The last dragon

THAT night there was a full moon that rose above the woodlot and poured silver into the meadow, and all the little owls were out, talking it over with each other. The yellow-striped spiders were very, very busy with their spinnerets, spinning great silver webs to catch the dew diamonds, and I think the mushrooms were up to some pearly mischief in the silvery grass.

The night was as bright as a polished coin, a coin that’s kept by a miser man and is polished every day with a green, green rag. Up in the nursery the children slept, if you could really call it sleeping—Peter, Johnathan and Janet Jane. Across the hall, Grandma sat, sat all night in her famous rocking chair—rocking, rocking, rocking—the gentle creak, creak, creak like the tick of a clock in the stillness of the house. Oh, Grams, how your little eyes are snapping; how your fingers are weaving in and out; how your silken gown is rustling, and the peppermints are clicking. What are you up to, Grams, in your famous rocking chair? Rock, rock, rock,—creak, creak, creak.

All night, sitting there, watching the moon through your little window, seeing it slowly climb up over the tree-tops. Now, you look like a pixie, Grams—Now, you look like an elf—And now you look young and fragile and all spun-glass like a fairy—and yet sometimes, Grams—Oh, sometimes you look like a dragon!

And what is disturbing the children? What dreams make them toss and breathe funny little noises into the nursery, so that Peter’s rocking horse opens its glassy eyes so round, and rocks a little on its rockers, and Janet Jane’s Raggedy Ann turns and speaks to Johnathan’s china pig who is so haughty and superior because he holds so many pennies in his round, china stomach.

One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock—the hours are noiselessly running away, tiptoeing off to the place where all the hours meet—the place where all the yesterdays live and the yesteryears, and the once upon a times, and the spirits of all the clocks that have run down for good.

The moon begins to sink in the west. There is the promise of something bright in the east. The little owls know it and put their dark glasses on, to prepare for the unwelcome glare of the sun. Four o’clock! Grandma is still rocking. Now her ears are pricked up sharp like the ears of a dog, and under her lavender cap that’s all awry there are two little bumps like a pair of horns, soft and tender like mushroom buttons.

Five o’clock! A faint red ribbon in the east. There is such a quiet over everything—such a breathlessness. If you listened real hard, you could hear the tiny beating of the lady bug’s heart as she slept on the silk of the rose petal.

What’s that? What’s that sound? Tap, tap, tap,—The branches of the white oak against the windows? No, it couldn’t be that. There’s not a breath of wind, and besides it’s too regular for that. Tap, tap, tap. Somebody throwing colored creek-pebbles at the windows of the nursery? No. Too regular for that, also. Must be the tapping of fingers, but what hand could reach way up to the second story?

Tap, tap, tap. Now, three pair of eyes are opened at once in the nursery, and three pair of ears listen, and three hearts go pump, pump, pump. Johnathan, Peter and Janet Jane sit up straight in their white night clothes and look at each other with the roundest, roundest eyes. There is a little prickling all along the roots of their bright, bright hair.

Tap, tap, tap again, and there in the wide nursery window, the one on the east side over the veranda, was the smiling face of the dragon, and one gently-tapping golden claw.

“Dragon!” cried the three little Baxters all together, and from their beds they leaped and ran to the window. Johnathan unlatched it and flung it wide open, and three small mouths were kissing the dragon’s cheeks. He was standing on his hind legs, and he was so tall that he could easily have rested his forelegs on the roof of the Baxter house if he had so desired.

“Dwagon—Dwagon, where did you go?” cried Peter.

“Oh, just around the corner,” returned the dragon, mysteriously.

“Around what corner, Dwagon?”

“Oh, the same old corner—the one just out of sight. You know—there’s one every place”—And he winked broadly.

“Oh, that corner,” said Johnathan, smiling wisely. “Yes, I know. I go around that corner all the time. It’s nice around there, isn’t it?”

“Yes, full of pleasant surprises, always different, you know. But as soon as you get around that corner, you come to another corner, and so you keep on going, around and around.”

“Yes, until you almost forget to come back,” pursued Johnathan, “and you’re almost lost, and then your mother calls you.”

The dragon smiled. “Yes, and then your mother calls you, and you have to go in and wash your neck and ears—but, by the sword of St. George, this is no time to moralize. The sun’s already warm on my back—(his voice sank down to a gentle whisper) so it’s time we’re going, children.”

“Going?” echoed Janet Jane.

