The Parodies Collection

by Adam Roberts

‘My real name, or my street name?’ asked the bird.

  ‘We dwarfs never forget a kindness done to us,’ explained Mori. ‘I ask your name that we may remember it, and repay your good deed at some point in the future.’

  ‘You probably want my real name, then,’ said the raving. It squawked uncomfortably a few times. ‘Lovely bird! Beautiful plumage! Cup o’tea! It’s,’ it added, in lower and much more sane-sounding tones, ‘Gavin Dembrell, of Mountain View Nest, the Glades – my mum and dad’s nest, that,’ it continued, its voice even lower. ‘I’ll be moving out, soon as I find my own crib, but when that happens they’ll, you know, have the forwarding address.’ It leapt away from the dwarfs, flapped and flew around their heads for a while. ‘Bling-bling!’ it shrieked. ‘Ca-aaarcg! Have a nut!’ And with that it flew away.

  The dwarfs huddled around the smoky opening in the mountainside. Bingo elbowed them aside and peered down.

  ‘You really expect me to go down there?’ he said. ‘There’s smoke coming out of it. There’s probably a fire at the bottom. It’d be suicide.’

  ‘You’ll be all right, boyo,’ said Mori. ‘It’s not so slanted. Almost horizontal.’

  ‘It’s tiny,’ said the soddit. ‘And it’s pretty slanted – it goes down at a sharp old angle.’

  ‘Never mind about that for now, boyo,’ said Mori. ‘We need to have a little chat first. You and we, we and you, we need to have a little talk about what you’re to do when you go down there.’

  ‘Does this mean,’ asked Bingo, ‘that you’re finally going to tell me why we’re really here? No nonsense about gold?’

  ‘Patience, boyo,’ said Mori, clapping him on the shoulder. It was an unfortunate blow, catching the soddit slightly off balance. His foot slipped through the gap and over the lip. He threw his arms forward to try and grab the sides of the opening, but it was too late. The next thing he saw was a square of light receding rapidly, and he was plunged in darkness. And not metaphorically plunged, either: literally plunged. Oh yes.

  1 I’m sure this is a word. All right, my dictionary doesn’t include it – but that just shows the inadequacy of my dictionary. I know this is a word. I feel it in my gut.

  2 That’s nice writing! I like that. That’s almost poetry, that is. ‘Complaining but compliant’ – two very different words, you see, that sound fairly alike. There’s a name for that in rhetoric, isn’t there, but I can’t bring it to mind.

  3 Incidentally, and in case you’re interested, this is the sound of one hand clapping.

  4 This is the archaic mode of counting, of course, which has been largely superseded in modern times by one two three and so on. But in the olden days we all used to count this way: once, twice, thrice, tvice, tgice, tmice, tjice, hethera, tethera, many. This schema served all human counting purposes for many centuries.

  Chapter Nine

  INSIDE, IN FORM

  Down went Bingo, his arms above his head. He spoke. ‘Aaaagghh!’ he said. The shaft narrowed as it descended, and soon it was chafing violently at the soddit’s belly and shoulders, and scraping his sore feet. ‘Ow! ow! ow!’ he said. ‘Aaaagghh!’ he added. Friction increased. There was the sound of cloth ripping. His descent slowed, painfully, as the skin around his middle felt as if it were being grated.

  He had stopped.

  ‘Dear me, dear me,’ he said to himself, panting a little. It was utterly dark. He was wedged uncomfortably in the chimney with his arms up. The faint sound of dwarf hallooing was just audible somewhere far distant above him, but he couldn’t make out the words. ‘Dear me, dear me,’ he said again.

  He sucked his gut in and breathed out as far as he could. Then, turning a little blue (not that you could have seen his colour in the dark) he wriggled and wriggled. He shifted an inch downwards, then half an inch, and then with a jolt he began falling again. He said: ‘Dear.’ He did not say this, however, because the experience was especially dear to him. Rather he intended to say ‘dear me’ one more time, but was interrupted by his downward movement. Instead of saying ‘dear me’ he found himself saying ‘dear aaaarrgh’, which is – I hardly need to point this out to you – not the same thing at all.

  And then he dropped out of the bottom of the shaft and, with a soft crash, fell into a great pile of old ashes and bits of burnt timber. Everything was instantly obscured by a cloud of grey, and Bingo started coughing. He thrashed about in the cool talcumy pile and staggered out, sore and startled but upright. He felt stone flags under his feet. Dust was in his eyes and he could see nothing, but he heard a deep, deeply rumbling voice, say:

  ‘Gracious.’

