Not Ordinarily Borrowable, chapters 1, 2 and 3

8/8/2019 Not Ordinarily Borrowable, chapters 1, 2 and 3

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Not Ordinarily Borrowable

or, Unwelcome Advice

a story byThomas Thurman

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Merlin, bursting into tears, deliveredwhat his prophetical spirit suggested to

him, as follows: "Woe to the red dragon,

for his banishment hasteneth on."

Geoffrey of Monmouth

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For Amy,who asked for a story

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1. The Exeat

nce, long ago before yourgrandparents were children,

after the end of the time of

angels but before the end of the time of

dragons, there lived a scholar. A scholar is

a person who spends a lot of their timereading books and trying to find out

interesting new things. Often they are

clever people, but quite ordinary people can

be scholars too.

O

This scholar's name was Maria. She

had brown hair, brown eyes, and two cats

called Cloud and Company-of-Wrath. The

cats don't come into the rest of the story,

but I thought you might be interested to

hear their names. Maria lived in a town full

of other scholars, and she often wondered

whether she was as clever as the other

scholars in the town, and if she was not,

whether the others would find out one day

and laugh at her. In fact, she was one of the

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cleverest in the town, but she didn't know

that herself.

Maria wore a thick black robe every day,

because the town where she lived was a

cold one. Everyone needed to wrap up

warm and cosy against the northern wind,

so all the scholars were given black robes to

wear from the first day they started

studying, and stripey scarves to wrap

around their necks. Maria lived in a single

room in a big white house, with her two

cats. There were ten other scholars living

in her house as well, but she didn't know

them very well. The other scholars were

mostly learning about chemistry, which was

a subject that didn't fit well into Maria's

head.

Maria was not studying chemistry.

Maria was an Asnac. An Asnac is a person

who studies the way people lived a long,

long time ago, far longer ago than the time

when Maria lived, and looks at the things

they made and the writings they left behind.

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She loved her subject, and she was hoping

one day to become a doctor.

I don't mean the kind of doctor that

people take you to when you're not feeling

very well, who asks you to stick out your

tongue and writes things on their little

pieces of paper. That kind of doctor is a

very important kind of person, and I'm glad

there are so many of them in every town,

otherwise what would happen if people got

sick? But that kind of doctor is a doctor of

medicine. If you want, you can be a doctor

of anything you please. The main thing you

need in order to be a doctor of something is

to love what you're studying, and to be

ready to spend a lot of time on it: years and

years. And Maria had been studying for

years. She was going to be a doctor of

Asnac.

Now in order to become a doctor of

something, there is a simple rule to follow.

You must find out something new, something

nobody in the world has ever seen or known

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or thought before. You might suppose that

with all the many people there are in the

world, and with all the thinking that goes on

every day, it must be difficult to find a new

thing never thought before. But everyone

has ideas every day, and there are so many

different ones that, sooner or later,

everyone must find something new. You

yourself saw something nobody had seen

before the last time you cracked open the

shell of a nut.

After you have found out your new

thing, you must write a book about it, a big,

heavy book called a thesis. Then, last of all,

you must explain your ideas to the other

scholars, and the other scholars must be

happy with your work. One day, when

Maria had finished doing all this, she would

be allowed to call herself Dr. Maria, and

allowed to wear a scarlet robe instead of her

black one. That way, everyone would know

how hard she had worked to find out

something utterly new.

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But that day was still quite a long way in

the future, and Maria still had a lot of work

ahead of her before it would come.

On the day when this story starts, Maria

had just woken up. And as she ate her

breakfast, she was thinking to herself about

the things which she had to spend the day

doing. At that time in her studies, she was

learning about some stories which had been

written down by a man called Geoffrey of

Monmouth, hundreds and hundreds of years

before. She particularly wanted to find out

what Geoffrey's ideas about dragons were,

because she was meaning to write a chapter

in her thesis about it. So she decided that

she would have to go to the library and find

a copy of his book. She put on her raincoat,

because the weather was cold and it was

raining quite hard, and got on her bike, and

off she went.

I will take a moment here to tell you

about the library. It's a special library

because the law says that if anyone

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anywhere writes a book, they have to send a

copy of it to this library. Because of this law,

the library is very large inside, and at the

top it has a brown brick tower that's

hundreds of floors tall which contains

almost nothing but shelves upon shelves of

books. The books are arranged very

carefully so that the librarians can find

them, but the way they are arranged is very

complicated and confusing if you're not a

librarian.

