What he saw was a world filled with dragons.
What he felt was big.
We are big! announced Tiamat happily. Then she spread her wings—his wings—their wings, and threw herself from the edge of a cliff. Jeremy's heart lurched with fear. But the leathery wings caught an updraft, and with a sudden rush Tiamat began to soar upward.
Jeremy looked down from a dizzying height. The air was filled with dragons—great beasts of power and majesty, creatures with jeweled eyes and burnished skins. He caught another current of hot air in his wings and spiraled upward, looking out over a world of ferocious beauty. High volcanic mountains capped with plumes of smoke and ash were feeding fire to the sky. Dragons soared and wheeled above and between the mountains, spiraling up on
the currents of hot air that filled their leathery wings, like sparks spiraling up from a bonfire.
The world of the dragons.
Tiamat's world.
And now, suddenly, his world, too.
I missed you, he thought to Tiamat.
Arid I you, she replied. She said it in his mind, and she said it out loud, and when she spoke it was with a tongue of fire. Her flames curled through the sky, and in them he read the promise that he could return to this world every night. When he dreamed, he would dream of dragons. With Tiamat he would slither into jewel-studded caves, soar through ash-dark skies, and study ancient mysteries.
Fire in his eyes, Jeremy rejoined the party. When Miss Priest saw him she smiled. Reaching into her cape, she withdrew a ring and slipped it onto her left hand. In the light of the bonfire, Jeremy could see that the stone set in the ring's top was a tear-shaped diamond. He raised a questioning eyebrow, looking more like his father than he would have guessed.
Miss Priest smiled and nodded, and touched her lips with her finger. Then she turned and vanished into the night.
The next morning, Jeremy went to his desk. Humming contentedly, he arranged his pencils in front of him. Then he took out some paper—and began to draw.
A Note from the Author
"I desired dragons," J. R. R. Tolkien once wrote, and it seems he was not the only one. There is some powerful pull about these great creatures, something that sings to the imagination.
In one very real sense, I wrote about Jeremy and Tiamat because, like Professor Tolkien, I desired dragons. Yet I must confess that when I started the story, I had no idea how much dragon I was actually going to get. The truth is, I thought "The Dragon's Egg" (as I originally planned to call this tale) was going to be a short story. But I tend to get carried away—which is why Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher ended up a novel.
I originally had the idea for this tale back in 1982, shortly after publishing The Monster's Ring, the first book to feature Mr. Elives' magic shop. I liked the store so much (basically, it's the magic shop I wanted to find when I was a kid myself) that I thought it would be fun to write other stories that sprang from a youngster buying one of Mr. Elives' unusual items. My plan was to make a book of such yarns, to be called Tales from the Magic Shop. Brainstorming one October afternoon, I came up with about a dozen things one might buy in the shop.
The thing is, every time I tried to write one of these ideas, it would get out of hand. Before I could finish the first version of "The Dragon's Egg," I could tell it was going to be much longer than I had intended. Still clinging to my first deluded notion, I started dividing it into chapters, thinking it could be the anchor story for the collection, maybe thirty or forty or fifty pages long.
But no, it insisted on being a book, or at least book length. And since I didn't have a publisher for it at that point, and had other books I was obligated to write, I set it aside. There it might have stayed— unfinished, unknown, and unloved—had not my friend Jane Vol en called one day to tell me Harcourt had engaged her to edit a new line of fantasy novels.
"If you could write a book like The Monster's Ring for me, that would be great," she said, litde knowing that I was longing to return to the world of Mr. Elives' magic shop!
That this book has been as successful as it has is in no small part due to Jane's editorial pushing and advice. For example, the first version ended with Jeremy saying good-bye to Tiamat outside Mr. Elives' shop, instead of going behind the counter with her. And she was no bigger than a dog when she had to return to her own world—partly because I hadn't figured out how Jeremy could cope with her if she got any bigger. (No night flights for Jeremy in that ver
sion!) Jane wisely pushed me to do more. In the end, it took thirteen drafts to get to the book you are now holding.
Strange as it might seem, research was an important part of the process. I believe fantasy like this works best—feels more real—when it is grounded in folk tradition. Therefore, much of the dragon lore in this book comes from tales and stories told about dragons over the centuries. For example, while having Tiamat be invisible to everyone except Jeremy and Mary Lou was an easy solution to the problem of how to keep people from finding out about her when she got bigger (a problem I didn't have until the later drafts, obviously!), it was not until I found an old French tale with a dragon who was only visible to some people that I felt comfortable using it. The milk trick, too, comes from the old lore. Other things—such as the use of Tiamat's teeth and skin to create the door that would return her to the world of the dragons—were my own invention. That's part of the fun of doing something like this: building on what has come before.
Another part of the fun is finding out how many others there were like me—others who also desired dragons.
May your hearts take wing!
Table of Contents
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One - Love Letter of Doom 7
Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher: A Magic Shop Book Page 10