"All I ever said to you was the truth."
"Was it?"
"Did I lie to you? Answer-yes or no!"
The dragon only looked away, its eyes still bright. It lay on its back and poured gravel over its belly.
"I did then. I lied. Just the kind of fool I am to tell the truth and still get caught in a lie."
Had the dragon"s eyes dimmed? Was there a lie in what he had just said?
"Dragon," Bork insisted, "if you don"t kill me or I don"t kill you, then I might as well throw myself from the cliff. There"s no meaning to my life, if I can"t die at your hands!"
Yes, the dragon"s eyes were dimming, and the dragon rolled over onto its belly, and began to gaze thoughtfully at Bork.
"Where is the lie in that?"
"Lie? Who said anything about a lie?" But the dragon"s long tail was beginning to creep around so it could get behind Bork.
And then it occurred to Bork that the dragon might not even know. That the dragon might be as much a prisoner of the fires of truth inside him as Bork was, and that the dragon wasn"t deliberately toying with him at all. Didn"t matter, of course. "Never mind what the lie is, then," Bork said. "Kill me now, and the world will be a better place!"
The dragon"s eyes dimmed, and a claw made a pa.s.s at him, raking the air by his face.
It was maddening, to know there was a lie in what he was saying and not know what it was. "It"s the perfect ending for my meaningless life," he said. "I"m so clumsy I even have to stumble into death."
He didn"t understand why, but once again he stared into the dragon"s mouth, and the claws pressed gently but sharply against his flesh.
The dragon asked the question of Bork for the third time. "Are you afraid, little man, to die?"
This was the moment, Bork knew. If he was to die, he had to lie to the dragon now, for if he told the truth the dragon would set him free again. But to lie, he had to know what the truth was, and now he didn"t know at all. He tried to think of where he had gone astray from the truth, and could not. What had he said? It was true that he was clumsy; it was true that he was stumbling into death. What else then?
He had said his life was meaningless. Was that the lie? He had said his death would make the world a better place. Was that the lie?
And so he thought of what would happen when he died. What hole would his death make in the world? The only people who might miss him were the villagers. That was the meaning of his life, then-the villagers. So he lied.
"The villagers won"t miss me if I die. They"ll get along just fine without me."
But the dragon"s eyes brightened, and the teeth withdrew, and Bork realized to his grief that his statement had been true after all. The villagers wouldn"t miss him if he died. The thought of it broke his heart, the last betrayal in a long line of betrayals.
"Dragon, I can"t outguess you! I don"t know what"s true and what isn"t! All I learn from you is that everyone I thought loved me doesn"t. Don"t ask me questions! Just kill me and end my life. Every pleasure I"ve had turns to pain when you tell me the truth."
And now, when he had thought he was telling the truth, the claws broke his skin, and the teeth closed over his head, and he screamed. "Dragon! Don"t let me die like this! What is the pleasure that your truth won"t turn to pain? What do I have left?"
The dragon pulled away, and regarded him carefully. "I told you, little man, that I don"t answer questions. I ask them."
"Why are you here?" Bork demanded. "This ground is littered with the bones of men who failed your tests. Why not mine? Why not mine? Why can"t I die? Why did you keep sparing my life? I"m just a man, I"m just alive, I"m just trying to do the best I can in a miserable world and I"m sick of trying to figure out what"s true and what isn"t. End the game, dragon. My life has never been happy, and I want to die."
The dragon"s eyes went black, and the jaws opened again, and the teeth approached, and Bork knew he had told his last lie, that this lie would be enough. But with the teeth inches from him Bork finally realized what the lie was, and the realization was enough to change his mind. "No," he said, and he reached out and seized the teeth, though they cut his fingers. "No," he said, and he wept. "I have been happy. I have." And, gripping the sharp teeth, the memories raced through his mind. The many nights of comradeship with the knights in the castle. The pleasures of weariness from working in the forest and the fields. The joy he felt when alone he won a victory from the Duke; the rush of warmth when the boy brought him the single fish he had caught; and the solitary pleasures, of waking and going to sleep, of walking and running, of feeling the wind on a hot day and standing near a fire in the deep of winter. They were all good, and they had all happened. What did it matter if later the knights despised him? What did it matter if the villagers" love was only a fleeting thing, to be forgotten after he died? The reality of the pain did not destroy the reality of the pleasure; grief did not obliterate joy. They each happened in their time, and because some of them were dark it did not mean that none of them was light.
