Dragon Book, The

by Gardner Dozois

  “Where could it be? That little tippy tip tip of a tail?”

  Maybe the puzzle maker was a trickster. Maybe the missing piece was the same size exactly as one of the other interior pieces. Maybe one piece alone in the whole puzzle had been printed on both sides. When she had turned the cardboard sides up to reveal the colored sides, she hadn’t, of course, turned over those pieces that had already landed with their colored sides faceup. So she would never have noticed a piece printed on both sides.

  “I have more patience than you do,” she said. “Besides, what are you going to do to me?”

  Eleni was nothing if not systematic. And anyway, where else was she going in this rain? She had all the time in the world. She began to unlock pieces in an orderly fashion, from upper left to bottom right. One row at a time. Unlock, look, and replace. One two three. Fifteen eighteen twenty-one. Thirty forty fifty. Ninety-nine.

  It wasn’t there. Though when she had taken the final piece of the nose, that steaming fissure, it was almost too hot to handle.

  “Pretty tricky,” she said.

  The dragon purred a little, sounding not unlike a distant roil of boiling water.

  “You like being flattered?” she asked it. “I suppose you do. Who doesn’t? Well, you are a pretty creature.”

  Its eyes narrowed. Wrong approach. “Pretty amazing,” amended Eleni. “Pretty awesome.”

  The dragon liked that better. A small exhaust of steam rolled forth, not unlike like the starch released when pasta has been dropped in hot, salted water.

  “If I found that last piece, would you do my bidding, I wonder?” asked Eleni.

  The dragon flared its nostrils and the steam from its nose thickened, whitened. Eleni watched it curl in an arabesque, and it formed a sort of a hook, as if to reach out and drag someone down. (Where did the word dragon come from, anyway?) In the twilight, the dragon’s eyes twitched and glittered.

  She saw what the problem was. The dragon wanted to move, but was pinned into place by dint of the missing tip of its tail. Eleni could see how its shoulder muscles shrugged and flexed in frustration, and the effort moved along the articulation of the spinal column, shimmering scales like the ripples on the surface of a pond moving outward from where a stone has plunked in. But the ripples faded out, and the rear legs and far end of the tail were frozen in place.

  “I rather know how you feel,” said Eleni. She put her hand on the nose of the dragon. “With just a little more effort you could break out.”

  It looked at her. She felt something more was needed. Maybe—the question mark—maybe it just needed to be asked the right question.

  “Do you know where the missing puzzle piece is?” she asked.

  The dragon looked as if it knew, though it didn’t do anything so obvious as nod in assent.

  “Is it my job to find it?” she asked, but hardly dared continue “and what will you give me if I do?”

  Again, the dragon did not seem to reply, though it was clearly attending to her questions.

  Then, suddenly, she had it. She knew what to ask. Maybe she only had three questions, but this next one was the right one. “Will you show me where it is?”

  The dragon breathed some more white splendor, and its eyes sharpened with canniness and glee. Then it opened its mouth.

  There was no golden flame, no guttural torchlight. Just a long slick tongue undulating forward. On the slick nubble of the tongue lay the final puzzle piece.

  “Oh,” said Eleni, “so it looks as if you bit your own tail off. Well, not to worry.” She rubbed her fingers together, and, with the delicacy of a surgeon, leaned forward and grasped the near edge of the missing piece.

  She held it up to the light to see if it had changed any by being swallowed by a dragon, but it hadn’t, or not so she could tell. It looked like an ordinary, slightly cheap cardboard puzzle piece, the usual sockets and prongs in the usual arrangement.

  Eleni leaned down to slip the last piece in place. The dragon held its breath and looked up at her with a sharp expression. Maybe adoration. Maybe skepticism. She couldn’t tell.

  “You should be skeptical of me?” she asked.

  She rotated the puzzle piece in her hand so that it was oriented correctly.

  “Has all this rain made you deaf? I’ve been hollering from downstairs for fifteen minutes.”