  Bingo stopped where he was. He tried wiping the ash out of his eyes, but the hands he was wiping with were also covered in ash, and his wiping proved a zero-sum game, smearing as much dust in as he smeared out. He was still trembling from his fall, and a deep terror was growing inside him. His stomach seemed to shrink to nothing and the roots of his hair shivered. He was acutely conscious that the deep rumbly voice almost certainly proceeded from the throat of Smug the Dragon. Whilst his eyes were closed, he told himself that – since he lacked ocular evidence – it was still possible, just, that it was not a fearsome fire-blowing dragon that had spoken, but (say) somebody with a large chest and a bad cold. Although he knew the chances of this were rather small, he clung to the hope.

  ‘Are you,’ rumbled the voice, ‘all right?’

  Bingo put one hand in his waistcoat pocket, and closed his fingers around the Thing®. This gave him some small solace. He wondered whether, should Smug decide to blast him with a great wave of fire, he would have time to speak any reverse wish through the device. Probably not. But it was better having it than not.

  Several blinks, and copious tears, were washing some of the ash out of his eyes. He opened them very cautiously.

  There was Smug the Mighty in all his enormous and terrifying magnitude. He was stretched on his back over a large pile of gold and jewellery, his belly out and his long head resting on his own chest. His wings were spread to either side of his enormous body, and his hind legs were crossed one over the other. He was not naked; in fact, he wore several layers of tough cloth over his torso, a dark inner coat, and a brown-green fine-checked outer jacket. His snout was long and his head lumpy, but his dragon eyes glinted with a fierce intellect. In his left claw, Bingo saw, something was clutched – at first the soddit thought it a canoe, or something of similar proportions. As he blinked again, and as the dragon lifted the thing and placed it to his mouth, Bingo could see that it was a tobacco pipe, a pipe of gigantic proportions. The dragon took two deep puffs, and laid the pipe at his side again.

  ‘Dra,’ said Bingo. ‘Drag. Dra. Dragon.’

  He stumbled back, but there was nowhere to hide, and nowhere to go. The beast’s eyes were fixed upon him.

  Bingo looked from left to right with a degree of desperation. The floor of the creature’s lair was piled high with gold, and the walls were stacked with enormous and multitudinous books – volumes of ancient lore bound in various leathers. To the right were a number of bottles, with labels that read ‘wyrmwine’ and ‘Dragon’s Friend’. Torches flickered behind, draping an intermittent red light over everything.

  ‘Good morning,’ said the dragon.

  ‘Good,’ said Bingo. Then his tongue seemed to seize up. ‘Momomomo,’ he added.

  ‘I did not realise,’ said Smug, ‘that I had an appointment. Pull up a chair, do – that one, yes – just move those papers off it. Put them anywhere.’

  Bingo looked around stupidly.

  ‘I’d offer you tea,’ said Smug. ‘But I’m sorry to say I ran out of tea some forty years ago.’

  ‘That’s quite all right, quite all right,’ said the soddit. He saw the chair to which the dragon had gestured, and pulled a stack of leathern parchments from its seat. With a little hop he climbed on to the chair. Somewhere in his brain he was thinking, half consciously, If I’m sitting on his furniture perhaps he’ll think twice about burning me to death.
If he values his own furniture, that is. He was still clutching the Thing® in his right hand.

  ‘And what can I do for you?’ said Smug.

  ‘I—’ said Bingo. He thought for a moment. But he had no idea what to say.

  ‘You’ll have to remind me of your name,’ the creature rumbled.

  ‘Bingo Grabbings,’ said Bingo, without thinking. As soon as he said it, he wondered if he had made a terrible mistake. Giving one’s true name to magical creatures, such as dragons, is not advisable. But it was too late now.

  ‘So,’ mused the creature. ‘So, Bingo Grabbings, is it? At first glance, that would be a burglar’s name, now, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I come from a family of respectable gentlehobblds!’ squeaked Bingo.

  ‘Of course you do,’ said the dragon, ‘since the etymological root of burglar and burgher, or bourgeois if you prefer, is to be found in the same word – from the old Brackish *bruh or *burh, you know. Being a robber and being respectable are, philologically speaking, more or less the same thing.’

  Bingo had got his hands more or less clean of ash now by dint of rubbing them together, and was able to wipe his face more effectively clear. He hadn’t really been listening to this. ‘Fascinating,’ he said nervously.

