Complete Short Fiction, page 89
“I think it’s time to find out,” said the dwarf. “Let’s get out of here before these armies start killing each other all over again. Once he’s done celebrating, Roland’s going to be tossing Saracen heads all over the place.”
Pogo nodded and helped the dwarf get to his feet. As they walked quickly away from the crowd that surrounded the noble (if still nude) Roland, Pogo examined the damage the long siege had done, at the burned and ruined houses, the countless fresh graves and the bloated corpses of animals still lying unburied in the street. “Wow. Everyone says Paris is so great, but it’s kind of a dump, really. I mean, seriously, how do they ever get tourists to come here?”
#
Quidprobe was astonished to be both alive and in one piece, and was in a hurry to get back to the symbolic plane before the Metaverse realized how unlikely that was and decided to rejigger the odds. “Intervention over,” he told the Pogocashman. “The story has been fulfilled. As soon as I get back to the Department, I’ll send you home again.”
“Promise, man? I mean, this is pretty interesting to visit but I wouldn’t want to live here, if you know what I mean.”
Quidprobe only nodded. For once he knew exactly what the Pogocashman meant. “I promise. I can’t send you home until I get back to the Department where all the machinery is, but as soon as I get there, I’ll do it.” He took a breath, noting for perhaps the last time how strange it felt when the lungs inside his chest inflated. How awkward organic life was! But interesting, too. As Quidprobe began to consider the precise symbolic sequence of thoughts that would take him back, an idle curiosity floated up to him–what other sensations did organic beings have that he had never experienced on the symbolic plane?
Ah-ah, he told himself. No use wondering because I’m never going to do something like this again. Ever.
The Pogocashman was looking at him strangely as he finished his preparations. “What is it?” Quidprobe asked. “Have we forgotten something?”
“Naw. I’m just . . .” The organic creature was avoiding eye contact, which seemed strange. “I’m kinda gonna miss you, little dude.”
Which was odd, because Quidprobe himself had been feeling something similar, although he had not realized it until just now. “Where I come from,” he told the Pogocashman, extending a bony, organic hand, “we say, ‘May all your stories have a proper ending’.”
“And as my people say,” said the Pogocashman, slapping the palm of Quidprobe’s hand even as they both began to turn intangible to each other, “Gimme five! And keep on truckin’, baby!”
A moment later Quidprobe was tumbling down a long, whistling tunnel of different shades, temperatures, and textures of blackness. After a while, it began to resolve itself into shapes–a whole crowd of shapes, all his coworkers and managers and even Fnutt the supervisor . . . and they were all clearly waiting for him! Welcome banners! Treats and streamers! It was a party–for him! Quidprobe was thrilled. Someone had seen what he was doing and alerted his superiors! He had been noticed and now his bravery would be celebrated and he might well be rewarded for saving the Matter of France and all of Western Literature.
But although his coworkers waved and cheered as he coalesced back into the collection of symbolic solids he had worn all his life until this adventure, he saw that many of them were also laughing, although they were doing their best not to make it obvious. Then, as his familiar world came into sharper focus, he could finally read the signs.
“WELCOME BACK QUICKPOOP!”
“QUITPUNK–OUR HERO!”
“CONGRATULATIONS, QUARTPUMP!”
He stood for a moment, glowering at them. “Very funny,” he said. “Did anyone notice I saved the world?”
Fnutt the supervisor stepped forward and handed him a piece of treatsweet on a disposable plate. “In all seriousness, you did very well, Quick . . . Quidprobe. Saved the Department a lot of trouble. Good to have you back.”
Quidprobe thanked him. The departmental supervisor wandered off to refill his container of natured spirits, and for a moment Quidprobe just stood and soaked in the glory of his successful return, the proximity of his own office and peers and home. He stretched out one of his pseudopods and reveled in its boneless suppleness, its entirely obvious rightness. Yes, it was very good indeed to be home at last.
Which suddenly reminded him of his former companion, still stuck in an imaginary past for which, recent victories aside, he was probably not entirely suited. Quidprobe hurried to the office machinery center, his fingers slippery with frosting and his rubbery young soul in a hurry to get back to the party–a party in honor of him! He punched the button.
“Safe journey, my friend,” he said to the image.
Somebody had put on some music–something slithery and non-traditional. The younger workers were dancing. Quidprobe didn’t stay to watch the monitor.
#
Pogo was just beginning to worry that the dwarf might have forgotten him when the walls of Paris began to grow faint and translucent before his eyes, as though the entire damaged city was turning into glass. A moment later he found himself hurtling down what seemed like the worlds’s longest, driest, and coldest Slip-n-Slide.
Finally going home! was his thought as the winds between realities spun him. Finally! But he’d had a pretty amazing adventure and he’d done pretty damn well, if he said so himself. He really deserved some kind of reward. And to think it all happened because he got sent into the story instead of some English guy.
Yeah, that English guy. Wonder whatever happened to him . . .?
A moment later Pogo tumbled out of the void and into the reality of his familiar world, to warmth and carpets and beautifully painted oriental screens and heavy wood furniture. And also to a slender naked woman sitting on a bed, brushing her hair with her back to Pogo.
