The Part About the Dragon was (Mostly) True

by Sean Gibson

  “Your very weird enchantment gave you a very weird sense of humor,” I said (not happily, I might add).

  “It really did,” said the rock.

  “So, dawn is a place—what does that tell us about the answer, Whiska?” asked Nadi.

  “I don’t know, you yellow-tressed flower sniffer!” Whiska shot back. (It’s a commonly held belief that elves love to smell flowers, but that’s not true—I mean, some do, just like humans, but it’s not a racial characteristic. I have no clue why the idea got traction, and even less of an idea why Whiska thought that was an effective insult.)

  “Let’s think through this,” I said. “If dawn is a place, then the speaker in the riddle arrives there when the sun comes up and stays until the midday meal to ‘spread some cheer.’ That suggests that the speaker is a physical being and not a concept like love or death or some nonsense like that, right?”

  “The sun…comes up early,” added Borg.

  “The part about taking a bite is throwing me off,” said Rummy. “I agree with Heloise that it sounds like the speaker has a physical form, but I’m not sure it’s a being. It could be food, right?” He looked around for support for his theory. “What kind of food do you tuck in at night? A pie? Maybe salad, because it’s on a bed of lettuce?”

  “But you can also ‘tuck in’ to a meal, which means to sit down to eat it,” mused Nadi. “Though the riddle seems to indicate that the tucking in happens so whatever it is doesn’t get eaten.” She shook her head. “This is so confusing.”

  “Well, if it was easy to solve, everyone could get into the mountain, right?” said the rock.

  “Why don’t you want people to get into the mountain?” I asked. “I mean, what do you care if people want to go get barbecued by a dragon?”

  “I don’t care at all,” said the rock. “In fact, I’d be delighted if you get what you want—you all seem nice. But, it’s not up to me—it’s up to whoever enchanted me.”

  “If this enchantment is as old as we think it is,” said Whiska, “there’s no way the dragon lived in the mountain when it was enacted.”

  “So, why did he, or she, or it—whoever created the enchantment, I mean—want to keep people out?” asked Nadi.

  Whiska shrugged. “What do I look like, the Oracle at Vanataw?”

  “Not really,” said Rummy. “You don’t have the head of a lion. And, well, let’s just say the vicinity around your décolletage isn’t quite as robustly proportioned.”

  “If this enchantment predates the dragon, it means two things,” I said before Whiska, who looked on the verge of unleashing a tirade on Rummy, could respond. “One: there’s something in the mountain someone wants—or, at least, wanted—to protect. Two: there’s another way in and out, unless the dragon solves the riddle every time it comes and goes.”

  “Does the dragon solve the riddle every time it comes and goes?” asked Rummy.

  “I’ve never seen the dragon,” replied the rock.

  “So, all we need to do is find the other way in!” I concluded (brilliantly).

  “It’s possible that there’s another way in,” said Nadi slowly, thinking out loud, “but it’s also likely that the way the dragon goes in and out requires you to be able to fly.”

  “Whiska—got any flying spells?” I asked.

  “Go to Pemblach!” Whiska shouted before storming off, not that she could go too terribly far, given that the precipice we stood on wasn’t all that big. (It turns out that Whiska is particularly sensitive about the fact that she can’t cast flying spells, which, unbeknownst to me at that time, is a major limitation of Ratarian schools of magic. Apparently, the structure of Ratarian hands makes it almost impossible to form the particularly intricate gestures required to enact a flying spell—though I can tell you they work exceedingly well for non-magical gestures meant to suggest anatomically challenging acts. It’s rumored that one Ratarian mage, known by his stage name, The Great Tailini, once managed the feat…but, given that he was never seen again after that, it’s hard to say whether that’s true or simply a fanciful story meant to cover up the tainted cheese-related disappearance of yet another Ratarian wizard.)