"I have been happy," Bork said. "And if you let me live, I"ll be happy again. That"s what my life means, doesn"t it? That"s the truth, isn"t it, dragon? My life matters because I"m alive, joy or pain, whatever comes, I"m alive and that"s meaning enough. It"s true, isn"t it, dragon! I"m not here to fight you. I"m not here for you to kill me. I"m here to make myself alive!"
But the dragon did not answer. Bork was gently lowered to the ground. The dragon withdrew its talons and tail, pulled its head away, and curled up on the ground, covering its eyes with its claws.
"Dragon, did you hear me?"
The dragon said nothing.
"Dragon, look at me!"
The dragon sighed. "Man, I cannot look at you."
"Why not?"
"I am blind," the dragon answered. It pulled its claws away from its eyes. Bork covered his face with his hands. The dragon"s eyes were brighter than the sun.
"I feared you, Bork," the dragon whispered. "From the day you told me you were afraid, I feared you. I knew you would be back. And I knew this moment would come."
"What moment?" Bork asked.
"The moment of my death."
"Are you dying?"
"No," said the dragon. "Not yet. You must kill me."
As Bork looked at the dragon lying before him, he felt no desire for blood. "I don"t want you to die."
"Don"t you know that a dragon cannot live when it has met a truly honest man? It"s the only way we ever die, and most dragons live forever."
But Bork refused to kill him.
The dragon cried out in anguish. "I am filled with all the truth that was discarded by men when they chose their lies and died for them. I am in constant pain, and now that I have met a man who does not add to my treasury of falsehood, you are the cruelest of them all."
And the dragon wept, and its eyes flashed and sparkled in every hot tear that fell, and finally Bork could not bear it. He took his ax and hacked off the dragon"s head, and the light in its eyes went out. The eyes shriveled in their sockets until they turned into small, bright diamonds with a thousand facets each. Bork took the diamonds and put them in his pocket.
"You killed him," Brunhilda said wonderingly.
Bork did not answer. He just untied her, and looked away while she finally fastened her gown. Then he shouldered the dragon"s head and carried it back to the castle, Brunhilda running to keep up with him. He only stopped to rest at night because she begged him to. And when she tried to thank him for freeing her, he only turned away and refused to hear. He had killed the dragon because it wanted to die. Not for Brunhilda. Never for her.
At the castle they were received with rejoicing, but Bork would not go in. He only laid the dragon"s head beside the moat and went to his hut, fingering the diamonds in his pocket, holding them in front of him in the pitch blackness of his hut to see that they shone with their own light, and did not need the sun or any other fire but themselves.
The King and Winkle and Brunhilda and a dozen knights came to Bork"s hut. "I have come to thank you," the King said, his cheeks wet with tears of joy.
"You"re welcome," Bork said. He said it as if to dismiss them.
"Bork," the King said. "Slaying the dragon was ten times as brave as the bravest thing any man has done before. You can have my daughter"s hand in marriage."
Bork looked up in surprise.
"I thought you never meant to keep your promise, Your Majesty."
The King looked down, then at Winkle, then back at Bork. "Occasionally," he said, "I keep my word. So here she is, and thank you."
But Bork only smiled, fingering the diamonds in his pocket. "It"s enough that you offered, Your Majesty. I don"t want her. Marry her to a man she loves."
The King was puzzled. Brunhilda"s beauty had not waned in her years of captivity. She had the sort of beauty that started wars. "Don"t you want any any reward?" asked the King. reward?" asked the King.
