It’s always some darn thing. If there’s enough sun, there’s not enough rain. If there’s enough rain, there’s a late frost. If there’s no frost, just enough sun, just enough rain, if the seeds aren’t bad and the locusts stay away, it’s something else. Soldiers trampling the young crops on their way to get killed redrawing the lines on some king’s map. Or a nearsighted gryphon mistakes my barn for a cliff and starts raising her chicks in the loft. Or barbarians steal everything in sight, and they get the prize hog and maybe one or two of my daughters who wouldn’t stay hidden. Or else someone mocks a witch and she puts a curse on the whole countryside because she can’t tell one farmer from another.

But I draw the line at dragons. So when one burned down my crops and carried off my wife, I got my granddaddy’s sword down from over the mantel.

And when I was done with that son of a so-and-so, I got the singed plow out and yoked him up. After all, he’d eaten the oxen, and it wasn’t too late for a second harvest.