I needed a children's story, so I made one here. This is a story commonly told among the kunjels. It is a moral tale. Its validity is not entirely known. Most kunjels will say that it really happened, and it has been debated whether or not this story is part of the Kundarthor. So far, it has not been voted in, but remains a story of some import. It tells the story of a character called Old Geeb, who steals a dragon's egg and what happens as a result.
This is a story that Drinna heard when she was a young girl from her father. It was, until just before her adventures in the Sea of Grass, one of her favorite stories, mainly because her father "did all the voices" for her, those of Old Geeb and Young Geeb.
The ending of this story (which I will not preview) sometimes changes, which keeps it out of the Kundarthor, between several alternatives, and when this story is performed before an audience, usually the audience can choose between Good Geeb and Bad Geeb based on a vote taken during the 'final judgment' section of the play. I will not tell you which is portrayed here in this story, but will let you judge for yourself which is which.
This story will be made available, in its final edited form, online at both Amazon and Smashwords, for free, I think. It's not really long enough to sell, and I want to offer a free story and hopefully build up some kind of audience.
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Old Geeb wasn't always Old Geeb. He became Old Geeb after he made his big mistake, lost his wife, and refused to correct it. He told everyone else that his mistake was not a mistake, but something he should have done a thousand times. He preached to the children, until the children told their mothers and fathers, and the reeselan told the priests. Eventually the story of Old Geeb's misdeeds and his refusal to acknowledge them became such a problem the knights had to be summoned to drive Old Geeb out of the little wolch where he lived and up into the mountains. They declared that he was a wayward and would not let him back into town until he confessed that he was wrong and made amends for it.
But Old Geeb was old before he got caught in his wild and bad tales. So many among the children wondered why it was so wrong what he had done and why it was wrong what he said to the children. What did he do? He stole a High Dragon's egg, exploiting the curse against High Dragons.
Many years ago, the High Dragons were cursed for what they did in the earliest of times. The Highest's curse upon them was that they were never to use their great and awesome powers to destroy the world or the souled creatures of the world again, because they were led astray by the Powerful First Dragon, Ollogriath. And the Highest's Curse made the dragons have to see their offspring diminish if they violated his mandate, which meant that if they had the stain of a soul's blood on their claws or their teeth or even upon their scales, their offspring would be less than they were. And thus, the lesser dragons, or low dragons were born. The low dragons could not speak as their parents could do, or dreambone or imagine, or perhaps they would not know the magic blood of the High Dragons. Most of them were no better than beasts, even if they did know magic, who wrought destruction or chaos through the world, and so that dragon's parents could only see that they had not created beauty or good in the world. They found their offspring were no better than the lesser creatures their kind had spurned and tried to eliminate from the world in their rebellion.
The first High Dragons under the curse, those who attempted to destroy the humans and the kunjels and the kinto-shah and all other souled creatures at first did not believe in the curse, though it was told to them in their hearts and minds. They produced hideous, wicked, beastly dragons who made fear and terror upon the world, who had neither love nor worth, and were fit only to live as the other animals.
But the High Dragons, who remained without the blemish of the souled blood, made every effort to avoid dealings with the lesser creatures. For with this purity in their hearts, they could dream bond with other dragons and in their dream bonding, they could finally cause their egg to grow into a full dragon, beautiful and complete, like themselves.
Old Geeb had stolen a dragon's egg, the work of a lifetime for one of us kunjels for a dragon to make. The great green dragon with two heads, what is called a gomeena among kunjelic dragon knowers, lived in the Forever Mountains, in a hidden cave. She and another dragon lay together and dreambonded together and after nearly a hundred years' time, they created between the two of them a single beautiful egg. Dragons take years to create their eggs together, because they have but one chance to make an offspring worthy of their minds and powers, something beautiful, good, and blessed with the same life they themselves enjoy.
