The Golden Dreidel

by Ellen Kushner

  “Ohmigosh!” Sara cried. “I’m supposed to be chasing the demon army and rescuing the Golden Dreidel!”

  “Demons have captured King Solomon’s daughter?” He waved his arms about, running around in tiny circles, kicking up sand. “We must get a move on! As quickly as possible! Without delay! This very minute—if not sooner!”

  “But how do we find the demons?”

  “How do we find the demons?” he repeated. “We fool them—by making them think we’re going backward, like them!”

  And he put his sock on his head backward and both shoes on his feet backward.

  “Come on,” he said, “follow me!”

  Sara didn’t even see a path, but the Fool rushed forward. “Come on,” he repeated, “it’s a shortcut!”

  And there before them, suddenly, were bushes and trees and a path that hadn’t been there before, and Sara was running down it.

  THE ROAD SEEMED TO SPIN BY—or maybe it was the Fool who kept Sara’s head spinning with his riddles and jokes.

  “What is it,” the Fool asked, “that makes you cry but doesn’t make you sad?”

  She used to like riddles, but not anymore. Riddles were babyish. And she’d never heard this one.

  “You don’t know?” said the Fool. “C’mon, it’s an easy one.”

  “I’m too old for riddles.”

  “Whaaaaaaa?” The Fool stopped dead in his tracks. He stuck his finger in his ear and bulged his tongue out inside his cheek and wiggled it around, so it looked like he was cleaning out the inside of his head. “Am I hearing what I think I’m hearing? Tell me I’m not hearing this thing that I think I’m hearing but really am not.”

  “Riddles are just for kids,” Sara said stubbornly.

  “Oy.” The Fool shook his spiky red head. “Right. Kids like that Greek hero, Eddy Puss or something, who riddled at the crossroads with the Great Sphinx for his life and crown. Kids like the mighty Samson, who challenged an entire party of Philistines with a riddle only his wife could answer by tricking it out of him…or the brilliant King Solomon himself, who won the love of the equally brilliant Queen of Sheba in a Riddle Game that lasted for six long months. So you’re too old for riddles.” The Fool shrugged. “OK. Never mind, then.”

  They walked on.

  “So what is it?” Sara asked.

  “What is what?”

  “What doesn’t make you sad but always makes you cry?”

  “I asked you that.”

  “Well, now I’m asking you.”

  “But you don’t know the answer.”

  “So?”

  “You can’t ask a riddle you don’t know the answer to yourself,” the Fool said firmly. “It’s against the rules.”

  “Riddles have rules?”

  “Every game has rules. Every game worth playing.”

  “So what’s the answer?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you,” the Fool said.

  “Well, I don’t know, do I?”

  “Ohhhhh!” The Fool acted like he’d just figured out something deep. “You give UP!”

  It sounded a lot like losing a game, but she couldn’t stand it any more. “Yeah, OK, I give up,” Sara muttered. “Just tell me what it is.”

  “An onion.”

  Well, that was true. Sara’s mother hated chopping onions because they not only made her cry, they also made her nose run.

  “Now you tell me one,” the Fool said.

  “I don’t know any.”

  “You don’t—oh, Lord, give me patience. What do they do for fun in your world? Watch paint dry on the walls?”

  “Watch TV.”

  “That’s what I said!” She wished he didn’t make her laugh. He was so annoying, she would have liked to be really mad at him. But there was something about his cheerful goodwill—even when he was teasing, she could tell he wanted to make her like him. And he was distracting her from worrying about the demons.

  “So, all right, here’s another one. This one’s hard, but you’re a bright girl. What flower stays green and fresh forever?”

  “A rose?”

  “You may be gifted, but you don’t know much about flowers, do you? And don’t say ‘a plastic rose,’ ’cause it doesn’t count. What started out green, and stays green forever? Come on….”

  “A pine tree?”

  He snorted. “What do you think this is, the Christmas Tree Shops? I said flower. You’re not thinking.”

  Sara thought of all the flowers she knew. Didn’t they all die eventually? “I give up.”

