Prince charming's Arc

Chapter 14 of 30

Prince Charming woke before dawn and stood at the window. The sign was up on the ridge, but a sign only worked on a man who could read. He thought of the hunters he had driven off. Two of them had made their marks with a thumb on the dirt when he asked their names. A painted man and a crossed arrow would mean nothing to eyes that had never learned letters or pictures on wood. He needed a watcher. Someone at height, before the ridge, who could see a stranger coming and turn him back with a voice. He walked to the birdbath at first light and found Princess Elara Rosemary already there, filling it from a pail. He told her the sign was not enough. He said an illiterate hunter would walk past it and climb straight into the dragon's reach. She set the pail down. She said her tower stood on the rise between the road and the forest path. From its platform a person could see the fields all the way to the fence line. She said she would take it. She would sit the watch herself while she remained, and after that they would find others to sit it in turn. He agreed before he let himself think about the cost of asking. They walked to the tower together. She climbed the ladder and stood at the rope rail and pointed down the road. A cart was there, small as a beetle, moving toward the forest. She said she could see a man on the seat and a bow across his knees. Prince Charming climbed up beside her. He watched the cart come. When it reached the fence she called down to the driver, told him a dragon lived on the mountain and any man who climbed past the sign would not come back. The driver stared up at her, then at the ridge, then at the black scale catching the sun on the post. He turned the cart in the road and drove back the way he had come. Prince Charming came down the ladder with his hands still shaking. The warning had held, but only because a voice had carried it. A sign alone would not have stopped the man in the cart; he had never once looked at the plank. On the peak the dragon shifted, and a single jewel bird crossed the sky and settled on the tower rail beside Princess Elara Rosemary. She held out her palm and the bird stepped onto it. Prince Charming understood then that the mountain had a gate now, and the gate had a keeper who was not him. His forest was watched from two heights. What he did not yet know was how many carts were still on the road behind the first.