And Geeb came to steal the egg. He did not steal it because the village needed protection, never mind that stealing a dragon's egg was probably the last thing that would protect it. He did not steal the egg because he had any bad feelings towards the dragon itself. He did not steal it because anyone else wanted it, either; no king had offered him gold for it, and not even the woman he stole it for wanted him to take it. He stole it to impress a woman who was completely and utterly unimpressed by the deed.
When Geeb became a dunor, he was betrothed to a young dunaya village woman named Bereel. Bereel was a maker, a woman who appraised and carved stone into statues of vors, of varshawks, of gremlins, or anything else. She liked to carve statues of famous people, too, like the old kings of Thortinis, or the heroes of the Drod Wars. She made chess sets and warfield sets out of marble quarried. Geeb was betrothed to her for two reasons: their arrangement was made when they were born, and because they both knew and liked to work with stone. Geeb had ambitions to go and work in the stone quarries or to mine, because he knew the Forever Mountains well, and he was a good climber, and a good finder of things. Often, he would bring back to his betrothed the very stones she carved.
And one day, when he was out in the Forever Mountains, he saw a great storm of dust and wind, and from this rose a huge blue-scaled and beautiful dragon. For old Geeb, it was actually the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. The monstrous creation was like a flying palace made of the most finely polished steel. Its horns and wings reflected the sun like mirrors, but mirrors that made anything looking into them look better. This was how Old Geeb would later describe it. The dragon actually had magical scales, and if you looked into one, you saw the good of yourself looking back at yourself. He said he saw one of those scales, but it was much too big and too heavy to pick up, and whenever he went back for it, it was disappeared again.
But this dragon, who was the mate of the gomeena, was just leaving to go and fetch some food for the two of them, and passed right over Geeb's head on his way. Likely, it would go and fetch some fligs in the mountains or maybe some nerns in the Sea of Grass, or maybe he would dive below the seas and eat fish and bring them back. The gomeena, in the meantime, was asleep for itself. For when dragons dreambond together, it is not like sleep in the sense that it gives rest or it refreshes. It is instead like two people building a house together, but a house made of only what the two of them can imagine together, and pieced together bit by bit, straw by straw, and brick by brick. And they are not making a house, but making a child.
And Geeb knew that dragons had fantastic things in their caves or the places where they rested. So, thinking the dragon that lived in the cave had gone, and knowing that most of the beautiful dragons lived solitary lonely lives away from people, Geeb visited the cave.
He found the beautiful green gomeena sleeping, and if he knew what to look for, he'd find it smiling with a happiness no mortal has ever experienced with our brains like little lockboxes. This green gomeena had the contentment of one who had done some great thing and knew it deep down in its heart that she had done. Perhaps it even communed with the infant dragon it had just created inside its egg, or perhaps it merely rested.
But the egg was absolutely beautiful. It's shell was as smooth and as perfect as the newest, shiniest armor could ever be, but all over its surface were peculiar marks, strange swirls and shapes like a form of writing. Old Geeb said it looked as though it were etched into the surface of the egg, like what his betrothed would do to a stone with a carving tool, but his hand could not feel any of these marks. The egg just was that way, he guessed. The only light in the cave was the light radiating off the sleeping dragon from one end and the light coming into the cave from the other. The dragon seemed to reflect more light than it had, and whatever light found its way to the egg reflected bright and glorious, like gold, but not the color of gold, like purest silver, but not the color of silver either. He said it was like metal, but like no metal any kunjel had ever worked. The egg was not very big, really, only about the size of a grass gremlin, and when he tried to pick it up, he found it was as light as if it were empty. He couldn't imagine some big metal thing like that being so light, but it was.
