"Are you all right?" The old man squinted down at her.
"Go away!" Berla shouted. "Leave me alone!"
"Rhojë alive, can it really be?" The old man's eyes went round as robin's eggs. "No, it's just not possible," he answered his own question. "Your mind is playing tricks on you, old man—But it's her voice! I'd recognize that voice anywhere. You heard it too, don't deny it—The devil take your hearing, man! Use your eyes. She doesn't look a thing like her. Well, except the mouth and nose do take after her grandmother..." He smacked his lips together as he pondered the conundrum. "Say something else!" he called down to her.
"I said go away!" Berla repeated, underscoring the command with a stomp of her foot.
A look of joy swept over the hermit's lined face. "Ord's gourds! It is you!" He hopped up and down like an agitated flea. "Ha! I knew you had some gumption! All these months I'd given you up for dead and here you are looking hale as a harp. Oh, praise Rhojë! A miracle!"
Berla's heart sank. Clearly, the hermit had been very attached to his goat and was exceedingly happy to have found it again. Why else would he be carrying on like that? No matter, it was hers now. Finders keepers, people were always saying, though it was usually Berla's things that wound up getting found by someone else, often before she had even had a chance to lose them. Not this time. Striking her most commanding pose, she decided to set the record straight once and for all. "Goatee's mine and you can't have him!"
The old man peered down at her with furrowed brows.
"He likes it here," she explained. "And he doesn't want to leave." Goatee added his weight to the argument, sidling over to her side and braying warningly at the intruder.
"Goatee?" The old man affected a sour face. "What in Ord's ever-burning name is a goatee?"
"I do declare, you should watch your language." She waggled a finger at him. One thing mother and grammy had both agreed on was that coarse language was not to be tolerated. "You can't have him and that's that."
"I'm not here for your goat, if that's what you mean."
Berla chewed on this for a moment. If he wasn't here for her goat, she couldn't very well imagine what the old man might be doing up there on the edge of her pit. Then again, he might be trying to fool her. People were always trying to fool her on account of her slow-ness. "What do you want, then?" she asked.
The old man stood up straighter. "I'm here to rescue you."
"Rescue me? From what?"
"From the dragon, of course."
"Oh." Berla's head was beginning to hurt. She had not had to think this hard in months. The old man wasn't making any sense.
"Come on, then," said the old man. "We don't have all day. The dragon might come back at any moment."
Berla brightened at this news. "Would you like to meet him?"
"Meet him?!" the old man squawked. "Have you lost your chorling mind?"
"Chorling?" Berla repeated the unfamiliar word.
"Don't say that, it's..." The old man paused and scratched his head, threatening to dislodge the few wisps of hair that still clung to his scalp like dandelion pollen. "Listen, uh, Berla, is it?"
"I named him Goatee."
"Not the goat. Your name. Berla, right?"
Berla managed a nod.
"I'm Moribus Ansol Polibdemus the Third," he introduced himself. "I'm an old friend of your grandmother's."
"If you're her friend, then why did you hide behind a woodpile and scare her so bad she broke all her eggs? It's not nice to break people's eggs," Berla admonished.
The old man was momentarily taken aback. "Well, that was a long time ago. How did you know about that?"
The wind worked itself up into a sudden frenzy, causing the old man's cloak to flap about him like ungainly wings. When it had passed, he looked imploring and grave. "Listen, Berla, we haven't got much time. I've come to take you home but I'm going to need your help. It's what your grandmother would have wanted. What do you say? Will you help me?"
"Oh, sure," Berla agreed. Grammy had always taught her it was good to help others in need. Perhaps the old man was cold standing up there in the wind and wanted to come down into her pit where it was warmer.
The hermit got down on his stomach and stretched out his arms toward her. "Come on, then. Let's get you out of there."
Berla moved over to the wall and reached up her arms, but at least ten feet separated her fingers from the hermit's. "I can't reach," she said. "I bet you could jump down, though."
"I can't come down after you," replied the old man. "I'd never get back up this thing. And I'm not strong enough to pull you out with a rope. You're going to have to climb out on your own."
"Climb out?" Berla said. Somewhere in the ponderous clockwork of her mind a cog was beginning to catch. "You mean leave here?"
"That's right. I'm taking you back home to your cottage in the woods."
"Home? Cottage?" The gears were really turning now. The old man wanted to take her back to her grammy's place, the one the mayor had taken from her and given to the family with twelve starving children. "I'm going home," she whispered to herself, feeling a mixture of relief and sadness. But when she looked down at Goatee with his toothy grin, lively black eyes and velvety nubs, she knew that she could never leave him behind. "Only if Goatee can come with me."
"Good Rhojë almighty!" the hermit crowed in disbelief. "You want to take the goat?"
"I'm not leaving without him."
"Very well—yes, yes, you can take the chorling goat."
"Can the dragon come to visit?"
"The devil himself can come to call for all I care. Only let's get you out of this godforsaken place."
"And my treasure too?"
"We'll come back for it."
That decided her. "I'm going home," she said with conviction.
"That a girl! Come on, then! Climb up!" He beckoned.
One look at the chasm wall crushed Berla's enthusiasm. Maybe a nimbler person could have scaled it with ease, but for someone of her girth it might as well have been the wall of a castle. "I can't climb that. I'm too fat!"
"Fat?" echoed the old man.
"Fat!" wailed Berla.
"But you're not fat at all. Why, you're skinny as a wasp."
