St George and the Dragon

Long ago, in a walled city at the edge of a wide dry plain, there was a dragon. He lived in the marsh beyond the walls, and he was enormous, and every morning the city sent out two sheep, and every morning he ate them and went back to sleep. Everybody agreed it was a reasonable arrangement. Then the sheep ran out. The city argued for three days. On the fourth, having thought of nothing better, they drew lots to decide who should go out instead, and the lot fell to the king's own daughter, which nobody had planned and nobody could undo. She went out at dawn in a white dress, because she said she would rather go herself than watch them send somebody else. She was standing at the edge of the marsh when a knight came along the road. His name was George. He had been riding since the spring, and he was tired and dusty, and carried a round shield with a red cross on it. "What are you doing?" he said. "Waiting," said the princess. "For what?" She told him. George got down off his horse and looked at the marsh for a while. "Go back to the gate," he said. "I would like to talk to him." The dragon came up out of the water like a green hill standing on end. He was as long as the street behind them, his eyes were amber, and he was making a low sound that shook the puddles. George did not draw his sword. He set the shield down on the ground and stood beside it with his hands open, which was the bravest thing anybody in that city had ever seen. "You are hungry," he said. The dragon stopped. "There is a river six miles north with more fish in it than you could eat in a hundred years," said George, "and nobody living along it at all. I came past it yesterday. I will show you, if you like." The dragon looked at him for a very long time. Then he put his head down on the mud, and the low sound turned into a different sound altogether, and George reached out and laid his hand flat on the great scaled nose, which nobody had ever done. They went north together at walking pace, the knight on his horse and the dragon following, and the whole city stood on the walls and watched them go and did not say a word. George came back nine days later, alone, and said the river suited him very well. The city put up a statue of the two of them side by side, which visitors always misunderstood. And once a year the dragon came down the plain to sit outside the walls for an afternoon, and the children were taken out to see him, and the city sent out two sheep for old times' sake. The end.