The feast was in metaphorical full swing (literally in the case of Sir Gecko, who had found her way into the chandelier) when the doors to the great hall swung wide and a stranger walked in.
“Lo!” they called. And they went unheard, for Sir Crocodile was attempting to drain an entire barrel in one long swallow and the rest of the castle was busy chanting ‘DRINK. DRINK. DRINK’ around him.
“Lo!” they repeated. And they went unheard, for Sir Gecko overcommitted herself and landed in the lap of Sir Tegu with sufficient force to send that distinguished woman falling over backwards into three other seated worthies.
“LO!” they hollered at the top of their lungs, and when that still did not suffice to penetrate the riotous merrymaking they grasped the poker from the fireplace and hurled it into the great long table of the castle, where it impaled in order a fine roast, a sturdy metal serving-platter, and the table itself with a godawful crunching sound that finally got the attention of one and all.
“Lo,” said the stranger.
“You’ve said that,” replied Sir Crocodile crossly, who had swallowed his entire barrel in surprise and was a bit angry about that. “What d’you mean, intruding upon a humble communal meal among friends and fellows so rudely? If this wasn’t a solemn occasion of celebration and goodwill I’d pull your head off.”
“Far I have come bearing news of great import,” said the stranger, ignoring all of this, “fit only for the ears of this castle, whose warriors I hear spoken of as the greatest in the world, for they are born from the shell armoured and shielded.”
“That’s us,” said Sir Tegu, who was removing Sir Gecko from her nostril with some difficulty – the CLANG of the poker had greatly startled the smaller knight.
“Indeed it is true,” agreed Sir Tortoise.
“In my land, far away and over the river and through the woods, there is a great and monstrous injustice: our grandmothers are consumed by wolves, our little girls are robbed of porridge by bears, our little boys are threatened with grinding by giants, our adorable step-children are jailed by witches. We need heroes like you, with your beautiful scaled and armoured skins, to come and deliver us from evil and so on and so forth so please tarry forth from this place and come to the castle (remember, over the river and through the woods) and issue a challenge to the wicked braggart that dost so cruelly and wickedly and unrightfully rules over the despair and suffering of my kind. Farewell!” And so speaking, the stranger turned and hurried out the door.
There was a long and thoughtful silence as everyone finished chewing that over.
“I will go,” said Sir Tortoise, rising to his four feet with ponderous dignity. “I am the oldest of us, and it would be nice to accomplish something in my twilight years.”
“That’s the spirit!” cheered Sir Turtle from under the table. And they all resumed feasting and drinking and carried on in great spirits for three days, and in moderate spirits for two days, and in nervous and self-conscious spirits for two more before Sir Gecko gave voice to what they were all thinking and said “so, he’s dead, right?”
“Churl,” said Sir Turtle, “that is my cousin you speak of!”
“Your dead cousin.”
“Churl!”
“A correct churl.”
“A correct churl is a churl nonetheless!”
“So we’re agreed then.”
“Silence both of you incredibly tiny people,” sighed Sir Crocodile, hauling himself in ready position. “I am the largest and strongest of us all, and so seeing as our most august and distinguished brother has been laid low by fate and fortune, it falls to me to vent the terrible wrath of vengeance upon the foul miscreant that has laid him low in his twilight years, few remaining though they may have been.”
“God, you’re talking like he is,” said Sir Tegu.
“It’s a sign of respect,” said Sir Crocodile stiffly. And he turned on his great tail and walked the crocodile walk out the doors, high-tailed, stiff-limbed, chin-raised, side—to-side, clumsy and steady and not faster than it looks but much, much, much slower than you’d imagine they can run.
Seven days of increasingly nervous feasting later, everyone was refusing to make eye contact.
“I can’t go,” said Sir Gecko, from halfway up the hall’s walls. “I’m too small and wouldn’t be able to help.”
“I can’t go,” said Sir Turtle, drowning his sorrows in a small and very deep pitcher, “I’m in mourning for my cousin, Sir Tortoise.”
“I can’t go,” said Sir Tegu, “I’m allergic.”
“To what?” asked Sir Gecko.
“Death. It’s fatal to me.”
“I will go,” said the lizard serving-child, who was so tremendously unnoteworthy that they had gone unnoticed and unnamed by everyone including the very narration of the story.
“Who?” asked Sir Tegu.
“You?” asked Sir Gecko.
“Why?” asked Sir Turtle.