  Eleni turned. Her mother stood in the doorway. “I’m down there busting my butt to put a meal on the table, and you can’t tear yourself away …”

  She looked at Eleni and said, “What. What. What?”

  “I just have one more piece to put in place …”

  Martha Lester’s gaze fell on the puzzle. In one step, she had crossed the room and snatched the last puzzle piece out of Eleni’s hand. You would have thought she was handling dynamite, or a poisonous snake. She spun wildly about as if looking for a fireplace that she hadn’t noticed before, one suitable to receive a pitched cardboard puzzle piece.

  Eleni leaped up from the card cable, astonished, unmoored, as if she’d just been awakened from a dream. Her mother’s eyes narrowed. She popped the last puzzle piece in her own mouth and swallowed.

  “Mom!” said Eleni. “What is going on?”

  Her mother shrugged and ran her fingers through her hair, and straightened up. “Oooh, honey,” she said. “I had hoped you would grow up and go off to college before any of this came out.”

  “Any of what?”

  “Oh, the back and forth of it. The great battle of wrong and right, evil and good. Rather tedious to talk about it, a bit overearnest for my taste, but you know, we avatars of justice have to do what we can.”

  “Have you been hitting the gin harder than usual?”

  “A nasty thing to say, and anyway, gin is not recommended for those on duty. It can muddle the thinking and seriously compromise response time. You should count your lucky stars I wasn’t drinking gin.”

  “I don’t get this,” said Eleni. “I don’t understand. There are too many pieces not in place. Are you a … a whatever?”

  “A witch?” Her mother raised an eyebrow expertly. “Well, that’s what your father used to call me. Who cares what the term is?”

  “Mom,” said Eleni. “I need a little more information here. A few more pieces of the puzzle.”

  “Well, then,” said her mother. She picked up the cover of the puzzle and looked at the dragon. “If they’re going to try to use you to get to me, I guess you do need to hear a little more. Why don’t you come down for supper? I made spaghetti. We’re going to have to have a little chat. A bit sooner than I’d expected, alas. But I suppose it doesn’t matter. We don’t have anything else to do. And I see it’s going to be stormy, stormy weather for quite a while. Quite a long while longer than anyone yet realizes.”

  After the Third Kiss

  BRUCE COVILLE

  Not only can you get used to anything, no matter how monstrous and dreadful, you can even come to miss it …

  Bruce Coville is the author of more than ninety books for children and young adults, with more than sixteen million copies of them in print, including the international bestseller My Teacher Is an Alien and the wildly popular Unicorn Chronicles series (featuring the long-awaited, much-delayed, but finally released third volume, Dark Whispers). Bruce has been, at various times, a teacher, a toymaker, a magazine editor, a gravedigger, and a cookware salesman. A noted speaker and storyteller, he has been commissioned four times by the Syracuse Symphony to create original stories to perform in concert with the orchestra. He is also the founder of Full Cast Audio, an award-winning audiobook company devoted to producing full-cast, unabridged recordings of material for family listening. His books have won children’s choice awards in more than a dozen states, including Vermont, Connecticut, Nevada, and California. His most recent book is a collection, The One Right Thing. He lives in Syracuse, New York.

  I looked at my brother with desperate longing. “Please,” I begged. “Just one more kisssss.”

  Wyn
de shuddered and turned away, toward the west, and the setting sun.

  Horrified that I might lose my chance, I stretched the great length of my neck past his broad shoulder, then curved it back so I could catch and hold him with my amber eye. “Please, Wynde,” I hissed again. “Once the sun goesss down, I will be trapped this way forever. We have but minutessss left.”

  My heart was pounding with such fear that I thought I might die before the sun reached the horizon anyway. Wynde had kissed me twice already, which, really, was more than you could ask of any man, given how hideous I was, and how fierce the heat of my every breath. But underneath the scales, beyond the fangs, the fire, and the venom, I was still May Margret, the sister he had left behind shortly after our mother’s death, when he went out to conquer the world with his young man’s sword and his young man’s heart. Still the sister who had been left to deal with our father’s new wife, who was the one who had cursed me into this loathsome shape.

