Not Ordinarily Borrowable

or, Unwelcome Advice

a story by
Thomas Thurman

1
 Merlin, bursting into tears, delivered
what his prophetical spirit suggested to
him, as follows:— "Woe to the red dragon,
for his banishment hasteneth on."
— Geoffrey of Monmouth

2
3
 For Amy,
who asked for a story

4
1. The Exeat

O
nce, long ago before your
grandparents were children,
after the end of the time of
angels but before the end of the time of
dragons, there lived a scholar. A scholar is
a person who spends a lot of their time
reading books and trying to find out
interesting new things. Often they are
clever people, but quite ordinary people can
be scholars too.
This scholar's name was Maria. She
had brown hair, brown eyes, and two cats
called Cloud and Company-of-Wrath. The
cats don't come into the rest of the story,
but I thought you might be interested to
hear their names. Maria lived in a town full
of other scholars, and she often wondered
whether she was as clever as the other
scholars in the town, and if she was not,
whether the others would find out one day
and laugh at her. In fact, she was one of the

5
cleverest in the town, but she didn't know
that herself.
Maria wore a thick black robe every day,
because the town where she lived was a
cold one. Everyone needed to wrap up
warm and cosy against the northern wind,
so all the scholars were given black robes to
wear from the first day they started
studying, and stripey scarves to wrap
around their necks. Maria lived in a single
room in a big white house, with her two
cats. There were ten other scholars living
in her house as well, but she didn't know
them very well. The other scholars were
mostly learning about chemistry, which was
a subject that didn't fit well into Maria's
head.
Maria was not studying chemistry.
Maria was an Asnac. An Asnac is a person
who studies the way people lived a long,
long time ago, far longer ago than the time
when Maria lived, and looks at the things
they made and the writings they left behind.

6
She loved her subject, and she was hoping
one day to become a doctor.
I don't mean the kind of doctor that
people take you to when you're not feeling
very well, who asks you to stick out your
tongue and writes things on their little
pieces of paper. That kind of doctor is a
very important kind of person, and I'm glad
there are so many of them in every town,
otherwise what would happen if people got
sick? But that kind of doctor is a doctor of
medicine. If you want, you can be a doctor
of anything you please. The main thing you
need in order to be a doctor of something is
to love what you're studying, and to be
ready to spend a lot of time on it: years and
years. And Maria had been studying for
years. She was going to be a doctor of
Asnac.
Now in order to become a doctor of
something, there is a simple rule to follow.
You must find out something new, something
nobody in the world has ever seen or known

7
or thought before. You might suppose that
with all the many people there are in the
world, and with all the thinking that goes on
every day, it must be difficult to find a new
thing never thought before. But everyone
has ideas every day, and there are so many
different ones that, sooner or later,
everyone must find something new. You
yourself saw something nobody had seen
before the last time you cracked open the
shell of a nut.
After you have found out your new
thing, you must write a book about it, a big,
heavy book called a thesis. Then, last of all,
you must explain your ideas to the other
scholars, and the other scholars must be
happy with your work. One day, when
Maria had finished doing all this, she would
be allowed to call herself Dr. Maria, and
allowed to wear a scarlet robe instead of her
black one. That way, everyone would know
how hard she had worked to find out
something utterly new.

8
 But that day was still quite a long way in
the future, and Maria still had a lot of work
ahead of her before it would come.
On the day when this story starts, Maria
had just woken up. And as she ate her
breakfast, she was thinking to herself about
the things which she had to spend the day
doing. At that time in her studies, she was
learning about some stories which had been
written down by a man called Geoffrey of
Monmouth, hundreds and hundreds of years
before. She particularly wanted to find out
what Geoffrey's ideas about dragons were,
because she was meaning to write a chapter
in her thesis about it. So she decided that
she would have to go to the library and find
a copy of his book. She put on her raincoat,
because the weather was cold and it was
raining quite hard, and got on her bike, and
off she went.
I will take a moment here to tell you
about the library. It's a special library
because the law says that if anyone

