Читать книгу The Dragon MEGAPACK ® - Kenneth Grahame - Страница 11

OF MICE & DRAGONS, by Gary Lovisi

Part I

First there was a twitching of the delicate nose, then a barely perceptible twinge of furry ear tips, soon followed by a shuddering chill that ran the entire length of the tiny body ending in a very loud and resounding sneeze.

It was a mighty sneeze, especially by human standards, but for this tiny mouse it was of enormous magnitude.

“Bless you!” A deep, bellowing voice boomed with resounding approval from on high, like thunder.

The mouse named Dapple, came to instant wakefulness, opened sleep-drenched eyes, wide—wider—wider still—to find himself eyeball to eyeball with a truly horrible and monstrous creature. A very large monstrous creature at that.

“Oh, no!” Dapple whispered with dread as paralyzed fear gripped him. His eyes looked into eyes that were watching him so closely—eyes that were as big as pumpkins and just as orange—eyes that were only a very miniscule part of an exceptionally major-sized beastie.

Dapple was astounded by the huge gapping mouth, the enormous pointed fangs, the rough scarily hide, and the long barbed tail that even now danced menacingly in the air overhead with what seemed to have a mind all it’s own.

The little mouse bravely smiled with chattering teeth, his eyes stared as if mesmerized, looking into the huge eyes of the terrible monster before him.

“Why, you’re a mouse, ain’t you?” the huge beast asked in a thunderous voice.

“Oh, boy! What a mess I am in now! An innocent young rodent can’t even take a nap these days without waking up to discover all manner of unpleasantness. Yes, I am a mouse and I certainly hope you are not hungry, Mr. Dragon.”

The huge beast blinked it’s enormous lids and then focused on the tiny mouse shaking so fearfully before him. Suddenly the dragon’s huge maw opened wide, revealing many terrible pointy teeth, but suddenly his face broke into a wide grin of disarming friendliness.

“Nah, little one, not to worry. I doubt if you’ve got a full ounce of meat on those puny bones anyway. Why, I’d expend more energy in digesting you than you’d be worth.”

Dapple swallowed with hopeful relief and a nervous twitch, but somehow felt vaguely insulted by the large creature’s opinion of his worthiness. Nevertheless he did not complain about the fact and was rather elated by the news. “I am exceptionally happy to hear that, Mr. Dragon.” Then regaining his normal amount of confidence and bravery now that he assumed he would not become a tiny tasty appetizer for the giant behemoth in front of him. He stood up and with a low whistle began a long walk around the creature to investigate. It was quite a long walk for the dragon was very large. Tiny Dapple soon decided he did not want anything to do with this strange creature at all. “Well, then I guess I’ll just be on my way, and it was most nice meeting you, I must say. I hope you have a good day, and… and …oh …no!”

But the dragon would not take no for an answer.

“No! No!” Dapple continued as he was lifted high into the air suspended by his long, thin tail—which the monster was now holding most delicately between two huge talons.

“Not so fast, little one,” the dragon said snorting a short flame from his nose to emphasize his words. Dapple could easily smell the aroma of brimstone that drifted upon the wind and he began to have renewed worries about the possibilities of barbecued mouse suddenly being added to the menu!

“I hope you have not suddenly found your appetite, Mr. Dragon,” Dapple mumbled nervously as he tried to steady the fear that was coursing through his tiny trembling body. You could never tell what a dragon might do, and the fact that they were mythological beasts and not supposed to exist made things rather more difficult than ever for this pint-sized rodent.

“Nah, nothing like that, have no fear, little friend,” the dragon said with a smile, placing the tiny creature down carefully upon the end of his long nose. “There, now I can keep a close eye on you and we can discuss this problem of ours face to face.”

“Ah, what problem of ‘ours’ would that be, Mr. Dragon?” Dapple asked with growing apprehension. He hunched down upon the soft snout and stared into the great orange eyes of the monster before him wanting to run away but knowing there was no way to escape.

“Ya see, little mousey, the problem is, dragons ain’t supposed to be real. You and I know they’re supposed to be mythological beasts, creatures from imagination and fantasy in your world. I ain’t even supposed to exist here at all.”

“I can agree with you there,” Dapple offered carefully, wondering where all this was leading with quiet trepidation, and what his part might be in it all.

“Glad to hear it, little guy,” the dragon prompted with what looked like a rather wry grin. “Well, let’s see now. The thing is, I do exist. I mean, it’s a true, incontrovertible fact that you can see with your very eyes and it can’t be denied by anyone. And you, being an unbiased observer of the present situation, can attest to the fact that I most sincerely do exist. Isn’t that true, little runtling?”