When you enter the library through its

great bronze door, you find yourself in an

entrance hall full of statues of all the

librarians who have ever worked there.

Then you climb the stairs into a long room

with patterned friezes around the walls,

called the Reading Room, which is where

you sit and read the books. There are a lot

of books on the shelves in the Reading

Room, but most of the books are in the

tower, and ordinary people like you or me or

Maria are never allowed into the tower.

Instead, you have to ask the librarian to

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climb up inside the tower for you, and fetch

you the book you want.

When Maria got to the library, she was

surprised to see that the edges of the door

had scorch marks around them, as though

someone had burnt them with a very large

match. When she entered the building,

there was a smell inside which Maria

couldn't place.

I wonder what that smell is, she said

to herself.

Sulphur, said a voice behind her.

She turned. The Librarian stood there

in his librarian robes, looking doleful and a

little scorched around his long grey beard.

He was a very old man, who had been

looking after the library for as long as Maria

could remember. If she had thought about

it, she would have realised that he had

probably been a young man once, and one

day he would probably need to retire, but in

fact nobody ever thought of these things. ToMaria he seemed as much a permanent and

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unmovable part of the library as the

reference desk.

Are you here to borrow anything from

the twelfth century section? he asked. We

had a rather unusual patron, who has

borrowed the lot. And I don't think he's

going to bring them back any time soon. A

patron is what librarians call the people who

borrow books.

Yes, I wanted to borrow the works of

Geoffrey of Monmouth. But how in the

world did you burn your beard? asked

Maria.

That was the problem, sighed the

librarian. "Do you know much about

dragons?"

Maria knew quite a lot about dragons,

from the books she had read. "A little bit,"

she said.

"All the Asnac books we have, and there

are a lot of them..." he paused, and

corrected himself, "there were a lot of them,

anyway... all our Asnac books were12


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borrowed this morning. Quite forcibly. By a

dragon."

"A dragon?" Maria looked puzzled. "I

thought they were extinct."

"So did we all, until this morning."

"And I thought that they usually came

looking for treasure," Maria went on. "Whywouldn't it have gone to steal gold from the

goldsmith's, or the town bank, or

somewhere, instead of here?"

The librarian shrugged. "I really don't

know, I don't know at all. All I know is, one

moment I was sitting at my desk, trying to

stop people bothering me for five minutes so

that I could get the card index back into

alphabetical order, and the next moment,

there's a cloud of sulphur billowing around

the room, and a great red lizard trying to

break the door down."

He pointed at the door, which was a

great brass door with figures carved into it

showing people reading books and scrolls.

Around the edges it was noticeably bent,13


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and the deep scratches across the top of the

door, which were just in the place where a

dragon's spines would be if it tried to crawl

through the door of a library, had certainly

not been there the day before.

"I'm afraid you're out of luck if you want

to read about Geoffrey of Monmouth," said

the librarian. "Ordinarily, if you wanted a

book which was already out, I would advise

you to visit the person who had borrowed it

and ask them whether they were finished

with it. But in this case I'm afraid you're

going to have to study something else. Can

I interest you in the study of chemistry?"

Now, Maria's friends thought they knew

her quite well, and if you had asked them

what sort of a person she was, they would

probably have called her timid. So it would

have given them quite a surprise to hear her

say what she said next.

She said: "Well... I need the book. And I

like a challenge. I think I shall visit thecreature who borrowed it. And I think I

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shall ask it whether it's finished with the

book. Do you know which way the dragon

went?"

The librarian looked worried. "I must

try to persuade you not to go. Not only will

it be a very dangerous journey, but dragons

themselves are not tame animals. I only just

escaped with my beard. How someone like

you, without a beard, might manage, I don't

dare to think."

"Thank you, but my mind is quite made

up," said Maria. "I have been working for

years to get my doctor's degree, and I will

not have anything standing in my way. Not

even a dragon."

"Well, if you're sure..." said the

librarian.

"I am."

The librarian hesitated for a moment,

then decided to co-operate with her. "Let's

see. An old friend of mine is the librarian at

Oxenford. I telephoned him this morning to

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attempted to borrow any of the books from

his library as well. He told me that four of

their scholars had reported seeing a dragon

flying over their city to the north-west, in

the direction of Cadair Idris. I suggest you

try exploring in that direction to begin

with."

"Thank you," said Maria. "I hope to

bring your books safely home again in a few

months."

The librarian nodded. "Good luck.

Don't forget your exeat." And with that he

went back to sorting the card index.

