Dragon, Dragon by John Gardner

Author:John Gardner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media LLC
Published: 2010-09-12T16:00:00+00:00

THE LAST

PIECE OF LIGHT

Once, long, long ago, a strange thing began to happen—all the lights in the world began to grow dim. At first, no one especially noticed. People would casually observe, now and then, when they were trying to make out a definition in the dictionary, or trying to read the highway numbers on a complicated map, or understand the small print on an insurance policy, “Confound, it seems as if something’s happening to the light, these days.” But they were only half serious. They thought it was merely their eyes.

Soon, however, there was no getting around it. The world was gradually slipping into darkness. “The world’s getting darker,” people said experimentally. Shoemakers said it, and druggists who were trying to measure things—in fact everyone said it except the politicians, who furiously denied it—and the people were all vaguely frightened, wondering what it meant. Sometimes, in the pale gray afternoon, farmers waiting for their turn at the barbershop in town would say casually, but in a nervous voice, “I wonder if the corn will ripen before frost this year.” The barber would shake his head and say nothing, for he’d heard it before, and it worried him, to tell the truth. None of the crops were growing right, and if this kept up … But it was not his business, actually, and neither was it the farmers’ business, so they put it out of their minds, as well as they could, and talked politics.

The king called a meeting of all his politicians, and after he’d talked with them for a while about this and that, he said, as if it had just occurred to him and was not of much importance really, “By the way, gentlemen, does anyone happen to know if it’s true, as people say, that something’s been happening to the light?”

“Light, Your Majesty?” the politicians said, for they hated to come right out and confront a thing like that.

“Well,” the king said, “I’ve been hearing rumors, from time to time …”

But they didn’t pursue it. One was always hearing rumors, complaints, dire prophesies. What was a person to do?

Now in those days there lived a little chimney-girl, by the name of Chimorra. She hadn’t a friend or relation in the world to direct or instruct her, and she lived with a cruel lady boardinghouse-keeper who gave her nothing to eat but old dry doughnuts and nothing to drink but stale tea. Nevertheless, Chimorra was a happy child, partly by nature and partly because, strange as it may seem, she loved her work cleaning chimneys. She would sit in the flue among the chimney swifts when everyone below had forgotten she was there, and she’d hum very softly to herself, rhythmically dusting the soot from the bricks, and she would listen to the voices in the house around her and think at every second word, “How interesting! I must try to remember that!” Sometimes she would remember and sometimes she wouldn’t, for oftentimes it happens in this

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