The Dragon Book (49 page)

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.”

Wynde 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 been 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.

After a year of wise and fruitful reign, all the kingdom hoped that Wynde would wed, and no neighboring princesses there were, I think, who would have refused his hand, despite his scars, for he was kind and courteous, and, really, still quite beautiful, at least to my eyes. But women know things about what moves the heart to love that men do not, and my poor brother, thinking himself restricted from the paths of love by his ravaged face, never understood what he could have had.

Women know, too, what goes on backstairs, and the rumor was that though Wynde tried many times, he could not get a woman with child. The dragon’s breath, it was said, had unmanned him.

These rumors—I did hear them, of course, though Glenna tried to keep them from me—were like daggers in my heart.

Wifeless, childless, Wynde turned his attention on me. Oh, not in any wrongful way! He simply decided that if he was not to wed, I must do so in his place, in order that the kingdom might have a true heir. But all men knew my history, and none there were who dared to call me bride, for fear that I might again become what I once was. None would state this outright, of course, for fear of Wynde’s wrath. Even so, I understood well enough the reason I had no suitors.

In his frustration, Wynde, my brother and rescuer, slowly became my tormentor. I don’t think he ever really understood what he was doing, or at least not why. But he began to criticize me daily, telling me the ways in which I should change so I might better attract a husband.

I, who had run the household from the time our real mother died! I, who had kept the keys of the castle for our father until the arrival of our stepmother! I, who had a fire in me that no man could understand—a fire, I feared, that none could
withstand
, come the wedding night.