  ‘But,’ the dragon continued, ‘I’d say that Bingo Grabbings is a west-country name. Am I right? There’s a Grabesend, isn’t there, on the coast up that way? I’d hazard – this is mere conjecture, of course, please don’t note this down – I’d conjecture a root for names like bingo is from *beo-wing, “he who flies from bees”. Are you afraid of bees, Mr Grabbings? No? They do have a nasty sting, don’t they? It is probably a good idea to get out of their way.’ He chuckled at this, and clacked the fearsome claws of his empty right hand together, making a dry, drumbeat noise, cloc, cloc, cloc. ‘As for Grabbings—’ the dragon said.

  ‘Please don’t kill me!’ shrieked Bingo, unable to contain himself. He fell from the chair on to his knees. ‘I’m sorry! Sorry! I’m sorry I fell down your chimney! It was their idea! It wasn’t my idea!’

  ‘Dear me, dear me,’ rumbled the dragon, not un-amused. ‘Do calm down, little chap. Really. Kill you? Why should I want to kill you?’

  ‘We’ve travelled all this way, hundreds of leagues,’ the soddit burbled, ‘to slay you and steal your gold, and I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.’ He sucked in a shuddering breath, and was only prevented from more unfortunate disclosures by the fact that he chanced to inhale a lungful of the fine ash that was still drifting around the lair, provoking a short soddit coughing fit.

  ‘Dear me,’ said Smug, when the coughing had stopped. He took another few pulls on his pipe. ‘This is a serious development. I’m sorry to hear it. Might I ask why you have come all this way to slay me?’

  Bingo sat back on his knees. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘I assume – I don’t know. I assume you’ve done some great wrong to their people?’

  ‘And they are …?’

  But Bingo was, finally, learning some circumspection. He had already given far too much away. ‘My travelling companions,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, but I didn’t realise that one needed a specific reason for slaying dragons. Isn’t that – slaying dragons, I mean – just something people do?’

  ‘My life would be terribly uncomfortable,’ said Smug, ‘if that were so. Dear me. This is a very disagreeable development. I’m trying to think,’ he added, ‘whom I may have offended. I really can’t think of anybody.’

  Bingo was still terrifically nervous, which may have been why he blurted: ‘The Lakesiders have seen no customers for seventy years – you’ve scared their customers away.’

  ‘Dear me,’ said the dragon, sounding genuinely contrite. ‘Have I? How dreadful. It really wasn’t intentional. I don’t see, though – to be fair – that it’s exactly my fault if people find me scary. I don’t go out of my way to be scary.’ He puffed on his pipe for a while.

  The conversation was not going the way Bingo had anticipated at all. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘if I startled you, falling into your fireplace like that. And I’m sorry about – you know, the talk of slaying you.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Smug, ‘if you were to tell me the identity of your travelling companions, I might be able to remember if I had done them any wrong. Are they, perhaps, hobblds, such as yourself?’

  ‘Mighty Smug!’ said Bingo, scurrying behind the chair and peering out. ‘Pardon me! I have said too much already! If my friends knew what I have revealed they would be sorely angry with me.’

  ‘Oh well, oh well,’ said the creature in a mournful voice. ‘Of course, if you’d rather not say, I understand perfectly.’

  There was silence in the lair for a while.

  ‘I do apologise,’ grumbled the dragon, ‘about the lack of tea.’ He hoomed and hummed for a while. ‘Interesting word, tea,’ he said, as if talking to himself. ‘Derived, I’d argue, from tyr, a variant of þyrs, the old Eastron word for giant. Because it is a drink that makes one feel like a giant.’ He hoomed some more. ‘Wonderful drink,’ he added.

  It was starting to dawn on Bingo, despite his fright, and despite the various aches he had sustained coming down the chimney, that Smug was wounded in his feelings. The soddit had not expected that. Rage, fire, destruction, yes. Cunning and guile, yes. But a hurt look in the eye and some defensive puffs on a pipe, not at all.

  ‘Sir Smug,’ the soddit said cautiously. ‘I fear I have offended you.’

  ‘Not at all,’ murmured the dragon. ‘Don’t mention it. Only, you see, it is a little disconcerting to discover that a group of people have travelled such a long way to kill one.’

  ‘Surely you have many enemies,’ said Bingo. ‘I mean,’ he added hurriedly, anxious that his words had come over as merely insulting, ‘one so, eh, magnificent and terrible as you.’

