Chapter Four

ORNING DAWNED CLEAR and Steven was anxious to cross the river. Ranihaha tasted the air with his finger and the water with his toes and agreed that it was time to go. He instructed Steven to strip naked and pack his clothing (including the hat) into his pack on the raft.

“I will go first, pulling the lead raft,” Ranihaha instructed. “You will come behind with the second raft in tow and will hold the front raft by this rope,” he continued, pointing to a short length of rope at the back of the first raft. “We should stay as close together as we can. The rafts will sway with the current and try to get away. We have to keep them under control.”

They stepped into the cold water of the river and unfastened Steven’s raft from its moorings. Steven immediately felt the current pull at the raft and stretch it out to his right downstream until it was at the end of the rope he held wrapped around one wrist and in his hand. Ranihaha loosened the lead raft and Steven grabbed the trailing rope as it came past him with the raft slewing in the current. Ranihaha stepped out in the lead and began towing the raft.

“Is there anything else I should be doing?” Steven called to him.

“Just tow your barge,” answered Ranihaha, “and if you are in over your head, hang onto the rope.”

The crossing was proving uneventful. Though the current pulled constantly, it was not so much that it cost Steven a great effort to guide his raft after Ranihaha’s. After three hundred trudging steps along the mucky bottom of the river, the water was still only up to Steven’s knees. With the village shore now only half the distance away that it was, Steven could see people gathering by the river and suddenly felt self-conscious about approaching completely naked.

“Ranihaha,” Steven called. “Why did we take off all our clothes. The water is only knee-de…”

Steven’s commentary was cut off by a mouthful of water as he plunged over a drop-off and found no solid riverbed beneath his feet. It was only Ranihaha’s last-minute advice that saved Steven. He did not let go of the rope. When he surfaced, his arms were stretched out as far as he could reach with the lead raft rope in his left hand and the following rope in his right. The rafts were now fully stretched out downstream, anchored by Ranihaha’s strong swimming strokes on the other side of the raft to Steven’s left. After an eternity in which Steven pondered how to count the steps he was floating over, his feet scraped bottom and gradually the riverbed rose beneath them again.

Just feet from the village shore, Steven rose up in the water as it became abruptly shallower. On the shore were gathered more people than Steven had ever seen in his life, watching and cheering as Ranihaha victoriously towed the rafts further in. Half a dozen men splashed into the shallows and began helping to guide the rafts up on the shore. Both Ranihaha and Steven were given blankets to wrap themselves in for warmth as the townspeople fell upon the rafts and distributed the melons. Steven’s bundle was unceremoniously dumped on the ground next to him as Ranihaha was helped into festive clothes by gathered admirers.

Steven reached for his pack and found a foot positioned directly in front of it. He looked upward at a tall gangling figure who stood looking down at him, outlined against the sun so that Steven had to shade his eyes to make out the broad grin on the youngster’s face.

“I’m Jasper,” the young man said stretching out his hand to help Steven stand. Even when Steven was fully upright, Jasper was a head taller.

“I am Steven George,” Steven said.

“Which one?” asked Jasper.

“It’s all one,” Steven responded, surprised.

“Okay Stevengeorge,” Jasper answered. “It’s a funny name if you ask me. Do you want clothes like the melon farmer, or do you just run around naked?”

“I have clothes in my pack, there,” Steven said pointing behind Jasper. Steven started pulling the clothes from his pack and putting them on, amazed at how to all the town, more people than he could imagine were in the world, he seemed almost invisible in the presence of Ranihaha, except to this simple young man named Jasper.

“Ranihaha’s really popular here, isn’t he?” Steven asked as he place his hat on his head.

“He brought the melons,” Jasper said as though that said everything. Steven wondered that his role having nearly drowned in transporting the melons was not valued at all. Ranihaha was still surrounded by celebrating people and a large number of women and girls who seemed to hang off every part of his decorative robe. “There is a feast at high sun,” Jasper continued. “You can come, too.”

“Thank you,” Steven said.

“That’s a nice hat,” Jasper said shyly.

“Thank you again,” Steven said. “There sure are a lot of people.”

“This is nothing compared to the town I used to live in,” said Jasper. “I wish I knew where that was.”

“Really?” Steven said in disbelief. “I’ve never seen so many people. My little village is much smaller than this. I’ve seen the same one hundred seventy-four people my whole life. Ranihaha is the first person I’ve ever met who wasn’t from my village or the mountain village.”

“And now I’m the second,” Jasper said excitedly. “That’s almost like being first.” Oddly, Steven understood that logic. “Are you lost?” Jasper asked.

“Oh no,” Steven said, proudly. “I’m ninety-nine thousand one hundred seventy-two steps from home. That way,” he added pointing back across the river. “How far are you?”

Jasper looked stricken.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I couldn’t find my way back. I’ll tell you the story if you’ll tell me about your hat,” he said suddenly feeling he had something to bargain with. Before Steven could agree to the bargain, they were interrupted by an imperious command.

“Idiot!” yelled the officious-looking man. “Bring the melon farmer’s helper to the banquet.”

“Come on,” urged Jasper. “We don’t want to be late.”

“Why does he call you idiot?” Steven asked.

“Because I’m too stupid to go home,” Jasper answered. They got to the feast and Steven was seated at a small table far from the festivities where he could see that Ranihaha was still being honored as a hero. But the food was good and plentiful, even though Jasper was constantly being summoned to perform some menial task. People didn’t seem to be very friendly to strangers here. Steven surreptitiously pulled his hat out of his pack and placed it firmly on his head. People looked at him in silence, but didn’t ask about the hat or its significance. Steven was certain he could trade the story better now that he’d had experience.

