The King of the Hummingbirds (4 page)

“I'd have sworn he'd take it to the princess,” said the king of the elves.

“Well, you were wrong,” said the queen. “You and your ideas.”

“Well, you went along with it,” said the king. “You didn't believe me you should have said no. You think I'm God, maybe?”

“
Oy vay
,” said the queen. “Always God. All he can talk about is God. He should have been a rabbi.”

For two weeks after that they didn't speak.

But the rose never withered, because of the magical dewdrop, which was really the pear tree, the most beautiful pear tree in the world. Eventually Eddie noticed this. “Funny rose,” he said to himself, and interlaced his fingers. The next morning he looked again, and still no withering. He decided to give it to the princess, for no special reason. He was in love.

He said, “Hey, Papa, I have to run over to the castle.”

“Castle, Eddie?” his papa said.

“Oh, I got this funny rose,” Eddie said. “I thought I'd give it to the princess.”

“That's a good boy,” Eddie's papa said. “She'll like it.”

So he went to the castle, and the elves all rode in his hair, as light as feathers.

The guards said, “You want something, man?”

“I'll tell you,” Eddie said, removing his glasses. “I picked up this funny rose somewhere. What's interesting about it is, it never seems to wither. Funny?”

“Funny, sure,” the guards said. “How we know you telling the truth?”

Eddie thought about it, then he shrugged. “So keep it awhile,” he said. And he gave it to the guards at the gate and walked back home.

The queen of the elves said, “This kid's a loser. Why didn't we leave her have the knight with the yellow-gold clothes?”

“Pah,” said the king of the elves, “better the merchant. Security. What do you think it would be like, living with a knight. Always away on the road someplace. No, better a good, steady merchant.”

“Ech,” said the queen. “He was too old. Better the poet, except he was a string bean.”

“Eddie's fat,” the king said happily.

“That's true,” said the queen, softening. “Make somebody a good husband.”

Two or three weeks later, Eddie went back to the castle and said, “How'd it turn out, man?”

The guards looked at each other and shrugged.

“You know,” Eddie said, “the rose.”

Still they looked blank. “You sure it's one of us you talked to, not the cat that works nights?”

Eddie laughed. “Hey come on, you guys, don't kid around. You got my rose someplace?”

“Man, if there was a rose around here we'd see it, you dig? Look how clean we keep it.” They waved for him to look around the gatehouse. But the elves slipped the rose from under the visitors' book up onto the top of the table and Eddie saw it. It was smashed a little from being under the book, but it still wasn't withered.

“Oh, there it is,” Eddie said. “Good as new, too. Mind if I take it to the princess?”

“You kidding?” the guards said. “Tonight's her wedding night.”

Eddie looked horrified, his eyes as round as his glasses, and so the guards took pity on him.

“Dude came along with this pear,” the guards said. “It wasn't much, you ask me. But the king was bored with the whole thing, so he decided to allow it. It's a crying shame, you ask
me
, brother. This dude that got her, he looks like a bear in clothes.”

“
Oy!
” Eddie said. He put his hands to the sides of his head. After a while he said, “Maybe I could slip the rose in under her door?” He had to wipe his glasses. The guards were sorry for him.

“We don't see you pass, we can't very well stop you, brother,” they said. They looked up at the trees and started humming, jiving with the birds. Eddie stood there in a moral quandary. The elves got a running jump and gave him a shove, and in he went.

When he knocked on the princess's door, a funny thing happened. He'd just finished knocking, and the princess was just starting to open the door when,
zap
, a pear tree grew out of the rose.

“Wow,” said Eddie, and lowered his eyebrows and looked at it.

“You knocked?” said the princess. Then she saw the pear tree, loaded with pears, the most beautiful pears in the world. “Say!” she said.

“I thought you'd like—” Eddie began.

“One sec,” said the princess. She went back inside, where there was a man. “Rupert,” she said, “I have the worst headache. Do you mind?”

He left. He looked like a bear in clothes.

The princess smiled and said, “Come on in, tall dark and handsome. Excuse me just a sec, while I slip into something more comfortable.”

He pretended to salute, hand cupped; it was a gesture he had.

“Where do you want the pear tree?” Eddie asked.

The elves laughed with glee. They were so happy they turned the perfect pears into diamonds and rubies; but when the princess came back she was disappointed, so they turned them back to pears. Except for one, which remains a ruby to this day, and if you want to know more, put out some milk and ask for Irving.

The Gnome and
the Dragon

O
nce upon a time, in a strange country, there lived an incredibly ugly little gnome who was a great artist, changing the world around any way he pleased, whether from boredom or for nobler reasons. Reality was putty in the clever gnome's hands, as it would be in the hands of a whittler or a fiddler or a teller of moralizing tales. He could change anything to anything and could even change him
self
to anything, or even into twenty things at once. He changed reality so frequently by his magic that in the end he lost track of it, for all he ever thought was “What might I change this into?”

