Steven George & The Dragon
The Obstructive Bridge
STEVEN CONTINUED on his journey in the morning with a light heart, a ridiculous hat, and sore feet that were slowing his normal walking pace. He changed socks in the morning, washed out his first pair, and hung them from his pack to dry. He discovered that he had blisters from the previous day and they made walking painful.
He had traveled only 11,256 steps that day when the blisters got the better of him and he was forced to make camp to tend to his feet. He used a pinch of the wise woman’s herbs on them, ate a meal of dried snake, and went to sleep, dreaming of the home that was now 30,510 steps behind him. He had been unable to walk along the edge of the river because of unpredictable marshes and terrain, but he had managed to keep it in view periodically through the day and was confident that he was still taking the only possible course to the dragon. He only hoped that he would reach a crossing before he encountered another tributary which, like the one downstream from his home, would lead him away from, rather than toward his destination.
The next day his feet were better and he was able to make more progress. He came to a small brook, but a tree had fallen across the water and he was able to scramble along its trunk far enough that he could leap to the opposite bank from its limbs. Now, if only there were a tree large enough to fall across the big river, Steven might manage to cross over on its limbs. This thought kept him occupied through the night and the next day.
On the fifth day of his journey, the lowering sun shone in Steven’s eyes as he crested a small rise. 86,201, 86,202. Suddenly, he saw before him the dragon. It prowled, huge and lumbering, and as it moved it used its little hands to pop round creatures from the ground up into its gaping maw. Steven was horrified.
He strung his bow and nocked an arrow. Steven approached slowly this time, not wanting to repeat his fiasco of the first day. He wanted a closer look at this strange creature.
“Ho, Dragon!” called Steven as he approached more closely with his bow at the ready. “Stand and meet your fate for today you have met the dragonslayer.”
The dragon looked up, and then did a most remarkable thing. It stepped out of itself. Steven stared aghast as a man stepped forward.
“What do you want, stranger?” yelled the man. “Why do you come armed into my garden?”
“I’ve come to save you from the dragon that was intent on devouring you,” called back Steven looking at the rest of the dragon the man had left behind. The dragon was beginning to look more and more like a large basket.
“There’s no dragon here,” called the farmer.
Steven relaxed his grip on the bow and removed the arrow. He approached the farmer shyly and returned his offered greeting. Steven squinted his eyes at the basket, but he could no longer get it to look like the monster he had first taken it for. It was just a big basket that the farmer dragged along on his back while picking melons.
Steven told the melon farmer that he was on a quest to slay the dragon that harried his village, but confessed that he had never actually seen a dragon and mistook the farmer and his basket for the foe. The farmer got a good laugh out of this. Since Steven was there, and it was the peak of melon harvest, and it appeared he was capable of carrying a great deal on his back, the melon farmer convinced Steven to help him pick melons which amounted to Steven dragging the huge basket while the farmer placed the precious melons into it.
When evening descended and Steven had walked another 5,768 steps in service of the melons, he sat with the farmer in the evening light looking out at the river.
Suddenly Steven leapt to his feet and pointed across the river.
“The dragon!” Steven exclaimed. “I can see the smoke from his fiery breath.” This set the melon farmer off on another fit of laughter at the naiveté of his companion.
“That is not the dragon,” he laughed. “That is the town of Lastford. That is where I take my melons to be traded for the goods I need for the next year.”
“The next year?” asked Steven. “Do you mean you live here, but your village is on the other side of the river?” He began to get very excited. “Then there must be a way to cross the river. Is there a great tree that has fallen across it so we can walk across?”
“A tree? You mean a bridge across the river?” Now the melon farmer sounded both furious and insulted. “This is a ford—a place to wade across the river. Bridges are a great barrier to commerce.”
“I don’t understand,” said Steven.
The melon farmer nodded sagely. “You don’t know much, do you?” he asked. “I tell you what. I’ll tell you about bridges and help you get across the river if you will tell me the story of that very interesting hat you are wearing.”
“You mean you want to once-upon-a-time each other?” asked Steven. If there was one thing that Steven loved more than anything in the world, it was a good once-upon-a-time. If he could trade stories with the melon farmer, his quest would be far more exciting. When he returned home, he would have more stories to tell his village. “I agree. You go first,” Steven said. The melon farmer agreed.
ONCE UPON A TIME, a long time ago and very far away, there lived a melon farmer, like me. One trait of melons is they do not grow well where many people are likely to travel and trample their vines. But it is a trait of people who live together to want melons to eat because they are sweet and moist. So there have been melon farmers from the beginning of time who would live far from the towns and villages to cultivate the melons under favorable conditions, and then transport them to the towns and villages in exchange for the necessities of life.
