Prince charming's Arc

Chapter 27 of 30

Prince Charming rode home from the tinker's road with a cold thought sitting in his chest. He had spent the last coin in his purse to patch that hole. He had spent rubies on the dragon and a tower on the princess and honey on the deep woods, and now the well was dry. The forest trusted him because he fed it. The birds came because seed waited in the dish. The lynx crossed the second stream because honey strips hung from the branches. If the strips went bare for a week, the animals would drift back into fear. If the birdbath stayed empty of seed, the jewel flock would lift and go. Without the flock, the signal died. Without the signal, the dragon sat alone on the mountain again, and every stranger on the road became a threat he could not answer in time. He went through the house room by room that night. He counted what was left. A copper pot. Two wool blankets. His father's sword without its ruby. A shelf of dried apples going soft. He had no orchard of his own, no hives, no field of grain. He had been living off what the house held when he inherited it, and the house was almost empty. He sat at the table until the candle burned low. Then he wrote a short letter and sealed it, and at first light he rode to the wooden tower at the forest's edge. He climbed the ladder and found the princess at the rail with a jewel bird on her wrist. He gave her the letter and asked her to read it in front of him. It said he could no longer keep the forest alone. He asked her to bring her household from the road — her steward, her cook, her people, and their stores. He offered her half the standing right to the forest and the mountain in return for grain, honey, and seed brought in every month by her wagons. He would keep the pebble and the bond with the dragon. She would keep the tower and half the keeping. She read it twice. She said the wagons could come within the week. She cut a strip from the hem of her sleeve and tied it around his wrist to seal the bargain, since her hair was already short. He rode back down the ridge with the cloth on his wrist and refilled the stone dish at the forest's edge from the last of his own seed. The jewel birds dropped in one by one. The dragon watched from the mountain and did not move. The forest was no longer his alone, and the offerings would not run out. But he had traded half of what he had built for the grain to hold it, and he did not yet know what the princess's people would think of a tame dragon when they arrived.