Riddles in the Round

"Isn't it curious," Iago suddenly said, "how geography affects so many things?"

Quasimodo put his hands on his hips, smiled and gave his companion a sidelong glance. "I'm no C. Auguste Dupin," he replied. "There is no way on earth I can deduce what led to that question. It just came out of the blue. Besides, what exactly are you talking about?"

Iago was surprised. "Why, dragons, of course. You know, things like that. How could you not know what I was referring to?"

 "Because I'm sane. But what geography, pray tell, affects a dragon?"

"Oh, not just dragons! Lots of things are affected!"

"Just as these woods have apparently affected your mental state."

Iago looked around. "The woods... they are unusual. Traipsing through them, they have certainly affected us, you must admit. But that's not the point."

"The point is dragons?"

"Yes. No. The point is geography. You see, where one is affects how one comprehends things, even if there's no obvious reason why it should. As a case in point, I was just thinking, and I trust I remember this correctly, that dragons were considered beneficial in the Orient."

Quasimodo shrugged. "I wouldn't know. Sadly, my education is spotty at best. But I do know that where I came from dragons were things to be feared."

"Aha! Well said, old friend! Exactly my point! Dragons were feared by the Europeans but not by their eastern neighbors. Wolves were feared by the Europeans but, I've heard, not by Native Americans, or at least let's say not all of them. And the sphinx? A benign entity to the Egyptians but feared by the Europeans as a man-eating monster!"

"The Europeans are a fearful people," Quasimodo smiled at his attempted pun. "I know a little about the Egyptian sphinx, at least I've seen photographs of it, but a European sphinx is a new one on me. What was it?"

"Well, unlike the Egyptian version, it was a woman... well, at least the head was a woman's. It had a lion's body and sometimes, depending on the story I guess, wings like a bird."

Quasimodo snorted. "My friend, you and I have seen far, far stranger things in these woods and yet have survived to see another day. I don't understand how a creature such as you described could inspire fear."

"Well," Iago replied, warily watching some shadows moving in the underbrush to his left, "she'd pose the poor wayfarer a riddle and, if he couldn't solve it, she'd devour him."

"Europeans always had weird cuisine. But what was the riddle?"

"It was something like 'which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?' Or maybe like 'what goes about on four legs at dawn, two at noon and three at dusk?' You know, variations on that theme."

"Ah!" chimed Quasimodo, "The answer to the riddle is more fantastic -- and perhaps more ominous -- than the riddle-giver herself. I dare say she should have been the one fearing the strange traveler instead of the other way around."

Iago laughed. "Quite right! Quite, quite right, indeed! And speaking of which, I thought I saw something in the shadows over there. Do you see it? It's vague, I grant you, but it looks sort of like it might be a Grecian sphinx itself nestled in the foliage. Would you care to see what thereat is, to let your heart be still a moment and this mystery explore?"

Quasimodo chuckled and hooked his arm around his companion's. "Lay on, Macduff! You and I, we were born riddles and to riddles we are drawn, no matter where we are! And who can say? Perhaps the effect of the geography of these uncanny woods has made us even more of a riddle than we first dared to dream. I say that this sphinx of yours will have to be content subsisting on berries today. We'll know the answer to all her riddles, but how will she ever fathom the riddle which is us?"

And off the companions went, ever deeper into the woods.