listen, the innkeeper’s daughter whispered to the fool, for i am going to tell you a story. do not interrupt, and listen closely, for i am not going to repeat myself…
once upon a time there were two little girls, sisters, who had been kidnapped by a dragon named darius and carried away to a big house beside a great swamp in a kingdom in the middle of nowhere.
although the girls were sisters, one of them, the older, named alexa, was the most beautiful girl in the world and the younger, named zucky, was the ugliest.
the dragon, however, did not concern himself with the relative comeliness of the two girls, because, no sooner had he kidnaped them than a curse had been placed on him by his old nemesis the magician “old moloch” and he barely had strength to carry himself and the two girls to his hiding place in the big house by the swamp.
the two girls spent their days waiting on the bedridden dragon, bringing him his soup and medicine, which he hardly had the strength to imbibe, and toiling in the little garden growing the feeble vegetables which barely sustained life in the three of them.
alexa, the older and bolder of the sisters, had pluck enough to venture out into the swamp with a bow and arrows she had fashioned herself, and to bring back some curious little - and sometimes not so little - animals to be fried up or roasted in the big black stove in the nasty little kitchen in the big house. for this she received little thanks from either the dragon or her sister, although both were happy enough to share in the devouring of the poor creatures (the dragon in the form of broth, as that was all his weakened system could handle).
the old house had a large library which took up most of the space on the ground floor.
when they first reached the house, the dragon, in his weakened state, had explained to the two girls that somewhere in the library, not necessarily in a book labeled as dealing with magic or spells, was a formula for mixing a potion that would restore him to full health and vigor, and enable him to seek vengeance on his enemy old moloch, and he begged them to expend every effort to locate it.
a glance between the two girls, on receiving this information, sufficed. they had absolutely no intention of searching for the formula, and if they stumbled upon it by chance, they would destroy it.
alexa had nothing but contempt for the library and its contents, but zucky spent long hours in it, when she could spare the time from her labors in the kitchen or in the other, mostly abandoned rooms, which had to be constantly defended from rain and damp and vermin.
the contents of the library consisted largely of collected editions of the works of novelists like sir walter scott, balzac, charles nodier, eugene sue, hugo, dickens, thackeray, captain marryat, fenimore cooper, mrs gore, george sand, charles reade, paul de kock, mrs braddon, mrs henry wood, and zola, as well as the poems of byron, tom moore, southey, tom hood, barry cornwall, and hugo, and such historical works as grote’s history of greece, mommsen’s history of rome, ranke’s history of the papacy, hume’s history of england, and macaulay’s history of england. the books zucky liked best were plutarch’s lives, gibbon’s decline and fall of the roman empire, macaulay’s essays, the poems of ossian, and carlyle’s the french revolution.
alexa stayed out of the library, and considered it “creepy”, even compared to the dragon’s bedchamber, and the swamp. when she was not hunting, cooking, or waiting on the dragon, she mostly slept.
one evening zucky found a little book which had fallen down behind one of the tall bookcases.
where is this story going?, exclaimed the fool. he was afraid the candle the innkeeper’s daughter was holding above him would start dripping hot wax on him.
i told you not to interrupt, cried the maiden. i will let it go this once, but i will not warn you again!
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