Believing Is Seeing Read Online Free PDF

“I’m imagining a dragon,” he said. “If there was a dragon, those splotches would be the places where its body rests. Water dragons have no feet. And the length of the wetness suggests I must be imagining it about eleven feet long.”
    â€œI am fourteen feet long,” said a voice out of nowhere. It was rather too near Thasper’s face for comfort and blew fog at him. He drew back. “Make haste, child-of-a-god,” said the voice. “What did you want to ask me?”
    â€œI-I-I—” stammered Thasper. It was not just that he was scared. This was a body blow. It messed up utterly his notions about gods needing men to believe in them. But he pulled himself together. His voice only cracked a little as he said, “I’m looking for the Sage of Dissolution. Do you know where he is?”
    The dragon laughed. It was a peculiar noise, like one of those water warblers people make bird noises with. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you precisely where the Sage is,” the voice out of nowhere said. “You have to find him for yourself. Think about it, child-of-a-god. You must have noticed there’s a pattern.”
    â€œToo right, there’s a pattern!” Thasper said. “Everywhere he goes, I just miss him, and then the place catches fire!”
    â€œThat, too,” said the dragon. “But there’s a pattern to his lodgings, too. Look for it. That’s all I can tell you, child-of-a-god. Any other questions?”
    â€œNo—for a wonder,” Thasper said. “Thanks very much.”
    â€œYou’re welcome,” said the invisible dragon. “People are always telling one another to ask us, and hardly anyone does. I’ll see you again.” Watery air whirled in Thasper’s face. He leaned over the parapet and saw one prolonged clean splash in the river, and silver bubbles coming up. Then nothing. He was surprised to find his legs were shaking.
    He steadied his knees and tramped home. He went to his room, and before he did anything else, he acted on a superstitious impulse he had not thought he had in him and took down the household god Alina insisted he keep in a niche over his bed. He put it carefully outside in the passage. Then he got out a map of the town and some red stickers and plotted out all the places where he had just missed the Sage. The result had him dancing with excitement. The dragon was right. There was a pattern. The Sage had started in good lodgings at the better end of town. Then he had gradually moved to poorer places, but he had moved in a curve, down to the station and back toward the better part again. Now, the Altuns’ house was just on the edge of the poorer part. The Sage was coming this way ! New Unicorn Street had not been so far away. The next place should be nearer still. Thasper had only to look for a house on fire.
    It was getting dark by then. Thasper threw his curtains back and leaned out of his window to look at the poorer streets. And there it was! There was a red-and-orange flicker to the left—in Harvest Moon Street, by the look of it. Thasper laughed aloud. He was actually grateful to the assassins!
    He raced downstairs and out of the house. The anxious questions of parents and the yells of brothers and sisters followed him, but he slammed the door on them. Two minutes’ running brought him to the scene of the fire. The street was a mad flicker of dark figures. People were piling furniture in the road. Some more people were helping a dazed woman in a crooked brown turban into a singed armchair.
    â€œDidn’t you have a lodger as well?” someone asked her anxiously.
    The woman kept trying to straighten her turban. It was all she could really think of. “He didn’t stay,” she said. “I think he may be down at the Half Moon now.”
    Thasper waited for no more. He went pelting down the street.
    The Half Moon was an inn on the corner of the same