by Nicky Kyle
Louisa for her part was curled in a corner with her hands pressed over her face, weeping. Nothing about her looked like someone expecting a rescue, and Dea's heart felt squeezed suddenly inside her scale-dusted chest at the thought Louisa had believed herself so readily abandoned.
Dea's sharp hiss carried like a shout over Louisa's muffled tears. Louisa started, curls thrashing, and looked around the tidy room before she spotted Dea in the window's opening. She gasped and scrambled to her feet.
"You were right!" she sobbed. The floor inside was built-up enough that the shorter woman could reach the windowsill without climbing, although only with her fingertips. She brushed them over Dea's thick nail-claws; she was trembling. "I should have listened!"
"Even I don't take my own advice all the time," Dea said drily. "Please stop crying. It's not as bad as all that."
"Yes it is!" Louisa protested. "You don't understand. They're going to come and get me in a few minutes and then I'll have to marry Dane. No more delays on account of the dragon. They think I'm under a spell, and that will cure it. Ha!" she said bitterly. "Now I'll never be able to stop the dragon and it will come and burn everything down and people will die and it will be all my fault, because I should have listened!"
"Hush," growled Dea. "I'm not dragon enough yet to enjoy such levels of melodrama. Now get out of the way; I don't want to land on you."
"Land on—?" Louisa gulped and scrambled backwards as Dea hoisted herself up and through the window. She dropped lightly to the floor, the thud of the wooden boards underfoot almost drowned-out by the chatter outside.
"I couldn't very well boost you up from out there, could I?" she asked. "Now hurry—before they come to fetch you for the wedding. You do still want to leave, don't you?"
"Of course!" Louisa said. "More than ever! But—you can't possibly lift me, a skinny thing like you…"
"I'm stronger than I look," Dea said firmly. She knelt by the window and cupped her hands together to make a step. "Now come on, stop fussing."
Louisa fluttered but did as she was told, still sniffling a little, and Dea gave a grunt as she heaved with hands and knees. Louisa squeaked and scrambled over the sill. There was a thump and another, louder squeak as she hit the ground outside. Dea dug her nails into the soft wood of the windowsill and followed, easily leaping over the crumpled form of the other woman and landing nimbly on her feet. She reached down and tugged Louisa upright.
"Well come on then, we don't have time to waste. Did you finish packing last night?"
"Packing?" Louisa repeated, sounding a little breathless. "Aye, but I didn't bring anything with me when they dragged me away to see Brother Bauik." When Dea simply nodded and tugged her in the direction she'd come from Louisa paled and drew back. "We're not—not going back home, surely? To the inn, I mean?"
"Unless you want to walk all the way to Klarns in nothing but that dress we are," Dea replied calmly. "Come along, and don't worry so. Everyone else is coming here, so there won't be anyone to see us there. We'll nip in and grab your things and be on the road before they've figured out you've gone—with any luck."
Dea did not mention that dragons do not, as a rule, believe in luck and certainly do not approve of relying on it. When they turned the corner of the cottage only to come face-to-face with a crowd of busy villagers including none other than the priest himself and the young strawberry-haired man who thought he was supposed to be marrying Louisa in a few minutes, she remembered why.
Fortunately the filthy oath she snarled was draconian and none of the inhabitants of Styesville spoke that archaic tongue, or she would doubtless have been greeted with more outrage than surprise. As it was, the attention of the startled villagers focused first on Louisa. It consisted at first mainly of cries expressing their surprise that she had escaped (not that they used such a word; that would imply she had been a prisoner, and people who are forcing others to act "for their own good" rarely see it as a prison, as Dea knew all too well). The first person to really take note of her was the priest. When his eyes bulged and the veins in his face swelled Dea realized that in her scramble in and out of the window her hood had fallen. She reached to pull it back over her head but stopped when she realized it was already too late: the priest was pointing a shaking hand at her.
"D-d-d-dragon!" he shrieked.
Louisa moaned and spun to look behind her; Dea, who knew very well what the priest was pointing at, did not. The other villagers in Styesville did not have to turn, because she was standing right in front of them. Suddenly a runaway bride was no longer the most interesting thing to stare at. Dea sighed and stared back, refusing to be made to feel abashed for her scales. She had chosen them of her own free will, and no scandalized villagers were going to make her feel ashamed over that choice now. She fixed the priest with a slit-eyed stare. He yelped and ducked behind a tall man who had flour dust up to his elbows; the miller no doubt, unless he was the village's baker. Whoever he was, he did not look pleased about being the priest's shield, and his face turned almost as pasty as his hands.
"That can't be the dragon," someone protested. "That looks like a… girl?"
"The fiend has taken human shape to lure our poor lass into its clutches!" the priest cried, clinging to the miller. "But see, by the holy light of day it cannot hide its true nature!"
"Don't be ridiculous," Dea said, without much hope that anybody would listen. "I look like this in any light. And I'm not a dragon." Not yet anyway, she added silently. And maybe not ever, if you lot have your way.
Louisa, cheeks bright pink, turned back to face her fellow villagers. "She certainly is not! I told you, there isn't a dragon—not a real one, anyway! It's all my imagination!"
