by Ashly Graham
‘Fortunately a dragon’s flaming breath goes out when it’s unconscious, and the exhaust fumes stop, so the dentist can at least take off his asbestos suit and mask while he’s working; remembering to put them on again before it wakes up; or better, be on his way and out of sight before the dragon stirs.
‘You’d have thought that snaggle-toothed creatures like dragons could afford to lose a few molars; and they can, but they make a fuss out of sheer bloody-mindedness. They understand about supply and demand, and know that the cartel limits the number of teeth in circulation in order to keep the prices up, and hence its profit. The dragons get in on the act by holding out for ever more riches to add to the treasure hoards that they sleep and nest on—the Dragon Bank is the safest bank in the world: it has never been robbed, interest is zero, and withdrawals are rare—and gifts and other inducements.
‘And the Dragons’ Mutual Society that the creatures all belong to has rules that make the removal of each dragon fang like what it literally is: pulling teeth. Any draca or wyrm, worm, to use the Anglo-Saxon or Old English, and archaic names, for dragon who is caught negotiating a back-door trade is killed, and has its choppers extracted and impounded for trading on the free market, with the members of the Dragon Mutual sharing the proceeds.
‘You should see some of the hoards of gold and jewels those guys are sitting on: the stacks are so high one needs climbing gear to get to the top and make an offer, whereupon if the dragon doesn’t like the terms it can just tip one off. They hate to haggle. The hoards are very unstable, there’ve been many nasty accidents, and a number of brokers have been killed falling off the really big heaps or being buried in treasure-slides.
‘The largest species of dragon, Humungus armada, is mad, bad, and dangerous to know, as Lady Caroline Lamb said of Lord Byron. The Humunguses have memories longer than elephants, and if you’ve offended one it’ll hunt you down and airbrush you with its breath until your entrails crackle.
‘But despite what you’d think of such fearsome beasts...I exclude the miniatures of the Parvus esmeralda variety, which are attractive and docile and make good pets...dragons are delicate in health. They’re prone to all sorts of diseases and infections and ailments, and bad backs, and problems with joints and ligaments. On top of it all they’re hypochondriacs, so being a dragon doctor is an exhausting occupation, and almost as fraught as being a dentist. Because dragons won’t go to clinics and surgeries, and insist on being treated at home, newly qualified doctors are accompanied on their rounds for a year by experienced physicians, who help them get to know their patients and give them practical advice on how to avoid antagonizing or hurting them; the results of which are sadly predictable.
‘Since the average dragon calls out a doctor fifty times a year, as tedious as it is to have to make so many visits, building confidence and a certain relationship between the parties is essential and can be a life-saver.’
‘Crikey. Whoever would want to deal with them?’
‘Admittedly those who do, have below the median lifespan, and many burn out, often physically, as I said, as well as mentally, very young. But the financial rewards are huge and ambitious medical students are drawn to the work, despite the seven-year training period required to qualify, in hope of making a hoard of their own and retiring early with skin intact. Men in particular, because the specialty makes even the ugliest of them attractive to women.
‘Back to P.D.T. The Witches’ Guild’s consumer reports, as well as those of the Necromancers’ Union, our male counterpart, give the farm-raised dragons’ fangs a very low rating. A free-range diet makes for a harder enamel. And the lower metabolic rate of the captive beasts, which renders them fatter and more easy-going—that’s a relative term in the context—reduces the potency of the powdered ingredient.
‘The cost of keeping a farmed dragon at the correct temperature is astronomical. While the wild ones maintain their own body heat, the lazy farm blighters can’t be bothered, and one has no choice but to turn the thermostat up all the way.
‘There are cheap generic alternatives to dragon tooth, from such lesser reptilian species as the giant members of the Varanus clan, but none are any where near as good. At the bottom of the scale, mongoose teeth are supposed to be O.K., but I’m sceptical: you’d need a devil of a lot of them, and with the extra harvesting expense the saving is minimal. Some have tried mink, which is ridiculous. Both species are fierce, so they have to be killed before the extraction process. And there’s a new ivory polymer currently being tested in the Guild’s research and development laboratories; I have no hope for that, but then I no longer have any say in how the Witches’ Guild chooses to waste membership dues.’
‘What do dragons eat?’
‘Flesh, flesh, and more flesh. The Guild’s field officers tried a vegetarian feed once on some zoo specimens, with the result that their teeth fell out and they died. Fresh or rotted protein, it makes no difference, and any amount of fat. Dragons will eat corpses so far gone that even Volumnia would turn up her beak at them. That’s another reason why the margins are slim on the farms: in addition to the physical hazard pay—for even a hand-raised dragon is a psychopathic murderer-in-the-making by the time it loses its milk teeth—the workers have to be generously compensated for putting up with the smell, which is highly offensive, and the illnesses they stand to get from shovelling their ordure. They’re exposed to a constantly evolving variety of dragon viruses, which have the potential to mutate into forms deadly to humans, and are easily transmissible.
