Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(122)

him found him strong and steady, so he hired him again, to pick

vegetables, paint a fence, any odd work that comes up around a farm.

He recommended Ivan to others, so there was soon a steady trickle

of odd jobs that brought in enough money for him to buy bread and

meat. The farmer who had originally hired him gave him vegetables

that were too ripe for market.

He could never be gone long, because Blanchfleur would remind

him in no uncertain terms that taking care of the lizards was his task, not hers. Whenever he came back, they were clean and fed and doing something orderly, like playing board games.

“Why do they obey you, and not me?” he asked, tired and cross.

He had just washed an entire family’s laundry.

“Because,” she answered.

After dinner, once the lizards had been put to bed, really and

finally put to bed, he would sit in the parlor and read the books

on the shelves, which were all about travel in distant lands. Among them were the books of Dame Emilia Lizard. They had titles like Up the Amazon in a Steamboat and Across the Himalayas on a Yak. He found them interesting—Dame Lizard was an acute observer, and he learned about countries and customs that he had not even known

existed—but often he could scarcely keep his eyes open because he

was so tired. Once Blanchefleur returned from her evening hunt, he

would go to sleep in Dame Lizard’s room. He could tell it was hers

because the walls were covered with photographs of her in front of

temples and pyramids, perched on yaks or camels or water buffalos,

dressed in native garb. Blanchefleur would curl up against him, no

longer pretending not to, and he would fall asleep to her soft rumble.

In winter, all the lizards caught bronchitis. First Andromache

started coughing, and then Ajax, until there was an entire household of sick lizards. Since Ivan did not want to leave them, Blanchefleur went into town to find the doctor.

? 361 ?

? Blanchefleur ?

“You’re lucky to have caught me,” said the doctor when he arrived.

“My train leaves in an hour. There’s been a dragon attack, and the

King has asked all the medical personnel who can be spared to help

the victims. He burned an entire village, can you imagine? But I’m

sure you’ve seen the photographs in the Herald.”

Ivan had not—they did not get the Herald, or any other newspaper, at Dame Lizard’s house. He asked where the attack had occurred, and sighed with relief when told it was a fishing village on the coast. His father was not in danger.

“Nothing much I can do here anyway,” said the doctor. “Bronchitis

has to run its course. Give them tea with honey for the coughs, and tepid baths for the fever. And try to avoid catching it yourself!”

“A dragon attack,” said Blanchefleur after the doctor had left. “We haven’t had one of those in a century.”

But there was little time to think of what might be happening far

away. For weeks, Ivan barely slept. He told the lizards stories, took their temperature, made them tea. Once their appetites returned, he found them the juiciest worms under the snow. Slowly, one by

one, they began to get better. Medea, the smallest of them and his

secret favorite, was sick for longer than the rest, and one night when she was coughing badly, he held her through the night, not knowing what else to do. Sometimes, when he looked as though he might fall

asleep standing up, Blanchefleur would say, “Go sleep, Ivan. I’ll stay up and watch them. I am nocturnal, you know.”

By the time all the lizards were well, the marsh marigolds were

blooming, and irises were pushing their sword-like leaves out of the ground. The marshes were filled with the sounds of birds returning from the south: the raucous cacophony of ducks, the songs of

thrushes.

Ivan had forgotten how long he had been in the marsh, so he was

startled when one morning he heard the front door open and a voice

call, “Hello, my dears! I’m home!” And there stood Dame Lizard, with her suitcases strapped to her bicycle, looking just as she had left a year ago, but with a fuchsia scarf around her throat.

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? Theodora Goss ?

The lizards rushed around her, calling “Mother, Mother, look

how we’ve grown! We all have names now! And we know about the