"It's true," Dea said, raising her voice to be heard although she wasn't sure why she was bothering. "That is why it is important that Louisa go somewhere she can learn how to use her talents properly, deliberately, instead of—"
"Lies!" the priest shrieked. "Stop your ears, my brethren! Do not let it ensnare any more of you!"
Dea scowled; anyone who tried to win an argument by silencing the other party was, as far as she was concerned, not worth listening to, but several villagers shrank back obediently and if they didn't actually clap their hands to their ears they did avert their eyes and shuffle their feet awkwardly, torn between wanting to do as they were told and not wanting to miss a moment of the scandal. Louisa's mother was weeping openly while two other women supported her on either side. The prospective groom shoved his way to the front of the crowd.
"Louisa, come away!" said Dane. He was sweating nervously. "Before it—before it hurts you. Please."
"She's not going to hurt me!" Louisa snapped. "She's here to help."
"Help with what?" someone asked.
"With… with getting rid of my dragon," Louisa said, dropping her gaze evasively. "And… not getting married."
"Not married?"
"I told you she was bewitched!"
"It's not enough for the dragon to steal our sheep, it wants our women as well!"
"Poor Louisa! We mustn't let it harm her!"
"Oh, poppycock," Dea muttered.
"If it's in people-shape now, does that mean it will be easier to kill?"
"That's how it always works with monsters in the stories!"
"Somebody grab it!"
"You grab it."
Louisa stamped her foot. "Nobody is grabbing anybody! You settle down right now, Jack Hempswitch!"
One bushy-bearded man had the decency to look ashamed, but the rest of the crowd was undaunted by Louisa's scolding, and from the look of things more than a few had started to discuss strategy. Dea suspected that it would come to violence in a few moments.
"If we burn the dragon it can't burn us anymore!" one villager screamed, proving her right.
There was a sudden surge of movement as the crowd reached forward, ignoring Dane's frail cry of, "But Louisa! Don't hurt her!" Anger twisted their faces into ugly masks but at least, having been prep
aring for a wedding, none of them were armed with anything more dangerous than flower-garlands and belt-knives.
Dea raised her hands and they almost fell over one another to stop. Only the priest still tried to push forward, but because he was still tucked behind the solid miller, he didn't go far. "Don't let it scare you!" he yelped. "It can't hurt you when it's in human form! Our faith will guard us!"
"I don't want to hurt any of you," Dea snapped, "but if you persist in this—this nonsense I may be forced to, and I'd rather not do that. Now, all you have to do is let Mistress Louisa here decide what she wants to do with her own life—as I believe she has tried to explain to you several times already this morning—and no one will have to do anything rash, you or me."
"It was you who was rash coming here, dragon!" Dea almost expected the priest to start frothing at the mouth, but he didn't even spit as he shouted, showing more self-possession than most of his ilk that she'd encountered in her travels. "Now we have you where we want you! Now we can—"
"Dea isn't the dragon!" Louisa yelled. Everybody went silent, gaping at her. Her plump cheeks were flushed bright red. It seemed no one—at least no one like her—had ever interrupted the priest before. He gaped like a fish while everyone else stared. Louisa pushed on, refusing to let her embarrassment silence her: "I am! Or at least, I'm why it's coming here. And I don't want any of you to get hurt, and I'm sorry things got burned but I didn't mean it, and I didn't even know I was doing it, but I don't want to do it anymore." She turned to face Dane and her voice dropped from shouting to sorrowful. "I don't want to marry you either. I do like you, I just—I don't want to marry you. I'm sorry. That's part of why I have to go, and it's not your fault either, and I'm sorry. And ma, pa… I should have spoken up sooner. I'm sorry. That part's my fault, for sure. Maybe after I learn how to… how to do or not do whatever this is I can do, maybe—"
"You are not leaving!" Louisa's mother, her face as red with outrage as her daughter's was with shame, drew herself up. "You aren't going anywhere except over to that altar! Everything will look better once you're wed and this silly curse is broken!" She planted her hands on her hips. "Now I won't hear any more nonsense out of you, young lady!"
"Mother! You need to listen to me!"
"Don't talk to your mother in that tone of voice."
"Pa, don't you start now. Don't you see—"
"I see you've been dragon-addled, my girl, but we'll take care of that and this beastie…"
When the villagers, muttering darkly—some in the back of the crowd who felt themselves safe were shouting, but those whom Dea could look in the eye merely muttered—started forward again, Dea decided it was time to stop being polite. "That's enough," she snapped. Her green eyes glittered. "No one is getting married today and nobody has been cursed and nobody is going to be breaking any curses—or breaking or burning anything else, either. I am a faerie godmother and I will not put up with this sort of thing." Dea glared, although she knew that statements like that were a lot more impressive when issued by a creature that was over twelve feet tall and had wings the size of the sun. The mouths full of razor-sharp, swordblade-long teeth probably didn't hurt either.
"A faerie godmother?" somebody actually laughed, nervously.
"Louisa, you listen to me—"
"No." That was Dane, looking pale. "If'n she doesn't want to be married, we won't be married."
