How to Slay a Dragon

by Cait Stevenson

  Welcome aboard! Would you like to go to hell?

  You were probably thinking the sea monster would be the easy part of the ocean leg of your quest. It takes (literal) miracles to save people from drowning in shipwrecks. Pirates will sell you into slavery, throw you overboard to drown, or murder you outright. In comparison, Nessie is kind of cute, and could make a good pet.

  But you will pretty quickly have bigger things to worry about than death if that sea monster off your stern decides to take a bite of boat meringue pie. So yes, you should definitely worry about ancient Near Eastern and prehistoric proto-Indo-European primordial monsters of the cosmic ocean who must devour the world or die.

  You may have been lucky enough to have laughed off this myth, thanks to an ancient Hebrew satire about a disobedient prophet who gets swallowed by a generic big fish. Medieval Christians observed that Jonah stayed eaten by said not-actually-a-whale (really—the Bible says nothing about a whale specifically) for three days. Hey, didn’t Christ spend three days in hell between Good Friday and Easter Sunday? (Yes.) Aren’t a mouth and being eaten near-universal symbolism for the entrance to hell and going there? (Also, yes.) So, Christians declared Jonah’s adventure an allegory for the three days that Christ spent defeating the devil before rising from the dead. Okay, maybe Jonah fought stomach acid while Christ fought Satan. Their fights still took place on the same unholy battlefield. So if you get eaten by that sea monster off your stern like Jonah did, you’re on your way to hell.

  But if you want to avoid a simultaneously literal and metaphorical hellmouth, you’re going to need every strategy you can gather, from Greenland tundra to European libraries to where there be dragons.

  BAFFIN BAY

  You were impressed that the Norse got into boats and sailed from Iceland to Greenland? In the twelfth century, the Thule made it there from Russia, and maintained open lines of communication and trade in pottery from Baffin Bay back to Alaska. The Greenland Thule and their Dorset predecessors (the Norse look less impressive by the minute) stuck around because they had the sea beast known as the walrus for a food source. Walrus meat was both easily accessible and more or less easily acquired. The Thule were also happy to adapt their walrus-hunting skills to the narwhal, a creature that Europeans as a whole viewed less than fondly (… and the Norse now look even less impressive).

  But if trade goods are any guide, the Norse were mad for ivory. Walrus? Narwhal? Their trading partners smiled at the challenge. Where the Norse feared to sail and stab, the Thule faced down the creatures and won.

  Unfortunately, unless you are Thule, cultural appropriation like “not being afraid” will probably get you eaten.

  RED SEA

  In the tenth-century book Marvels of India, Buzurg ibn Shahriyar explains how he learned to survive a sea monster attack from Muhammad al-Hassan ibn Amr, who in turn learned it from a sailor who survived an attack. I know, you have no idea who Muhammad al-Hassan ibn Amr is, and Buzurg ibn Shahriyar wasn’t a real person… but you need all the strategies out there to stay out of hell. And the sailor in this story won.

  Moving on. The nonexistent sailors were making their way up the very real Red Sea when a monstrous fish smashed into their hull so hard that they could have believed the ship dashed into a cliff. But it didn’t sink! The truth was revealed once they reached the port. The smashed hull was sealed up by the severed head of the monstrous fish. It had gotten its head stuck in the side. And as it struggled to get free, a truly monstrous fish had swum along and had itself some nice sashimi. But the hole remained sealed by the remnants of the first sea monster.

  This adventure unquestionably offers an example of how to survive a sea monster attack. A good example, though? Relying on a deus ex beluga is lazy and will probably get you eaten.

  JORDAN RIVER

  Felix Fabri was a real person (1440–1502) who went to the real Jordan River (1480, 1483), wrote a real travel diary that was mostly true, and was skeptical of legends about the river that other travelers accepted as real. (He leaves it to the reader to decide whether a linen tunic washed in the Jordan will save you from arrows.)

