Chapter Two

TEVEN CONTINUED ON HIS journey in the morning with a light heart and a ridiculous hat and feet that were slowing down his normal walking pace. He had changed socks in the morning, washed out his first pair, and hung them from his pack to dry. He discovered that he had blisters from the previous day’s walk and they interfered with his walking.

It was a short day of only eleven thousand two hundred fifty-six steps when he camped again and tended to his feet. He used a pinch of the wisewoman’s herbs on them and went to sleep, dreaming of the home that was now thirty thousand five hundred ten steps behind him. He was unable to walk along the edge of the river because of unpredictable marshes and terrain, but he had managed to keep it in view periodically through the day and was confident that he was still taking the only possible course of action. He only hoped that he would reach a crossing before he encountered another tributary like the one downstream from his home that would lead him away from his destination.

The next day his feet were better and he was able to make more progress. He encountered a small tributary to the river, but a tree had fallen across the water and he was able to scramble along its trunk far enough that he could leap to the opposite bank from its limbs. Now, if only there were a tree large enough to fell across the big river, Steven might manage to cross over on its limbs. This thought kept him occupied through step forty-seven thousand six hundred twenty-one where he camped for the night and through the incredible twenty-three thousand one hundred ten steps of the next day.

On the fifth day of his journey, Steven crested a small rise as he counted eighty-six thousand two hundred, two hundred one, two hundred two. There below him he saw the dragon. It prowled through a field huge and lumbering and as it moved it used its little hands to pop round creatures from the ground up into its gaping maw. Steven was horrified.

He strung his bow and nocked an arrow. Steven approached slowly this time, not wanting to repeat his fiasco of the first day. He wanted a closer look at this strange creature.

“Ho, Dragon!” called Steven as he approached more closely with his bow at the ready. “Stand and meet your fate for today you have met the dragonslayer.”

The dragon looked up, and then did a most remarkable thing. It stepped out of itself. Steven stared aghast as a man stepped forward.

“What do you want, stranger?” yelled the man. “Why do you come armed into my garden?”

“I’ve come to save you from the dragon that was intent on devouring you,” called back Steven looking at the rest of the dragon the man had left behind. The dragon was beginning to look more and more like a large basket.

“There’s no dragon here,” called the farmer. “I’ve heard of one south of here on the other side of the river, but he’s never come up this way before.”

Steven relaxed his grip on the bow and removed the arrow. He approached the farmer shyly and returned his offered greeting. Steven squinted his eyes at the basket, but he could no longer get it to look like the monster he had first taken it for. It was just a big basket that the farmer had dragged along on his back while picking melons.

Steven told the melon-farmer that he was on a quest to slay the dragon that harried his village, but confessed that he had never actually seen a dragon and mistook the farmer and his basket for the foe. The farmer seemed to get a good laugh out of this and introduced himself as Ranihaha. Since Steven was there, and it was the peak of melon harvest, and it appeared he was capable of carrying a great deal on his back, Ranihaha convinced Steven to help him pick melons which amounted to Steven dragging the huge basket while Ranihaha placed the precious melons into it.

When evening had come and Steven had walked another five thousand seven hundred sixty-eight steps in service of the melons, he sat with Ranihaha in the evening light looking out at the river.

Suddenly Steven leapt to his feet and grabbed his bow, pointing across the river.

“The dragon!” Steven exclaimed. “I can see the smoke from his fiery breath.” This set Ranihaha off on another fit of laughter at the naiveté of his companion.

“That is not the dragon,” laughed Ranihaha. “That is the town of Lastford. That is where I take my melons to be traded for the goods I need for the next year.”

“The next year?” asked Steven. “Do you mean you live here, but your village is on the other side of the river?” He began to get very excited. “Then there must be a way to cross the river. Is there a great tree that has fallen across it so we can walk across?”

“A tree? You mean a bridge across the river?” Now Ranihaha sounded both furious and insulted. “This is a ford—a place where you can wade across the river. Bridges are a great barrier to commerce.”

“I don’t understand,” said Steven.

Ranihaha nodded sagely. “You don’t know much, do you?” he asked. “I tell you what. I’ll tell you about bridges and help you get across the river if you will tell me the story of that very interesting hat you are wearing.”

“You mean you want to Once upon a time each other?” asked Steven. If there was one thing that Steven loved more than anything in the world, it was a good Once upon a time. If he could trade stories with the melon farmer, his quest would have even more meaning. When he returned home he would have more stories to tell his village. “I agree. You go first.” Ranihaha agreed.