Now, if you are a scholar studying to be

a doctor of anything, there will always be

someone to look after you. The person who

looks after you is called your supervisor, andMaria's supervisor was called Dr Rose.

Supervisors are usually fairly good at giving

you advice, because they are already a

doctor of whatever it is. So whatever

troubles you might be having, they haveprobably also gone through the same

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difficulties themselves when they were

younger. Dr Rose had often been helpful to

Maria in the past, but Maria worried that

this time would be different. She rather

doubted that Dr Rose had ever had her

textbooks carried off by a dragon.

But Maria needed to talk to Dr Rose for

another reason, too. Your supervisor is

supposed to worry about you if you

disappear for a long time. If you are going

away on holiday, or to try to find out your

new ideas in another town, or even simply

to hunt a dragon, you need to get a special

permission from your supervisor, so that

they don't worry and so that they can be

sure you won't miss too much of your work.

Your supervisor needs to sign a piece of

paper to give you the permission, and the

paper is called an "exeat". That word means

"she may go out".

Dr Rose lived on B staircase in Maria's

college. All the people who lived in the

college lived in rooms which you reached by

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going up some staircase or other, and each

staircase had a letter. Dr Rose was sitting

in an armchair reading a book about

toasters when Maria opened her door.

"Hello, Maria," she said, "how can I help

you?"

"Did you hear about the dragon?" asked

Maria.

"Yes," said Dr Rose, "very sad. I expect

the university will survive. It always does."

"But the dragon has taken my books!"

"Oh dear," said Dr Rose. She looked

puzzled for a moment, and then said, "I

suppose you could study something else

instead. Have you considered chemistry?"

Maria felt her heart sinking inside her.

She tried not to sigh in front of Dr Rose.

Then, since (as I told you earlier) she was a

clever person, she tried another approach.

"Well, you see, I've come to ask you for

permission to do some field work," she said.

"It's all very well discussing the ideas of

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Geoffrey of Monmouth, but I thought my

thesis could use a chapter on real dragons.

So I'd like to go and find an actual living

one, and investigate its habits and

behaviour. I think it would make a very

interesting chapter."

"Hm," said Dr Rose, but Maria could see

she was interested. "Until today, I believed

they were all extinct."

"Some of them must still be alive. For a

start, there's at least the one which raided

the library this morning," said Maria.

"Very true, very true," said Dr Rose.

"What do you think it wanted the books for?

Do dragons eat books? Does Geoffrey have

anything to say on the matter?"

"I really don't remember Geoffrey

mentioning the subject of a dragon's diet.

That's part of my plan, you see: I'll learn

what they eat if I can watch one. This is the

sort of information I want to find out and

write up in my thesis," said Maria.

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"Good plan, good plan," said Dr Rose.

"Here, I'll write you an exeat."

So Maria thanked Dr Rose, folded her

exeat and ran back excitedly back down the

staircase. She asked her chemist

housemates to feed the cats while she was

away, and packed enough clothes and food

in a suitcase for at least a week. Then she

jumped back onto her bike and pedalled

happily off through the rain in the direction

of Oxenford. Maria was never happier than

when a job was underway, and this time she

was just starting to feel that her

determination was beginning to pay off.

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2. Courage

fter riding for an hour throughthe rain, Maria's spirits felt

almost as damp as her hair.

Many years earlier, when she had first come

to the university, she had once fallen into

the river by mistake, while she was trying torow a boat. Now she felt almost as soaked.

Her clothes clung tightly to her skin. It was

hard to keep her happiness alive.

A

Just as she was thinking about how

suddenly she had started feeling miserable,

she noticed that she was entering a town

called Royston. It seemed like a good place

to take a break. So she pulled up outside a

pub called the Red Lion, locked her bike and

went in to buy herself some lemonade.

"Good morning," said the man behind

the bar. "What brings you here?"

"I'm looking for a dragon," said Maria,

wiping her wet hair out of her eyes. "Have

you seen one?"

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"I heard they had one at the library

down the road," said the man, "so they say.

Myself, I think they're making it up, I think

they're extinct. Why, did you see anything?"

"I didn't see the dragon," said Maria.

"But the librarian saw it and told me, and I

trust him. Oh, thank you, how much is

that?"

She paid the man, who handed her a

glass of lemonade, and to her own surprise

she drank the whole glass in one go. She

had not realised how thirsty she was. The

man took advantage of her silence to

explain his thoughts on dragons.

"See," he said, "in my experience of

dragons... I mean, I have no experience of

dragons. I've never seen one. But I've oftenread about them in magazines and stuff.