So he plucked it from the ground and ran away with it. He got to the mouth of the cave when he heard a roar like thunder behind him. Actually, two roars, for the dragon first screamed with one head, and then screamed with the other. Old Geeb ran as fast as he could go and he scurried up out of the cave and into the sunlight. The dragon was close behind him and Old Geeb said he could feel its breath on his back and its feet beating the ground to death. He didn't know if it would breathe fire on him or not, but he wasn't taking chances. He ducked into a cleft of rock with the egg hardly bigger than either of them. He didn't know the cleft was there before, but as the old saying goes: when you're running from a dragon a mousehole becomes a mansion. And so he hid.
The green gomeena thrashed its way from the cave and nearly slithered its way along the rocks and crags where Geeb had gone. It lashed its tongue so fast into the air, Old Geeb would say it made whipping sounds, but louder, like the breaking of stone. Its feet raked up dirt and stones bigger than Geeb himself as though they were mere pebbles. Each head turned in different directions, searching the sky and the ground and behind the trees, but somehow it missed where Geeb hid. Geeb said the sounds it made were like a bellowing roar, almost painful to listen to.
The gomeena went everywhere. Its tail lashed around and smashed cracks into the ground. Its two heads flipped this way and that. It had no wings, but its great claws raked and cracked and smashed everything. It roared and roared, and the search went on and on for hours, while Geeb stayed hidden.
The dragon seemed full angry, but Geeb could tell it was sad, and Geeb was mean-spirited enough to understand the dragon's pain, but not sympathize with it. Instead, as soon as the dragon allowed him to, he ran away, all the way back to his village with the egg. The other dragon returned, because Geeb said there were three outrageous howls in the mountains, like three storms colliding. But he wasn't going to give up his find yet. He would show the others in his village what he'd done; he would show them that he'd gone and found the egg and done the bravest thing anyone could ever do. He'd stolen from a dragon.
He showed the egg to his betrothed, but she was very upset. "Why have you done this? The dragons have never come into our lands and stolen from us, not the High Dragons. They have never harmed us in any way. Did I make you do this? Did I ask you to do this?"
"A kunjel takes trophies from the world around himself. When you hunt, do you not take a gremlin pelt now and again? I have gone into the mountains, and I have found a great prize. And you scold me for it? Let us not discuss it again. The egg will surely die without its parents, so that is that, and I am not going to get myself destroyed for the sake of one silly old dragon egg. When you see the villager's reactions to this, you will know that what I have done is right."
And so he took the egg on the back of his wagon into the village. And he showed the villagers. They were impressed, but not the way he thought they would be. Most of them were angry.
"What have you done?" They all cried at Geeb. "You have brought ruin to us. Surely the dragons will come to look for their egg. You have stolen their egg and they will kill us for it. The dragons that have lived in the Forever Mountains have left us alone; they are not the dragons of Gollithia who have killed us and driven us out of our homes. The dragons here do not wish to do us harm, and so far have not done. But now, they will come looking for their egg, and when they discover you have it, they will have cause to burn us all to ashes, or eat us up."
Most of the villagers did not know about the curse of dragons. Not even Geeb knew about the curse on the dragons.
"And just what will you do when this dragon hatches from the egg? Will you raise it as your offspring? Will you sit on it until it hatches?"
Geeb didn't think it would hatch without its parents. But, nevertheless, he went home with the egg, not feeling so well about his decision after all. However, a strange thing happened, then. He dreamed peculiar dreams, dreams where he knew things.
When he woke the first day, he found a half-finished statue his wife was making. He examined it while she was away finding more stones to work with, and then he took up her tools and finished the statue, and he made perhaps the best statue ever wrought from stone. When she returned, she was, at first, angry about what he'd done, but when she looked at the statue he had made, she agreed with him that it was better than what she would have done with it. She gave him one of the stones she had found and told him to make something of it, and she watched him. His technique was flawless, and he made a statue of a vor that was so well carved it looked as though it would leap off her worktable.
