Part 3

On the morning of next day the homelanders prayed again to the sun that he would call the dragon away from them. He did not so. Therefore they besought him that he would forbid the dragon to come further than the cave’s mouth, and would cause him to be well-pleased with a feast like yesterday’s.

Such a feast, in the afternoon, was duly laid at the cave’s mouth; and again, when the sun was setting, the dragon did not come down the hill, but ate aloft there, and at the twelfth clash drew back his glowing jaws into the cave.

Day followed day, each with the same ritual and result.

Shib did not join in the prayers. He regarded them as inefficacious, and also as rather a slight to himself. The homelanders, be it said, intended no slight. They thought Shib wonderfully clever, and were most grateful to him; but it never occurred to them to rank him among gods.

Veo always prayed heartily that the dragon should be called away forthwith. He wanted to see the dragon by daylight. But he did not pray that the dragon should not come forth in the evening. Better a twilit dragon than none at all.

Little Thol, though he prayed earnestly enough that the dragon should stay at home by night, never prayed for him to leave the homeland. He prayed that he himself might grow up very quickly, and be very big and very strong and very clever and very brave.

For the rest, the homelanders were all orthodox in their devotions.

* * * * *

The young moon had grown old, had dwindled, and disappeared. The sound of the clashed jaws ceased to be a novelty. The vesperal gatherings in the valley became smaller. The great column of smoke, by day and by night, was for the homelanders a grim reminder of what had happened, and of what would happen again if once they failed to fulfil the needs of their uninvited guest. They were resolved that they would not fail. In this resolution they had a sombre sense of security. But there came, before the leaves of the trees were yellow, an evening when the dragon left untasted the feast spread for him, and crawled down the hill. He was half-way down before any one noticed his coming. And on that night, a longer night than the other, he made a wider journey around the homeland, and took a heavier toll of lives.

Thenceforth always, at sunset, guards were posted to watch the hill and to give, if need were, the alarm. Nor did even this measure suffice. In the dawn of a day in winter, when snow was lying thick on the homeland, a goat-herd observed with wonder a wide pathway through the snow from the dragon’s cave; and presently he saw afar on the level ground the dragon himself, with his head inside the mouth of a lonely hut that was the home of a young man recently wedded. From the hut’s mouth crept forth clouds of smoke, and, as the dragon withdrew his head, the goat-herd, finding voice, raised such a cry as instantly woke many sleepers. That day lived long in the memory of the homelanders. The dragon was very active. He did not plod through the snow. He walked at his full speed upon the ground, the snow melting before him at the approach of his fiery breath. It was the homelanders that plodded. Some of them stumbled head foremost into snowdrifts and did not escape their pursuer. There was nothing slothful in the dragon’s conduct that day. Hour after hour in the keen frosty air he went his way, and not before nightfall did he go home.

Thus was inaugurated what we may call the Time of Greater Stress. No one could know at what hour of night or day the dragon might again raid the homeland. Relays of guards had to watch the hill always. No one, lying down to sleep, knew that the dragon might not forthcome before sunrise; no one, throughout the day, knew that the brute might not be forthcoming at any moment. True, he forthcame seldom. The daily offerings of slain beasts and birds sufficed him, mostly. But he was never to be depended on--never.

Shib’s name somewhat fell in the general esteem. Nor was it raised again by the execution of a scheme that he conceived. The roe and buck stuffed with poisonous herbs were swallowed by the dragon duly, but the column of smoke from the cave’s mouth did not cease that evening, as had been hoped. And on the following afternoon--a sign that the stratagem had not been unnoticed--one of the men who were placing the food in front of the cave perished miserably in the dragon’s jaws.

Other devices of Shib’s failed likewise. The homelanders had to accept the dragon as a permanent factor in their lives. Year by year, night and day, rose the sinister column of smoke, dense, incessant. Happy those tiny children who knew not what a homeland without a dragon was like! So, at least, thought the elders.

And yet, were these elders so much less happy than they had erst been? Were they not--could they but have known it--happier? Did not the danger in which they lived make them more appreciative of life? Surely they had a zest that in the halcyon days was not theirs? Certainly they were quicker-witted. They spoke less slowly, their eyes were brighter, all their limbs nimbler. Perhaps this was partly because they ate less meat. The dragon’s diet made it necessary that they should somewhat restrict their own, all the year round. The dragon, without knowing it, was a good physician to them.