  The agony of my transformation will be with me always. It pained my body, of course, for every bone had screamed in rebellion at the way it was forced to twist and stretch, every inch of skin had felt afire, every secret inside part burned as though it were being bathed in acid. But the torment of my body had been nothing to the agony of my soul when I saw the long, twisting coils of dragon shape that now encased me.

  That same despair pierced me yet again an hour later when the sight of me evoked piercing screams from Glenna, my lady-in-waiting—and yet again each time I saw the fear and disgust that twisted the face of anyone who looked on me.

  And that was only the beginning, for less than a day after my change I discovered that I had an appetite to match my size, and a hunger that ate at me as if a fire were burning within. Out I soared on newfound wings, and nothing that lived was safe, though I managed to restrict my feeding, usually, to sheep and cattle.

  How I was feared. How I was hated! How I ached inside each day as I wrapped myself around the Spindlestone, the great shaft of rock on the cliffs above the sea, the rock that I had claimed as my perch. Or perhaps it had claimed me, for I felt a strange attraction to it. From here I could watch inland to see if any came to attack. More importantly, I could gaze out over the western waters in the hope that I might spot my brother returning to free me from my curse. For my stepmother had made this much clear: The only way for me to regain my true shape was for Childe Wynde, of his own free will, to kiss me three times before sunset on the day of his return.

  Wynde did return, at last. Later, I learned that it was my own rampaging hunger that had brought him back, for when I had slain enough cattle, devoured enough sheep, word reached him across the sea that a dragon was devastating his homeland. So home he came, sword at the ready, never suspecting that the beast he came to slay was his own childhood playfellow, the younger sister he had promised to protect and defend forever.

  Oddly, by the time he arrived, the worst of my depredations were past. This was because an old wisewoman named Nell had advised the desperate countryfolk that if they would set aside the milk of seven cows to bring me both morning and evening, my ravenous hunger would be sated. So it was a fairly peaceful countryside to which Wynde was returning—at least, until the queen herself became aware that he was on his way. Then her wrath was mighty indeed. I sensed her rage. Indeed, who in the kingdom did not? It seemed to sizzle in the stones, and curl the leaves of every tree. What I did not know, at first, was the cause of it. So I simply clung to my stony perch and watched.

  In time, I saw a ship upon the horizon. I reared my head, feeling an odd uneasiness. It was as if I needed to go down to the water, to keep the ship from landing; as if there were a compulsion on me to guard the kingdom.

  Before the urge became so strong that I must leave my stony perch, my stepmother sent an army of imps to raise a storm and turn the ship away. But my good brother was wiser than the queen had anticipated. Suspecting witchery, Wynde had—as I later learned—sheathed his ship with rowan wood, good proof against the queen’s dark art.

  It both delighted and troubled me to watch that screeching horde of imps dash themselves against the ship’s hull, then tumble into the water, where they thrashed about, wailing for their mistress to protect them. Delighted me because they were my stepmother’s servants, and I hated her. Troubled me because I had no idea, yet, who was on that ship, and this uncertainty intensified my compulsion to protect our shores. With the imps vanquished, the uneasiness I had felt when I first spotted the ship drove me to the water’s edge. Once there, I found I had no choice but to attack the ship. Soaring out across the water, I coiled my long body around the vessel and tried to drag it under.

  My brain was on fire then. I had no control of myself, and still no knowledge of who was on board. But with the help of the rowan wood, Childe Wynde escaped my clutches and steered the ship out of sight. His oarsmen were strong, and before the queen knew what was what, he had landed in the next bay.

  And here was a lovely thing; the moment my brother, the true heir to the crown of Arlesboro Castle, set foot onshore, the queen’s awesome power was broken. So when Wynde approached me, sword drawn, ready to lop off my head, I was able to speak to him. My own maiden’s voice rising from my massive dragon chest, I whisper-hissed, “Ssset down your ssssword, my brother ssssweet, and think not to ssslay me now. For I am your sssister, your May Margret, and naught but your kissss can set me free.”

