The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

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

  “Ding-dong,” said the clock. The little ants turned their heads and gazed up contentedly at Viivian.

  “Hm,” she sniffed, removing the watch and putting it in her pocket.

  “In any case you can’t continue your journey, as you’ve come to a dead end. This is the center of a labyrinth, the only way you can go is backward,” said the dragon apologetically. “Sit down for a moment, though I’m afraid I have nothing to offer you,” he implored.

  “Very well then,” said Viivian graciously. “Carry on your story.” Somewhat bewildered, the dragon scratched his head.

  “Where was I?” he asked. “I talk to myself so often that it doesn’t matter where I leave off.”

  “The first young woman you ate,” said Viivian. “But there’s one thing still puzzling me,” she continued pensively. “The purpose of a labyrinth puzzle is generally to find hidden treasures, not a dragon.”

  “Indeed, but the purpose of this puzzle is precisely to find a dragon,” he said with a smirk, but regretted it immediately.

  “Not at all. Please don’t think I’m awfully vain, I was only joking,” he quickly added. “Let me tell you quite how overjoyed I was when I saw you.” His face suddenly turned a deep purple color. “There is of course treasure to be found here, but it’s certainly nothing to write home about. Are you interested in it?”

  “Absolutely,” replied Viivian. “Of course, if it’s too much trouble for you…” she added politely, not wanting to seem overly eager.

  “Wait here a moment,” said the dragon and with that he disappeared once again into his cave, from which after a few moments there came a crash and a clatter as though someone had knocked over a cupboard full of china. Viivian stood up and walked over to the horse.

  “You’re not bored, are you, my old friend?” she asked, stroking the horse’s black neck. The steed gave her cheek a friendly nibble with its soft velvet lips and lay down near the brook. Viivian untied the bridle straps, removed the stirrup from the horse’s head, wound the reins round her arms, opened the buckles around the chest and stomach, and lifted the whole saddle from the horse’s back. Awkwardly the horse rolled over and with all four hooves in the air he began excitedly rubbing his sweaty back on the soft green moss. Then he jumped upright with a snort and shook off all the dust and dried leaves. Viivian hung the bridle and the light saddle on a thick willow branch nearby, reached into the saddlebag for a currycomb, and with only a few long strokes the horse’s sides gleamed like freshly smoothed ice. The horse was chewing away at a few willow leaves when the dragon reappeared huffing and puffing at the mouth of the cave, covered in dust, cobwebs, and all manner of dirt.

  “The chest is stuck fast in the ground and I can’t move it,” gasped the dragon. “It hasn’t been moved since it was brought here and even then I had no reason to lay a finger on it. Mmm, back then I was only a child, nothing but a small basilisk less than two feet long. At first, you can well imagine, I got terribly lonely in here all by myself,” he said wistfully and sat down to think more clearly. But as he sat down he gave a terrifying roar. Viivian jumped and the horse startled and rolling its eyes it stared at the dragon, its ears pricked.

  “I must have twisted my back, or else this is a case of lumbago,” groaned the dragon.

  “You wouldn’t last a minute with my mother. She’s always moving the furniture around. She only lifts the piano enough to put a rug under one end, then she drags the rug and the piano around the room,” said Viivian.

  “Why?” the dragon asked and Viivian simply shrugged her shoulders.

  “It cheers her up,” she replied. The dragon looked her up and down somewhat perplexed.

  “It’s a good job your mother hasn’t found her way out here,” he retorted finally. “Or St. George for that matter. At one time there were lots of stories written about how he went about slaying dragons. It took a lot of time and energy to block the gorge with boulders so he would be unable to get here.”

  “That was a long time ago,” she said cautiously.

