Fantastical Ramblings (11 page)

My aim was off. I sent five spiders scuttling to safety but
missed my target.

“Hey, send some more fire this way, Your Volatileness. Helps
clean up a bit,” Jenks taunted me.

“House cleaning is your job.”

“If you’d hire some proper house fairies rather than
enslaving an innocent pixie...” He darted into a corner behind the stack of
Egyptology tomes.

“You know I can’t afford house fairies.” Jenks had come to
me as part of a trade. I scared a pack of bandits away from a farmer’s
livestock in return for some books. Jenks had been ensorcelled inside a
delectable volume on wheat hybrids (I think the wizard figured no one would
ever open the book and discover the bad-tempered brat). I broke the spell in
return for services. Some day I’ll write a book about that adventure. Some day
when I’ve finished my to-be-read-pile, or got bored with re-reading my
favorites.

“If you’d get off your fat arse and go hunt up some treasure
like a proper dragon...” Jenks ducked as I threw a rotten tomato at him. It was
sitting right where I’d left it when I started reading the mystery
series—goodness, can that have been two weeks ago? How time flies.

I lumbered off the lounge, displacing the pile of old
romances that propped up the broken leg. A fog of dust engulfed me as the books
tumbled. I was mad enough to spit fire, but had to settle for loosing a stream
of ancient curses—gleaned from one of the Egyptology tomes.

“Where are you, you miserable pixie?” I screamed as I batted
my forepaws through the thick air, trying to clear it before I sneezed.

Too late. “Achooooooooo!” Smoke and fire shot upward as I
turned my muzzle away from the precious books.

“Now look what you’ve done!” Jenks screamed at me as he beat
at a flamelet on a hardcover dust jacket with his hands. Unfortunately, his
flapping wings only fanned the embers into real fire.

“No great loss.” I stomped upon the wildfire, half hoping I’d
flatten Jenks in the process. “It’s only a duplicate copy of
Astarte, Love Goddess To Unlovable Thieves
,
true porn masquerading as romantic erotica, probably the worst book ever written.”

“My favorite,” Jenks protested as he squeezed between my
toes.

Drat! I missed the little gnat.

He examined a bent wing. The fire had singed the tip, and my
talons had made a rent down the middle, a least two thirds its rainbow length.

“I claim the other copy as recompense for damages, Your
Addicted-to-Justice-ness” Jenks moaned.

“Fine, and clear out some of this other crap while you’re at
it.” I kicked a pig skeleton into the deep recesses of the cave. It bounced
back from the pile of refuse, and shattered upon impact. I pulled a splinter
free of the carcass and picked my teeth.

“You really should do something about the mess, Your
Slobbishness,” Jenks said, shaking his head.

He rummaged through a pile of rags to unearth a medicine bag
from the last wizard who had tried to steal treasure from me. When the spell-caster
had discovered nothing but books, I couldn’t allow him to leave. After all, my
fierce reputation was all that gave me any privacy for reading.

The land was thick with knights and other adventurers;
younger sons who couldn’t inherit the family homestead and had to make their
own way in the world. I guess they hoped to pilfer a few diamonds and such to
purchase their own land or make them more attractive to an heiress.

To tell you the truth, if I had a spare diamond or two, I’d
sell it and buy more books. That’s the only use for treasure, in my not-so-humble
opinion. My fractiously feuding family doesn’t agree with me, on much of
anything. Especially the issue of books.
Boils
and pustules
, what can I do with them?

They believe the purpose of a dragon’s life is to amass
treasure and then defend it against thieving humans. Now if we could just teach
more of those humans to read and to treasure books... But that’s another
matter.

My family, with their hoards of shiny treasures can afford
house fairies to keep everything clean and polished and properly accounted for
in thick ledgers.

A clean cave is a sign of a sick mind. Or a sign of a dragon
with nothing better to do with her time.

I’d rather spend my time reading.

Whenever family obligations require we meet, I always go to
their places. I’d never invited a single one of them here, nor have I allowed
them to “drop by” or escort me to a family gathering. They might discover that
I’m not just erudite, I’m a total slob.