The Obstructive Bridge

NCE UPON A TIME, a long time ago and very far away, there lived a melon farmer, like me. Now it is a trait of melons that they do not grow well where many people are likely to travel and trample their vines. But it is a trait of people who live together to want melons to eat because they are sweet and moist. So there have been melon farmers from the beginning of time who would live far from the towns and villages to cultivate the melons under favorable circumstances, and then transport them to the towns and villages in exchange for the necessities of life.

Such was the case with the melon farmer near the River of Stolen Dreams and the village of Tornlace. The melon farmer—I don’t know his name, but we’ll call him Portho for ease of remembering—lived on the west bank of the river where rich dark soil made the melons thrive. His crops were rich and his melons were so highly prized that the village celebrated the day when he brought the melons to town.

That village was on the east bank of the river, and because of its tasty melons and the great festival that it had when the melons came to town, people from far away began to visit at melon harvest. Many of those people found that the village of Tornlace was a pleasant place to settle and raise a family. And so the village grew until it was a town, and the town until it was a small city. The small city had to elect a mayor. It had soldiers and workers of every sort.

But on one day of the year, all work in the city stopped. Musicians played, people danced, and the mayor led a parade of citizens to the banks of the river to await Portho and his melons.

Portho spent his quiet life pleasantly. The melon patch produced plenty to supply his needs as well as what he took to market. But it was treacherous to cross the river at any time except the hottest and driest season of the year, when the melons are their ripest and sweetest. Portho studied the river and knew the exact day when it would be safe for him to load his raft with the harvest of the year and wade across the river towing it behind.

One year when Portho had harvested his melons, loaded his raft, and waded the treacherous waters of the river to reach Tornlace, he was met at the water’s edge by the mayor and the parade of people who fell upon the raft of melons with such ferocity that in mere minutes, all the melons had been taken and consumed. Portho was rewarded richly and dined with the mayor that evening.

During dinner, the mayor turned to Portho and said, “Melon farmer let us talk business. We have become a city instead of a village. The melons you bring across the river once a year are scarcely enough to provide our needs. Our soldiers are occupied keeping people from fighting over the melons you bring. They scarcely get any for themselves. How can we get more melons?”

Portho considered this and agreed to build a larger raft for the next year’s harvest and to bring more melons across with him. But the next year, the same thing was repeated and even with more melons, there were not enough to supply the still-growing city. When it was realized that Portho could not build a bigger raft and still control it in the currents of the river, the city council met to consider what would be done.

The next year, Portho was met with his melons in an open square surrounded by soldiers who kept the citizens at bay with their swords and lances. The mayor had officials who took the melons and distributed them to the citizens, soldiers and council first. Then the mayor sat with Portho and said, “Melon farmer we have decided that the best solution is to build a bridge. With a bridge that spans the river, we can cross over to help with the harvest, transport more melons across the river, and extend the festival season to many days instead of just one. What do you think?”

Portho considered only a moment before saying, “I have no need of a bridge. I grow the melons and bring them by raft across the river. That is the way it is and has always been. There is no need for a bridge.”

But the mayor and the people of the city were adamant, and Portho returned home silently, without the usual accompanying fanfare and without the usual wealth as the people began building the bridge.

By mid-summer the next year, the bridge was completed and the first person to cross the bridge was the mayor himself. He reached Portho in his garden and announced jubilantly that the bridge had been completed and they could now have all the melons they wanted. He reached down and plucked a melon from the patch, opened it with his knife, and took a huge bite. Then he spat the huge bite across the garden. The melon was bitter.

“Where are the sweet melons, you dog?” cried the mayor. Portho attempted to explain that the melons were not ripe until late summer when the water was lowest, but the mayor stomped back across the bridge in disgust, convinced that Portho was keeping the sweet melons hidden.

As the summer wore on, more and more people crossed the bridge, trampling the vines in Portho’s garden and sampling the melons with the same results as the mayor. But they found something else on the west bank of the river that people in crowded places are always looking for. They found space and good places to build homes.

Soon the bridge was jammed with people and carts bringing their belongings to the west bank of the river, building materials, and, of course, soldiers to guard their possessions.

When Portho finally judged the meager crop of melons he had left to be ripe and the river to be low enough, he loaded his raft with melons and set out across the river. But bridges change the currents in the water and before he was across the water, his raft was caught in the new current, swung wildly about, and was dashed against the pillar of the bridge. All the melons were lost and Portho barely escaped with his life.

He dragged himself to shore and looked at the ruins of his garden, the trampled vines, and the disgusting bridge. He packed his few belongings and a sack of melon seeds and quietly slipped away from the city of Tornlace to find a new garden where melons would grow as sweetly as honey and where the people had never heard of a bridge.

From that day forward, melon farmers have known that bridges are a great obstruction to commerce.

Chapter 1
Chapter 3