Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback (44 page)

was going to lose one. Once, indeed, he had to rescue Number Two

from an eagle, and Number Five had to be pulled out of a foxhole.

But he found that the hours spent working on the Encyclopedia of

All Knowledge stood him in good stead: if he began telling a story,

in an instant they would all be seated around him, listening intently.

And if he forgot anything, he would ask the pen he had made from

Professor Owl’s tail feather to write it out for him. Luckily, Dame

Lizard had left plenty of paper and ink.

He gave them all names: Ajax, Achilles, Hercules, Perseus, Helen,

Medea, Andromache. They were fascinated by the stories of their

names, and Medea insisted she was putting spells on the others, while Hercules would try to lift the heaviest objects he could find. Ivan

learned to tell them apart. One had an ear that was slightly crooked, one had a stubby tail, one swayed as she walked. Each night, when he tucked them in and counted the lizard heads—yes, seven heads lay

on the pillows—he breathed a sigh of relief that they were still alive.

“How many more days?” he would ask Blanchefleur.

“You don’t want to know,” she would reply. And then she would go

out hunting, while he made himself dinner. Of course he could not

eat insects and spiders, or mice like Blanchefleur. On the first night, he looked in the pantry and found a bag of flour, a bag of sugar, some tea, and a tinned ham. He made himself tea and ate part of the tinned ham.

“What in the world shall I do for food?” he asked Blanchefleur.

”What everyone else does. Work for it,” she replied. So the next day, he left the lizards in her care for a couple of hours and went into the town that lay along the road Dame Lizard had taken. It was a small

• 360 •

• Theodora Goss •

town, not much larger than the village he had grown up in. There, he asked if anyone needed firewood chopped, or a field cleared, or any

such work. That day, he cleaned out a pigsty. The farmer who hired

him found him strong and steady, so he hired him again, to pick

vegetables, paint a fence, any odd work that comes up around a farm.

He recommended Ivan to others, so there was soon a steady trickle

of odd jobs that brought in enough money for him to buy bread and

meat. The farmer who had originally hired him gave him vegetables

that were too ripe for market.

He could never be gone long, because Blanchfleur would remind

him in no uncertain terms that taking care of the lizards was his task, not hers. Whenever he came back, they were clean and fed and doing

something orderly, like playing board games.

“Why do they obey you, and not me?” he asked, tired and cross.

He had just washed an entire family’s laundry.

“Because,” she answered.

After dinner, once the lizards had been put to bed, really and

finally put to bed, he would sit in the parlor and read the books

on the shelves, which were all about travel in distant lands. Among

them were the books of Dame Emilia Lizard. They had titles like
Up
the Amazon in a Steamboat
and
Across the Himalayas on a Yak.
He found them interesting—Dame Lizard was an acute observer, and he

learned about countries and customs that he had not even known

existed—but often he could scarcely keep his eyes open because he

was so tired. Once Blanchefleur returned from her evening hunt, he

would go to sleep in Dame Lizard’s room. He could tell it was hers

because the walls were covered with photographs of her in front of

temples and pyramids, perched on yaks or camels or water buffalos,

dressed in native garb. Blanchefleur would curl up against him, no

longer pretending not to, and he would fall asleep to her soft rumble.

In winter, all the lizards caught bronchitis. First Andromache

started coughing, and then Ajax, until there was an entire household of sick lizards. Since Ivan did not want to leave them, Blanchefleur went into town to find the doctor.

• 361 •

• Blanchefleur •

“You’re lucky to have caught me,” said the doctor when he arrived.

“My train leaves in an hour. There’s been a dragon attack, and the

King has asked all the medical personnel who can be spared to help

the victims. He burned an entire village, can you imagine? But I’m

sure you’ve seen the photographs in the
Herald
.”

Ivan had not—they did not get the
Herald
, or any other newspaper, at Dame Lizard’s house. He asked where the attack had occurred, and

sighed with relief when told it was a fishing village on the coast. His father was not in danger.

