Princess Ahira (2 page)

I wonder
ed
who was ringing them tonight.

Two...

I hoped it was c
hoir boy
,
Corin
th. That little brat kicked me at the last mass I attended.

             
I hope
d
I
would
get at least one present
for my birthday

             
Four…

             
I was so wrapped up in the sounding of the bells that I
didn’t notice the screams
or the smoky s
c
ent of fire tha
t
came
from the main entrance of our palace.
I also didn’t hear the great gusts of wind, or even feel the faint sizzle of magic.
Oblivious dolt, that’s what I was.

             
Eleven…

             
Just one more toll till I’m sixteen.

             
Twelve
…

             
“…Well that’s cheap!” I muttered. “I don’t feel any different,” I
said
as
I turned away from my window and
started
to walk back to
my bed
.
It was then that I heard
a strange noise. I
t was a combination of wind and something dragging across stone.
I sleepily turned around and my eyes bulged out of thei
r sockets when
I spotted a
colossal
,
red dragon
flying directly outside
my window.

My shrill screams
caught his
attention
, drawing his gigantic eyes to peer into my room. O
ne of his silver claws
snaked out to grasp
me, pulling me through the window and into the clutches of his paws
. It was then that I noticed
the front gate was on fire. The
guards
were
mobilized and standing in the courtyard
.
They were shouting and gesturing wildly, but I couldn’t hear anything over the steady beat of the dragon’s wings.

             
Being held
high above the ground
, in the claws of a dragon no less, I did what any other person would have done. I screamed bloody murder. “LET ME GO!” I shouted between blood curdling shrieks.

The dragon ignored my screams and instead caged me between his clawed paws. As I in
creased the volume of my shouts
the dragon banked and started flying higher.

I screamed some more. “TAKE ME BACK! I TASTE HORRID
, I PROMISE
! LET ME GO! CASPIAN!”

The dragon ignored me
, and h
is
huge bat-
like wings pumped
as
w
e soared
higher into the air
until my castle was a tiny dot.
It was then that
I had to silence myself, unable to breathe enough in the
thin air the dragon soared
through.

             
I gasped for air as I sat in the dragon’s careful grasp.
I could hear a
steady whooshing noise grow overpoweringly louder.
I
peered through the cracks between my captor’s claws
saw four other drag
ons had sidled along side of us. Each dragon clasped its
forepaws together, like the dragon carrying me.

             
“It was a raid for princesses!” I
hiccupp
ed in revelation
.

             
Mother was forever lecturing me about the proper, historical role of a princess. One of the things she used to hold up to me as a shining example of femininity was a captive princess. Once upon a time dragons used to kidnap princesses. These beautiful maidens were always held hostage until a great prince (usually one would emerge after several not-quite-great princes had already tried to save the princess
es
and were roasted in the process) came and killed the dragon, freeing the
graceful and properly cowed girl
.

It was a myth I was always particularly disgusted with because the
princesses
saw none of the action and apparently never had the brains to try and escape on their own.

Foolish
princess
drabble
aside
, I was always taught that it was part of our
history
. Princess raids hadn’t
happened in practically forever.
Or at the very least, before my mother was born
—which is almost forever
!

             
This made me very, very mad. Don’t get me wrong, I was terrifi
ed of the dragons!
But this
woul
d undoubtedly make my mother’s y
ear. Now a prince would come rescue me, and I would have no choice but to marry him out of duty and gratefulness.

             
I consi
dered swearing under my breath—
hanging around t
he stables does have its perks—
but I thought better of it and instead
continued to peek
through the confines of the dragon’s paw.

I fell backwards in surprise
.
W
e were passing over the Enchanted Mountains, the divider between
Somnio
and its magic
filled counterpart, Tsol. Apparently dragons
flew
faster than I thought.

             
I shudd
ered from the cold
and rolled myself into a ball, trying to hug the flimsy material of my ugly green dress closer to me. I
sneeze
d, and my ears popped as we started to lose altitude.
The gradual descent
went on for about half an hour. One long, cold, miserable half an hour.

