Dame Dragon

But I can’t just let him go. They’ll think I’m cowardly or inferior in strength. I don’t think so. The dragon was indeed very graceful and flexible. With brute strength, it would be easy to overpower him. It was more beautiful than powerful.

He was no longer in a hurry to spew fire. Wasn’t his goal just to lure me out of the castle for a meeting? It was only for that purpose that he had begun to scorch the fields. He was now planning over the towers and had no thought of breathing out fire again. He seemed to like my castle. The dragon hovered above the tallest spire for a long moment. His claw touched the standard with my emblem on it. The claw glittered like a real moon. I even felt a sudden longing for the night and the glow of the moon.

“Go ahead, attack again, and that will be an invitation to a fight,” I whispered to myself, but the dragon suddenly looked at me. Our eyes met. For a moment, I felt as if I were immersed in an emerald swamp from which there was no escape. It enveloped me like green honey. It seemed to me that I was drowning in this swamp, and above it the moon was shining brightly until my eyes hurt, and I was repeating some woman’s name that I did not know at all. I think it was:

“Sephora!”

I repeated it aloud, and some leprechaun, on which I almost stepped with my foot, squeaked and bounced away.

What’s the matter with me? I used to control myself and never hurt anyone, even accidentally. Especially crumbs like the Leprechauns, who hoarded their gold in holes in the fields like mice or moles.

The moon dragon stared at me for another long minute. Like a fool, I stood there and did nothing, even as the raider turned and flew away. To the mountains! Well, now I knew where to look for him. The high mountains beyond the forests were very often a haven for all sorts of suspicious creatures who had slipped through the magical borders unbeknownst to them. No wonder the arsonist flew to hide there. That’s where I’ll find him, but not tonight.

My head was spinning after what I’d seen. It felt like I was surrounded not by a burned field, but by a molten liquid emerald marsh that stretched as far as the eye could see, with the moon, not the sun, hanging over it. The moon is bifurcated. Or is it suddenly the moon and the sun merging into one?

I was brought to my senses only by the concerned murmurings of the dryads. They were all awake, dressed and out in the courtyard. The traces of the recent fire frightened them and made them whisper excitedly.

“Remember, you promised to grow new houses for us,” Cypress, the most sensible of the dryads, returned to the problem at hand.

“Of course, if I promised, I’ll do it,” I began to think about where it would be better to grow new trees for them to live in: right here on the burned grass or further away from here and closer to the forests.

“Where’s Perla?” I’m missing an azure nymph.

“She’s taken up residence in the shell-shaped fountain in your greenhouse,” Palma explained. “I would have taken up residence there too, but there’s nowhere to put down roots. I don’t want to ruin the castle parquet.”

I nodded.

“There’s a peach grove nearby and a beautiful lake behind it, and I think there’s plenty of room for everyone to plant a new tree. And the climate there is wonderful, I mean magical, both palms and birches will take root.”

Bamboo, bored, made a fan of her leaves, waved it around and nodded enthusiastically.

“Well, take us there,” she suggested.

Take us there? Do they really want me to turn into a dragon right in front of them and put them on my scaly back? Did the sight of a moonlit arsonist turn them off dragons at all? Somehow I didn’t even want to think about turning right now, but my night mistresses were waiting, and I couldn’t say no to them. If they wanted to fly on a dragon’s back and prick themselves on its sharp scales once in a lifetime, then so be it.

Dream of a Rose

I dreamed that Rose and I were getting married again. This time everything was as it should be. The chapel was in the castle, not on the moors. Lighted candles in floor candelabras cast in the shape of sirens that came to life and could replace the wedding choir with their singing if they wanted to. Pixies dance on the stained glass windows. There are no other guests because Rose doesn’t like her family, and I have no family at all. The last thought makes me feel better for some reason for the first time. It’s scary when the rotting dead rise from their graves and come to a wedding, even if it’s in a dream. Though perhaps what was missing here was a half-rotting but festively dressed Florian who had risen from the ground overnight.