  “Love,” said the Fool.

  “What? That’s not a flower!”

  “It’s a metaphor. The flower of love stays green and fresh forever—if you’re lucky. If it’s true love. You should be so lucky,” he sighed. “We all should. So have you thought of one yet?”

  Sara used to have a riddle book. She’d hide it in her desk at school and look at it when class got boring. It had pictures in it. She saw her favorite one now, so clearly she might have just been reading it behind her math book. And she bet it was one he didn’t know. Sara said, “What key doesn’t open a door?”

  “A monkey.”

  “Nope.”

  “A turkey.”

  “Those aren’t real kinds of keys. It has to be real.”

  “A fruit key.”

  “There’s no such thing as a fruit key,” Sara said—though for all she knew, there was here.

  The Fool waved his arms in the air. “A key that you used to have the lock to but you lost when you moved across town and now you can’t remember which door it went to and anyway the lock’s all rusty?”

  “Pathetic,” Sara said. “Give up? Want me to tell you?” He nodded. “A piano key!”

  He hit his own head. “Ouch! OK, listen: A man is sitting in a restaurant, a very busy restaurant. And every time the waiter rushes by, the man calls out, ‘Waiter, waiter, taste this soup!’ (He’s got a bowl of soup in front of him, did I say that?)”

  “What kind?”

  “Pea soup—how should I know? Funny soup. It’s a joke, so it’s funny soup.”

  “Minestrone,” said Sara. It was the funniest soup name she knew. Some people said min-ess-TRO-nee and some said min-ess-TRONE, which cracked her up either way.

  “OK, minestrone,” he said, doing the TRO-nee. “So: ‘Waiter, waiter, taste this soup!’ ‘Just a minute, sir!’ says the waiter. He is very busy. ‘Waiter, waiter, taste this soup!’ Finally, the waiter stops at the table. ‘So where’s the spoon?’ he asks, and the man goes, ‘A-HA!’ ”

  Sara waited a moment. “That’s it?”

  “Don’t you get it? The waiter never brought him a spoon! That was how he asked for it! Whatsamatter, don’t they have restaurants where you come from?”

  “Try another riddle,” Sara said. (His riddles were better than his jokes.)

  “What gets bigger the more you take out of it?”

  “Love?”

  “Hmm. Very philosophical. But no. You wouldn’t let me have monkey, I’m not giving you love. So to speak. The more you take from it, the bigger it gets. What is it?”

  Sara gave up.

  “A hole in the ground.”

  The world changed around them with each joke the Fool told. Sometimes they were walking along a river, sometimes in a forest under trees. Sometimes the sky was blue, but once Sara thought she saw stars overhead. At least it never rained, though there were storm clouds as they crossed a little stone bridge. And then, suddenly, they were in the mountains. The purple mountains, Sara guessed, though once you were in them, they looked more grey than purple. They were on a narrow path, with rocks rising high on all sides of them. You couldn’t really tell if it was day or night, the shadows were so deep.

  The path stopped at a wall of solid rock.

  “Uh-oh,” said Sara, but the Fool said, “Finally!”
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br />   Sara looked up at the sheer rock face. It was so high it blotted out the sky. “Are we going to have to climb up this?” she asked nervously. “Do you know how? We did rope climbing in gym, but that’s not the same thing, is it? Do you even have a rope? What if—”

  “Hooooold your horses,” said the Fool. “Do I detect a note of worry?”

  “Well, it’s just that if we have to climb it—”

  “Climb it? Do I look like Sir Edmund Hillary to you?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “ ‘Who’s that?’ she asks me. What do they teach them nowadays? He climbed Mt. Everest. I don’t look a thing like him, trust me. Get it?”

  “OK. But how—”

  “Get it?”

  “I said OK. But—”

  “No, no, nooooo,” the Fool moaned. “When I say ‘Get it?’ you have to say ‘Got it.’ Try again. Get it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Good.” He nodded. “That’s the ticket. Now, then, as to your cliff-climbing terrors, fear not, and also do not worry or be afraid. This is demon territory—everything’s backward, remember? To go up—we go down. To go over, we go under. Jump!”