“Hurry, darling!” she said, in one of those posh Upstairs-Downstairs PBS accents. “It’s cold. I want to get under the covers with you so you can warm me up. In fact, I want you to do more than just warm me up, you amazing man . . .”
Reward . . .! Pogo thought. Jackpot! Hallelujah!
But then she turned and saw him standing in the doorway. For a moment a look of confusion seized her lovely face. “You . . . you’re not my husband! Who are you?” Then she began to scream, and scream, and scream.
Pogo was going to find it very difficult to explain to the village constable what he was doing in Mr. Castlemane’s house.
Meanwhile, six thousand miles away, the appearance of a naked Englishman in the middle of Kirby Shoes Summer Madness Event was barely noticed. There was a sale going on, after all.
Diary of a Dragon
Dear Diary
Went out shopping today. Picked up half a dozen sheep, two pigs, and a princess. The sheep are rather depressingly thin, the pigs and princess only slightly less so. The wind off the mountains was very cold and my joints ache. I am growing too old for this flying-around nonsense.
Later:
I have discovered a nasty-looking arrow lodged in the scales of my armpit. Someone from that castle, no doubt. As if they did not have three or four more princesses waiting around the place, and dozens more to be had from other castles. I just know it will fester. Even if I am lucky and it does not turn gangrenous, it will certainly itch. Mean-spirited little humans. I have never, ever liked them.
Dear Diary
The sheep were stringy, as I feared. If someone is going to leave mutton standing around in a field masquerading as early spring lamb, they should hang a large sign on it saying “mutton,” so a poor old soul like myself does not strain his aching pinions carrying it back.
The pigs look more hopeful. I will have one of them tomorrow, and the princess for dessert. Before I eat her, I will make her look at this arrow-spite under my arm so she feels properly guilty.
Dear Diary
The princess is a horrible creature. She has crawled into the back of my cave where I cannot reach her and will not come out and be eaten. I could roast her with my fiery breath, I suppose, but then she would just stay there and the old den would never feel quite clean again. (Reminder to self: sweep sheep bones to midden. One preserved here to remind me not to visit that pasture again.)
I have tried to reason with her, but it is useless. Not for the first time, I wonder that such a profoundly stupid species should have such a wonderful way with sheep. (Although whichever tribe this princess belongs to appears to have lagged behind the rest in their husbandry skills, if the quality of what I picked up yesterday is any indication.)
Later:
Horrible princess sang songs all night. My old bones ache and my eyes feel like I have flown through a sandstorm. I threatened to roast her, but she just sang louder. To add to my irritation, the remaining pig has fouled the floor. I have scrubbed and scrubbed with a wet birch tree, but I can still smell it. My stomach has gone all goozly, and I do not think I would enjoy the princess just now even if she did the right thing and came out.
Also, I will now have to find some place to wash this pig before I can bear to eat it, but if I leave the den, the horrible princess creature will run away and I will have a tedious time swooping around in the cold wind until I find her. I am very cross.
Dear Diary
The princess saw me writing in my Diary yesterday afternoon and said, “Can dragons read and write?” To which I responded (a little testily) “Better than princesses can sing.” It is depressing to descend to that level, but I did not sleep well last night, either. I do not know who has taught this horrid girl to make music, but whoever it is should be immediately killed. Twice, if possible.
Dear Diary
It is miserable outside. Here is a frozen bear. It is the very stupid one I wrote about back in the autumn—the one who had become confused about when to hibernate.
Dear Diary
The wretched, wretched creature is blackmailing me! She has told me that she is bored and wants to draw, and that if I do not give her my Diary and ink, she will sing every night, all night. And I am to feed her, too. I am speechless with rage, and furious with myself for leaving that alcove in the back of the den which is too narrow for me to get into with my bad back and whatnot. Again I am tempted to flame her to a cinder, but the thought of then continuing indefinitely with a singed princess just out of reach . . .
Dreadful. Yes, I am truly furious. If I can solve the running-away problem, I think I will go out and find something to kill, which would make me feel better.
Later:
I blocked the cave entrance with a boulder (and of course pulled a muscle in my foreleg, which is now throbbing miserably) and went outside. I chased a deer, but it ran into a thicket and I scratched myself. While I was putting snow on the wounds (and waiting for the thicket to stop burning) I decided that it would be easier to give her what she wants. If we develop some trust, some mutual understanding, perhaps at some point she will come out, and then I can eat her.
Dear Diary
The princess-thing is making pictures. To my horror, I have discovered she is one of those people who sings while she draws.
I could not give her you, of course, dear Diary. But I have given her a few old sheepskins and a bit of ink and a quill. When I tossed them into her hidey-hole, she said “thank you.” Thank you! As though I were some kindly old human who had given her sugar-candy, instead of a lordly dragon being forced to comply with the threats and menaces of a delinquent child. The snooty baggage. Just a moment, she’s saying something.
Hah. She wants to know if I can think of a way to stretch the skins on something to make them flatter. “When you have a moment or two,” she said.
