The Dragon MEGAPACK ®. Kenneth Grahame

through his tiny trembling body. You could never tell what a dragon might do, and the fact that they were mythological beasts and not supposed to exist made things rather more difficult than ever for this pint-sized rodent.

      “Nah, nothing like that, have no fear, little friend,” the dragon said with a smile, placing the tiny creature down carefully upon the end of his long nose. “There, now I can keep a close eye on you and we can discuss this problem of ours face to face.”

      “Ah, what problem of ‘ours’ would that be, Mr. Dragon?” Dapple asked with growing apprehension. He hunched down upon the soft snout and stared into the great orange eyes of the monster before him wanting to run away but knowing there was no way to escape.

      “Ya see, little mousey, the problem is, dragons ain’t supposed to be real. You and I know they’re supposed to be mythological beasts, creatures from imagination and fantasy in your world. I ain’t even supposed to exist here at all.”

      “I can agree with you there,” Dapple offered carefully, wondering where all this was leading with quiet trepidation, and what his part might be in it all.

      “Glad to hear it, little guy,” the dragon prompted with what looked like a rather wry grin. “Well, let’s see now. The thing is, I do exist. I mean, it’s a true, incontrovertible fact that you can see with your very eyes and it can’t be denied by anyone. And you, being an unbiased observer of the present situation, can attest to the fact that I most sincerely do exist. Isn’t that true, little runtling?”

      “Ah, yes, of course, Mr. Dragon. I wouldn’t doubt what you say for a moment. Why, it’s just an undeniable fact of reality, I would say, if that makes you feel any better.”

      “It does, and it doesn’t, my mouse friend,” the dragon continued, as Dapple watched in rapt fascination as the creature used its long barbed tail to scratch it’s lizard scaled back. Dapple knew that dragons were not real—but he also knew that reality melted in the cold truth of the creature he saw before him now. Was this all some illusion? Perhaps the result of some bad cheese that had affected his vision? He only wished it were so simple, for he was sure that it was not the case, and that this dragon was just as real as he was.

      “So, then, what’s the big deal about it, oh Great Large One?” Dapple asked with a bit of feigned bravado. “I mean, as the ancient philosophers must have said sometime, or someplace, ‘you’re here, therefore you are!’ Or at any rate it was something to that effect. Leastways, Mr. Dragon, you get the general idea, don’t fight it—you’re here—enjoy it.”

      Well the dragon looked with crossed eyes at the speck of creature sitting so comfortably upon his bulbous nose and for a long moment seemed to be contemplating the rodent’s words. Then with a fire-breathing snort that almost shook poor Dapple loose, the dragon announced he had come to his decision.

      “Well, heck and dreck!” the dragon groaned with evident discomfort, “Ya see, the thing is that by me being here, that means that I definitely had to come from somewhere else. Get it? Of course, I can’t remember at all where that other place was, but it musta been better than this here stinky little world full of nothing but mice. Ah, no offense intended, little fella.”

      “None taken,” Dappled sniffed with some trepidation. “And so, oh Great One…?’

      “And so little mouse, wherever I came from just had to be a better place than this here place—and I want to get back there as soon as I can. And you’re going to help me get back there!”

      Dapple gulped fearfully, he was afraid of just such a conundrum.

      “But how am I going to help you do that, Oh Large Magnificence?” Dapple stammered, his nimble mouse mind scheming away at a multitude of ideas, and quickly discarding each in turn as more ridiculous or dangerous than the previous one. The most dangerous of them all of course, being to anger the monstrous being which was before him.

      “Good question, mouseling,” the dragon said thoughtfully as he perked up with interest, his barbed tail whipping overhead like a banner, and the massive teeth barred in a most dragon-like smile. “I think I have it! I really do! You see, we’ve already figured out that dragon’s don’t exist in this here world, right?”

      “Rightoo, Your Largeness,” Dapple said in a jovial tone he hoped would lighten matters.

      “Then that makes it all quite elementary; I must be from another world! Another world that apparently exists parallel to this one. Another world that you are going to help me get back to, my mouseling friend.”

      Dapple gulped nervously, thinking rapidly, and he saw some value to what the dragon said now. After all, parallel worlds and trans-dimensional portals were something this little mouse dealt with every day—in the fiction stories he wrote of the various science fiction magazines. Like many other imaginative fiction authors he’d read and even written about similar problems—but this rather stark reality, in the form of a very mighty and potentially troublesome dragon, was quite another matter altogether than the mere ideas he played with intellectually in his fiction. However, Dapple decided to put a brave front to his misgivings and said simply, “I believe what we need is called a trans-dimensional portal of some type, Mr. Dragon. The problem being, just how do we find such a thing? And even if we do find such a thing, how can we be sure it will send you to the proper reality and not just to some other one—perhaps one even worse than this one?”

      The dragon sighed deeply, looking most thoughtful as he sat there thinking, which is how dragons usually look when they exercise the old gray matter. He thought a long time, and Dapple kept in mind the potential fury of an angry dragon and realized that what he was now smelling was the actual burning of brimstone—a residue of the creature’s heated breath. This realization just made him shiver with that creepy feeling of impending danger and doom that he did not like at all.

      “How do I get involved in these things,” Dapple whispered to himself as he squirmed in his seat upon the bulbous nose of this most humongous of beasts thinking through the problem as best he could. Where would a dragon come from, anyway? Perhaps a past age, a time long-ago and far-away? Surely another and alien reality altogether. And yet, how to get him back home? This was one monumental problem for such a miniscule creature but there was even more to this than ever realized and it would all come crashing in soon enough.

      In about one minute, actually.

      Part II

      The guys from the OR—Other Reality—arrived in an instantaneous flash of otherworldly brilliance.

      Dapple was blinded for a moment by the bright light and fell from the dragon’s huge nose to land upon the tip of his spongy-wet and rough reptilian tongue.

      “Ouch! That smarts!” the tiny mouse shouted as his soft rump brushed against the rough barbs of the dragon’s tongue.

      “There! I got you now!” the dragon said a bit unintelligibly, seeing as he couldn’t move his tongue that much or talk very clearly with the little mouse upon it. To his credit, the dragon was most delicate with the mouseling, and took great care not to mistakenly ingest the miniscule rodent by speaking, or through one of his massive inward breaths.

      “Thank you, oh Great Dragon!” Dapple said with a nervous reply as the huge beast caught his fall. Then he noticed the intruders who were now coming towards them. “But look, we have strange company approaching!”

      The dragon placed the tiny mouse back upon his huge nose—Dapple holding tightly to a long thick stalk of hair so as not to lose his balance again. Then the dragon turned his lumbering gaze to the three visitors.

      Well, they certainly were strange and they didn’t look very friendly; sort of grumpy and angry, actually. And one of them, the old walrus in the middle—and I do mean old walrus, for in fact the visitor was an actual large fat male tusker blubbering forward upon perambulatory fins and uttering guttural growls like a hungry sea lion. Well, this worthy wore pinned to his chest what shone unmistakably as a five-pointed star that seemed to proclaim him as some type of law enforcement officer. A sheriff or perhaps, a marshal. Obviously by this scenario,