The Book of Dragons Part 20

The yellow dragon crept nearer and nearer, licking her greedy lips with her long red tongue, and Edmund knew that in the school his master was still teaching earnestly and still not believing Edmund's tale the least little bit.

"He'll jolly well have to believe it soon, anyhow," said Edmund to himself, and though he was a very tender-hearted boy--I think it only fair to tell you that he was this--I am afraid he was not as sorry as he ought to have been to think of the way in which his master was going to learn how to believe what Edmund said. Then the dragon opened her jaws wider and wider and wider. Edmund shut his eyes, for though his master was in the town, the amiable Edmund shrank from beholding the awful sight.

When he opened his eyes again there was no town--only a bare place where it had stood, and the dragon licking her lips and curling herself up to go to sleep, just as Kitty does when she has quite finished with a mouse. Edmund gasped once or twice, and then ran into the cave to tell the c.o.c.katrice.

"Well," said the c.o.c.katrice thoughtfully, when the tale had been told.

"What then?"

"I don't think you quite understand," said Edmund gently. "The dragon has swallowed up the town."

"Does it matter?" said the c.o.c.katrice.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Creeping across the plain." _See page 147._]

"But I live there," said Edmund blankly.

"Never mind," said the c.o.c.katrice, turning over in the pool of fire to warm its other side, which was chilly, because Edmund had, as usual, forgotten to close the cave door. "You can live here with me."

"I'm afraid I haven't made my meaning clear," said Edmund patiently.

"You see, my granny is in the town, and I can't bear to lose my granny like this."

"I don't know what a granny may be," said the c.o.c.katrice, who seemed to be growing weary of the subject, "but if it's a possession to which you attach any importance----"

"Of course it is," said Edmund, losing patience at last. "Oh--do help me. What can I do?"

"If I were you," said his friend, stretching itself out in the pool of flame so that the waves covered him up to his chin, "I should find the drakling and bring it here."

"But why?" said Edmund. He had gotten into the habit of asking why at school, and the master had always found it trying. As for the c.o.c.katrice, he was not going to stand that sort of thing for a moment.

"Oh, don't talk to me!" he said, splas.h.i.+ng angrily in the flames. "I give you advice; take it or leave it--I shan't bother about you anymore.

If you bring the drakling here to me, I'll tell you what to do next. If not, not."

And the c.o.c.katrice drew the fire up close around his shoulders, tucked himself up in it, and went to sleep.

Now this was exactly the right way to manage Edmund, only no one had ever thought of trying to do it before.

He stood for a moment looking at the c.o.c.katrice; the c.o.c.katrice looked at Edmund out of the corner of his eye and began to snore very loudly, and Edmund understood, once and for all, that the c.o.c.katrice wasn't going to put up with any nonsense. He respected the c.o.c.katrice very much from that moment, and set off at once to do exactly as he was told--for perhaps the first time in his life.

Though he had played truant so often, he knew one or two things that perhaps you don't know, though you have always been so good and gone to school regularly. For instance, he knew that a drakling is a dragon's baby, and he felt sure that what he had to do was to find the third of the three noises that people used to hear coming from the mountains. Of course, the clucking had been the c.o.c.katrice, and the big noise like a large gentleman asleep after dinner had been the big dragon. So the smaller rumbling must have been the drakling.

He plunged boldly into the caves and searched and wandered and wandered and searched, and at last he came to a third door in the mountain, and on it was written THE BABY IS ASLEEP. Just before the door stood fifty pairs of copper shoes, and no one could have looked at them for a moment without seeing what sort of feet they were made for, for each shoe had five holes in it for the drakling's five claws. And there were fifty pairs because the drakling took after his mother, and had a hundred feet--no more and no less. He was the kind called _Draco centipedis_ in the learned books.

Edmund was a good deal frightened, but he remembered the grim expression of the c.o.c.katrice's eye, and the fixed determination of his snore still rang in his ears, in spite of the snoring of the drakling, which was, in itself, considerable. He screwed up his courage, flung the door open, and called out: "h.e.l.lo, you drakling. Get out of bed this minute."

