her butterfly-sash were the only bright spots in the gloomy procession.
When the executioner came to the well, he paid no attention to Tatsu sitting there. He reached his hand down into the well so that he touched the water with the leaf.
"Change into a sword with blade as sharp as a flame," he said sternly, and waved the iris leaf, which immediately became a sharp-edged sword.
Tatsu knew he'd have to hurry.
He let his tail down till it touched the cool water in the depths of the well.
Just as Hachi lifted the sword to strike the gardener's neck, Tatsu spoke.
"Change to a leaf again," he gasped. As he turned his head to watch whether the magic would work, he lost his balance and fell completely into the well.
"Oh," cried Kiku, "the poor dragon! We must get him out before he drowns."
Kiku had never felt sorry for anyone before. The Daimyo was so used to giving Kiku her own way that he didn't stop to be surprised that she was trying to help someone.
"Save him, executioner," ordered the Daimyo.
Hachi the executioner, who had been looking forward to wielding his sword, would have liked to delay, but he knew the Daimyo demanded instant obedience of all his retainers. With hardly a moment's hesitation, Hachi leaned over the well and let down the iris leaf—only a leaf again now—to the dragon. Tatsu was just able to open his mouth and hold onto the leaf with his teeth.
With the Daimyo's eye upon him, Hachi the executioner tried to pull Tatsu out of the well, but he couldn't do it alone.
Gushi the gardener forgot he was going to be executed. He hastily yanked off the blindfold and put his arms around the hateful executioner to help pull, but the two of them couldn't pull Tatsu out.
The Daimyo forgot he was a Daimyo. He put his arms around Gushi to help pull, but the three of them couldn't pull Tatsu out.
Finally Kiku ran over and put her arms around her father to help. They pulled and tugged, and tugged and pulled, and finally Tatsu came unstuck and they got him out of the well.
He lay on the ground beside the well, soggy and muddy. When he tried to talk, he could only cough hoarsely. When he tried to get up and move, he found there wasn't a slither left in him—nor even a hitch.
"What shall we do for him?" asked Kiku anxiously, and she thought so hard how to help Tatsu that she forgot all about the execution of the gardener, and no one ever thought of it again, except Hachi the executioner. Naturally, Hachi was disappointed. He didn't have a victim to execute every day.
Looking the dragon over anxiously, Kiku spied the stitches the wizard balloon man had put in.
She took the iris leaf, no longer so sharp as a sword, but still sharper than an ordinary leaf, and cut the stitches.
"Executioner! Gardener!" she commanded. "Take this poor old dragon home."
Hachi the executioner, fuming inwardly at the indignity, stood up inside the dragon near his head, and Gushi the gardener stood up inside the dragon near his tail.
Tatsu dripped all the way home; yet he was a proud dragon.
Gushi the gardener bowed low to Tatsu and thanked him for saving his life. Neither Gushi nor Tatsu noticed Hachi staring at them with a most unpleasant frown.
To Shrine Island
Tatsu's life began with such a lot of activity that he was quite unprepared for the long dull days that followed the rescue of Gushi the gardener.
There were no more parades and no more moonlight ceremonies. Jiro and Zenji left him lying in the corner of the courtyard till his green and yellow cloth skin was muddier than ever and his brown yarn tail and his purple whiskers were decidedly matted.
He still had the tin horn for a voice, but what good is a voice with no one to talk to? All the air had long ago oozed out of the orange balloon, and he too lay limp and lazy under the monkey-puzzle tree in the courtyard. All Tatsu could do was to hibernate. But hibernation grows stupid after a while.
After a particularly dull and rainy night, Tatsu wakened to hear a clatter and a commotion in the courtyard. A lot of people were talking all at once.
As soon as he roused himself enough to hear what it was all about, he began to sort out voices. He heard Jiro and Zenji and the Daimyo and Kiku and Gushi the gardener and Hachi the executioner, and after a while he began to figure out what they were talking about.
"Kiku wants a dragon in our retinue," the Daimyo was saying. "We're going to Shrine Island for New Year's Eve to the fire-fighting ceremony."
"Surely, my lord, you could find a more fitting creature than this interfering dragon," said a fawning voice Tatsu recognized as belonging to Hachi the executioner.
"No other creature but a dragon will do—and I'll have no dragon but Tatsu," Kiku put in.
"I want Tatsu, too," said Gushi the gardener. "I'm only here by his honorable shadow."
That must be his way of remembering that Tatsu had once saved his life. Tatsu's brown yarn tail had drooped sadly when he listened to Hachi, but now he began to feel important again. When he heard the Daimyo's next speech, he wagged his tail like a proud puppy.
"Certainly we want this heroic dragon. If you boys will permit, he will go with us to Shrine Island."
"He's too faded and dirty to be part of a retinue," objected Jiro. "Look how muddy he is!"
But Kiku was determined.
"You clean him up," she ordered Gushi the gardener and Hachi the executioner.
Hachi shrugged his shoulders in defeat.
They all got busy and scrubbed poor Tatsu with long-handled brushes, and combed out his tail and his purple whiskers with a strong comb and brushed his bamboo teeth.
Tatsu felt that Hachi scrubbed much harder than it was at all necessary to scrub even a very dirty dragon. He yanked at the comb till Tatsu wanted to give a most un-dragon-like yelp—or grab the comb in his teeth and pull the executioner's hair and let him see how it felt—but he had the pride of his ancestors to live up to and took it all without a protest. At least, he consoled himself, he was beginning to look like his old self.
The boys even daubed fresh yellow paint on his clean green cloth body for scales. This time the spots really looked almost like real golden scales. Tatsu was encouraged. Maybe he wasn't a real dragon yet, but at least he was a clean one. If only the balloon man had been there to blow him up! Without the wizard's help Tatsu couldn't get around by himself. Somebody would have to stand up inside him to make his front legs, and somebody else would have to stand up inside him to make his hind legs. Never, never, could he choose for himself where he wanted to go.
"Where did you say we were going?" he ventured to ask.
Gushi
