The Dragon's Third Riddle

Part One · The Dragon's Door

The bell stopped ringing on a Tuesday, and by Friday three fishing boats were lost in the fog. Nettle Brook stood on the dock with the village of Mistley Quay, hearing nothing but water slapping the posts. She was eleven years old and the smallest person in town, so small that the baker still gave her the children's loaves. "Somebody absolutely must get the Fog Bell back," said the mayor. Forty grown-ups looked down at their boots. Nettle did not mean to be one of them, and her mouth spoke first. "I'll go."

Everybody knew who had taken the bell. High above the village stood Cinder Mountain, and inside it lived Sootwick, a dragon as old as the harbor and twice as grumpy. He hated visitors, noise, and the smell of fish, which was a problem, since Mistley Quay smelled of nothing else. Three weeks ago a storm had cracked the bell tower, and that night the bell had vanished. Nettle packed bread, a lantern, and her grandfather's whistle, and she told herself her knees shook only from the cold.

The climb took the entire morning, and the path turned to loose black gravel, and the air began to smell like a struck match. Near the top, Nettle heard something peculiar, a tink, tink, tink, exactly like a tiny hammer. She found a crack in the rock so narrow that no grown man could squeeze through it, and she wriggled inside on her stomach. The tunnel grew warm, then hot, and at the far end a red light pulsed like a giant heartbeat. A voice as deep as a well growled, "You are standing in my light."

Sootwick was bigger than the church and greener than pond scum. One yellow eye, wide as a cartwheel, swung slowly down to look at her, and his nostrils let out two puffs of smoke. "A child," he grumbled, turning one ear toward her. "They send me a child; did they run out of knights?" Nettle's mouth went dry as chalk, because she saw mountains of dusty golden goblets and something enormous and round hidden under old blankets. "I have come for the Fog Bell," she whispered. "A fog smell?" boomed the dragon. "This is a mountain, not a bakery!"

"The BELL," said Nettle, as loudly as her small voice could go. The dragon smiled, which was worse than the frown, because he had so many teeth. "Nobody has beaten me at riddles in four hundred years," he said. "Beat me three times and you may have your bell. Lose even once, and you stay here and polish my goblets until your hair turns white." Nettle thought about the lost boats and the forty grown-ups and their boots. "Very well," she said, "but you go first." The dragon cupped a claw around his ear and bellowed, "What? Speak up!"

"Here is the first," said Sootwick, grinning wickedly. "I follow you all day, but I never say a word. I am longest when the sun is low, and I am gone when the lamp goes out. What am I?" Nettle's mind went as blank as a blown-out candle. The red light threw her shape across the cavern floor, long and thin, and she stared at it for a whole minute before she laughed and said, "A shadow," and the dragon's tail thumped the ground. "Lucky guess," he snapped, and smoke curled out of both ears.

"The second is harder," said Sootwick. "I have a tongue but cannot taste. I have a lip but never smile. I only speak when I am struck. What am I?" Nettle's chest tightened as she thought of a drum, a gong, a gate, and then she glanced at the heap of blankets, where something gave off a faint hum, like a plate after a spoon taps it. "A bell," she said slowly, and the dragon's grin slid off his face. "That was meant to be difficult," he muttered, and he sneezed a fireball at the ceiling.

Sootwick shuffled his enormous feet and would not meet her eyes. "One more, the hardest riddle I know," he said, and he leaned close enough to show his teeth. "What do I want more than all the gold in this mountain?" Nettle's heart sank to her socks. That was not a riddle but a question about a dragon, and all she knew was that dragons were grumpy and liked shiny things. "Can I look around first?" she asked, and he said "No," and then, more irritably, "Yes."

Part Two · The Third Riddle

She wandered down the hall with her lantern held high, and her shadow crept behind her. The golden goblets were not shiny at all. They were dusty, as if nobody had touched them in a hundred years. But beside the dragon's bed she discovered a small anvil, a pair of tongs, and a neat row of hammers no bigger than her hand. Fresh soot lay on the anvil. When Nettle lifted one corner of the blankets, her lantern light bounced off bronze, and she gasped.

It was the Fog Bell, and someone had been repairing it. A long crack ran up its side, and most of the crack was already filled with new, shining metal. "I was going to bring it back," muttered a miserable voice behind her. Sootwick had curled up around his anvil, and for the first time he looked small. "The night of the storm it rang wrong," he said. "One dreadful, crooked note, and I heard it from up here. It sounded like something crying. So I swooped down and took it before anyone could strike it again."

"Then why the riddles?" asked Nettle, and the dragon's ears drooped. "My fire is good at mending bronze," he mumbled, "but my ears are no good at all. The left one went deaf two hundred years ago, and the right one is going. I can fix the metal, but I cannot tell whether the note is true, and nobody climbs this mountain unless they are screaming." He cleared his throat. "So I made up a contest, and if you lost, you would have to stay and listen for me, which was a very bad plan."

"It was a terrible plan," Nettle agreed, and then she took a breath. "But I know the answer to your third riddle." The dragon blinked and said, "You what?" "What you want more than all the gold in this mountain," said Nettle, "is someone to listen for you. Someone who will tell you the truth about the note." She pulled out her grandfather's whistle and blew one clear, steady tone. "Heat the seam and strike it, and I'll tell you when it's right." Sootwick's yellow eye filled with something wet. "That," he said hoarsely, "is the right answer."

They worked all night, while Sootwick breathed a thin blue flame onto the open seam while Nettle listened to every note. "Flat," she called, "flatter, now it's too sharp, there!" Once the dragon lost his temper and threw a hammer through the wall, and Nettle calmly fetched it and handed it back. By the time gray light crept in through the narrow crack, the Fog Bell stood complete and glittering on the stone floor. When Sootwick tapped it with one delicate claw, it sang a single deep, clean note that Nettle felt in her teeth.

There was only one problem, because down in the valley the fog had grown so thick that Mistley Quay had vanished completely, and three boats were still lost somewhere inside it. "The sound will never carry through that from up here," Nettle said. Sootwick sighed a cloud of smoke and said, "Then we will ring it from down there," and he lowered one enormous green wing like a stairway. "Climb aboard, little one. And if you tell a soul that I said please, I will deny it." Nettle hugged the bell, gripped a spine, and the mountain dropped away.

They plunged into the fog, and the world turned white and silent, and then Nettle swung the clapper with all her might. Bong, bong, bong! The sound rolled out over the water like a great, gentle hand, and out in the gray a tiny lantern flickered, then another, then a third. On the dock, the townspeople looked up to see a dragon sliding out of the clouds with a girl on his back. The mayor dropped his hat, the baker dropped a whole tray of loaves, and one small dog fainted.

The three boats came home before noon. That evening the townspeople carried a long table up Cinder Mountain, loaded with smoked fish, which Sootwick said he hated and then ate down to the last bone. Now, whenever the fog rolls in, the bell rings from the cliffs, and an extremely old, extremely grumpy dragon tilts his good ear to listen for Nettle's whistle. Nobody hands her the children's loaves anymore, either. She is still the smallest person in town, and she is the one the whole town stops to hear.