             
I was peering
through the cracks of
my captor’
s
clasped
claws
when
the ground
zoomed into my sight
.
I screamed as we bega
n to land, convinced I was going to be squashed, but the dragon landed rear first. There was a deafening rumble as he plopped down on the ground, shaking my entire body.

The dragons slowly wad
d
led forward on their back feet before growing excessively exasperated. My dragon, in a stroke of ingenuity,
l
atched one clawed paw around me
, holding me much how I used to hold my dolls as a child
.
This action freed up one paw, allowing him to move forward in a shuffling
,
three legged hobble.

             
The other dragons
carefully
copied his movement, holding the
ir princesses in a single paw.
We, the princesses, were set down in a circle in the middle of a giant
cave
. It was so b
ig that the ceiling didn’t end. I
t just disappeared into a big black cloud.
Giant
tor
c
hes were fastened to the gleaming, marble walls.
It looked
a little like
a coliseum.

About
four
hundred
dragons were perched
on the sidelines of the cave.
T
hey were watching us with glowing eyes
that came in a wide array of colors and shapes
. 

             
What surprised me most about the dragons, not like I was able to think very brilliantly at that moment, was their elegance. Their scales shone like precious, plate sized gems. The younger dragons were big, proud and glossy. Their body structure was sturdy, but they had a sort of feline grace to them. Their necks were long and their faces were almost equine with
their
glowing eyes set on the side
s
of their
head.

             
A
particularly fat dr
agon lumbered up to us p
ri
ncesses and cleared his throat
.
“In
our scouting of
Somnio
five dr
agons returned with princesses.
We are
ready to divvy them out,” h
e announced. 

             
My mouth dropped to the floor. “I didn’t know they could talk,” I uttered.
Mother’s legends never mentioned
smart
dragons. Princess snatchers were always greedy snarling beasts, not educated creatures!

             
Out of all the princesses
it seemed that I was the only one who was awed. The others were crying
in
muddled messes on the fl
oor. Well, all but one of them
. The odd ball of the bunch was a fierce lo
oking princess with coarse,
black hair. She l
ooked
very
warrior like.

I
n a situation
like this
that would usually endear her to me. However, she appeared to
be mad. Insane. N
ot quite right in the head.
How did I draw this conclusion? She was army crawling on the ground in a circle. As she crawled she muttered under her breath.

             
“This is all because I pose to be such a big threat to
my brother the crown prince
!”
the nutso princess decided
. H
er laugh was distinctly horse like. “
If I were to remain in my country any longer surely the people would revolt and demand I take the throne! But alas, I am by far the most beautiful princess here! Surely the dragons
will eat
me to retain their lizard
beauty!”

             
I was
dumb
struck by her speech, mostly because she looked like a cross frog.

My attention was only drawn away from the crazed princess when the dragons began
humming
.
It was a musical sound that came from the back of their throats.

             
“And Duke Azmaveth
here by
receives the
honor of going first!” t
he gold dragon
announced.
Apparent
ly the d
ragons, going by some sort of
rank
ing system
, got to choose a princess to serve the
m.
Interesting,
not only were they able to speak,
they had some sort of government. 

             
The humming grew louder
still and I realized it wasn’t that th
e dragons weren’t singing, but
were gossiping with one another.
A
dragon
slowly stalked towards us
,
presumably
Duke
Azmaveth
. 

             
He was
huge.
A horse could have comfortably stood on his forehead
!
His scales were a lustrous royal purple
,
and
his
intelligent purple eyes
were slightly darker
than the hue of his scales.
He was big
, even with his wings tucked against his sides, but
still
elegant
. 

             
He sat
on his hindquarters, much
like a cat
,
while studying us. I instinctively backed away
from his sharp gaze and noticed that the scary, fierce princess was smolderin
g and shaking her fist at him.
The other girls
had stopped crying
and were
instead
on the
verge
of
hysteria.

The dragon
moved his giant head toward me and blew out of his enormous nostrils, which was like a
blast
of wind.

             
The purple
dragon
cocked his head at me before turning to the fat dragon and
nodding
.