He lived all alone in a cave in the side of a mountain, and for years he never saw a living soul except his billy goat, because every time he heard footsteps coming, whether it was something real or something he'd created, he hid, sometimes by changing himself into thin air, sometimes by changing whatever
it
was into thin air, and sometimes by means more ingenious. The only thing he couldn't seem to change was, for some reason, dragons. And so he kept changing things to other things, insofar as possible, and refusing to look. It was just as well. It was by now the most curious country in the world, where the magic was out of control completely, and if the gnome had looked to see what creature was approaching him, real or otherwise, he might well have been frightened into his grave.

Sometimes what he would have seen would have been a dragon blowing smoke and fire and burning up the grass in front of him, making a road. Sometimes he would have seen two dragons, and sometimes three, or thirty, or three thousand. The whole country was crawling with dragons, as if somebody couldn't get enough of them, and all the people and all the birds and animals were terrified of them, including the billy goat, the gnome's only friend in the world. When the people of that country saw a dragon, they would shake so badly they'd set off small earthquakes. It was terrible. The only creature in the whole country who didn't shake (not counting the dragons) was the gnome. The reason was not so much that he was brave as that he was afraid of everything, whether or not he'd created it in the first place—rabbits, mice, chickens, even clock towers—but only mildly afraid, never having looked to see how bad it really was and knowing, moreover, that however ugly the thing might be, it wasn't as ugly as his own black-bearded, warty face, which was his main inspiration. He had, it should be added, an unusually strong constitution and couldn't be hurt too much by dragon fire. Besides, he knew the thing might not be there at all; more likely than not it was some magic he'd made up that had slipped his mind. So he merely shivered and hid, then went about his business.

The billy goat noticed how calm the gnome was, all things considered, when a dragon came near, and he thought about it, being very sly. He thought, “I ought to be able to make some
use
of this. It would make me my fortune.” But he couldn't think exactly how to use it, though he thought and thought.

One day the king said, “That's enough! Those dragons are everywhere! I don't get a moment's peace! I decide to go riding and I find my horses are shaking so badly I can't sit on them. I decide to go dancing and I discover the band is too shaky to play anything but Greek. Death to the dragons!”

The people cheered, but when they asked the king how he meant to get rid of the dragons, he had no idea. The king said, “I'll give half my kingdom to whoever gets rid of the dragons.”

The people all sighed. Who'd
want
such a mixed-up kingdom? But the billy goat, who was deeply, moaningly in love with the princess, scratched his chin and said, “How about the ‘daughter's hand in marriage' part? ”

“That too,” said the king, not registering the fact that it was a billy goat who spoke. “Naturally. It goes without saying.”

“Ah!” said the billy goat, and went home.

That night, when the gnome and the billy goat were eating supper, the billy goat said, “Well, well. So tonight's the night of the royal masked ball.”

If there's one thing a gnome can't resist—even the shyest of gnomes—it's a royal masked ball. The elegance, the formality, the
art
of it all! And then—the best part—the gnome shows his horrible, horrible face at the center of all that grandeur and tinsel and sham, and the people go screaming and flying from the castle in hysterics, crying “Spoiler! Ruiner!” It makes a gnome so happy he feels downright faint.

“Ball?” said the gnome noncommitally.

The billy goat nodded.

“Hmm,” said the gnome. He felt very nervous. Self-satisfied hermit that he was, he hated the thought of facing all those people, and yet—

“A ball, you say,” he said.

“I know what you're thinking,” the billy goat said. “Forget it. They're all in disguise, in hopes that if any gnome shows up the disguises will scare him to death. Their disguises will be so terrible you'll probably run from the guests before they even get a look at you.” He chuckled.

“That's what
you
think,” said the gnome.

“Well all right,” said the billy goat, and shrugged. “I'll tell you where the ball is.” And the billy goat directed his old friend to Dragons' Mountain. When the gnome was gone, the billy goat laughed and laughed.

The gnome found the dragons dancing in a ring in the center of the mountain, and thinking they were merely the king and his court in disguise, he walked right up to them, shy as he was, and looked them in the eye. To his great surprise they spit oily fire at him until his clothes were as black as soot. The gnome stamped his foot in anger and thought, “So!”

When the gnome got back to his own cave, the billy goat was sitting by the fire, and he too was black as soot, as if the same thing that had happened to the gnome had happened to everybody and it was certainly nothing special.

The gnome took a deep breath, not sure what was up, and all he could say was, “Billy goat, I expected more of you.” And went to bed.

The billy goat stayed up late, chuckling and thinking.

The next night the billy goat said, “Well, well. So tonight's the night of the dooloo.”

“Oh?” said the gnome.

If there's one thing a true gnome hates and detests, it's not knowing what somebody's talking about.

“It's tonight, is it?” the gnome said, not letting on that he didn't know about dooloos.

“Mmmm,” said the billy goat indifferently.

“Where is it?” inquired the gnome.

As if wearily, the billy goat gave him directions, and although the directions sounded familiar, the gnome listened with all his ears, intending to go there and find out what the devil a dooloo was. He carefully followed the billy goat's directions, and sure enough, he ended up at Dragons' Mountain.