Recently, I was babysitting, and as I always do, I told my childers a lengthy bedtime story. My conscience tells me I can’t take credit for the grand scale of this epic tale. It is based entirely off of what the three kids said they wanted, itemized thus: dragons, a knight, a princess, and a boy.
If you have the mind of a child, please read on.
Long ago, on the planet of Venus, a boy watched the sun set. Joshua was eight. He lived all by himself. If he once had parents, he did not remember them. He lived in a one-room hut made of malvolia reeds, tall, crooked plants that grew in the marsh. Do you know what a marsh is? It is a place that stinks, where your feet sink into the squishy ground every time you take a step, and wetness and fog surround you and hem you in. This Venusian marsh smelled even worse than usual because malvolia reeds are the smelliest plant you’ve ever encountered. Joshua considered it an advantage because if there’s one thing that staves off dragons, it’s malvolia. Joshua would sit on the ground outside when he was bored and point to dragons the same way we point to airplanes, saying, “Oh, there goes another dragon,” and not worrying a bit.
This particular night, he ventured out into the marsh to hunt frogs. (Venusian frogs are like ours except as big as grapefruits, and when they swell up to croak, they blow up like balloons and float into the air. So Joshua would look for floating frogs and snag them with his net.) As he snagged his fifth frog, he heard a loud chorus of whooping and looked around to see a flock of birds fly in a flurry from a distant part of the marsh. He raced over to see what was bothering them and slowly parted the reeds.
“AAAAAH! It’s a girl!” shouted Joshua. “Stay away!” Lots of boys don’t like girls very much, and he was one of them. Besides, he’d never met one.
“I’m hungry,” she said. “I’ve wanted food for days, but I got lost. Please give me some.”
“Ew. Stay away,” said Joshua, holding his net out like a sword. “Go find somewhere else.”
“No!” said the girl. “I want food.”
Joshua took off running as fast as he could, but the reeds rustled behind him and the girl ran straight after him until they reached the hut. He ran in and slammed the door behind him. The girl pounded on the door and screamed to be let in. Eyes wide, he knocked for silence. She stopped.
“No,” said Joshua. “I won’t let you in.”
“Then I’m sitting here until you come out,” she said.
He made no reply.
“It smells terrible out here,” she said. “Boys must smell really bad.”
Joshua got mad. “It’s not me!” he said.
“What’s your name?” she said.
“I’m not telling you,” he said. “Why should I tell a girl?”
“If you tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine,” she said.
“Okay,” said Joshua. “I’m Joshua.”
“I’m Lena,” said the girl. Just then, Joshua’s stomach growled. Just then, he realized he had no fuel for his fire. He had no more dried grass. He deliberated. His stomach growled again. The frogs were ballooning up and floating around the room. He opened the door.
The girl was sitting there. Her yellow hair was tangled because she had been running around alone for so long. Her white dress was stained. He felt sorry for her.
“I’ll let you in. But you have to help me collect dried grass for a fire,” he said.
“Yay!” said Lena.
They cooked some frog, and it tasted like fried chicken, crispy and mouthwateringly scrumptious. They ate it with cloud bread made with Venusian wheat.
The children awoke to a rumbling sound. They rushed out the door. A swarm of insects flew out of the swamp. Then all the animals came, jabberwocks with their slobbery mouths, floating frogs, eagles, and mome raths which were fuzzy, long-legged, and rather stupid looking. They looked up and up and up, and finally they saw a humongous foot coming down. It stomped onto the ground, and the hut fell down.
“We have to go!” said Joshua. “Whenever giants wander around here, you can’t do anything. They destroy everything.”
“I know a trick to get away,” said Lena. “Grab a leg of the mome rath like you’re grabbing the leg of a grownup, and it will carry you along with it as it runs.”
Mome raths look like birds mixed with puffballs and ostriches. Each child grabbed onto a leg and traveled away like the wind.
“How do we get off?” said Joshua.
“We wait for it to stop,” said Lena, yelling over the animal noises.
“Wait a minute,” said Joshua. “How long have you been doing this? Why are you so used to it? Where are you from?”
“Not telling,” said Lena.
“You have to,” said Joshua. “We need to be able to trust each other.”
“Well, I’m actually a princess,” said Lena. The mome rath turned away from the herd, and headed for a floating forest. “But I ran away because my parents wanted me to marry an ugly prince with black hair that reaches all the way to his feet and a beard that goes down to his chest and scary eyebrows. And I’m only 10! I am so mad at them that I will never go back.”
Joshua was quiet. “I think you are lucky to have parents,” he said, at last. “I don’t have any, and I wish I did. I think you’re lucky to have people who love you.”
But Lena was too angry to listen to him. Just then, the mome rath squawked and stopped in the middle of a forest.
“Jump!” said Lena. They were in a sunny clearing. The mome rath ran away, and the sound of hooves clip clopping echoed in the forest. Lena and Joshua hid behind a bush. Two horses appeared, one black and one white, carrying two knights, one black and one white. They tied their horses’ bridles to the trees.
