It isn’t every day that you see the man you’re supposed to marry snatched up and eaten right before your very eyes. In fact, it isn’t even every week, or month, or year. Fortunately for most girls, it doesn’t really happen at all in normal life. Most girls don’t even dream of it happening.
Unfortunately, I’m not most girls.
The day started out quite as normal as any other day. It was sunny outside, but windy, and the dragon was asleep in his bed-cave. I was doing my daily chores for him—just the usual; sweeping up after he burnt his library to a crisp, polishing the armor of knights he’d defeated, feeding the now rider-less horses of said knights; nothing special. I was on the brink of finishing for the morning, and intended on taking a long, well-earned nap.
My plans were interrupted by a scuffling noise in the front of the cave. Since the entrance was on the top of a cliff, I found that intriguing and I went to investigate. Standing there, holding a large, rusty sword, was a knight.
He was the most brown knight I’d ever seen—and believe me, as a princess, I’ve seen my fair share of knights. He had brown hair, brown eyes, brown freckles, and lightly browned skin. His pants, shoes, and shirt were brown. To top it all off, he wore brown leather armor. Even the hilt of his sword was brown, and the rusted metal didn’t help with the picture.
At first, the poor boy looked confused at the sight of me wearing a loose cotton shirt and pants, with my straight black hair hanging loose about my shoulders. I had cut it off long ago, as it always got in the way. My skin was tan, my eyes were a dull gray, and my fingernails were chipped and broken. In short, I was not very princessly.
“Er…I’m looking for Princess Isabella Alexandra Esmeralda Fontana of Aleuria, Duchess of all Fairglade, Lady of Lilly Lake and the Siren Islands, Countess of Carlesmont, Honorable Abess of Orendale, and Vicereine of Scoria. She is the fairest in all the lands, with hair like the deepest night and eyes like the sea. Does she live here?”
Eyes like the sea? Hair like night? “Call me Cleo,” I replied, disgusted.
He blinked at me. “Er…” he fumbled. “Um. Yes. Well. Princess. I am here to rescue you!” That last was declared rather loudly as he regained his composure and confidence. Though I wasn’t the essence of beauty and grace he seemed to be expecting, I was still a princess. He continued confidently. “Your father has promised a rich reward of your hand in marriage and half of his kingdom for the rescue of his darling daughter from the ferocious, fire-spewing, man-eating dragon. Only he who is brave enough to dare crossing the Far-Flung Sea, marching through the Forest of Despair, across the Desert of Iniquity, and climbing the Mountains of the Hopeless deserves the favor of the beautiful Princess…um…Cleo.”
I’d gotten bored about the time he started up about my father’s reward and stopped listening. But someone else was.
Sir Brown-Pants opened his mouth, probably to go on at length about the perils and strange happenings of his journey, but before he could get even another word out a huge, looming shadow rose between him and the sun. His mouth snapped shut, and he stared up into the emerald eyes of the ferocious, fire-spewing, man-eating dragon. The dragon regarded him for a moment as the knight stood there and gaped—he didn’t even reach for his sword—then opened his great mouth and swallowed him whole.
Now, I was no stranger to fighting, or even a little blood. But it’s something different to see another living human eaten right in front of you.
The dragon—I’d never figured out his name—looked at me in irritation. He seemed to be considering me. This wasn’t the first knight to attempt my rescue, nor the first to interrupt his daily nap. I had the feeling he was deciding whether a clean cave was worth the trouble I represented.
Apparently the thought of more knights decided him. He hissed and snapped his razor-sharp teeth at me. I backed up slowly, until I was against the edge of the cliff. It was a straight drop onto craggy rocks below. How had the knight done it?
Then a whinny caught my attention. At first I wondered if one of the horses had escaped, but no, that wasn’t possible, I’d checked their enclosure only that morning…and the noise had come from above.
A shadow passed over my head, and the eyes of the dragon followed it. He hissed again, and mantled his wings, apparently about to charge whatever it was. I turned. To my surprise and delight, a dappled gray mare stood in front of me—and she had wings!
I didn’t pause to think. There was a harness and a saddle on the poor mare, which I used to leap onto her back. As soon as I was seated on the padded leather, she made a dash for the cliff face and leapt off it—right into open air. Her wings snapped out to either side of my legs, and she coasted on the air for a bit, gliding away from the cave entrance. I looked back. The dragon was nowhere in sight.
“To the forest!” I shouted, giddy with delight at my sudden freedom. It wasn’t that the dragon’s cave was frightening; quite the opposite in fact. Most of the time I had found myself bored out of my mind. I hated to be bored. An adventure was just what I needed, and the forest was the place to find it.