  ‘Enemies?’ said the dragon. ‘I don’t believe so. Let me have another think. No, no. I had a bit of a ding-dong with Blaze the Dragon from the Ice-Plain of Gungadin – over, it was, the correct derivation of the term wodwo. But that was settled amicably. Yes, amicably. He’s a good old worm, that one. Modest, too.’

  He shuffled on his bed of gold, and scratched his stomach with the claws of his right foreleg. ‘Hmm,’ he said.

  ‘I must say, you don’t seem, sir,’ said Bingo in a tiny voice, ‘you don’t seem very smug, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘What? What’s that? No, you’re quite right, you’re quite right. Smug is not what my friends call me, you know. Although it is, philologically speaking, quite an interesting word.’

  ‘Really?’ said Bingo weakly.

  ‘Certainly. It’s a west-land variant of the east-land root-word Smýk, which has, in fact, come down into modern language via another branch of the linguistic tree, as Smoke. The vowel shift, you see. Smoke is a perfectly descriptive name for a dragon.’ He lifted his enormous pipe in his left claw and puffed on the stem for a while. Billowing quantities of smoke poured from between his teeth.

  ‘Is that then your name, sir? Smoke the Dragon?’

  ‘No, no, Smoke is what people used to call me. People aren’t very original with their names for dragons. Hmm. They tend to name dragons, in man-speech, on a merely literal level: Smoke, Flame, Puff, things like that.’ He shook his great head. ‘No, that’s not the name I call myself.’

  ‘So what is the name you call yourself, mighty sir?’

  ‘Ah. When I was a young dragon, fighting and rushing around, I was called Rashbold. But it’s been an age and an age since anybody’s called me that. An age and an age since I’ve been rash, although I hope I’m still capable of a little boldness.’ He chuckled, and took another draw on his pipe. ‘It sounds as if I’ll need a little boldness, indeed, if your friends are genuine in their intentions to slay me.’

  ‘I’m sorry for my friends’ intentions,’ said Bingo.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Smug. ‘I’ll try not to get too huffy. A dragon’s huff is, you see, rather more destructive
and fiery than a regular person’s.’ He chuckled at this, as if he had made a joke. ‘There’s a great deal of misconception about dragons, you know,’ he added mildly. ‘A great deal. People tend only to see the smoky and the fiery side of dragons. They don’t see the creative side at all.’

  ‘The creative side?’ said Bingo, interested.

  ‘Oh yes. I hate to boast – that goes against the grain, boasting – but it can’t be denied that dragons made all this.’ He gestured with his right claw, and his leathern wings rustled beneath him.

  ‘This room?’ said Bingo. ‘These books?’

  ‘What? What? No, no. Well, yes, strictly speaking. But I meant the world as a whole. Everything.’

  ‘Dragons,’ said Bingo, uncertain he had heard correctly, ‘created the world?’

  ‘Well,’ said Smug, as if embarrassed, ‘yes. Brought it to life, breathed fire and smoke into it. That’s what caused the sun to shine, what filled the upper sky. that’s why the sky’s blue, it’s smoke – high up, I mean, aither, hot and dry. The lower air isn’t blue, it’s clear, of course. And,’ he added, ‘that’s why the mountains and the hills are hollow, because dragon breath puffed them up into the landscape, like glass-blowing. But I don’t mean to brag. Dragons can’t take all the credit.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, no. Some of the houses are, you know, made by later people. But anyway, anyway. I don’t mean to bore you. It’s been a pleasure speaking to you.’

  Bingo came out from behind the chair. ‘I can’t believe, sir,’ he said, abashed, ‘that it has truly been a pleasure.’

  ‘Well – perhaps pleasure isn’t the right word,’ conceded Smug. ‘Perhaps not pleasure, exactly. But it has been edifying. Edifying. I’m sorry I have to draw it to an end. But I think I’d better pop, you know, pop down to Lakeside. There’s clearly been a misunderstanding between us, between the Lakesiders and myself. I’d better flap down there and try and sort it out. Drive away their trade? Nothing could be further from my thoughts. I’ll have a chat with them, and I’m sure we can arrange some kind of compromise. Dear me, dear me, what an unfortunate situation. What a disagreeable situation. Well, Mr Grabbings,’ Smug continued, stirring on his pile, ‘goodbye. I’ll show you the main gate – I don’t suppose you’ll fit back up that chimney.’