Chapter Six

Y THE FIRST LIGHT OF DAWN, Steven was up with his bedroll packed and his staff in his hand. Jasper arose sleepily and slowly.

“Do we have to leave already?” he said plaintively. “It’s hardly morning.”

“You don’t have to leave, my friend,” said Steven, “but I want to be on the road and searching for the dragon.”

“Can you wait while I get ready?” Jasper asked. Reluctantly, Steven agreed, but couldn’t help pacing back and forth in impatience. One hundred one thousand three hundred twenty. One hundred one thousand three hundred twenty-one. One hundred one thousand three hundred twenty-two. Steven had been gone over one hundred thirty-three steps before Jasper picked up a small parcel and slung it over his shoulder.

“Is that all?” Steven asked, in disbelief.

“I don’t have much,” said Jasper. “I’ve never really needed anything that people didn’t just give me.”

Steven shrugged and the two headed out of Lastford on the main road. The skies were gray and there was a hint of moisture in the air. Steven was glad for the warm wool of his walking shirt as he picked up his pace to the comfortable one hundred steps per minute that meant he was on a smooth and secure path.

Jasper lagged behind and then jogged to catch up. He talked to Steven at a rapid pace for several minutes, then gradually fell behind again. Jogging to catch up again, he asked breathlessly, “Why do you walk so fast? I can hardly keep up. Can’t you slow down a little?”

To Steven, the pace was not anything like the one hundred twenty steps per minute that he considered a hard walk. Nonetheless, he tried to moderate his pace to match Jasper, but kept gradually drawing ahead and Jasper would jog to catch up and complain that Steven was walking too fast.

Jasper spent most of the time talking as fast as they were walking, asking questions but seldom waiting for an answer. But one question he asked set Steven thinking, and lost in thought he was a great deal ahead of Jasper when the boy ran to catch up again.

“How are you going to kill the dragon?” Jasper had asked.

Now that was a good question. In fact, it was a question he had asked himself and others many times. The hunter had taught him to set traps and to shoot the bow and arrow when he was still a youngster. Since then he had assumed that he would have to make a bow and arrow of his own and that he would shoot the dragon in one of the two vital spots the hunter had described for most animals: the neck just behind the back of the skull, or the heart. But he had asked many people over the years how they thought he would kill the dragon.

“Mother, mother,” he had pestered her when he was still tagging along at her heels. “How will I kill the dragon?”

“Well,” she had said, “you will be clever surprise it.”

“But how will I kill it?”

“Well, perhaps you will stab it?” The young Steven considered this for a moment.

“But I’m too little to have a knife. You said,” he complained. “How can I kill it without a knife?”

“Well, you aren’t too little to hit it with a stone,” she had replied.

“But what if it is really, really big?” His exasperated mother was at her wit’s end trying to answer the question.

“Steven, I don’t know how you will kill the dragon,” she had said in irritation. “I don’t even know what a dragon looks like. Perhaps you are a kind of poisonous animal and when the dragon eats you he will die of a stomachache.”

That had served to silence Steven as he considered for the first time that slaying the dragon might not mean that he would return home victorious. His mission in life might, in fact, cost him his own.

Now, as he walked with or in front of Jasper, tuning out the boy’s chatter and complaining, he focused on counting his steps and thinking about how to kill the dragon. One hundred nine thousand six hundred eighty-two. On hundred nine thousand six hundred eighty three.

He has studied herbology with the wisewoman. He had studied magic rituals with the shaman. He had studied hunting with the hunter. He had even studied story-telling with the teacher and politics with the elder. He had many skills, but still had no real understanding of what a dragon was and how it should be speedily dispatched. He imagined it to be a winged serpent that breathed fire. He had no idea where either neck or heart on the beast might be. He had no idea how to get close enough to poison it. He didn’t know a magic incantation for destroying it. How was he to ever fulfill his destiny and slay the dragon under these circumstances?

