"Kushner,.Donn.-.A.Book.DragonUC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

scended he thought, with some pride, that all the full-grown
dragons were too large to follow him and, with a feeling he
could not identify, that soon he would also be too large.

Nonesuch landed by the pool's brim. When the surface
became still again after the wind of his flight, he looked over at
his own face, framed in the reflection of beech trunks. His
features were still childlike, without the fierce, proud angles of
a proper adult dragon. The water was smooth, the day hot and
dusty. He thrust his head in, almost up to the eyes. Then he
looked up at the beech trees, down at their crooked reflection
in the rippling water, and let his eyes sweep the surface of the
pond to enjoy the double image of a bright-yellow butterfly
with a blue star on each wing.

"Well," a grumpy voice remarked, "I hope you'll leave
some water for the rest of us!"

Nonesuch opened his eyes wide. Directly before him a
head rose out of the water, a homy, disapproving head on a
long, wrinkled neck that emerged from a hard greenish-orange
shell.

The dragon took his head completely out of the water.
In the wave this created the turtle's head disappeared for a
moment, then poked up again by a lily-pad. To show that he
had not descended to the pool for frivolous reasons. Nonesuch
took a deep drink of water and announced stiffly, "I was
thirsty."

' 'I can well believe it, with all those fires inside you,'' the
turtle replied.' 'We were watching you,'' he added.' 'It's very
rare to see one of your lot so close. Usually you stay above the
tree-tops, which is quite close enough."

14

Nonesuch decided not to take offense at the remarks of
such a lowly creature. "Our wings are too vast and broad;

their sweep is too mighty for the confined air of the forests,''
he replied loftily. This was how they talked back in the cavern.

"Yes," hissed a thin, very high voice, which Nonesuch
still heard - for dragons had sharp ears: they could hear a
sheep bleat or a maiden scream three valleys away. The butterfly
was speaking. Now it continued: "I've seen them bouncing
from the tree trunks like hailstones. They have no control at
all!" Then, as if to show what control was, the butterfly