Flash

Pretty Maids All in a Row

 Another maiden! Breitfeldt exhaled a small fireball of frustration. Why could these fools not fathom that what he really craved was a nice fat sheep?

He folded his wings and landed on the rocky islet which thrust itself up from the ocean half a league from shore. The villagers had bound their offering to the single, scraggly tree rooted in the scant soil of a deep cleft, and were now crowded along the shore, watching and waiting. Their chanting and drumming was no more pleasing to Breitfeldt's ears than it had been the year before. He had not heard any decent dragon music since his exile over three hundred years ago.

At least this one was not screaming. She was obviously chilled in her skimpy ceremonial gown, and balanced on her toes to ease the pressure on her wrists, which were tied to an overhead branch; but she seemed calm enough, gazing at him steadily with something approaching intelligence. Perhaps it would worth taking this one back to his cave. It could use a good cleaning. He moved closer.

"My name is Amaryllis and I am not a virgin," she said in his own language.

"You speak Draconian!"

"Our wise woman taught me," she said slowly and carefully, with a passable accent. "She said I am too ... outspoken, and my turn to become an offering to you would come sooner or later."

"That is how your people choose their sacrifices -- by their outspokenness?"

She smiled wryly. "It's supposed to be a lottery, but Greya says it's fixed. Whoever is inconvenient..."

Breitfeldt chuckled, remembering to turn his head to keep from incinerating Amaryllis. "An astute woman, your Greya. How did she come to learn our language?"

"Her mother mated with a dragon, so she says, and she grew up in his lair ... just a story, I think, but the others are in awe of it. They talk from time to time of getting rid of her, but they fear her magic."

"Your people are not so different from mine," Breitfeldt murmured.

Amaryllis trembled a little as he bit through the ropes binding her, but she did not struggle.

"What will you do with me?" she asked.

"I will leave you within walking distance of the village. Kindly tell your people I want some sheep -- skinned, if you please. I am not equipped to manage skinning."

Amaryllis stared at him. "You mean you didn't eat the others?"

"Only one, when I was very hungry. My stomach was upset for weeks. I tried leaving them here, but your people refused to retrieve them, so I just dropped them near the village."

A tear rolled down the girl's cheek. "Only Leda came back. They stoned her for her unworthiness. They will stone me, too."

She sat down with her back to the tree trunk and hugged her knees. "I don't suppose you have a blanket."

"I could start a fire," Breitfeldt offered, "but you'll have to move away from the tree."

She looked over her shoulder at the intended victim. "Never mind -- it's struggled too hard to be here."

Her sympathy for the tree touched Breitfeldt in a part of himself he had almost forgotten.

"If I come back to the village with you, they won't dare to stone you," he suggested.

Amaryllis shook her head. "After you're gone, they'll kill me for trafficking with the forces of darkness."

"And if you put some of this rope around my neck and pretend to have captured me?"

"They might come close enough to parley," Amaryllis said, "but they will never give up their sheep."

"They value their sheep more than their women?"

"Sheep are less troublesome."

They sat side by side, pondering.

"Is there any grass where you live?" Amaryllis asked at last.

"Yes." His cave opened onto a charming alpine meadow where he liked to sun himself.

"We could raise sheep there."

"Hmm..."

"There are several villages around here. If you take a few sheep from each flock, there will be no great harm done."

"You would skin them for me?"

"Certainly. And I could make you a nice bed of the skins."

"And scratch my itches where I can't reach...?"

"Agreed. When they sacrifice the next maiden, you can bring her, too, and she can help me."

"Hmph," Breitfeldt said. A shepherdess and back-scratcher might add pleasure to his solitary life, but a growing community of them?

His self-appointed chatelaine was already engrossed in her plans. "We need a cow ... with a calf, so we can have milk. And a horse and wagon. And maybe a man or two for the heavy work..."

"I hope we don't live to regret this," Breitfeldt growled as he leaped into the air with Amaryllis clinging to his neck.

She leaned forward to speak into his ear. "Is it true that if I remain with you for a year and a day, I will turn into a dragon?"

"I don't know. Perhaps I will turn into a human."