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But it is one thing to agree that a thing sounds fine, and another to accomplish it. We waved our tails at the foot of the falls and looked up at the mossy crags. They were so far. Some tried; every day a goldfish or two screwed up her courage and her tail muscles and shot out of the water like a flaming dart, higher and farther than any goldfish had done before—and she always fell back to the frothing pool, nowhere near the crest and just as much a goldfish as she had been a moment before.
Naturally, I wondered if a Lock might be superior. Every day we fought to stay in our homes as the water drained. We swam against the sucking flow, our muscles were tight and golden and we were bigger than the others, with all our constant struggle. But a child loves its mother’s breast, and so we loved the lock.
I made my attempts at night, when the others were off feeding, so that I would not be ashamed to fall. But I leapt so far, farther than any of them, and with every leap the crest was nearer to my fins. I could taste the wind and the fire in me, swollen and ready. And then, one night when no one was looking, and even the eel and the drumfish were nosing in the mud, I leapt up, waving my tail in the wind as much like leathery, bony wings as I could imagine—and cleared the falls.
I fell with a great splash into the upper river, and had to right myself quickly to avoid going over again. I was awkward in the water, floundering as I had never had to do, with a fish’s instinct for swimming being such that we have never in all the lives of fish had a word for “swimming.” There is no need. I dragged myself up by a bent oak branch and lay gasping on the soil, air burning my chest, gill-less and finless and goldless, coughing and spitting and cold.
I was a dragon.
But what kind of dragon I could not begin to say. I had no wings at all, and my flesh was not scaled and green but pink and soft, and I had two legs and long, wet hair that stuck to my arms and all that came out of my mouth was bile and river, and no fire at all. But, I thought, no one has seen a dragon for so long. Perhaps this is what a dragon looks like. Everything that lives outside the water looks more or less the same, anyhow, and sunfish and walleye were often mistaken. Perhaps a dragon does have little dainty toes and blunt, sleek teeth. Who was I to argue? I had leapt the fall; I must now be a dragon, however strange a dragon that may be.
I walked down the mountain shakily, my dragon’s feet soft and pale and unused to rocky jags and pebbles. I came upon a village, as dragons are wont to do, and—just like the stories!—their eyes widened and their jaws went slack and they sputtered and ran from me. But they came back with trousers and a long, loose shirt and a belt and a hat, and told me that I could not simply walk around naked.
“Dragons may do whatever they wish,” I said haughtily. “And nakedness is no worry for me. I am sorry if it is a worry for you.”
But they pulled me into a little house and showed me a long, oval mirror. In it I was, I presumed, a dragon. A dragon with long hair the color of goldfish scales, and small, round breasts, and eyes blue as a river in summer, and a mole at the base of her throat. I saw nothing the matter.
“That is what dragons look like.” I shrugged, sounding more sure than I felt. I cleared my new throat. “I’m surprised at your provincial ignorance. But if the color of my scales bothers you, I will take your silly clothes.”
They laughed nervously and eyed me from the corners of the room—as well they might!—but I dressed, and with great, hard-soled shoes, walked at my leisure down and out of the mountain.
Summer wound golden around me as I ventured into the world. I ate rabbits and rats, breathing on them until they just stopped running and stared at me while I puffed out my cheeks and became very red in the face. I sighed and snatched them with my hands. I was very disappointed in a dragon’s lot. In my darkest moments, when the night was damp and the wolves crooned ballads to each other in the far-off hills, I allowed myself to consider that perhaps I was something slightly less than a dragon, but certainly more than a goldfish.
One morning when the sun was thin and bright on the blackberries, a hunting party came into the valley and caught no hart, but snared a dragon. My face was stained with blackberry juice and I did not know what to say, but the leader of the party was handsome and dark, and though I snarled at him, he did not seem bothered.
“I am a dragon.” I sighed, almost pleading with them to believe me. “You ought to run and scatter like ants.”
The man looked at me quite seriously. “No,” he said, “you are not. My father has a dragon head in his hall, and though it is quite dusty and one nostril has a mouse living in it, I should never mistake it for a maiden.”
“But I leapt the falls!” I hissed desperately. “No one else has ever done it! I! A lock-fish!”
“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about, but a young girl like you should not be out in the wilderness with nothing between you and the brambles but some uncle’s trousers.”
“My uncles don’t wear trousers—”
I protested, but his fellow hunters surrounded me in a moment like hares around a fox, and ushered me firmly onto a horse, and the horse galloped through the dilapidated gate of a city all of red towers. As we rode, he told me of the glory of Ajanabh, the greatest city which had yet graced the earth, great in all things, including the currency.
“Did you know,” he said, his gray eyes flashing like a minnow in an eddy, “we have the most extraordinary coins! Each coin, blue and bright as your own eyes, has two perfect holes in its center! It is such a marvelous country—you could be happy there…”
THE TALE OF
THE AJAN COIN
LONG BEFORE EVEN MY GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER’S day, the coin was whole, and solid yellow gold, and prized as all coins are. There was no Duke in those days, and Ajanabh ground along like a clock: more or less on time, hoping someone will think to wind it, but unable to be truly concerned. Currency was what had been stolen from other cities, or brought by the river bargers. Nothing was minted here.
In this raucous place lived a man by the name of Amilcar, and this man was a fisherman on the Vareni. He caught pike and carp—Why do you look so pale, my dear?—of the most fabulous colors, bright yellow and deep green and eye-aching blue. Now this fisherman was wiser than the fishermen of the degenerate tales of the north, and he spent his evenings with a horn of brass and bone, whose rim he used to rub with oil and light, to chase away the river insects. He played the most delicate, lovely music in his little hut, lighting the banks of the many-colored river with his flaming horn.
Now, Amilcar was quite lonely, and even a clever fisherman still reeks of fish. Beyond the local prostitutes, his prospects were few. And so, each evening, he would wet a sheet of music in gloss and place it against his rocking chair. As time went by, the tea-and-sturgeon-stained sheets with their notes like spider’s legs thickened and grew into the shape of a lovely wife, all of music. And each evening Amilcar would sit opposite his prize and wish for it to open treble-clef eyes or eighth-note lips and live for him. He played the music of his wife with his flaming horn of brass and bone, but it did not wake.
And if this were a perverse northern tale, it would, eventually, and love him all its days. But we are more practical, in the country of palm and cinnamon.
Now, the Vareni, being more or less made of dye, attracts very strange sorts of fish, and very strange sorts of other things which are not fish at all, and so it was that a Lamia called Vachya watched Amilcar at his music, and loved him. He was not unhandsome, and as a Lamia is more or less a sea serpent with three blue breasts and the head and arms of a woman, she was not over-concerned about the reek of fish.
One early morning, before the sun had set about setting his cloudlures, Amilcar caught a great carp, the greatest one he had yet snared. This carp was all spangled silver, having once swallowed a great quantity of expensive thread. The carp was most displeased at having been caught—Why do you laugh, my dear?—and rolled over in Amilcar’s net, a baleen hook stuck into his lip, and said in a frot
hy, gurgling voice:
“Amilcar, who soothes the clapping clams with his radiant horn, whose flames flash over the water! Hearken to me! If you should let me live, I shall tell you of a great treasure which crouches by your window every night!”
