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.And laughed, showing his teeth.And what about the others? I thought, rather later, on the train to the plane home at noontime.Other cities have mascots, but few have held onto them with the tenacity of the Bernese, in these times of ruthless modernization and the systematic rubbishing of the “sentimental” and “outdated”.Now I suspected it was because the bears have help—”professional” help.How many other distant children of the Zahringen, wearing skins occasionally alien to them—dark quiet suits, business dresses—have pushed quietly, lobbied, speaking a word in a bar here, a local political committee meeting there, to make sure that the relatives who couldn’t now speak for themselves were properly taken care of? And not turned out into the wild for the sake of political correctness, either, but cared for and companioned by those who walked on two legs, and spoke a local dialect that they could at least partially understand.Bad enough to be a beast with only the distant echoes of humanity left at the bottom of your brain: worse still to be stuck with humanity that didn’t speak Bärnerdeutsch.Let others, outsiders, think what they like.In Bern, at least, the family takes care of its own.and the figs and carrots are extra.And now a fairy tale… somewhat spatially misplaced from the more typical European milieu.And a chance to indulge, not the Were thing this time, but a dislocated version of the Dragon thing— of which (as the readers of The Door into Shadow probably can guess) I have a pretty bad case.The Queen and the Thief and the DragonWhen the dragon came out of the caves of Cumbre de la Vicente and started blackening the hills with its fiery breath, the Queen began to worry.She sat on her throne with her chin on her fist and her elbow on the throne’s arm, watching with mild dismay as her royal house began filling up with heroes.Magnificent specimens they were, none of them less than two yards tall.They came on splendid steeds (which they sometimes rode right into the hall, frequently fouling the sweet rushes strewn on the bright-tiled floor); they came in gold-damascened cuirasses, bearing spears hammered out on icy anvils, or supple swords forged in the fires of lost Toledo.They bore themselves with heroic grandeur, swirling their cloaks in their passing, speaking courtly phrases, bowing themselves double over her hand every chance they got.They drank a great deal of her wine, and, while not at their heroic feasting, they staged mock battles in the fields around the palace, trampling much green corn in the process.The Queen sat in her throne, considering all these things; also considering that it would soon be June, and the dragon, instead of just blackening hillsides and burning down crofters’ cots, would be starting huge brushfires as well.And finally she turned to her most trusted counselor, who stood by her throne chewing his graying beard and thinking similar thoughts.She crooked a finger at him, and Don Escalonzo bent near.“Get me thieves,” the Queen said.And since the Don was a prompt and conscientious man, with extensive connections throughout the Twenty Cities, he immediately got her thieves—all of them who were of any note—even making discreet withdrawals from several neighboring dungeons.From Los Encinos to Ciudad de la Santa Monica, the theft rate took a drastic plunge.Several professional fences imperiled their immortal souls by hanging themselves in despair.The Queen was a noble hostess, no less so to criminals than to heroes when they were guests under her royal roof.She poured out many a bottle of the blood-red wines of the North for them, listening to their qualifications and asking them (with the guarantee of amnesty) many pointed questions about their careers.The thieves answered as courteously as the heroes, but more circumspectly, with much shifting of the eyes.And the Queen noticed that their fingers seemed to twitch a great deal when she wore jewelry.One by one she had them into her throne room, and one by one sent them away again, down the long halls hung with tapestries and ancient heirloom weapons, lined with tables covered with plate of gold and other precious things of marvelous workmanship.The thieves sweated greatly on these long walks, so Don Escalonzo told the Queen—for all that it was cool and shadowy in the royal house, and hardly late May as yet.She nodded at this.And then came the long afternoon in which the Queen interviewed three thieves, one after the other.The first two came and went, and sweated; and the third came, and spoke with her, and went again.And afterward, by Don Escalonzo’s count, there were found missing from the long hall a crystal cup footed in curiously wrought gold; two opal-encrusted daggers of ancient lineage; a fair unset turquoise the size of a bustard’s egg, carved with strange signs of the Old People; and a small iron horse on wheels with a string in front to pull it, all set with smoke-colored diamonds.And on hearing this report the Queen put her hand to her orange silk bodice, below the great cream-colored ruff, and found that the Most Noble Order of Santa Catalina, in the shape of a winged lion cast in red gold and inlaid with amber, was missing from around her neck, along with its chain of yellow topazes.“Bring me that man,” said the Queen.And after a brief interval, during which there ensued a hard-run race involving the thief in question and several members of the Queen’s Own Horse, the man was brought before her; dusty, windblown, and (finally) sweating.“You, sir,” the Queen said, coming down from her throne in a rustle of orange silk, “are the man I’m looking for.” And she led him away by the hand, to her chambers; and the members of the Queen’s Own Horse shrugged their shoulders, and went away to get drunk with the heroes.*That was how Churro de las Resedas came to receive a commission from the Queen [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]