The doorbell rang. Such a rare phenomenon that Jenks and I
stared at each other long enough for the visitor to get impatient and ring
again.

“Quick, Jenks, get rid of it, whatever it is.” I slunk into
a dark recess, grabbing my book along the way.

The bell rang again, a long and loud bong that repeated a
dozen times, as if someone actually swung from the rope rather than rapping it
smartly against the bronze bell. I wasn’t curious enough to peek out the window
crack to see for sure.

“Keep your greaves on, I’m coming,” Jenks groused. He had to
walk the ten tail-lengths to the iron-hinged and studded double oak doors. He
couldn’t lift the latch of course. It was heavy enough to make me think twice
about lifting it—so I rarely left the place. Jenks crawled beneath the door,
then right back inside.

“Get your scaly chartreuse body over here, Your Immenseness.
This is one of yours.”

“A knight?” I really didn’t want to fight a knight today. They’d
left me alone for so long, I’d lost my taste for human flesh. Besides, I was
just getting to the good part of the book, the part where the hero says this
one special word in ancient Sumerian and the heroine melts into a puddle of
oil.

Psst, I should mention that I usually recast the characters
in the books I read. The ones you might ordinarily call villains are the true
heroes. The nice guys are just too... too vanilla.

“A knight of sorts,” Jenks choked under his nectar scented
breath.

Then I realized the hacking sound coming from his miniature
body was laughter. If he’d make a decent mouthful, I just might eat him. But
then, if Jenks didn’t lure game into the cave, I’d have to find food and cook
occasionally. That would disrupt my privacy and my reading.

“Who dares trespass on my property,” I bellowed in my
fiercest dragon voice. I let a little smoke seep under the door. That usually
scared off all but the most desperate and poor of the thieves.

For an answer I heard only a tremendous thud against the
stout door.

“What’s he got, a battering ram?”

“Better,” Jenks chortled. “A trebuchet.”

Curses and flames hit the door in equal measure. It caught
fire and splintered under the next blow.

Where could I hide? More important, how could I keep the
invader away from my books?

Panic made me shrink into a brittle shadow of my robust
self.

“Quick, Jenks, sprinkle the place with pixie dust so he
thinks all this is treasure and not just garbage. Maybe he’ll haul away a pig
carcass or three.”

“Or six,” Jenks muttered. “You know if I dust the books
maybe he’ll haul away a few stacks, give us some more room.”

“Over my dead body!” I puffed myself up and loosed another
blast of fire. The knight was attacking the door with a fresh barrage of
boulders anyway, maybe if I singed him through the cracks a little, he’d think
twice.

“He’ll make your body dead if you aren’t careful.” Jenks
threw a handful or two of pixie dust over the remains of my last six meals.

“More, Jenks. That’s not enough dust to fool anyone.”

“All I can do, Your Gluttonness. Can’t fly, thanks to you
singing my wing, so I can’t properly dust anything.”

“Maybe if you throw it in his face...”

“You willing to hold me high enough, and close enough to
reach his face?” The cocky gnat stood, hands on hips, feet spread in an
aggressive stance.

“I don’t... If I have to.” My knees began to tremble and I
dropped to all fours rather than fall flat on my face.

Did I mention that besides being an erudite slob I am also a
coward?

“That’s better,” Jenks said. “You’re thinking, rather than
just reacting and depending upon your size and strength to win this fight.”

Yeah, right
.

He began climbing my body as he would a mountain. “If you
rolled onto your side, I could make better headway on your scales. Not fight
gravity.”

Whatever
. I obeyed
his command and he slithered and hitched himself up, scale by scale, shaking
loose a few itchy mites along the way.

Meanwhile, the knight made headway on the door with
boulders, nearly as large as myself, banging into it every few minutes. Before
Jenks reached my muzzle so I could stand up again, the door crashed to the
floor.

“Yeep!” I squeaked and scrambled for a more dignified pose.

“All right, Lea, hand them over!” shouted a scrawny man
crouching behind a shield made of translucent dragon scales. He brandished a
rusty sword that belonged in a museum. His token armor consisted of motorcycle
leathers and a helmet—not very stylish or well-fitting leathers at that. They
bagged at his shoulders and butt. He’d had to roll up the pant legs and sleeve
cuffs to accommodate their bulk and length to his underdeveloped frame.

