Dragon on a Pedestal (11 page)

Ivy walked up to it fearlessly. “My very own pet dragon!” she cried. “Green, like Mommy’s hair! To be my friend and companion and to guard me when I’m afraid.” She reached out to pat the ugly snout. “What a lovely creature!”

The dragon was not at all reassured. In fact, it found itself athwart a dilemma. Chase, flee, or fight? None of the signals matched a pattern. No
one had ever called it lovely before or patted it on the snout. So it remained stationary, taking no action. A nervous waft of steam puffed from it.

“Nice steam!” Ivy said. “You’re a steamer, so your name is Stanley.” She had been told tales of strange, funny Mundania, where impossible things existed, such as metal machines that traveled on wheels and people who had no magic. She wasn’t good at comprehending impossibilities, but she had an apt memory for names. “Stanley Steamer,” she repeated. “You’re wonderful!”

Ivy was indulging in a simple but subtle process of identification and transference. First, she was a creature of love, for love had always abounded in her family, so naturally love radiated from her. She bestowed on her toys and pets and friends the kind of unquestioning love she received herself. Also, she was aware of the way men treated women, as exemplified by her father’s handling of her mother. King Dor placed Queen Irene on a pedestal. Irene complained about it often but was privately rather pleased. Ivy had spent many hours of many days searching Castle Roogna for that pedestal, but it seemed to be invisible, like the ghosts. Finally she had realized that it was magic, like the monster-under-the-bed that only she could see. King Dor was able to put Queen Irene on the pedestal that no one else could see or feel, and Irene could not get off it, complain as she might. It was a special enchantment he could perform. Ivy liked enchantment, so she had tried to develop her own invisible pedestal on which she could place her friends. She had by diligent effort perfected it, but had lacked a suitable friend for it. Smash the Ogre was really too big to fit on it. But now she had a suitable prospect, and so she placed her new friend Stanley on it. He was the very best of all the little dragons she knew!

Stanley, like Ivy’s mother, was not entirely comfortable on that pedestal; but again, like her mother, he was not entirely displeased. There were things to be said in favor of pedestals, and he was the right size for this one. What made Ivy’s pedestal especially effective was her talent, of enhancement. Whatever traits a person or creature possessed, in her eyes, became more pronounced, powerful, durable, and good. When she had noted how well her mother grew plants, her mother had grown them even better. When Ivy had met the friendly, talkative yak, the creature had become more friendly and helpful. Now Ivy perceived how handsome and nice Stanley Steamer really was.

Stanley suffered a period of disorientation, as was normal for creatures abruptly discovering themselves on pedestals. He hadn’t known his name was Stanley. He hadn’t known he was wonderful. Certainly he hadn’t known he was lovely. Then the full power of Ivy’s magic took over, for it was Magician-caliber sorcery, the kind of power few mortals comprehended, and the dragon became exactly what she perceived him to be—her
handsome and loyal friend, playmate, and pet. Like many a male before him, he succumbed to the enchantment of a sweet little female, without even knowing the nature of her sorcery. He was not aware that he had lost a battle of remarkable significance; he didn’t even know there had been a battle. Because his natural instincts had no guidelines for this role, he had to accept hers. He was precisely what she wanted.

Ivy, because she was what she was, a creature of love and innocence and unsuspected power, had in an instant tamed one of the most formidable monsters of Xanth—the Gap Dragon. No one had ever done that before. Some people might have considered it a miracle, but it was not; it was merely an early indication of Ivy’s own formidability, which was allied to that of her grandfather Bink.

“You must have very hard scales,” Ivy said, tapping the scales of Stanley’s neck; and now they were metal-hard. “Such pretty colors, too!” And the colors intensified, manifesting as elegant shades of green and blue and gray with iridescent sparkles. Stanley was now so pretty as to smite the unwary eye. “Oh, you’re such a
nice
dragon!” She hugged him about the neck and kissed his green ear.

Bemused, the dragon accepted her embrace. Had he not been so hard-scaled and pretty-colored, he might have melted right into the ground, for Ivy’s affection was a very special thing, quite apart from her magic.

“And such nice, hot steam,” she continued. Stanley jetted a superheated jet, much hotter than he had ever managed before.