"I am too fat!"
"You are not."
"Am too!" Berla stomped her foot.
The old man buried his face in his hands. "If this isn't a fine pickle. The simpleton and the curmudgeon, what a pair, eh? Between the two of you, you've got the makings for a village idiot—Think, dammit! You've convinced kings and cardinals to do your bidding. Surely you can convince a halfwit to hop out of a dragon pit—What would you suggest? That I wave my magic walking stick and cast a spell over her?"
"Who are you talking to?" Berla asked.
"Never mind me, Berla dear," he said. "I'm just trying to knock some sense into the unreasonable old man that lives in my head."
Berla marveled at this strange news. A man would have to be pretty small to fit inside someone's head. Then she remembered the tale of Candlestick Nick, who lived in a cupboard and bathed in soup pots. She figured he would be just about the right size. "How did he get in there?" she asked.
"I've often wondered that myself. Black magic, I suspect."
"You know magic?" Berla clapped her hands together excitedly.
"Why, yes," the old man brightened. "Now that you mention it, I do recall a spell or two."
"Do you know any spells that could make me not be so fat?" Berla asked hopefully.
The old man seemed to hesitate. "Well, you are pretty fat."
"I told you so!" She began to sob.
"Now don't you worry your fat little head, Berla dear. I've got just the thing for that. In fact, the fatter you are the better this magic works. It was made for giant ogres, see." The old man produced a pouch from somewhere inside his cloak, shook out a small brown object, and tossed it down into the pit where it landed with a series of wooden clicks. Before Berla could get a good look at it, it was gone in a flash of white teeth. "Goatee, no!"
"That's all right," the old man said. "It's part of the spell. That was a magic acorn, see. And when the acorn is eaten by a goat, it makes the, uh, person nearest to the goat, um, thin as a rod and, uh, strong as a bear."
"And beautiful?" Berla asked hopefully.
"Oh my, yes. Breathtaking."
"But I don't feel anything."
"You're not supposed to feel anything. But if you could see yourself right now... Woowee," he whistled. "If I were a man half so young and twice so bold, I might have to ravish you myself."
Though Berla wasn't sure what youth or boldness had to do with anything, the notion of looking at herself at least made some sense. She held out a hand and gasped in amazement. The spell was working! Her doughy fingers were slender as twigs, browned by the sun. With growing elation, she braved looking down at her feet. No longer blocked by the doughy bulge of her gut, she could see them without having to lean way over. They were flat and paddle-like instead of puffy and slug-shaped. She wriggled her legs about, watching their slim outlines move beneath the loose layers of tattered cloth that had once hugged her flesh. "Thin as a rod?" she repeated with a tad more confidence.
"And strong as a bear," replied the old man.
A feeling came over Berla like nothing she had ever experienced before. She felt indomitable. "I'm strong as a bear! Grrr!" She made claws with her hands.
"That's right, Berla dear. Here, tie this around one of the goat's legs so we can haul him up after you." He tossed down a coil of rope.
After a merry chase around the pit, Berla finally managed to wrestle Goatee to the ground and secure the rope around a hind leg. Holding the loose end between her teeth, she turned to face the rock wall. "Grrrr!" she growled, seizing a jut of rock and stepping up onto a ledge. Once she felt stable, she pushed off and planted the front of her lead foot into a seam barely more than an inch wide. Another push and another step up. Goatee tugged fitfully at the rope, almost causing her to lose her balance. Several times she jarred a knee or felt like the arches of her feet would snap. "Hrrr!" she growled, bit down harder on the rope and pressed on.
The handholds ran out at the lip of the wall, but the old man was waiting to seize her by the wrists. After much straining and groaning and a brief, sickening moment of weightlessness, Berla found herself tumbling forward onto level ground. Together, they managed to haul up the goat.
"Oooh!" Berla sighed, looking around. It had been many weeks since the dragon last carried her aloft and the world outside the pit seemed large and boundless. To one side, mountains soared skyward, clouds tangling in their peaks. In the opposite direction, the ground tumbled away precipitously, serrated stone yielding to bald ridges which gave way in turn to rolling hills stretching away to the hazy green horizon. She had the vague sensation of flying. "What's that up there?" She pointed to a tiny red speck floating in an azure sea of sky.
The old man's face drained of blood. "Quick, girl! We must hurry. There's a copse of pines a couple furlongs down this mountain. Go south until you come to a boulder that looks like a saddle. Then tack west until you—"
Berla stared at him blankly.
Taking her by the shoulders, he turned her to face downslope. "Go that way," he said. "Count to a thousand then find some place to hide. I'll find you later. And, uh..." With a suddenness that caught her off guard, he enveloped her in a hug.
Berla crinkled her nose. "Ooof! What's that smell?"
"Oh, almost forgot." He took a pouch from an inside pocket and, before she could protest, scooped out a handful of some putrid, whitish gloop which he commenced to smear on her shoulders. "There, that should do it. Now you smell like a bat."
The poo smell tickled Berla's memory. "Goatee!"
The goat had found the magical acorn pouch and emptied it of its contents. Berla wondered what effect the additional acorns would have on her. By this time, she must be as beautiful as a goddess and strong as a dragon. She picked up the goat and hugged it close to her chest. "You stay with me, you hear!"
"Go now!" The old man gave her a hard nudge before turning and heading the opposite way, straight toward the dark mouth of the dragon's lair.