  (Pemblach, incidentally, is a town on the outskirts of the largest Ratarian kingdom that does not allow cheese to be made or served—what humans might call a “dry” town. Given cheese’s intoxicating effect on them, Ratarians really, really hate the place unless they belong to a particularly ascetic sect of Flomanism, which is the primary religion practiced by Ratarians (though not Whiska, who is such an atheist that she doesn’t even believe in atheism). I’m pretty indifferent about cheese as a general rule, so I’m not sure Whiska’s curse had the potent effect that she had hoped; she was really off her game today.)

  “Well, then, I suppose we need to solve the riddle,” said Nadi.

  “The Oracle at…Vanataw has the…head of an…eagle. Not…a lion,” said Borg.

  “Ah, right!” said Rummy. “Thanks. I was thinking of the Oracle at Jargone.”

  “Focus!” snapped Nadi.

  “Sorry,” said Rummy. He squinted at the rock and rubbed his beard before turning toward me. “What do you think the ‘rest, not sleep’ part means? Is there anything that doesn’t need to sleep, but needs to rest?”

  “There was this dwarven gigolo I used to know…” I started to reply before Nadi cut me off.

  “Not helpful. Come on, think! We need to solve this.” She looked pointedly at me. “What rests but doesn’t sleep? There can’t be that many things. What about something that comes to rest? Like, something that moves, but then stops moving? Like…like a rolling stone.”

  “I think you’re mixing your metaphors,” said Rummy. “But,” he hastily added in response to a death glare from Nadi, “maybe you’re onto something. It would have to be something that’s not alive if it doesn’t sleep. Unless it only doesn’t sleep during the one night in question in the riddle.” He shook his head and smiled. “This is a real humdinger, isn’t it?”

  So it went for three straight days.

  We attacked the riddle from every possible angle, but none of us could come up with a response we were confident enough to risk offering to the rock lest we lose our ability to enter the mountain for a year. (Borg suggested “grumpel,” which is apparently a rock giant delicacy made from live eels that don’t need to sleep, but none of us wanted to give that one a try—in any manner of speaking.) Just as I started to worry that Whiska might begin to electrocute various members of our party out of boredom and frustration, a small, high-pitched voice sang out, “Why are you trying to solve the riddle?”

  I wouldn’t say I jumped in terror so much as I leapt into combat position. Everyone else jumped in terror. We spun around, weapons at the ready, to confront our foe, only to discover that the threat was…

  A seven-year-old orc girl with a giant yellow flower woven into her hair and armed not with an elf-sticking dagger, but an empty basket.

  The girl giggled. “You are good jumpers.”

  “No,” I said (possibly huffily). “We’re good at instant combat positioning.”

  “Oh,” said the girl, sounding unconvinced. I couldn’t help feeling that she seemed familiar somehow.

  “Who are you?” asked Nadi as she looked around warily for other orcs.

  “Etty Loo Betterken,” replied the girl. “Who are you?”

  “That’s not important,” I said. “Well, no, that’s not true—it’s mostly not important. I’m Heloise the Bard.”

  The girl shrugged. “Okay.”

  “What’s more important,” I said, possibly through gritted teeth, “is whether there are any more of you.”

  “Don’t worry—there’s only one Etty in our whole village.”

  “Thank goodness for that,” I muttered perhaps too loudly. “There aren’t any grown-up orcs wandering around here with you? What are you doing here?”

  “Adult orcs don’t go mushroom picking,” replied little Etty in her best know-it-all voice. “S
o why would they be with me?”

  “That’s what you’re doing then?” interjected Rummy, clearly in an attempt to forestall what was going to be a curse-filled retort from yours truly. “Picking mushrooms?” He sounded genuinely curious.

  The girl nodded enthusiastically, taking an immediate shine to our most diminutive party member. “Yes—I’m the best in the village! I’m the only one who knows where the rarest, tastiest mushrooms are.”

  “Where are they?” asked Rummy.

  “Inside the mountain,” replied the girl, sotto voce. She winked.

  “You know the answer to the riddle?” asked Nadi, excitement in her voice.

  “No,” giggled the girl.

  “Then how do you get in, you green-skinned doorstop?” said Whiska.

  “Through the door,” replied the (obnoxious) child.

  “What door?” demanded Whiska.