"Now son, you just think a moment—"
"Da, she said she doesn't want to. That's the end of it."
"It is not! The girl is cursed, and we can cure her!" The priest was using the miller's solid shoulder as a springboard now, lifting his balding crown above the crowd in little hops and jumps. "All we have to do is kill the dragon! We'll free the girl and our town in one blow—"
"It will take more than one." Dea's voice was a growl, the sort of growl that was heard by children waking in the dead of night when they know there's a monster under their bed; the sort of growl that is heard in the heart rather than through the ears; the sort of growl, in short, that people only hear when they face dragons. It sent a deep, primal shudder through the crowd—or at least through those parts of it that had more sense than faith.
"Then we'll keep hacking until you're dead, foul beast!" the priest shouted. "Onward, brethren!"
Nobody charged; instead there was a reluctant shuffle that moved sideways more than it did forward. The priest's already red face reddened further; the veins on the side of his head bulged and throbbed like a clogged hose.
Dea sighed and decided she ought to do something about the man before he talked someone else into getting hurt. "I said hold. Louisa has made her decision, so this discussion is at an end."
"You have no say here—"
"I rather think I do." Dea took a deep breath and held it; when she breathed out she did it like a bellows, all in one long gust of blisteringly hot air. The villagers in front of her shrieked, flailed, and fled. Even bold Dane waited for only one worried look at Louisa before he joined the others and ran. Louisa's parents were nowhere to be seen when the crowd was gone, nor was the priest. The sound of slamming doors, wailing voices, and shattering pottery as people tripped over their desperate fire-prevention piles filled the small village of Styesville.
Eventually everything was quiet save for one lone pig snuffling happily in something wet and mucky nearby. Dea took another deep breath and waved a hand in front of her face. "Phew!" she said. "That always stings!" She was sure she felt blisters rising but when she prodded the skin around her lips with exploratory fingers she couldn't find any. That didn't make her scalded flesh feel any better, though, and she couldn't help but ask, "Would it be bad form, do you suppose, if I got something to drink while you were collecting your things? I'd leave proper coin for it, of course…"
Louisa was staring at her, blue eyes wide and round face ashen. She was pressed against the wall of the priest's cottage, her hands fisted in her skirts. "You… I didn't know you could breathe fire," she said in a voice like a squeak.
"I can't," Dea replied. "That wasn't fire. That was just… heat."
"It was very hot heat."
Louisa sounded as shaken as she looked. Dea shrugged. "Well, some day it will be fire. Let's just be glad that for today, heat was enough. And let's hurry so we can be gone before anyone finds their courage again, eh?"
Paling even more, Louisa nodded. She led the way to the inn at a trot, Dea lagging behind so she could look around for trouble. She did pour herself another tankard of cider while Louisa trotted upstairs to fetch a tightly-knotted bundle and a warm cloak of her own. Unlike Dea she tied hers back over her shoulders; neither woman bothered to put their hoods up now. There was no point trying to hide, and the spring morning was rapidly warming.
The two women moved out, but Louisa hesitated on the threshold of the inn. She looked around, hope kindling in her blue eyes, but no one came forward to say farewell. All the doors around them were closed, the windows empty, and the streets barren of anything that walked on two legs. That did nothing to abate the sense of watchfulness that filled Styesville and made the hair stand up on the back of Dea's neck; her scales itched. The village was still and nearly silent, but she imagined eyes pressed to every crack and peeking out from the corner of every window. Dea crossed her arms to keep herself from fidgeting. Louisa had to do this at her own speed, and Dea knew that leaving home was no easy thing even after you had realized that there was no good way to stay.
Louisa took a step outside and wavered.
"Ready to go?" Dea asked gently.
Louisa took a deep breath. "You're sure the dragon will leave when I do?"
"Both the dragon and the dragon-faced girl," Dea said with a gentle smile.
"All right." Louisa nodded. She had started crying again at some point and now she dashed the tears from her face with a rough swipe of her open palm. "All right, I'm ready."
They started down the road slowly, Louisa glancing over her shoulder every few steps while De
a tried to ignore the feeling of eyes fixed on her back. Her skin prickled like someone had dribbled ice between the stubby wings concealed by her long cloak and heavy pack. She couldn't wait to pass out of sight of Styesville, but forced herself to walk slowly so as not to hurry her new companion.
When they crossed into the shadows of the southern forest a lark began to sing. A tiny smile stole over Louisa's tear-blotched face. She glanced sideways at Dea and asked shyly, "Are you really the Princess Aldeaim?"
Dea nodded. "Once upon a time."
Louisa thought for a minute, then grinned. "Well, you look quite well for your age, even if you do have scales."
"Perks of the job," Dea retorted. "Just wait until I start growing the tail…"
Fin
About the Author
Nicky was making up stories before she could write, acting them out with her handmade paper dolls or assorted action figures, usually with her little brother’s amiable assistance. Once she mastered writing implements she turned her efforts toward both prose and pictures and is a fan of storytelling in all media, especially novels and comic books, and the only thing she likes more than telling people about things they should read is writing (or drawing) them herself. Of course, if she could stop her cat helping her type she’d probably make more headway…
