Chapter Five

IRECTIONS WERE EASY TO come by but difficult to follow. Each person Jasper took Steven to see had an idea of where the road south to the dragon lay.

“Well, now,” said one grizzled old farmer, pointing, “you want to follow the main road out thet way. You don’t want to follow any of the other roads because they don’t lead anywhere. Thet one, for example, just goes out to Maggar’s place and it don’t go no further. Thet one over thar, it just go to… well, I don’t rightly know. En’t nobody goes thet way.”

“No one travels south,” said a merchant. “There is nothing but desert on one side and marshland on the other forever. If you take the main road you have to go round the mountains, but it is civilized. I’m sure you can find something useful to do while you are traveling.”

“You want to take the second branching to the right to go around the south side of the mountains,” said a musician. “The first road to the right just goes out into the desert and peters out there. I knew a minstrel who went that way once and was never heard from again. His lute showed up in a secondhand shop out in Highford.”

“Just follow the main road out a day and look for a big tree with a wasp-nest in a fork of the branches,” said a hunter. “Go toward the morning sun from there until it is high in the sky. Then listen for the sound of a brook and follow it downstream to where the deer come for salt. Just on the other side of the stream is the path that becomes a wagon trail that leads back along the river south.”

Steven was about to give up in despair when Jasper took him to see an old lady in a hut at the edge of town. Her hut was tiny and filled with smoke, choking Steven as he entered. But strangely, this little hovel reminded him more of home than anything in the town of Lastford. And the old woman reminded him pleasantly of the village wisewoman back home.

“And what makes you think it is a road that will lead you to the dragon, dragonslayer?” she asked. “It is not a road, but your destiny that leads you there. So follow what way you will, you cannot help but find the dragon.” She laughed lowly and Steven was emboldened to ask further.

“Do you have any herbs that would help me on my way?” he asked, remembering the packet the village wisewoman had given him.

“Herbs?” she cackled. “You want herbs? You have nothing to trade for herbs.” Steven was about to offer to trade a story, but he remembered just in time that he had not yet paid Jasper and it would be unfair to offer the story to the old woman. But she was not done yet. “You need your defenses strengthened. Give me your hat.” Steven was truly taken aback. He could not part with the implausible hat just for a handful of herbs. “I’m going to give it back,” said the old woman. “Come, now, have no fear.”

Reluctantly, Steven gave the old woman his hat and she examined it carefully. She lit a small pot of incense and held the hat out in the smoke, bathing it thoroughly in the pungent fumes. She chanted and turned it, waved it and cradled it. She placed it on her own head and walked three times around the hut. Then she slowly took it off and fastened a small piece of bone the snakeskin that bound the feathers to the sheepskin hat.

“There,” she said handing it back to him. “That’s the best I can do. Good hunting, dragonslayer. Farewell.” With that she pointed to the door and Steven emerged from the hut to find Jasper still waiting for him.

After a meal of scraps from the feast earlier in the day, Steven finally settled down in the barn to tell Jasper the story he had promised.

The Too Clever Maiden

NCE UPON A TIME, long ago and at least a hundred thousand steps away, there lived a young maiden who was very clever at getting her way in all that she wanted. She had two elder sisters who were always offered first choice of whatever came into their parent’s home. If it was cloth for a dress, the oldest took smoothest cloth, then the middle daughter took the brightest cloth, and then the youngest got what was left. When food was served at the table, the eldest took the tastiest portion, the middle took the largest portion, and the youngest got what was left. Faced with this situation from a very young age, the youngest found that her foolish sisters were easily manipulated. The youngest would immediately go to the coarsest fabric and exclaim over how the light shone from its beautiful contours. The eldest daughter would immediately snatch up the cloth as her own. Then the youngest would exclaim over the beautiful colors of the dullest cloth and the middle sister would snatch it up. That would leave the poor youngest child with the smoothest and most colorful cloth for her dresses.

When the girls came to be of marriageable age, the youngest decided she would have to be clever indeed to get what she wanted, for of course the eldest daughter wanted the richest man in the village, the middle daughter wanted the most handsome man in the village, and no one really cared what the youngest daughter wanted.