Yes, we were married at night, just as we had been last time, but it suited our tradition, unlike mortal rites. For the first time we wore real wedding clothes, pure white. In reality I had never dressed up in snow-white brocade, but in my dream it really suited me. The white color set off the crown perfectly, which I didn’t normally wear either. Except that Rose’s wedding dress looked a little old-fashioned. Such outfits with wide sleeves and a simple bodice were worn by ladies to jousting tournaments a couple hundred years ago. I’ve never seen such cuts since. The train was too long, flowing like a cloud across the floorboards. A gold sash with dragon-head pendants hung loosely just below her waist. I couldn’t see Rose’s face clearly, only her dark curls, her lashes bent upward, and the long gold earrings in her ears – the only jewelry on the bride, aside from the sash. The earrings were unusual – two small dragon-like serpents coiled in the branches of roses. Only an unearthly jeweler could have made them. The snakes didn’t come to life or move, but they looked both beautiful and threatening.

I put my arm around Rose’s waist to get a better look at them. The thick veil was in my way. I wanted to pull it away from Rose’s face. Suddenly someone’s claws were at her shoulder level. Not my claws, but dragon claws, too. They waited a second, and then they grabbed both gold pendants and easily ripped the earrings from her ears. It was just a moment, and only blood was left on the veil. I had no time to do anything, nor could I.

It was only a dream.

In the library at the castle, there were several puffy volumes on dreams written by humans. Percy had taken them with him after some town had been ravaged by magical creatures and brought them to my library. They’d taken root here, and their bindings looked a little different, but that didn’t change the fact that they’d come here from human hoards. But I didn’t care anymore. I was eager to learn something from the human books, since I couldn’t from the magical ones.

I had to get to such a point, to look up the meaning of a dream in the books of mortals! It was probably more useful to them, who didn’t know my powers, but I felt a little ashamed.

This is it! The dwarf, temporarily appointed curator here, showed me the right volume. The book itself opened at the right chapter.

Spouses are remarried in a dream, it is a divorce. Well, it’s already happened! We’re already divorced! This dream is way overdue! What kind of prophecy is this that’s sent retroactively? Prophetic dreams are usually made in absentia, not after the event they predicted has already happened. Something doesn’t add up here. Maybe there’s another interpretation of the same symbols?

What else is there? I read a whole list of interpretations, but none of them fit. But the pages of the book suddenly slipped out of my fingers and opened on the article “earrings”. The meanings were also numerous, but only one thing stressed me out. To pluck earrings from someone’s ears meant to take the place of a rival. In my dreams, someone’s glistening claws ripped the earrings out of Rose’s ears. Someone wants to take her place? Well, it’s free. You don’t have to take anything away from her.

“It is except your heart,” whispered a voice from the book. I’d forgotten that all the books in here can talk. If you get caught up in reading them, you can hear voices, and the bindings on the binding fold into the shape of talking lips.

“My heart is sort of sank,” I reminded myself of the night with the dryads. I felt a little uncomfortable remembering how much fun I’d had.

“Do you want to know the difference between giving your heart and giving your body?”

“I haven’t felt passion for anyone in hundreds of years, if we’re having this conversation,” though it was silly to talk about such things with a book. What does it know about me?

“And you’ve never been intimate with mortal beauties?”

“Of course it is not. I’ve never even been close to fairies.”

“You know how to start a fire with one breath, but you don’t know what passion is?” A little voice boomed out.

“Is it passion, like people have for each other?” I wiggled my golden eyebrows expressively. “I’m ashamed to admit it, but I don’t know.”

“And you didn’t enjoy last night with the sorceresses, didn’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“And you want to know the power of passion for human women and the pleasure of being with them.”

To forget Rose?

“I suppose I do.”

“Well, is there one way, shall I tell you?”

I nodded discreetly. The lips on the binding spoke to me, and I replied politely. What had loneliness brought me to? I had little faith in the voices from the pages before, but now I was suddenly indulging them. When the beady lips gave me another piece of advice, I decided to follow it.

To take communion in blood

To ignite a man’s passion, one need only drink from a marvelous cup. The bas-reliefs on it are hung in the form of human and winged bodies. This is what happens when two races come together: human and magical. At the bottom of the thicket, gems grew from the bottom like droplets. From them came a quiet whisper and a glow. Any elixir that you splash on them would immediately acquire one special quality from their influence. But I decided to be on the safe side. The infusion was made for me in the now-abandoned temple where I’d first met Noel. It was now in the middle of nowhere. Behind it, the heath was in full bloom. They say heather flowers symbolize loneliness. I was going to change the meaning of the symbol, so heather was added to wine, the wine mixed with blood and magic elixirs. I flew to the wasteland without spilling the cup, sat down and drank. The infusion didn’t taste bitter, but it wasn’t sweet either. It was a tart taste, a pleasant sensation, no warmth. Contrary to expectations, my throat didn’t burn.

