In a very far off land lay the town of Var.
It had a small number of houses and was located in the middle of a trade route,
which explained its existence. The people of Var were used to foreigners
passing through, sometimes without even saying a word and other times staying
for days, enjoying the beer the people of the region had learned to make. What
was most particular about Var was that most of the time it was covered by a
dense fog. No one knew why that was. Some believe in the folk tale that the town
had being built by the devil on top of a fissure in the ground that lead
directly to his lair in the center of the planet. Others, more scientific minds
if you will, thought the fog was related to the mountain chain that passed
close to Var, a chain that was largely unexplored and that housed a couple of
volcanoes.
In Var lived various types of people. But one
of the most interesting ones was Gerta. She was one of the various women that
were in charge of washing the linen and the clothing of other people and were
paid for this. Gerta liked her job because it required her to leave town and go
to a nearby river to wash by hand. There, all the ladies would reunite and
talk, sing and discuss various subjects in the peace and quiet of the outskirts
of the town. But Gerta would rather listen most of the times. She found herself
to be not all that interesting and very clumsy when speaking.
There was a subject, however, that she didn’t
like to discuss: children. The other women talked about their girls and their
boys and what they did or had learned or said at home but Gerta couldn’t do any
of that, even if she had been interested in speaking out loud. That was because
Gerta, who had turned forty years old recently, had never had any children and
the possibilities of that happening were just getting more and more slim.
You see, Gerta was a big lady in all the
physical sense and men had never appreciated her silences, which could last for
days. They thought she was dumb and simple and would only trust her with their
clothes and nothing more. Sometimes she thought about this, when the other
women started discussing their married lives and their duties as mothers, but
to be honest most of the time Gerta was busy dreaming.
What did she dreamt about? Simple. She would
think of a prince from a faraway land that would fall in love with her and
would take her on his horse to travel the world and live in adventure and
romance for the rest of her days. Every time she saw a foreigner or a caravan
of merchants crossing Var, she would stare at them one by one and not move
until all of them had passed through town. She saw their clothing, the way they
behave, and knew that she wanted to one day leave Var forever and not comeback
to her simple ways of being a washerwoman.
After washing the clothes, Gerta would
normally help her father, her mother had been dead for some years, in their
small crop. The ground around town had turned arid in recent years, many said
because of the foreign horses, so the land that people could use to grow food
was always shrinking, getting smaller and smaller. Gerta would plow the land;
pick up the carrots and potatoes and clean lettuces and various medicinal
plants that his father had used for years in the making of medicine for his
small pharmacy.
It was a renowned store, where people from
every corner of the world came to buy remedies for their illnesses and pains.
His father was well known but the amount of medicine he could do had been
declining steadily for the last few years. He was growing old and almost blind
so he had taught Gerta how to manage the store and how to process the
medicines. The truth was that he would have preferred to have a son or at least
one more child that was a male but that hadn’t happened. So he taught
everything he knew to Gerta and told her the store was one of the pillars of
Var and that she couldn’t let it crumble. She needed to form a family to keep
it alive, long after his death.
One day his father felt especially ill and lay
in bed. The store had to be closed, as there were no medicines to sell. Many
ingredients had not been harvested but Gerta knew where to find them so she
entrusted her father to a doctor and left town for the mountains. His father
had been there for many years, since he was a naughty kid, picking up plants
and roots. She took a book with her where her father had drawn all the plants
needed to make medicine so it would be easier for her to spot everything.
The think god also covered the mountains and
by midday, Gerta knew she was lost. She tried to find her way back to the main
path but she had definitely taken a wrong turn somewhere and now there was no
way to go back. She was feeling desperate when suddenly she realized she had
been climbing the mountain. The fog was disappearing and the soil had turned
black, covered with rocks. She found her first root and then another and so on
for hours. She would put them all in a basket she had brought and grabbed
everything she could, as she had no idea when she would be coming back.
But suddenly the ground shook and Gerta
screamed, afraid for her life. It seemed like an earthquake but it wasn’t. And
she knew it wasn’t because the ground moved and she fell and, before hitting
her head, she saw a shape beyond the now light fog and the clouds. She woke up
several hours later, already at night. What was amazing was that she was at
entrance of a cave, looking out to the starry night. Somehow, she had walked to
the cave’s entrance after falling or someone had brought her here. It didn’t
matter as she needed to go back home soon or her dad would worry. She stood up
and then realized her basket had disappeared.
It wasn’t in the cave or in the outside of it.
That was frustrating as Gerta had been especially happy about finding all of
those roots and plants so fast and in all the same place. She was now tired and
dirty and felt bad that her trip had been useless. She started walking out of
the cave but from the sky fell an enormous figure and just some meters in front
of her a gigantic head with bright yellow eyes and a long snout with warm
nostrils at the end. She was looking straight at the face of a dragon and the
dragon was looking at her.
Her reaction would have been to scream or run
or both but Gerta couldn’t do anything. She couldn’t move or react in any way
and was afraid she had been frozen in the spot. A few clouds in the night sky
moved, revealing the moon and, in turn, revealing the true size of the
creature. Now, Gerta did scream. It was pitch black, covered in scales and with
a body capable of destroying a whole town in just a few movements. She had no
idea if he could breath fire but that wasn’t something she was interested in
finding out. She wanted to go back home but couldn’t.
To make her shut up, the monster talked and
that was even worse. Gerta screamed like mad but the monster then kicked the
ground to make her stop. Apparently getting it, Gerta shut up and the monster
greeted her, telling her he had been the one to put her in the cave. He had
done it because wolves came out at night and would have eaten her alive if she
had stayed in mid part of the mountain. However, it had been him that had
caused her to fall. After all, she had been walking on him.
The dragon explained to a shaking Gerta that
the roots and plants were part of the mountain and that he had been entrusted
with the care of all the mountain chain. Gerta had heard the legends of
merchants encountering dragons but everyone thought it was a just a tale for
children. The monster said he forgave Gerta for her intrusion only because he
knew her father with whom he had made a deal: he would let Gerta’s father take
roots and plants if he made the dragon a potion for his sore throat. That way
they lived in peace.
Then Gerta, with a weak voice, explained she
had come because her father was ill and he was already very old. She promised
to make his potion too if he let her go with the roots and plants as she had
told her father the store would not die with him. The dragon thought of this
and then looked straight to Gerta’s eyes. She felt dizzy, as if he was able to
read her mind. He then said he didn’t need the medicine anymore but that he was
thankful anyway. So he would grant her a wish in honor of her father and the gratitude he felt towards him. He would
let her, and only her and her family, pick up the goods from the mountains.
Gerta told him she didn’t know what to wish
for but the dragon told her the wish had already been granted, so she could go
home now. Gerta didn’t understand. At least not after a few months when she
realized she was pregnant. The dragon had given her the gift of a family, to
keep on with the store but mostly to make her happy and make Gerta realize her
true potential as a human being. From that day on, she thanked the dragon by
praying at the foot of the mountain with her child, who grew up to be a great
man.
