Princess Ahira (4 page)

I struggled with
scraping the moldy dishes for the
better part of two hours. By the time I was finished I had enough
mold to patch together a quilt.
I was trying to figure out a system for washing dishes when Azmaveth returned.

             
“I’m back
!”
he shouted, flouncing into the kitchen.
 

             
I yelped and
fell into the bow
l, which was full with water.
I tried to keep myself from barfing as I sat in the mold riddled water in his soup bowl.
“Welcome back,
”
I said between clenched teeth.

Azmaveth flashed me his leery/friendly grin as he fished me out of the bowl and set me on the counter.

             
“I see you’ve been busy,” he said, observing the mold blanket
.

             
“
Yeah, about that.
Is there some way to fix this?
I can’t move these dishes, much less clean them, by myself,” I
said as
I walked around, making squishy
,
wet noises as I paced. 
“Please,” I added, deciding I had better be somewhat polite in case he happened to enjoy the taste of human.

             
“I did just i
nvent a new shrinking spell!” h
e excitedly said.

             
“A what?”  I questioned, apprehension
starting to build in the pit of my stomach.

             
“A shrinking spell! I’ll
bewitch the dishes so when you say something like ‘shrink dis
hes’ the dishes will shrink to a more manageable size.
And when you say something like ‘grow dishes’ they’ll g
row back to their original size,” he happily hummed.

It occurred to me at that moment that I might quite possibly be
royally
screwed. Not because I was kidnapped by a dragon and brought over to Tsol, but because I was living with a dragon who wa
s both an inventor and a mage—a
very dangerous combination.
 

             
The shrinking spell was a good idea though, it would save my back, and it would
make meals easier to prepare.
“
Are you sure about this?” I carefully asked. I didn’t want to get myself killed for my impertinence.

             
“
Absolutely! In fact, I’ll get started now,” Azmaveth decided
, sounding serious for
the first time since daybreak.

I was slightly assured when Azmaveth’s supposed shrinking spell appeared to be quite harmless and easy. “Everyone, listen up,” h
e said as
all the dishes and cooking ingredients slowly hovere
d a few feet above the ground.
He glanced at me.  “Your new clothes are in the h
allway,” h
e pointedly said before turning his attention back to the dishes. 

             
Taking the hint I left the kitchen and wandered out to th
e hallway where a big bag was carelessly strewn on the ground.
I opened up the sack and found four work dresses, a pair of sandals, and another pair shoes along
with some white undergarments.
To my bewil
derment all of my dresses were
made of clothe colored a
dark purple, the s
ame
shade
as Azmaveth’s scales.

I sheepishly hid myself in a small corner of the hallway before I
changed out of my
wet, tattered dress and into one of the
soft
,
new dresses
. The mater
ial was durable yet comfortable. I was happy, but it made me wonder
how the dragon
was able to procure
all
of my necessary clothing items, in my exact size, in such a short amount of time.

             
Just as I
finished squeezing
water
out
of
my hair
Azmaveth
lumbered down the hallway with a smug smile. 

             
“It worked,” h
e
self-righteously announced.
“The phrases are ‘glistenblossum’ to shrink them, and ‘we
ezlesnout’ to make them grow.”

             
“
What h
apped to ‘
grow dishes’ and ‘shrink dishes’?” I asked.

             
“
Those phrases are uncreative. T
hey don’t even sound like magic,
” h
e
said, shaking his large head
. 

             
It was in me to argue, but at
this point I was still aware of Azmaveth’s
size
,
power
,
and how easily he could kill me. (This awareness lasted only a short while before I learned I could wa
lk all over
him
.)
“I should get back to cleaning,” I
said
, pausing
for a moment
.
“But
why is everything purple
?” 

             
He rolled his eyes.
“As one of the three
Dragon Dukes
I have my own colors: purple and white,” he explained.
“B
ecause you are my p
rincess you’ll wear my colors. My father was this color too.
You see the first-b
orn son of a d
uke is the same color as his father because he will take over the
title once his father is dead.
My son,
if I ever have one, will be this shade as well,” he
lectured
. For some odd reason he sounded annoyed when he spoke of his father.

             
“I see,” I thoughtfully said. “If you’re a d
uke why haven’t you had a princess before?”

