Prince charming's Arc

Chapter 29 of 30

By afternoon Prince Charming remembered what the princess had promised. Her wagons would come within the week, loaded with grain and honey and seed, driven by men from her household who had never seen the dragon and did not know the rules of this place. One shout from a driver on the road would carry up the ridge. One bolted horse would break the truce he had spent months building. He climbed the ladder of the wooden tower and found the princess at the rail, watching the road. He asked her when the wagons would come and who would drive them. She said three days, and named four men she trusted with her grain but not with a secret. Prince Charming told her the drivers could not cross the treeline blind. She agreed. They wrote a plan on the platform floor with a piece of chalk from her pocket. On the third morning Prince Charming rode out to meet the wagons a mile down the road, before they were in sight of the mountain. He stopped them at a bend where the trees hid the ridge. He told the drivers the truth in plain words: there was a dragon on the mountain, it was tame to his call, and it would not harm them if they kept their voices low and their eyes on the road. He showed them the black scale from his pocket and let each man hold it. Two went pale. One laughed until the others made him stop. The fourth asked if he could turn back. Prince Charming said yes, and paid him a portion from the princess's purse to walk home and hold his tongue. The three who stayed climbed back to their seats. He rode ahead of them at a walk, and the princess lit no smoke, and the dragon stayed on its ledge as they had agreed. The wagons reached his house by noon. The drivers unloaded the sacks in the yard without looking up at the mountain once. When they left, they left quiet. Prince Charming stood among the grain sacks and knew the secret had grown by three more mouths, and that a fourth man was walking a road with coin in his pocket and a story he had been paid not to tell.