Without being a moralist or a preacher, he had also improved their characters. Quarrels had become rare. Ill-natured gossip was frowned on. Suspicions throve not. Manners had unstiffened. The homelanders now liked one another. They had been drawn charmingly together in brotherhood and sisterhood. You would have been surprised at the change in them.

* * * * *

But for his bright red hair, perhaps you would not have recognised Thol at all. He was a great gawky youth now. Spiritually, however, he had changed little. He was still intent on slaying the dragon.

In the preceding years he had thought of little else than this, and as he never had said a word about it he was not accounted good company. Nor had he any desire to shine--in any light but that of a hero. The homelanders would have been cordial enough to him, throughout those years, if he had wished them to be so. But he never was able to forget how cold and unkind they had been to him in his early childhood. It was not for their sake that he had so constantly nursed and brooded over his great wish. It was for his own sake only.

An unsympathetic character? Stay!--let me tell you that since the dawn of his adolescence another sake had come in to join his own: Thia’s sake.

From the moment when she, in childhood, had called him a coward, it always had been Thia especially that he wished to impress. But in recent times his feeling had changed. How should such a lout as he ever hope to impress Thia, who was a goddess? Thol hoped only to make Thia happy, to see her go dancing and singing once more, with flowers in her hair. Thol did not even dare hope that Thia would thank him. Thol was not an unsympathetic character at all.

As for Thia, she was more fascinating than ever. Do not be misled by her seeming to Thol a goddess. Remember that the homelanders worshipped cherry-trees and rain and fire and running water and all such things. There was nothing of the statuesque Hellenic ideal about Thia. She had not grown tall, she was as lissom and almost as slight as ever; and her alien dark hair had not lost its wildness: on windy days it flew out far behind her, like a thunder cloud, and on calm days hid her as in a bush. She had never changed the task that she chose on the day of the dragon’s advent. She was still a goose-girl. But perhaps she was conscious now that the waddling gait of her geese made the grace of her own gait the lovelier by its contrast. Certainly she was familiar with her face. She had often leaned over clear pools to study it--to see what the homelanders saw in it. She was very glad of her own charms because they were so dear to all those beloved people. But sometimes her charms also saddened her. She had had many suitors--youths of her own age, and elder men too. Even Veo, thinking her almost as beautiful as the dragon, had laid his hands upon her shoulders, in the ritual mode. Even the intellectual Shib had done so. And even from such elders as these it was dreadful to turn away. Nor was Thia a girl of merely benevolent nature: she had warm desires, and among the younger suitors more than one had much pleased her fancy. But stronger than any other sentiment in her was her love for the homeland. Not until the dragon were slain or were gone away across the waters would Thia be wife of any man.

So far as she knew, she had sentenced herself to perpetual maidenhood. Even had she been aware of Thol’s inflexible determination, she would hardly have become hopeful. Determination is one thing, doing is another.

The truth of that old adage sometimes forced itself on poor Thol himself, as he sat watching the sheep that he herded near his cave on the way to the marshes; and at such time his sadness was so great that it affected even his sheep, causing them to look askance at him and bleat piteously, and making drearier a neighbourhood that was in itself dreary.

But, one day in the eighteenth summer of his years, Thol ceased to despond. There came, wet from the river and mossy from the marshes, an aged wanderer. He turned his dark eyes on Thol and said with a smile, pointing towards the thick smoke on the hill, ‘A dragon is here now?’

‘Yea, O wanderer,’ Thol answered.

‘There was none aforetime,’ said the old man. ‘A dragon was what your folk needed.’

‘They need him not. But tell me, O you that have so much wandered, and have seen many dragons, tell me how a dragon may be slain!’

‘Mind your sheep, young shepherd. Let the dragon be. Let not your sheep mourn you.’

‘They shall not. I shall slay the dragon. Only tell me how! Surely there is a way?’

‘It is a way that would lead you into his jaws, O fool, and not hurt him. Only through the roof of his mouth can a dragon be pierced and wounded. He opens not his jaws save when they are falling upon his prey. Do they not fall swiftly, O fool?’

‘O wanderer, yea. But’----

‘Could you deftly spear the roof of that great mouth, O prey, in that little time?’

‘Yea, surely, if so the dragon would perish.’

The old man laughed. ‘So would the dragon perish, truly; but so only. So would be heard what few ears have heard--the cry that a dragon utters as he is slain. But so only.’ And he went his way northward.

From that day on, Thol did not watch his sheep very much. They, on the other hand, spent most of their time in watching him. They rather thought he was mad, standing in that odd attitude and ever lunging his crook up at one of the nodding boughs of that ash tree.

