Garth and Shanama

Stories for Another Day

Garth and Shanama were the children of the Dharab, the dragon-slayer and Eva, his wife, who was known across the seven secluded kingdoms as a healer. The children were born within the same hour on the same day, just as the morning star was rising. They grew together and played together and loved each other with all their hearts.

One day when they were about four years old, they were playing together in the front garden when a wicked woman snatched Shanama up into her carriage and drove off at high speed. She took her many miles away, to a place where she owned a weaving house. Children as young as Shanama were chained up and made to work unravelling silk threads from the cocoons of the silk moth, with their light, nimble fingers. As they grew older they were trained in dyeing the silk and then in weaving. The weaving house was filled with the clacking of shuttles passing back and forth in the looms, and the screams of the wicked woman urging them to go faster and work harder, for she sold the long, shining lengths of silk for a great deal of money, and it meant everything to her.

Garth, left alone as Shanama was carried off, screamed and cried. As the carriage disappeared down the road, he set off after it, running as fast as his study little legs would carry him. When their mother came out to fetch the two children, they were nowhere to be found. No matter how long and how far the parents searched, and they searched for many, many years with hearts weighed down with sorrow, they found no trace of them.

Garth ran and ran until his feet were cut and bleeding and his breath tore at his chest, but the carriage was long out of sight. He wandered weeping into the depths of the forest and fell asleep in the heart of a rosemary bush. The next morning a woodcutter found him, and took him home to his house, deep in the darkest heart of the forest. He and his wife treasured the little boy, and they brought him up just as if he were one of their own sons.

Garth grew strong and tall, a forester like his foster father and foster brothers. By the time he was a young man, he knew the name and care of every tree in the forest, when they should be planted and when thinned out, when to prune and how best to bring down an old dead tree. All foresters are skilled at these things, but Garth also had a deep understanding of the herbs and mosses, and he knew how to use them for healing. As time passed, he forgot his parents and his family home, but he never forgot losing his sister, Shanama.

Now Shanama grew to be a beautiful young girl, the most beautiful of all the young women who worked in the weaving house. She was also the most skilled, and everything Shanama wove sold for the very highest prices.

The wicked woman was very pleased. Only one thing troubled her. Every year, on midsummer day and again on midwinter day, a fierce dragon would fly out of the waste lands to the north, and snatch away one of the silk weavers. Its fiery breath would have burnt the weaving house and all within it to the ground, so the wicked woman turned her face away and allowed the dragon to claim its tribute. But each year she gave Shanama a special tea to make her sleep and then hid her away in a cupboard, rather than lose her best worker.

One year Shanama forgot to drink the tea the old woman gave her, and peeping out from her hiding place, she saw the dragon come. As it swooped down, the wicked woman pushed forward one of the older weavers, who was slower than the others. The dragon seized her in its talons and prepared to carry her off.

A cold fire of anger sprang to life in Shanama’s heart. She went to her loom and in no time she had woven a length of silk so closely set that it was as strong as steel, so fine that it shone like a silver mirror, and so soft and flexible that it wrapped around her body and clung to her. Wrapping it over her head and shoulders, she took her shuttle and went out and called to the dragon.

The dragon came, huge and old in evil. When it caught sight of Shanama standing alone, shining like a beacon in the sunlight, it glowed with excitement and dropped the young weaver it held between its talons. With heavy wingbeats, it flew towards Shanama while the old woman screeched and pleaded with Shanama to let the dragon have the other girl instead.

Fire streamed from the dragon’s mouth, but Shanama was protected by the silken armour she had woven for herself. As soon as the dragon was close enough, she threw her shuttle and struck the dragon in the eye, killing it with one blow. It fell out of the sky and landed on the ground with a noise like thunder. Its tail, lashing the air as it fell, pierced the old woman’s heart, and she lay dead at its side. But the shuttle, as it fell back to the ground, struck Shanama’s shoulder, so that her arm hung useless at her side.

News of this battle spread far and wide across the kingdom. Deep in the heart of the forest, Garth heard it and knew at once that this must be his sister, Shanama. He packed some herbal ointments that he had made and set out to find her. He knew the weaving house when he reached it, for the body of the dragon still lay where it had fallen. Villagers came to throw stones at its lifeless body, and occasionally they would saw off a piece of its tail to plough their fields with, or cut their firewood.

Garth went into the weaving house, and saw his sister weaving almost as fast as the others, even though she could weave with only one arm. “Shanama!” he cried.

She dropped her shuttle and ran to him, and they embraced and wept over each other. Garth rubbed the healing ointments into Shanama’s shoulder and it gradually regained its strength. They gave the weaving house into the hands of the women who worked there. Those who wished to, returned to their families and those who had no memory of their homes, stayed and taught other women their skills and made sure that all the workers were paid equally for the work that they did.

Garth and Shanama travelled home to their parents, and the joy and tears with which they were met can only be imagined. In time Garth married the gentlest of all the girls in the weaving house, who happened to be the one that Shanama had saved. They had happy, healthy children of their own who loved Shanama second only to their parents. Shanama did not marry for many years, until the Wild Dog came out of the west, but that’s a story for another day.