Being with one woman was lonely, too. I needed many. Time to live the life I’d been meant to live all along.

It means many women, many lovers. Shouldn’t that be the order of things for an emperor with many treasures.

My father, however, behaved differently. But he’s an angel. Even fallen angels have their own traditions. One Rhiannon was enough for him. I was in a hurry to forget one Rose. That’s easy to do. If the society of fairies and dryads doesn’t do much for her, then all you have to do is go to the cities of mortals. There would probably be many more of these sorceresses who would comfort me from my breakup with Rose, and whose company would make my nights unforgettable.

I’ve always behaved too primly. I should have gone into debauchery at a young age. I can imagine how disgusted Princess Odile would have made me if she’d known I’d come straight from a brothel to meet her. Yes, and her father, Prince Wizard Rothbert, wouldn’t have been so eager to match me with her if he’d known I wasn’t so impeccable in my manners. It is one thing to shoot fire or cast handfuls of charms, and quite another to spend all your accumulated gold on minxes. I’ve never had a favorite until now. It’s time to find them. I knew from experience that if you give a lady a couple of compliments, she won’t be frightened when you turn into a dragon in front of her eyes. It is Queen Seraphina, for example. I was her protector for a long time.

My romance with the queen and her romance with the dragon didn’t last very long. Besides, we never really got serious. There were only words, fleeting embraces and kisses, and a circle of black spirits who settled at her throne and watched us with the zeal of spies. We never actually made it to the king’s bed. And then the magical flute player Nolan came to the kingdom. With his music he could hold back entire armies and make them throw themselves off cliffs or send storms to drown entire armadas. In short, he could move all of Seraphina’s enemies with music easier than I could with fire. Naturally, with such a servant, the queen no longer needed the dragon. And so we parted ways. Serafina made Nolan her new favorite, and I took flight. It’s a shame that even she, for all her capricious nature, managed to find her true love, and I never did. You just have to look harder! And the main thing is not to look at those who look like Serafina, Odile or Rose. Such capricious women are nothing but trouble. I want girls who are refined but balanced. They won’t shake their fists in jealousy and set magical traps to teach me fidelity.

It’s a shame I’ve always had to deal with sorceresses. It’s much easier to deal with delicate and defenseless girls who don’t practice any sorcery. They need a protector, which I could be. Percy hinted at paying attention to the dour girls. They tend to be grateful to anyone who looks after them. I suppose he’d drawn that conclusion from his own experience, but it wasn’t much to my taste. I had a preference for pretty girls.

“It is just like a Beauty Lover!”

Who said that? I turned around. No one! The street of Veon I’d flown into was completely empty. Not even the windows of some art gallery were glowing with evening lights.

Nevertheless, a question immediately popped into my mind: who was this Beauty Worshiper? A local patron of the arts who collects paintings? Then no wonder he was so nicknamed. In the gallery one could notice only portraits of beauties, and not only mortal women, but fairies as well.

“He collects them like you collect statues,” the voice whispered again, as if an annoying bug had landed on my collar and was buzzing in my ear.

The statues in my castle were all once live girls. And here they’re just portraits. Still, such a comparison would make a person uncomfortable, but I’m used to all kinds of magic. Nothing surprises me.

“There is something! Get inside!”

I finally noticed some sort of glowing insect on the extinguished lantern. It looked like a snail with an orange shell on its back. It glowed like a tiny flashlight. A curious beckoner! But I wasn’t drawn to the gallery. They’re just portraits, and I’m looking for living women. I don’t need drawings and ghosts.

