Prince charming's Arc

Chapter 20 of 30

The dust from the cart had barely settled when Prince Charming rode back to his house and found Princess Elara Rosemary waiting on the porch. She had come down from the tower to eat. He told her about the travelers and the pebble and the dragon on the ridge. Then he asked her the question that had been building since the scholar left. What happens when strangers come and I am not here to drop a stone. She set down her bread. She said what he already knew. The pebble worked because he threw it. The dragon came because it was him. If a cart rolled up to the tower tomorrow and he was in town for salt, she would climb down her ladder and meet them alone, with no bird, no signal, and no way to call the mountain. They walked to the birdbath at the forest's edge. He wanted to test it. He picked a pebble from the path and gave it to her. He stepped back into the trees where the dragon could not see him. She set the stone on the flat rock the way he had shown her. They waited. The wind moved in the pines. A jewel bird crossed the clearing and kept going. Nothing came down from the mountain. After a long while she lifted the pebble and put it in her pocket. She said the dragon did not answer to a hand it did not know. He had suspected it. Now he had seen it. He walked her back to the lookout tower and climbed the ladder behind her. From the platform they could see the road, the ridge, and the smoke of his own chimney below. He told her the plan he had made on the walk. From now on, when she saw a party on the road, she would ring nothing and wait. She would send a jewel bird to his house with a seed tied to its foot. He would come at a gallop. If he was gone longer than a day, she would close the tower, come down, and turn travelers back with the old lie about a sick keeper on the mountain. She was not to summon the dragon. She was not to try. She agreed. She asked him what he would do about the days he could not be reached. He had no answer. He climbed back down the ladder and stood in the grass looking up at her small figure on the platform. The mountain was guarded, but only when he was within a bird's flight of it. He had solved one problem and uncovered a smaller, sharper one underneath. His range was now the size of the forest, and he could not leave it.