The drakling stopped snoring and said sleepily: "It ain't time yet."

"Your mother says you are to, anyhow; and look sharp about it, what's more," said Edmund, gaining courage from the fact that the drakling had not yet eaten him.

The drakling sighed, and Edmund could hear it getting out of bed. The next moment it began to come out of its room and to put on its shoes. It was not nearly so big as its mother; only about the size of a Baptist chapel.

"Hurry up," said Edmund, as it fumbled clumsily with the seventeenth shoe.

"Mother said I was never to go out without my shoes," said the drakling; so Edmund had to help it to put them on. It took some time, and was not a comfortable occupation.

At last the drakling said it was ready, and Edmund, who had forgotten to be frightened, said, "Come on then," and they went back to the c.o.c.katrice.

The cave was rather narrow for the drakling, but it made itself thin, as you may see a fat worm do when it wants to get through a narrow crack in a piece of hard earth.

"Here it is," said Edmund, and the c.o.c.katrice woke up at once and asked the drakling very politely to sit down and wait. "Your mother will be here presently," said the c.o.c.katrice, stirring up its fire.

The drakling sat down and waited, but it watched the fire with hungry eyes.

"I beg your pardon," it said at last, "but I am always accustomed to having a little basin of fire as soon as I get up, and I feel rather faint. Might I?"

It reached out a claw toward the c.o.c.katrice's basin.

"Certainly not," said the c.o.c.katrice sharply. "Where were you brought up? Did they never teach you that 'we must not ask for all we see'? Eh?"

"I beg your pardon," said the drakling humbly, "but I am really _very_ hungry."

The c.o.c.katrice beckoned Edmund to the side of the basin and whispered in his ear so long and so earnestly that one side of the dear boy's hair was quite burnt off. And he never once interrupted the c.o.c.katrice to ask why. But when the whispering was over, Edmund--whose heart, as I may have mentioned, was very tender--said to the drakling: "If you are really hungry, poor thing, I can show you where there is plenty of fire." And off he went through the caves, and the drakling followed.

When Edmund came to the proper place he stopped.

There was a round iron thing in the floor, like the ones the men shoot the coals down into your cellar, only much larger. Edmund heaved it up by a hook that stuck out at one side, and a rush of hot air came up that nearly choked him. But the drakling came close and looked down with one eye and sniffed, and said: "That smells good, eh?"

"Yes," said Edmund, "well, that's the fire in the middle of the earth.

There's plenty of it, all done to a turn. You'd better go down and begin your breakfast, hadn't you?"

So the drakling wriggled through the hole, and began to crawl faster and faster down the slanting shaft that leads to the fire in the middle of the earth. And Edmund, doing exactly as he had been told, for a wonder, caught the end of the drakling's tail and ran the iron hook through it so that the drakling was held fast. And it could not turn around and wriggle up again to look after its poor tail, because, as everyone knows, the way to the fires below is very easy to go down, but quite impossible to come back on. There is something about it in Latin, beginning: "_Facilis descensus_."

So there was the drakling, fast by the silly tail of it, and there was Edmund very busy and important and very pleased with himself, hurrying back to the c.o.c.katrice.

"Now," said he.

"Well, now," said the c.o.c.katrice. "Go to the mouth of the cave and laugh at the dragon so that she hears you."

Edmund very nearly said "Why?" but he stopped in time, and instead, said: "She won't hear me--"

"Oh, very well," said the c.o.c.katrice. "No doubt you know best," and he began to tuck himself up again in the fire, so Edmund did as he was bid.

And when he began to laugh his laughter echoed in the mouth of the cave till it sounded like the laughter of a whole castleful of giants.

And the dragon, lying asleep in the sun, woke up and said very crossly: "What are you laughing at?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "That smells good, eh?" _See page 152._]

"At you," said Edmund, and went on laughing. The dragon bore it as long as she could, but, like everyone else, she couldn't stand being made fun of, so presently she dragged herself up the mountain very slowly, because she had just had a rather heavy meal, and stood outside and said, "What are you laughing at?" in a voice that made Edmund feel as if he should never laugh again.