But his inspirations did not end there. The villagers found him picking berries and grasses and digging around in a mef pen and going all over and assembling a peculiar assortment of various things he could find, after which he didn't come out of his home for three days. When he finally did come out, he displayed on a gremlin hide, a painting made from the materials he had gathered. The painting was of nothing in particular that anyone could tell at first. It looked like hints of things, but when he told them that it was "Wind Over the Grasslands" they all agreed that this was exactly what it was. The High Priest over the village bought the painting for several trustmarks and kept it in his own thoughtroom for years and years, and it is still there to this day. And Geeb had invented a new style of painting, which would forever be called Geebism.
After these things, he took up philosophy in the Talking House. He brought smokeweed and sat with the other priests and thinkers of the village. People say he had all manner of inspirations to speak of. He spoke as though he had memorized the entirety of the Kundarthor and several other religious texts as well, and most people didn't think Geeb's reading had ever been all that good to begin with.
He began to predict things without people knowing how it could be done. He predicted when the rains would come. He predicted two plagues of insects before they came and a blight before it came, right down to the day. Village farmers will take any advice they can get, superstitious nonsense or no, and by harvest time, they asked him what he thought.
He went on carving with his betrothed as well, and he made money by the cartload, selling the amazing and realistic carvings to priests, to nobles, to knights, to children, to anyone who had money to buy them. He sold paintings, and mud sculptures, and all manner of things he made. He wove grass clothing that fit perfectly, and he found ways to improve the output of silk spiders.
The village flourished so much from his helping it, that the church of the village did not know how to respond. They held a counsel to discuss the matter.
"He has become a prophet," one village priest said. The high priest agreed with him, but another priest spoke against Geeb.
"It is not him. It is the egg he brought back. It is a dragon's egg, and not just any dragon's egg, but the egg of a High Dragon. It is magical and so he has been given magic. The egg must be destroyed."
"Why should we destroy such a gift? This village and all the villages around have flourished because of his visions and his gift of prophecy," the high priest said. "How could an egg inspire such things in a man like him?"
"He was not so inspired until the egg was brought here? How can it not be that? And what good does it do us to have this great gift in our village if we do not earn it? We know nothing but what this man can tell us, and he only knows through this egg, and the egg came to him through theft, a dishonorable act. We are the keepers of honor in this village, and we have not chastised him for stealing something of value from somewhere else."
"And what shall we say? He's been good for the village, so he has no honor?"
"He's profiting from this theft, High Priest. What if the dragons find out about it, and come here?"
And so the argument went. The high priest said that so long as Geeb was making the village better, the egg should stay, and Geeb should be allowed to go on and use his gifts of prophecy for as long as he could use them. And so he did.
He taught people better ways of building their houses. He could teach children to read faster and better than the priest of reading. He talked a wayward into submitting to the Protector and earning back his honor.
Geeb went on doing such things and helping his betrothed, and eventually, together they made enough money as to have the right to have a child nominated for the tests of knighthood when they had a child together. They helped others in the village mine, making better mines and finding better and purer gold. And Geeb fed the poor, helped waywards, and did all manner of good for his village, using the inspiration from the stolen egg to help him do these things. He created artworks that earned him fame throughout the lands. And this good fortune lasted so long, that all the villagers believed he had brought good instead of evil when he brought the egg.
And this lasted for a year. Then, came the dragons.
The bright blue dragon landed on the south side of the village. The big green dragon crawled to the north side of the village. They were so big, they looked like mountains had grown up on either side of the village. They had found the village where Geeb was and they were very angry with him.
They roared and bellowed so loud and so fiercely that all the people were terrified and hid in their houses. Many bowed to the dragons and begged their apologies, even though the dragons had not made any demands or asked any questions.
But these being High Dragons, they could speak. And they spoke.
"Which among you groveling creatures stole our egg?" the blue dragon demanded.
"Please, we wish to have it back unharmed. Please return our egg" the green, two-headed dragon said with both heads at the same time.
"Give it back or we will destroy you all, and everything you have made here, and everything you love. How dare you do this to us?"
The green dragon hissed and roared.