             
“
I’ve onl
y been duke for about
a decade
.
I never
received
a princess when my father wa
s the duke. He would take care of all the typical dragon roles,” he admitted. “You and the other princesses
have been the first to come in
quite some time
. Thanks to the previous rotation, I received the honor of going first
for princess selection
this time,” he explained
.

             
“Oh,” I said. Azmaveth was continuously proving to me that dragon society was very complex and refined. It
actually
sounded
similar to
my father’s court
—if you ignored the princess selection part anyway
.

A deep rumble shook me out of my reverie. “What was that?”
I asked
, looking up at the ceiling. It sounded like the den was going to collapse on us.

             
“Um…well I haven’t exa
ctly eaten yet this morning…” Azmaveth
said
.

             
“
I can prepare a simple breakfast. I am
somewhat familiar with cooking, b
ut I guess that depends what your usual meals are,” I carefully
said.
If he ate raw meat
I was not about to offend him.

             
Azmaveth rolled his eyes.
“I’m not some sort of
barbarian. I do eat fruits and plants! Practically anything you humans eat,” he defended
.

             
“Sorry
.
I’ll go make us some porridge.” 

Two
broken dishes later I poured the porridge into bowls before car
rying the dishes to the table.
I left mine in the kitchen
so when I said the magic word, weezlesnout, Azmaveth’s bowl, and Azmaveth’s bowl alone, grew, porridge and all.

             
I
went
back
to the kitchen and retrieved my bowl as Azmaveth sniffed at the food.
I climbed up on the table and Azmaveth
nodded
before politely sipping at the porridge, almost like
the way
a horse dr
inks water
.  

             
After he finished he happily sighed.
“
Excellent cooking Ahira.
Especially
for a princess.
I
truly think this could be a wonderful
,
working relationship!” h
e said.

             
“What do you mean?”
I asked, swallowing the last of my porridge. 

             
“N
ot all
dragons get along with their princesses
,” h
e said
, sounding surprised
that
this had never occurred to me.
“In fact it is a rare case that a dragon gets along with a princess.
Generally
speaking a dragon is never killed over a princess. She
is merely
released into the wild, or
goes
free with a random prince
. We dragon
s have a lot of patience, but princess
es
are, in general, stupid creatures,” Azmaveth said, rolling his head.

             
I consid
ered his words before agreeing.

After we finished eating
Azmaveth went off toward the library
and
I tackled the kitchen for the second time that day.

“I bet a snail keeps its shell cleaner than this,” I fussed as I washed dish after dish after dish after dish.

What felt like
days
later, but was really only a matter of hours, I finished.
By t
his point I was so sick of
mold
and dishes
I was ready to give Azmaveth a piece
of my mind, dragon or not
.

I made a beeline down the tunnels and gaped when I entered the library.

             
  Bookcases were stacked on top of each
ot
her so the library was over three stories high.
Three skylights filtered light into the room, along with huge
stain
glass wind
ows at the back of the library. A giant
marble staircase had been made, obviously for humans because Azmaveth could easily reach all the books, and big rolling ladders were
scattered around
the room
.
The books were about
triple or quadruple the size of a regular human book,
and
they
were on all sorts of subjects.

Azmaveth was
curled up, ga
zing at a book that was
titled
All About Princesses: Everything You Need to Know to Keep Your Pet Happy and C
lean
.

             
“Interesting title,”
I said
as I slowly approached him. My anger over the pigpen kitchen had evaporated.

Azmaveth looked
up from his reading material.
“
It is a highly educational read. I
t
’
s helping me
learn
why you do all the interesting things you do
,” h
e started,
about to launch into a lecture.
“Take your hair this morning
,
for an example.”

             
“What’s wrong
with my hair?” I sharply asked.

             
“Um, nothing!” he gulped.
“
It was positively beautiful. Did you want something?” he stammered, quickly back peddling.

             
It was then that I realized my captor was first and foremost a coward. It was highly unlikely I would ever do anything that would make him angry enough to gut me. These ponders lifted a weight from my shoulder
s
. This princess-
napping
ordeal would be bearable
, perhaps even
pleasant, if Azmaveth really was a coward.