Bork thought for a moment. "Yes," he said. "I want to be given a plot of ground far away from here. I don"t want there to be any count, or any duke, or any king over me. And any man or woman or child who comes to me will be free, and no one can pursue them. And I will never see you again, and you will never see me again."
"That"s all you want?"
"That"s all."
"Then you shall have it," the King said.
Bork lived all the rest of his life on his little plot of ground. People did come to him. Not many, but five or ten a year all his life, and a village grew up where no one came to take a king"s t.i.the or a duke"s fifth or a count"s fourth. Children grew up who knew nothing of the art of war and never saw a knight or a battle or the terrible fear on the face of a man who knows his wounds are too deep to heal. It was everything Bork could have wanted, and he was happy all his years there.
Winkle, too, achieved everything he wanted. He married Brunhilda, and soon enough the King"s sons had accidents and died, and the King died after dinner one night, and Winkle became King. He was at war all his life, and never went to sleep at night without fear of an a.s.sa.s.sin coming upon him in the darkness. He governed ruthlessly and thoroughly and was hated all his life; later generations, however, remembered him as a great King. But he was dead then, and didn"t know it.
Later generations never heard of Bork.
He had only been out on his little plot of ground for a few months when the old wife came to him. "Your hut is much bigger than you need," she said. "Move over."
So Bork moved over, and she moved in.
She did not magically turn into a beautiful princess. She was foul-mouthed and nagged Bork unmercifully. But he was devoted to her, and when she died a few years later he realized that she had given him more happiness than pain, and he missed her. But the grief at her dying did not taint any of the joys of his memory of her; he just fingered the diamonds, and remembered that grief and joy were not weighed in the same scale, one making the other seem less substantial.
And at last he realized that Death was near; that Death was reaping him like wheat, eating him like bread. He imagined Death to be a dragon, devouring him bit by bit, and one night in a dream he asked Death, "Is my flavor sweet?"
Death, the old dragon, looked at him with bright and understanding eyes, and said, "Salty and sour, bitter and sweet. You sting and you soothe."
"Ah," Bork said, and was satisfied.
Death poised itself to take the last bite. "Thank you," it said.
"You"re welcome," Bork answered, and he meant it.
THE P PRINCESS AND THE B BEAR.
I KNOW YOU"VE SEEN KNOW YOU"VE SEEN the lions. All over the place: beside the doors, flanking the throne, roaring out of the plates in the pantry, spouting water from under the eaves. the lions. All over the place: beside the doors, flanking the throne, roaring out of the plates in the pantry, spouting water from under the eaves.
Haven"t you ever wondered why the statue atop the city gates is a bear?
Many years ago in this very city, in the very palace that you can see rising granite and gray behind the old crumbly walls of the king"s garden, there lived a princess. It was so long ago that who can ever remember her name? She was just the princess. These days it isn"t in fashion to think that princesses are beautiful, and in fact they tend to be a bit horse-faced and gangling. But in those days it was an absolute requirement that a princess look fetching, at least when wearing the most expensive clothes available.
This princess, however, would have been beautiful dressed like a slum child or a shepherd girl. She was beautiful the moment she was born. She only got more beautiful as she grew up.
And there was also a prince. He was not her brother, though. He was the son of a king in a far-off land, and his father was the thirteenth cousin twice removed of the princess" father. The boy had been sent here to our land to get an education-because the princess" father, King Ethelred, was known far and wide as a wise man and a good king.
And if the princess was marvelously beautiful, so was the prince. He was the kind of boy that every mother wants to hug, the kind of boy who gets his hair tousled by every man that meets him.