‘Those who contract them have to be quarantined in the equivalent of a leper colony for the rest of their lives. Because there is no medical cure, the only spell protection I’m able to offer is a compound of dodo spit and phoenix scat, neither of which is the sort of thing one steps on in the street, so nobody is holding out much hope for me as a supplier of vaccine.
‘To keep their members supplied with as much P.D.T. as they need, the Necromancers’ Union, which is a great deal wealthier than we are, hires bounty hunters from the Society of St George to hunt rogue dragons in the mountains. As you might imagine the funding required to mount such expeditions is staggering. The St George’s men charge a gazillion pounds an hour, and demand luxury trailers to base camp; mule trains and servants and a chef; and air-conditioned tents with king-sized beds and satellite TV. But what can you do? Even a penny-pinching carline like me has to admit that rogue P.D.T. is the best; I won’t use anything else, but I have to get it on the black market.’
‘What is a rogue dragon?’
‘A rogue’s a dragon who has either been cast out from its family or has left of its own accord after a domestic dispute. Dragons naturally live in prides like lions. Rogues are the fiercest and most cunning of all dragons, and they have to be killed because of the impossibility of negotiating a price with them in the normal fashion. Anyone other than a cap-à-pie armed St George who gets close to one is on a suicide mission. Those brutes talk with their teeth, which they have every intention of hanging onto, and claws, and breath.
‘There’s a fifty per cent mortality rate amongst the bounty hunters; but those who survive, like the best Roman gladiators, retire very wealthy. I know one St George who was actually christened George St George, so his career was pretty much decided for him if he grew up with half an ounce of bravery in him. George is famous for having killed a record number of rogues. Because he always fought to the bitter end and never turned tail, he lost each of his limbs to dragon teeth, and all that there’s left of him now are his head and torso. The skin of his chest, despite his asbestos breast-plate, is so shrivelled by dragon exhaust that it looks like biltong; for dragons breathe up to ten times hotter when they’re angry, and a rogue is furious from the moment it gets out of bed in the morning.
‘George won his last battle, against the infamous Buster Beowulf worm, strapped onto his horse—he had no feet to put into the stirrups, or legs to grasp the horse’s flanks with. He had his sword bound to the two remainin
g fingers of his left, and only, arm. His final thrust down Buster’s throat was fatal to the dragon, but in his death throes the bastard clenched his teeth for the final time.
‘Today George St George is Vice President of the Society of St George. He’s very happy and lives like a king; a very small king, but a king nonetheless.
‘So there it is, all you ever might want to know about P.D.T.’
Whatever else she may or may not be, Jennie thought, Hecate was quite the talker.
”
Chapter Thirty
“
Jenny was relieved that Hecate, after an understandable initial irritability, instead of kicking her downstairs or visiting some punishment upon her for intruding in her quarters, was disposed to be communicative. Wishing to keep the flow of information going in order to satisfy her great curiosity, she hastened to broach another topic.
‘If you don’t consider it impertinent of me to ask, Dame Hecate, why are you in such dire financial straits? I’d have thought that a person of your stature, a triple goddess and all, would have unlimited wealth.’
‘Wrong. As a goddess I had no need of money, and never put anything aside. Besides which, any riches I might have had would have gathered dust, not interest, so that even if I had been well off, after a couple of thousand years’ of inflation my fortune would have shrunk to nothing.
‘Because the measly pension I receive from the Witches’ Guild isn’t index-linked, I have no choice but to keep working as a spell-maker filling prescriptions. The way it works is that, after a witch has received an order from a client for a spell, she comes to me to make it up. It could be for anything from chopping down a tree without an axe, to winning a prize in a lottery…though that one, not surprisingly, although the cost varies according to the amount of winnings, is as expensive as the return when you factor in the witches’ and my profit margins; it’s slow work, spelling probabilities not being my strongest area of expertise.
‘Spells to ensure that one wins a bet are more common; as are those to make one lose, because gambling debts are deductible on one’s tax return, and they can be useful depending on one’s income level. Those I keep off the books and don’t admit to even amongst my friends.
‘The spell being cast, the witch presents her client with a bill that is a lot more than what I, as the middle-woman, am able to charge my customer. You wouldn’t believe some of the mark-ups I’ve seen for the more complicated routines: as much as five hundred per cent. I don’t mean complicated for the witch, for each of my spells comes with a full set of instructions that take as long to write as the spell does to make. Some of these women are really thick, and couldn’t boil an egg without a manual, so I have to “spell” everything out in words of one syllable.
‘The most successful consultant witches, who would be nothing more than snake-oil saleswomen without me, insult me by sending their familiars instead of dealing with me in person, most of whom are inarticulate or speak with accents so heavy I can’t understand a word. Serves the witch right if she gets a spell for curing acne when she wanted one for an aching knee.
‘Many of the consultants have formed group practices, which are even more lucrative than sole practitionership.
‘While I continue to live here—happily, I might add, and I should never move somewhere more up-market even if I could afford it—these days the richest witches keep flats in London, and have given up their black cloaks and steeple hats and broomsticks for haute couture and flashy jewellery, dining in five-star restaurants, and doing all the things that “one does” during the season. A fancy custom-made air conveyance can whisk them back and forth in no time, and they think nothing of going up to London every night if necessary to entertain a rich client.