"Please, return our egg to us. We wish merely to have it back and leave this place without harming anyone. We know one of you has taken it, and we know you have benefitted from having it here among you, for we know what we have created and we know it is beautiful and full of good magic and great power. We can see that your village is prosperous and we saw that it was not so prosperous a year ago."
The people trembled and shook and they told them Geeb had their egg, so the dragons wanted to know which of them was Geeb. Promptly, the village said that Geeb was in his home on the hill, his home with many rooms and two thought rooms. Not even a kunjel would stand up against an enraged High Dragon.
Even so, the priests emerged from the Temple of Inspiration, which had been built during the time when Geeb was inspired. They raised their hands to the dragons, and the High Priest came forth to speak to the dragons.
"Surely, your egg by now is dead for lack of your care. How much good could it possibly do you now, but as you see and have said, it has done us great good. Please, let us keep it and perhaps you could make another just as good."
The dragons both roared simultaneously. Then, the blue dragon spoke back to the high priest.
"How dare you defend your thief and declare that it is we who should be rectified for your evil deed? Let me show you what you have done?" The blue dragon flew up into the air, his wings making a storm of wind over the entire village. The winds blew the roofs off several of the nearest houses, but the dragon was not done yet. Instead, the dragon flew higher into the air and then breathed his great fire across the nearest fields of crops, burning them to ash before the farmers' eyes. "See, I have destroyed your crops, but you can always grow more. After all, you have nothing better to do with your time but make new crops grow in their stead." The blue dragon went and stomped down the darch trees, and uprooted each and every aburon tree the village grew to use as wood. It ate at least ten of their mefs, and twenty of their nerns, and stomped flat five of the gremlin hutches of the village. "Now, priest, remake these things. Grow and make them better. Your mefs feed my hunger, so they have done a good thing, so regrow them for yourselves now that I am satisfied with their use."
"We have not destroyed your egg. We have merely benefitted from it. Please, do not punish us this way, please do not harm us further. We will have Geeb fetch your egg and give it back to you and may there be peace between us. Please, you will kill us with these deeds."
And the gomeena looked at the blue dragon and it roared at the blue dragon. And the blue dragon went to Geeb's house. It raked the roof off of the rooms of Geeb's house, which was carved out of a hillside. One roof after another until it exposed every part of Geeb's house, except the part inside the hill, where Geeb sheltered with the egg.
"I have not begun to harm you," the blue dragon roared at the sempering people. "Gollithia will be nothing but a campfire to what I will do to you wicked, and cruel kunjels. I'll obliterate every part of your lands, and I'll turn your wives and children to ash!"
But the green gomeena, with both heads, shouted "No!" to its mate. "No, we will give them the chance to give back what they have stolen. We will not destroy them."
"I will not have these creatures doing this to our kin. I shall not fear these little things beneath my feet and in the shadow of my wings. I shall make an example of this village, like nothing these creatures have ever known. I shall burn this place down to the ground until nothing will grow here for a thousand years again. The gremlins will not laugh within a thousand miles of this place, and the kunjels will call this place the place of dread and mourning."
The dragon took its tail and obliterated the Temple of Inspiration's walls and three of its four towers. None were within the temple, so it did not harm anyone, but at even this, the gomeena cried "No! Do not harm them! We cannot harm them!"
"You will not, but I will do so. I will brush these creatures aside. I will fling them so high the stars will envy them and bow to them. How dare they come among us and steal from us. I'll allow your conscience to be clean in this thing, but I will gladly take the curse upon me to teach them a lesson." The blue dragon was far less forgiving, and far more angry.
"No! You will bring the curse upon my child, the one I seek to make beautiful. Please, do not destroy what we have created. Please, let them return our egg, and we shall leave this place. We have done enough damage to their village; let us do no more."
