A Dragon Tale for Michaelmas

Once upon a time, a king gave his son a sword.  Since the prince was still a child, the king ordered the sword to be stored in a mountain cave to keep it safe, for in those days kingdoms were plundered constantly by thieves.  The king often took his son to the cave.  It took half a day to climb the steep path, and to remove the pile of sticks and rubble which hid it.

One day, when the son was twelve years old, the king died.  The prince, in addition to mourning his father, was now responsible for the kingdom.  Day after day he sat on a throne too big for him, consulted his ministers, and made decisions.  The prince was kept so busy with ruling the kingdom that he forgot the words his father had spoken to him about the sword on his deathbed, and forgot about the sword altogether.

By and by, a ferocious dragon took up residence in the mountain cave.  The dragon was not content merely to sleep in his cave on his pile of treasures.  He forgot about the treasures he had, since he always slept on top of them and never looked at them.  Therefore he always craved new shiny precious things, including maidens.  These last he would gobble up.  The young prince who had become king could not protect his kingdom from the dragon.  What's more, the dragon slept on top of the one thing that could tame him, the ancient sword that the old king had given his son.

Finally, there was only one maiden left: the most beautiful, the one betrothed to the young king.  He met with his counsellors, but none had a solution.  Droves of brave knights had tried to bring down the dragon, only to be burned to death by the fire from his mouth.  As dawn broke, the hungry dragon approached the kingdom.  The smoke from his breath hung over the buildings, blackening things in its path.  The dragon hovered above, searching for the maiden.

But in a dream the night before, the old king had visited his son.  He had spoken the forgotten words: "Do not try to rule the kingdom without the help of the sword.  It is no ordinary sword for making war.  It gives counsel, and only harms that which must perish."  The old king concluded that his son must go retrieve the sword alone.

The young king set out immediately, though it was the middle of the night.  As he trudged up the mountain path, the wind blew out the torch he was holding.  He had to fall to his knees and follow the path by feel, in the pitch black moonless night.  As no one had climbed it for years, the path had grown over with bushes.  Stones had fallen or rolled over it in places, and sometimes the young king was not sure he was still on the path.  But at last he felt a clearing beside a heart-shaped stone to the side of the path.  He remembered such a stone from his boyhood visits with his father.

There was no flat ground in the cave, only piles of clutter: the gloomy bones of maidens, ordinary swords and shields, bows and arrows.  The prince dug and dug, sometimes cutting his hands on the weapons.  At last he felt underneath them the familiar pile of sticks and debris from of old.  As he neared the bottom of the pile, light began to penetrate into the cave.  At last, the sharpest cut of all revealed to him the contour of his own special sword.  Carefully he extracted the sword from the clutter.  As it came free, smoke poured into the cave making it almost impossible to breathe, and darkening the cave.  The young king heard a dragonish snorting and his betrothed maiden weeping.  The dragon had returned to his cave to feast on the maiden.

The dragon breathed fire.  In the light of that fire the young king approached the dragon and struck at the thick hide.  The surprised beast reached around and grabbed the young king, who realized that if the dragon died in there, he and the maiden would be trapped inside.  So the young king taunted the dragon.  "O mighty dragon, it is so easy for you to defeat me in your own cave.  Surely you would prove yourself by challenging me in the light of day!"  The dragon was proud, and brought the maiden and young king out of the cave.  Before he had fully set them down on the ground, the young king pierced the dragon's side with the sword.  The dragon writhed and curled, crashing into the cave.  So doing he smashed a little glass vial.  The contents of the vial splashed all over the bones.  The bones all knit themselves together.  Flesh came back over them, and clothes, until at last the devoured maidens appeared, alive and whole.  The dragon's legs disappeared and it turned into a lithe green snake.  It wound itself around the young king's shoulders like a handsome mantle.

Then a roar of a crowd echoed over the hillside.  The whole kingdom was climbing up the path, clearing the bushes and stones, desperate to try and save their last maiden.  How astonished they were when they saw all of the maidens restored to life and rushing into the arms of their mothers, fathers, and brothers.  The safety of the kingdom was restored.  They all returned home to it, and the dragon which had become a snake wound itself around the kingdom walls to protect it from intrusion.  The remnants in the little vial, which was the water of life, the people sprinkled over the ashes of the burned knights, who also returned to life.  The young king married the lovely maiden. He never again forgot to keep his sword nearby but polished it, practiced  with it, and asked its advice.