  SARA JUMPED—just a little hop, really, to see what would happen.

  What happened was that she felt herself falling, falling, like falling straight off a cliff. Her eyes were squeezed shut tight. Just when she was wondering if she should prepare for a crash landing, she felt herself slowing down. It was like being a cartoon character, Sara thought. But before she could try running her legs in circles in the air, she felt the ground softly meet her feet. She opened her eyes and saw the Fool floating gently down next to her.

  His face was lit with orangey light by the torches burning all around them—torches held by demons of all shapes and sizes, some so funny-looking that Sara would have laughed if they weren’t on a serious rescue mission.

  Then one demon stepped forward, bigger than all the rest. His wings were shiny black, his eyes were red, and he had a huge, glittering crown on his head.

  “Greetings, King Ashmedai!” said the Fool.

  “Well, well,” gloated the Demon King. Fire flickered in his nostrils. “So glad you decided to…drop in. We’ve been looking for a little entertainment.”

  “Then isn’t this your lucky day—er, night? Entertainment is what we’re all about. How’d you like us to do handstands for you?”

  “Not that kind of entertainment. We were thinking more of something like…a little something called the Riddle Game.”

  “The Riddle Game, huh?” said the Fool. “Uh-oh. We don’t know too many riddles, do we, Sara?”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” the King said with oily happiness. “It’s easy. And it’s fun, too. Here’s how it works: We ask you questions, and if you don’t know the answers…we suck out your brains through a straw!”

  “Sounds like a laugh riot,” said Sara bravely. This wasn’t getting them anywhere; they were here to rescue the dreidel, weren’t they? And she did not want anyone sticking a straw anywhere near her brains, thank you very much. “But we have a question for you, first.”

  “That’s not how it works,” growled the Demon King. “We ask the questions. If you can answer all three, then you can ask us one. Whoever can’t answer…” The King made a horrible slurping noise that seemed to go on forever. It was worse than her cousin Max finishing his chocolate milk when Aunt Rachel had been dumb enough to let him keep his straw. “It’s lots of fun. You’ll see.”

  The Fool said, “I guess we will.”

  “Are you ready? Then let’s begin.”

  The demons started jumping up and down, cackling and giving the king advice. “I’ve got one! I’ve got one!”

  “No, I know, I know!”

  “Meeeee! Meeeeeeee!!!”

  “Enough!” The King raised his scaly hand. His fingernails were painted a dark red, except the pinkies, which were blue and black. “Ornias shall speak the first riddle.”

  A demon with hair growing out in different-colored tufts in weird places all over his body stepped into the circle. Twisting horns sprang from his forehead. His legs ended in chicken feet—but the worst part was, they were on backward. Ornias was truly horrible to look at.

  “Tremble, mortals,” he said. (“Who are you calling a mortal, fuzzface?” muttered the Fool.) “For mine is a riddle so ancient that when Joseph was imprisoned in Egypt, he told it to his jailer to get extra pottage privileges. And now, here is my riddle. Listen well. The more you take from me, the bigger I grow. What am I?”

  “A hole in the ground,” Sara answered promptly.

  “You knew it!” the King hissed.

  “Not fair!” whined Ornias.

  The Demon King hit Ornias on the head. “It is an old one,” grumbled the King, “much too old. When Adam told it to Eve, she said she knew it already.”

  “The Fool has been around a long time; he probably heard it from Eve and told it to the girl,” another demon said. This one was almost as round as a ball. When he spoke, he swelled up, so that it looked as if he would burst right out of his greeny-purple skin. “But I will not fall into that same trap. I am the mighty Autothith, bringer of headaches and hangnails. I shall ask them something modern, something new. Something unheard of in the world until lately, such as even Reb Berele Berenson, the Laughing Rabbi of Schnitzelkov, could never have dreamed of on a night when he’d eaten five times his weight in creamed herring and washed it all down with peppermint brandy. Here is my riddle. Listen well. What is it that is black and white…and yet is red all over?”

