drunk. His sighs resembled an old drinking song; their sound convinced the superstitious robbers that their two leaders were still singing in the dragon’s belly. Some fled, others fell on their knees and crossed themselves. Only the clerk kept his presence of mind. He ran back

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  to the ruined castle for two small barrels of gunpowder, which he placed beneath the dragon’s wings. In doing this, he gained great respect from the rest of the band, who didn’t know, as he did, that the dragon, when intoxicated, remained motionless for hours. The clerk unpegged the kitchen wench, called the band back to a safe distance, laid a train of gunpowder to the barrels, and dropped an ember at the far end of the train. As the explosion blasted the dragon into three pieces, the amazed robbers saw his eyes light up, just for an instant, with fierce joy at this new experience.

  This episode was the true beginning of Brother Ambrose’s career. After his chief rival for the post was found floating in a pond one dark night, Ambrose was unanimously elected leader of The Undergrowthe. He directed it with great success. The band became more respectable and hired out as mercenaries. Eventually Ambrose joined the winning side in the civil war. As a reward, he was later given the castle for his own, money to rebuild it, and a noble title.

  And while all these events, of greater or less importance in human history, were taking place, Nonesuch continued to shrink.

  For some time he was still the largest creature in the vicinity. He judged it wiser to keep out of human sight as much as possible. He flew mostly at night; people seeing his silhouette against the moon could easily believe he was as large as ever. No one realized he was growing smaller, except for children, who whispered about it among themselves; but who cared what they thought? Nonesuch began to find the night a more comfortable time to be abroad. He would stay aloft, or sometimes perch in the highest trees until shortly before sunrise, when he would fly back to his cavern.

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  One bright moonlit night, he found the contours of the beech for
est over which he was flying strangely familiar. Though it made him uneasy to do so, he lighted on a tree and waited until dawn broke. Yes, directly beneath him was the same round blue pool he had seen in his childhood.

  By this time Nonesuch, though much older, was almost the same size as when he had first visited the pool. He flew down between the trees. This time, he realized, he was much more skffled in flying and could zoom between the branches in an elegant and daring fashion. Even the butterfly would be impressed to see such flying from a dragon, he thought; though of course the butterfly was long dead.

  He landed by the pool’s brim. The hawthorn bush on the bank had grown; there were two lily-pads where one had been before. At first there was no other sign of life on the pool’s surface, except for a line of skating water-bugs. Then a turtle’s head broke water, a wrinkled head with wise eyes that peered keenly at the dragon.

  “So,” the turtle remarked after a time, “you’ve learned some manners. Now you wait before you stick your nose in.” He cleared his eyes by dipping his head in the water and looked at the dragon again. “You’re older, but no larger. How is that?”

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  “I was larger before; now I’m growing smaller,” Nonesuch told him modestly.

  “Extraordinary!” the turtle remarked. “Can you stop growing smaller?”

  ‘ ‘If I like,” the dragon replied.’ ‘So far, I haven’t found the proper size.”

  “You’re not a bad size now, especially since you’ve lost some of your youthful bumptiousness.” The turtle swam around the pool, always keeping his eyes on the dragon, regarding him from different perspectives.

  “He flies very well!” a shrill voice remarked.