The mare reached the edge of the trees in a matter of minutes. She was tiring, I could tell, so I directed her to land in a clearing I could see from the sky. She did so gracefully, and I patted her as I dismounted. I was about to leave the clearing in search of my adventure when she whinnied. I turned back, and she gave me such a sad look that I took the leather harness and saddle off of her. It seemed like the right thing to do. She gave a great shake, then leapt back into the air, flying away to her freedom.
And that was how I found myself in the Forest of Despair, which was known for being cursed, with no food, no shelter, and nothing to defend myself with. I smiled. An adventure.
“First things first,” I said to the trees around me. “I’m going to need some help.”
It was generally known that enchanted forests—even ones enchanted with curses such as this one—would listen to the requests of adventurers, and sometimes grant them. Luckily for me, the forest seemed to be in a good mood today, and an albino deer entered the clearing as I finished speaking. It looked at me with its wide silver eyes for a minute, then fled through the trees to my right. I dashed after it. I could take a hint.
I ran for hours. The deer would slow down about when I started to lose my breath, but would pick up the pace again as soon as I began to recover it. I figured it must have been in a hurry, because the sun was going down, and we had only a few more hours until full night.
We stopped at the edge of a little town that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t recognize it—not that I would, as I came from an island kingdom—and I wasn’t sure this was the place to be seeking adventure, but the deer had disappeared. It was the best I was going to get.
The town was still bustling, and as I made my way through the narrow streets people started giving me odd looks. Some even seemed frightened. One woman even ran from me when I stopped to ask directions to the nearest inn or tavern.
“Down the street, to the left,” said a grizzly old man when I asked. “Headed there myself. I’ll take you.”
So I followed the old man to a pub down the street. It was just as busy as the rest of the town was, but here I got no strange looks. I sat down at the counter, where a barmaid came to take my order.
“I’ll have a mug of your finest ale,” I said, still feeling adventurous.
“Comin’ right up,” she grunted back. She wiped down a glass with a towel she had slung over her shoulder, filled it with pale amber liquid from a barrel in the back, and slammed it down in front of me.
A dark fellow with nice clothes and a sword belted at his side was sitting at the counter beside me. He leaned forward with a gold coin in his hand. “The lady’s drink is on me,” he said and flipped it to the barmaid, who caught it and pocketed it without a thought, then turned to help another customer.
I eyed the man suspiciously as I sipped the bubbly liquid. If he was another knight, thinking to help out the poor, captured princess, then he’d soon learn his mistake. “To whom do I owe my thanks?” I asked politely. After all, he hadn’t done anything yet.
He bowed, a challenging feat from his sitting position. “My name is Vyacheslav the Black, dark magician of the Forty Kingdoms and shaman of the seas. It is a rare day indeed when I have the pleasure of making the acquaintance of a captivating lady such as yourself. Do you, by any chance, have a name?”
“Cleo,” I replied. I’d heard of dark magicians. They were supposed to be evil, vile creatures who fed off the fear and pain of others and ate babies for breakfast. I wondered what Vyacheslav the Black, dark magician of the Forty Kingdoms and shaman of the seas had eaten this morning. Probably pancakes.
It was about then when the door to the tavern burst open, and screaming white whirlwind burst inside. All the talk inside stopped as everyone stared at the hysterical woman who was making such a racket.
“Horrible!” she cried, her voice pitched to carry the most dramatic effect. “Absolutely horrible! I was sitting there, minding my own business and feeding Mindy her curds and whey, when a giant thing waltzed right up to us and gobbled it down!”
Several of the men laughed. “Now, now, Miss Mary Muffet, don’t have us all chasin’ after spiders again. We all know what happened the last time you ran in here screamin’ like you was bein’ chased!” It was the grizzly old man who’d shown me the way here. He chuckled and turned back to his ale.
Mary stomped her foot. “It was not a spider this time, Claude! I’d not be so frightened for my Mindy otherwise. She’s still in the house!”
But the people in the bar were turning back to whatever they’d been doing before Mary interrupted, ignoring her completely.
I felt bad for her, and stood up. “I’m an expert in giant monsters,” I offered when she looked at me hopefully. “Let’s have a look-see. Maybe it’s gone by now, whatever it is.” I didn’t mention that it probably was just a really large spider, and she was making a fuss over nothing again.
I was glad for my restraint when she seized my arm gratefully. “It’s this way, come on!”