  “Very long indeed,” the dragon enthused. “Nowadays he can be found in Heaven and in church paintings. And since then the mountains have collapsed and the boulders I had piled up have all rolled down into the ravine. It’s been several hundred years since any other Tom, Dick, or Harry has turned up here trying to poke me with spears and swords. My beloved wife came and went. She was always on the move, she was what they call a flying dragon, a real beauty. Her wings were like the fin on my back but far, far greater. I always told her all that flying around and gallivanting would be the ruin of her, and just as I predicted, one day she perished in a flying accident. I waited for her, I waited and hoped with all my heart, but it was only many decades later that I heard how, on a stormy night, she had plummeted into the sea in a ball of flames near a Phoenician fishing boat. At that moment the storm abated and the sea calmed, and you can imagine all the stories those fishermen told until the end of their days.” Viivian nodded in sympathy. She could feel her eyelids becoming gradually heavier and heavier.

  “Times went from bad to worse and gradually people stopped bringing young maidens out here, and to be perfectly honest it was a great relief. They tasted awful, I can tell you. And on top of this I realized I was in fact allergic to young women. Before I had ever met a young woman, my head was beautiful and smooth like other lizards, but I soon came out in a rash, and became covered in scabs and warts—the itching was unbearable, I would scratch my head night and day. And look at me now, there are almost horns on my head. Not once did anyone ever think to bring me a tender, young piglet or a well-done veal cutlet, just maiden upon maiden.”

  “You shouldn’t scratch your head,” said Viivian sleepily. “Anyway, how do you know what pork and veal taste like if no one has ever brought you pigs or calves?”

  “I have many cookery books, I very much enjoy leafing through them. In fact I have quite an extensive library. I would invite you in to look at it, but I’m afraid I wasn’t expecting company. I haven’t tidied up…” said the dragon, a touch embarrassed, and scratched his ear.

  “Don’t scratch!” said Viivian sharply, then burst out laughing as she realized that she too was thinking about scratching her head. Other people’s bad habits catch on without our noticing. “Tidying up isn’t so terribly important. If only you could see our bedroom on a Sunday morning.”

  The dragon looked at her suspiciously. “I can’t help scratching. Just thinking about young maidens makes me itchy. You can’t imagine what they are like, some bits are full of fat, others chewy and sinewy, ugh!” At this he shuddered from top to toe.

  “You must stop thinking about it,” she said comfortingly. “You need to learn to concentrate. Just keep thinking: I must not scratch, I will not scratch. And if the itching gets so bad that you can no longer control yourself, then pick a spot and scratch it very softly, just one spot, though, not your whole head. That’s what I do, and gradually you’ll stop doing it altogether.”

  “Aha!” exclaimed the dragon excitedly.

  “Still, it’s your own fault,” she continued. “As far as I can see you could have hidden or stayed in your room and let the maidens run away and go about their business.”

  “I tried, I swear, I tried my best,” the dragon shouted sadly. “Some of them ran off and sunk into the quicksand. There’s still a lot of quicksand on the path, isn’t there? Others couldn’t escape at all. Their only thought was that now they had been sacrificed to the dragon and so they came into the cave and searched for me among the rocks. Once, when I had gone out for a walk especially so that the day’s victim could leave in peace, what should I do but bump into her in the gorge and she died of fright. They all eventually found me and died of shock. Tell me, do I really look so frightening?” the dragon asked, his voice full of a profound sadness.

  Viivian took a close look at him.

  “No,” she said fin
ally. “I’d say you’re—to put it mildly—rather untidy looking.”

  “Am I not repulsive?” asked the dragon eagerly.

  “Not in that way,” she replied after careful consideration.

  “Am I not terribly ugly?” the dragon asked in all but a whisper.

  “No, you’re not,” she laughed. “You are rather strange looking, but not at all ugly. You’re a very nice color…” Viivian looked very closely at the dragon, and the dragon looked back. “In fact, you’re rather beautiful,” she said, somewhat surprised herself at the statement. “Allow me to clean you up a little,” she decided. “I don’t suppose you have any soap.”

  A little embarrassed, the dragon shook his head.

  “Well, I’m sure a basinful of water and a currycomb will do wonders.”