  The Fool opened his eyes wide. “Could it possibly be—an embarrassed zebra??”

  “No!” Autothith cried. “It is…a newspaper!”

  “I always heard ‘an embarrassed zebra,’ ” Ornias muttered.

  “Me, too.”

  “Penguin,” another demon said. “An embarrassed penguin.”

  “Newspaper!” Autothith shrieked, getting even bigger. “Don’t you get it?! Red all over—read all over?!!!”

  “Calm down, Thith,” the Demon King growled. “You’ll give yourself a rupture. I don’t want your slime all over the place again. Let us skip that one and ask another.”

  “But that’s not fair,” Sara said. “We gave a right answer. You can’t ask us four riddles—it’s not in the rules!”

  “Foolish mortal!” laughed the Demon King. “What do you know of rules?”

  “She’s right,” the Fool said quietly. “The game only works if you follow the rules. You know that, Ashmedai.”

  The Demon King kicked the ground. Dust rose up around him. “I don’t care,” he said. “I’m king. I make the rules around here.”

  “Yeah!” the other demons cried.

  “Fine,” said the Fool. He straightened the sock on his head. “Fine with us. Then we’re not playing. C’mon, Sara, let’s go.”

  “What do you mean you’re not playing?” The Demon King shrieked so loudly Sara’s ears hurt. “You have to play! We agreed! I was going to suck out your brains through a straw!”

  “Three questions.” The Fool looked over his shoulder. “We got the first two right. You only get one more.”

  “One more!” the other demons were shouting. “We want more riddles!”

  “Let it be so,” Ashmedai said sulkily. “ ‘Embarrassed zebra’ will be accepted as the answer to the second question.” Autothith started blowing himself up again. “Though ‘a newspaper’ would also have been correct,” he hastened to add. “What does it matter? The final riddle is the hardest, and you will surely lose, for I will do the asking this time.”

  Sara looked at the Fool. So far so good, but what if he didn’t know this one? What if it were really hard? Could they figure it out on their own? Oh, stop worrying, she told herself. The demons aren’t all that bright. It’s probably just something dumb like, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” Sh
e tried to think of all the riddles she knew, but her brain was being difficult, and all she could come up with was knock-knock jokes.

  “Here is my riddle,” said King Ashmedai. “Listen well. Ahem!” The demon cleared his throat. “I have more eyes than you can count, but only two of them can see. What am I?”

  The Fool looked puzzled for once. Was there really one he didn’t know? Sara bit her lip, thinking. She’d learned that all riddles made sense eventually. You just had to figure them out. Eyes that can’t see…a potato? That has more eyes than you can count. But no, that wasn’t the answer, not if two of them can see. What else has eyes? Eye of a daisy—was that real, or was she making it up? Eye of a storm…eye of a hurricane. What has two regular eyes and a bunch of eyes somewhere else…eyes in the back of their head? Eyes in their tail…. Of course.

  “I’ve got it,” Sara cried. “A peacock!”

  “Curses,” snarled the Demon King.

  “Three!” shouted the Fool.

  “Not fair!” the other demons whined, writhing and twisting themselves into even uglier shapes. They were such babies, Sara couldn’t believe it.

  “That was fun,” the Fool said. “I guess it’s our turn, now.”

  “All right,” the King growled. “Ask me one. But tremble still, for I know the answer to all questions that ever were or will be.”

  Sara opened her mouth to ask about the dreidel, but the Fool put his finger on his lips in warning.

  “I’ve got one,” he said to the Demon King. “Ready? What looks like a box…smells like a lox…and flies?”

  “Ohhh.” The Demon King screwed his red eyes shut tight in thought. “A box?…It flies, you say? And it smells?”

  “Like a lox. It’s a kind of pickled fish, if that helps.”

  “It doesn’t help! I know what lox is!”

  “Then you give up?”

  “No!”

  But try as he might, the demon could not come up with an answer.