Dragonspeaker Chronicles Box Set

by Patty Jansen

  “Whoa, be careful, children. You best go down while I do this.”

  “You’re scaring him with that box,” a little girl, Jette, said. She was only seven, still with soft blond curls dancing around her head.

  The dragon turned to her. He let out a brief growl.

  Jette walked to the top of the ladder. “You be good, Boots. You behave yourself. If Nellie says you should go in the box, you better go in the box.”

  Several of the other children were packing away their game.

  “Come on, children, go down. It’s only for a little while. You can come back and play soon.”

  “But we’ll forget where we were,” Bas said. He was marking the floorboards with a piece of chalk to indicate where each of the pebbles were.

  Nellie told him, “There is no need to do that. Just hurry.”

  While she was talking, the dragon reached out with a forepaw and hit the box out of Nellie’s hands. It bounced over the floorboards. The kitten scooted out from under the straw and inspected the inside of the box.

  “Whoa! Be careful.”

  Anneke said, “I don’t understand why he needs to go into that box. If someone comes, Boots can just fly away.”

  Agatha called from downstairs, “Children, if Nellie says go downstairs, you go downstairs. Now come down that ladder or I’ll spank your bottom.”

  Wide-eyed, Anneke and Bas scrambled down, leaving Nellie alone with the now agitated dragon. His ears were twitching, his tail was twitching and his head was waving from side to side. He glanced to the box and then to Nellie.

  Smoke trailed from its nostrils.

  The box lay on the hay-covered floor between them. When Nellie took a step towards it, the dragon shied back, pushing his rear end into the wall.

  “You really don’t want to go back into that box, don’t you?”

  She spoke in a soft voice.

  The dragon didn’t react. Smoke drifted from its nostrils and its ears continued to twitch.

  “I helped you, didn’t I?” Nellie said. “Now I need you to help me.”

  Again, no reaction.

  “You’re causing a lot of trouble,” she continued. “Do you think it’s going to be worth it? Do you think Prince Bruno is still alive and waiting for you?”

  The dragon turned his head to her.

  Did he recognise Prince Bruno’s name?

  In her memory, Nellie saw the chubby little prince as she had last seen him: a toddler with a soft face and big brown eyes. His hair was dark and very straight, and in summer, his skin would have a lovely bronzed tint.

  She used to read stories to him, and he would listen, sucking his thumb. He always chose stories about animals, unless his sister made Nellie read stories about fairy princesses and witch queens.

  The dragon made a soft whining sound.

  Nellie felt sorry for the poor creature. “You miss him, right?”

  A dragon without a master should roam free in the forests or mountains or whatever the dragon’s eastern home looked like. He should be able to soar through the sky, not be tied to a silly little box.

  Why was the dragon still tied to the box?

  Nellie held out her hand, palm up.

  The dragon bent its neck forward, brushing her fingertips with its snout.

  She took a step forward. The dragon leaned its head into her hand. She patted the warm scaly skin and scratched behind the ears and under the bearded chin. The dragon half-closed its eyes.

  “You like that, huh?”

  If she reached out with her right foot, she could just push the box back into her reach. But as soon as she bent to pick it up, the dragon’s head shot up and its eyes widened again. He let out a low growl.

  “Whoa, calm down.”

  She went back to scratching the dragon’s head.

  “All right then, stay up here, but don’t move and don’t make a noise. If you want to see your master again, you’ll have to help us and keep very quiet.”

  The dragon let out a low rumble. Smoke curled from his nostrils.

  Nellie climbed down the ladder, taking the empty box with her.

  Mina looked at her, hopeful, but Nellie shook her head. “He won’t go into the box. I told him to stay quiet.”

  “How is it going to stay quiet? You said it doesn’t listen to you,” Agatha said.

  “No, he doesn’t!” Nellie whirled at her. “It’s not like I asked him to come or to bring me here. And I don’t know why you think I can solve all your problems because I can’t. I’m doing my best, right? I have no magic and don’t know how to tell a dragon what to do. You go up there and try!”

  Agatha stepped back. “You don’t have to get so angry.”

  “Yes, I do. All you can do is snipe at me. I’m doing my best.” Nellie’s eyes pricked. She could do nothing right for these women.

  Agatha snorted. “It’s all useless quackery anyway, with this box and all that.”

  Anneke said from behind her mother, “Don’t be angry at Nellie. I like Nellie. I like Boots. And she did try to get him into the box. I saw it.”

  “Don’t talk your nonsense,” Agatha said.

  “I saw it,” Anneke said.

  “You were down here. Now keep quiet.”

  Agatha was right, Anneke had been down here. There was only one way she could have seen what had happened in the hayloft: if she had wood magic and had been touching the ladder, because it protruded above the floor level of the hayloft.

  Chapter 5

  NELLIE THEN TOLD the dragon to stay up in the hayloft and told the children to cover him with anything they could find.

  But she was very unhappy about it, and so were the other women. If the dragon had gone back into the box, she could easily have hidden it. Now she had to hide a full-size dragon and the incriminating box that had been stolen from the church.