“Someone has to,” said the lizard.
“Fine by me,” all three of them agreed, and so it was that the lizard was ejected from the castle with nothing more than a few crumbs, their own little lizard self, and the poker from the fireplace.
***
The crumbs lasted the lizard until the river, where they sat down in consternation to think: it was deep and wide and fast. Sir Tortoise would have forded it with stolid weight; Sir Crocodile would have swum it in a trice with great strength. The lizard was light and slim and weak, and they found themselves wishing most dearly for a bridge, or at least some stepping stones.
“Hello cousin,” said a piping voice from besides them. It was a basilisk, long of limb and bright of eye, braced on its long hind limbs. “What’s eating you?”
“Nothing,” replied the lizard, “but my friends and masters can’t say the same. Somewhere beyond this river, through the woods, they have been defeated and probably eaten by some sort of gruesome castle—dwelling fiend.”
“Messy business,” said the basilisk. “Why don’t you go home?”
“Because someone has to do something and nobody else wants to.”
“Determination without effect is just frustration,” said the basilisk. “How are you planning to cross?”
“You could carry me,” said the lizard. “You are my cousin, and even if you’re no swimmer, you can run on water like solid ground.”
“That’s because I’m light and fast, and I won’t be either if I’m carrying you, even if you are my cousin and proportioned like it,” said the basilisk.
The lizard pondered that, and then they pondered harder, and then they gritted their teeth and coughed and hacked and spat and swore and sneezed and wheezed and choked and gasped and groaned and heaved and ejected their entire left lung from their mouth along with its associated cardiovascular structures.
“Now am I light enough?” they asked. Or tried to – their voice was withered and small and came out mostly as faint whistles of air.
“If you weren’t, I don’t think I’d be brave enough to say so,” admitted the basilisk. And so the lizard was picked up and carried across the water on the limbs of their cousin and deposited on the other side – out of breath, but alive and dry.
***
Proceeding forwards into the shaded depths of the great woods was awkward in more than one way: not only were there hundreds of trees to meander around, each had hundred of roots to clamber over, and each root had dozens of crooked convolutions in its bark, and each and every rift and gap had been colonized by fungus, ants, woodpeckers, or god knows what else. The lizard was short of breath and tired of leg to begin with and the sheer amount of nonsense in their way truly bestaggered them – many times they were forced to stop and rest and wait for their strength to return as they pushed on through leaf litter and valley and dale and hill. Their four crumbs were long-ago memories, burned into fuel to stagger teetering limbs closer to an endless goal at the far end of a terrible and terribly unending trek. At length they grew too exhausted to move, and so collapsed nigh-insensate on the ground.
They woke up some time later, in the dark of night, with someone large and hairy chewing on their right hind leg.
“Ah!” thought the lizard. “One of the beasts that the stranger must have warned of! But I’m too tired and hungry to do anything to fight it. Maybe if I wait it will get bored and leave me alone.
The beast – who was grey and furry with a little adorable black mask over its eyes – tore off the lizard’s right hind leg, swallowed it, and started gnawing happily on their left hind leg.
“Well, losing two is as good as losing one,” thought the lizard. “It’s not as if I’m getting much use out of them on this uneven ground. And how hungry can this creature be?”
The beast – who had pretty rings around its tail and clever little hands – tore off the lizard’s left hind leg, gulped it down without chewing, and began eagerly tugging on their right foreleg.
“And losing three is as much as losing two, just moreso,” resigned the lizard to themselves. “There’s one more to spare yet.”
The beast – who was fairly plump and well—fed itself, with a sleekly padded body that spoke of ripe fatty tissues and rich chunks of muscular development – wrenched the lizard’s right forelimb from its body, pulled off its left foreleg for good measure, and began to chew them up, worrying away every bit of flesh with its sharp little teeth.
“I fear it won’t be satisfied with just my legs at this rate,” thought the lizard. “Well, as last meals go, this has been very one-sided. I’d have loved at least one mouthful before I went.” And at that thought and the memory of all those missed feasts they’d served back home, the lizard found themselves extremely outraged for the first time in their life, which was just enough strength and energy that when the beast turned its face to them again and plucked them up and held them to its mouth they made a single lunge and a single bite and latched onto its nose.
