Prince charming's Arc

Chapter 13 of 30

The scale sat on the table by the window all night, and Prince Charming kept looking at it as if it might speak. The dragon would hold its fire. That was half the promise. The other half was the stranger climbing the ridge with a bow, who did not know a promise had been made at all. By morning he understood the warning had gone the wrong direction. He had told the mountain about the hunters. He had told no hunter about the mountain. He walked the path to the forest's edge with Princess Elara Rosemary beside him. The stone birdbath stood where she had set it, water clear, a few bright feathers stuck to the rim. He said the ridge needed a sign. Something a stranger could read before he raised a weapon. She asked what a hunter would believe. He said a hunter would believe another hunter's mark. A warning at the treeline. A scale nailed to a post. Proof that the mountain was claimed. They went back to his house and worked through the morning on the porch. He cut a plank from a shelf inside and burned three lines into it with a poker from the hearth: a man, an arrow crossed out, a mountain. Princess Elara Rosemary tied the small black scale to the top of the plank with a strip of her own hair. She said a scale from a live dragon was a thing no hunter could argue with. He carried the sign under his arm and a spade in his other hand and started for the ridge before noon. He set the post at the foot of the climbing path, where the trees thinned and the rock began. He drove it deep and packed the stones around it. He stepped back. The scale caught the sun and threw a slow black shine. From the peak he heard nothing, but he felt the dragon watching, the way he always felt it now. He raised his hand toward the mountain. A single jewel bird crossed the sky above him and turned back. The sign was up. Any stranger with eyes would see it before he nocked an arrow. He came down the slope and found Princess Elara Rosemary waiting at the birdbath. She asked if he thought it would hold. He said it would hold for the ones who could read. It would not hold for the ones who wanted to shoot anyway. She nodded and did not soften it. Somewhere on the road below the fields, a cart was already moving toward the forest. He did not know it yet. He only knew the warning was planted, and the next face over the ridge would be the test of it.