He and the princess grew up together. They took lessons together from the teachers in the palace, and when the princess was slow, the prince would help her, and when the prince was slow, the princess would help him. They had no secrets from each other, but they had a million secrets that they two kept from the rest of the world. Secrets like where the bluebirds" nest was this year, and what color underwear the cook wore, and that if you duck under the stairway to the armory there"s a little underground path that comes up in the wine cellar. They speculated endlessly about which of the princess" ancestors had used that path for surrept.i.tious imbibing.
After not too many years the princess stopped being just a little girl and the prince stopped being just a little boy, and then they fell in love. All at once all their million secrets became just one secret, and they told that secret every time they looked at each other, and everyone who saw them said, "Ah, if I were only young again." That is because so many people think that love belongs to the young: sometime during their lives they stopped loving people, and they think it was just because they got old.
The prince and the princess decided one day to get married.
But the very next morning, the prince got a letter from the far-off country where his father lived. The letter told him that his father no longer lived at all, and that the boy was now a man; and not just a man, but a king.
So the prince got up the next morning, and the servants put his favorite books in a parcel, and his favorite clothes were packed in a trunk, and the trunk, and the parcel, and the prince were all put on a coach with bright red wheels and gold ta.s.sels at the corner and the prince was taken away.
The princess did not cry until after he was out of sight. Then she went into her room and cried for a long time, and only her nurse could come in with food and chatter and cheerfulness. At last the chatter brought smiles to the princess, and she went into her father"s study where he sat by the fire at night and said, "He promised he would write, every day, and I must write every day as well."
She did, and the prince did, and once a month a parcel of thirty letters would arrive for her, and the postrider would take away a parcel of thirty letters (heavily perfumed) from her.
And one day the Bear came to the palace. Now he wasn"t a bear, of course, he was the the Bear, with a capital B. He was probably only thirty-five or so, because his hair was still golden brown and his face was only lined around the eyes. But he was ma.s.sive and grizzly, with great thick arms that looked like he could lift a horse, and great thick legs that looked like he could carry that horse a hundred miles. His eyes were deep, and they looked brightly out from under his bushy eyebrows, and the first time the nurse saw him she squealed and said, "Oh, my, he looks like a Bear, with a capital B. He was probably only thirty-five or so, because his hair was still golden brown and his face was only lined around the eyes. But he was ma.s.sive and grizzly, with great thick arms that looked like he could lift a horse, and great thick legs that looked like he could carry that horse a hundred miles. His eyes were deep, and they looked brightly out from under his bushy eyebrows, and the first time the nurse saw him she squealed and said, "Oh, my, he looks like a bear bear."
He came to the door of the palace and the doorman refused to let him in, because he didn"t have an appointment. But he scribbled a note on a piece of paper that looked like it had held a sandwich for a few days, and the doorman-with grave misgivings-carried the paper to the king.
The paper said, "If Boris and 5,000 stood on the highway from Rimperdell, would you like to know which way they were going?"
King Ethelred wanted to know.
The doorman let the stranger into the palace, and the king brought him into his study and they talked for many hours.
In the morning the king arose early and went to his captains of cavalry and captains of infantry, and he sent a lord to the knights and their squires, and by dawn all of Ethelred"s little army was gathered on the highway, the one that leads to Rimperdell. They marched for three hours that morning, and then they came to a place and the stranger with golden brown hair spoke to the king and King Ethelred commanded the army to stop. They stopped, and the infantry was sent into the forest on one side of the road, and the cavalry was sent into the tall cornfields on the other side of the road, where they dismounted. Then the king, and the stranger, and the knights waited in the road.
Soon they saw a dust cloud in the distance, and then the dust cloud grew near, and they saw that it was an army coming down the road. And at the head of the army was King Boris of Rimperdell. And behind him the army seemed to be five thousand men.
"Hail," King Ethelred said, looking more than a little irritated, since King Boris" army was well inside our country"s boundaries.
"Hail," King Boris said, looking more than a little irritated, since no one was supposed to know that he was coming.
"What do you think you"re doing?" asked King Ethelred.
"You"re blocking the road," said King Boris.
"It"s my road," said King Ethelred.