Ivy’s attention soon wandered, for she was, after all, only a little girl without any great store of attention. She hardly needed it. “I’m hungry!

Aren’t you?”

Stanley agreed that he was hungry by nodding his head, making the scales of his neck glitter nicely. In fact, now he was ravenous.

“Then we must find some food,” Ivy decided. “For supper.” She looked about.

Stanley sighed privately. Ivy herself was the most delicious possible morsel, but he could no longer even think of that without wincing. No one would consume her while he was on guard!

Nearby was a crabapple tree, with quite a number of ripe crabs. “Gee, I bet those are good,” she said, reaching for one. But the crab snapped at her with its huge pincer, and she hastily withdrew her hand. She had learned the hard way about things that pinched, back at Castle Roogna.

Still, those crabs looked awfully good. “I know!” she decided, for she prided herself on her ability to solve problems when she tried; indeed, that ability had intensified to do justice to her pride. “Mommy cooks crabs in hot water. Then they don’t snap!” She had not realized, before this moment,
why
her mother went through the ritual with the water, putting hot
peppers into the pot to bring the liquid to the boiling point, then dumping in the crabs. It was a significant revelation, worthy of Ivy’s effort.

But she didn’t have any hot water. In fact, she had no water at all and no hot peppers to heat it. Ivy pondered, and in a moment she came up with a solution, for she was trying to be a precocious child. “Stanley, your hot steam can cook them! Then we can both eat!”

Stanley looked at the crabapple tree, not understanding. He did not need to steam crabs; he could crunch them raw without difficulty. Their meat became his flesh, and their shells became his scales, in the natural order of assimilation.

“Oh, come on,” Ivy said encouragingly. “I know you’re smarter than that!” The dragon discovered he
was
smarter than he had thought, and now he understood her notion.
She
could not crunch crabs live and raw.

Stanley positioned himself before the crabapple tree and sent forth a jet of sizzling steam. It touched a crab, whose greenish shell instantly ripened to bright apple red, and the creature fell to the ground. Ivy picked it up—and dropped it, for it was hot. She stuck her fingers in her mouth, unscorching them. Then she made do; she used a section of her ivy-green skirt to protect her fingers and picked the crab up again. It smelled delicious.

But she didn’t know how to crack open the shell, as she had no nutcracker. Then she looked at Stanley’s gleaming teeth and had another bright idea. “You can crack it!” she exclaimed.

She poked the cooked crab into the corner of the dragon’s mouth where the chewing teeth were. Stanley crunched down slowly until the shell cracked. Then he eased up, and she took the crab back. The problem had been solved.

She picked out the meat and chewed it. “Yes, it’s very good,” she said. “Cook some for yourself, Stanley.”

Stanley shrugged and steamed several more crabs and chewed them up, shells and all. He discovered that they were good this way, too. His horizon had been broadened; now he knew how to eat cooked as well as raw meat. In due course, both girl and dragon were satisfied.

But now night was closing more insistently. “I guess Mommy hasn’t found me yet, and Daddy’s busy with something more important,” Ivy remarked, unconcerned. She knew Queen Irene would show up when it suited her convenience. It wasn’t often the woman forgot about bedtime, though. “We must find a good place to sleep.”

The dragon, of course, normally slept anywhere he wanted to; no other creature would attack him. But he was much smaller and less experienced than he had been, and was daunted by the threat of darkness. How would he escape the monster under the bed if he had no bed to climb on? So if Ivy believed it was necessary to find a good place to sleep, then it must be true.

They walked on, seeking a good place. They came to a tree on which grew not crabs but small men. Stanley wafted an experimental cloud of steam at it, in case the men were edible, and a number of them turned red and dropped off.

They had been steamed, but they were not cooked. Each fallen man bounded to his feet, and a company of them gathered below the tree. “Oh, babies!” Ivy exclaimed, perceiving that each wore diapers. “This is an infant-tree!”

These were pretty tough babies. Each had a helmet and a little sword or spear. Now they scowled and marched, their weapons extended threateningly. Stanley wafted more steam at them, but the troops of the infant-tree forged on, using little shields to deflect the steam. Their red color was that of anger, not of ripening or cooking.

“I think we’d better run,” Ivy said intelligently. “Your scales are tough, Stanley, but my skin is tender, because I’m a cute little girl. Anyway, it’s getting too dark.”

