– 3 –
Saul is a kid. He’s a smith-dwarf kid, a svart-elf kid. He grows up in the fields and the lich-rows. He plays among the eoliths and the cobblestones that are deep under the surfaces of things.
He milks the blood-draugr. He collects the lung-eggs. He hauls hay into Barnface.
It is a lot of work.
“I wish I could skip my chores,” he says, miserably, one evening.
“I’m sorry, honey,” says Aubrid, who is his mom. She musses his hair. “It’s just, if you’re bad, Hans will prison you away.”
“I know,” Saul sighs.
Goodness/Badness Report: SAUL
Good
He doesn’t complain after that. Not for years and years.
He just grows up.
. . .
One day Saul finds a puppy. It’s a naturally formed puppy — it’s growing out of an eolith, and its body hasn’t decided whether it wants to be one wolf or three wolves yet. It has three heads and it is drooling acid. It is struggling to break itself loose from the rock. It looks very hungry, as puppies often do while they are being born.
Saul walks closer. The puppy yaps at him.
“Oh, come on,” says Saul.
The puppy glints its eyes at him. It snaps at the air.
Goodness/Badness Report: PUPPY
Bad
The puppy is evil.
. . .
Saul pulls a steak out of his svart-bag. It is wrapped in paper. He unwraps it. He holds it out to the puppy. Originally the steak was for the river-men but they can go hungry for a day. What is the worst that can possibly happen?
. . .
The puppy whimpers, then it hangs its head.
It lets Saul approach.
It snaps up the steak. It chews on it between two of its heads and it lets Saul pet the runt.
Saul has a hammer now. He has palmed it when the puppy wasn’t looking. He hammers the puppy free of the stone.
It falls to the ground with a clunk.
“There now,” Saul says. He ruffles its heads. It finishes the steak. It looks at him.
It loves him, utterly and totally, from that moment on.
. . .
Saul tries to hammer the puppy the rest of the way free, if only so he can figure out whether it’s currently one puppy with three heads or three puppies with their bodies stuck together, but he can’t. The joints are too close to the puppy’s spine — he can’t hammer them very hard!
“I’ll take you home,” he says, instead.
. . .
Saul and his puppy play together in the fields.
He grows up.
He fixes the tractor. He rebinds the limbs of the great round-bellied field demon. He leaves some milk and shoes out at night for the cobblers to fix.
That’s the kind of life one gets, a svart-elf among svart-elves, in their fields and farms and caves and palaces underneath the earth.
“Mother,” he says, one day, “I think that I am working harder than I must, simply to not be bad.”
“I know,” she says.
“Why?”
“If you’re good,” she tells him. “If you’re good, if you’re good enough, then the sugar fairies will come and they will carry you away.”
“. . . oh,” Saul says.
Goodness/Badness Report: SAUL
Good
He goes back to work.
. . .
Saul goes to school, when he’s old enough. Well, he goes to school some.
Aubrid doesn’t hold much with education, herself. She figures a smith-dwarf ought to be able to make a crown of smartening if they really need one, or a magic ring of knowing stuff — she’s not sure what stuff. Just, stuff. You know.
She doesn’t believe in school, but she wants Saul to give it a good try anyway. So he does.
. . .
Every week when the grim white arms of the schoolbus seize Saul up and drag him into its mouth, and further in, the puppy barks. It licks the bus.
The bus writhes in its discomfort and it shakes itself and its engine groans.
Then the puppy sits down and it waits patiently for Saul, for its Saul, to come home.
It hasn’t gotten much bigger. It is still trapped inside the stone. The stone creaks and cracks, sometimes. The puppy licks it with its acid-dripping tongue. The puppy’ll get there — but not yet, and a puppy trapped in stone doesn’t grow too well.
. . .
The years pass.
Each time Saul comes home — whether it’s from working in town, or school, or from a date with his lady love — the puppy is happy. It dances in delight.
One day Saul turns sixteen.
“Have you been good?” Saul’s mother asks.
“I have,” says Saul.
Suddenly there are tears in his eyes although he doesn’t quite know why.
“I thought so,” Aubrid says softly. So she gets up from their breakfast. She goes around the table. She hugs him. She tries to let go, but only hugs him tighter. Actually letting go takes a second try.
“Go on, then,” she tells him.
He looks at her.
“The sugar fairies are here.”
. . .
Saul goes to the door.
He looks back.
“Can the puppy come?” he asks.
“I’m sorry,” Aubrid says.
. . .
“I never got to break it free,” Saul says.
“I know,” Aubrid says. Tears are running down her face, but she is smiling.
. . .
“OK,” Saul says, because the smith-dwarves aren’t much for partings, and he turns, awkwardly, and he goes out the door, and the sugar-fairies find him.
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