by Nicky Kyle
"Ah yes, you said that earlier. Sensible decision," said Dea. "How long has the dragon been visiting?"
"Been almost two months now."
"So it showed up just after the marriage was arranged, then?"
Louisa's jaw dropped. "How could you know that?"
"I guessed," Dea said. "Would you sit down with me for a little?"
"Oh." Louisa's cheeks flushed pink. "Of course." She followed her over to one of the tables near the fire, away from the chess players. Dea pushed back her hood, exposing those gleaming scales and cat-pupiled eyes again, and her close-cropped tuft of dark hair.
She took Louisa's hands between her own, making the younger woman blush darker. "I want to tell you a story now. It's about a girl who once upon a time did not want to get married. She was a princess named Aldeaim—"
"Oh," Louisa said, dragging her eyes away from the clasped hands on the table, "I know that story. My granddam used to tell it to me when I was little. I always liked it, but I liked the one about Princess Gella more because it has a happy ending, and also the one about Princess Thaiyn who overthrew the wicked—"
"Hush," said Dea. "Let me tell the tale as I know it, all right?" She closed her eyes a moment, then cleared her throat and began. "Once upon a time, there was a princess who would not marry. Her parents tried everything: they hosted grand balls and athletic contests, held poetry readings, gathered scholars to debate literature and history, even offered a reward to any who could win their princess's heart, male or female or otherwise. When none of that worked they summoned wizards and wise-women to see if there was a curse on the girl but neither magic nor science could solve the problem; she simply wasn't interested in falling in love with anyone.
"At last, having no choice—because in their lands, no one could claim the throne alone you see, so even if Aldeaim had adopted an heir she would not have been allowed to rule without first choosing a consort—they penned the princess up in a tower and said that whoever could overcome the enchantments and guards they set around it would have her hand in marriage whether she liked it or not."
Dea smiled crookedly. "They thought, you see, that since all else had failed they might as well fall back on the oldest traditions and determine that whoever was worthy of their daughter—he or she or otherwise—would be able to breach the defenses and rescue her. They thought their daughter must be under a curse of some sort, no matter what the scholars and sorcerers said, because why else had she not fallen in love with anyone they had presented to her? They thought perhaps 'true love's kiss' would work to breach her heart where all else had failed, overcome the curse and save their daughter from a life alone and their kingdom from an empty throne."
Louisa was silent now, her lower lip caught absently between her teeth while she listened, a well-trained audience for a storyteller; Dea was no professional bard but she had done enough traveling that she was practiced at telling stories. Any newcomer in a small town could earn themselves a bit of supper by sharing news and gossip and, when those ran out, simply by telling tales that had not yet been told in that town.
She continued with a shrug. "Well, Princess Aldeaim was no keener on the idea of marriage now that she was in her tower than she had been before they locked her away, so she took desperate measures of her own. They had put quite a lot of books up there with her, you see, her parents; they did not want their princess to be bored while she waited. It wasn't that they were unkind, the queen and king, they simply thought they knew what was best for their daughter better than she did. It's quite a common state of parenting, isn't it?" She didn't wait for an answer, but Louisa squirmed uncomfortably before she went on. "Well, so they kindly left her with many diversions before they sealed the doors and summoned the brambles and monsters, and Aldeaim had spent a lot of her time locked up in there reading. Some of the books were more useful than others, and one taught her some of the long-lost secrets of faerie godmothers."
"But those are just a myth," Louisa burst out, unable to stop herself interrupting. "Just a story folk tell girls to make them behave when they otherwise might not, because they think that as long as no faerie godmother has showed up to help then no matter how much they don't like what's going on, it can't be that bad or one would." She gulped then and sucked her lips in quick, as if she could take back the words. She started to stammer an apology but a gentle squeeze of her hands silenced her.
