Dragon, Dragon and Other Tales

by John Gardner

  The old woman on the fence post said, “About what, if I may ask?”

  “Oh, these boulders,” he said. “I have to turn them to rubies.”

  “That’s easy,” said the old woman. She waved her walking stick, and the boulders turned to rubies.

  “Well I’ll be darned,” said the miller.

  The king and all his knights came and saw what the miller had done. “You’re a better man than I am,” said the king, “and not a traitor after all.” By way of reward, he gave the miller half the precious boulders.

  The miller whispered in the mule’s ear, “You spiteful creature, you tried to get my head chopped off. Now I will shoot you for sure.”

  But the mule said, “Didn’t I say I’d make you rich, master? Do you think I didn’t foresee exactly what would happen?”

  “Hmmm,” said the miller, and he didn’t know what to think.

  The mule said, “If you’ll trust me further, I can make you richer yet.”

  “Hah,” said the miller, “nothing doing!” However, on second thought he decided to try it. “All right,” he said, “I’ll trust you one more time.”

  That was exactly what the mule wanted, because he hated that miller more than words can tell, and he was determined to see him dead. “Oh, Your Majesty,” the mule cried to the king, who was helping the knights load rubies into wagons, “I forgot to tell you one little thing. The miller claims that whenever he turns plain boulders into rubies, all the rivers in the kingdom begin to run backward, and soon the kingdom will dry up to mere desert and grits.”

  “What?” said the king.

  The miller felt slightly uneasy, but he said, “It’s true, Your Majesty.”

  The mule said, “If the rivers run backward, then the miller’s a traitor to the kingdom, and if they don’t run backward the miller’s a liar. Either way, he deserves to lose his head.” And the mule smiled.

  “We’d better go look at the rivers,” said the king. He ordered his knights to lock up the miller in a high tower overlooking the nearest of the rivers, and tomorrow morning, whichever way the thing turned out, they would come back and chop off his head. So they locked him up and sent the mule away and rode off to look at the rivers.

  “Tricked,” thought the miller irritably, and this time he swore he’d get revenge on that mule for sure. But then he thought, where there’s a will there’s a way, and he squeezed his head between his hands and tried to figure one out. He thought and thought, but the more he thought, the more he understood that whether the rivers ran backward or not, he was in for it. “There’s only one solution,” he said at last. “I’d better get out of here.”

  He set to work immediately. He borrowed a file from a hunchbacked old Friar with one brown eye and one green one, who was sitting just outside the tower door, and filed the iron bars from the windows. Then he borrowed a long rope and a lantern, and he began to climb down from the tower to make his escape. But he had forgotten one thing—directly under his window lay the river, and it rushed along at such terrific speed he could not possibly swim across it. “I’m ruined,” said the miller.

  Above his head the old hunchback looked out the window and asked, “Why?”

  “Oh, because of this river,” said the miller. “It’s running so fast I’ll drown the minute I set foot in it.”

  “That’s easy,” said the hunchback, “I’ll just make the river run the other direction, so the water empties out, and you can walk across on dry land. Besides, some pirates are sailing away with the king’s youngest daughter, and this is a good way to stop them.” He waved his walking stick and the river emptied out, and the miller walked across on dry land. When he’d gone not more than a mile and a half down the highway on the other side, fleeing the kingdom, he noticed the pirate ship the hunchback had mentioned, and he went to it and rescued the princess and carried her back to her father, as was right. By this time the kingdom was beginning to shrivel up into desert and grits.

  When the miller brought the princess to the king, the king said, “I’m very grateful to you. I don’t mind telling you, son, we’ve been worried sick.” By the way of reward, he gave the miller half the kingdom and his daughter’s hand in marriage.

  “You’re not angry about the river, then, or the kingdom shriveling up?” the miller said.

  “River?” the king said. Then he remembered and shrugged. “All’s well that ends well,” he said.