9
anywhere writes a book, they have to send a
copy of it to this library. Because of this law,
the library is very large inside, and at the
top it has a brown brick tower that's
hundreds of floors tall which contains
almost nothing but shelves upon shelves of
books. The books are arranged very
carefully so that the librarians can find
them, but the way they are arranged is very
complicated and confusing if you're not a
librarian.
When you enter the library through its
great bronze door, you find yourself in an
entrance hall full of statues of all the
librarians who have ever worked there.
Then you climb the stairs into a long room
with patterned friezes around the walls,
called the Reading Room, which is where
you sit and read the books. There are a lot
of books on the shelves in the Reading
Room, but most of the books are in the
tower, and ordinary people like you or me or
Maria are never allowed into the tower.
Instead, you have to ask the librarian to
10
climb up inside the tower for you, and fetch
you the book you want.
When Maria got to the library, she was
surprised to see that the edges of the door
had scorch marks around them, as though
someone had burnt them with a very large
match. When she entered the building,
there was a smell inside which Maria
couldn't place.
“I wonder what that smell is,” she said
to herself.
“Sulphur,” said a voice behind her.
She turned. The Librarian stood there
in his librarian robes, looking doleful and a
little scorched around his long grey beard.
He was a very old man, who had been
looking after the library for as long as Maria
could remember. If she had thought about
it, she would have realised that he had
probably been a young man once, and one
day he would probably need to retire, but in
fact nobody ever thought of these things. To
Maria he seemed as much a permanent and
11
unmovable part of the library as the
reference desk.
“Are you here to borrow anything from
the twelfth century section?” he asked. “We
had a rather unusual patron, who has
borrowed the lot. And I don't think he's
going to bring them back any time soon.” A
patron is what librarians call the people who
borrow books.
“Yes, I wanted to borrow the works of
Geoffrey of Monmouth. But how in the
world did you burn your beard?” asked
Maria.
“That was the problem,” sighed the
librarian. "Do you know much about
dragons?"
Maria knew quite a lot about dragons,
from the books she had read. "A little bit,"
she said.
"All the Asnac books we have, and there
are a lot of them..." he paused, and
corrected himself, "there were a lot of them,
anyway... all our Asnac books were
12
borrowed this morning. Quite forcibly. By a
dragon."
"A dragon?" Maria looked puzzled. "I
thought they were extinct."
"So did we all, until this morning."
"And I thought that they usually came
looking for treasure," Maria went on. "Why
wouldn't it have gone to steal gold from the
goldsmith's, or the town bank, or
somewhere, instead of here?"
The librarian shrugged. "I really don't
know, I don't know at all. All I know is, one
moment I was sitting at my desk, trying to
stop people bothering me for five minutes so
that I could get the card index back into
alphabetical order, and the next moment,
there's a cloud of sulphur billowing around
the room, and a great red lizard trying to
break the door down."
He pointed at the door, which was a
great brass door with figures carved into it
showing people reading books and scrolls.
Around the edges it was noticeably bent,
13
and the deep scratches across the top of the
door, which were just in the place where a
dragon's spines would be if it tried to crawl
through the door of a library, had certainly
not been there the day before.
"I'm afraid you're out of luck if you want
to read about Geoffrey of Monmouth," said
the librarian. "Ordinarily, if you wanted a
book which was already out, I would advise
you to visit the person who had borrowed it
and ask them whether they were finished
with it. But in this case I'm afraid you're
going to have to study something else. Can
I interest you in the study of chemistry?"
Now, Maria's friends thought they knew
her quite well, and if you had asked them
what sort of a person she was, they would
probably have called her timid. So it would
have given them quite a surprise to hear her
say what she said next.
She said: "Well... I need the book. And I
like a challenge. I think I shall visit the
creature who borrowed it. And I think I

14
shall ask it whether it's finished with the
book. Do you know which way the dragon
went?"
The librarian looked worried. "I must
try to persuade you not to go. Not only will
it be a very dangerous journey, but dragons
themselves are not tame animals. I only just
escaped with my beard. How someone like
you, without a beard, might manage, I don't
dare to think."
"Thank you, but my mind is quite made
up," said Maria. "I have been working for
years to get my doctor's degree, and I will
not have anything standing in my way. Not
even a dragon."
"Well, if you're sure..." said the
librarian.
"I am."
The librarian hesitated for a moment,
then decided to co-operate with her. "Let's
see. An old friend of mine is the librarian at
Oxenford. I telephoned him this morning to
warn him in case the same dragon
15
attempted to borrow any of the books from
his library as well. He told me that four of
their scholars had reported seeing a dragon
flying over their city to the north-west, in
the direction of Cadair Idris. I suggest you
try exploring in that direction to begin
with."
"Thank you," said Maria. "I hope to
bring your books safely home again in a few
months."
The librarian nodded. "Good luck.
Don't forget your exeat." And with that he
went back to sorting the card index.
Now, if you are a scholar studying to be
a doctor of anything, there will always be
someone to look after you. The person who
looks after you is called your supervisor, and
Maria's supervisor was called Dr Rose.
Supervisors are usually fairly good at giving
you advice, because they are already a
doctor of whatever it is. So whatever
troubles you might be having, they have
probably also gone through the same

