Emma Fleming

 

 

 

 

Once, upon a time…

“There is no smoking in the castle, good sir knight.”

“I’m not in the castle, princess.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“What are you doing then?”

“I’m leaning nonchalantly on the castle wall and finishing this cigarette.”

“It’s my wall.”

“It’s my cig.”

He looked at her. She folded her arms and pursed her lips. Sighing, he put out his cigarette on the stone, carefully grinding off the ash so he could put it back in the packet for another day. Finally, she smiled at him.

And so, it began.

“What brings you to my castle, good sir knight?”

He jabbed his finger towards the sky. There were black shapes flitting across it, underneath the clouds.

“I saw your dragons, princess.”

“So?”

He dug around in his pocket and handed her his card. She read it. Then she read it again. Then she set up laughing so hard she had to sit down on the steps. He noticed she had wellies on underneath her dress. She was the most unladylike princess he had ever met, and he’d met quite a few. She guffawed heartily and slapped her thigh as the tears ran down her face. She tried to speak but she was laughing too hard, struggling for breath. He reached nervously in his pocket for his inhaler. He did not want the death of a princess on his hands.

Slowly her shrieks turned to giggles and eventually, hiccups. She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand and accidentally streaked green across her face from the mossy stone. She looked down at his card again. There was a picture of a sword dripping blood on it and underneath:

DRAGONS SLAYED – no job too small.

She reached into her skirts and handed over her card. There was a picture of a whip and underneath:

DRAGONS TAMED – no job too small.

He looked at it and then he looked at her. She looked an unlikely dragon tamer.

“What?” she said, smirking.

He looked at the ground and rubbed the back of his neck. Then he looked at the sky again. When he looked back to the steps she was gone, racing upward, back into the castle.

“Hey! Where are you going?”

“Come on!” she shouted back to him, “come on – I need you!”

***

 

What could he do? He hurried after her. She took him down corridor after corridor and up and down endless flights of stairs. When they finally drew to a halt he was completely disoriented. He felt as though they might be in the very centre of the castle, but he couldn’t be sure. He had never had the best sense of direction. Often he had rescued the wrong princess. Once or twice he’d turned up expecting dragons and found empty caves with nothing in them but a few gold coins and some broken jewellery.

The princess fished a large iron key from between her breasts and opened the heavy door in front of them. The heat radiating from it was nothing compared to the heat that smacked him in the face as it swung open. It was like opening a door to hell. There was strong smell of sulphur. He put his handkerchief over his nose and frowned at her.

“This is the forge where I make the cages,” she said, striding into the room. “The dragons provide the heat.” His mouth was dry and his skin wet. It was so hot he could barely breathe. She stood next to an anvil as pale and porcelain as a doll. She waved her hand toward a smaller door at the back. “I keep the dragons through there. Come and see.”

He paused and she laughed.

“Are you afraid of dragons, dragon slayer?”

He shrugged.

Then he followed her. What else could he do?

***

This room was bigger and cooler, but only just. It was set up as a stable, but instead of stalls there were cages, ranging in size. He noticed there was straw on the floor and bales of hay soaked through with water stacked up to one side. The air was less sulphurous. In here it was musky and sweet. The princess pointed to the cages on their left.

“These are for the dragons you saw outside,” she said.

“They’re tame?”

“Yes, I’ve had them for years. I exercise them every morning. It gives me a chance to muck out. Hence the wellingtons,” she lifted her dress a little and wiggled her rubberclad toes at him, “I’ve trained a couple of them to do tricks. People pay to see them, you know.”

“I don’t doubt,” he said, moving to get a closer look at the cages. They were large; he’d judged the dragons to be a little larger than horses and the cages bore it out. There were seven of them hanging open, with clean straw down on the floors and piles of gold and silver in the corners. Each cage had a piece of cardboard tucked between the bars and the name of the dragon written on in marker pen. Ordinary names. Steven. Christopher. Robert. Mark.

He squinted through the haze. “How are you keeping them?” he asked, “what are these cages made from?”

“Take a look,” she said.

Although the cages were empty they were still warm. Standing in front of them was like standing in the kitchen of a bakers shop. He reached out to touch one of the bars and burnt his finger. She laughed.