  Later, when he saw the mule, the miller said, “You vicious beast, you tried to get my head chopped off twice. I won’t be fooled a third time—I’ll shoot you now for sure.” He drew his pistol and pressed the muzzle to the side of the mule’s head.

  But the mule said, “Didn’t I say I’d make you rich, master? Do you think I didn’t foresee exactly what would happen? Well, some people are forever suspicious and small-minded and devoid of trust. Go ahead, pull the trigger.” Salt tears ran down his face.

  “Hmm,” said the miller, and he frowned in confusion and put the pistol in his coat pocket.

  The mule said then, “If you trust me once more, I can make you the richest and most powerful man in the world.”

  “Hah!” said the miller, “do you think I’m an absolute idiot?” And he stalked away. But late that night he had a change of heart and went back to the mule and said, “All right, I’ll trust you one last time, but you’d better watch your step.”

  The mule was overjoyed. “Good,” he said. “Meet me at the palace in the morning.” And so they parted.

  That morning they met at the palace and the mule said at once to the king, “Your Majesty, now that you’ve given up half the kingdom to him, this miller has grown drunk with power. He claims he can overthrow all the kings from here to Latvia, including of course you.”

  “Is this true?” said the king sharply.

  The miller was again uneasy, but again he nodded.

  “Ha ha ha. He’s kidding,” the king said.

  “It’s no joke, Your Majesty,” said the mule.

  “No joke?” said the king.

  The miller shook his head.

  The king bit his lip. “And how does he intend to do it?”

  The mule said, “He’s invited all the kings in the world to come on a deer hunt to celebrate his wedding. While the other kings are hunting deer, the miller will be hunting kings. You’ll be the first, of course.” The mule smiled.

  “What shall I do?” the king said.

  “I’d chop off his head at once, if I were you,” said the mule.

  But the king said, “I can’t do that. The invitations to the other kings have already gone out. We can’t have royalty traipsing all that way for nothing.”

  The mule frowned, for that was something he hadn’t anticipated.

  “There’s just one solution,” the king said. “When the other kings come and the miller sets about murdering them, I shall go on a long trip, and perhaps when I come back he’ll have changed his mind.” He added, after a moment’s silence, “It’s a clever idea, that deer-hunt trick. I wish I’d thought of it years ago!”

  And so it was settled. The day before the day of the hunt the king set off to visit Yugoslavia, and the miller sat moaning and groaning in his room, thinking of all those kings he would have to kill. “Alas,” he cried, half to himself and half to the princess who sat on the window ledge, combing her golden hair, “how can I possibly kill all those kings, even supposing I wanted to? What wouldn’t I give to be merely a humble miller again, without this responsibility, Furthermore, they’re my guests.”

  “Oh come now,” said the princess. She was the most beautiful princess in the world, but she was mean. “No point in stewing over it. You’ve said you’ll do it, so do it.”

  “But how?” cried the miller. He pointed down to the courtyard where the kings were assembled, each one with his thousand knights. “How can anyone possibly kill so many?”

  “That’s easy,” said the princess. She pointed at them with her ivory comb, and instantly the ground
opened up and swallowed them and then closed again, not leaving so much as a banner for evidence.

  “You!” cried the miller, for only now had he noticed that one of her eyes was brown, the other green, so he hadn’t saved her from the pirates at all, she’d merely been fooling around with him, possibly from boredom. The princess smiled. “All’s fair in love and war,” she said.

  So the miller went on the deer hunt alone, and shot more deer than he had arrows, and came back that night and married the princess. When the king came back the miller told him he’d changed his mind, and so together they ruled the world from here to Latvia.

  When the miller came across the mule, he said, “You traitor, three times you tried to kill me. Never again! Prepare to meet your Maker!” And he drew out his pistol and cocked it.

  “Whatever you say, Your Majesty,” the mule said. He rolled up his eyes as if to heaven. “But didn’t I tell you, Your Majesty, that I’d make you the most powerful man in the world? Do you think I didn’t foresee exactly what would happen?”