And this was how the kunjels of the land learned the first things of the curse of the High Dragons. The blue dragon roared and howled and bellowed. It destroyed several houses, but first raked aside their roofs and made sure none were inside. It howled at the temple, until he was sure it was empty also, and then wiped it from the face of Trithofar such that none of the stones were left on another.
The green gomeena howled as well, but it was not with the anger of the blue dragon. Instead, she called to Geeb to come forth. She begged Geeb to bring out the egg, to save his village and to stop the blue dragon from doing something unforgiveable.
Geeb did come forth, but without the egg in hand. He stood in his shattered home.
"I understand you dragons have magic," he said to them. "You have great powers, and can do what you desire. We have very little in the way of powers," he said. "You have great power, and we have little. We deserve the help your egg can give us, and we have used it for the good of the people, and you come here and destroy all we have built? Your kind took our world from us, and you drove us here to this world. Your kind attempted to destroy us all. Your kind live forever and ever. We deserve something of you in recompense for these things that your kind has done, and this small blessing we have because of this egg you've made is like the preparing of a small meal for you, and you come among us and destroy our village and our temple. How is this fair? We demand you rebuild what you have destroyed, go and catch replacement animals, and heal the farmland you have effaced." Geeb spoke as though he were a king among peasants.
The blue dragon was so outraged by the audacity of Geeb, it slapped him from his home with a mighty swipe of its hand. Geeb flew over the other houses of the village, bounced off one, and landed at the feet of the two-headed gomeena.
"What have you done!" the gomeena cried in horrible desperation. "You have doomed our child! How could you do this thing? How could you?" No kunjel had ever before or ever again heard a cry like what the heart-broken dragon would cry. It was the purest, most perfect, expression of agony ever echoed across the stones and through the trees and over the grasses and under the skies.
The blue dragon raised its great wings and flew into the air. It flew far away to the north, howling and blowing fire as it left. The green gomeena breathed its fire into the air in two directions and raged and howled, stamping its feet and swishing its tail back and forth.
But then, it realized that Geeb was not quite dead after all. The dragon turned one of its heads down to the broken body of Geeb.
"Please," it said to him. "Please, give me back my egg and I will heal you. Promise you will do this thing? Promise me I will have my egg back if I heal you?"
Geeb, in his broken voice, coming from his broken body, agreed, and the dragon breathed a bluish flame over his body. She healed his wounds, but Old Geeb would never walk without a limp again and he would never be able to rage again. He would live, but he would feel great pains through his joints.
And Geeb went up into the remains of his home and brought out the egg. He gave the dragon back its egg and the dragon quickly slithered and stomped its way back to the north.
The village rebuilt itself slowly, but surely, and they did not forget the things Geeb had learned to do. And Geeb kept some of his abilities to carve and to paint, but his body ached and his body did not heal entirely right. Perhaps it was the dragon's goal to punish him without killing him. Perhaps it was so distraught with the proposition of losing its egg or its mate, it hurried the healing. Who can say?
But Geeb went away to find a healer. He went to a village where a famous healer lived and he settled there and he tried to use whatever inspiration was left to him to help the healer make medicine to heal him. While he was in this village, he tried to pay people to go into the mountains and fetch another dragon egg from another cave, and this time give it to the healer. Among all the people in the village, he had not learned his lesson, and he figured that if only the healer were inspired to do things, then the dragon they stole from would not notice such a thing.
He attempted to bribe the knights to fetch him another dragon egg and see what it would do for them. He told the children to beg their parents for this. He begged the wives to cojole their husbands. But Geeb's betrothed found him in the next village and she told the story of her village, where the people had to move away from each other, and where the dragons had come and destroyed their livestock and their homes.
So eventually, Young Geeb became Old Geeb and he could not convince anyone to go and steal from the High Dragons again. Eventually, his betrothed rejected him and became betrothed to another, and Old Geeb was eventually driven out as a wayward from all villages. That village was never rebuilt, and was labeled as a cursed place, and it stands as a reminder of the cost of stealing from the dragons without cause.
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