“Ah, yes, of course, Mr. Dragon. I wouldn’t doubt what you say for a moment. Why, it’s just an undeniable fact of reality, I would say, if that makes you feel any better.”

“It does, and it doesn’t, my mouse friend,” the dragon continued, as Dapple watched in rapt fascination as the creature used its long barbed tail to scratch it’s lizard scaled back. Dapple knew that dragons were not real—but he also knew that reality melted in the cold truth of the creature he saw before him now. Was this all some illusion? Perhaps the result of some bad cheese that had affected his vision? He only wished it were so simple, for he was sure that it was not the case, and that this dragon was just as real as he was.

“So, then, what’s the big deal about it, oh Great Large One?” Dapple asked with a bit of feigned bravado. “I mean, as the ancient philosophers must have said sometime, or someplace, ‘you’re here, therefore you are!’ Or at any rate it was something to that effect. Leastways, Mr. Dragon, you get the general idea, don’t fight it—you’re here—enjoy it.”

Well the dragon looked with crossed eyes at the speck of creature sitting so comfortably upon his bulbous nose and for a long moment seemed to be contemplating the rodent’s words. Then with a fire-breathing snort that almost shook poor Dapple loose, the dragon announced he had come to his decision.

“Well, heck and dreck!” the dragon groaned with evident discomfort, “Ya see, the thing is that by me being here, that means that I definitely had to come from somewhere else. Get it? Of course, I can’t remember at all where that other place was, but it musta been better than this here stinky little world full of nothing but mice. Ah, no offense intended, little fella.”

“None taken,” Dappled sniffed with some trepidation. “And so, oh Great One…?’

“And so little mouse, wherever I came from just had to be a better place than this here place—and I want to get back there as soon as I can. And you’re going to help me get back there!”

Dapple gulped fearfully, he was afraid of just such a conundrum.

“But how am I going to help you do that, Oh Large Magnificence?” Dapple stammered, his nimble mouse mind scheming away at a multitude of ideas, and quickly discarding each in turn as more ridiculous or dangerous than the previous one. The most dangerous of them all of course, being to anger the monstrous being which was before him.

“Good question, mouseling,” the dragon said thoughtfully as he perked up with interest, his barbed tail whipping overhead like a banner, and the massive teeth barred in a most dragon-like smile. “I think I have it! I really do! You see, we’ve already figured out that dragon’s don’t exist in this here world, right?”

“Rightoo, Your Largeness,” Dapple said in a jovial tone he hoped would lighten matters.

“Then that makes it all quite elementary; I must be from another world! Another world that apparently exists parallel to this one. Another world that you are going to help me get back to, my mouseling friend.”

Dapple gulped nervously, thinking rapidly, and he saw some value to what the dragon said now. After all, parallel worlds and trans-dimensional portals were something this little mouse dealt with every day—in the fiction stories he wrote of the various science fiction magazines. Like many other imaginative fiction authors he’d read and even written about similar problems—but this rather stark reality, in the form of a very mighty and potentially troublesome dragon, was quite another matter altogether than the mere ideas he played with intellectually in his fiction. However, Dapple decided to put a brave front to his misgivings and said simply, “I believe what we need is called a trans-dimensional portal of some type, Mr. Dragon. The problem being, just how do we find such a thing? And even if we do find such a thing, how can we be sure it will send you to the proper reality and not just to some other one—perhaps one even worse than this one?”

The dragon sighed deeply, looking most thoughtful as he sat there thinking, which is how dragons usually look when they exercise the old gray matter. He thought a long time, and Dapple kept in mind the potential fury of an angry dragon and realized that what he was now smelling was the actual burning of brimstone—a residue of the creature’s heated breath. This realization just made him shiver with that creepy feeling of impending danger and doom that he did not like at all.

“How do I get involved in these things,” Dapple whispered to himself as he squirmed in his seat upon the bulbous nose of this most humongous of beasts thinking through the problem as best he could. Where would a dragon come from, anyway? Perhaps a past age, a time long-ago and far-away? Surely another and alien reality altogether. And yet, how to get him back home? This was one monumental problem for such a miniscule creature but there was even more to this than ever realized and it would all come crashing in soon enough.

In about one minute, actually.

Part II

The guys from the OR—Other Reality—arrived in an instantaneous flash of otherworldly brilliance.

Dapple was blinded for a moment by the bright light and fell from the dragon’s huge nose to land upon the tip of his spongy-wet and rough reptilian tongue.

“Ouch! That smarts!” the tiny mouse shouted as his soft rump brushed against the rough barbs of the dragon’s tongue.

