Crown Princess Madeleina Von de Compte Schwanmept Rupert Twissy (third of her name) sat on a broken stalagmite, scratched her shoulders under the shawl she’d made of half her best gown, gazed upon the broken and jagged stones of Kalamity Peak, and pondered upon the pros and cons of being violently abducted by a dragon on her eighteenth birthday.
Well, she didn’t have to wear her best gown anymore. The damned thing had almost stifled her to death before the dragon’s claws had pierced several of its mainstays, gaffs and booms as she was plucked up from the Tsaress of Ammygdala’s garden.
The dragon’s name was Rxixghorashclaclajermorashahexamalcrar. Madeleina had asked her if she could shorten it to ‘Rxix,’ or better yet, ‘Rix.’ She had been denied this.
Learning how to fend for herself on the greatest of the Shattered Trinity peaks had been exhilarating. Madeleina had never imagined herself so happy to snap a rabbit’s neck with her bare hands, or so cunning at finding fresh wild onions growing in the finger-deep soil in the lee of a boulder.
So on the whole things seemed to almost be more good than bad. But the way Rxixghorashclaclajermorashahexamalcrar kept offhandedly informing Madeleina she was going to eat her… well. She could do without that. It made the whole affair a bit sour to her mouth.
Oh right! That reminded her. It had been five minutes (counted by heartbeats; Madeleina had always had a nice even pulse since she was a child), and it was time to flip the little rabbit steaks where they sizzled on the flattest stone she could find, placed close enough to the fire that the flames almost licked it salaciously.
The second side would move much more quickly.
Onions, onions, little green onion sprouts, and the biggest safest mushroom she’d found (bless her childhood tutor and her odd fascination with fungi), all sizzling merrily away in what little fat she’d scraped off the sides of the poor rabbit. Good thing they were well away from winter.
Browned all. As good a crust as she could make without iron. Bless the days she’d spent eavesdropping on the kitchens, bless her father’s inattentiveness to her studies when she was a child, and bless the palate of Rxixghorashclaclajermorashahexamalcrar be fond of coneys.
And as she thought of the devil, so she appeared. There were many words and many ways to conceptualize the arrival of the dragon, of her scale and of her scope and of her span and so on, but perhaps the most clear way to encompass her in the moment of her landing was a single word that wasn’t a word at all, and that word was
WHOOOOMP.
“Now what have you been up to this time?” asked Rxixghorashclaclajermorashahexamalcrar. She sniffed, a surprisingly delicate affectation, but then again Madeleina had learned after four or five escape attempts that she had a nose that made a bloodhound look like an elder with a head-cold. “Smells burned. Promising!”
“The onions are CHARRED,” said Madeleina with a severity that she took from her chaperone and knew full well would have no effect.
“Synonyms, synonyms, synonyms,” chanted the dragon. “And who is this for?”
“Why, you,” said Madeleina . “In hopes that you’ll find something tastier for your plate than Crown Princess.”
“I have no plates.”
“Palate, then,” said Madeleina . “Go on. It’s just finished.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” said Rxixghorashclaclajermorashahexamalcrar, and she scooped up the meat, the mushrooms, the onions, the rocks they were cooking on, the entire campfire, and very nearly Madeleina if she hadn’t fallen over backwords, then she tipped the whole lot into her maw and swallowed once.
“Hmm,” she said. “Hmm. Mpph. Ack. Well, a bit crunchy and tasteless. Promising hint of warmth, but not much substance to it. I think I’d rather still eat you, sorry.”
“You weren’t meant to eat the stones,” said Madeleina crossly.
“What, surely you didn’t intend for me to consume the meat alone?” said Rxixghorashclaclajermorashahexamalcrar in astonishment. “That little thing?”
“It wasn’t a small rabbit.”
“Princess, princess, princess,” said Rxixghorashclaclajermorashahexamalcrar solemnly, shaking her head that was bigger than a plough-horse, shark-jagged teeth still shedding crushed granite. “There ARE no big rabbits.”
“Perhaps there are no big Crown Princesses either,” said Madeleina.
“Big enough,” said Rxixghorashclaclajermorashahexamalcrar, as she eeled her way down, down, down into the dark chasms of the cave, where no light would disturb her nap. “Big enough.”
***
The next day, Crown Princess Madeleina Von de Compte Schwanmept Rupert Twissy (third of her name, and may there be others after her), went hunting.
And the next day.
And the next.
And the next day she went again and finally found something, which (bless the slow digestion of dragons) was just in time. It was an elk come up the mountain slopes to feed on the little summer meadows in full flower downslope from where Rxixghorashclaclajermorashahexamalcrar did her business (volcanic ash was a wonder for plants it seemed), and it was majestic and alert and entirely unprepared for a very small but targeted landslide.
Madeleina had learned a lot of very specific geological facts in her time on the peaks. Where to put her feet and when had been number one.
Digging the elk out was hard, but it was nicely tenderized and not too badly mangled. She dragged it upslope an inch at a time.
There were no scavengers. Predators kept well out of the way of a dragon’s scent.