  Nellie wondered whether, if Prince Bruno were here and he was still alive, he could control this creature. How did one tell a dragon what to do in absence of its master?

  Some of the women, led by Jantien, were hiding all their meagre possessions in the straw and various other places in the warehouse.

  There must have been some earlier disagreement because Jantien kept looking sideways at Zelda. “I don’t care what she says, I don’t want to lose everything I have once again. I had some bronze candleholders that belonged to my husband’s family I was going to sell so I could afford to travel to see him. Those supposed guards stole them, and I don’t know whether I’ll ever see him again.”

  Her eyes glittered.

  Nellie said, “That’s all right. I’ll help you.” She had lost all her possessions several times, and she knew how important those little mementoes became when you had nothing else to remind you of the good life.

  Jantien did not have much left in the way of possessions, except some spare clothes for the children, and a little box with hairpins.

  “It used to belong to my mother. I would die before I sell it.” She wiped a tear from her cheek.

  Gertie and Hilde had lifted a couple of cobbles and dug a hole underneath. The women put all their valuables in there.

  Nellie felt so miserable she thought she could cry. She thought of the little table in her room in the palace that she had been unable to take and that would probably now go into the dusty storage room from which she had rescued it in the first place. Maybe the Regent would even sell it, and she would have no money to buy it.

  Koby brought her own treasure: a little brooch with three tiny gemstones. “It’s my grandma’s. I don’t want to lose it.”

  Poor Koby.

  Zelda was watching all these activities with an expression of scorn on her face. She had made it clear that she had wanted the women to make ointment.

  She stomped around the warehouse. “I need to do work. I will lose customers.”

  But when Jantien suggested that she help hide the valuable items, she snorted and left.

  “What is up with Zelda?” Nellie asked Jantien when t
he two of them went to collect wood in the adjacent warehouse.

  “I don’t know. But many people don’t trust her.”

  “Why is she with the group, then?”

  “Because Agatha was friendly with her, and she said Zelda wanted some women and children to come work for her.”

  “Have you been to see her ‘customers’, too?”

  “I have. We visited a family with a sick old grandma. She was thin as a skeleton and had all these horrible lumps all over her skin, some of them burst open. Zelda insisted that the family put ointment on them even if it hurt the poor old dear so much that she was crying. But it was all right because she couldn’t speak anymore, anyway. The poor dear died a week later. I said to Zelda I wouldn’t come anymore, with what she charges for those ointments and tea that’s nothing more than chamomile and other herbs from the meadows.”

  Nellie said, “She says she gets it from Mr Oliver.”

  “Maybe she does, but there is nothing special about the tea. To be honest, she could just pick the leaves herself. She wouldn’t need to buy them from Mr Oliver’s expensive store.”

  Yeah, that part might be a lie. Nellie couldn’t see why Zelda would buy leaves from Mr Oliver either.

  “I would like to go somewhere else,” Nellie said. “I don’t like selling quackery to people who believe they’re buying a medicine that works.”

  “No, me neither, but Zelda has money and gives us food.”

  “We can get our own.”

  “I’m so ashamed of all this,” Jantien said, and her eyes welled with tears. “I’m ashamed that the children see me do this work for this woman I wouldn’t even say hello to in the street. Ewout and Jette are old enough to understand. I hope when they get older, they’ll understand that I had no choice. I hope that my husband will understand when he comes back.”

  Nellie put her hand on Jantien’s shoulder. “It’s all right. Look after the children. That’s the most important thing.”

  Jantien nodded, but her eyes glittered with tears.

  “I don’t even know if I’ll ever see my husband again. I have no idea where he is.”

  “Didn’t you say he went to Florisheim?”

  “That’s what he said, but if he arrived safely, surely he would have let us know?” The tears again welled in her eyes.

  Nellie wished she could make everything better, but this time she had no king and queen hidden in her group as they did in the hard but glorious time when they defeated the Fire Wizard. They were a bunch of poor women and a dragon who wouldn’t listen to them.

  The wood was chopped, and Jantien and Nellie carried it into the other warehouse where some others were already preparing the midday meal.

  Zelda had brought a bowl of dried beans, and they needed to be soaked and boiled for a long time before they were ready to eat. The leftover ham and potatoes Nellie had brought were not enough to feed all of them, but with the beans, it would make a nice soup. The smell was wonderful.

  Suddenly, Koby came rushing into the warehouse. She had gone out to collect clear snow to melt for water, but her buckets were still empty.

  “Guards are coming into the street!” she shouted, panting.

  “Be calm, child,” Agatha said.

  “There are so many of them, and they’ve gone into Yolande’s shop and are throwing everything into the street. They’ve also gone into the house next door, you know, where the two brothers live, and are taking out things like clocks and other devices made of metal.”

  Zelda started, “That’s what you get when you—”

  But Mina cut her off. “Children, go up into the hayloft, and be very quiet. I’m going to have a look.”

  “No need to panic,” Zelda said. “They’re always looking for stolen things in those shops.”

  Mina rounded on her. “And we have no stolen things? We don’t know what they’re looking for. I’m not going to take any risks.”

  Nellie followed her out of the warehouse.