“There! I got you now!” the dragon said a bit unintelligibly, seeing as he couldn’t move his tongue that much or talk very clearly with the little mouse upon it. To his credit, the dragon was most delicate with the mouseling, and took great care not to mistakenly ingest the miniscule rodent by speaking, or through one of his massive inward breaths.

“Thank you, oh Great Dragon!” Dapple said with a nervous reply as the huge beast caught his fall. Then he noticed the intruders who were now coming towards them. “But look, we have strange company approaching!”

The dragon placed the tiny mouse back upon his huge nose—Dapple holding tightly to a long thick stalk of hair so as not to lose his balance again. Then the dragon turned his lumbering gaze to the three visitors.

Well, they certainly were strange and they didn’t look very friendly; sort of grumpy and angry, actually. And one of them, the old walrus in the middle—and I do mean old walrus, for in fact the visitor was an actual large fat male tusker blubbering forward upon perambulatory fins and uttering guttural growls like a hungry sea lion. Well, this worthy wore pinned to his chest what shone unmistakably as a five-pointed star that seemed to proclaim him as some type of law enforcement officer. A sheriff or perhaps, a marshal. Obviously by this scenario, the appearance of the companions of the old walrus—the large upright walking feline and the equally tall upright walking canine who stood on each side of the walrus, were his companions, perhaps even his deputies. Dapple noticed that they were deputies. They wore the badges to prove it.

Dapple wasn’t all that confident about the appearance of these three strange beings but he watched them carefully as he held on tightly to the dragon’s nose hair—ever watchful that a sudden and disastrous sneeze by the large beast might be in the process of arriving any moment and dislodge him with calamitous circumstances.

The dragon also watched these newcomers with great interest, his bright orange eyes narrowed down to curious blood-red slits. Just in case there would be trouble the enormous reptile stoked his fire and brimstone apparatus. Should the occasion warrant, he’d be ready to do battle, or at least to seriously scorch a few butts.

“Step no closer upon pain of roasting!” the dragon demanded when the trio of newcomers was some hundred feet distant. “State your business or be away from here in a heartbeat!”

The dragon then shot a spurt of fiery brimstone into the air to emphasize his words.

The gesture was not lost on the newcomers as they quickly jumped back a few steps in evident alarm. They got the message but quickly regained their equilibrium.

The feline finally just laughed and said, “Well, look at that, it looks like the old sourpuss finally has got his fire-breathing facilities working again.”

“About time too, they’ll come in handy, for sure,” the old walrus muttered as he gathered his composure and walked closer towards the dragon. He finally stopped a dozen yards from the reptilian monstrosity, looking into the large scaly face, which was staring down at him in obvious curiosity and some concern. The walrus also now noticed that the dragon had—of all the most incredible things—a tiny rodent of some kind perched upon it’s nose—however he thought better of mentioning that for the moment. He had more important things on his mind. He gathered his thoughts.

“Now look, Charlie,” the walrus told the dragon with obvious familiarity, while his feline and canine deputies nodded meaningfully and walked forward to take up positions on either side of him. The three intruders all wore weapons—side arms in waist holsters, but as yet had not drawn them. “You gotta come back with us. Right now. We need you.”

“Charlie?” Dapple asked looking from the walrus, then back at the creature upon whose nose he now stood and finally back to the walrus. “You mean the dragon’s name is Charlie?”

“Yep, Charlie is his name,” the walrus offered having to squint a bit to see the miniscule rodent who stood upon the dragon’s ponderous nose. “Ah, Sir Mouse, well you see…”

“Dapple, sir, if you please.”

“Quite right. Well then,. Mr. Dapple, you see, Charlie, better known to us all at the constabulary as Charlie Richfield, just happens to be a very important and unique creature. He’s an interbred or hybrid of man and dragon. Mostly dragon, as you can plainly see, though he is capable of speech and rather obtuse thought…”

“Hey, I think I resemble that remark!” the dragon, now identified as Charlie said in a bit of a huff.

The walrus and his two companions took a careful step backwards in concern and conferred quickly. Good judgment dictated never angering a dragon. The walrus continued, “No offense intended, Charlie. It’s just the facts, only the facts. You have these human characteristics to a limited degree.”

Dapple looked at the walrus carefully asking, “And what of you and the two beings with you?”

“Ah, good question, Sir Mouse. Myself and my companions are also interbreeds, commingled biological species artificially constructed for various specified functions. In the case of myself and my two companions, law enforcement happens to be our forte—in the case of Charlie, well, he’s our transportation. And a darn good transport he is—usually. Truth is, we just couldn’t work as well without him. You see, dragons have the power and ability to travel not only through space and time, but within the full spectrum of trans-dimensional realities. I think its got something to do with those big floppy wings of their’s and that kooky fire-breathing ability. Or maybe it’s just that long barbed tail? Whatever the case, they are highly prized as valuable transportation mediums where we come from.”