“Take off your helmet,” said the white knight. “Let’s fight to the death. You deserve to die after murdering so many innocent people.”
The evil black knight took off his helmet. Lena gasped as a coil of long, black hair cascaded down his back.
“It’s the ugly prince,” she whispered.
The other knight threw his helmet to the side. He had a pleasant face with honest, open eyes.
The two began to battle. The evil knight was clever and quick. He would trick the other knight into letting his guard down.
“I know what to do,” said Joshua. “I will loose the black knight’s bridle, and the horse will run away and distract him. Then the white knight can kill him.”
“No,” said Lena. “They cannot. They have to fight alone. That’s the rules. I know because I’m a princess.”
But Joshua was nervous for the white knight. Then just as the white knight looked the other way, the black knight drew back his sword to cut his head off. Joshua yelled, “Look out!” The white knight whirled around and chopped the black knight’s head off. It plunked to the ground.
“Who said that?” said the white knight.
Joshua peeked out over the bush. “That was me,” he said. “I’m sorry I broke the rules.”
“I can never thank you enough,” said the white knight. “My name is Sir Egelbert. You can call me Egg. I’m only 16, and it was hard to fight that old knight. Is there anything you need that I could offer you?”
“Well,” said Joshua. “My friend here, Lena, was supposed to marry that guy you just killed. But now that you killed him, she will want to go back to her parents. Could you take us there?”
So Egg mounted his white horse, and the two children rode the black knight’s horse. They soon left the forest because on Venus the trees are not rooted in the ground but float around with tufts of dirt hanging from their roots, and whenever a wind blows, the forest flies away. Since all winds on Venus come from the West, they simply walked the opposite direction the forest was traveling, and soon they came to a plains area.
“We are in the dreaded Plains of Dragonia,” said Egg. The grass was tall and purple. It stretched over acres of rolling hills.
“Look,” said Lena. Far in the distance, so far you could barely see it, was a glimpse of a white castle gleaming in the sun.
“Look,” said Joshua, pointing up. Dragons flew across the sky, blue, green, white, and gold.
“That is the problem,” said Egg.
“Ha,” laughed Joshua. “I still smell like malvolia, so none of the dragons will want to eat us. Let’s go!”
“I did notice you smelled bad,” said the knight. “But I was too polite to mention it. Wonderful! You can be our dragon repellent.”
So they advanced across the Plains of Dragonia. Joshua kept yelling insults at the dragons. The most dangerous ones are the gold ones. They ransack castles and open the treasuries. Then they use their fiery breath to melt all the treasure and bathe in it until they are coated in a golden sheath. What Joshua did not realize is that the dragons in this part of the world were different from the ones back home. Instead of avoiding malvolia, they thought it smelled like an interesting, exotic spice. So down swooped a golden one in no time and landed in front of the travelers, blocking their way.
“I want to eat you,” it said. “But since I am nice, if you answer my riddle right, I’ll let you go. What runs but has no legs?”
“A clock!” said Joshua.
“Wrong,” said the dragon. “A stream.”
“But wait,” said Egg. “Both of the answers are right! We answered right!”
“That doesn’t really matter,” said the dragon, “because I’m huge and you’re tiny, so I can eat you anyway.”
“How dare you eat a princess!” said Lena.
“A princess?” said the dragon, a crafty smile spreading over his face. “Get on my back. I’ll take you home.” He grabbed Lena and set her on his back. The boys scrambled up beside her, and the dragon ate the horses in one gulp and rose into the air.
They flew to the castle, and the dragon landed with an earth-shaking boom. The king and queen, the lords, ladies, the cooks, the knights, all came out onto the ramparts and stared.
“I have your princess,” said the dragon. “Give me all your gold, or I’ll eat her.”
“Let him eat me,” shouted the princess because she did not want her family to become poor and not be able to buy food to eat. But then she remembered she had a floating frog in her backpack and got an idea.
“Quick, you escape while I distract the dragon,” she told the boys. Then she turned to the dragon and said, “Hey, ugly! Why do you even want treasure? All the other dragons will try to steal it from you. Look! Here they come!” And she pointed off the other direction from the castle. Right when the dragon turned his head, she threw the frog at the castle, still holding onto it, and she zoomed right over to the ramparts and landed in the king’s arms. She looked back. The dragon had noticed, but he was smiling.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You rejected my peaceful way, so I’ll ransack your whole castle! I’ll burn you all to bits!” And he hurled himself at the castle.
Now, the dragon had not noticed one crucial detail. How was this castle, stuck plumb in the middle of Dragonia, still standing prosperous and full of treasure?
He hurled himself at the castle and immediately was blasted by the magical spell of protection. The dragon became roasted dragon. Egg and Joshua ran into the castle. That night, they all had a feast.
When the king saw Egg, he demanded an explanation. He listened and mused and after a while he said, “The prince my daughter was supposed to marry has died. Why don’t you marry her when she grows up?”
“I would like that,” said Egg.
The princess looked at Egg. “I would, too,” she said.
So when she grew up, the princess married Egg.
THE END