Twice in the course of the autumn the dragon came down the hill; but when the watchman sounded the alarm Thol did not go forth to meet him. He was not what his flock thought him.

He had now exchanged his crook for a spear--a straight well-seasoned sapling of oak, with a long sharp head of flint. With this, day by day, hour after hour, he lunged up at the boughs of fruit-trees. His flock, deploring what seemed to them mania, could not but admire his progressive skill. Rarely did he fail now in piercing whatever plum or apple he aimed at.

When winter made bare the branches, it was at the branches that Thol aimed his thrusts. His accuracy was unerring now. But he had yet to acquire the trick of combining the act of transfixion with the act of leaping aside. Else would he perish even in victory.

Spring came. As usual, her first care was to put blossoms along the branches of such almond trees as were nearest to the marshes.

The ever side-leaping Thol pricked off any little single blossom that he chose.

* * * * *

Spring was still active in the homeland when, one day, a little while before sunset, the watchers of the hill blew their horns. There came from all quarters the usual concourse of young and old, to watch the direction of the dragon and to keep out of it. Down came the familiar great beast, the never-ageing dragon, picking his way into the green valley. And he saw an unwonted sight there. He saw somebody standing quite still on the nearer bank of the stream; a red-haired young person, holding a spear. About this young person he formed a theory which had long been held by certain sheep.

Little wonder that the homelanders also formed that theory! Little wonder that they needed no further proof of it when, deaf to the cries of entreaty that they uttered through the evening air, Thol stood his ground!

Slowly, as though to give the wretched young lunatic a chance, the dragon advanced.

But quickly, very terribly and quickly, when he was within striking distance, he reared his neck up. An instant later there rang through the valley--there seemed to rend the valley--a single screech, unlike anything that its hearers had ever heard.

Those who dared to look saw the vast length of the dragon, neck on grass, coiling slowly round. The tip of the tail met the head and parted from it. Presently the vast length was straight, motionless.

Yet even of those who had dared look none dared believe that the dragon was indeed dead.

But for its death-cry, Thol himself would hardly have believed.

The second firm believer was Thia. Thia, with swift conviction, plucked some flowers and put them loosely into her hair. Thia, singing as well as though she had never ceased to sing, and dancing as prettily as though she had for years been practising her steps, went singing and dancing towards the stream. Lightly she lept the stream, and then very seriously and quietly walked to the spot where Thol stood. She looked up at him, and then, without a word, raised her arms and put her hands upon his shoulders. He, who had slain the dragon, trembled.

‘O Thol,’ she said gently, ‘you turn not away from me, but neither do you raise me from the ground.’

Then Thol raised Thia thrice from the ground.

And he said, ‘Let our home be the cave that was my father’s.’

Hand in hand, man and wife, they went up the hill, and round to the eastern side of its summit. But when they came to the mouth of the old cave there, he paused and let go her hand.

‘O Thia,’ he said wonderingly, ‘is it indeed true that you love me?’

‘O Thol,’ she answered, ‘it is most true.’

‘O Thia,’ he said, ‘love me always!’

‘I have long ceased to love you, O Thol,’ she said, five years later, in a low voice. But I see that I have outstripped my narrative. I must hark back.

* * * * *

The sun had already risen far when Thol and Thia were wakened by a continuous great hum as of many voices. When they looked forth and down from the mouth of their high home, it seemed to them that all the homelanders were there beneath them, gazing up.

And this was indeed so. Earlier in the morning, by force of habit, all the homelanders had gone to what we call Berkeley Square, the place where for so many years they had daily besought the sun to call the dragon away across the waters. There, where lay the great smokeless and harmless carcass, was no need for prayers now; and with one accord the throng had moved from the western to the eastern foot of the hill, and stayed there gazing in reverence up to the home of a god greater than the sun.

When at length the god showed himself, there arose from the throng a great roar of adoration. The throng went down on its knees to him, flung up its arms to him, half-closed its eyes so as not to be blinded by the sight of him. His little mortal mate, knowing not that he was a god, thinking only that he was a brave man and her own, was astonished at the doings of her dear ones. The god himself, sharing her ignorance, was deeply embarrassed, and he blushed to the roots of his hair.

‘Laugh, O Thol,’ she whispered to him. ‘It were well for them that you should laugh.’ But he never had laughed in all his life, and was much too uncomfortable to begin doing so just now. He backed into the cave. The religious throng heaved a deep moan of disappointment as he did so. Thia urged him to come forth and laugh as she herself was doing. ‘Nay,’ he said, ‘but do you, whom they love, dance a little for them and sing. Then will they go away happy.’