Well, you're looking to find a dragon. You

know what a person needs when they look

for dragons?"

Maria was too polite to tell him that shehad spent the past few years reading about

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dragons, and that she knew a hundred times

more about what was needed to deal with

them than any magazine could tell you.

Perhaps it would be better if she had said

so. But instead she smiled at the man and

said, "No, do tell me."

"What you need is courage. You need to

be brave and fierce and bold. Think of all

the knights you read about who fought

dragons. They were big strong men, brave

men. Think of what a dragon's like, for

goodness' sake, it's the size of a bus,

covered in armour, and it breathes fire. You

need a strong man, a brave man, a man with

courage. That's what you need."

Maria listened carefully, finished her

drink, and said, "Thank you. Where do you

think I can find courage?"

"You? You're surely not going to fight a

dragon on your own? I mean... with all due

respect, you don't seem the dragon-fighting

type," he said, and laughed. "I'm sure youcould find a dragon, but I don't think you

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could deal with it when you had it. What

you need is to find a man who has courage.

You should ask the mayor."

"Why? Is the mayor very courageous?"

"The mayor can ask one of the

policemen to go with you and protect you.

I'm sure one of them is brave enough," hesaid. "I mean, nobody in this town knows

more about courage than I do, but I'm busy

serving drinks, or I'd help you. But good

luck!"

"Thank you," said Maria, and went backout to her bicycle.

A little further down the road, she met a

policeman. "Can I help you, miss?" he said.

"I don't think so. I'm actually looking

for a dragon," said Maria.

The policeman laughed. "Really, kids

these days get the strangest ideas into their

heads," he said, though he was not all that

much older than Maria herself. "And what

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are you going to do with this dragon, when

you find it?"

"The important thing for now is finding

it," said Maria, "and for that I will need

some courage."

"Nobody in this town knows more about

courage than I do," said the policeman."Why, I have often chased burglars down the

street and caught them with my bare hands.

I don't think any dragon would need more

bravery than I have. I would come with you

and protect you, if I wasn't on duty."

"Thank you," said Maria, "and I'm sure

you're very brave, but I don't need

protecting. I'm looking for some courage of

my own. Can you tell me where you get

your courage from?"

"I would not suggest that a young lady

like you should go hunting dragons on your

own," said the policeman severely. "Stay

here in Royston. Get married and start a

family. Be a credit to society."

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"No, thank you," said Maria. "But would

you tell me where to find the town hall?"

It turned out that the town hall was half

a mile down the road from the Red Lion. It

was a squat red-brick building set back a

little from the road. Maria looked at it and

imagined the sort of person who had built it,

and decided that they were someone who

did not have very much imagination. She

locked up her bike again, and went in to talk

to the mayor.

The building was as boring inside as

outside, which made finding the mayor's

office harder than it needed to be. Every

corridor looked like every other corridor.

When Maria found the mayor, he was sitting

in a polished wooden room. He looked up

from his polished wooden desk and gave a

polished smile. "How can I help you, my

dear?"

"I'm looking for a dragon," she began.

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"We don't give out dragon licences at

this office any more. There's no point, you

see. They're extinct."

"I don't want a licence. And I've just

come from the university. One of them

attacked our library. It didn't seem very

extinct."

"Ah," said the mayor. "And you would

like money for repairs? University funding

is a matter for central government. This

office can only help you with primary and

secondary education."

"I didn't come here looking for any help

with university funding, thank you."

The mayor looked as though he was

trying to be polite, and struggling not to be

annoyed. "Then how can I help you, young

lady?"

"I'm looking for this dragon, so that I

can get the books back, if I can. And...

someone told me to come and ask you about

courage." She felt her voice tailing off. It

would have been better not to have come.27


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The mayor stood up from his desk and

went to the window, gave a tug and opened

it. A cool gust of wind blew in and

disturbed the dull atmosphere of the office.

Straight away, its smell put Maria in mind of

the open road and adventure.

"Courage?" said the mayor. "What

makes you think I can tell you about

courage?"

"Someone told me you have courageous

people working here. And they said that

you might send one of them with me to

protect me."

She saw the mayor smiling at her as

though he was an uncle and she was a

young niece, and a sudden surge of

annoyance ran through her heart. "But Idon't need protection, your worship." (This

is the proper way to talk to a mayor.) "I

thought I could ask them if they knew about

courage. And dragons. Anything new that I

didn't know about the proper way to dealwith them. I'm researching them, you see."