  “The one that’s right around the other side of that rock, genius.” The girl pointed to a particularly large outcropping of stone.

  Nadi raced over, peered behind the stone, and slapped her hand over her face. “This leads into the mountain?” she asked without turning back toward us.

  “Yeah,” said the girl. “That’s where the mushrooms are. Unless you can fly like the dragon, it’s the only way in.”

  “Unless you can answer the riddle,” said Rummy.

  The girl giggled. “The riddle is impossible. My da says that it was made that way to keep the morons away from the mushrooms.”

  “I’ll show you a moron,” muttered Whiska as she whipped out her wand and prepared to rain electric death down on the tiny orc.

  “Whiska!” shouted Nadi, holding her hand up.

  Whiska grumbled something that sounded suspiciously like, “Hang you from a tree and pull out your innards and have a contest among buzzards to determine which is the strongest and most worthy of consuming your intestines, which it will share with me before I then pan fry and eat the buzzard so that I can consume all of you and the most evolutionarily desirable buzzard in the process,” but I might have misheard. Nonetheless, she lowered her wand.

  “Well, rock?” said Nadi, turning back to our riddlemaster. “Is this true? Does this door lead into the same part of the mountain as the one you guard?”

  “As near as I can tell. I’ve never actually been inside, but I trust Etty Loo—she is nice to me, and always brings me a mushroom, even though I can’t eat them.”

  “And why, exactly, didn’t you tell us about this door?” replied Nadi.

  “Not part of my enchantment. Where would be the fun in solving the riddles if you knew you didn’t need to?”

  “I think we might have different ideas of what constitutes fun,” noted Rummy with equanimity.

  “Can I blast him yet?” asked Whiska.

  “Rummy? No, I kind of like him,” I replied.

  “No, you singing bag of fecal wind! The rock! Can I blast the rock?”

  Nadi looked at me. I shrugged. She sighed. “Go ahead.”

  Whiska cackled with glee as she brandished her wand. “Suck molten eldritch energy, you crag-faced pain in my rancid hairy—” The rest of Whiska’s taunt was lost in an explosion of flame, as her wand blew up like a volcano, knocking us all—our new little orc friend included—off our feet. Smoke billowed, and Whiska laughed again. “How does that taste?” she said to no one in particular.

  “I don’t have taste buds,” said a familiar, rocky voice as the smoke dissipated, revealing an utterly unaffected rock wall. “But I don’t imagine I would be a big fan of spicy food, and that fireball seemed a little hot.” The rock looked from Whiska to Nadi to me. “Spicy? Hot? No?” It frowned. “I thought that was at least a little funny.”

  “Hey, Whiska, the rock seems pretty unaffected,” said Rummy.

  “Yes, the enchantment makes me invulnerable, especially to magic. Otherwise, people would just blast their way through me.” The rock pursed its lips. “Did I not mention that?”

  “Hey, Whiska, the rock can’t really be affected by magic,” said Rummy affably.

  “I will murder you on your wedding day,” replied Whiska.

  “Good thing I’m not even engaged,” replied Rummy.

  “You shouldn’t…blast the rock,” said Borg.

  “Well,” said Nadi, “I guess we’re done here. At least we found a way into the mountain, and, if nothing else, hanging out here for a few days was way better than going through that swamp.”

  The orc girl giggled. “You went through the swamp?”

  “Yes,” said Nadi, scowling at the orc. “Why?”

  “Right through the middle of it?”

  “Yes, that’s where the path led,” said Rummy.

  “Only diiinnnggg-dooonnngggsss use the path!” sang the girl. “If you go about three grope ropes north, there’s a log bridge that goes over the top of the swamp. It takes about two hours to cross, and you don’t get stinky and smelly. And bog men can’t walk on logs. Not that those are hard to beat—I just push ‘em over with a stick. They make funny sounds when they splash back into the swamp.”

  “Three grope ropes?” asked Rummy.

  Etty Loo nodded. “A grope rope is the distance one grope of orcs would cover if they stood in a line holding hands. I thought everyone knew that.”

  “I was never formally educated,” said Rummy.

