Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(121)

but she always gets us mixed up.”

“I’ll have to give you names,” said Ivan, although he was afraid that he would get them mixed up as well. “Let’s at least go in. Blanchefleur and I are tired, and we need to rest.”

But once they stepped inside, Ivan found there was no place to

rest. All of the furniture in the parlor had been piled in a corner to make a fort.

“If I’m going to take care of you, I need to learn about you,” said Ivan. “Let’s sit down—” But there was nowhere to sit down. And the

lizards, all seven of them, were no longer there. Some were already inside the fort, and the others were about to besiege it.

“Come out!” he said. “Come out, all of you!” But his voice was

drowned by the din they were already making. “What in the world

am I supposed to do?” he asked Blanchefleur.

She twitched her tail, then said in a low voice, “I think it’s the Seige of Jerusalem.” Loudly and theatrically, she said, as though to Ivan, “Yes, you’re right. The French are so much better at cleaning than

the Saracens. I bet the French would clean up this mess lickety split.”

Ivan stared at her in astonishment. Then he smiled. “You’re wrong,

Blanchefleur. The Saracens have a long tradition of cleanliness. In a cleaning contest, the Saracens would certainly win.”

“Would not!” said one of the besiegers. “Would too!” came a cry

from the fort. And then, in what seemed like a whirlwind of lizards, the fort was disassembled, the sofa and armchairs were put back in their places, and even the cushions were fluffed. In front of Ivan stood a line of seven lizards, asking, “Who won, who won?”

“The Saracens, this time,” said Blanchefleur. “But really, you know, it’s two out of three that counts.”

Life in the Lizard household was completely different than it had

been in Professor Owl’s tower. There were days when Ivan missed the silence and solitude, the opportunity to read and study all day long. But ? 359 ?

? Blanchefleur ?

he did not have much time to remember or regret. His days were spent catching insects and spiders for the lizards’ breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner, making sure that they bathed and sunned themselves, that they napped in the afternoon and went to bed on time.

At first, it was difficult to make them pay attention. They were

as quick as seven winks, and on their outings they had a tendency

to vanish as soon as he turned his back. Ivan was always afraid he

was going to lose one. Once, indeed, he had to rescue Number Two

from an eagle, and Number Five had to be pulled out of a foxhole.

But he found that the hours spent working on the Encyclopedia of

All Knowledge stood him in good stead: if he began telling a story, in an instant they would all be seated around him, listening intently.

And if he forgot anything, he would ask the pen he had made from

Professor Owl’s tail feather to write it out for him. Luckily, Dame Lizard had left plenty of paper and ink.

He gave them all names: Ajax, Achilles, Hercules, Perseus, Helen,

Medea, Andromache. They were fascinated by the stories of their

names, and Medea insisted she was putting spells on the others, while Hercules would try to lift the heaviest objects he could find. Ivan learned to tell them apart. One had an ear that was slightly crooked, one had a stubby tail, one swayed as she walked. Each night, when he tucked them in and counted the lizard heads—yes, seven heads lay on the pillows—he breathed a sigh of relief that they were still alive.

“How many more days?” he would ask Blanchefleur.

“You don’t want to know,” she would reply. And then she would go

out hunting, while he made himself dinner. Of course he could not

eat insects and spiders, or mice like Blanchefleur. On the first night, he looked in the pantry and found a bag of flour, a bag of sugar, some tea, and a tinned ham. He made himself tea and ate part of the tinned ham.

“What in the world shall I do for food?” he asked Blanchefleur.

”What everyone else does. Work for it,” she replied. So the next day, he left the lizards in her care for a couple of hours and went into the town that lay along the road Dame Lizard had taken. It was a small ? 360 ?

? Theodora Goss ?

town, not much larger than the village he had grown up in. There, he asked if anyone needed firewood chopped, or a field cleared, or any such work. That day, he cleaned out a pigsty. The farmer who hired