I will eat her very, very slowly.
Dear Diary
Here is a picture she has painted of me. While she makes me appear far older than I actually am (instead of flattering her host, she has done rather the reverse), I suppose it is a tolerable likeness. If she were not a human and a horrible singing princess-thing, I would perhaps even compliment her on it. As it is, I shall place the picture here between your pages, dear Diary, and perhaps I will let her live a bit longer, just to see if she can produce a portrait that better displays the noble lines of my face.
(I swear that I do not squint in that ridiculous fashion!)
Dear Diary
It is hard to believe, but apparently the princess-thing has a suitor. A large (by the standards of the species) and very stupid (by any standard) human appeared at the cave door today, called me the “Foul Kidnapper of the Demure and Beauteous Lillian”—which is, I suppose, the princess-thing’s name—and challenged me to a fight.
What was odd was that the princess appeared as irritated by the whole thing as I was. She kept yelling at us both to stop—the armored person seems to be named “Sir Greg”—and when we had been fighting a while, a mere hour or so, and were taking a little break, she called out that I was holding her captive with a magic spell, and that if this Greg person slew me, she too would perish.
Although I admit I was wheezing a bit, I am certain that when I had caught my breath again I would have finished him off, so I was not the least happy or relieved when he took her at her word and retreated back toward the castle. I asked her what she thought she was doing, since a lordly dragon would never trifle with cowardly, humanish things like spells.
“Trying to keep two idiots from killing each other,” was her reply. Smug, infuriating creature.
Dear Diary
She is painting and drawing almost all the time. Some of the pictures are nice, in their own way, and from time to time I shall use a bit of your sacred pages, O dearest Diary, to display them.
I have discovered to my horror that she has already drawn pictures of herself and other things in your margins, my poor abused Diary—I must have left you too near her bolt-hole when that ill-mannered, loose-stomached swine of a pig was causing trouble—so these pages have already been witness to her essentially criminal features.
No, I am unfair. It is only her musical inclinations that could truly be termed criminal. The rest of her behavior is merely unpleasant. In fact, she draws rather well, and although her high-handedness and self-absorption are appalling—just today she said that if she had her way, I would never get to eat her—she is by no means the worst of her noisy, soft-skinned species.
Dear Diary
I have discovered that it is occasionally almost pleasant to have another voice around the cave—as long as that voice is not raised in song, I hasten to say. But when the caterwauling stops, we from time to time have conversations, and I find myself enjoying the give and take.
Princess Lillian does not seem to miss the castle all that much. “They never let me do anything there,” was her explanation. “No one lets me draw—they insist it is not ladlylike. All they want me to do is stand around and swoon at how handsome the knights are. Piffle to that, I say.”
That made a kind of sense, but then she asked me why I live alone, which made no sense at all. How else should I live, I could not help asking. Dragons do not clump together in herds, like sheep and humans.
“But haven’t you ever been married? Aren’t there any female dragons?”
If I have chosen a lonely, even monastic life, that is to my credit, I pointed out. It has kept my purpose high and noble.
“And what purpose might that be?” she asked.
Humans are for eating, and only for eating. Talking with them is pointless. I shall remember that in the future.
Dear Diary
Princess Lillian has been very busy with something, although she will not show me what it is. In the meantime, either her singing has improved, or my ear for music has been deranged by her constant tone-deaf warbling, because in the middle of a quiet afternoon today (I was finishing up yesterday’s entry and she was working on her current mysterious project) I caught myself tapping my foot to one of her melodies.
I thought I had centuries to go until senility might be a concern, but I cannot help being worried.
Dear Diary
Sir Greg (who says is the least objectionable of all the knights, although “not exactly,” as she put it, “the most tightly-wound ribbon on the Maypole”) appeared in front of the cave again. But before I could go out and contest him with fire and talon, the princess asked me to take him something. Two things, actually: a large envelope and one of tiny, human size.
After Sir Greg had read the contents of the small one, he turned and went galumphing off on his horse without a word. I was quite ready for a fierce battle, so of course I was very disappointed, but it will leave a bit more time this afternoon for dusting my collection of Crusader helmets.
When I asked Lillian what all that had been about, she only smiled. She does it on purpose, I am certain—perhaps even practices when I am sleeping. No one can be so annoying by accident.
Dear Diary
I woke up this morning to a most unusual sound. When I opened my eyes, I was doubly surprised, first to discover that Princess Lillian had left her hiding hole, secondly to see that she was sweeping the cave!
I briefly considered devouring her, more out of reflex than anything else, but I have rather gone off the idea now. Still, I wondered if she might take the opportunity and bolt out of the cave and back to the castle and the family that is presumably missing her. Instead, after she had swept the midden out the front door (I’m certain I had some sheep bones there with some perfectly good marrow left in them!), she dusted the Crusader helmets (I’m afraid I had forgotten again) and even straightened the old volumes of my journal. Then she took more sheepskins and went back to her hole.
Does that mean she actually wants to stay here? With me? What an odd thought.
