Cosmicomics

Each one told a story, in turn, and at a certain point they said: 'What does the Ugly One have to tell us? Don't you have any stories? Didn't anyone in your family have adventures with the Dinosaurs?'

'Yes, but…' I stammered, 'it was so long ago… ah, if you only knew…'

The one who came to my assistance at that juncture was Fern-flower, the young creature of the spring. 'Oh, leave him alone… He's a foreigner, he doesn't feel at home yet; he can't speak our language well enough…'

In the end they changed the subject. I could breathe again.

A kind of friendliness had grown up between Fern-flower and me. Nothing too intimate: I had never dared touch her. But we had long talks. Or rather, she told me all sorts of things about her life; in my fear of giving myself away, of making her suspect my identity, I stuck always to generalities. Fern-flower told me her dreams: 'Last night I saw this enormous Dinosaur, terrifying, breathing smoke from his nostrils. He came closer, grabbed me by the nape, and carried me off. He wanted to eat me alive. It was a terrible dream, simply terrible, but – isn't this odd? – I wasn't the least frightened. No, I don't know how to say it… I liked him…'

That dream should have made me understand many things and especially one thing: that Fern-flower desired nothing more than to be assaulted. This was the moment for me to embrace her. But the Dinosaur they imagined was too different from the Dinosaur I was, and this thought made me even more different and timid. In other words, I missed a good opportunity. Then Fern-flower's brother returned from the season of fishing in the plains, the young one was much more closely watched, and our conversations became less frequent.

This brother, Zahn, started acting suspicious the moment he first saw me. 'Who's that? Where does he come from?' he asked the others, pointing to me.

'That's the Ugly One, a foreigner, who works with the timber,' they said to him. 'Why? What's strange about him?'

'I'd like to ask him that,' Zahn said, with a grim look. 'Hey, you! What's strange about you?' What could I answer? 'Me? Nothing.'

'So, you're not strange, eh?' and he laughed. That time it went no further, but I was prepared for the worst.

This Zahn was one of the most active ones in the village. He had traveled about the world and seemed to know many more things than the others. When he heard the usual talk about the Dinosaurs he was seized by a kind of impatience. 'Fairy tales,' he said once, 'you're all telling fairy tales. I'd like to see you if a real Dinosaur turned up here.'

'There haven't been any for a long time now…' a fisherman said.

'Not all that long…' Zahn sniggered. 'And there might still be a herd or two around the countryside… In the plains, our bunch takes turns keeping watch, day and night. But there we can trust one another; we don't take in characters we don't know…' And he gave me a long, meaningful look.

There was no point dragging things out: better force him into the open right away. I took a step forward. 'Have you got something against me?' I asked.

'I'm against anybody when we don't know who gave him birth or where he came from, and when he wants to eat our food and court our sisters…'

One of the fishermen took up my defense: 'The Ugly One earns his keep; he's a hard worker…'

'He's capable of carrying tree trunks on his back, I won't deny that,' Zahn went on, 'but if danger came, if we had to defend ourselves with claws and teeth, how can we be sure he would behave properly?'

A general argument began. The strange thing was that the possibility of my being a Dinosaur never occurred to anyone; the sin I was accused of was being Different, a Foreigner, and therefore Untrustworthy; and the argument was over how much my presence increased the danger of the Dinosaurs' ever coming back.

'I'd like to see him in battle, with that little lizard's mouth of his…' Zahn went on contemptuously, goading me.

I went over to him, abruptly, nose to nose. 'You can see me right now, if you don't run away.'