  “You should go back to school,” said Etty solemnly. “Education is really important.”

  “How deep into the caves are the mushrooms?” I asked.

  “They’re right inside the entrance—I’m not supposed to go in deeper. There’s a minotaur in there, and minotaurs like to eat orc children.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” I said.

  Etty nodded vigorously. “Oh, yes—it is. I learned it in my Certainties class.”

  “I know I’m going to regret this,” I replied, “but…‘Certainties’ class?”

  “That’s school again,” she said knowingly, then shook her head. “You really all ought to be better educated.”

  “I know what school is,” I said through gritted teeth, “but I’m not sure ‘Certainties’ is a staple of curricula everywhere.”

  “Certainties is where we learn about things that are factually true. Factually means they’re real.”

  “Yes, as opposed to unfactually true,” I replied, sarcasm present in, though hopefully not dripping from, my voice.

  “Right,” replied Etty, missing the subtext entirely. “You don’t always have to have facts to say true things.”

  “I’d say they’re pretty necessary,” grumbled Whiska.

  “No, that’s not true,” said the girl. “The President of our tribe says so, and that everyone who says anything different is just saying fake things.”

  “But how do you distinguish fake from truth without facts?” asked Nadi.

  “Truth is just stuff you know is right. Facts are little bits of information you can use if they fit the truth you want to say is not fake. That’s where we learned about like how minotaurs eat orc children, bears will attack your campsite if you don’t bury your poo, and half-elven lady bards are always sassy—things like that.”

  “Seems like a pretty good class,” I said, sagely.

  “Yeah, it was my second favorite.”

  “What was your favorite?” asked Rummy.

  “Jim class.”

  “Exercising, playing games—things of that sort?” said Rummy.

  Etty Loo shook her head. “A ‘Jim’ is what we call someone who always says fake things, like humans are smart or vegetables are important. We get to throw rocks at a new Jim each day in Jim class.”

  “Oh,” said Rummy, summing up what I imagined was our collective response.

  “I also liked math, though.”

  “Liked doing your sums, did you?” said Rummy, clearly eager to move the conversation in a new direction.

  Etty gave him a strange look. “No, silly—math is where you stab small animals and
learn how to cook them.”

  “I think that word loses something in the translation,” Rummy responded.

  “I guess,” said Etty.

  “So, is there actually a minotaur?” asked Nadi, looking from Etty to the rock and back.

  “I’ve never been inside the mountain,” the rock reminded us, its eyes flicking down to look at itself.

  “I don’t know,” shrugged Etty.

  “Why not?” asked Whiska.

  “Look, I’m seven—you’re a grown-up. Figure it out yourself.” With that, she skipped her way into the mountain, leaving us staring awkwardly at each other in our magically created and extraordinarily unfashionable clothes.

  “Well, this has been fun,” said the rock at last. “Let’s do it again sometime, eh?”

  “Um…I’m not sure that’s necessary,” replied Nadi.

  “Though it’s been delightful,” added Rummy.

  “Let’s get our gear together and get moving—we’re burning daylight,” said Nadi.

  “That won’t really matter inside the mountain,” I said sweetly.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “This was…fun,” said Borg. “Goodbye…rock.”

  “Goodbye, you handsome devil,” replied the rock.

  “Nadi, what are we going to do if there actually is a minotaur in there?” asked Rummy.

  “We’ll figure it out,” replied Nadi confidently.

  “Or just blow it up,” said Whiska.

  “I’m not…a devil,” said Borg. “I’m a…rock giant.”

  “I know,” said the rock.

  We gathered our things and headed into the mountain.

  Chapter 21

  A MINOTAUR AND HIS MAZE ARE NO MATCH FOR OUR MATCHLESS HEROES

  Having proven their mental mettle by solving the riddle that gained them entrance to the mountain, our brave heroes entered the dark and twisting corridors that led to the dragon’s lair with renewed vigor, resolved to end once and for all the threat to the good people of Skendrick. Of course, it is never the case that an adventurer travels the shortest distance between two points, for epic quests and heroic deeds occur not on a straight line, but just around the blind bend ahead.