“I see,” Dapple replied, not really seeing at all but interested nevertheless. “And just where do you come from?”

“Oh, a place far away and very different from here, I can assure you,” the walrus said with an indulgent smile.

Dapple nodded. It certainly seemed likely.

“The problem we have is…” the walrus added giving a quick nod of his head towards Charlie, “is that they aren’t very bright in the gray matter department…”

“Hey, I heard that!” Charlie growled, snorting in annoyance.

“No offense intended, Charlie. Anyway, Sir Mouse, if dragons are left alone they often mistakenly go off on their own—somewhere—and not only forget where they are, but where they have come from as well. They have to be rounded up and shown the way home. I tell you, it has caused me and my companions quite a lot of trouble at times, as I am sure you can understand.”

Dapple didn’t really understand, but the walrus continued regardless. “You see, Charlie has this dreamwalking problem…”

“Dreamwalking?” Dapple scratched his head in thought. This was all moving a bit too fast for him.

“When dragons dream they allow their subconscious mind to roam far afield, and sometimes their thoughts can become trapped in a loop of conflicting resonances—dreamwalking—which can cause them to accidentally flit into another dimensional reality. Hence Charlie is now here—in your reality, err, your world. Once in that new world without a rider for guidance, dragons forget all about who they are and where they come from. It’s a bit awkward at times as my companions, Gump and Tump, and I have to go out searching for Charlie when he’s in that dreamwalking state and bring him back home. But old Charlie is worth it, so that’s why we’re here.”

“To bring him home?” Dapple asked.

“Correct.” the walrus smiled at the mouse

“Well, I sure don’t unnerstand much of this, guys,” the dragon named Charlie told the three strangers. “I don’t unnerstand it at all, but it seems to sound right, somehow. I mean, I know I came from somewhere else than here, I don’t belong here in this little mouse world, and I wanna get back to wherever I came from.”

“Right you are, Charlie,” the large feline creature called Tump responded, “and we’re here to take you back.”

“Ah, yeah, well…then there‘s a question I have in mind to ask you,” Charlie interjected with a sly wink. “Are there other dragons back where you come from? I mean…girl dragons?”

“Oh, Charlie, don’t tell me you already forgot about your paramour, the lovely seductress Classiddia MaRoo?” the canine creature named Gump barked in gravelly words and toothy grimaces. “She’ll be mightily disappointed to hear that news.”

“Classiddia MaRoo?” Charlie said thoughtfully, then smiled, it was obvious he had lodged lose a bit of frozen memory. “Ah, yeah, right you are! I remember now. Alright fellas, I remember my sweetie, and what you say sounds good to me. So when do we go back? And where exactly is ‘back’?”

“‘Back’ is home, Charlie,” the walrus replied as he brought forth a tiny clocklike device from out of his vest pocket. “You’ve forgotten all about it for now, but you’ll remember it all soon enough once we’ve arrived back where we belong.”

Then the old walrus, with Tump and Gump, approached the lumbering form of the dragon called Charlie Richfield. With utmost care, they removed the tiny mouse from the creature’s nose to a nearby rock where he watched with amazement as the walrus manipulated buttons on his tiny time device.

Soon Charlie and all his fifteen heavy tons of scaly reptilian dragoness instantly disappeared in a blinding bright light as completely as if he’d never existed at all. The walrus and his two companions were gone as well. Only a faint echo of Charlie’s voice remained for a moment as it said, “Farewell, Sir Mouse, it was nice meeting ya, kid!”

Dapple was left alone and happily noted that now in his own reality dragons were once more merely mythological creatures, just the stuff of fiction and dream making. As they should be. They were much too large and dangerous to be allowed lumbering around in his tiny mouse world. It was a good feeling to have things set right once again in his rodent-centered universe and he set out once more to continue his walk to his downtown office, where he was planning to get busy working on his latest book. It would be a science fiction novel about an imaginary race called homosapiens that were descendent from apes of all things—who evolved on a planet called Earth and ended up conquering the Universe. Dapple knew most of his colleagues thought such a book just wouldn’t sell. After all, who’d believe an intelligent race springing up from monkeys and apes of all things! But Dapple was determined to continue with it more than ever now, and even figured on adding a few new characters to spice it up a bit. Maybe a trans-dimensional, star-traveling walrus law enforcement officer? Maybe even give him canine and feline deputies? Finally he’d add a lost fire-breathing dragon by the name of Charlie Richfield who was looking for his home.

Dapple smiled at the though that these added elements would surely help to make his new science fiction novel more interesting and his first big bestseller.