16
difficulties themselves when they were
younger. Dr Rose had often been helpful to
Maria in the past, but Maria worried that
this time would be different. She rather
doubted that Dr Rose had ever had her
textbooks carried off by a dragon.
But Maria needed to talk to Dr Rose for
another reason, too. Your supervisor is
supposed to worry about you if you
disappear for a long time. If you are going
away on holiday, or to try to find out your
new ideas in another town, or even simply
to hunt a dragon, you need to get a special
permission from your supervisor, so that
they don't worry and so that they can be
sure you won't miss too much of your work.
Your supervisor needs to sign a piece of
paper to give you the permission, and the
paper is called an "exeat". That word means
"she may go out".
Dr Rose lived on B staircase in Maria's
college. All the people who lived in the
college lived in rooms which you reached by

17
going up some staircase or other, and each
staircase had a letter. Dr Rose was sitting
in an armchair reading a book about
toasters when Maria opened her door.
"Hello, Maria," she said, "how can I help
you?"
"Did you hear about the dragon?" asked
Maria.
"Yes," said Dr Rose, "very sad. I expect
the university will survive. It always does."
"But the dragon has taken my books!"
"Oh dear," said Dr Rose. She looked
puzzled for a moment, and then said, "I
suppose you could study something else
instead. Have you considered chemistry?"
Maria felt her heart sinking inside her.
She tried not to sigh in front of Dr Rose.
Then, since (as I told you earlier) she was a
clever person, she tried another approach.
"Well, you see, I've come to ask you for
permission to do some field work," she said.
"It's all very well discussing the ideas of

18
Geoffrey of Monmouth, but I thought my
thesis could use a chapter on real dragons.
So I'd like to go and find an actual living
one, and investigate its habits and
behaviour. I think it would make a very
interesting chapter."
"Hm," said Dr Rose, but Maria could see
she was interested. "Until today, I believed
they were all extinct."
"Some of them must still be alive. For a
start, there's at least the one which raided
the library this morning," said Maria.
"Very true, very true," said Dr Rose.
"What do you think it wanted the books for?
Do dragons eat books? Does Geoffrey have
anything to say on the matter?"
"I really don't remember Geoffrey
mentioning the subject of a dragon's diet.
That's part of my plan, you see: I'll learn
what they eat if I can watch one. This is the
sort of information I want to find out and
write up in my thesis," said Maria.

19
 "Good plan, good plan," said Dr Rose.
"Here, I'll write you an exeat."
So Maria thanked Dr Rose, folded her
exeat and ran back excitedly back down the
staircase. She asked her chemist
housemates to feed the cats while she was
away, and packed enough clothes and food
in a suitcase for at least a week. Then she
jumped back onto her bike and pedalled
happily off through the rain in the direction
of Oxenford. Maria was never happier than
when a job was underway, and this time she
was just starting to feel that her
determination was beginning to pay off.

20
2. Courage

A
fter riding for an hour through
the rain, Maria's spirits felt
almost as damp as her hair.
Many years earlier, when she had first come
to the university, she had once fallen into
the river by mistake, while she was trying to
row a boat. Now she felt almost as soaked.
Her clothes clung tightly to her skin. It was
hard to keep her happiness alive.
Just as she was thinking about how
suddenly she had started feeling miserable,
she noticed that she was entering a town
called Royston. It seemed like a good place
to take a break. So she pulled up outside a
pub called the Red Lion, locked her bike and
went in to buy herself some lemonade.
"Good morning," said the man behind
the bar. "What brings you here?"
"I'm looking for a dragon," said Maria,
wiping her wet hair out of her eyes. "Have
you seen one?"