He wasn't expecting that. He looked around. The others formed a circle. There was nothing for us to do but fight

I moved forward, brushed off his bite by twisting my neck; I had already given him a blow of my paw that knocked him on his back, and I was on top of him. This was a wrong move; as if I didn't know it, as if I had never seen Dinosaurs die, clawed and bitten on the chest and the belly, when they believed they had pinned down their enemy. But I still knew how to use my tail, to steady myself; I didn't want to let him turn me over; I put on pressure, but I felt I was about to give way…

Then one of the observers yelled: 'Give it to him, Dinosaur!' No sooner had they unmasked me than I became again the Dinosaur of the old days: since all was lost, I might as well make them feel their ancient terror. And I struck Zahn once, twice, three times…

They tore us apart. 'Zahn, we told you! The Ugly One has muscles. You don't try any tricks with him, not with old Ugly!' And they laughed and congratulated me, slapping me on the back with their paws. Convinced I had been discovered, I couldn't get my bearings; it was only later that I understood the cry 'Dinosaur' was a habit of theirs, to encourage the rivals in a fight, as if to say: 'Go on, you're the stronger one!' and I wasn't even sure whether they had shouted the word at me or at Zahn.

From that day on I was the most respected of all. Even Zahn encouraged me, followed me around to see me give new proofs of my strength. I must say that their usual talk about the Dinosaurs changed a bit, too, as always happens when you tire of judging things in the same old way and fashion begins to take a new turn. Now, if they wanted to criticize something in the village, they had got into the habit of saying that, among Dinosaurs, certain things were never done, that the Dinosaurs in many ways could offer an example, that the behavior of the Dinosaurs in this or that situation (in their private life, for example) was beyond reproach, and so on. In short, there seemed to be emerging a kind of posthumous admiration for these Dinosaurs about whom no one knew anything precise.

Sometimes I couldn't help saying: 'Come, let's not exaggerate. What do you think a Dinosaur was, after all?'

They interrupted me: 'Shut up. What do you know about them? You've never seen one.'

Perhaps this was the right moment to start calling a spade a spade. 'I have too seen them!' I cried, 'and if you want, I can explain to you what they were like!'

They didn't believe me; they thought I was making fun of them. For me, this new way they had of talking about the Dinosaurs was almost as unbearable as the old one. Because – apart from the grief I felt at the sad fate that had befallen my species – I knew the life of the Dinosaurs from within, I knew how we had been governed by narrow-mindedness, prejudice, unable to adapt ourselves to new situations. And I now had to see them take as a model that little world of ours, so backward and so – to tell the truth – boring! I had to feel imposed on me, and by them, a kind of sacred respect for my species which I myself had never felt! But, after all, this was only right: what did these New Ones have that was so different from the Dinosaurs of the good old days? Safe in their village with their dams and their ponds, they had also taken on a smugness, a presumptuousness… I finally felt toward them the same intolerance I had had toward my own environment, and the more I heard them admiring the Dinosaurs the more I detested Dinosaurs and New Ones alike.

'You know something? Last night I dreamed that a Dinosaur was to go past my house,' Fern-flower said to me, 'a magnificent Dinosaur, a Prince or a King of Dinosaurs. I made myself pretty, I put a ribbon on my head, and I leaned out of the window. I tried to attract the Dinosaur's attention, I bowed to him, but he didn't even seem to notice me, didn't even deign to glance at me…'

This dream furnished me with a new key to the understanding of Fern-flower's attitude toward me: the young creature had mistaken my shyness for disdainful pride. Now, when I recall it, I realize that all I had to do was maintain that attitude a little longer, make a show of haughty detachment, and I would have won her completely. Instead, the revelation so moved me that I threw myself at her feet, tears in my eyes, and said: 'No, no, Fern- flower, it's not the way you believe; you're better than any Dinosaur, a hundred times better, and I feel so inferior to you…'

Fern-flower stiffened, took a step backwards. 'What are you saying?' This wasn't what she expected: she was upset, and she found the scene a bit distasteful. I understood this too late; I hastily recovered myself, but a feeling of uneasiness now weighed heavily between us.

There was no time to ponder it, what with everything that happened a little later. Breathless messengers reached the village. 'The Dinosaurs are coming back!' A herd of strange monsters had been sighted, speeding