Dea smiled. "Not a myth in the way you might think. The truth has become quite obscured by mythology, yes—but the underlying idea remains true. We've simply grown confused about how it works. Faerie godmothers are indeed real; they are not, however, actually faeries. Well," she explained wryly, "faeries are fickle and capricious creatures, selfish and fond of pranks; they would obviously make terrible help-mates for a person in trouble. Who would want to call a faerie godmother to help them? It would only make things that much worse, getting a faerie involved. Dragons, on the other hand…"
Louisa's eyes were wide and fixed on Dea as if she could absorb the older woman's secrets just by staring at her. Dea pretended not to notice the desperate, hungry look in Louisa's eyes and continued:
"Dragons are reliable and constant. They have a strongly-developed concept of honor. They are also insatiably curious, and they love an underdog." Her teeth flashed in a grin. "They have an innate understanding of magical currents and very long life-spans, and they hate being bored. What better creature to invite to meddle in your life when you need help? Thus what Princess Aldeaim actually contacted, when she called for help from a faerie godmother, was a dragon—not a surprise to her, since she had read the whole book through and knew where the myth of faerie godmothers really came from; knew from the start that she was calling a dragon."
Dea's eyes were distant now, as if she looked through the fire smoldering in the hearth and out the other side to something else. "A great crimson beast with black claws and golden teeth and bright green eyes that glowed like a cat's in moonlight, wings as wide as the sky and softer and stronger than silk, a long tail like a drop-spindle unrolling…" She sighed, shook her head, and focused on Louisa again. "Well, at any rate the princess did not have to marry anyone because she flew away on dragonback—not kidnapped as the stories say, but because that's what she wanted to do and the dragon was kind enough to oblige when she explained the situation that had landed her at the top of that tower."
Louisa frowned. "She wanted to go with the dragon?"
"Most do, those whom folk say have been 'kidnapped.' Dragons have little interest in humans as captives. Well, they like people because of the stories they can tell and the trouble they can cause and the interesting ideas they have. Why would they want one who just sits around moping or wailing to go back home?" Dea shook her head. "That would be boring, and dragons hate being bored. No, they find it a lot more interesting to help people than trying to hurt them.
"Usually if a dragon is hindering someone," she explained, "it's to the benefit of someone else who asked them nicely. Or admittedly because they've decided to spread rumors of a treasure hoard so they'll always have company, which is a favored tactic of those too elderly to enjoy traveling anymore and who would rather have the world come to them, even if it comes with silly little sword in hand…" Dea chuckled, then frowned. "Sorry, now I'm getting off track. Anyway the point I was trying to make is that faerie godmothers are real, and they're dragons."
Louisa didn't look comfortable with that idea. "How can you be sure?" she asked.
Dea met her eyes. "Because I was saved by one, and now I'm becoming one."
Louisa looked very much like a milky-pink fish with her mouth hanging slack like that. Dea kindly made no mention of it.
"Once upon a time my name was Aldeaim and after I flew away, I decided that being a faerie godmother sounded like a much better life than being a princess, so I stayed with the dragon and studied her magical arts as her apprentice. Now I'm an 'apprentice faerie godmother' myself, for lack of a better term, and I travel to gain prac
tical experience and help out where I can while I'm on my way to mastering my wings."
"That's impossible." Louisa was whispering now. "That was…the story of the beautiful-but-ice-hearted Princess Aldeaim happened over a hundred years ago."
Dea nodded. "Dragons live for a very long time. And it takes a very long time to become a dragon."
"But…but…people can't just turn into dragons!"
"Look at your hands. At my hands. You can see the scales—hellfire Louisa, you can feel them."
Louisa rubbed her thumb lightly across Dea's knuckles and the patches of scale growing through the skin. "Does it hurt?" she asked in a soft voice.
"No. Itches a bit, around the edges, sort of like—have you ever gotten a sunburn? I don't mean that little pink kiss across your cheeks, but a proper summer sunburn, the kind that peels." When Louisa nodded Dea said, "It's a bit like that, when the skin gets dry and curls off. That's how it happens around the scales: they grow up through the skin which flakes off around them. But it doesn't hurt."
"And that's going to happen… everywhere?"