  Indeed, a couple of men were standing outside the shop on the corner. Like the ones who evicted the people from the church, these did not wear uniforms. They were not men who Nellie recognised, either. At least, they were not regular palace guards being sent out to do this work. Yes, she was still thinking about Henrik. The fact he continued to ask about her made her more uncomfortable. If he would not renounce the deeds of the guards, then she didn’t know if she could trust him and didn’t want his attention.

  Yolande’s shop on the corner sold homemade sweets and spices. It was a quaint little business, no bigger than a few steps wide in each direction, and crammed with many shelves with little boxes, glass containers and jars and other quaint items. It was a relic from the days that the artisan quarter was filled with shops like these and that the well-off citizens would come here for the novelty, the days that people would come to see Mustafa’s exotic animals and the jugglers.

  Now, the shop window was dusty, the paint peeling and the sign that said Yolande and Dirk’s Sweets faded. Dirk had been dead for years.

  Three guards stood outside the shop next to a pile of jars, some broken, some tipped over with their content spilling onto the trampled snow.

  There were a couple of men inside the shop, and a woman’s voice drifted out.

  “I have done nothing wrong. Now get out of my shop, you’re ruining my business.”

  Next thing one man came out of the shop, dragging the old woman with him. She had a bent back and walked with a walking stick.

  “Keep your hands off me. I have done nothing wrong,” she was yelling, and thwacking him with her walking stick, but he paid her no heed.

  The two brothers from next door stood in the open door to their house, watching the goings on. Nellie wondered why didn’t they do anything to help the poor woman, because they were both healthy men. But there were guards inside their house as well.

  Someone came out carrying a box full of metal items, adding it to a collection already in the street. The loot included bronze candleholders, wooden boxes with pearl inlay, ornate frames with pictures, wall clocks such as were owned by rich families.

  The two brothers stood unemotional and hard-faced as the guards raided their home.

  “Are these their belongings?” Nellie asked. She couldn’t imagine people in this part of town owning those pretty objects.

  Mina said, “They sell those things. Sometimes at the markets, but usually they sell them to shops. They’re pawnbrokers. They buy those things, usually for a low price, from well-off people in financial trouble, and resell them.”

  Nellie felt so dumb. It was as if she had entered another world where she was like a child and needed to learn everything.

  Pawnbrokers. Everyone except her probably knew this already.

  The only way she knew pawnbrokers was how her father always spoke disdainfully of them, especially if he was forced to deal with them because the church wanted to buy an item off a pawnbroker.

  Her father always said making a profit off another person’s misfortune was a tacky way to make your living, but her father was quick to judge others, and despite the fact that he dealt with people from all corners of society, he had never understood the plight of others, or had any sympathy for them.

  She said, “So what are these men doing? I thought they were supposed to be looking for magical items.”

  Mina snorted. “I think they’re looking for ways to enrich themselves.”

  A wagon with a horse stood around the corner from Yolande’s shop. A few people sat in the open tray, huddled against the cold. The guards dragged Yolande to the wagon, still shouting, lifted her up and made her sit down.

  “What are they going to do with her and the others?” Nellie asked.

  Mina shrugged.

  “Does she have magic?”

  But Mina didn’t know that either. “If they say you have magic, you have magic. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.”

  And that was the horrific truth.

  Nellie and
Mina retreated into the alley and ran to warn the others that the raiding party would turn up soon.

  The women stood around the fire, a circle of worried faces. Mina told them to keep talking, but there was nothing to talk about. They all wanted to be quiet so they would hear the approaching footsteps.

  “Keep stirring the pot,” Mina told Koby.

  The children in the hayloft did their job and were very quiet. There was no sign of the dragon either. Hopefully, he would sleep through all of it.

  No one spoke.

  The only sound was the occasional clonking of the spoon against the side of the pot as Koby stirred.

  Nellie was hungry. The soup smelled really good.

  Sounds came from the street, filtered through the alley: a shout of a man, or the whinnying of a horse. Nellie presumed that more people got put onto the cart.

  Then heavy footsteps came down the alley, accompanied by male voices. It sounded like at least three or four men. One of them gave an order. Sounds outside indicated that they tried to open the door to the nearby warehouse, but the state of that building was such that it was dangerous to enter.

  One of the men swore, followed by a crash.

  Nellie guessed the door had fallen off its hinges or part of the roof had fallen in. At any other time, this might have been funny. The women always told the children not to play in there.

  Then someone banged on the door of the warehouse.

  “Open up, in the name of the Regent.”

  The women looked at each other, and slowly, Mina walked to the door. She pushed the plank aside a crack.

  “Are you hiding any items of magic?” the man yelled.

  Nellie couldn’t hear Mina’s reply, because the dragon took this moment to lift his head out of the straw.

  Oh no.

  Mina was saying, “We are just a group of women and children. We are poor and have nothing.”

  The door crashed open, and a man pushed her aside.

  Mina almost fell as the men charged in. They stopped in the middle of the warehouse.

  They looked around.

  The leader’s gaze rested on Koby, still stirring the pot. “Having a party here?”

  Nellie had packed away the bread and the remains of the ham so they could use it later, but the cups and plates were still on the table.