Dragonskin Slippers by Jessica Day George Read Free Book Online Page B

struck me. “But why are you being so kind to me?” I tried to keep suspicion out of my voice and simply sound humble. Was he trying to catch me off guard, or fatten me up for better eating?
    “Perhaps to prove to you that we dragons are not allas bad as the bards would make us out to be,” he said with an airy wave of one foreleg. “Or perhaps because I miss my alchemist friend.” He strolled over to one of the larger windows and gazed intently at the scene it depicted: a young woman in a green gown playing the harp while a dragon wheeled overhead. “Or perhaps because something about you reminds me of a fair dragoness I knew long, long ago,” he finished in more sombre tones.
    “Oh. Thank you.”
    I went over to my pack and began to lay out my embroidery floss and needles. I was starting to feel hungry, but ignored it. When my stomach growled loudly, however, Shardas laughed and went into another chamber. He came back with an immense wheel of cheese and a basket of apples. Putting aside my silks, I let the dragon show me how to impale the fruit and chunks of hard cheese on to a stick. I held the stick away from me, and he used the barest trickle of flame to toast our food. We feasted until I thought I would burst. Then Shardas settled himself down in the middle of the room to contemplate his windows, and I began my sampling set.
    A few hours later, we heard Feniul call from the pool, insisting that Shardas give Azarte a talking-to. Shardas and I rolled our eyes in unison, and then he began to sing to drown out the sound of barking dogs.
    In a great deep voice the gold dragon sang “The Ballad of Jylla and the Fair Youth of Trin”, a song my fatherhad often sung in the evening. Tears pricking my eyes, I bent over my sewing. The piece I was working on was meant to be a curling vine, but in my mind it was the sinuous curve of a dragon’s tail.

A Cave Like Home
    I slept that night on a fresh pile of leaves and branches in the main chamber of Shardas’s lair. The next morning, I awoke stiff and groggy, with hair like a bottlebrush and my gown sadly creased.
    “You look awful,” Shardas said.
    “Thank you,” I muttered.
    There was a roast pig and a bowl of strawberries the size of a washtub sitting on the floor in the middle of the chamber. Still half asleep, I ate berries and pork and tried to get my bearings. Shardas attempted to make conversation, but when I replied only with grunts, he gave up.
    After breakfast, during which he ate most of the pork and all but a handful of the strawberries (stems and all), he took me down the passageway and into another cave.
    “This will refresh you, I hope,” he said.
    The floor of the chamber sloped away from the entrance to a pool of turquoise-blue water that steamed inthe dim light. Shardas’s bulk would fill the pool with only just enough room to turn around, but it was still bigger than the pond I had learned to swim in at home.
    “The water is quite hot for humans, though I enjoy it,” Shardas said. “If you do not get too close to the middle, I think you will find it comfortable enough.”
    “Is it a natural hot spring?”
    “Oh, yes, there are many such in this land.”
    “Not around Carlieff Town.”
    “You didn’t spend enough time in caves, then. That is why we dragons came to Feravel in the beginning: so many deep caves, with air vents and hidden pools.” He gave a great sigh, rippling the water. “Even Milun the First couldn’t get rid of us entirely.” And with that he left me to bathe.
    I ran back down the passage and fetched my pack. There was a little nub of soap tied up in a spare handkerchief and a clean set of underthings in the bottom of my pack. Keeping to the edges of the pool as suggested, I scrubbed myself clean. My straight hair was horribly tangled, and I broke two teeth off my comb working through it. Then I took the rest of the soap and scrubbed the dirt and sweat out of my gown and laid it over a rocky outcropping to dry.
    Having