  Wynde stared at me in astonishment, and called me both demon and liar. But when I whispered to him of secrets from our past, childish intimacies that only he and I could know, he understood that I spoke the truth.

  “What must I do to break this spell?” my winsome brother asked.

  “Kissss me thrice ere set of sun, and I’ll your sssister be.”

  Wynde paled, nor could I blame him. I knew too well, from gazing into streams and ponds, how hideous I was, with teeth like daggers, shieldlike scales of fiery red, and blazing eyes set in a head the size of a coracle. Yet far worse than all this was the heat of my breath, for though I tried to hold it in, it seared my brother’s skin as he drew near. He, brave brother, ignored the pain and kissed me on the lips, his mouth as small to mine as a gnat’s would be to his.

  Nothing happened, save the blistering of his fair skin.

  Again I begged, and again he kissed. Thus the blisters multiplied, and this time he cried out with the pain.

  The sun was sinking, and with it my hopes. Wynde turned to me once more, and I nearly screamed at the sight of his seared skin. Only the knowledge that such a burst of breath from my lungs would wound him even worse gave me the strength to withhold my cry of pity.

  “Please, brother,” I whispered, one last time.

  Skin blackening, hair smoking, weeping with pain, Wynde leaned in and kissed me a third time. And now the pain was mine, for bones and skin did in reverse what they had done before, twisting and shrinking as I turned back, back, back to the maiden I once was.

  In but moments, I stood naked before my blistered brother, who wrapped his cloak around me, then swept me into his arms and carried me to the castle.

  But it was not yet time to rest, or heal, for there was one more task to accomplish, and this Wynde did with ease and grace, despite the pain of his burns. Taking a wand of rowan wood, he mounted the tower stairs to where our stepmother, knowing her doom was upon her, sat waiting. It took no spell, no conjuration, for Wynde to work his will. He merely struck her once with the wand. I was holding his hand when he did so, and felt an odd pull, as if something—the transformative magic, I later learned—was leaving me.

  Our stepmother’s eyes widened. She cried out once, then began her own metamorphosis. Mouth widening, eyes bulging, skin erupting with warts, she shriveled down, down, down, till she was the largest and most loathsome toad I had ever seen.

  I wanted to drop a heavy book upon her, but Wynde stayed my hand—I am glad now that he did—and she fled, hopping away down the tower stairs.

  And that should have bee
n the end of it.

  Save for one thing.

  I began to miss the fire inside me.

  It did not happen right away, might not have happened at all, had Wynde not stayed and claimed the throne. But not long after my return, our aged and ailing father learned the truth of my enchantment, despite our attempts to hide it from him. Realizing at last what a horror he had married, he went half-mad from brooding on what his bride had done to his daughter.

  It hurt Wynde and me deeply to see this man, who in our youth had fought and won such a ferocious war with the neighboring kingdom, slump and grow weak. Despite our attempts to rouse him, in a month he took to his bed. A few days later, he gave up the ghost.

  Wynde—no longer “Childe” Wynde, now that Father was dead—set aside his plans to roam the world. As was both his right and his duty, he claimed the crown.

  I was happy at this, and at first there was nothing but loving amity between us, as well there might have been, for we had been dear companions from earliest childhood. Yet one sad thing did stand between us: His beautiful face never did heal properly, and there remained always afterward deep scars from the terrible burns. He never, not once, spoke of this or in any way blamed me for them. But I flinched each time I saw his face. This was not because the scars made him ugly to me, but because I knew it was I who had put them there.

  To make matters worse, I myself was considered more beautiful than ever. Many were the comments on my sparkling eyes, my rosy complexion, and the deep red of my long, shimmering tresses. I alone knew that these were but outward signs of the new energy and vitality I felt within—an unexpected gift from my endragonment.

  I used this beauty and energy to regain the trust of the castle servants. Glenna, my lady-in-waiting, was first to lose her fear. Soon enough, she brought the others along.