“Look, don’t touch.”

He bent down and looked closer. The bars of the cage were black, but they weren’t solid. They were made up of something else, strings and strings of something else, shimmering and moving in the heat.


“Are those …” he looked closer, taking his handkerchief and folding it over and over so he could touch the bar with it, “are those … words?”

She nodded proudly. He looked at his handkerchief, singed almost all the way through. He swallowed, hard. He couldn’t believe she had the strength to deal with them. He’d never been this near to dragons without a full suit of armour and a heavy sword. She was unarmed, and there were no weapons in the stable that he could see. He moved away from the empty cages. The heat was becoming unbearable.

He realised slowly that they weren’t alone. He could hear the wheeze of hot dragon breath and claws scrabbling across flags. To him they were noises of battle. She led him forward, towards the sound and the heat. At the back of the stable it was almost pitch black. The smell of sulphur returned. Flames flickered in the dark, flames he knew were shooting from mouths with a thousand teeth each. She struck a match and lit a torch. The two dragons reared back, screaming in the light.

“These are a different breed,” she said, “they’re not ready for show yet. I’m still working on them. They are called TheBabyThatNeverWas and TheManThatBeatMeBlackAndBlue.”

These were huge dragons in huge cages, the bars almost as thick as his arm. His eyes stung with the heat. He could feel his blood racing in his veins. He hoped against hope he wouldn’t pass out. He’d seen bigger – he’d fought bigger, but he was older than her and stronger. He felt her hand in his, small and cool. She tugged him away gently. “Come on,” she said, “come and look at this.”

***

She led him over to an incubator. Inside it was an egg, bigger than a hen’s egg but only just, jewel red and glowing. “This dragon will be called MeAndYou,” she said. Her face was very close to his. He could feel her breath on his cheek, a relief against the burning. He swallowed again.

“What do you want?”

“Give up your quest, good sir knight, give up and stay here with me. I need someone who knows how to deal with dragons. I go through keepers like nobody’s business. I have been waiting for you. I have been waiting for someone who isn’t afraid.”

What could he do? He gave up and gave in and broke his vow. He pushed her down onto the straw, down onto the floor next to the hot box with the dragon’s egg in it. Not only was she wearing wellies under her dress, she wasn’t wearing any knickers. Not very ladylike at all. He noticed for the first time her palms were crisscrossed with scars. There were old burns on her ankles and on her arms.

He kissed them and said, “what have they done to you?”

She kissed his scars back and said “what have they done to you?”

***

Afterwards she propped herself up on her elbows and motioned him to keep quiet. Her hair was falling down and she had a bit of straw stuck to her forehead. There was a very, very faint cracking sound, just audible above his breathing. They both got up, quietly, quietly and peered into the incubator.

“It’s hatching!” he said in loud surprise. He’d never seen such a thing before. The dragon had struggled almost all the way free of the shell. Like the egg, it was bright ruby red, red as wine, red as blood. He reached out only to draw his hand back quickly. The little dragon was cinder hot. The princess pulled on some asbestos gloves which reached up to her elbows. She picked up the dragon gently and cradled it in both hands.

She raised it up to her face and blew gently. The dragon blew back, a puff of steam.

“He’s going to be fine,” she said, with a big smile. “He’s beautiful. He’ll be a big draw.”

There was a silence as they stood there, watching the belly of the dragon rise up and down with each tiny breath. He’d never seen anything so small before, or so perfect. He found it difficult to balance the knowledge that something that could fit in the palm of a princesses hand could grow be so dangerous and so frightening.

“Will you stay?” she asked.

It was the first time he’d seen her uncertain. Her eyes were glittering. What could he do? He had fallen in love with her.

“Yes,” he said, “I’ll stay.”

He sold his horse and moved into the castle the very next day. They built a cage together for MeAndYou out of stories about dragons they had known. With time he got used to the heat and the noise and became the best keeper she’d ever had. She auctioned off the smaller dragons to the highest bidder and concentrated on getting the large ones good enough to show. They were very popular. People like to be frightened but know they are in no danger.

And so they lived, happily, ever after…