After the meal, Jasper caught hold of Steven’s arm and dragged him to the head table where Ranihaha sat with the town council in a place of honor. It was obvious that Ranihaha had told the others about Steven because the person at his left began immediately to address Steven.

“You bear the badge of a pilgrim on that spectacular hat,” said the leader. “Where is your destination, pilgrim?”

“I am Steven George the dragonslayer. My destination is wherever the dragon lives, far to the south on this side of the river. I am ninety-nine thousand three hundred seventeen steps from home, that way,” he answered.

“Ah. A dragonslayer,” the leader nodded. “We had one of those once. He went off to slay a dragon and we never saw him again. Of course, we’ve never seen a dragon either!” he and the others laughed at this crude joke while Steven blushed. “Well, such as it is,” the leader continued, “welcome to the town of Lastford. You can sleep in the barn where Jasper does and be off in the morning on your quest. There is a path a day’s journey from here that cuts south and leads into the desert. That’s as close to a south route from here as you can get. Good journey to you.”

Steven was shocked with the abruptness with which he was dismissed. In his village a visitor would be pumped for stories until dawn.

“Don’t you want to know about my hat?” Steven asked.

“Ranihaha already told us about your hat,” the leader said. Then he had the others turned abruptly away. Even Ranihaha was too busy to spare a backward glance toward Steven and Jasper.

Jasper showed Steven the barn where he slept and the two settled in. Then Jasper told Steven his story.

The Wrong Way Home

NCE UPON A TIME, there was a woodcutter who lived with his wife and three sons near a castle where he sold his wood. The sons helped in the forest with the heavy work of chopping wood, but still the family was poor and barely subsisted.

Now it happened that the first son was brave and skilled. He could knock either of his brothers down in a fight, and his father never punished him. Many times the eldest brother brought home meat to the table that he had hunted, even though it was not strictly legal to hunt in the castle’s forests. There came a day when the eldest son set off to seek his fortune. He went to the castle and became a soldier. He had plenty to eat and lots of fighting to do, and he never came home again.

While this lessened the number of mouths to feed, it also increased the amount of work that the remaining brothers had to do. Now the second brother was very clever. Whenever he took wood to the castle to sell, he brought back more goods traded and more coins than even his father could do. But he was very unhappy with the work in the forest, so in due time he set off to seek his fortune. He went to the castle and began trading and buying and selling until he had amassed great wealth and was a merchant in the city, and he never came home again.

Now there was only one son left at home and the family did not have the hunting skills of the eldest or the trading skills of the middle son to help them survive. And with two less workers in the family, the woodcutter and his youngest son were hard-put to cut enough wood to subsist.

The youngest son was not good at anything. It took him a long time to cut wood, and if his father sent him on an errand it was likely that he would have to go find the boy and bring him home. He was always getting lost. But the boy’s mother loved him and he loved her. And so the woodcutter did his best to provide for his little family.

Seeing the strain that his father was under to make ends meet, the youngest son determined that he, too, must set off to seek his fortune. His father watched silently as the son packed his meager belongings and the mother wept openly to see her last son leave, but it was a great day for the son who had never been further than a further than the castle without his parents. Since the younger son’s brothers were prosperous and lived at the castle and had no regard for their family, the youngest son decided to turn his back on the castle and seek fortune in another part of the world, vowing to one day return to care for his aging parents.

But the world is a cruel place if you are not strong like the eldest brother or clever like the middle brother. When the youngest brother had traveled far and had come to another, even greater castle, he met a man with dark eyes who took him beneath his wing. This man was both strong and clever and the boy thought he was fortunate to have found someone who could take care of him like his brothers refused to. The man taught the boy how to find his way in the city, which was no small task. He did this by sending the boy on errands late at night.

“Boy,” he would say, “I have a need for silver candlesticks for my dining table. I saw a pair at Lord Vesper’s home. Be a good boy and run over to pick them up for me. The Vespers have gone hunting for a season and will not be home, so just step in and pick them up for me and hurry back here.” And the boy would run the errand.

The boy did not understand until “the awful night” that his friend and protector was a thief. On that night he was collecting a matched set of dueling swords from the home of the Merchant Gudby when the merchant unexpectedly returned early from his journey. The merchant called for soldiers and the boy ran for his life. The careful training that his one-time friend had given him was only for a certain part of town, and when the boy’s panicked footsteps took him into a different part town, he was instantly lost.

Thus cowering in an alley where rats fought over scraps of food, the boy determined to leave the city and return to his parents. He would learn the paths in the woods and become a good woodcutter like his father, for surely that was his fortune in life.

But lost is lost. The boy wandered alone until time had no meaning and place was defined only by his two feet. He became a man, but still was neither clever nor strong. Eventually he wandered into the last town on earth and, unable to find his home, decided to stay there forever.

That town is this town, and I am that boy.

Steven was moved by the boy’s story. His own small adventure so far was nothing compared to the experience and story of Jasper. The poor village idiot’s tale had awoken a pang of loneliness and longing for his own home. He begged that they wait until evening before he told the story of his hat, and Jasper agreed that they would spend the afternoon seeking directions for Steven’s adventure, for no one yet had been able to tell him how many steps it was from the town of Lastford to the road that would take him south to the dragon.

Chapter 3
Chapter 5