But long before, the youngest daughter had set her heart on son of the elder of the neighboring village. He was rich, strong, handsome, and powerful. Both of her elder sisters had cast a longing eye on this young prince. And so it was that the youngest set about her plan.

She sat one day at the village well gazing down into its depths, sighing softly to herself as she filled her water jar. The village wisewoman came to sit by her and asked, “Child, why do you sit and sigh as you draw your water? What is it you see?”

The maiden smiled to herself and said, “I see stranger coming to our village. He is handsome and rich and he has eyes only for me. He will take me far away where I will live in a castle surrounded by servants who draw my water for me, and maids who sew my clothes.”

Now the village wisewoman was not called a wisewoman for naught. She saw through the clever maiden’s ruse at once, but she decided that the girl’s tricks must be paid for. “It is a true seeing,” declared the wisewoman. “The girl is a prophetess. I have seen visions of this stranger from afar in my dreams as well. We should be ready for his appearance.”

The clever maiden was delighted with this result, for her sisters had abandoned all thought of the young prince from the neighboring village. Their thoughts were consumed by the tall dark stranger, rich and handsome, who would come to sweep them up to his castle far away. But the wisewoman arranged a trick that would forever silence the clever maiden.

One day in the spring when all things were bursting into flower and the new grain was peeping through the soil, a child ran to the village declaring a stranger had been seen in the hills heading their direction. The three sisters were atwitter with excitement. It was much to their surprise that they were commanded to stay at home when the stranger arrived in the village. They saw him only from a distance. And from that distance he appeared very powerful. He spoke to their father, the village elder and the village prepared a feast in his honor that night. But still, the elder would not let his daughters attend. At long last, the eldest prevailed upon her father to let her go to the feast because she was of age and should be part of the village councils. Her father relented and granted her permission to go. The second daughter prevailed upon her father to let her serve him at his table. It was only right that the elder’s daughter be the one to bring food to the elder’s table. At long last the second daughter won her father’s permission to attend.

But no matter what the youngest daughter said, because of the prophecy that she had, herself proclaimed to the wisewoman, the elder was loathe to let her see the stranger and she was commanded to stay at home.

Now when the eldest and the middle daughter got to the feast, they were not encumbered by their sister’s flatteries, and discovered quickly for themselves that the stranger was an old man, neither rich nor handsome and they loathed him. But when they got home late that night they told their sister quite the opposite.

“I am in love,” said the eldest. “He is rich beyond compare. He is a powerful prince among men. There is no doubt my father will arrange our marriage in the morning.” She giggled to herself and the youngest despaired that her vision was true.

“I am much more in love than you,” said the middle sister. “He is the most handsome man in the world. His wealth would mean nothing to me for there are stars shining in his eyes and the sun is in his smile.” She too giggled and now the youngest truly despaired of having her prince take her to a castle far away. All thoughts of the neighboring village elder’s son was driven from her mind and she was consumed by jealousy for her sisters.

Late that night she hatched a plot to circumvent the machinations of her sisters and claim the stranger for herself. When her sisters were asleep and softly snoring, the youngest daughter slipped out of the house and made her way through the shadows to the council house where the stranger slept on a pallet near the fire. She quietly slipped beneath the blankets as he slept and in the darkness enticed him to lie with her. Then she fell asleep in his arms.

In the morning, when the elder, the wisewoman, and the shaman came to the council house to address the stranger, they found the elder’s youngest daughter in his arms. She, awaking to find that her rich, handsome young prince was in fact a disgusting, old, and impoverished wanderer, immediately accused him of seduction and rape while he stuttered his denials. He fled from the village for his life.

The clever maiden, for her part, discovered among the bed clothes this remarkable hat. Realizing that she had been duped by her sisters and that now she bore a child no man would claim, she hid the hat away as her son’s only inheritance. That hat has been passed down through the ages and it is my good fortune to possess it now.

“And that is how you got this incredible hat?” asked Jasper.

“That is how it happened,” affirmed Steven.

“I can see the truth in your story,” said the simple-minded man. “Tomorrow I will accompany you on your journey to find the dragon. Perhaps as we travel, we will come upon my home.”

Chapter 4
Chapter 6