The Boy Who Would not Sleep

Stories for Another Day

Once there was a boy who would not sleep, and the reason was this. As a tiny baby, when his mother put him in his crib one night to sleep, he chanced to open his eyes and see the first star of the evening. It so enchanted him, twinkling prettily in the violet sky, that he lay awake watching it. As the night sky darkened, and more and more stars showed themselves, he watched them, delighted, smiling and gurgling and waving his little hands.

Every night after that he stayed awake, looking at the stars and watching the moon striding up and over the skies. If he was put to bed with the curtains closed, or in another room where he could not see the stars, he cried and fretted until he was placed where he could see them again. Then he would settle down contentedly.

As he grew, the stars, the planets and the moon were his friends. He was hopeless at his lessons because he kept falling asleep, having been awake from early evening until the last star disappeared in the brightness of the dawn. In fact, he probably would never have learned to read at all except that his mother found him a book about planets and stars. As he pored over it, the mysteries of how the stars moved, what kept them in place, and what gave them colour unfolded for him.

His parents despaired of him ever being any use for anything. He was unskilled at everything important, at ploughing, building, cooking, or caring for animals. He complained that the sun hurt his eyes, and he preferred to be inside during the daylight hours, so he was useless at games, sluggish and uninterested. His brothers and sisters teased him relentlessly, so the cloak of darkness became his escape, and solitude his choice. He began to spend his days in hiding, and his nights roaming the fields and the forest, learning the ways of the stars.

And then the dragon came to his village. This dragon had eaten its way through many villages in its time, and several good-sized towns. It started by devouring the herds, two or three animals at a time, a dozen for a meal. When all the animals were gone and the fields and barns were empty, it started on the villagers themselves. When it had eaten the last beating heart, it preened itself for a while and then it flew off to find a new village to feed on.

The boy, whose name was Castor, was the first to see the dragon arrive. Awake as usual while everyone else slept, he noticed a great black cloud obscuring the stars, moving across the sky. When the cloud sprouted wings that began to flap, Castor knew what it meant, and he was terrified.

He went to the house where the Head Villager lived and knocked at the door with a shaking hand.

Old Oscar got out of bed, grumbling, “Castor, is that you, you young fool? Why have you come disturbing a man in the middle of the night?”

“A dragon!” Castor croaked, hardly able to speak the word. “I saw a dragon flying into the valley!”

Oscar’s face went white. He clutched Castor’s arm. “Pray God you are wrong!” he said. But when the morning came, it was clear to everyone that he was not.

So it began. The dragon settled itself comfortably in the elbow of the mountain stream just where it flowed into the village, in easy reach of the fields and the village itself. Day by day it gobbled and stuffed itself, its body sinking heavily into the stream, which it fouled with its filth.

The village leaders all met secretly. “We must send for a dragon-slayer, or we are all doomed, every one of us,” they agreed.

“I’ve heard of a young dragon-slayer,” said old Oscar. “He is young, but he seems to know his business well enough. His name is Dharab.”

“Send for him!” the others said. “There is no time to lose! The more the dragon eats, the hungrier it gets!”

“But who will go?” old Oscar asked.

They looked at each other, fear written plainly on their faces. The only road out of the village passed directly in front of the dragon’s nest. Each of them weighed up the certainty of being snatched up and eaten alive against the few weeks of huddling indoors waiting for the dragon to sniff them out. They looked away from each other and returned to their homes without speaking another word.

Everyone in the village soon knew what had been said at the meeting, and now little hope remained. One by one, their eyes turned to Castor. They knew that if anyone was going to slip under the dragon’s guard and fetch the dragon-slayer, it would have to be in the dead of night, and the only person who could find their way across the fields and over the mountain in the darkness, was Castor.

So it was Castor, with fear in his stomach like a belt of lead, trembling so much that he thought everyone must be able to hear his bones knocking together, who slipped out of the village in the middle of the night, swathed in black from head to toe.

He could hear the dragon snoring as he slipped past like a shadow. He was afraid that he would trip, or stumble and wake the monster, but it was far easier than he expected. His feet were sure in the dark and he could read the path as he always did, by the map of the stars overhead. Before dawn he was safely on the other side of the mountain.

It took him one long day and half the the next night to reach the dragon-slayer’s house. The dragon-slayer agreed to come at once, and the journey back began. Castor led the way, sure-footed as always in the dark. The stars, like an open book, showed him the way back over the mountain when Dharab or any other man would have been completely lost.

When they finally reached Castor’s village, Dharab fought the dragon and defeated it after a great struggle, but that story has been told elsewhere. At the end of the battle, Dharab put his hand on Castor’s shoulder and offered to take him as his apprentice, but Castor slowly shook his head.

“That is not for me,” he said firmly. “I know what an honour is it to be offered the chance to be your apprentice, but I have a different calling.”

Dharab nodded. “The stars call you, don’t they? To know the patterns of the stars as they move, to know their names and how they tell the seasons and the times – that is great wisdom indeed!”

Castor said warmly, “The starts have taught me many things. I am only beginning to realise how grateful I should be.”

Dharab said, “Sailors, fishermen at sea, hunters, and soldiers lost in unknown lands – so many people would give a great deal to have your skill, to be able to find their way by the stars alone, by signs that no other eye can see!”

They embraced each other, each of them full of admiration for the other, and then they went down the mountainside to the village together, where the feasting and celebrations lasted more than a day and a night. And as night fell and the stars rose, Castor set out on his next adventure.