The Too-Clever Maiden

DIRECTIONS WERE easy to come by, but difficult to follow. Each person Jasper took Steven to see had an idea of where the road south to the dragon lay.

“Well, now,” said one grizzled old farmer, pointing, “you want to follow the main road out thet way. You don’t want to follow any of the other roads because they don’t lead anywhere. Thet one, for example, just goes out to Maggar’s place and it don’t go no farther. Thet one over thar, it just go to ... well, I don’t rightly know. En’t nobody goes thet way.”

“No one travels south,” said a merchant. “There is nothing but desert on one side and marshland on the other forever. If you take the main road you have to go round the mountains, but it is civilized. I’m sure you can find something useful to do while you are traveling.”

“You want to take the second branching to the right to go around the south side of the mountains,” said a musician. “The first road to the right goes out into the desert and just vanishes. I knew a minstrel who went that way once and was never heard from again. His lute showed up in a secondhand shop out in Highford.”

“Just follow the main road out a day and look for a big tree with a wasp-nest in a fork of the branches,” said a hunter. “Go toward the morning sun from there until it is high in the sky. Then listen for the sound of a brook and follow it downstream to where the deer come for salt. Just on the other side of the stream is the path that becomes a wagon trail that leads back along the river south.”

Steven was about to give up in despair when Jasper took him to see an old lady in a hut at the edge of town. Her hut was tiny and filled with smoke, choking Steven as he entered. But strangely, this little hovel reminded him more of home than anything in the town of Lastford. And the old woman reminded him pleasantly of the village wise woman back home.

“And what makes you think it is a road that will lead you to the dragon, Dragonslayer?” she asked. “It is not a road, but your destiny that leads you there. So, follow what way you will, you cannot help but find your dragon.” She laughed lowly and Steven was emboldened to ask further.

“Do you have any herbs to help me on my way?” he asked, remembering the packet the village wise woman had given him.

“Herbs?” she cackled. “You want herbs? You have nothing to trade for herbs.” Steven was about to offer to trade a story, but he remembered just in time that he had not yet paid Jasper and it would be unfair to offer the story to the old woman. But she was not done yet. “You need your defenses strengthened. Give me your hat.” Steven was truly taken aback. He could not part with the implausible hat just for a handful of herbs. “I’m going to give it back,” said the old woman. “Come, now; have no fear.”

Reluctantly, Steven gave the old woman his hat and she examined it carefully. She lit a small pot of incense and held the hat out in the smoke, bathing it thoroughly in the pungent fumes. She chanted and turned it, waved it and cradled it. She placed it on her own head and walked three times around the hut. Then she slowly took it off and fastened a small piece of bone to the snakeskin that bound the feathers to the sheepskin hat.

“There,” she said handing it back to him. “Even a dragon hunter should have music when he travels. That’s the best I can do. Good hunting, Dragonslayer. Fare you well.” With that she pointed to the door and Steven emerged from the hut to find Jasper still waiting for him.

After a meal of scraps from the feast earlier in the day, Steven finally settled down in the barn to tell Jasper his story.

ONCE UPON A TIME, long ago and at least a hundred thousand steps away, there lived a young maiden who was very clever at getting her way in all that she wanted. She had two elder sisters who were always offered first choice of whatever came into their parents’ home. If it was cloth for a dress, the oldest took the smoothest cloth, then the middle daughter took the brightest cloth, and then the youngest got what was left. When food was served at the table, the eldest took the tastiest portion, the middle took the largest portion, and the youngest got what was left. Faced with this situation from a very young age, the youngest found that her foolish sisters were easily manipulated. The youngest would immediately go to the coarsest fabric and exclaim over how the light shone from its beautiful contours. The eldest daughter would immediately snatch up the cloth as her own. Then the youngest would exclaim over the beautiful colors of the dullest cloth and the middle sister would snatch it up. That would leave the poor youngest child with the smoothest and most colorful cloth for her dresses.

When the girls came to be of marriageable age, the youngest decided she would have to be clever indeed to get what she wanted, for of course the eldest daughter wanted the richest man in the village, the middle daughter wanted the most handsome man in the village, and no one really cared what the youngest daughter wanted.

The youngest daughter had set her heart on the son of the elder of the neighboring village. He was rich, strong, handsome, and powerful. Both of her elder sisters had cast a longing eye on this young prince. And so, it was that the youngest set about her plan.