The Not Bright Knight 2...

The Not Bright Knight Part One

It was a full three-day journey to get to the thicket of thorns. Though he could smell the roses on day two. That’s how many roses there were. How thickly they had grown around the old castle. At the end of day two when he made his camp for the night he drifted off engulfed in the smell of roses. As he fell asleep he thought it might be a nice place to live. Away from the smells of the bigger cities crowded with too many people and too many animals. Away from the smells of the smaller farms, still crowded with animals, many of them allowed to live in the house with the farmer.

He wondered what would happen if he just decided not to go back to the king. To make a home for himself here on the edge of the enchanted lands. Smelling the roses every day. Stop and smell the roses. That’s what people say you should do. Make sure to stop and smell the roses. But what would happen if you never started again?

The king would send someone else to do his job. He might not have been a terribly bright knight, but he wasn’t stupid. And he knew the king wanted that land. And if the princess was as beautiful as they said, he’d like to have her as well.

The next morning, he set off again. A little slower pace, getting closer to the rose encased castle, but not forgetting that he was on the lookout for the dragon as well.

When he saw the roses in the distance he understood why no one had been able to penetrate the hedge before. It wasn’t like any rose bush he had ever seen. It was as large as the castle. As tall, as wide, maybe even taller and wider. Even from this distance he could see the thorns. And he saw a few bits of armor stuck on some of them. Remnants of those that had come before him. And there were definitely char marks there as well. Something had burned spots all around the rose hedge.

He sat on his horse and searched the area around the rose-covered castle. Where might a dragon stay? Would it live in the rose hedge? He didn’t think so. The growth looked too thick for that. And besides, everyone knew that dragons preferred caves. He didn’t know why everyone knew that, but they still did.

Finally, he saw a dark spot on the hill behind the castle. He thought that was probably the cave he was looking for. It would give a good view of anyone trying to ride up to the castle. And it would give whatever was in the cave the high ground as well. If he were protecting the castle that’s where he would have set up his camp.

If he went wide of the castle and the hill, then came back down he might be able to sneak up on the dragon. He decided he would camp on the top of the hill and see if he could learn the dragon’s routine. When was it sleeping? Could he sneak past it, or would he need to try and kill it? He didn’t like the idea of killing the dragon, but he had known that it was a possibility he might have to. And seeing the char marks and the bits of armor reinforced that idea.

He camped on the hill for two days. He never saw the dragon at all, but he did hear noises coming from the cave. Deep sighs. A low humming. Almost like a song, but too deep for him to grab the words. He finally secured his horse and his armor and snuck down the hill to see what was in the cave. Moving quickly and quietly he inched around the entrance of the cave and there she was. The most beautiful creature he had ever seen.

Nobody ever talks about how beautiful dragons are. They only talk about how fierce they are, but she was beautiful, her scales so black they reflected rainbows when the light hit them. Her eyes were sapphire blue. The pupils diamond shaped. She lowered her head to him and spoke, the voice echoing in his head, he was never sure if she used words or if he just understood her magic. Either way, he listened.

She was old and tired. She had been guarding the castle for almost a thousand years, and it was now close to the end. She didn’t want to kill him, as she had killed so many others, so if he wouldn’t mind waiting just a few days the spell would end and she would no longer be trapped in this life, then he could do what he had come to do. But if he insisted on charging the castle now, she would kill him. Though she would be sorry to do so.

When she said this she stretched out her front leg and an impressive claw clicked on the cave floor. It was a request, but the threat was clear.

He reached out and touched her foot. He asked if there was anything he could do to make her last days more comfortable. She sighed again and asked him to sing her a song. She had always loved music and had been singing to herself for a thousand years but thought it might be nice to hear someone else for just a bit.

He sang her every song that he knew. They stayed together for a week. He brought her water to drink and offered to hunt for her, but she was not hungry. So, he sang. And she rested. And she told him her story and he listened, as he liked to do.

On the 8^th day he walked to the castle and saw that all of the rose bushes had died. Not only had they died, but the wood was dry. The magic that had compelled the dragon to protect the castle had also kept the roses alive. He tried to cut through the hedge, but it was too thick. He would have needed a whole crew of men to cut through that thorned forest. He thought about his problem. How was he going to cut through that thicket to secure a path for his king to get to the castle?

He thought through everything he had learned throughout his various apprenticeships to see if anything he knew would help.

Wood burns before stone. That was it. He could burn the thorns. The char marks he had noticed before formed a perfect circle around the hedge. That would work as a firebreak. He could burn the thorns without risk of the fire spreading to the forest.  

He was sure it was a good idea.

The story that they told in the kingdom of the not bright knight was that he should have spent a little more time apprenticing with the baker. Then he would have understood that wood burns before stone, but stone in a fire becomes an oven.

When the king came to claim the princess all he found was ashes. Everything inside of the castle had burned. In the tower room he saw where a bed might have been, a larger pile of ashes among so many other piles of ash. He was disappointed but not terribly, after all he now had all of that land with no royal family to fight over it, and the burned roses had made the soil rich farmland.

He rewarded the knight for clearing the land, killing the dragon, and securing the castle. Then he dismissed him from service, after all in this instance being not so bright had worked in the king’s favor but it might not again.  

The not bright knight took his reward and found a plot of land far away from the busy cities and the crowded farmlands. He planted a few rose bushes and lived very happily with his black-haired, blue-eyed wife, whom he sang to every night and listened to all of her stories. His favorite being the one about the knight who rescued her from her curse by trusting her and doing as she asked and how they lived happily ever after.

 He was not very bright, but he was not stupid.