Charming, Volume 1

by Jack Heckel

  “Normally, yes,” he said, and made a helpless gesture with his hands back down the well. “But that frog was really something.”

  Liz threw her hands in the air in silent despair and stalked off through the smoldering crops toward the dragon’s body, cursing her brother, fate, and dragons with equal vehemence.

  To approach the dragon’s body, Liz had to climb down into the massive trench the beast had cut in the field as it fell. She followed the ragged scar and shuddered as she saw that it was aimed like an arrow right at the spot in the middle of the field where she had caught Will after his mad attempt to draw the dragon away from the house . To distract herself from the memory of those terrifying moments, Liz began a careful inspection of the dragon’s body, tracing the outline of one of its massive wings as she walked toward its head. This close to the beast’s body, the air smelled of burnt dragon flesh, and she pressed the handkerchief tighter against her mouth to cover the choking stench.

  With her eyes watering, she at last reached the dragon’s massive snout, and stared into the creature’s face. To be sure, it was a horror. Hundreds of ivory white teeth like butcher’s knives jutted from the thing’s mouth, and thousands of plates that met in raised razor-­sharp rows covered its body, running along the dragon’s length, growing as they went till they formed high armored ridges along its back. But, despite the vicious talons and the spiked tail, there was something very human about the creature’s expression. Its eyes were closed, and bathed in the light of dawn, its face seemed almost peaceful. She ran a hand over the rough scales around the nose. The dragon was still warm; it could have been sleeping.

  “Lucky . . .” Liz muttered.

  She paused, her hand still outstretched, and considered the word. It was wrong, but she knew that was exactly how she felt. The dragon’s troubles were over. Hers, on the other hand, had only begun. She turned about and surveyed the smoking landscape. Their home was a shambles, their crop, their only source of livelihood and sustenance, was gone. The village, with as little comfort as it might have offered them, was also likely destroyed. The excitement of the early-­morning terror was gone, and Liz found herself staring at the dragon and feeling nothing but a profound emptiness.

  “Why us? Why now?” she asked the dead beast. This was not how the story went. There had been no noble steed in white, no prince, no flashing sword or gleaming armor. There would be no castle on a hill, no happily ever after. This was not how it was supposed to end. All they had was a ruined farm and this ruined corpse. Anger filled the emptiness in her heart. She screamed: “It isn’t fair!” and, with each spoken word, she hammered with her fists at the dragon’s corpse, though its sharp scales cut into the soft flesh of her knuckles.

  Before she had landed a half-­dozen blows on its stone-­hard head, Will was at her side. He threw his arms around her and drew her away from the body. Her anger turned to great wracking sobs. She collapsed into his arms, and out came a rush of words.

  “It’s gone . . . what little we had is gone. Everything we’ve worked for . . . and for what? Now all we will have is . . . is . . . hunger and misery. It would have been better if we’d stayed in that field and burned.”

  She knew she was being emotional and selfish and maudlin, and all the other things she hated in other women, but she could not help it—­it was all true. She pulled away and looked up at him, her tears painting white lines in her ash-­covered cheeks.

  “What will we do? We have nothing left—­nothing.”

  The last she spat out like a curse and then rocked back on her heels. It was hopeless. She let her body go limp, her eyes stared out unseeing at the gray stillness of the smoky morning.

  There was a long moment of silence during which Liz, for perhaps the first time in her life, thought nothing. Then Will spoke. “We could go rescue the princess.”

  Liz was no longer crying. Instead, she was angry. She pushed his hands away and stood stiffly. So, his answer to this disaster is to tell me a fairy tale? He is his father, and his grandfather, and his great-­grandfather all over again.

  While she played this monologue out in her head, all she could manage was “What?”—­which, even to her own ears, sounded ominously low.

  Perhaps grave muttering shook Will, because when he replied, it was with significantly less confidence. “We could go after the princess . . . it’s . . . I mean . . . now that the dragon is gone it shouldn’t be too hard.”

