How to Slay a Dragon - Bill Allen [49]
“Just call her Missus Sez, Greg,” Lucky advised him. “Most people do.”
Greg nodded. “We’re looking for Simon, Mrs. Sez.” He turned suddenly to Lucky. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me your prophet’s name is Simon Sez, and you go around doing anything he tells you?”
“Well, his name’s Simon Sezxqrthm, actually. Most of us just call him Simon Sez. And it’s not like we do whatever he tells us. He only tells us what we’re already going to do.”
Greg frowned. To Mrs. Sez he asked, “Is Simon here?”
She stared at him, confused. “You’re in where?”
“No . . . IS. SIMON. HERE?”
She nodded. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying, boy. Maybe you should talk to my husband, Simon.”
Greg swallowed back a comment. The old woman escorted them all into the house, through three empty rooms, and right out the back door. Greg was beginning to think she’d misunderstood again, until he saw an old man sitting at an easel in a tiny patch of green yard behind the house. He was facing the most beautiful landscape Greg had ever seen, yet the painting in front of him looked as if he’d toppled a paint can onto the canvas.
“Simon, we have guests,” the old woman shouted, her voice so loud Greg was sure he, too, would be deaf if he stayed here much longer. The old man looked up from his work. If his wife was two centuries old, this man was easily three or more.
“Wozzat? Hooreezfok?”
It took Greg a moment to recognize the first part as “What’s that?” and the last part as “Who are these folk?”
“This here’s Sonny Day’s boy,” Mrs. Sez said. “And I guess this must be his girlfriend . . . and well, I don’t know about them other two.” She leaned toward her husband and covered her mouth with one hand, adding in a whisper that shook the easel, “This one thinks he’s Greatheart, the famous dragonslayer.”
“Grauht, naint thadahoot. Wacniduferu?”
“What’d he say?” Lucky asked Mrs. Sez. He might as well have asked the easel.
“Are you going to answer his question, or not?” she yelled.
“What question?” moaned Lucky. “What did he say?”
“He asked what he could do for you.”
“We want to know about the prophecy involving Greghart and the dragon Ruuan,” Nathan tried.
The old man shouted something totally incoherent. Mrs. Sezxqrthm held a hand to her ear and forced him to repeat himself twice, until Greg felt his ears would bleed, but each time was no clearer than the last. Finally she nodded. “He says that was a long time ago, and his memory ain’t what it used to be. What do you want to know?”
“We just want him to verify that it was Greg Hart, not Greatheart who was supposed to slay the dragon,” Nathan said. “The boy here thinks maybe there’s been a mix-up.”
She clearly didn’t understand a word he’d said, but Simon was prompted to spout off more indiscernible ramblings. Again, he repeated it several times before his wife understood. “That’s what I was thinking, too,” she screeched back at him. The pair yelled more gibberish back and forth, and finally Mrs. Sez turned to the others and smiled as if the matter had been settled.
“Well, what did he say?” Priscilla cried.
The old woman wilted, as if she couldn’t be expected to endure talking to the four of them a moment longer. “Weren’t you listening? He said he don’t remember.”
“I’m afraid this is hopeless,” Nathan said. “We’re never going to learn anything from these two.”
“No,” said Greg. “We’ve already learned everything we need.”
The others looked at him questioningly.
“Don’t you see? His mumbling is so bad he couldn’t have possibly communicated the prophecy correctly. And she’s so deaf she couldn’t have possibly heard him. But she’s the only one who stands a chance of understanding a word he says, so that means whoever got word to the King’s scribe must have got it at least secondhand through her, and then the scribe probably got it third-hand and had to remember it well enough to write it down. And that’s another problem. Lucky said that the scribe’s handwriting is atrocious. No telling how far from reality the original prophecy was from how it reads now.”
Greg rested, thoroughly pleased with his