  “I do have a bottle brush somewhere,” the dragon informed her.

  “Excellent!”

  So while the dragon clattering and throwing things around rummaged for the bottle brush, Viivian took a battered old basin and collected water from the brook and brought it to the mouth of the cave. Then with the help of a few ferns she swept a large area clear of ancient, dried leftovers.

  “Right,” she said firmly as the dragon stepped hesitantly out of the cave. He sat down and Viivian began cleaning him up. She began with the dragon’s spiky back, which after a thorough wash and a scrub gradually looked less and less like a broken umbrella and began to shine in all the colors of the rainbow. Viivian brushed, scrubbed, scraped, and polished. Using the currycomb and some sand she made the dragon’s armored back change color and it soon began to gleam a light shade of green. Viivian scrubbed and brushed the dragon from the tips of his ears right down to the end of his tail; every now and then she ran over to the brook to fetch more fresh water, by now dripping with sweat. The dragon sat up on his hind legs and Viivian brushed his stomach, covered in soft downy hair, until it shone as white as snow.

  “The twenty-third basinful,” she said, quite out of breath. “After this I’ll fetch some rinsing water. But I don’t know how to wash your hair. My mother always washes our hair.”

  “Surely it can’t be all that dangerous, let’s get it done too now that we’ve started,” said the dragon, who was also gasping for breath.

  “Very well then, but you mustn’t start crying,” she said and, clenching her teeth, poured a basin of water over the dragon’s head.

  “The water’s going in my eyes,” he shouted in dismay.

  “It’ll soon come out again. That’s what Mother always says,” she explained, rubbing the dragon’s head with sand as hard as she could. Once she had rinsed his head she cleaned the dragon’s ears and his trumpet-shaped snout, a task for which the bottle brush was the perfect tool. And once she had fetched twenty basins of rinsing water she finally stopped and admired the dragon with her arms folded.

  “How sad that you can’t see yourself,” she said, satisfied. “You look altogether different.”

  The dragon turned his neck and examined himself as much as he could, and looked very pleased at what he saw.

  “I feel suddenly very hungry,” he said, somewhat surprised.

  “I normally become very thirsty after washing myself,” Viivian replied quickly. “But I certainly could eat something too. What do you normally eat at this time?”

  The dragon looked her up and down, then back again, and a mischievous grin spread across his face. Viivian sensed the warmth suddenly drain from her cheeks and she felt very cold. All at once her hands and feet seemed numb. But then the dragon could not help but burst into laughter.

  “Mushrooms. Nowadays I eat nothing but mushrooms,” he said with a giggle. “I grow them in the cave where my bed used to be. But there are very few of them and they grow very slowly indeed.”

  “You frightened me,” Viivian said very quietly.

  “I don’t have a single tooth left,” he chuckled.

  “That’s true, we didn’t brush your teeth,” she thought. “You should be glad you don’t have any teeth, there is nothing worse than visiting the dentist,” she said casually. “I could cook you some porridge and other soft food instead.”

  “You thought I was going to eat you,” the dragon smirked.

  “But first of all I’ll cook you some oat porridge,” she said. At this the dragon grimaced. “Oat porridge is very good for you. And even though you don’t have any teeth, you still ought to gurgle and clean your mouth every day. Breathe out,” she said sternly and the dragon breathed out.

  “Hhhhaaaah.” Viivian felt herself lifted from the ground; there she floated high, high up above the treetops.

  “Huh,” she said to herself, the dragon’s breath smelled truly rancid and revolting. The watch in her pocket seemed to be moving, its little hands pulling at her and tickling her hips.

  “But how can I make porridge and light a fire when I don’t have any matches?” she asked.

  “Psst, psst! It’s seven o’clock!” hissed the little ants. Their whispers were becoming louder and louder.

  “Oh, I have to go now,” she shouted in a panic. “Take care of yourself,” she said, holding with both hands as tightly as she could to the hay sack as it flew above the trees, over small houses, across the town the dragon had spoken about.