  Maybe he was trying to be amusing, but Liz was in no mood, and she had too much experience with the men of her family to assume that he was anything but serious.

  “What princess, Will?”

  She was happy to see beads of sweat form across his brow as he answered. “You know the one in the ‘Dragon’s Tale.’ The—­the one Mom used to read to us.”

  “There is no princess, Will!” she shouted, her anger spilling out unchecked. “The story was just that—­a story! If this is the ‘Dragon’s Tale,’ then where is Prince Charming? Where is his shining blade and noble steed? Where is our happily—­”

  Liz stopped herself too late. Will’s eyes narrowed with understanding, and she felt a mixture of embarrassment and anger paint flashing red across her cheeks. Now he knew she’d also been thinking of the fairy tale. Will got to his feet, bit the nail of his index finger and, with eyes locked firmly on the ground, said, “Just because the cock don’t crow doesn’t mean the sun didn’t rise.”

  Liz pursed her lips and glared at her brother. He loved those country expressions, and she hated them. Their mother had been Lady Pickett, their great-­grandfather had been an advisor to kings. Much as it was their only source of sustenance, they were not farmers, and she would be damned if she let her brother lower himself. She started to say just that, but Will held up his hands in a gesture of peace and said quickly, “All I meant to say is that just because our field is gone doesn’t mean there isn’t a princess.”

  Liz was momentarily speechless. He actually thought he was going to be allowed to go looking for a princess. He could not be that foolish. She would not let him be that foolish. She would not let him ride off on some mad quest and repeat their father’s and grandfather’s mistakes.

  She stepped forward and, despite the difference in height, endeavored to loom over him as she had done when they were younger. “Do you think this is a joke?”

  She gestured widely around at the devastation, her voice rising to a shout. “This is not a bloody fairy tale, Will. That mad beast just destroyed our home. And what about the village? How many of our neighbors, our friends—­your girl, Gretel—­are in that thing’s belly? Prosper may be gone. Our home is gone. There is no happy ending here. And for God’s sake, stop biting your nails!”

  Will dropped his hand from his mouth, but then the line of his jaw set stubbornly. “You and I both know that everyone in that village will be fine. They have their stone cellars and their watch fires and their bowmen and . . .”

  He threw up his hands and without another word brushed past her, striding across the blackened field toward what was left of the house. She stared after him. Was that it? Then fear rushed through her. What if he rode away and left her here alone?

  She called out, “Will, I’m—­I’m sorry I yelled.”

  He stopped several paces away and bent low to the ground. She rushed after him and, reaching his side, gently stroked his back. “I—­” Her voice broke again, “I shouldn’t have said that about staying in the field. The only thing that matters is that we are alive and together. The rest we can figure out. I know this is hard for you to accept, but the ‘Dragon’s Tale’ is just a pretty fable made up to help children sleep. There is no princess, there is no curse, there is nothing but a stupid, mindless, bloodthirsty beast that managed to get itself killed! And . . .”

  She stopped as he rose and slowly turned toward her. He was holding something out to her. There dangling from the end of a broken cha
in was a golden key. It was a four-­toothed affair, a little longer than his hand, with writing etched on its surface in spidery script. Liz raised her index finger cautiously, as if afraid it might vanish at her touch, and traced its length. The words written there came straight from the book she had read and reread since she was a little girl.

  This key shall be my curse’s mark.

  The maid shall sleep,

  The wyrm shall watch,

  Bound link-­by-­link by magics dark.

  The story was true? The blood pulsed in her ears until the world was a soundless roar. How long she stood there looking at the key, but seeing instead images of a gallant knight and a sleeping maiden and a high dark tower, she did not know. There was a sense of time passing, but if it was a minute or an hour she could not have later said. Finally, though, she heard Will’s voice, and the meaning of what he was saying shook her from her reverie.