“Nothing much I can do here anyway,” said the doctor. “Bronchitis

has to run its course. Give them tea with honey for the coughs, and

tepid baths for the fever. And try to avoid catching it yourself!”

“A dragon attack,” said Blanchefleur after the doctor had left. “We

haven’t had one of those in a century.”

But there was little time to think of what might be happening far

away. For weeks, Ivan barely slept. He told the lizards stories, took their temperature, made them tea. Once their appetites returned,

he found them the juiciest worms under the snow. Slowly, one by

one, they began to get better. Medea, the smallest of them and his

secret favorite, was sick for longer than the rest, and one night when she was coughing badly, he held her through the night, not knowing

what else to do. Sometimes, when he looked as though he might fall

asleep standing up, Blanchefleur would say, “Go sleep, Ivan. I’ll stay up and watch them. I am nocturnal, you know.”

By the time all the lizards were well, the marsh marigolds were

blooming, and irises were pushing their sword-like leaves out of the ground. The marshes were filled with the sounds of birds returning

from the south: the raucous cacophony of ducks, the songs of

thrushes.

Ivan had forgotten how long he had been in the marsh, so he was

startled when one morning he heard the front door open and a voice

call, “Hello, my dears! I’m home!” And there stood Dame Lizard, with her suitcases strapped to her bicycle, looking just as she had left a year ago, but with a fuchsia scarf around her throat.

• 362 •

• Theodora Goss •

The lizards rushed around her, calling “Mother, Mother, look

how we’ve grown! We all have names now! And we know about the

Trojan War!” She had brought them a set of papier mâché puppets

and necklaces of lapis lazuli. For Blanchefleur, she had brought a hat of crimson felt that she had seen on a dancing monkey in Marakesh.

Blanchefleur said, “Thank you. You shouldn’t have.”

Once the presents were distributed and the lizards were eating an

enormous box of Turkish Delight, she said to Ivan, “Come outside.”

When they were standing by the house, under the alders, she said,

“Ivan, I can see you’ve taken good care of my children. They are

happy and healthy, and that is due to your dedication. Hercules told me how you took care of Medea when she was ill. I want to give you

a present too. I brought back a camel whip for you, but I want to give you something that will be of more use, since you don’t have a camel.

You must raise your arms, then close your eyes and stand as still as possible, no matter how startled you may be.”

Ivan closed his eyes, not knowing what to expect.

And then he felt a terrible constriction around his chest, as though his ribcage were being crushed. He opened his eyes, looked down,

and gasped.

There, wrapped around his chest, was what looked like a thick

green rope. It was Dame Lizard’s tail, which had been hidden under

her duster. For a moment, the tail tightened, and then it was no longer attached to her body. She had shed it, as lizards do. Ivan almost fell forward from the relief of being able to breathe.

“I learned that from a Swami in India,” she said. “From now on,

when you give pain to another, you will feel my tail tightening

around you so whatever pain you give, you will also receive. That’s

called
empathy
, and the Swami said it was the most important thing anyone can have.”

Ivan looked down. He could no longer see the tail, but he could

feel it around him, like a band under his shirt. He did not know

whether to thank her. The gift, if gift it was, had been so painful that he felt sore and bruised.

• 363 •

• Blanchefleur •

After he had said a protracted farewell to all the lizards, hugging

them tightly, he and Blanchefleur walked north, along the river. He

told her what Dame Lizard had done, lifting his shirt and showing

her the mark he had found there, like a tattoo of a green tail around his ribcage.

“Is it truly a gift, or a curse?” he asked Blanchefleur.

“One never knows about gifts until later,” said the white cat.

Marmalade met them at the front door. “I’m so sorry, Miss

Blanchefleur,” he said, “but your mother is not home. The King has

asked her to the castle, to consult about the dragon attack. But she left you a note in the solar.”

Blanchfleur read the note to Ivan.

