Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast by Jane Yolen Read Free Book Online Page A

boy had been growing in leg and thigh and heart since his brothers’ deaths, and he would not be treated like a bairn, a child, anymore. He had madę up his mind. He was stubborn, like all the McLeods.
    When the old man came home from the pub past midnight, his Zulu was gone. And gone, too, was young Robert.
    Annie was weeping on the shore in the moonlight, crying, ‘‘Robert, Robert...” and even occasionally “Robin..." which was the bairn’s name she had had for him. Her skirt was kilted up and soaking wet, for she had been in the sea after him... But he had never looked back, not even to wave. He did not dare. He was afraid if he saw his mam crying and calling for him, it would unman him, or so he said later.
    He had gone without bait, except for his own self, and with no help at the oars but the good Lord above. He’d gone to get that brother-killing dragon or die.
    McLeod tried to bring Annie inside but she continued to weep on the shore till all of Anster was awake. And then didn’t all the women weep with her, for there was not a one of them in Anster who didn’t count the boy gone for good.
    â€œIf he is lucky,” McAllister said, “he’ll be drowned first.” He didn’t say “and eaten after,” but we were surely all thinking it.
    At first light we went out in three swift Fifies to look for him, but no trace of boy or boat did we find. So we had to return home to mourn him like his brothers, with McLeod and his Annie weeping in one another’s arms on the pier. A weeping man is a sore sight indeed. But we were too soon with our burial, though we didn’t know it then. And what we would hear from Robert after was a story indeed.
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    Robert had sailed north and then west till the wind dropped like a gannet into the water. He just sat there in the Zulu, becalmed, with nothing to do except to think. He was remembering his older brothers, Jamie and Matthew, who had been his idols, the two of them as alike as twins though a year or more apart. They both had had sweethearts in Anster, fisher lassies who had not taken their loss with any ease, but still came to the cottage and sat with his mam and talked of Jamie and Matthew as if the boys were somehow still alive.
    It did not occur to Robert as he sat in the dark on the ocean that he, too, would most likely die there in the dragon’s great maw. Lads that age have no fear in them, even fisher lads who have the sea in their bones. He rowed a bit, then rested, then rowed a bit more.
    When the sun came up, he was far from sight of land. The sky was first red, then blue, above him, the water black below. Robert had been out on the water from the time he had been a babe in arms, but never this far out on his own. Still, he trusted his own skills and his father’s little Zulu, it being sturdy and competent like himself. The sun had warmed him by then, so he took off his oilskin. His jersey was coat enough. And it was that small thing that saved him. The Lord’s ways, as Reverend Dougal likes to say, are as unfathomable as the deepest part of the sea.
    No sooner had Robert shrugged off his coat and set it on a hook on the mast then a snaky green head and neck, as tall as the mast itself, lifted out of the sea and ripped the oilskin from its resting place. Used to men in their coats being a soft prey, the dragon had mistaken skin for man. Its great hinged jaws, fringed with rows of teeth, opened and closed on the slick coat and carried it triumphantly back into the sea.
    Now, Robert was a quick lad—though no quicker than Matthew or Jamie, just luckier. As soon as he had gotten over his startle, he grabbed up the threaded gaffing hook and leaped over the side of the boat after the beast. Though he had never been a horse rider, knowing only the white mares of the sea—those great waves that break on the East Neuk shore—he landed astride the sea dragon’s neck and knew enough to