  “Pah,” said the miller. “The scales have fallen from my eyes, mule. You meant to kill me, and you would have, too, if the princess hadn’t fallen in love with me, or perhaps felt bored to the point of despair, the princess being a witch for whom everything comes easy.”

  “Whatever you say,” the mule said. “If you’re sure you’re right, go ahead and murder me. Heaven knows, I’m an old and defenseless beast, and in this world of constant uncertainty, it’s your opinion against mine.”

  “Hmm,” said the miller.

  He held the pistol against the mule’s head for a long time, and the princess sat in a nearby oak tree, smiling and paring her nails. At last the miller threw down the pistol and stamped his foot. “Confound it,” he said, “a person just can’t tell.”

  He let the mule come live with him in the royal palace, since if it was true that the mule had meant to help him, it was only fair that he show a little gratitude. The mule never tried to kill the miller again, because if he killed the miller he would have to go back to living in a field, standing all day in the drizzling rain, like other mules. Thus as long as he lived, the miller never did make out what to think. As the years passed the mule became more and more friendly with him, and when the mule at last died he left everything he had to the miller, with a note so touching that the miller could not help but weep.

  THE LAST

  PIECE OF LIGHT

  Once, long, long ago, a strange thing began to happen—all the lights in the world began to grow dim. At first, no one especially noticed. People would casually observe, now and then, when they were trying to make out a definition in the dictionary, or trying to read the highway numbers on a complicated map, or understand the small print on an insurance policy, “Confound, it seems as if something’s happening to the light, these days.” But they were only half serious. They thought it was merely their eyes.

  Soon, however, there was no getting around it. The world was gradually slipping into darkness. “The world’s getting darker,” people said experimentally. Shoemakers said it, and druggists who were trying to measure things—in fact everyone said it except the politicians, who furiously denied it—and the people were all vaguely frightened, wondering what it meant. Sometimes, in the pale gray afternoon, farmers waiting for their turn at the barbershop in town would say casually, but in a nervous voice, “I wonder if the corn will ripen before frost this year.” The barber would shake his head and say nothing, for he’d heard it before, and it worried him, to tell the truth. None of the crops were growing right, and if this kept up … But it was not his business, actually, and neither was it the farmers’ business, so they put it out of their minds, as well as they could, and talked politics.

  The king called a meeting of all his politicians, and after he’d talked with them for a while about this and that, he said, as if it had just occurred to him and was not of much importance really, “By the way, gentlemen, does anyone happen to know if it’s true, as people say, that something’s been happening to the light?”

  “Light, Your Majesty?” the politicians said, for they hated to come right out and confront a thing like that.

  “Well,” the king said, “I’ve been hearing rumors, from time to time …”

  But they didn’t pursue it. One was always hearing rumors, complaints, dire prophesies. What was a person to do?

  Now in those days there lived a little chimney-girl, by the name of Chimorra. She hadn’t a friend or relation in the world to direct or instruct her, and she lived with a cruel lady boardinghouse-keeper who gave her nothing to eat but old dry doughnuts and nothing to drink but stale tea. Nevertheless, Chimorra was a happy child, partly by nature and partly because, strange as it may seem, she loved her work cleaning chimneys. She would sit in the flue among the chimney swifts when everyone below had forgotten she was there, and she’d hum very softly to herself, rhythmically dusting the soot from the bricks, and she would listen to the voices in the house around her and think at every second word, “How interesting! I must try to remember that!” Sometimes she would remember and sometimes she wouldn’t, for oftentimes it happens in this world that things which seem interesting in the dark are not very interesting or memorable after all in the common light of day.

  Though she never went to school like other children and thus never learned the things her society considered important, like how to add nine and seventeen or what is the capital of Idaho, she did learn answers for a number of interesting questions. For instance, she learned why the best banks are in London, not Switzerland, and why there are no armadillos in the zoo at Minsk. Also, one day, sitting in the chimney of a withered old man with one glass eye, she learned what was happening to the light.

  She overheard the old man saying to his one and only friend, who was a cruel old mizer who sometimes lived in Utrecht, “Soon I shall be Master of the World.”