Such was the case with Ranihaha, a melon farmer near the River of Stolen Dreams and the village of Tornlace. Ranihaha lived on the west bank of the river where rich dark soil made the melons thrive, safely away from the village on the east bank. His crops were rich and his melons were so highly prized that the village celebrated the day when he brought the melons across the river to town.
That village held a festival when the melons came to town, and as its reputation grew, people from far away began to visit at melon harvest. Many of those people found that the village of Tornlace was a pleasant place to settle and raise a family. And so, the village grew until it was a town, and the town until it was a small city. The small city had to elect a mayor. It had soldiers and workers of every sort.
But on one day of the year, all work in the city stopped. Musicians played, people danced, and the mayor led a parade of citizens to the banks of the river to await Ranihaha and his melons.
Ranihaha spent his quiet life pleasantly. The melon patch produced plenty to supply his needs as well as what he took to market. But it was treacherous to cross the river at any time except the hottest and driest season of the year, when the melons are their ripest and sweetest. Ranihaha studied the river and knew the exact day when it would be safe for him to load his raft with the harvest of the year and wade across the river towing it behind.
One year when Ranihaha had harvested his melons, loaded his raft, and waded the treacherous waters of the river to reach Tornlace, he was met at the water’s edge by the mayor and the parade of people all of whom fell upon the raft of melons with such ferocity that—in mere minutes—all the melons were taken and consumed. Ranihaha was rewarded richly and dined with the mayor that evening.
During dinner, the mayor turned to Ranihaha and said, “Melon farmer, let us talk business. We have become a city instead of a village. The melons you bring across the river once a year are scarcely enough to provide our needs. Our soldiers are occupied keeping people from fighting over the melons you bring. They scarcely get any for themselves. How can we get more melons?”
Ranihaha considered this and agreed to build a larger raft for the next year’s harvest and to bring more melons across with him. But the next year, the same thing was repeated and even with more melons, there were not enough to supply the still-growing city. Ranihaha could not build a bigger raft and still control it in the currents of the river. The mayor met with the city council to consider what should be done.
The next year, Ranihaha was met with his melons in an open square surrounded by soldiers who kept the citizens at bay with their swords and lances. The mayor had officials who took the melons and distributed them to the citizens—soldiers and council first. Then the mayor sat with Ranihaha and said, “Melon farmer we have decided that the best solution is to build a bridge. With a bridge that spans the river, we can cross over to help with the harvest, transport more melons across the river, and extend the festival season to many days instead of just one. What do you think?”
Ranihaha considered only a moment before saying, “I have no need of a bridge. I grow the melons and bring them by raft across the river. That is the way it is and has always been. There is no need for a bridge.”
But the mayor and the people of the city were adamant, and Ranihaha returned home silently, without the usual accompanying fanfare and without the usual wealth as the people began building the bridge.
By mid-summer the next year, the bridge was completed and the first person to cross the bridge was the mayor himself. He reached Ranihaha in his garden and announced jubilantly that the bridge had been completed and they could now have all the melons they wanted. He reached down and plucked a melon from the patch, opened it with his knife, and took a huge bite. Then he spat the huge bite across the garden. The melon was bitter.
“Where are the sweet melons, you dog?” cried the mayor. Ranihaha attempted to explain that the melons were not ripe until late summer when the water was lowest, but the mayor stomped back across the bridge in disgust, convinced that Ranihaha was keeping the sweet melons hidden.
As the summer wore on, more and more people crossed the bridge, trampling the vines in Ranihaha’s garden and sampling the melons with the same results as the mayor. But they found something else on the west bank of the river that people in crowded places are always looking for. They found space and good places to build homes.
Soon the bridge was jammed with people and carts bringing their belongings, building materials, children, and, of course, soldiers to guard their possessions.
When Ranihaha finally judged the meager crop of melons he had left to be ripe and the river to be low enough, he loaded his raft with melons and set out across the river. But bridges change the currents in the water and before he was across the water, his raft was caught in the new current, swung wildly about, and was dashed against the pilings of the bridge. All the melons were lost and Ranihaha barely escaped with his life.
He dragged himself to shore and looked at the ruins of his garden, the trampled vines, and the disgusting bridge. He packed his few belongings and a sack of melon seeds and quietly slipped away from the city of Tornlace to find a new garden where melons would grow as sweet as honey and where the people had never heard of a bridge; for bridges are a great obstruction to commerce.
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at nathan@nathaneverett.com.