“Going where?” asked Peter, all breathless.

“Going with me, on my back, for a long, long ride.”

For a moment the children appeared utterly astonished, their red mouths open like baby birds in a nest at feeding time, and then it all became very simple and not a bit unusual, just as it had felt when the dragon first entered the meadow.

“Will you come with me?” the dragon asked, and the children answered in a chorus, “Yes, Dragon, because we love you.”

“Shh, not so loud,” warned the dragon, a gold finger to his lips, “we don’t want to wake up your father and mother. They won’t understand in the least, and it would be so hard and take so long to explain. Now, put your arms around my neck, and I’ll hoist you on my back.”

“But can we go this way?” asked Janet Jane, indicating her white night gown.

“Certainly. It will be so nice, riding through the springy world, just with your night gowns on,” said the dragon.

“Oh, yes,” cried Peter, “I like that!”

“And so do I,” added Johnathan.

“Won’t we catch cold, though?” asked Janet Jane, always the little mother.

“Not in the least. It’s as warm as a stove on my back from the fire I used to eat, you know, and in the night”—

“Ooh, will we stay all night, Dwagon?”

“Maybe,” smiled the dragon. “Who can tell what you’ll do when you go riding on a dragon’s back. Come along.”

There were giggles, and breathless Oooohs! and shrill Weeeeees!—and the next moment, the nursery was emptied of its children, and the dragon’s face had vanished from the window. Only the sun was there, peeping through on the three empty beds with their three dented pillows and their tumbled sheets and comforters.

Quickly the dragon walked around the house, proudly carrying his precious burden, and the dogs, Nap and Jerry, came running as fast as they could from their round beds in the barn. They looked quite amazed when they saw the little Baxters perched on the dragon’s back, but they did not bark. Instead, they began to smile, their tongues sticking out, and as the dragon stopped to look up at Grandma’s window, they leaped aboard and sat, still smiling, at the bare feet of the children.

“Is it all right for Nap and Jerry to come, too?” Janet Jane enquired of the dragon.

“Why, certainly! Do you think we’d leave them behind when we’re going adventuring?” The dragon seemed indignant.

I said he was looking up at Grandma’s window, didn’t I? Well, he continued to look up steadily, and the children followed his eyes. Slowly the little window under the eaves opened out, slowly, slowly, as if hands were gently pushing it, but there were no hands to be seen.

Do you remember how apples bob on the water after you’ve ducked for them on Halloween, and they’ve fooled you, and seem to laugh at you as they bob and bob, higher and higher? Well, that was the way Grandma’s head bobbed up over the window sill after the windows had opened very wide. First bobbed the lavender cap; then the soft white hair; then the bright eyes behind the steel-rimmed spectacles, the crinkly mouth, the proud, defiant chin, all creased with little furrows like crumpled silk, and now the lavender silk shoulders encased in the lavender shawl with tiny white butterflies.

What was Grams doing? Why, she was rising, higher and higher. Now, her tiny hands are seen—now her tiny feet. She was sitting in her famous rocking chair and rising like a bird, or like a giant mushroom that springs up over night. In her lap was her knitting bag that was filled with the strangest, most fascinating things under the bright balls of colored yarn.

“Grams!” the children called in frightened wonder. “Grams! Look out!”

But Grandma only smiled serenely and sailed through the window, seated calmly in her rocker, coming straight down to the dragon’s back, where the rocking chair lighted, oh, so nice and gently, and rocked a little, creaking contentedly. “Well!” breathed Grandma, “here I am!”

“Oh, Grams, are you going with us?” asked Peter.

“Why, of course. I’m just like Nap and Jerry when it comes to adventuring. It was I who told Mr. Dragon where to hide until morning. I knew if he returned to the cave, maybe none of us would have the courage to get him back again.”

“So you sent him around the corner,” smiled Johnathan.

“Yes, my dear, around the corner.” Then Grandma tapped with her little slippered foot on the dragon’s back—a magic little tapping, three times with the heel and then once with the toe. “Are we ready, Mr. Dragon?” she called.

“Yes, indeed, Grandame,” returned the dragon. “We’re off, down the highway.”

And before the children even knew they had started, the landscape was gliding by on each side of them, faster and faster, like streaks of hills and streaks of trees. Looking back, their house was gone in the twinkling of an eye. Looking ahead, they seemed to be running straight into the rising sun. And it was Sunday morning and all the bells were ringing.