  “Really?” said the mizer without much interest, for nothing really interested him but money. “How so?”

  “I’m stealing all the light,” said the withered, one-eyed man and gave a horrible, horrible laugh. “When it’s all gone, nothing will grow, and the people will starve except me, since I am out of the habit of eating, and then I’ll be Master of the World.”

  “Horrible!” said the mizer of Utrecht with a grim chuckle. It did not particularly bother him, because he never ate either, and he did not much care who was Master of the World, so long as they left him alone.

  “My goodness!” little Chimorra said, her eyes wide in the darkness of the flue, “I must hurry and tell the king!” She waited till the two fell asleep from drinking, then hurried to the royal palace.

  But when she came to the palace the guards told her to go home and wash up, they couldn’t have soot all over the palace floor, so she went home to wash. Alas! the cruel boardinghouse lady would not give her a drop of water. “What shall I do?” cried little Chimorra. But what could she do? So she went to bed and soon fell fast asleep.

  While she was sleeping she dreamed that a beautiful, plump lady in an ice-blue dress and a crown of starlight came to her bedside and said, “Chimorra.”

  “Yes’m?” Chimorra said.

  “I want you to do me a favor, Chimorra,” the lady said. “Go steal me a piece of light before the last of it is gone.”

  “Steal?” Chimorra said, sitting up in alarm.

  “Borrow, I mean.”

  “In that case, all right,” Chimorra said.

  “Put it in your locket and keep it there,” the lady said, “and if anyone asks you what you’re up to, tell them you’re working for the Lady of the North Star.”

  “Really?” Chimorra said. “Will they believe me?”

  “Just do as I say, dear,” the lady said, and Chimorra said she would.

  “One more thing,” the lady said, “and this you must be especially careful to remember, for the worst thing about darkness is, it’s depressing. Also, what I am going to tell you is powerful, magic,
and there will come a time when it’s needed. If ever you feel sad, just say to yourself—

  Gloom is here, gloom is there,

  But I am the North Star’s friend.

  After you say it you’ll find you feel much, much better, because there I’ll be—ping!—just like that! Can you remember?”

  “I’ll try,” said Chimorra. To fix it firmly in her mind—and also because the lady did not look as if she completely trusted her—Chimorra said it over.

  Gloom is here, gloom is there,

  But I am the North Star’s friend.

  “Yes,” she said then, nodding. “I think I’ve got it. It’s an interesting poem, actually. You think it’s going to rhyme and then it doesn’t.”

  “It’s free verse,” said the lady. Then she vanished. The next morning when Chimorra awakened she thought at once of the visitor who had come to her in the night, and some of what the lady had said Chimorra remembered, and some of it she did not. “I must steal—that is, borrow—a piece of light,” Chimorra recalled. And, lest it slip her mind, she wrote herself a note. “Borrow light.”

  Then, clutching the note in her pocket Chimorra hurried to the one-eyed man’s house and sneaked in through the cellar door. Above her head she heard the one-eyed man talking with his friend, the mizer of Utrecht. “Tonight is the night!” said the one-eyed man. “Tonight I bring in the last load, and in the morning when people wake up, Surprise! No morning!”

  “Horrible,” said the mizer, bored.

  Then they sat drinking whiskey till they both fell asleep.

  As soon as she heard their regular snoring, little Chimorra crept past the parlor where the two were sitting and went hunting through the house till she found where the one-eyed man had hidden the light he had stolen from the world. It was all in an enormous crock in the pantry, tucked out of sight behind crates of apples, sacks of potatoes, old catalogues from seed houses, and a giant pile of zucchini. Even before she lifted the lid she knew she had found what she was after. The crock was humming inside as if filled with bees. She closed her eyes tight (since looking directly at that much light would be worse than looking at the sun), and lifting the lid of the crock quickly, she reached in and snatched a small sliver of light and hastily put it in her locket, as the lady had commanded. Then she fled back past the parlor and home to bed.