Where do you find live women if not at an assembly? I went to the first one I could find. Here’s a great place to meet. I don’t need an invitation. With my magic, I’m welcome everywhere, and any door opens for me. The place was full of beautiful ladies. Their cavaliers were no competition for me. I knew that if I beckoned to them, they would follow me obediently. It wasn’t just magic. The charms of fallen angels had always captivated women. And the fact that I am a slumbering dragon, in love affairs does not prevent me at all. But as soon as the hostess looked at me, and I felt almost in love, the dragon inside me stirred angrily. He was reflected in the full-length mirror on the wall. It was a blessing that Simonetta, the organizer of the assembly, didn’t see him. Even if she did, it didn’t scare her away at all.

The elixir of blood and heather seems to be working as it should. The attraction is so strong that there are no more barriers, and it doesn’t matter that the dragon inside me is furiously moving its claws and trying to get out. I’m certainly not going to burn the lady I like.

A gust of wind blew open the window, extinguishing all the candles in the nearest candelabra. How like the intervention of someone’s magic! Even if it is Rose, let her be jealous. I don’t care. I should teach her a lesson someday. I exhaled a thin stream of flame to re-light the extinguished candles. Simonetta looked at me with the same sympathy. Beside her, a dozen other beauties had also taken a fancy to me. I could recognize their names before they were introduced to me. There were Leonella, Barbara, Jodetta, Irena, Felina, Jeanine, Marietta… The names swirled in my head like fall leaves. They were as varied and beautiful as the ladies. Brunettes, shades, redheads, blondes, curly or slender, green-eyed or brown-eyed, swarthy or white-faced – I liked them all. For the first time I chose Lisette, a mischievous coquette who beckoned me from the noisy hall to a secluded boudoir. The cup with the bloody elixir appeared in my hands. I offered the girl a drink.

“Is it communion with blood?” She was surprised.

“What do you mean?” I was as surprised as she was.

“That’s what all the followers of St. Augustine do.”

Oh, then it’s no wonder she confused witchcraft with communion. Though, in fact, religion and witchcraft are two sides of the same coin, like God and the devil. Something one means good, something the other evil, but not everything is perfectly simple.

“They put blood in the communion cup to inflame the passion in the parishioners they’re attracted to,” Lisette explained, as if she’d been through something like this herself. “But I like you as you are. Whoever you are, you are very handsome.”

The dragon in me is beautiful too. He is golden and winged and his eyes sparkle with amethyst brilliance, but he can breathe fire. Lisette felt the heat of the flames from my nostrils, nevertheless, gently ran her hand through my curls.

“It is like gold!” She said. “To attract a girl you don’t need to use religion like a witchcraft ritual at all.”

But to attract a girl, I had to drink from the cup. So, according to Augustine’s followers, it’s called blood communion. It was just one sip to forget Rose and rekindle my passion for other women. And then the cup was thrown away and Lisette was in my arms. And it didn’t matter that the bas-reliefs on the bowl groaned and moved, and the dragon in the mirror hissed furiously.

Heart in the fire

How strange it was that I fell asleep in a girl’s arms and woke up in a bed showered with ashes. Did I burn something in the night? I don’t remember! In fact, Lisette herself is as good as gone. I don’t remember girls leaving me so quickly. Usually they want to get to know each other. Besides, it’s her house, not mine.

There was a suspicious amount of ash on the sheets. It scattered in clumps under my palms, swirling in the air like black snowfall. Something had definitely burned during the night. But what was it? Was it maybe the canopy? It had burnt holes in places, but the frame itself was intact.

Where’s Lisette?

Particles of ash settled on the tea tray, on the dressing table, on the nightstands, but the room was empty. There was no one hiding in the drawers of the dresser. I kept waiting for a gremlin to pop out of them. In case I was with Rose, that’s what would happen. But this was Lisette’s bedroom, the mortal girl. She didn’t have gremlins.

But down the hall, I noticed cages of colorful parrots. I’d have to ask them where the lady of the house had gone so early. I got up, dressed, and went downstairs. There were no servants to be seen, but the parrots were very happy that someone understood their speech. I understood the language of all animals and beasts, so I could have a long conversation with the brightly colored birds. The parrots turned out to be avid talkers. They reported to me everything that happened in the house and all the lovers the mistress had taken before me. On the subject of the latter they were fond of gloating. But as for the mistress herself, my curiosity as to her whereabouts puzzled them.

“She hasn’t come out yet,” admitted a large parrot with a red crest.