‘Although open-market brokers’ commissions are negotiable, the Guild determines the amount of my reimbursement for each category of spell and ingredient according to a fixed scale, one that takes no account of increases in my costs. Last year, for example, while my expenses went up nine per cent, largely owing to the dearth of good P.D.T., the Guild only agreed to grant me an extra five per cent across the board. Whenever I apply to the compensation committee to raise the scale rates, or the cap on the percentage that they can go up year by year, it cites fewer clients, escalating administrative costs, reduction in new membership applications owing to high enrolment fees, and fewer existing members because the annual dues keep going up. It’s a vicious circle.
‘Because I’m unable to pass my extra costs on to the witches, as they can to their clients, to make ends meet I also do some teaching, of trainee and novice witches who are studying for their Chartered Institute exams. The students get more stupid every year, and the classes larger. Consequently I have to work longer and longer hours until they either pass or fail for the third time, which is the maximum allowed. Three-time losers go into a pool and apply for jobs as apprentices, for which no qualification is required, only an ability to survive an interview...which is what I thought you were here for.’
‘Why can’t you complain to the Guild or threaten to quit? Surely the witches wouldn’t be able to operate without you.’
‘My appeals fall on deaf ears. The Guild protects its own by reminding me of my oaths of loyalty to the Guild, pledges that I wrote thousands of years ago, and threatening me with a lawsuit if I resign, because it would be impossible for the witches to make a living, and force some of them out of business.
‘They should try living on what I do. The harsh reality is that the Spellmarts already supply them with much of what they need, for the bread-and-butter procedures, thereby cutting me out of the equation. What gets ignored is that the over-the-counter and discount products are of inferior quality, and have disclaimers on them so that they can’t be returned for a refund once the box is opened and they either don’t work or go wrong. There are also a lot of quacks out there competing with qualified witches and wizards for business, and even spell kits for people who want to try to make their own simple magic at home, as if they were home-brewing beer or wine.
‘While I guarantee all my products, the consumer doesn’t know that I exist. I can’t afford to advertise, and it’s a condition of my contract with the Guild that I’m not allowed to go direct to the client, do freelance work, or patent my spells. Witches can go independent, but they have to be very confident of making a go of it without the support that the Guild’s infrastructure provides, which includes access to my services.’
Hecate peered at Jenny. ‘Surely you must have some disposable income, or a nest-egg tucked away somewhere. We could go into partnership.’
‘I’m afraid not. My family’s assets have always been tied up in the land. If it weren’t for the ghosts helping out with the household duties, livestock from the farms, the catch from a few fishing boats, and produce from the vegetable gardens, we wouldn’t have survived as long as we have; although like you, and unlike my parents who have moved to Edinburgh, I should never consider leaving however hard things got. Dragonburgh is my life.
‘When my husband Lord Huntenfisch bought the castle from my parents, he poured most of his wealth into turning Dragonburgh into a sporting estate for rich society and business people. After he was bankrupted by his own mismanagement, he succeeded in accumulating a second fortune, which could easily go the way of the first—Lloyd’s of London has always considered us a bad risk and refused to insure us—were he to embark on a misguided attempt to repair the castle and replace everything that was destroyed overnight by the storm.
‘My guess is that Otto, my husband, will now lose heart and cut his losses by giving everything up and deserting me, which would be the best news I’ve had for a long time. He never gave me an allowance, and now that the castle has been deeded to me—he turned ownership over to me after the sporting business went belly-up—I can’t think that he will grant me one now. I did earn a great deal of money from some murder-mystery books I wrote, but I gave it all away to charity because the inspiration for the villains c
ame from Otto, and I didn’t want to profit from anything to do with him.’
The old woman sighed. ‘Pity, we could have done great things together. I need a dependable junior assistant so that I can take on more work, but with the finances as they are.... From time to time I’ve even been reduced to taking in the witches’ snotty children as a day-care facility: the mothers pay me a pittance to mind them while they go off to their bridge and golf games.
‘There was a brat called Wendy I had here who was learning to read; she got into one of the books, and succeeded in turning Volumnia into an elephant; a baby one fortunately, but even so if I hadn’t come home in the nick of time and reversed the spell, the floor would have collapsed.
‘The worst occasion occurred while I was upstairs and Barb Trout’s two-year-old daughter, Yolanda, opened the spigot on the barrel of sand I use for tracing magic circles. She let it all out to make a beach to play and build sandcastles on, added the pickled octopus from a jar I’d taken down from the cupboard, and shook some red okapi powder over it because she liked the colour.
‘Quite by chance Yolanda then crawled around three times and said, “Googoogopotty”, which is close enough to the correct incantation, and Hey presto! there were a dozen Vikings in here. I heard the noise from upstairs in the turret and came down to find them drinking mead out of their horned helmets and trashing the place. They destroyed some valuable specimens and the more fragile of the spell instruments in the laboratory’—Hecate waved at a heavy green curtain on a rail, which closed off the side of the room that Jenny hadn’t got round to investigating—‘before I was able to send them to Arabia to sober up in an alcohol-free environment.