The Fox That Wanted Nine Golden Tails

by Kathleen Gray Nelson

he declared, and when it roared the whole earth grew dark with the smoke from its steaming nostrils, and when it laughed a flame came out of its mouth that lit up the sky, and this Terrible Thing was called a dragon. It goes without saying they were all very careful to keep away from the particular place where the dragon was said to live, and as none of them had ever seen it, they were not sure it was there.

The snail had been heard to stoutly declare he wouldn’t run from it anyway, but as the orang-outang reminded him, it was very easy to be brave before you saw it coming, but he had heard of snails that got in such a hurry they left their houses behind them. The bear asked the very important question: “How many legs has a dragon?” And when the tortoise said it must have at least a million, since a centipede had a hundred, the bear was comforted, for as he wisely told the fox, one need not be afraid of anything if it has more than four legs.

Now there wasn’t much difference between day and night in Napatantutu, for both were happy times, and they could eat when they wished and sleep when they wished, and they didn’t have to do anything unless they liked to do it. Sometimes they would eat and sleep all day, and at night, when the green eyes of the owls shone like lanterns and the fireflies lit up the wood with their little lamps, they would meet in a wonderful dell all lined with moss softer than velvet carpet, and there they would romp and play until morning.

The frogs would sit in a solemn circle on toadstools, the worms, because they wanted to see what was going on, would crawl up on the grand stand, which was the pouyou’s back, the ants would hold wee pink and blue flowers over them for parasols because they tried to be fashionable, the monkey was always the clown, the quiet tortoise the judge and the fox was the mischief maker, but too sly to ever be caught in his tricks.

The frog liked to show how far he could jump, the deer always wanted to run a race, the monkey would put up a target for them to throw at, the bear would dance on his hind legs, while the crickets and the grasshoppers were the band, and when the circus was over the porcupine would invite them to a quill-ting party.

Or if they grew tired of fun and frolic the pouyou would tell them stories about a land far beyond the Sun’s Nest, where the birds and butterflies, the parrots and lizards were redder than red and greener than green; and again of a wide world of water with houses that rocked all the time floating on it, but where these houses came from or where they went he had been too sick to find out, although he had been in one for many sad months.

And when the thunder rumbled and flashes of lightning shot through the leaves, and the owls shut their eyes in terror and the poor little fireflies put out their lights, they would whisper to each other that the dragon was around, and scamper away and hide until morning.

And then when it was daylight they wouldn’t be a bit frightened, and each one would say the other ran first, and he only ran because some one behind pushed him and he couldn’t help it. And they would pooh! pooh! and declare in a chorus they didn’t believe there was any such thing as a dragon. But the fox, who was usually a big talker, never had anything to say except once, when he told them quite seriously he hoped there was a real, true, live dragon. But no one believed him.

They did not know that when he was a baby fox, only about the size of a cat, and lived in the Fertile Plain of Sweet Flags, one cool and dewy night his mother made a bed of leaves behind a log, and as she cuddled him close to her warm bosom she told him how to know if the dogs were anywhere around.

She said when the wind brought him a hot breath out of a cold nose, a breath that smelt like it had a bark in it, he must listen with both ears, and after that if he heard a sound that was neither hungry nor angry, but came full tilt out of a throat just bursting with joy, he would know that the dogs were on his trail, for they only chased animals for the fun of catching them, and because a fox was so cunning, it was great sport to run him down. And if he saw strange tracks, in which had lodged a caterpillar’s hair or an ant’s egg, the dogs had passed the day before, but if the tracks were bare, the feet that made them were not far away.