I sleep.
Eventually the heavy oak doors of the wine cellar screech open, its iron hinges sprinkling detritus upon my earthen floor.
The slow creak-creak-creak of wary footsteps descend the rotted wooden staircase that has not borne the weight of Man since--hmmm, let me think about this--Robert Darwin? God only knows how many years ago that was, and BOOM! The wine cellar doors collapse again, leaving in their wake a young human boy, standing at the bottom of the cellar steps, trembling in the soft glow of a single flickering candle.
"Is there a dragon down here?" says the lad.
"Anything's possible," I answer.
The child gasps, and I see his white face turn a shade or two paler, and when he finally lets out his breath, out goes the candle. I seem to recall Robert, when he was a lad, making the same blunder--but when Robert blew out his candle he scrambled up the steps and pounded on the wine cellar doors, begging to be freed, screaming like a banshee that the dragon was about to devour him alive.
But this one just stands up straight, straining his weak human eyes, eyes not that were not made for seeing clearly through the darkness.
"What year is it, lad?"
"The year is 1817," he says. "I thought Father was fibbing. I mean about you. Of course, I can't see you--so you could be fibbing, too. This could all be part of my punishment. Are you a man pretending to be a dragon?"
"Why in the world would I want to do that?"
"Maybe Father is paying you."
"I am not so easily bribed." I flare a nostril, and reveal just enough of my flame to illuminate the corner of the wine cellar where I lay resting.
The youngster edges closer.
"Well, my boy," I said smugly, "do I pass the test? Man or beast?"
)