  “See, I was trying to tell you the whole time. I saw the key glimmering there in the dirt when I ran over to pull you off the dragon. I’ll take Grey and the cart up the mountain pass. I figure it should take one week—­four days up and three days down—­and if I don’t come back with the Princess, you go to town, show them the dragon, and tell them to go to the castle to send someone after me.”

  Panic pushed away all thoughts of the key and the fairy tale. Her brother was seriously suggesting that he go rescue the Princess from the dragon’s tower. Unbidden, their mother’s voice came back to her. He has too much of his father and grandfather in him. His head is full of adventure and glory, and if you do not keep his feet solidly on the ground, it will be his undoing, just as it was theirs. Liz dropped her hand away from the key and squared her shoulders. She watched his eyes grow guarded and tense. Good, she thought. I must make him see reason. I must be practical—­hard.

  “So, let me get this straight,” she said with as much scorn as she could muster. “Your plan, the one you spent the last half-­minute thinking up, is to take our only horse up into a notoriously dangerous mountain pass to find a dragon’s lair, and rescue a princess that may or may not exist?” He opened his mouth to respond, but she gave him no chance, and instead quickened the tone and meter of her lecture. “Will, did you look at that key? It’s solid gold. Even if it isn’t, it must be worth a fortune, more than this family has had since Grandfather went mad trying to buy those ridiculous magic beans. If we melt that key down, no one could trace it back to the dragon, and we would have enough money to—­”

  “Now wait a minute,” he interrupted. “Grandfather just had a little bad luck with the phase of the moon. If he had been any kind of a farmer, he’d have planted in the waxing moon so the seed would sprout under the full moon. You see the important thing about beans is—­”

  Liz put her hand on her brother’s chest to silence him. “Will, try and focus on the issue at hand. Please.”

  His eyes grew cold, and she knew she had said the wrong thing. He straightened his back so that he stood at his full height. She was suddenly very aware of how tall he was. “I am focusing on the issue,” he spit. “I’m thinking about a girl trapped up in a dark tower, Liz. I’m trying to ignore your suggestion that we become . . . I don’t know what—­thieves? Tell me, Liz, what are we supposed to do, leave her there to rot?”

  Liz turned her back to him. Her voice quavered as she answered his question. “No, of course not. But—­”

  “But what?” he asked impatiently.

  But what? she asked herself. In her mind’s eye, she saw the flowing pennants, glittering armor, and Prince Charming on his horse. She felt a pang of something in her breast, and tears began to spill down her face. This time when she spoke her voice had lost all of its authority. “But what about the Prince? The Prince is supposed to rescue the Princess. I also remember the story, Will,” and she closed her eyes and recited the lines she had read so many times: “ ‘And the Prince regarded the maiden fair—­a pale flower in enchanted slumber preserved. And on bended knee did he lower himself to her, and lip to lip, breath to breath, with love’s first kiss did he awaken her heart from its timeless cage.’ ”

  She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and then snapped her finger under his nose. “What about all that? There’s nothing in the story about a peasant waking the Princess! Prince Charming is the hero. Prince Charming wakes the Princess. You might not even be able to.”

  Liz knew that seeing any woman cry made Will intensely uncomfortable, so when he mumbled something incoherent about artistic license being responsible for some of the inconsistencies, she let it pass. She knew that a debate over literary device would not resolve anything. Eventually, his speech ground to an awkward halt. They stood in another of their too common silences.

  Surprisingly, this time it was Will that broke the spell. He placed the key in her hands and said, “But, we are here now, and if we can save her, then that is what we should do. How can we condemn her to another day of sleep in those cold mountains?”

  The thought of the Princess lying like a corpse in some forgotten tower sent a chill through Liz’s bones, and she shook her head to be rid of the vision. He smiled down at her, and Liz knew from the expression that he had seen her thoughts in her expression.