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"Young lady," said the mayor, "nobody in

this town knows more about courage than I

do. What can be more terrifying than a

career in local politics? What can be more

bloodthirsty than a well-fought battle in the

council chamber? But nobody in this office

knows anything about mythical or extinct

animals. That is a matter for central

government. Do you have nothing to ask

about council tax? Refuse collection? Local

election protocol? If not, I think this

interview needs to come to an end."

At that moment, a flash of yellow and

black buzzed in through the window. The

wasp circled the mayor's head and came to

rest on his shoulder. The mayor jumped out

of his seat and started batting his hands at

the wasp. "Shoo! Go away, you horrible

thing!" he shrieked.

"Wait, wait," said Maria, "don't flap at it.

It will make the wasp angry, and angry

wasps are harder to deal with. Look, try

this."

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She took an empty glass from the

mayor's desk, turned it upside down, and

gently placed it over the mayor's shoulder.

The mayor watched wide-eyed but said

nothing. Then she took the memorandum

pad from the mayor's desk and slid it in

between the glass and the mayor's shoulder.

The wasp crawled around on the

memorandum pad and up the sides of the

glass, but it could not get out.

"See, it's all safe now," said Maria. "I'll

take it outside and set it free."

"Young lady," said the mayor again, but

his face was white and his voice was faint.

"I see you already have true courage

aplenty in your heart. I'm sorry I doubted

you. Here..."

He pulled out a sheet of notepaper with

the borough coat of arms in gilt on the top.

Taking a pen, he wrote carefully in beautiful

curly letters, and read aloud as he wrote:

"Know all men by these presents that thebearer is braver than anyone in Royston,

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and is hereby considered eminently

qualified to fight and conquer any dragon.

There," he said, handing it to her. "In case

anyone doubts your courage."

"Is that all I need to kill a dragon?"

Maria sounded dubious.

"Possibly, possibly not," said the mayor,"but it's the most important thing.

Whatever else you might need, without

courage I'm sure you will never get

anywhere. Now, please, would you take that

wasp away?"

Maria thanked the mayor and carried

the wasp outside to freedom. Then she

swung her leg over the bicycle again and

pedalled off towards a freedom of her own.

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3. A sword

few hours after she leftRoyston, Maria came to the

town of Biggleswade. She

locked her bike up outside the church and

sat down beside a tombstone to eat her

sandwiches. The sandwiches were cheeseand chutney.

AThe sun was shining again, and it had

been warming her skin on the path up to the

church. Now, the church tower stood guard

over her and kept her cool from the

sunshine. The tower was made of grey

stone with flints in every so often. The

bellringers were practicing something

called "called changes" in the tower, and

everything was rather peaceful, though I

suppose Maria might not have felt so happy

if she was one of those people who do not

enjoy the sound of bells.

Just as Maria was finishing her

sandwiches, a woman in a black shirt

strolled past. She looked like a very busy32


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person who has been surprised by finding a

few of their hours unoccupied, and is

slightly bothered by their brief freedom.

"Hello," said Maria, who was always

polite. "I'm Maria."

"Hello," said the woman, "I'm Mother

Margaret. I'm the priest at this church.""You look like a busy person. Are you

busy today, then?"

"Well, you see, I'm a schoolteacher

during the week. I only do the priest thing

on Sundays and when I'm needed. But as it

happens it's half-term this week and the

children don't need me at the school, so I

thought I would come and see whether I

was needed at the church."

Maria nodded.

"Now you know something about me.

But who are you? Tell me a bit about

yourself," said the priest, looking at Maria's

bicycle. It was a blue bicycle, and it looked

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rather battered and ready for adventures.

"Are you going on a journey somewhere?"

"Yes, I'm on quite an important journey.

Well, it's important to me, anyway. I'm

trying to find the dragon which took my

library books," said Maria.

"I thought dragons were extinct," saidthe priest, as everyone always did.

"One of them isn't, at least. It took my

library books," Maria explained again. She

had learned many years before that if you

want someone to hear something important,you had better be ready to say it more than

once.

The priest nodded, and said "I see.

Well, if it's taken your library books, it can't

be extinct. I hope you find it."

She seemed about to leave, but Maria

suddenly remembered her research, and

decided to see whether the priest could give

her any new ideas. "What do you think you

would want to have, if you had to go and

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catch a dragon? Apart from courage, that

is."