Stanley wasn’t certain of the logic of all this, but knew he wasn’t as smart as she was, since thinking wasn’t normally the prerogative of dragons. Yet he understood what she wanted.

They found the trunk of another tree. This one was huge; it would have taken Ivy some time just to walk around the base, climbing over its monstrous, buttressing roots. The foliage was dense, an impenetrable mass that spread out almost horizontally near the bottom. “We’d be safe up there,” Ivy decided. “But how can we get up?”

They were in luck. Behind the tree was a crane. The bird had long, thin legs and a long, thin neck and a long, thin bill. It was a large bird, so that when it stood up straight, its head disappeared into the leaves of the tree. Indeed, it was engaged in lifting stones from the ground to the foliage, cranking up its head in slow, measured stages.

Ivy paused, watching this procedure. She concentrated, and finally figured it out: the bird was practicing rocky-tree.

The troops of the infant-tree were in hot pursuit, delayed only by the shortness of their stride and by their need to detour more widely around the projecting roots than Ivy and Stanley had to do. Ivy didn’t waste time. “Mister Crane, will you lift us up into the tree?” she asked. “I’ll give you—” She hesitated, searching about herself for something to offer, for she knew that it was proper to give favors for favors. She found a metal disk in her pocket and brought it out. “This.”

The crane peered at the disk. The disk gleamed in the last slanting beam of daylight. The crane was charmed, for it liked bright things. It accepted the disk, then hooked its bill into Ivy’s skirt-band and hoisted her up into the foliage. She spun dizzily with the sudden elevation, but grabbed the
branches as they came within reach and scrambled up into the soft darkness of the leaves.

The crane’s bill descended, hooked onto Stanley’s tail, and hoisted him up similarly. Soon he was with her again, which was just as well, because she was nervous about being alone in the dark.

It was almost completely night in the tree, but there were many soft leaves, so Ivy arranged a bunch of them by feel into a bed that was comfortable enough. She couldn’t see the ground, so she didn’t worry about falling. Stanley formed a nest of his own and curled up snout to tail in the fashion of his kind. In moments they were both asleep.

There was a terrible storm during the night, but the massed leaves channeled the water around, so that Ivy and Stanley did not get wet and were only dimly aware of the deluge. Ivy drew her leaf-blanket more tightly about her, and Stanley snorted a waft of steam. Both were glad to be high and dry; few experiences are cozier than being nicely sheltered from bad weather.

In the morning it took Ivy a little while to remember where she was. At first she thought she was home in bed, but the color wasn’t right. Her bedroom was pink, with climbing ivy plants that her mother had grown for her. This place was green, with faint pink swatches of light where a few bold sunbeams poked through. And, of course, she had no pet dragon at home.

“Stanley!” she exclaimed with joy, reaching across to give him a hug. “You’re such a
nice
dragon!”

The baby Gap Dragon woke with a startled snort of steam, switching his tail. His middle set of legs fell through the foliage, and he had to scramble for a moment to recover secure footing. They were, after all, up a tree. But he was also much nicer than he had been.

“I like this tree,” Ivy decided. “Let’s stay up here!” Stanley, who had discovered that he liked being hugged by a cute little girl, agreed.

Ivy looked for a bathroom, but found none. She discovered, though, that anything she did dropped harmlessly through the floor of foliage and out of sight and out of mind, so that was no problem. Birds did it, after all; no wonder they found trees so convenient!

Next she looked for a kitchen, with no better success. But there were assorted fruits and nuts dangling within reach, so she plucked and ate them. Stanley wasn’t sure about this form of sustenance, but at her urging he consumed a bunch of red-hot pepper fruits and found them delicious. He liked hot stuff; it helped heat his steam just as effectively as it heated Ivy’s mother’s water. Then he ate some of the more juicy fruits, for he also needed liquid from which to generate his steam.

Now they moved on through the tree, exploring. Foliage was everywhere, making this a jungle in itself, but there was a certain pattern to it.
The branches twisted generally upward, and the layers of leaves became firmer at the higher levels. This was vaguely like an enormous house, with many floors and walls and ramps; it seemed to extend forever. Stanley had no trouble, for his body was long and low and sinuous, but Ivy felt nervous on the smaller branches.