My dear, Ivan’s third apprenticeship is with Captain Wolf in the
Northern Mountains. Could you please accompany him and try

to keep him from getting kil ed? Love, Mother
.

This time, there was no banquet. With the Lady gone, the castle

was quiet, as though it were asleep and waiting for her return to wake back up. They ate dinner in the kitchen with Mrs. Pebbles and the

ladies-in-waiting, and then went directly to bed. Blanchefleur curled up next to Ivan on the pillow, as usual. It had become their custom.

The next morning, Mrs. Pebbles gave them Ivan’s satchel, with

clean clothes, including some warmer ones for the mountains, and

his horn-handled knife. “Take care of each other,” she told them.

“Those mountains aren’t safe, and I don’t know what the Lady is

thinking, sending you to the Wolf Guard.”

“What is the Wolf Guard?” Ivan asked as they walked down the

garden path.

“It’s part of the King’s army,” said Blanchfleur. “It guards the

northern borders from trolls. They come down from the mountains

and raid the towns. In winter, especially . . . ”

“Blanchefleur!” Tailcatcher was standing in front of them. He

• 364 •

• Theodora Goss •

had stepped out from behind one of the topiaries. “May I have

a word with you?” He did not, however, sound as though he were

asking permission. Ivan gritted his teeth. He had never spoken to

Blanchefleur like that—even if he had wanted to, he would not have

dared.

“Yes, and the word is no,” said Blanchefleur. She walked right around him, holding her tail high, and Ivan followed her, making a wide circle around the striped cat, who looked as though he might take a swipe at Ivan’s shins. He looked back, to see Tailcatcher glaring at them.

“What was that about?” asked Ivan.

“For years now, he’s been assuming I would marry him, because

he’s the best hunter in the castle. He asked me the first time on the night before we left for Professor Owl’s house, and then again before we left for Dame Lizard’s. This would have been the third time.”

“And you keep refusing?” asked Ivan.

“Of course,” she said. “He may be the best hunter, but I’m the

daughter of the Lady of the Forest and the Man in the Moon. I’m not

going to marry a common cat!”

Ivan could not decide how he felt about her response. On the one

hand, he was glad she had no intention of marrying Tailcatcher. On

the other, wasn’t he a common man?

This journey was longer and harder than the two before. Once

they reached the foothills of the Northern Mountains, they were

constantly going up. The air was colder. In late afternoon, Ivan put on a coat Mrs. Pebbles had insisted on packing for him, and that he

had been certain he would not need until winter.

Eventually, there were no more roads or paths, and they simply

walked through the forest. Ivan started wondering whether

Blanchefleur knew the way, then scolded himself. Of course she did:

she was Blanchefleur.

Finally, as the sun was setting, Blanchefleur said, “We’re here.”

“Where?” asked Ivan. They were standing in a clearing. Around

them were tall pines. Ahead of them was what looked like a sheer

• 365 •

• Blanchefleur •

cliff face, rising higher than the treetops. Above it, he could see the peaks of the mountains, glowing in the light of the setting sun.

Blanchefleur jumped down from his shoulder, walked over to a

boulder in the middle of the clearing, and climbed to the top. She

said, “Captain, we have arrived.”

Out of the shadows of the forest appeared wolves, as silently as

though they were shadows themselves—Ivan could not count how

many. They were all round, and he suddenly realized that he could

die, here in the forest. He imagined their teeth at his throat and turned to run, then realized he was being an idiot, giving in to an ancient instinct although he could see that Blanchefleur was not frightened

at all. She sat on the dark rock, amid the dark wolves, like a ghost.

“Greetings, Blanchefleur,” said one of the wolves, distinguishable

from the others because he had only one eye, and a scar running

across it from his ear to his muzzle. “I hear that your mother has sent us a new recruit.”

“For a year,” said Blanchefleur. “Try not to get him killed.”

“I make no promises,” said the wolf. “What is his name?”