  Muslim tour guides at the river warned Christian pilgrims that swimmers would sometimes just… simply vanish, so they should under no circumstances swim across the river. But, of course, all the men did it anyway. So now you get to picture a middle-aged monk stripping naked (the swimsuit of medieval Europe) and frolicking in a river.

  On Fabri’s first trip, one of his fellow swimmers, indeed, simply vanished. The poor man finally resurfaced, unconscious and half-drowned. He vomited up the water he had swallowed and was able to tell his pitiful story. Something had brushed against his leg! And it was as if all the strength had left his muscles. He was being pulled down and down, and there was nothing he could do.

  The question wasn’t whether a sea monster had tried to drown him, but what kind. Fabri related the options he heard: (1) soul- and body-sucking creatures of the deep who lurk on the muddy river bottom, ready to rise up and snap at any human leg they see. (2) Beasts who swim up from the Dead Sea, in which nothing can live, as if swimming up from hell. (3) The water itself was the monster—that bitter, bitter water of the Dead Sea pushing its poisonous way up the river.

  Fabri the Dominican friar and theologian, however, felt compelled to turn the near disaster into a lesson. He tried to argue that the terrifying event was God’s punishment for stripping naked and splashing about in the sacred river.

  Waiting until the invention of swimsuits is certainly a novel approach to surviving a sea monster attack. But given the firmly medieval nature of your quest, it will probably still get you eaten.

  ENGLISH CHANNEL

  Fictional or not, the tenth-century poem “A Certain Fisher Whom a Whale Swallowed” (plausible enough) featured an English fisher named Within (never mind the plausible part) who was, in fact, swallowed by a whale. Within was within for a terrifying five days, as he fought to free himself and his little boat. Slicing and hacking at the whale’s stomach with his trusty sword, Within managed to drive the monster toward the shoreline and onto the beach. But he was able to kill the whale only when he set fire to his boat—while he was still trapped inside.

  Within refused to be stuck within without a fight. He started yelling for help. The local villagers, who had arrived on the beach to carve up the whale for its meat, heard Within instead. They assumed the whale was possessed by a demon, lost their appetites, and ran away in fear. Eventually, though, they came back and turned Within into Without.

  Starring in a poem called “A Certain Fisher Whom a Whale Swallowed” will definitely get you eaten. Bringing along a boat, a sword, a beach, and hungry villagers will help you survive being eaten. Making people think you’re a demon will probably get you burned at the stake.

  Next example.

  ALL THE WATERS OF ALL THE EARTH

  Not scared yet? The Hebrew Bible describes the greatest ocean dragon of them all. His body is made of molten shields with no weaknesses, and his breath is fire. To him, swords are nothing but straw, and armor is made of rotten wood. God made him to be lord of the deep, mightier than the rest of creation. He was the “king over all the sons of pride.”

  But the medieval Jewish readers who understood that every single person was a child of pride found one story repeated over and over and over. At the end of days, God would slay the worst sea monster of them all, the most powerful enemy in all of creation. And at the final banquet, all of humanity would feast on its flesh.

  The prophecy of the final feast resonates in the lives of the Jewish readers, Christian writers, Arabic tale-tellers, and Thule walrus hunters of the high Middle Ages. From the frozen shores of Greenland to the banks of the River Jordan, one truth shines forth: the way to avoid being eaten by a sea monster is to eat it first.

  HOW to NOT GET EATEN

  It was supposed to be an ordinary Sunday. The French villagers in Sens crowded into their church that day in 858, women on one side, men on the o
ther. The priest began the liturgy, in Latin, with his back to the congregation. The congregation was supposed to be standing still and facing the priest, but most of them were probably jostling around their side of the gender-segregated church, mingling and gossiping and being glad that pews would not be invented for centuries. Just an ordinary Mass for an ordinary day. Then a wolf burst through the doors.

  The beast tore through the men’s side of the church, knocking them into each other, sending them sprawling. It proceeded to race around the women’s side, just as violently. And then it ran back outside, vanishing into the forest. In case you’re not keeping score, the number of people killed by the wolf was zero. No one lost their life, a limb, or anything but time to gossip.