Mother Margaret thought for a good

while, and she put her hand to her lips to

show she was thinking. Then she said, "In

all the stories I've ever read about dragons,

someone has wanted a sword. Do you have

a sword?"

"No," said Maria, "but I don't know what

good a sword would be. I don't know how to

handle a sword."

"You might be better off with one,anyway. Suppose the dragon saw it and

decided you were someone worth reckoning

with? A dragon wouldn't know whether you

knew how to use it," said the priest. "Do

you know, we have a sword in thechurchyard here? Maybe you could borrow

it."

"Won't it be awfully rusty?" asked

Maria.

"Possibly," said Mother Margaret, "but

do come and have a look anyway."35


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She led the way around the corner of

the church to a shady place under a dark

green yew tree. There in the grass stood a

large square stone. A sword was plunged

into the middle of the stone, a sword as long

and thick as Maria's arm, and as she had

guessed, it was very rusty. There were

some words carved into the stone. Even

though they were covered with moss, Maria

could see that they said, "Who pulls this

sword from this stone is rightful Lord and

King of all England."

"Or Lady and Queen, of course," said

Mother Margaret. "Can you pull it out? Go

on, do give it a try."

Maria gave a dutiful tug, but the sword

remained in its place.

"It's strange," said the priest, "but

nobody seems to be able to pull the sword

out. We did have the Queen herself visiting

Biggleswade a few years ago, but I didn't

like to ask whether she could manage it.After all, perhaps she wouldn't have been

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able to, and then it would have provoked a

constitutional crisis. Lots of other people

have tried, though, and nobody's succeeded.

Perhaps there aren't any rightful kings any

more."

"Maybe I don't need a sword, though,"

said Maria hopefully. Her muscles were

aching just at the thought of having to carry

the sword she saw in front of her.

"Well, you might want to try another

sword," said the priest, with a purposeful

look on her face. She turned and strode

away, and Maria followed her through a side

door into the church building. It was cool

and airy inside, a welcome change from the

heat, and the bells sounded muffled indoors.

There, in a side aisle, they came upon asimilar stone, except that this one was

slightly smaller and less mossy. But the

sword which stood in this stone was a

fencing sword, much thinner and not at all

as rusty. A convenient shaft of blue light fellfrom a stained-glass window onto the

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writing on the stone, and the writing said:

"Who pulls this sword from this stone is

rightful Lord and Mayor of all Biggleswade."

"Or Lady and Mayor, of course," said

Mother Margaret. "Can you pull it out?"

Maria bent down and gave a

tremendous pull, but the sword remainedjust as still as the one before it.

"It's no good. I'm sure I'm not a mayor

or a queen," said Maria. "I'm just me."

"Well, thank you for trying," said the

priest. "These swords have been around

here for years. I keep hoping that their true

owners will turn up some day or another.

You never know."

Maria thanked the priest and began to

leave the church. But as she reached the

entryway (the proper word for it is the

narthex, and it had great red doors leading

to the outside world) she stopped to look at

yet another stone standing off to one side.

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This stone was quite small, compared to

the other two, and the sword buried in it

was only as long as Maria's forearm. The

sword was covered in symbols and patterns

which Maria could not understand, but she

could read the writing on the stone. It said,

"Who pulls this sword from this stone is

rightful Lord and Master of himself."

"Or herself," said the priest from behind

Maria, making her jump and turn around.

"I was only looking," she said.

"Go on, see whether you can pull itfree," said the priest.

Maria knelt down so that she had a

better view of what she was doing, put out

one hand, and grasped the hilt of the sword.

Then, as easily as pulling a knife out of the

butter, Maria pulled the sword out of the

stone and laid it on the flagstones of the

floor.

The priest gave a little jump of

happiness and clapped her hands. "I knew

it! I knew someone would come along one39


40/41

day and claim one of the swords. Thank

you! You may keep it if you like, and take it

on your travels to find the dragon. Do you

mind if I write a paper on the subject for the

Historical Society?"

"Not at all," said Maria. She tied the

sword to her belt as best she could. Then

she asked, "Can you tell me what these

symbols all over the sword mean?"

The priest bent down and gazed at the

blade as it hung by Maria's leg, but then she

shook her head. "I have no idea, I'm sorry.

There are some wise people in Leighton

Buzzard, if that's on your way. They might

know."

"I should be passing through Leighton

Buzzard tomorrow," said Maria. "Thank you!" And she pushed open the great red

doors and walked back out into the

sunshine. She was the master of a new

sword, it was true, but more importantly,

she had certainly been proved to be the lordand master of herself.

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