Go, dog!
He was faint now with weariness and his comrades had to help him back to the old woman’s hut where he soon fell asleep.
She’s a quest-giver, an encyclopedia, and a bed & breakfast. This woman does everything. Forget the princess, marry her.
Night passed and dawn appeared. A great cry of relief and thanksgiving went up from all the earth. “The dawn! The dawn!” people cried. “God bless the man who has released the dawn!”
Only at the castle was there sorrow still.
“My poor oldest daughter!” the king cried with tears in his eyes. “It was my sacrifice of her that has released the dawn!”
Then he called his servants and gave them orders to gather up his daughter’s bones and to bring back the leather sack.
“We shall need it again tonight,” he said.
I may be the king and have a huge castle and all, but leather sacks aren’t cheap!
He wiped his eyes and for a moment could say no more. “Yes, tonight we shall have to sew up my second daughter and offer her to the six-headed serpent, him that holds captive the moon. Otherwise the monster will devour half my kingdom, half the castle, and half the shining stones. Ai! Ai! Ai!”
But the servants when they went to the high rock on the seashore found, not the princess’ bones, but the princess herself, sitting there with her chin in her hand, gazing down on the beach which was strewn with the fragments of the three-headed serpent.
“Sure, the serpent’s dead. But where’s that nice man I gave head-scratches to? Was I not supposed to scratch on the first date? Is he going to call?”
They led her back to her father and reported the marvel they had seen.
“There, king, lies the monster on the sand with all his heads severed! So huge are the heads that it would need three men with derricks to move one of them!”
“Some unknown hero has rescued my oldest daughter!” the king cried.
“Actually, he said his name was Thr — ”
“I SAID, some unknown hero has rescued my oldest daughter!”
“Would that another might come tonight to rescue my second child likewise! But, alas! what hero is strong enough to destroy the six-headed monster?”
So when evening came they sewed the second princess in the sack and carried her out to the rock. Log and his companions saw the procession move down from the castle and they saw that the castle was again disturbed, one half of it laughing and one half weeping.
“It’s the second princess tonight,” the old woman told them. “Unless her father, the king, gives her to the six-headed serpent, the monster will come and eat half the kingdom, half the castle, and half the shining stones. He it is that holds the moon captive and the hero that slays him will release the moon.”
Yeah, yeah, we get it. It’s a pretty straightforward mathematical progression. Three, six, Log.
I’m getting kind of curious about the shining stones, though. What are they? Are they like the magic rocks in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? How do they work?
Then he whom his comrades called Six Bottles cried out, “Here is work for me!”
He drank bottle after bottle of the strong waters until he had emptied six. “Now I am ready!” he shouted.
He then staggered four steps, vomited in a heroic fashion, drunk-dialed several exes, and then Log cleared his throat a few times and Six Bottles got the hint.
He mounted his mighty horse and as he rode off he called to his comrades, “If I need help I’ll throw back a shoe and then you unleash my dog!”
He rode to the rock on the shore and dismounted. Then he climbed the rock and released the second princess. He told her who he was and as they awaited the arrival of the six-headed serpent he lay at the princess’ feet and she scratched his head.
This might actually be less weird if it’s a euphemism, but I kinda think she’s really scratching his head.
This time the serpent came in six mighty swirls with six awful heads that reared up one after another. In terror the second princess hid behind the rock while Six Bottles, mounting his horse, rode boldly down to the water’s edge.
Like his brother serpent this one, too, came sniffing the air hungrily, muttering the magic rime he had learned from his mother, wicked Suyettar:
“Fee, fi, fo, fum!
I smell some yum, yum!
I’ll fall on him with a thud!
I’ll pick his bones and drink his blood!
Fee, fi, fo, fum! Yum!Yum!”
“Stop boasting!” Six Bottles cried. “You will have time enough to boast after you fight!”
“Fight?” repeated the serpent scornfully. “Shall we fight, little one, you and I? Very well! Blow then with your sweet breath, blow out a long level platform of white silver whereon we can meet and try our strength one with the other.”
“No,” answered Six Bottles. “You blow instead, and let it be a platform of red copper.”
Elegant! Unlike the poetry!
So the serpent blew and on the copper platform that came of his breath Six Bottles met him in combat. Back and forth they raged, Six Bottles striking left and right with his mighty sword, the serpent hitting at Six Bottles with every one of his six scaly heads and belching forth fire and smoke from all his mouths. Six Bottles whacked off one head, then another, then another. At last he had disposed of five heads. He tried hard to strike the last, but by this time the serpent had grown wary and Six Bottles’ own strength was waning. So he reached down and took one of his shoes and threw it over his shoulder back to his comrades who were awaiting the outcome of the struggle. At once they loosed the dog which bounded forward to its master’s assistance. Soon, with the dog’s help Six Bottles was able to dispatch the last head.
These are awesome dogs. My beagle would bay hysterically, wet himself, and the best