WURM

Ritter was a happy boy.

He lived a charming life in the forest of Bohemia.

He would spend days and days running and skipping through the trees, the dells and the rivulets that made up the wood on the edge of the world.

"Don't go beyond the forest!" shouted his Mother as he set off on another adventure.

"I won't" he replied as he skipped past the cottage garden and into the sunny glade near the stream.

The boy would saunter along winding paths and old fence lines meandering through the tall oaks like snakes and ladders.

He would pick wood anemones and sorrels for his Mother and sing madrigals he'd learnt from his Father as they sat together by the hearth on winter nights.

Occasionally he would stop to eat a sandwich from his bundle and drink some elderflower all made by his Mother that morning.

The sun would shine through the canopy and the warm light would dance and pose around the forest floor. Ritter would follow the bobbing sunlight as it made its way through the trees.

It was on one such day that the boy, shuffling along humming and hopping in the dapples, came to the edge of the forest.

He had never been this far before and felt the yawning distance between his home and where he stood.

 "Don't go beyond the forest!"

His Mother's warning echoed through the watching trees.

Ritter sat down at the edge and ate a sandwich.

It was then that he heard a haunting plaintive sound like the sad whispers of a golden harp.

He stood and felt an urgent desire to find the source of the lament and breaking his Mother's cardinal rule, left the forest.

He walked out onto a vast undulating board of gently rolling wolds, which when entered, had a charming effect like the welcome he felt in his father's arms.

The boy walked on summoned by the aching notes drifting across the low hills.

He clasped his food bundle and looked back once towards the dark boundary of the woods and went on into the new land.

On he went until he came to a small grassy hill.

The haunting melody seemed to emanate from here soothing the very air and the ground around it.

Ritter stared at the mound and thought he saw part of it open up slightly.

It had and what's more in the opening was a large .... eye!

Ritter was flabbergasted and was about to turn and run home when he heard the plaintive song again. It was so sad, so moving. He sat down to listen to it properly now that he was here.

In his reverie he thought he saw another eye open up at the base of the hill. Now two large eyes with red pupils were staring at him in a sort of sorrowful way.

"Are you the eyes under the hill?" asked the boy.

"I am," said the hill, "and there is more of me."

"Then do not be afraid Mister Hill. Come out into the sunshine", replied Ritter cheerfully.

"I am not afraid young Sir. I am stiff and find it hard to move, but I shall try now that you are here", explained the hill.

At this the eyes closed as if some huge edifice was straining to rise and the boy could see spiral rents appearing in the grass around the mound. 

The spiral tears grew bigger and after much creaking and groaning a colossal grassy creature was standing in front of the boy, a shower of soil and roots falling from him like snow.

"You are so big Mister Hill!" said Ritter as he craned his neck to see the creature's head in the bright sky.

"I am," it agreed "I am as tall as a castle, if not taller."

"I have never seen a castle I'm afraid. I live in the forest and there are no castles there, just my parent's house and my den," explained the boy.

"I once lived in the forest too, many years ago," replied the creature now stretching in the sunshine and shaking off some mice and voles that had nestled in his creases.

"But how could you have lived in the forest Mister Hill? You are so big and the gaps between the trees are so small!" asked Ritter.

"I was once a boy like you young Sir. I had a home and I lived with my dear parents far away on the other side of the woods, where the brook babbles and the robins sing. My name was Wurm,"

"But you aren't a boy at all. Your'e a .....," remarked Ritter.

" ...... dragon. Yes. I am a huge dragon with wings and four legs and a vast toothy mouth," agreed Wurm as it began to walk round the boy, grass still covering its massive form.

"But why did you change from being a boy Mister Dragon, I mean Wurm?"

"Like you young Sir I once wandered far from home, with some food from my dearest Mother wrapped in a cloth. I wandered and sauntered through the tall tress until there were no trees left and the forest ceased."

Wurm went on, licking some dead leaves from his claw.

"It was then that I heard the most sorrowful music I had ever experienced in all the world. Even the sad winter robins could not produce such a sound as this. I stepped out of the forest and the notes lead me to a grass-topped mound, where like you, I sat and listened to the sad song."

"But what happened to you Wurm? Why aren't you a boy now?" inquired Ritter feeding grass to a dizzy vole.

"I met the dragon under the hill and the dragon explained how he had once been a boy and strayed out of the trees and met a dragon under the hill ..... and so it goes back into the mists of time to the beginning of the world," explained the Wurm.

"So you ..... became the dragon?" asked Ritter with the first nibbles of fear in his voice.

"Yes," replied Wurm, "As you will too."

"But I don't want to become a dragon under the hill Wurm, I don't. My parents will be worried sick and I need to go home," implored the boy.

"I'm afraid you can't young Sir for it is the way of the hill that you must now take my place under its roots and keep some of the world's sadness locked away. You will be a Sorrow Dragon like me and sleep deeply in your bed of herbs singing your own sad song as you dream forever," explained Wurm.

"Oh no, Wurm, please! I beg you, I do not wish to become a Sorrow Dragon and keep sadness locked away. I want to go home to my Mother and Father and hug them again and again!" cried the anguished boy now standing below the giant dragon's head.

"But if you do not become a Sorrow Dragon then I shall stay a dragon forever and ever, for it must be the first child who strays that can release me. That child is you I'm afraid," soothed the Dragon stroking the boy's brow gently with a huge blue claw.

"I do not want you to stay a dragon forever Wurm but I do not want to be a dragon either. Please, please do not make me one for I shall miss my parents terribly and it will break their hearts that I am gone", sobbed Ritter.

"It is ever thus young Sir. I implored the very same but it was to no avail. Sorrow Dragon's are as much a part of nature as streams and mountains and the sadness they keep would overwhelm the world if it wasn't stored away in the hills. There are many of us scattered around the vale and I am the one at the edge of the forest. You must become a dragon and I must be freed as you yourself will be freed in time," explained Wurm sat down on the grass on his vast blue haunches.

The forlorn boy sobbed with such ferocity that his shoulders wracked and his body shook with a sadness he had never known, a sadness born of his parents' distant breaking hearts and his own yearning arms and he knew that must lock such sorrow away from the world lest it overwhelm it just as Wurm had said.

"How do I release you?" he asked the dragon looking up into its sad eyes.

"Firstly, I must say your name."

Then say it.

"Ritter."

"Now, you must lie like an an unborn child in the bowl in the ground where I once lay."

The boy slowly led down in the soil and stared up at the sorrowful dragon.

"And now last of all I must shed a tear over you."

The boy nodded and lay down his head and snuggled into the earth as its heart broke.

The dragon, sobbing, lowered his vast head over the boy and released an enormous tear that splashed over his curled body and soaked the soil around him.

"Goodbye Ritter." said the dragon.

"Goodbye Wurm." sobbed the boy.

The dragon immediately changed back into a young boy and he ran once more into the forest of his past.

At the edge he stopped and looked back to where Ritter was lying.

All he could see was a grassy mound.

As Wurm turned he thought he could hear the first notes of Ritter's sorrowful song filling the sunlit wolds.