"Oh yes," said Dea. "That's just the beginning too. The bigger changes come later, where the bones shift and I grow new teeth, and a tail and wings… and of course I'll get much, much bigger, too!"
Louisa shuddered. "I don't believe it. People can't turn into dragons. And what would the dragons say? They can't possibly want that to happen. What do real dragons think about it?"
"I'm going to be a 'real' dragon," Dea explained patiently. "Where do you think dragons come from? Eggs?" She snorted when Louisa nodded hesitantly. "Even leaving aside for a moment the fact that dragons don't have a sex and adopt a gender only out of curiosity or comfort, can you truly picture a great, massive creature like a dragon hatching out of an egg? Or brooding a clutch of them, for that matter? Let alone talk about mating and all the difficulties that would cause… " She shook her head. "Dragons like to socialize, yes, but only in small doses. Besides, most areas can only support one or maybe two dragons comfortably; they're too much of a strain on local resources in groups, so a whole nest… well! It wouldn't end well for anyone, I'm sure."
Louisa frowned. "Then where do they come from?" she asked.
"People, always people. Sometimes dragons are folk who've studied too much forgotten magical lore to enjoy being people anymore. Mostly though they used to be princesses—or princes. Sometimes a duchess or an earl. They're not always royal or noble, of course. I knew one, a beautiful grey-blue scaled creature with a voice like a thunderstorm, who used to be a merchant's daughter before she grew her wings. Most dragons were human nobility though, once upon a time."
At Louisa's expression of disbelief Dea said primly, "A royal education actually prepares one quite well for dragon-hood, believe it or not. It cultivates the right mind-set: a self-confident superiority coupled with a desire to meddle in other people's lives for their own good. Condescending, distantly affectionate, and curious—that's a good description of most dragons and of most of those kings and queens who actually do good things for their subjects. With such an overlap of personality, is it any wonder that dragons prefer to draw their next generation from noble human houses?"
Louisa didn't seem to realize that she was slowly shaking her head back and forth, her face slack. Dea smiled gently. "It's all right," she said. "It's a lot to take in. I had months to get used to the idea, reading up there all alone in my tower, and it was still a bit of a shock when I grew my first scale."
"So you're saying… you're saying that a princess summoned this dragon?" Louisa grasped at the question like a drowning woman clutching a bit of driftwood; grabbing the here-and-now because the way-back-then was too big to contemplate.
"I'm saying that's not a dragon at all. It's just the idea of a dragon—and it wasn't summoned by a princess, but rather by the daughter of an innkeeper."
"But I don't have any sisters, and there's not another inn around for miles and miles! What's it doing here?"
Dea said nothing but her gaze didn't waver. She continued to smile.
Louisa paled. "That's not—I didn't summon no dragon, you're mad!"
"You didn't mean to, which is why you didn't get a proper dragon, an actual dragon," Dea explained, not unkindly. "You just got the idea of a dragon. It can't manage much flame and it fades out of existence when it gets too far away from you, which is why—I don't know if you've noticed, but everyone will if the 'dragon' is still here by summer when dead things start really stinking—if you go looking around beyond the village limits, you'll find all the bloody bits of what it stole to 'eat' splattered all over the ground. They fell when it dematerialized, I presume."
"I never… I couldn't… I didn't…"
"The marriage your parents arranged for you, it's to that boy who was watching you tonight?" Dea guessed. "Which is problematic, I assume, because you prefer women?" The bright flush that rose in Louisa's cheeks was answer enough.
"Well I can offer you a way out of your arrangement that doesn't require illusory dragons or carry a risk of burning down the whole village if things get out of control, if you'd like, although I'm afraid it isn't the escape you've been daydreaming about. I've no more interest in marriage now than I did when I went by my full name," she said, her smile wry but her rough voice as gentle as she could make it. Dragons can see into people's hearts and while Dea was as of yet no dragon, her eyes were by now less human than draconian and some things were easy to see even with a mortal gaze if one bothered to look. "I won't spirit you off for a runaway elopement, or challenge that young fellow to a fight for your hand, or overwhelm your parents with a bride-price of dragon gold—"
Astrangled sort of croak escaped Louisa's lips; she looked horrified. Dea squeezed her hands gently and added, "But I can take you away with me, if you want— as friends, perhaps, or at least as travel companions for a while." She smiled and extricated her fingers from Louisa's vise-tight grip. She didn't resist but she did drop her eyes to the floor. They glistened wetly in the light of the dying hearth-fire.