  “I’ll bring some matches next time,” she said. She flew further and further away, as if carried upon a great gust of wind, first into the darkness, then into a gray light gradually becoming brighter and almost blinding.

  “That’s all I need, I’ve fallen into the sea,” she said to herself. “And now I’m coming up to the surface. Those Phoenician fishermen will have something to talk about again.”

  “It’s a good thing I remembered to unsaddle the horse,” she said just as her head burst through the surface of the water and she was finally able to take a deep breath.

  Mother was standing leaning over her. The smell of the dragon’s breath still hung in the air around her. Hopefully Mother would not notice. What a stroke of luck that she had returned to her bed before morning. She must have lost consciousness and the kind fishermen must have brought her home.

  “Good morning, it’s seven o’clock,” said Mother quietly. “Time to go to school. Bath, breakfast, books, and bus—the four B’s,” she said as if it were some kind of joke.

  In the next bed Stumpy stretched her arms and legs and opened her eyes, looking dazed as if the dawning of a new day were a miracle. Then she gave Viivian a broad smile.

  “And what do you think you’re staring at?” Viivian shouted grumpily.

  R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) was born in Iowa and lived most of his adult life in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II in the South Pacific, then worked as an electrical engineer until he retired to write full-time in the early 1970s. Lafferty’s first work in print was in 1959 with a story in New Mexico Quarterly Review, but he began publishing in science fiction markets with “Day of the Glacier” in Science Fiction Stories in 1960 and soon was appearing with regularity in major SF magazines and anthologies—frequently enough in Damon Knight’s pathbreaking Orbit series to result in an entire collection titled Lafferty in Orbit (1991). Lafferty’s stories often have the feel of baroque tall tales, stories filled with flights of language and truly unique imaginings, informed by the esoteric obsessions of an autodidact. “Narrow Valley” was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1966 and included in Lafferty’s classic first collection, Nine Hundred Grandmothers (1970). It shows his long-standing interest not only in folklore but also in Native American history and culture, an interest that led to his historical novel Okla Hannali (1972). Writing about the story in The Best of R. A. Lafferty (2019), Michael Swanwick said, “Tall tales are nothing if not straightforward. ‘Narrow Valley’ is anything but. This is a sophisticated work, written by a sophisticated man.”

 
NARROW VALLEY

  R. A. Lafferty

  IN THE YEAR 1893, land allotments in severalty were made to the remaining eight hundred and twenty-one Pawnee Indians. Each would receive one hundred and sixty acres of land and no more, and thereafter the Pawnees would be expected to pay taxes on their land, the same as the White-Eyes did.

  “Kitkehahke!” Clarence Big-Saddle cussed. “You can’t kick a dog around proper on a hundred and sixty acres. And I sure am not hear before about this pay taxes on land.”

  Clarence Big-Saddle selected a nice green valley for his allotment. It was one of the half-dozen plots he had always regarded as his own. He sodded around the summer lodge that he had there and made it an all-season home. But he sure didn’t intend to pay taxes on it.

  So he burned leaves and bark and made a speech:

  “That my valley be always wide and flourish and green and such stuff as that!” he orated in Pawnee chant style. “But that it be narrow if an intruder come.”

  He didn’t have any balsam bark to burn. He threw on a little cedar bark instead. He didn’t have any elder leaves. He used a handful of jack-oak leaves. And he forgot the word. How you going to work it if you forget the word?

  “Petahauerat!” he howled out with the confidence he hoped would fool the fates.

  “That’s the same long of a word,” he said in a low aside to himself. But he was doubtful. “What am I, a White Man, a burr-tailed jack, a new kind of nut to think it will work?” he asked. “I have to laugh at me. Oh well, we see.”

  He threw the rest of the bark and the leaves on the fire, and he hollered the wrong word out again.

  And he was answered by a dazzling sheet of summer lightning.

  “Skidi!” Clarence Big-Saddle swore. “It worked. I didn’t think it would.”