LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

      "It's only a thunder shower," said the master, and caned Edmund more than ever. This master was not like some masters I know: He was very obstinate, and would not believe his own eyes if they told him anything different from what he had been saying before his eyes spoke.

      So while the master was writing Lying is very wrong, and liars must be caned. It is all for their own good on the black-board for Edmund to copy out seven hundred times, Edmund sneaked out of school and ran for his life across the town to warn his granny, but she was not at home. So then he made off through the back door of the town, and raced up the hill to tell the cockatrice and ask for his help. It never occurred to him that the cockatrice might not believe him. You see, he had heard so many wonderful tales from him and had believed them all—and when you believe all a person's stories they ought to believe yours. This is only fair.

      At the mouth of the cockatrice's cave Edmund stopped, very much out of breath, to look back at the town. As he ran he had felt his little legs tremble and shake, while the shadows of the great yellow cloud fell upon him. Now he stood once more between warm earth and blue sky, and looked down on the green plain dotted with fruit trees and red-roofed farms and plots of gold corn. In the middle of that plain the gray town lay, with its strong walls with the holes pierced for the archers, and its square towers with holes for dropping melted lead on the heads of strangers; its bridges and its steeples; the quiet river edged with willow and alder; and the pleasant green garden place in the middle of the town, where people sat on holidays to smoke their pipes and listen to the band.

      Edmund saw it all; and he saw, too, creeping across the plain, marking her way by a black line as everything withered at her touch, the great yellow dragon—and he saw that she was many times bigger than the whole town.

      "Oh, my poor, dear granny," said Edmund, for he had a feeling heart, as I ought to have told you before.

      The yellow dragon crept nearer and nearer, licking her greedy lips with her long red tongue, and Edmund knew that in the school his master was still teaching earnestly and still not believing Edmund's tale the least little bit.

      "He'll jolly well have to believe it soon, anyhow," said Edmund to himself, and though he was a very tender-hearted boy—I think it only fair to tell you that he was this—I am afraid he was not as sorry as he ought to have been to think of the way in which his master was going to learn how to believe what Edmund said. Then the dragon opened her jaws wider and wider and wider. Edmund shut his eyes, for though his master was in the town, the amiable Edmund shrank from beholding the awful sight.

      When he opened his eyes again there was no town—only a bare place where it had stood, and the dragon licking her lips and curling herself up to go to sleep, just as Kitty does when she has quite finished with a mouse. Edmund gasped once or twice, and then ran into the cave to tell the cockatrice.

      "Well," said the cockatrice thoughtfully, when the tale had been told. "What then?"

      "I don't think you quite understand," said Edmund gently. "The dragon has swallowed up the town."

      "Does it matter?" said the cockatrice.

       "Creeping across the plain."

      "But I live there," said Edmund blankly.

      "Never mind," said the cockatrice, turning over in the pool of fire to warm its other side, which was chilly, because Edmund had, as usual, forgotten to close the cave door. "You can live here with me."

      "I'm afraid I haven't made my meaning clear," said Edmund patiently. "You see, my granny is in the town, and I can't bear to lose my granny like this."

      "I don't know what a granny may be," said the cockatrice, who seemed to be growing weary of the subject, "but if it's a possession to which you attach any importance——"

      "Of course it is," said Edmund, losing patience at last. "Oh—do help me. What can I do?"

      "If I were you," said his friend, stretching itself out in the pool of flame so that the waves covered him up to his chin, "I should find the drakling and bring it here."

      "But why?" said Edmund. He had gotten into the habit of asking why at school, and the master had always found it trying. As for the cockatrice, he was not going to stand that sort of thing for a moment.

      "Oh, don't talk to me!" he said, splashing angrily in the flames. "I give you advice; take it or leave it—I shan't bother about you anymore. If you bring the drakling here to me, I'll tell you what to do next. If not, not."

      And the cockatrice drew the fire up close around his shoulders, tucked himself up in it, and went to sleep.

      Now this was exactly the right way to manage Edmund, only no one had ever thought of trying to do it before.

      He stood for a moment looking at the cockatrice; the cockatrice looked at Edmund out of the corner of his eye and began to snore very loudly, and Edmund understood, once and for all, that the cockatrice wasn't going to put up with any nonsense. He respected the cockatrice very much from that moment, and set off at once to do exactly as he was told—for perhaps the first time in his life.

      Though he had played truant so often, he knew one or two things that perhaps you don't know, though you have always been so good and gone to school regularly. For instance, he knew that a drakling is a dragon's baby, and he felt sure that what he had to do was to find the third of the three noises that people used to hear coming from the mountains. Of course, the clucking had been the cockatrice, and the big noise like a large gentleman asleep after dinner had been the big dragon. So the smaller rumbling must have been the drakling.

      He plunged boldly into the caves and searched and wandered and wandered and searched, and at last he came to a third door in the mountain, and on it was written The baby is asleep. Just before the door stood fifty pairs of copper shoes, and no one could have looked at them for a moment without seeing what sort of feet they were made for, for each shoe had five holes in it for the drakling's five claws. And there were fifty pairs because the drakling took after his mother, and had a hundred feet—no more and no less. He was the kind called Draco centipedis in the learned books.

      Edmund was a good deal frightened, but he remembered the grim expression of the cockatrice's eye, and the fixed determination of his snore still rang in his ears, in spite of the snoring of the drakling, which was, in itself, considerable. He screwed up his courage, flung the door open, and called out: "Hello, you drakling. Get out of bed this minute."

      The drakling stopped snoring and said sleepily: "It ain't time yet."

      "Your mother says you are to, anyhow; and look sharp about it, what's more," said Edmund, gaining courage from the fact that the drakling had not yet eaten him.

      The drakling sighed, and Edmund could hear it getting out of bed. The next moment it began to come out of its room and to put on its shoes. It was not nearly so big as its mother; only about the size of a Baptist chapel.

      "Hurry up," said Edmund, as it fumbled clumsily with the seventeenth shoe.

      "Mother said I was never to go out without my shoes," said the drakling; so Edmund had to help it to put them on. It took some time, and was not a comfortable occupation.

      At last the drakling said it was ready, and Edmund, who had forgotten to be frightened, said, "Come on then," and they went back to the cockatrice.

      The cave was rather narrow for the drakling, but it made itself thin, as you may see a fat worm do when it wants to get through a narrow crack in a piece of hard earth.

      "Here it is," said Edmund, and the cockatrice woke up at once and asked the drakling very politely to sit down and wait. "Your mother will be here presently," said the cockatrice, stirring up its fire.

      The drakling sat down and waited, but it watched the fire with hungry eyes.

      "I beg your pardon," it said at last, "but I am always accustomed to having a little basin of fire as soon as I get up, and I feel rather faint. Might I?"

      It reached

Скачать книгу