Vyacheslav the Black stood up and followed. “If a dark magician doesn’t know monsters, I don’t know who does!” And so the three of us left the tavern into the dying light of a beautiful red sunset.
Mary Muffet lived at the edge of the village, right next to the forest. The tavern was the closest public center in town, which was why she had run there first. It only took us a few moments to reach her house, and when we did, I threw out an arm to make the other two stop. “Do you hear that?”
It was a snuffling, scratching kind of noise, coming from the other side of the house. “It sounds big,” Vyacheslav the Black said as Mary sobbed quietly.
We told Mary to stay where she was, then Vyacheslav the Black and I rounded the corner of the house slowly. The first thing I noticed was the baby—it was cradled in a heavily-padded tuffet with pink lace trailing down its sides. Mindy Muffet seemed to be undisturbed; she was sleeping peacefully away, making an occasional snort. But the baby wasn’t the only thing in the yard.
When we came through the gate, the hinges made a squeaking noise and we startled it. It raised its head—no, heads. Three pairs of sapphire eyes were staring at us from the other side of Mindy, looking not at all menacing.
I heard Vyacheslav the Black catch his breath. “Ohh, it’s a baby,” he cooed. At first, I wondered if he’d seen the creature behind the baby at all, but when I saw where he was looking I realized he was talking about the monster, not Mindy Muffet.
“What is it?” I asked. The monster seemed to be content just watching us, though it looked sad. I couldn’t have explained why. Maybe I’d been living with a dragon for too long.
“It’s a hydra,” Vyacheslav the Black said, still in that ridiculous crooning voice. “And it’s lost its mother.”
A shrill scream behind us startled me so bad I leapt at least a foot in the air. “That’s it!” Mary Muffet shrieked, pointing. “That’s the monster! Kill it, kill it! Oh, my poor baby!”
But her screams only seemed to upset the hydra, which made a whining noise in the back of its throats, and stood up. Mary screamed again and ran away, abandoning her baby to the “monster” once again.
I stepped toward the hydra slowly and held out my hand to it. “It’s okay,” I said in a soft voice. “I’m not going to hurt you. I only want to be your friend. It’s okay.” I continued to speak quietly as I advanced, inch-by-inch, and tried to keep the hydra calm.
It worked. As I approached, the hydra lowered its three heads and sat back down with a ground-shaking thump. Sitting, it was taller than me by half a man’s length, and wider by several feet. When I reached it, it allowed me to gently scratch its heads, closing its eyes in bliss. I smiled.
Vyacheslav the Black came forward then to scratch its other head. “Aren’t you a beauty?” he murmured to the creature, which soaked up his attention unabashedly.
A strange rushing noise, which had been slowly building and getting louder since Mary had left, suddenly reached a breaking point and I realized what it was.
Shouting. I turned around, and saw that people were pouring into the yard from the other side, holding torches and pitchforks, yelling and throwing rocks. At the front of the mob was Mary Muffet herself, screaming about monsters and babies.
“Kill the beast! Kill the beast!” they were chanting.
“She brought it here!” cried one man I recognized from the tavern. “She’s new in town! It must have been her!” A roar of agreement came from the crowd.
“And him! He’s a dark magician!” another shouted.
“Kill them all!”
The hydra had begun to cower back as soon as people appeared. A low whining was coming from its throat. I could barely hear it over the noise of the mob, which was advancing across the yard.
Vyacheslav the Black looked at me. “Run?” he shouted. I nodded, and we both turned into the dark forest and ran. The hydra came with us.
When we’d run so far that we couldn’t hear the mob anymore we stopped, out of breath. The hydra huddled behind us in fear, and I placed a hand on its shoulder.
“Nothing I love better than an angry mob!” Vyacheslav the Black was saying delightedly. “Well, except maybe hydras.”
I stared at the magician and wondered if he was crazy.
“We make a good team,” he continued, oblivious to my scrutiny. “Tell me, do you have any plans for the near future Cleo? How’d you like to go on an adventure with me?”
I thought for a minute. Why not? I’d set off in search of an adventure, and here was one staring me in the face. “Well, I suppose I should tell my father I’m alright, and have him stop sending those silly knights after me. But after that…who knows?” I smiled. “I’d love to, on one condition.”
“That being?”
“I can call you something besides ‘Vyacheslav the Black.’”
He chuckled. “Well, my real name is Eric, but I didn’t think that inspired much fear in the hearts of my enemies. Vyacheslav is much better, don’t you think? You may call me by my true name, though.” He held out his hand.
I shook it. “Then you have a deal. Partner.” And that was how we began our adventures together.