It seemed to Thia that really this was the next best plan, and so, still laughing, she turned round and danced and sang with great animation and good-will. The audience, however, was cold. It gave her its attention, but even this, she began to feel, was not its kind attention. Indeed, the audience was jarred. After a while--for Thia’s pride forbade her to stop her performance--the audience began to drift away.

There were tears in her eyes when she danced back into the cave. But these she brushed away, these she forgot instantly in her lover’s presence.

* * * * *

Love is not all. ‘I must go drive my geese,’ said the bride.

‘And I my sheep,’ said the bridegroom.

‘There is good grass, O Thol, round my geese’s pond. Let your sheep graze there always. Thus shall not our work sever us.’

As they went forth, some children were coming up the hill, carrying burdens. The burdens were cold roast flesh, dried figs, and a gourd of water, sent by some elders as a votive offering to the god. The children knelt at sight of the god and then ran shyly away, leaving their gifts on the ground. The god and his mate feasted gladly. Then they embraced and parted, making tryst at the pond.

When Thia approached the pond, she did not wonder that Thol was already there, for sheep go quicker than geese. But--where were his sheep? ‘Have they all strayed?’ she cried out to him.

He came to meet her, looking rather foolish.

‘O Thia,’ he explained, ‘as I went to the fold, many men and women were around it. I asked them what they did there. They knelt and made answer, “We were gazing at the sheep that had been the god’s.” When I made to unpen the flock, there was a great moaning. There was gnashing of teeth, O Thia, and tearing of hair. It was said by all that the god must herd sheep nevermore.’

‘And you, beloved, what said you?’

‘I said nothing, O Thia, amid all that wailing. I knew not what to say.’

Thia laughed long but tenderly. ‘And your sheep, beloved, what said they?’

‘How should I know?’ asked Thol.

‘And you left them there? Do you not love them?’

‘I have never loved them.’

‘But they were your task?’

‘O Thia, the dragon was my task.’

She stroked his arm. ‘The dragon is dead, O Thol. You have slain the dragon, O my brave dear one. That task is done. You must find some other. All men must work. Since you loved not your sheep, you shall love my geese, and I will teach you to drive them with me.’

‘That,’ said Thol, ‘would not be a man’s work, O Thia.’

‘But they say you are a god! And I think a god may do as he will.’

Her flock had swum out into the pond. She called it back to her, and headed it away towards some willows. From one of these she plucked for Thol a long twig such as she herself carried, and, having stripped it of its leaves, gave it to him and began to teach him her art.

* * * * *

There was, as Thia had known there must be, a great concourse of people around and about the dragon.

There was a long line of children riding on its back; there were infants in arms being urged by their mothers never to forget that they had seen it; there were many young men and women trying to rip off some of its scales, as reminders; and there were elders exchanging reminiscences of its earliest raids and correcting one another on various points. And the whole crowd of holiday-makers was so intent that the gradual approach of that earnest worker, Thol, was not noticed until he came quite near.

Very gradual, very tortuous and irregular, his approach was. Thia, just now, was letting him shift for himself, offering no hints at all. For the homelanders’ sake, she wished him to be seen at his worst. It was ill that they should worship a false god. To her, he was something better than a real god. But this was another matter. To the homelanders, he ought to seem no more than a man who had done a great deed and set a high example. And for his own sake, and so for hers--for how could his not be hers?--she wished him to have no more honour than was his due. Splendid man though he was, and only a year younger than herself, he was yet a child; and children, thought Thia--though she was conscious that she herself, for all the petting she had received, was rather perfect--are easily spoilt. Altogether, the goose-girl’s motives were as pure as her perception was keen. Admirable, too, were her tactics; and they should have succeeded. Yet they failed. In the eyes of the homelanders the goose-god lost not a jot of his divinity.

No hint of disillusion was in the moans evoked by the sight of him. Grief, shame, horror at his condescension, and a deep wrath against the whilom darling Thia, were all that was felt by the kneeling and swaying crowd.

Thia knew it. She was greatly disappointed. Indeed, she was near to shedding tears again. Pride saved her from that. Besides, she was angry, and not only angry but amused. And in a clear voice that was audible above the collective moaning, ‘Have patience, O homelanders,’ she cried. ‘He is new to his work. He will grow in skill. These geese will find that he is no fool. And it may be that hereafter, if you are all very good, I will teach him to sing and dance for you, with flowers in his bright red hair.’