Skanky Po
© Stephen Cain
1064 words
Stalagmites and stalactites of all sizes festooned the vast caves beneath the legendary Avay Far mountains. The Ton people that lived nearby used to give most of their best food to a large, scaly dragon that dwelt in the very deepest of the deep caves, believing their sacrifice would protect them and bring them great favour. As a matter of fact the dragon, whose name was Skanky Po, was eleven thousand years old and had become so wise that it could do practically anything, but the people never asked it for favours because they realised, of course, that anything as wise as an eleven-thousand-year-old dragon would surely know best what to do for them. Skanky Po would happily gobble up the food that was given it and go right back to sleep, which was the thing it liked to do best of all apart from eating.
There was a young man among the people who had been born with a memory so splendid that he never forgot a single thing, and a speaking voice that was, if anything, even more splendid than his memory. He wished above all else to become the village storyteller, and everyone agreed that he had the aptitude for it, but he was so bored with the tribe's stories there were only three of them anyway and it was not permitted to change them even slightly that he went to see the dragon one day and asked ever so politely, after giving it a sackful of food, whether it knew any good stories. Skanky Po was secretly pleased at being asked to tell stories (although it grumbled a fair bit for show) because no one had ever asked it to do anything before and it often felt that its vast cleverness was just going to waste. Skanky Po's stories were the most wonderful the young man who never forgot anything had ever heard. He rushed back to the village and announced to everyone he met that he had some brand-new stories to tell and he would do so at the village meeting that very evening! When the people that had gathered to hear him finally became silent he opened his mouth to speak, but to his great horror (and everyone else's amusement because the young man had been a bit of a know-it-all), nothing came out of it. He who never forgot had forgotten every single word of the dragon's stories! His shame was so great that he ran away from the village and hid.
The story of the young man who forgot everything spread far and wide and whenever people saw him they would point and laugh or so he imagined so he soon stopped talking to people and began to shun human company altogether. Everyone thought he had lost his mind and he certainly did wander around for a long time as though he were looking for something. One day he found his way back to Skanky Po's cave and, in a voice grown croaky from long disuse, asked the ancient scaly one why this dreadful thing had happened to him. The dragon explained that the stories it had told, being dragon-stories, could only be told in places where there were dragons. The confusion that had clouded the young man's mind cleared in seconds and he asked Skanky Po if it would come up to his world from the depths so that its wonderful stories could be heard by everyone. Skanky Po, who was quite proud of its literary prowess really, consented, albeit with a suitable degree of dragonish reluctance.
The young man returned triumphantly to his village. Smiling for the first time in years, he told everyone he met that he had been miraculously restored to sanity and would at last be able to tell them the new stories that he had previously mentioned. The people were doubtful at first, remembering how his last go at storytelling had turned out, but being, as they were, quite fond of a good yarn, they agreed to give him a second chance. They were glad they did! They were enchanted by the fresh, new stories character-driven and tightly plotted with that certain hard-to-define something ; but their enjoyment was short-lived because a dragon had come up to the land where people lived and had begun to terrorise them attacking villages, burning huts with its awful breath, and eating children. The young man had neglected to tell the people where the new stories had come from he had sort of hoped they would think he had thought of them himself, but the fact that the people did not know he was the cause of their terror did not make him feel any less awful about the whole thing. Summoning up all of his courage, the young man went to the valley where Skanky Po often liked to snooze after it had eaten its fill of children and asked as politely as he could whether it might perhaps like to think about returning to its underworld dragondom, cleverly pointing out that being fed on the tribe's sacrifices would give it quite a bit more time for sleeping. Skanky Po thought carefully about this, as dragons do, weighing up all of the pros and cons the sacrificed food he had lived on in the underworld wasn't quite as tasty as fresh children, but then you didn't have to run around to catch it, it didn't wriggle like so many nasty little earwigs the way children do, and it certainly didn't shriek and make that skanky pop children make when you squish their brains out between your fingers, so the dragon consented to go back to its cave far beneath the legendary Avay Far mountains, but its wonderful stories would go with it and would never again be heard by humankind.
The young man did I mention his name was George? told the people that he had slain the dragon with his mighty sword, although he had hastily added they had better carry on with the sacrifices of food because of the other dragon And while everyone agreed that George appeared to be becoming what he had always wanted to be, a bit of a storyteller, the dragon did seem to have gone away and it was probably sensible to continue to feed the other one if indeed any such thing existed! just in case.