Dea wasn't done speaking yet. "Anybody who can conjure a full-fledged projection of a dragon strong enough to actually scorch damp thatch and carry off livestock without any proper training is somebody who can do a lot more with her life than serve drinks and clean up spills. There's a university I know of that would be glad to have somebody of your natural ability. I'm not much for company on the road generally, but I think I could manage not to bite long enough to help you get there, if you'd like. And if not, there are plenty of places where a cheerful girl who knows how to balance a tray of drinks can make a living outside of Styesville and away from any well-intentioned meddlers with an interest in matrimony."
Louisa sat looking down at the table and her empty hands. After a while she said, in the sort of tightly-controlled voice that people use when they're trying to sound like they're more interested in rational logistics than anything as wet and untidy as emotions, "I haven't the coin to go to a fancy school. Even my dowry won't pay for something like that, providing I could somehow talk ma and pa into letting me spend it on learning instead of marriage, and I've no money of my own."
"I don't think you'll have to pay them a thing. The University of Alchemical Light has provisions for people of prodigious talents and modest backgrounds. I imagine they'll cover your costs and even give you a stipend for whatever their room-and-board arrangement doesn't provide in exchange for you agreeing to help instruct some of the lower classes when you move on to your higher levels of study; they've done that before. The current dean was herself one of their 'stipend students' when she studied there—if I've not lost track of time. They might have a new university head by now," Dea admitted. "I'm still getting used to measuring years in dragon-cycles."
They had both of them forgotten about the other people in the room, so it came as a surprise when a hoarse voice said, "This person botherin' you, Louisa?"
The women looked up to find the two grizzled game-players standing by
their table. Neither looked happy. One stood with his arms folded across his chest, ropey muscles taut beneath skin so leathered by sun and weather that it was impossible to tell what color it had started as. The top of his head was completely bald but the rest of his hair seemed keen to make up for that lack, especially the bushy gray eyebrows that loomed like furious cocoons over his dark eyes. The other was shorter but broader, his muscles given over mostly to flab now but in the stretchy sort of way that showed there was still some iron hidden under the plump padding. His dark skin was marked with heavy freckles scattered across his cheeks like spattered ink and his coarse white hair stood out around his head like a pale nimbus, the light of the fire behind him making it almost appear to glow.
If neither was intimidating to a woman accustomed to walking through bandit country and facing-down unscrupulous toll-collectors and city guards with nothing but a toothy smile and a few magic tricks, they still tried to indicate that anybody giving Louisa any trouble would soon have trouble of their own from them, perhaps more than they looked likely to give at first glance.
Dea had to duck her head to hide a smile. She had a soft spot for protective but misguided old men; they always reminded her of that marvelous dragon.
Louisa was shaking her head vehemently, her honey-curls bouncing. "Oh no! No, thank you Gaffer Haush, Master Sellbick, no I'm not being bothered at all!"
Neither man looked convinced. Dea was careful to keep her head down, momentarily lamenting the fact that she kept her hair cropped so short; longer locks would have served as something of a curtain to hide the scales on her cheeks. As it was she just had to hope that the men's eyes were rheumy and weak, or that they were old enough—and pragmatic enough—not to bat an eyelash at the sight of a few scales on a woman's face.
The silence stretched out and thickened, like yeast ripening a loaf of bread. Eventually the old man who had spoken said, "You looked a bit bothered." The belligerence was gone from his tone; he was just making conversation now although it was the sort of conversation that took care to indicate that, in the right circumstance, it could very quickly become belligerent again.