Psychopomp Magazine Fall 2015 | Page 13

Inez Tan | 13

Inez Tan

The Princess and the Dragon

Most children only hear that they are forbidden to go beyond the city walls without being given a reason why. I could have told them. It’s because the walls of stone and mortar are able to withstand fire, and little boys and girls are not.

I am the size of five men, but I have the strength of a hundred. I lie by the gates, across the main road no one uses anymore. News of a fire-breathing dragon can do that for business.

In the city, I hear them whisper among themselves, How can we be rid of the dragon? The king offered all his gold and silver and half of his kingdom to any man who would slay me, or else drive me away. He needn’t have bothered. No one could hope to succeed.

Their children ought to be told the truth. I hate ignorance. I detest the ignorant thing I have become, growing sluggish on the people’s sheep. It is an ill thing to prey on sheep—kept sheep, no less. Little by little, my thoughts grow dull. I scratch at my scales. I go for long stretches of time staring off into the distance, attentive to nothing at all.

Two sheep a day is what I get in exchange for not hurting anyone, two sheep a day for doing nothing. It feeds my apathy.

When they started bringing me the pregnant ewes, I knew the flocks were thinning. Next came lame and blind sheep with glutinous discharge crusted around their eyes, and finally old leathery sheep so sick they could not stand.

The people’s representative is the learned fool Algernon. I know his kind. A young man, brought up in a prosperous family. A smattering of education and he thinks he’s clever.

One day he knelt before me with his face to the ground, pleading.