1312: Duck and Dragon
From The Little Book of Fitzartur Foibles
There was once a house that stood between the River of Ducks and the Hill of Dragons. It was not a large house but it had the habit of seeming so, for every window in it reflected more windows, and the servants learned to walk softly so as not to tread on themselves. The house was called Domus Draconis by those who wrote Latin and Duck House by those who cleaned.
Each morning the mistress of the house set out bowls of milk and bowls of ash upon the stone threshold. The ducks drank the milk and the dragons the ash—so she said—and though nobody had ever seen either creature indoors, the servants dusted the sills twice daily, for fear one day they might. It was their custom never to ask which side of the threshold was safer.
It is told that, in the beginning, duck and dragon were one and the same. They shared a single name, rolled from the tongue like a spark, and it kept the world balanced between flame and feather. But one evening, when the great river was young and the sky not yet divided from smoke, the creature sneezed. A scale fell into the water and became soft; a feather fell into the fire and became hard. From that moment, each half desired the other. Thus began the age of longing, which most people now call history.
The Lady of Duck House said it was proper to feed both halves. “For if the duck grows too many,” she said, “the world will cool into puddles; and if the dragon hungers, all polite conversation will burn.” The Duke, who was courteous but never patient, said it was nonsense. “What use,” he asked, “is courtesy to a creature that cannot stand a table?” But the Lady continued to lay her bowls, and the servants, not knowing whose opinion paid their wages, agreed alternately with both.
Once every season a messenger arrived from the Hill, breathing smoke into his gloves, bearing news in phrases that were never nouns and hardly verbs. He bowed low before the Lady and murmured: “The dragons thank you for your discretion.” Then he left six feathers that smelled faintly of iron and one thin coin that looked too new. “Spend the feather,” said the Lady each time, and the servants stared, wondering which shop took such tender.
As years passed, the ducks swam deeper, learning to breathe green light, and the dragons climbed higher, drinking from clouds until they almost forgot the ground. The world went on, divided yet somehow balanced, though the house between them aged not at all. Travelers said it had found a way to turn dust into illusion, which is all any noble family ever learns to do.
One night, when the moon looked particularly uncertain, the kitchen girl left a window open. It was said to be an accident, but later some claimed she wished to test the Lady’s superstition. In through the gap came a thin, shimmering breath—neither smoke nor breeze—and the milk began to hiss. The bowls rattled like gossip. Lifted by the strange air, each servant rose an inch above the flagstones, unable to cry out because the sound would burn.
The Lady appeared, calm as hazel tea. She lifted the bowls and spoke what might have been a prayer or an apology. In that moment the breath curled back out, taking with it something unseen. From the mirror above the fireplace came one soft quack and one smaller roar. Nobody planned the laughter that followed, but it spread—quietly, politely—like ash meeting milk.
Next morning the Lady forbade any mention of it. “The matter is resolved,” she said, “and resolution is a draught best served without witnesses.” She tasked the footman with polishing every wall until they reflected nothing, and thus the house grew dimmer but also freer of confusion. Still, the servants kept one secret habit: each whispered the story differently, so that the truth escaped them by design. To remember exactly, they thought, might summon a thing that was listening for its own name.
Visitors continued to come—dukes, magicians, errand boys—and always found the house prepared, though the bowls were gone. In their place stood silver dishes of water so clear it showed not faces but mistakes. The Lady told them the age of fire and poison was over. “We live now by reflection,” she said, smiling the way candles do before they sputter. Yet on certain mornings a smell of feathers found the corridor, and on certain nights the hearth flared green as envy. The servants grew accustomed. People in houses always do.
Centuries later—though perhaps it was only months—the old superstition changed its plumage again. Children were told that dragons had once taught the ducks to speak, and ducks had repaid the kindness by teaching dragons to keep secrets. The tale wandered down kitchens, through schools, into sermons. “All stories grow polite when they age,” somebody observed, and no one contradicted them for fear of appearing young.
There remains one record, written on a faded scrap of vellum folded as small as a leaf. It says simply: If the ducks ever stop swimming, look to the mirrors. Most readers treat it as a domestic reminder—some note about cleaning day—but those who have served in great houses know better. They know that mirrors and loyalty share a single curse: they remember in both directions.
And so, whenever the servants scrub the glass, they sing a little rhyme to steady the hand:
The dragon drinks ash, the duck drinks milk,
The fire lies soft, the river like silk;
If one should forget, the other will dream,
And the house will live exactly as it seems.
That is all they sing, though there is said to be a final verse too quiet to record. Some say it grants the hearer command of flame; others, that it teaches one the flavour of mercy. The Lady still listens for it in her sleep. She has been listening for years.
One evening a youth polishing floor-tiles asked her whether ducks and dragons ever meet. The Lady, who had lived long enough to suspect questions were a kind of spell, replied: “Only in mirrors that forget which side they’re on.” The answer pleased nobody, but the boy retired remembering every word.
Later, when all lamps were dim and the house seemed smaller than its name, the boy opened the pantry window—the very one of the legend—and whispered to the outside: “Come in, if you remember which you are.” A shape answered from the dark, neither wing nor scale distinct, just something shining and fond. The boy bowed. “My Lady leaves no bowls now,” he said. “We serve water only.”
A long pause; then a sigh that smelled of pondweed and brimstone. “That will do,” said the voice. “That will do.”
In the morning the Lady found a feather in the hearth and a burn in the milk jug. Both marks were cleaned as a matter of pride. Nothing else appeared disturbed, though the glass of the long corridor no longer matched from one end to the other. Only the servants noticed, and none of them spoke, for they understood what mirrors sometimes forget.
And in the scullery, by the ledger of chores and rations, a new note had been written in an unfamiliar ink:
Feed both, but count only one.
Most of the staff assumed it meant ducks. The Lady thought perhaps dragons. Only the boy, who had neither seen nor decided which had come, read it again much later and laughed softly to himself, as if he understood—though he didn’t, quite—that the house had simply been telling its own story all along.
The next time someone mentions the old rhyme, you must nod and change the subject. For if you ever stop to ask which came first—the duck or the dragon—you will find the kitchen window open, and the mirrors listening again. And perhaps, very faintly, across the water, the ordinary sound of ducks.
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