21
 "I heard they had one at the library
down the road," said the man, "so they say.
Myself, I think they're making it up, I think
they're extinct. Why, did you see anything?"
"I didn't see the dragon," said Maria.
"But the librarian saw it and told me, and I
trust him. Oh, thank you, how much is
that?"
She paid the man, who handed her a
glass of lemonade, and to her own surprise
she drank the whole glass in one go. She
had not realised how thirsty she was. The
man took advantage of her silence to
explain his thoughts on dragons.
"See," he said, "in my experience of
dragons... I mean, I have no experience of
dragons. I've never seen one. But I've often
read about them in magazines and stuff.
Well, you're looking to find a dragon. You
know what a person needs when they look
for dragons?"
Maria was too polite to tell him that she
had spent the past few years reading about
22
dragons, and that she knew a hundred times
more about what was needed to deal with
them than any magazine could tell you.
Perhaps it would be better if she had said
so. But instead she smiled at the man and
said, "No, do tell me."
"What you need is courage. You need to
be brave and fierce and bold. Think of all
the knights you read about who fought
dragons. They were big strong men, brave
men. Think of what a dragon's like, for
goodness' sake, it's the size of a bus,
covered in armour, and it breathes fire. You
need a strong man, a brave man, a man with
courage. That's what you need."
Maria listened carefully, finished her
drink, and said, "Thank you. Where do you
think I can find courage?"
"You? You're surely not going to fight a
dragon on your own? I mean... with all due
respect, you don't seem the dragon-fighting
type," he said, and laughed. "I'm sure you
could find a dragon, but I don't think you

23
could deal with it when you had it. What
you need is to find a man who has courage.
You should ask the mayor."
"Why? Is the mayor very courageous?"
"The mayor can ask one of the
policemen to go with you and protect you.
I'm sure one of them is brave enough," he
said. "I mean, nobody in this town knows
more about courage than I do, but I'm busy
serving drinks, or I'd help you. But good
luck!"
"Thank you," said Maria, and went back
out to her bicycle.
A little further down the road, she met a
policeman. "Can I help you, miss?" he said.
"I don't think so. I'm actually looking
for a dragon," said Maria.
The policeman laughed. "Really, kids
these days get the strangest ideas into their
heads," he said, though he was not all that
much older than Maria herself. "And what

24
are you going to do with this dragon, when
you find it?"
"The important thing for now is finding
it," said Maria, "and for that I will need
some courage."
"Nobody in this town knows more about
courage than I do," said the policeman.
"Why, I have often chased burglars down the
street and caught them with my bare hands.
I don't think any dragon would need more
bravery than I have. I would come with you
and protect you, if I wasn't on duty."
"Thank you," said Maria, "and I'm sure
you're very brave, but I don't need
protecting. I'm looking for some courage of
my own. Can you tell me where you get
your courage from?"
"I would not suggest that a young lady
like you should go hunting dragons on your
own," said the policeman severely. "Stay
here in Royston. Get married and start a
family. Be a credit to society."

25
 "No, thank you," said Maria. "But would
you tell me where to find the town hall?"
It turned out that the town hall was half
a mile down the road from the Red Lion. It
was a squat red-brick building set back a
little from the road. Maria looked at it and
imagined the sort of person who had built it,
and decided that they were someone who
did not have very much imagination. She
locked up her bike again, and went in to talk
to the mayor.
The building was as boring inside as
outside, which made finding the mayor's
office harder than it needed to be. Every
corridor looked like every other corridor.
When Maria found the mayor, he was sitting
in a polished wooden room. He looked up
from his polished wooden desk and gave a
polished smile. "How can I help you, my
dear?"
"I'm looking for a dragon," she began.

26
 "We don't give out dragon licences at
this office any more. There's no point, you
see. They're extinct."
"I don't want a licence. And I've just
come from the university. One of them
attacked our library. It didn't seem very
extinct."
"Ah," said the mayor. "And you would
like money for repairs? University funding
is a matter for central government. This
office can only help you with primary and
secondary education."
"I didn't come here looking for any help
with university funding, thank you."
The mayor looked as though he was
trying to be polite, and struggling not to be
annoyed. "Then how can I help you, young
lady?"
"I'm looking for this dragon, so that I
can get the books back, if I can. And...
someone told me to come and ask you about
courage." She felt her voice tailing off. It
would have been better not to have come.
27
 The mayor stood up from his desk and
went to the window, gave a tug and opened
it. A cool gust of wind blew in and
disturbed the dull atmosphere of the office.
Straight away, its smell put Maria in mind of
the open road and adventure.
"Courage?" said the mayor. "What
makes you think I can tell you about
courage?"
"Someone told me you have courageous
people working here. And they said that
you might send one of them with me to
protect me."
She saw the mayor smiling at her as
though he was an uncle and she was a
young niece, and a sudden surge of
annoyance ran through her heart. "But I
don't need protection, your worship." (This
is the proper way to talk to a mayor.) "I
thought I could ask them if they knew about
courage. And dragons. Anything new that I
didn't know about the proper way to deal
with them. I'm researching them, you see."