Jenks swung from one of my neck fronds as if it were a
playground toy. “Hey!” he chortled. “It’s a girl.”

I dipped my head to peer more closely at my invader. The
shield was perfectly transparent to my vision. I also hoped to find a way around
that shield. Flames were of no use against dragon scales.

If I stalled long enough maybe she’d drop it. It must have
weighed a ton and covered the entire length of her body.

“Hand what over?” I boomed, hoping the noise and
reverberation would cover the frightened quaver in my voice.

“Your library books. They’re one hundred years overdue. The
fines alone are worth a king’s ransom.”

“Yeep!” I gulped. “Library books?”

“You heard me. Hand them over.”

“Look around, girlie, you find ’em, you can have ’em,” Jenks
challenged her.

She poked her pert nose around the edge of her shield. Her
eyes went wide, causing a pair of thick spectacles to slide down her miniature
snoz, stopping just short of dropping to the ground.

“By Midas, the great god of hoarders!” She tried reaching
for a pile of books, discovered both hands occupied by sword and shield.

I could almost see the wheels turning in her head. How to
choose between the treasure of books and defense of her body? While she
thought, I tried to come up with a strategy to get rid of her. But if she left
here alive she’d tell the world that not only did I not have a great treasure
of diamonds and gold, but she’d broadcast to the world and my family what a
lousy housekeeper I was, even with a pixie to help dust occasionally.

The librarian/knight finally opted to sheath her rusty old
sword and keep her shield between herself and the smoke dribbling out of my
muzzle. Rapidly and precisely she straightened two piles, alphabetizing them as
she went.

“My name’s Miriam by the way, Miriam de Livres. Some of
these books are true rarities. They should be in an atmosphere-controlled room
on acid free shelves, not touching each other...” She rambled on about the best
way to store and preserve the books. All the while, the square footage behind
her shield took on a neatness the likes of which this cave hadn’t seen in
centuries.

“This cavern is precisely climate controlled. If you’d been
less concerned with overdue fines than where you were you’d have noticed how
deep you came into this hidey hole. The temperature and humidity do not vary
more than ten percent no matter the weather outside,” I explained to her. “I
bought those books new and they are still in pristine condition.”

I puffed out my chest with pride, to disguise the fire building
within me. If Miriam of the books lost just a tiny bit of her concentration, I
might be able to work a line of flame over or around the shield and she’d be
ash. What was one more dead body among the refuse. I just wanted to be done
with her and get back to my reading.

“These books are in good condition, despite the dust,” she
said in a dazed sort of voice. She skootched closer to my chaise lounge,
(recliners don’t fit my body nearly so well as old fainting couches) leaving
order in her wake.

I noticed an old favorite among the rows of books that I had
forgotten about. I snatched at it with two delicate talons.

Miriam slapped my paw with the flat of her sword. Where did
that come from? “Don’t you dare make a mess of these books.”

Chastened I withdrew to sulk on the other side of the
chaise. She shifted the shield, still keeping it between us.

Jenks hopped off my muzzle onto my favorite reading chair
beneath the crack in the ceiling that allowed a little extra light in. A puff
of dust rose around him when he landed.

The librarian stifled a sneeze, still working away in search
of “her” books. If possession was nine tenths of the law, then the books should
be mine after a century or two had passed.

“Maybe we can work a deal,” Jenks said in a stage whisper meant
to induce a sense of privacy but loud enough so I could hear.

I’d hear his quiet words anyway, dragon ears and cave
acoustics made this a perfect whispering gallery.

“We let you retrieve your books and take a couple of special
rarities and you waive the fines. And you keep this cave a secret.”

Little Miss Neatness tilted her head to listen. Her free
hand kept working.

“No! Not my books. You can’t take my books away from me,” I
wailed, wringing my forepaws. When did I lose control of this battle?

“Hush,” Jenks admonished me. “I’m saving your ass. You ever
tried to match a librarian for stubbornness, determination, and greed for
books?”