There was a sudden crack of thunder that broke Steven out of his reveries and caused Jasper to scream. In an instant, the rain had begun in earnest. Steven pulled the flap of his oilskin pack over his head and continued to trudge onward, now slowed to less than his most stately eighty steps per minute. But even at this pace, Jasper—wet and bedraggled—had difficulty keeping up. He was tired and wet, and soon the inevitable happened. Like the child he was inside he broke down in the middle of the road and wept.

“I don’t want to go!” he cried. He sat in the muddy wagon tracks of the supposed road and slapped his hands on the ground. “I want to go home!”

“But we are trying to get you home, Jasper,” Steven soothed. “There is only one way out of Lastford, so this must be the way you came in. Somewhere ahead is your home.”

“I mean my other home,” Jasper wailed, pointing back in the direction they had come. “I should never have come away with you. I want to go home.”

“Well, if you want to, you can go ahead and go home,” Steven said, his temper rising. “I didn’t ask you to come with me. It was your idea.” The fact that he had not told Jasper that he couldn’t come along escaped Steven. He had, in fact, been hopeful that having a companion on the journey would be a pleasant way to make the distance go more quickly. The two could tell stories to each other and keep each other’s spirits up. As it turned out, they were making each other miserable.

“Take me home, Stevengeorge,” Jasper wailed. “I want to go home.”

“Just go!” Steven shouted. “It is ten thousand three hundred two steps that way,” he said, pointing back the direction they had come.

“I can’t,” Jasper sobbed. “I’ll get lost. It always happens. I got lost and couldn’t find my way home. Now I’m lost and can’t find my way back to Lastford.”

Steven tried to explain. He tried to cajole Jasper into going. He even stomped off on his way, but had gotten only a dozen steps from Jasper when the mournful wail of the boy jerked him to a halt and sent him back to his side.

At long last, Steven helped the sobbing boy to his feet, draped a corner of his oilskin over the boy’s head and started back to the village of Lastford.

When they finally reached the barn where Jasper lived, the boy was instantly transformed back into the funny and pleasant host Steven had found when he first arrived in Lastford. He offered to go find food for Steven. He encouraged him to get out of his wet clothes and dry off.

Steven, however, was not encouraged. The day was far advanced and he had walked over twenty-one thousand steps and was no further than when he started. He stepped out of the barn with no more than a fare-thee-well and set his foot back on the road with determination. This may have been why he walked with such single-mindedness through the rain and the night, depending on the occasional flashes of lightning to confirm that he was still on the rutted path, that Steven missed the turning to the south and continued up into the mountains and away from the supposed location of the dragon.

OR THREE MORE DAYS STEVEN maintained his relentless pace passing through two more villages at forks in the road. At each of these forks, he maintained his course to the right, even though one of the roads running from a village looked much broader and easier than the one Steven had chosen. The road he was on now was slightly better traveled and he had passed other travelers in both directions. But he spoke very little to the other wayfarers on the road. He paused to lend a hand to a farmer and was given bread, to a woodcutter and was given dried meat. But in all this he did not offer to tell a story, nor was he asked about his hat or his mission.

The trail was getting steeper, too. Steven found that he could no longer be assured of twenty thousand steps in a day. His pace slowed on the uphill and picked up again on the down, but it seemed there was a lot more uphill than down now.

And so it was that evening was falling as Steven took his two hundred twenty-eight thousand eight hundred fifty-second step and suddenly became aware of a strange creature just off the path ahead of him. It was silhouetted against a fire and made restless movements from side to side. With each movement its armor clanged, and with each of its breaths the fire flared higher.

Steven strung his bow and nocked an arrow and began stealthily creeping up on the beast. It had killed recently because Steven could smell the singed flesh coming from the fire like roasting meat. In fact, it made his mouth water.

“Ho, dragon,” Steven called out drawing his bow. “I have come to fulfill my destiny and slay thee. Dampen your fires and turn to face your doom!”

With that Steven ran forward yelling as he went. But as he was a few steps away and was drawing his bow, his head was met with a clanging blow that sent him backward in a tumble.

“What kind of brigand are you that threatens an honest tinker on the open road?” an angry voice growled.

Chapter 5
Chapter 7