  A happy outcome is almost unfair. As a questing hero with a party of traveling companions, you deserve to be scared of wolves stalking the woods alongside roads. Old Norse used the word vargar to mean both outlaws and wolves. Vargar attack and murder travelers all the time. Governments in France and England offered bounties on wolf hides in an attempt to wipe out the beasts.

  As the years and failed Crusades roll on, you deserve to be getting more scared. A few centuries of population growth in high medieval Europe meant humans and livestock were invading wolves’ space more and more. Wolves don’t recognize a culinary difference between wild prey and flocks of sheep. No matter that all those wolfskin bounties drove wolves to extinction in some parts of Europe by 1500. A wolf still killed fourteen people outside Paris in 1438! All the chronicles say so!

  Or you could interpret it as “A wolf killed fourteen people in 1438, and people talked so much about the event because attacks were so rare.” And you’d be right. To provide a little more context, a devastating famine year in 1438 had driven wolves to attack people out of desperation. There’s only one logical conclusion: the Middle Ages has had centuries of such lousy PR partly because they spent their advertising budget on slandering wolves.

  Don’t worry, though. You can still gain hero points by fending off animal attacks. All you need is a late medieval city that really likes bacon. It turns out that keeping a sow is a really great way to ensure your family has a supply of meat that isn’t salted fish, and it’s a lot more economical to let your pig roam the streets and eat garbage than to feed it yourself. The only problem was that wandering pigs had the bad habit of occasionally breaking into houses and eating babies. It was a big enough problem that city governments in Germany passed laws forbidding people from letting their pigs roam about. These ordinances were as effective as you would expect, which leaves ample opportunity for you to dash in and save toddlers from the jaws of pigs. And hey, not being eaten pales in comparison with not being eaten, plus bacon.

  Oh, does killing a cute, intelligent pig make you kind of queasy? Or maybe you’re a Muslim, a Jew who needs a kosher butcher, or a Christian during Lent who forgot to pay the Church to waive your fasting requirement? Or you’re just cranky that killing a pig is not exactly the height of drama and fending off a dramatic wolf attack is not going to happen. Stop worrying about your hero cred. You’re still in deep danger of being eaten, and not from any old animal skulking along a dark roadside. I am talking, of course, about the most dangerous predator of all:

  CANNIBALS

  All the experts agree: Think twice before you set your course for the edge of the world. A storm might blow you off course to an island beyond even Sumatra. Its residents will eat you, and then put your skull on display like a trophy. That’s not a possibility; it’s a fact. And don’t bother with a desperate attempt to get your ship back on the sea. You’ll need to restock your ship with food and freshwater somewhere. And, well, all the islands on the fringes of the Outer Sea are peopled by cannibals.

  But can you protect yourself from becoming ingredients if you do, in fact, end up at the end of the world? You can if you study the story of one tenth-century sailor who did, somehow, find a way to freedom.

  On an unnamed island off Sri Lanka—cannibals near the known world! well, sort of—the cannibal king himself invited the sailor to dinner. It was a lavish feast—except for the entrée swimming in a sauce that contained chunks of head, foot, and hand. As you can probably imagine, the sailor was done eating for the night. (Maybe for many nights.) The next morning, as he prepared for a hasty departure, the cannibal king held out a fish. “This is what we eat,” he told the sailor. “This is what you ate. The best of our fish.” The supposed cannibal king was just pulling a prank? Well, that’s a relief. Not being eaten is an unqualified good. And you can’t be eaten by cannibals if cannibals don’t exist.

  So you can sit back, relax, and enjoy many, many more medieval tales costarring cannibal villains in deserts and on islands. Like the tenth-century Arabic story of another island somewhere near Sri Lanka, which is a triple snare from which no sailor has ever escaped. If you land on this island, you’re devoured by tigers. If you’re quick enough to jump off your ship into the water, crocodiles are waiting, and they are hungry. And why would you jump overboard? Because the pirates who just boarded your ship are going to steal it… and eat you.

  Hold up. Cannibal pirates?