The beast shrieked, and the lizard did not let go. The beast ran, and the lizard did not let go. The beast whirled and hid and scampered and wailed and spun in circles and clambered up and down trees and up and down walls and finally the lizard came off its nose and its nose came off its face and it ran away howling, leaving the lizard alone in the courtyard of a dark and terrible castle with the nose, which they immediately ate.
“That’s better,” the lizard said, in the soft and indistinct whisper of their voice.
***
The castle’s doors were unlocked, but without legs this didn’t matter much – luckily, they were also poorly—fitted, and so they wiggled limblessly beneath them over the threshold of what proved to be a very large and grand dungeon fitted with bars, chains, and locks, inside of which sat the despondent Sir Crocodile.
“Eh?” he asked, and his enormous head swung upright. “Who is there?”
“It’s me,” whispered the lizard.
“Eh? Speak up, you’re awfully quiet. Or nevermind, don’t – the master of the castle is a sharp-eared little devil. He tricked me into this awful dank pit and locked the door and he keeps the keys on his belt and he wears his belt to his bed. He says he wants to make me into boots. You know, I’m beginning to think he was lying when he told us to come to his house and save everyone.”
“I’ll be right back,” whispered the lizard.
“Eh?”
Under the moonless sky they slithered, up a drainpipe and through a window and beneath billowing curtains, up through tangled sheets and against hairy shin, into a frayed pant leg and up around and coiled along the leather length of a worn belt.
The belt was scaled. The lizard shuddered even as they took the keys into their mouth, and the man in the bed snorted and rolled over and pinned them to the mattress with his great heavy gut.
In the short time since they’d lost their legs the lizard had become something of a master at wriggling, but this was truly a new height of challenge. They squeezed and pulled and yanked and tugged and try as they might and writhe as they could they remained trapped, suffocating under two hundred pounds of mammalian flesh.
“I pulled my insides outside,” the lizard thought. “I waited while all of my legs were pulled off one at a time. I have crawled on my belly to get here. I will NOT lose now because of something as stupid as my body being stuck, and I will peel off my own skin if I need to.”
And so that’s just what they did. Inch by inch, but not piece by piece, the lizard skinned themselves free of their captivity, pulling their body free from their own mouth and leaving nothing there but a dull and dusty one-piece full-formed husk as they slid away and down the bedpost.
***
The keys were heavy, and the lizard’s new skin was soft and sore, and the night had already been long, but at last they found their way down again from the high master bedroom to the low jail, where they began to put keys to locks.
Snikt went the key. Thud went the lock on the floor.
“Aha!” said Sir Crocodile, awake again. “You have returned! That’s one lock!”
Snikt. Thud.
“I cannot overstate your bravery my friend. I haven’t seen hide nor scute of Sir Tortoise since I arrived, but from his plans for me, his belt, and his collection of handsome knives, I can’t think his fate was pleasant. That’s two!”
Snikt. Thud.
“Three! Three locks down! Don’t make too much noise, you’re so good at being quiet! I never was much good at that myself – my voice can carry for miles when I want to, and I confess that I’m oh dear behind you”
Snikt. Grab.
“Little SNEAK” hissed the master of the house in the lizard’s face. It was the stranger, which wasn’t a surprise, and his breathe was rancid and his skin slimily glandular and porous in the most primitive and mammalian way. His insult was fierce and whole-heartedly and blissfully unreflective in its hypocrisy, beautiful in the purity of its self-ignorance, and after all that the lizard had been and done and lost and suffered it was the last straw. Its heart overflowed with bitter venom, and so did its mouth, and so did its teeth, which it sunk into the master’s hand.
“Agh!” he said. “Argh. Eegh. Urgh. Urk urk urk urk. Uh.”
Thud.
“So,” said Sir Crocodile at length. “Mind getting the rest of the locks?”
***
The return trip was probably much shorter, but the lizard wasn’t entirely sure since they spent most of it wrapped around Sir Crocodile’s head, sleeping, awakening only when once more within the warm and cozy walls of home and someone impossibly loud was speaking right next to their head. .
“…And then I walked back. Ah, and this is our newest knight,” said Sir Crocodile. “Too modest to say their name, but I daresay I’ve heard it spoken: they are a little snake. So Sir Snake you shall be!”
“Hoorah!” shouted everyone, and Sir Snake flicked their tongue out, thought about explaining who they were, and gave up in favour of eating an entire roast ham.
***
Sir Tortoise returned two weeks after that. He’d realized that he’d forgotten his sword halfway to the river.