28
 "Young lady," said the mayor, "nobody in
this town knows more about courage than I
do. What can be more terrifying than a
career in local politics? What can be more
bloodthirsty than a well-fought battle in the
council chamber? But nobody in this office
knows anything about mythical or extinct
animals. That is a matter for central
government. Do you have nothing to ask
about council tax? Refuse collection? Local
election protocol? If not, I think this
interview needs to come to an end."
At that moment, a flash of yellow and
black buzzed in through the window. The
wasp circled the mayor's head and came to
rest on his shoulder. The mayor jumped out
of his seat and started batting his hands at
the wasp. "Shoo! Go away, you horrible
thing!" he shrieked.
"Wait, wait," said Maria, "don't flap at it.
It will make the wasp angry, and angry
wasps are harder to deal with. Look, try
this."

29
 She took an empty glass from the
mayor's desk, turned it upside down, and
gently placed it over the mayor's shoulder.
The mayor watched wide-eyed but said
nothing. Then she took the memorandum
pad from the mayor's desk and slid it in
between the glass and the mayor's shoulder.
The wasp crawled around on the
memorandum pad and up the sides of the
glass, but it could not get out.
"See, it's all safe now," said Maria. "I'll
take it outside and set it free."
"Young lady," said the mayor again, but
his face was white and his voice was faint.
"I see you already have true courage
aplenty in your heart. I'm sorry I doubted
you. Here..."
He pulled out a sheet of notepaper with
the borough coat of arms in gilt on the top.
Taking a pen, he wrote carefully in beautiful
curly letters, and read aloud as he wrote:
"Know all men by these presents that the
bearer is braver than anyone in Royston,

30
and is hereby considered eminently
qualified to fight and conquer any dragon.
There," he said, handing it to her. "In case
anyone doubts your courage."
"Is that all I need to kill a dragon?"
Maria sounded dubious.
"Possibly, possibly not," said the mayor,
"but it's the most important thing.
Whatever else you might need, without
courage I'm sure you will never get
anywhere. Now, please, would you take that
wasp away?"
Maria thanked the mayor and carried
the wasp outside to freedom. Then she
swung her leg over the bicycle again and
pedalled off towards a freedom of her own.

31
3. A sword

A
few hours after she left
Royston, Maria came to the
town of Biggleswade. She
locked her bike up outside the church and
sat down beside a tombstone to eat her
sandwiches. The sandwiches were cheese
and chutney.
The sun was shining again, and it had
been warming her skin on the path up to the
church. Now, the church tower stood guard
over her and kept her cool from the
sunshine. The tower was made of grey
stone with flints in every so often. The
bellringers were practicing something
called "called changes" in the tower, and
everything was rather peaceful, though I
suppose Maria might not have felt so happy
if she was one of those people who do not
enjoy the sound of bells.
Just as Maria was finishing her
sandwiches, a woman in a black shirt
strolled past. She looked like a very busy
32
person who has been surprised by finding a
few of their hours unoccupied, and is
slightly bothered by their brief freedom.
"Hello," said Maria, who was always
polite. "I'm Maria."
"Hello," said the woman, "I'm Mother
Margaret. I'm the priest at this church."
"You look like a busy person. Are you
busy today, then?"
"Well, you see, I'm a schoolteacher
during the week. I only do the priest thing
on Sundays and when I'm needed. But as it
happens it's half-term this week and the
children don't need me at the school, so I
thought I would come and see whether I
was needed at the church."
Maria nodded.
"Now you know something about me.
But who are you? Tell me a bit about
yourself," said the priest, looking at Maria's
bicycle. It was a blue bicycle, and it looked

33
rather battered and ready for adventures.
"Are you going on a journey somewhere?"
"Yes, I'm on quite an important journey.
Well, it's important to me, anyway. I'm
trying to find the dragon which took my
library books," said Maria.
"I thought dragons were extinct," said
the priest, as everyone always did.
"One of them isn't, at least. It took my
library books," Maria explained again. She
had learned many years before that if you
want someone to hear something important,
you had better be ready to say it more than
once.
The priest nodded, and said "I see.
Well, if it's taken your library books, it can't
be extinct. I hope you find it."
She seemed about to leave, but Maria
suddenly remembered her research, and
decided to see whether the priest could give
her any new ideas. "What do you think you
would want to have, if you had to go and

