Filter House by Nisi Shawl Read Free Book Online Page A

Africa’s Ifa, and it also owes a bit to China’s “I Ching.” To the best of my knowledge, however, it is not part of any authentic tradition.

The Pragmatical Princess
    (with apologies to Jay Williams)

    Princess Ousmani had fallen asleep in her chains, from boredom. She woke to the weight of a dragon’s head resting uncomfortably on her stomach. One rough, scaly paw kneaded her left shoulder, pricking at her skin.
    Ousmani closed her eyes again. She did not believe in dragons, any more than she believed in the affrits and djinns of her father’s homeland, or the water-demonesses of Mali, where her mother had been born. “It is a horse,” she told herself. “A very large and very ugly horse.” Peering out under her long, dark lashes, she considered the dragon’s glittering snout, its gleaming, golden eyes. Its irises were formed like slits, as were the nostrils inches from her own, from which an occasional wisp of steam escaped.
    “You have stopped sleeping,” the dragon said. It spoke French, a mountain dialect of course. Ousmani understood, though at first with some difficulty. The beast continued. “Why do you pretend? To fool yourself, perhaps, for you can see it is impossible to convince me.”
    The princess shrugged, then winced as the tips of the dragon’s claws insinuated themselves into her shoulder. “The illusion seemed a sensible one: if I slept, I dreamt. You have spoiled it, though, and must provide another.”
    “Must I?” Her ribs vibrated with its voice, which possessed an odd, dry timbre, seeming wide rather than deep.
    “It seems only fair.”
    “Life is not fair,” said the dragon. “Consider, for example, your plight.” It drew back its head as if doing just that.
    “I must admit, it does appear to be an unfortunate one.” Princess Ousmani lay chained flat on her back, close to the edge of a precipice. She was not naked, but an unfriendly Northern chill pierced her scarlet silks. It had done so all day, except for a brief, sunny respite around noon. “My only comfort has been philosophy. But then, this has been true most of my life.”
    “A most unprey-like speech. I grow increasingly intrigued,” the dragon said, consideringly. “Let us continue this conversation in an atmosphere more conducive.”
    The garish head moved from her field of vision. She heard a loud hissing, felt a sudden heat in first one, then the other of her shackled wrists.
    “Rise.” She tried, and found she was able to sit. The chains, which had run from wrist shackles to iron bolts fixed in granite, now ended in red-hot, half-melted links.
    The chains that bound her feet were considerably shorter. The dragon paced closer and considered them dubiously. “I should like to melt these, too, but I fear to cause you unnecessary pain. Do you suggest another remedy?”
    Unlike the others, these chains ended in a common terminus, an iron staple driven into the ground. Ousmani thought back to certain Greek texts she had recently acquired for translation; in particular a work by one Archimedes. “A stout stick, I think, will make the trick. And a stone of middling girth, flat on one side.”
    The dragon dove off the precipice, then circled overhead on oily-looking wings to shout one word: “Patience!”
    The Princess Ousmani wondered when, if ever, some other virtue would be urged upon her, such as courage or resourcefulness. She shivered, and not entirely with the cold. Despite her show of stoicism, the Princess had never really resigned herself to death. Though rejecting as false the conclusion that because offerings made to a dragon disappeared, ergo there must be a dragon, she had made what hasty arrangements she could to be spared consumption by more prosaically horrible beasts. Barring treachery, she had expected rescue to come with the fall of night. But now it looked as though she might not be present to be rescued.
    “I must just keep my wits about me,” Ousmani admonished herself. “If my