Hunting of the Last Dragon by Sherryl Jordan

nothing, for my grandfather had never talked about that.
    â€œYour English ways are not the only ways,” said Lan, “nor are you all so cunning as you think. You can’t even read or write, most of you, and only men of the Church have knowledge; but in my country people are studying at great universities, making music on wondrous instruments, and doing marvellous paintings on silk. While your English soldiers are busy poking enemies with spears and swords, my people are blowing their foes to smithereens with exploding fire. You tell the time by the position of the sun, but in one of ourgreat cities we have a machine, driven by water, that marks time, telling every hour and the moments in between. You flatten animal hides to write upon, but we make fine stuff called paper. And while your monks are still sharpening feathers to copy books slow, one at a time, my people are carving books upon blocks of wood, and printing many copies, quickly and with ease. So don’t you tell me my nation is wrong, my people mistook. We have more knowledge, more accomplishments, than you can dream about.”
    I’m sorry about the feather bit, Brother Benedict; I see it disturbs you. Myself, I think your work is very advanced, and excellent, but I have to tell this tale the way it happened. If you’re interested in the Chinese way of bookmaking, you could talk later to Jing-wei, for she knows more about it than I do. Perchance the Abbot will be interested, too.
    I wish I had pressed Lan to talk more on such matters, for as it turned out she was wondrous wise; but at the time I was ill-content and full of gloom. Truth to tell, seeing Lan hooking the tiny needle through the fabric, and drawing through the thread, put me in mind of my mother mending clothes for me and the four plagues, and I was hurting in my heart as well as in my head. Also, the picture of the beast on Lan’s box awoke in me some dreadful imaginings, and I couldnot shake them off. Wishing for peace, I pulled off my boots, ready to go to bed. The goat was eating the straw, and as I chased it off, Lan said, “’Tis not as fearsome as you think, Jude.”
    â€œNay, but it eats a fearsome lot,” I said.
    Lan cackled. “I meant the dragon!” she said. “That’s not so fearsome as you imagine.”
    â€œI don’t imagine it,” I lied. And I crawled into the bed and lay watching the smoke swirl about the thatch, thinking on the beast and what it might look like. ’Twould not be like the gorgeous coiled creature on Lan’s box, of that I was sure.
    â€œThe dragons here, they’re not as large as people think they are, nor as cunning,” said Lan.
    â€œHave you seen one?” I asked.
    â€œNay. But Ambrose told me much about them.”
    I sat up, the better to hear her talk. She was still bent over her sewing, her sparse white hair like a halo in the firelight, her nut-brown skull outlined dark within.
    â€œAmbrose always said that fear was faith in one’s enemy,” she continued. “He said if one understood that enemy, studied his weaknesses and strengths, where he slept and ate, what his face was like, his weapons, his defence—then the fear vanished. He said knowledge was the greatest weapon of all. And when it cameto the fight, he said all that was needed was the right weapon, the right moment, and the steel-strong will to win.”
    â€œLittle good his knowledge did him,” I muttered, “since he was burned half to death.”
    â€œBut he survived, and passed that knowledge on to me,” said Lan. “Nothing in the world is ever wasted, Jude.”
    I almost laughed. Passed the knowledge on to her ? God’s precious heart! Did she have some mad notion about hunting the dragon herself?
    â€œI know all about dragons and how they may be defeated,” Lan said. “I know why the knights failed, most of them. I know our best defence against this present