  “Look, I’m not saying I believe in the whole story,” he said in a reassuringly measured tone. “Like you said, the Prince wasn’t real, but if that kiss part is real, and the Princess doesn’t wake with the key, then I’ll just put her in the cart and deliver her to the castle so the Prince can do the rest. But think about it, if we bring the Princess back, then, well, then no one can deny what we’ve done. We’ll have written ourselves into their story, and if that’s not worth a king’s ransom in gold then nothing is.”

  Liz cocked her head to one side and studied him curiously, holding his gaze with her own. There had been something in his voice when he’d mentioned the kiss that made her pause. He blushed under her examination and dropped his eyes, and in an instant she knew the truth. This was not about duty or honor, it was about the Princess.

  He gathered himself and asked, “If we let the Prince do it, then what?”

  Will kept talking, though Liz hardly noticed his words. She may not have gotten her prince, but Will still saw a chance to get his princess, and how could she blame him for wanting to make the attempt? Jealousy and fear tugged at her in equal measure, and she knew she must let him go.

  “Maybe they will give us some coin out of their grace,” he was saying. “But maybe they won’t? This is our one chance . . .”

  She did not trust her own motives. If she forced him to stay, which Liz knew she had it in her power to do, how could she ever know that she hadn’t done so, in at least some measure, out of pettiness? Somewhere in the distance a church bell pealed its silvery tone, which meant the town had survived. Her eyes raised at the bell’s call and drifted to a low grassy hill at the far end of the field. Though it was obscured by smoke, in her mind’s eye she could see quite clearly the little circle of graves lying there. She had dug their mother’s grave herself. If she let him go would she be digging Will’s also; if she let him stay, what then for him and for her?

  “For whatever reason,” he said in a voice bursting with earnestness, “after all these years of beating us down, fate has literally thrown us the key to our own destinies.”

  “Fine.”

  “So, there’s no point in—­ Wait, what?” His eyes widened in shock.

  “I said, fine.”

  He stared at her for a moment, mouth open, “You mean . . .”

  “I mean—­” Her voice broke again, and she forced herself to look up at him without crying. “I mean you can go and fetch the Princess, if that is what you want. But”—­and she waved a finger at his chest—­“but no playing the hero, William.”

  “I don’t—­”

  “Yes, you do,” she said seriously. “I was sure I’d lost you wh
en you ran out into that field, and I never want to feel that scared and empty again.”

  “The plan was to draw the dragon away from you and the house,” he mumbled.

  “My point exactly,” she said dryly. “No more heroics.”

  He mumbled something that might have been a yes.

  “Promise,” she pressed.

  “Yes,” he said with an exasperated sigh and a shrug.

  She studied his face, which had that irritatingly stubborn set to it again, and sighed in reply. She doubted his promise meant anything, but she also knew there was nothing more she could do. She forced her doubts and fears aside. The course was set. He would be Will, whether she wanted him to or not. Besides, now that the decision had been made, her mind could turn itself to more practical considerations. She glanced over at the dragon’s body. Knowing the towns­people as she did, if they found it before Will got back, they would take it to Castle White themselves, and take the credit for the creature’s death and whatever reward came with it. Will would have to deal with that.

  “Good. Now figure out some way to keep the dragon’s body hidden, and by then I should have lunch ready.”

  “How am I supposed to hide a dragon?” he asked in a voice bordering on a whine.

  She shrugged. “Your plan. Your problem.”

  With that she plucked the key from his hand, dropped it into the pocket of her apron, and turned back to the manor house. A pall of black smoke was still rising from its collapsed roof. She turned about and looked at the ruins of the other out buildings. Her eyes settled on the sole surviving structure. “It looks like the barn managed to make it through. We’ll eat there.”

  Fear was creeping back into her heart. Knowing that another emotional outburst was coming if she lingered, Liz turned and walked away. From behind her she heard Will call out, “I guess I could bury it . . . or something?”