The liver, the kidneys, the heart, all separated and chopped and minced as best as she could with a knife made from a stone-sharpened snapped femur, then boiled in its stomach, in a wooden bowl filled with fire-heated stones.
The meat of the flank and the haunch and the shoulder and the ribs and EVERYWHERE, cut free in flaps and sliced and scorched senseless on the thinnest, flattest, hottest rocks she could find.
The application of what few herbs she could pluck from the meadow that probably weren’t poisonous, along with a very few, very small, very hot little peppers that she’d sampled herself and determined to be as close to human-inedible as any fruit could be.
It wasn’t a feast, but it was more than she’d have ever thought she’d managed, with less than she’d ever dreamed of having.
“I smell meat,” said the dragon’s voice, rich and thunderous and wrapping around Madeleina like a velvet blanket. “And blood. And oh my that’s a LOT of blood. Are you going to be sick?”
“No,” said Madeleina, who’d scrubbed off as best as she could in the little cave-stream.
“Good. Now, what is this?”
“Elk haggis,” said Madeleina. “And elk…” Steak? Roast? Rump? Chuck? Shoulder? “…bits,” she decided on.
“What’s haggis?”
“A bit of everything.”
“What a good idea,” said Rxixghorashclaclajermorashahexamalcrar, and she plucked up the haggis and the roasted meats and put them all in her mouth, moved her tongue in a curious manner, swallowed, and spat out the basket.
“Well!” she said in a pleased way. “That’s certainly better than raw, I’ve got to say. Now I see a use for this cooking besides satisfying your sad little stomachs.”
“Would you like more?” asked Madeleina.
“Not quite as much as I’d like to eat you,” sighed Rxixghorashclaclajermorashahexamalcrar. “But it was close!”
“Really?”
“Well. Maybe not THAT close,” admitted the dragon. And she curled up quite tightly and went to sleep immediately with a satisfied little grunt.
***
Four days later Crown Princess Madeleina Von de Compte Schwanmept Rupert Twissy (third of her name, god willing, not the last) had found four tough little mountain potatoes and a long-dead grouse that had perished in a crevice out of reach of fox and crow and stoat but not, alas, of ants.
She watched the sun rise and had never seen anything more fully in her life, hungry and cold and depressed as she was. It spreads its rays across the Shattered Trinity, and across the far green lands her father ruled, and all the way to the world rolling away beyond her sight and past.
It was a lovely place. Pity she’d not get to see more of it. Pity she’d never learned more about foraging, or hunting, or cooking. Pity that Rxixghorashclaclajermorashahexamalcrar wanted to eat a princess so badly. But there was precious little space in that sunlight for pity or regret or the future so Crown Princess Madeleina Von de Compte Schwanmept Rupert Twissy (third of her name) cleared her throat and said the following:
“I, Crown Princess Madeleina Von de Compte Schwanmept Rupert Twissy (third of her name), hereby renounce my title, my peerage, my stature, my family, my crown, my birthright, and all other particulars.”
She shut her eyes tight for a minute, then risked opening one a crack.
The sunrise was still very pretty.
So Madeleina sat and watched it for a long, long time until the stones behind her crackled and crunched and ground away under the great rolling gut of a dragon’s passing.
“Hmm!” said Rxixghorashclaclajermorashahexamalcrar sharply. “Hmm! What have YOU been doing?”
“Nothing much,” said Madeleina, truthfully.
“Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” said Rxixghorashclaclajermorashahexamalcrar. “That doesn’t SMELL like nothing. You’ve done something. Come on, tell me.”
“I’ve renounced my title,” said Madeleina.
“Oh wyrmtitties,” said the dragon in the crossest voice Madeleina had ever heard. “No wonder. Ugh, you’re all off now. Nothing there but hard work and sweat. If I wanted peasant I have villages close by, and I never have and never will. Bah. Bah!”
“You… wanted to eat me just for my title?” asked Madeleina.
The dragon snorted and the ceiling shook. “Certainly,” she said. “It’s where all the sweet and spice comes from. Fancy living and soft lives and cushy money make for tender flesh, you know – but nothing adds to flavour like wealth and power.”
“Then why take me?” asked Madeleina. “You plunged down to my father’s first summer ball of the year! The gardens of Borjeport are SWARMING with the titled gentry! You could’ve had a double handful of earls and countesses for breakfast every day for the past two weeks!”
Rxixghorashclaclajermorashahexamalcrar looked at her. “You mean to say… there are nobility that aren’t princesses?”
“Yes.”
“Or royalty in general?”
“Yes!”
The dragon stared into the sun. “Perhaps…” she ventured cautiously “even the untitled can live like nobles?”
“Some of them.”
“And they will be at these summer balls?”
“Absolutely.”
“Wonderful. I’ll be home tonight. Feel free to be about your business.”
WHOOOOMP.
Madeleina, first and probably last of her name (she’d never been very fond of it, or the grandmother who’d insisted on it), watched the dragon fly until her wings faded away in the vast blue of the morning sky.
Well.
Perhaps it was for the best that she’d never been terribly fond of high society.