Prince charming's Arc

Chapter 18 of 30

By noon a stranger stood at the forest's edge. Prince Charming saw him from the porch — a young man with a pack, a walking staff, and no bow. Not a hunter. Something worse, maybe. Prince Charming crossed the yard to meet him before he could step under the trees. The stranger smiled and asked if this was the road to the dragon mountain. He said he had heard a story in a tavern two days back. A man limping, buying drinks, telling how a beast on a ridge pinned him and let him crawl. The stranger wanted to know if the story was true. He said he was a scholar, and he only wanted to see the creature from a safe distance and write it down. Prince Charming took his time. A wrong word here would bring ten more like him by week's end, then a hundred. He told the stranger the story was half true. There was a dragon. It had killed three hunters on the ridge last month, and the bones were still up there. The man who told the tavern story had been spared as a warning, nothing more. He said the forest itself was closed — game was thin, the paths were watched, and a woman in a tower turned back every traveler who tried the mountain road. He pointed across the field to the birdbath at the treeline and said the dragon knew when strangers came. As he spoke, a shadow crossed the grass. The dragon had come down to the ridge and stood there in full sun, wings half spread, its long body dark against the rock. Prince Charming had not called it. It had come on its own, drawn by the pebble he had dropped that morning or by something he could not name. The stranger stared. His hand tightened on the staff. Prince Charming said quietly that the scholar could turn around now, or he could walk up the ridge and see the bones for himself, but only one of those choices ended at home. The stranger watched the dragon a long moment. Then he thanked Prince Charming, turned on the path, and went back the way he had come. Prince Charming stood in the field until the man was out of sight. The dragon on the ridge folded its wings and lay down. One traveler was turned. The story had held its shape for one more telling — but the shape depended now on a creature that came when it chose, and on a lie Prince Charming would have to tell again to every face that arrived.