  Okay. Never mind that this tale allows no way for a sailor to survive and tell his story. Never mind that “cannibals” are only ever seen eating fish. Never mind that cannibals always live at the edge of the world, which nobody has ever visited. There are cannibal pirates.

  Wait, no. Being eaten is a bad thing. The best way to survive a predator attack is if there are no predators. So it’s good that cannibal pirates don’t exist in the first place.

  What a bummer. Why should you have to defeat the hordes of evil to save a world that doesn’t have cannibal pirates?

  WHEN DARK CLOUDS APPEAR on the HORIZON

  When dark clouds appear on the horizon at some point on your journey, there’s no need for concern. Just hire a weather-wizard.

  Yes, the Middle Ages had weather-wizards. They were called tempestarii or tempestariae, and they were the saviors of ninth-century France and England. When storms loomed on the horizon, tempestarii had the power to communicate with the clouds and force them to leave.

  Sometimes weather-wizards were called inmissores tempestatum, which means “senders of storms,” and they had the power to call down thunder and hail. They recited incantations to invite in storm clouds that destroyed peasants’ harvests.

  An important addendum: the tempestarii and inmissores tempestatum were the same people, and they wanted the same thing: your crops. All you had to do to make them stay good was give some of your harvest to them instead of to the Church.

  Does inmissores tempestatum sound a little too elegant and grammatically correct for peasant sorcerers? Does the specification about paying them instead of the Church seem suspiciously precise to you? You really might be right. The early medieval Church liked to declare that tempestarii were sinners. Early medieval European governments, often prompted by the Church, occasionally declared that tempestarii were criminals. But somehow, the only tempestarii you’ll meet in the literary sources that you might look to for guidance are not actually tempestarii. Rather the opposite.

  Around 816, Archbishop Agobard of Lyon wrote down the story of his conversation with a man who claimed to have seen, with his own eyes, a tempestarius in action. It was a claim, Agobard assured his readers. He had talked the man into admitting he had not, in fact, seen anyone perform any kind of weather magic—that he had invented the story entirely.

  On another occasion, the situation was far more dire. Agobard had chanced upon a posse of villagers. They were on the verge of stoning three men and one woman to death—right that moment. The villagers explained that the four people were cloud-sailors who had fallen out of one of their airborne ships. Agobard described himself reciting a long speech and having an extensive debate with the villagers, which he naturally won. They admitted their belief was wrong and freed their prisoners. This time, no suspected tempestarius or tempestaria was even involved.

>   Agobard, a tireless investigator and hero (according to his own account), found plenty of people who believed in the existence of tempestarii. But nobody was one. Nobody knew one. Nobody had even seen one. So good luck finding one to help with your quest.

  But not to worry! The Middle Ages still had weather-wizards. Just, they were called saints and priests. With their incantations and ritual spells, they were the saviors of a lot more places than just France and England.

  People in southwest France turned to priests to pray for enough rain for their crops, and priests held special church services to ward off thunderstorms. Priests in early medieval France and Germany (like, say, one Agobard of Lyon) were empowered by prayer to drive away thunder and hail. How curious.

  When particularly bad storms arrived despite these attempts, people generally took shelter in sturdy stone churches. But who needs a building when you have a legitimate saint? As the story goes, an English-German missionary and abbess named Lioba (c. 710–782) stepped out into the worst storm the villagers had ever seen. She made the ritual sign of the cross—raise one hand to your forehead, draw it down to your stomach, touch one side of your heart, trace it across to the other side. The storm evaporated instantly.

  No need to worry that Lioba’s hagiography only mentions one success. The chances of a hero like you encountering more than one severe storm are surely rather low. The story’s lack of clear distinction between religion and magic isn’t a problem, either; that’s how medieval Christianity rolled. The problem is more that the man writing about Lioba needed some miracles to make her look like a saint. Hmm.

  Fine. Other examples might still be called for to learn how to deal with those dark clouds on the horizon. How about a figure who challenged a rival sorcerer to a weather duel?