34
catch a dragon? Apart from courage, that
is."
Mother Margaret thought for a good
while, and she put her hand to her lips to
show she was thinking. Then she said, "In
all the stories I've ever read about dragons,
someone has wanted a sword. Do you have
a sword?"
"No," said Maria, "but I don't know what
good a sword would be. I don't know how to
handle a sword."
"You might be better off with one,
anyway. Suppose the dragon saw it and
decided you were someone worth reckoning
with? A dragon wouldn't know whether you
knew how to use it," said the priest. "Do
you know, we have a sword in the
churchyard here? Maybe you could borrow
it."
"Won't it be awfully rusty?" asked
Maria.
"Possibly," said Mother Margaret, "but
do come and have a look anyway."
35
 She led the way around the corner of
the church to a shady place under a dark
green yew tree. There in the grass stood a
large square stone. A sword was plunged
into the middle of the stone, a sword as long
and thick as Maria's arm, and as she had
guessed, it was very rusty. There were
some words carved into the stone. Even
though they were covered with moss, Maria
could see that they said, "Who pulls this
sword from this stone is rightful Lord and
King of all England."
"Or Lady and Queen, of course," said
Mother Margaret. "Can you pull it out? Go
on, do give it a try."
Maria gave a dutiful tug, but the sword
remained in its place.
"It's strange," said the priest, "but
nobody seems to be able to pull the sword
out. We did have the Queen herself visiting
Biggleswade a few years ago, but I didn't
like to ask whether she could manage it.
After all, perhaps she wouldn't have been

36
able to, and then it would have provoked a
constitutional crisis. Lots of other people
have tried, though, and nobody's succeeded.
Perhaps there aren't any rightful kings any
more."
"Maybe I don't need a sword, though,"
said Maria hopefully. Her muscles were
aching just at the thought of having to carry
the sword she saw in front of her.
"Well, you might want to try another
sword," said the priest, with a purposeful
look on her face. She turned and strode
away, and Maria followed her through a side
door into the church building. It was cool
and airy inside, a welcome change from the
heat, and the bells sounded muffled indoors.
There, in a side aisle, they came upon a
similar stone, except that this one was
slightly smaller and less mossy. But the
sword which stood in this stone was a
fencing sword, much thinner and not at all
as rusty. A convenient shaft of blue light fell
from a stained-glass window onto the

37
writing on the stone, and the writing said:
"Who pulls this sword from this stone is
rightful Lord and Mayor of all Biggleswade."
"Or Lady and Mayor, of course," said
Mother Margaret. "Can you pull it out?"
Maria bent down and gave a
tremendous pull, but the sword remained
just as still as the one before it.
"It's no good. I'm sure I'm not a mayor
or a queen," said Maria. "I'm just me."
"Well, thank you for trying," said the
priest. "These swords have been around
here for years. I keep hoping that their true
owners will turn up some day or another.
You never know."
Maria thanked the priest and began to
leave the church. But as she reached the
entryway (the proper word for it is the
narthex, and it had great red doors leading
to the outside world) she stopped to look at
yet another stone standing off to one side.

38
 This stone was quite small, compared to
the other two, and the sword buried in it
was only as long as Maria's forearm. The
sword was covered in symbols and patterns
which Maria could not understand, but she
could read the writing on the stone. It said,
"Who pulls this sword from this stone is
rightful Lord and Master of himself."
"Or herself," said the priest from behind
Maria, making her jump and turn around.
"I was only looking," she said.
"Go on, see whether you can pull it
free," said the priest.
Maria knelt down so that she had a
better view of what she was doing, put out
one hand, and grasped the hilt of the sword.
Then, as easily as pulling a knife out of the
butter, Maria pulled the sword out of the
stone and laid it on the flagstones of the
floor.
The priest gave a little jump of
happiness and clapped her hands. "I knew
it! I knew someone would come along one
39
day and claim one of the swords. Thank
you! You may keep it if you like, and take it
on your travels to find the dragon. Do you
mind if I write a paper on the subject for the
Historical Society?"
"Not at all," said Maria. She tied the
sword to her belt as best she could. Then
she asked, "Can you tell me what these
symbols all over the sword mean?"
The priest bent down and gazed at the
blade as it hung by Maria's leg, but then she
shook her head. "I have no idea, I'm sorry.
There are some wise people in Leighton
Buzzard, if that's on your way. They might
know."
"I should be passing through Leighton
Buzzard tomorrow," said Maria. "Thank
you!" And she pushed open the great red
doors and walked back out into the
sunshine. She was the master of a new
sword, it was true, but more importantly,
she had certainly been proved to be the lord
and master of herself.

40
(and here the preview ends)

41