“What do you mean, she hasn’t come out?” She couldn’t have flown out the window. “Surely your mistress is not a magician?”

The parrot almost laughed in his hoarse bird tongue.

“We haven’t seen her since last night,” the other parrots replied politely. “She must be somewhere in the house?”

“Are there no hiding places?”

They shook their colorful heads in the negative.

“All right, I’ll come back and look for her later,” I had no intention of playing hide-and-seek with Lisette. There were plenty of other charming ladies besides her. I didn’t like silly games.

On my way out, I came upon a strange man who was on duty at the fountain, looking at Lisette’s window and making a quick charcoal sketch in a blank sketchbook. An artist! I tried not to socialize with artists after my failed relationship with Marcel. I was still drawn to them, though. I found it kind of magical how they create a drawing out of nothing. All they have in front of them is a blank sheet of paper on which an image gradually emerges. And they don’t need magic to do it. I secretly respected painters. Their talent for drawing was akin to my gift of sorcery.

So when the stranger said hello to me, I returned the greeting. Although everyone knows it’s not customary to greet strangers as if they were longtime friends. But he acted as if he had known me for a long time. He was wearing a long crimson cloak with a silver braid. It was fastened at the shoulder by a buckle in the shape of a manticore. I’ve seen one of these buckles somewhere before.

“I know a wonderful shop nearby that sells beautiful urns and chests for ashes,” he said, pointing with a lump of charcoal to the left.

“And you think I need them?” I wondered if he was mocking me.

“I thought one of the fire fairy urns would be for Mistress Lisette,” the guy looked confused that I didn’t understand him. But I never discussed any purchases with anyone.

“Why would you think that?” I grinned and walked on by. If Lisette was going to buy something outlandish, that was her business. I had enough urns, vases, amphorae, and fortress-shaped chests in my castle, so I wasn’t intrigued by a shabby shop where a suspiciously troll-like creature was selling pottery. Yes, the urns were molded with faces and figures of fairies, gorgons, firewomen, nymphs, and mermaids, but it was nothing unusual to me. Only one vase caught my eye for a moment. On its sides stretched in bas-relief a whole circle of magical creatures. And they were all exclusively female. As if there were no men among us. All these intricate things are clearly made by an admirer of female beauty.

The troll-like and gruff salesman, who noticed me through the window, suddenly took off his hat and bowed low to me. I was able to get a good look at his bald head with its huge ears. A troll indeed! All the things he traded must have been stolen from somewhere, or he must have collected them from the wreckage of estates that had been looted. My subjects liked to be naughty, even though I forbade it. But I didn’t care about prohibitions or laws now. I had other things on my mind. So I walked past the troll without giving him a comment or warning for the future in the form of a fiery sigh that could burn the floor of the shop. Let him go on with his trade. As long as he doesn’t cross me, I’ll leave him alone. I don’t care where he got it.

I was busy looking for more beauties, and I was proud of the fact that I wasn’t looking for them to burn, rob, or throw them off a cliff. That’s how a dragon should behave. And in me again woke up the old prince, who was taught to treat ladies gallantly, and not to wring their necks with claws. In a word, I was looking for girlfriends for love pleasures, and filled myself with the thought that there would certainly be a lot of them. So many that I could forget Rose. And for that I would need a very long list and the girls would have to be one more beautiful than the other.

Somewhere nearby was a kingdom, I think it was called Tioria, whose recent ruler was so fond of ladies that his list of favorites was compared to a collection of jewels from a dragon’s treasury. It was said that he had more mistresses than there were jewels in the dragon’s treasury. I doubted that, because I couldn’t even count all my treasures myself. The magical talents of my spirit treasurers were not enough for that either. But the former king of Tioria had kind of gone broke on the ladies. The kingdom fell into disrepair. Parts of it became ruins and wastelands. I don’t know what happened there, but I certainly didn’t raid it. I used to scorch states to the ground. There’s still some of Tioria left. But the king himself is gone. The king’s castle is a ruin. What can women get you into? We must remember that king, lest we do the same to him. I wasn’t about to spend my fortune on pretty girls. It’s enough for me to have a little fun, to feel free to choose. Being Rose’s pet dragon isn’t very dignified for the emperor. Let her know she’s not the only one.