George S. Walker

Letters

Originally published in Plasma Frequency Magazine (February 2014)

Talaitha awoke to the smell of smoke. Half-asleep, she heard the serene patter of raindrops, the fireplace crackle of flames. Not from her fireplace. It took her a moment to realize what was burning.

Her hut.

The dragon had set the rain on fire.

Talaitha swore and rolled off her straw mattress. She yanked on dead-reindeer shoes and wrapped her blood colored cloak around her. Stumbling to the table, she grabbed the stack of Prince Frederick’s letters. No time for anything else. She coughed from the smoke. Burning thatch began to fall.

“Impenetrabilis vestimentum!”

Her cloak glowed with dark light. She covered her bed-messed hair with the hood, stuffed the letters up her sleeve and pushed her way out into the burning rain. It sizzled harmlessly on her cloak, fiery rivulets dripping onto the dirt. Against the night sky, the forest was in flames.

She was halfway to the stone-sheltered ravine when she smelled the rain change. Less sulfur and coal, more clouds and mist. Unburned rain poured down in sheets, soaking her shoes and gradually putting out the flames in the trees.

Talaitha trudged back up the hill to the remains of her hut, water squishing in her shoes.

The walls remained. The roof was gone. She stood forlornly in the middle of her open hut, rain dripping from her nose. By the dark glow of her cloak, her blackened mattress was a mass of damp straw. Next to the hearth oven, the cookies she’d baked for Prince Frederick (with oats she’d picked by hand) were sad little lumps of coal.

Her dove poked its head out from its niche in the stone wall of the hut, regarding her warily.

There was a time when this would have revived her old feud with the dragon. But Frederick’s letters had taught her to see beyond petty revenge.

“We’ll get by, won’t we, Dora? Rebuild the roof, sew a new mattress. And this gives me things to write Frederick.”

The dove, which had never shown signs of affection, did not coo.

It took her a month to clean, fill a new mattress with straw and rebuild the roof. She hardly had to use magic at all. For as Prince Frederick had written in one of his letters, “Witchcraft is a bottomless pit that exhausts the soul.”

She wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but Frederick had written it for her alone, and if that wasn’t true love, she didn’t know what was. She re-read his last letter and sighed deeply.

Prince Frederick’s birthday was only a week away. The lords and ladies of his court would lavish upon him gifts from all corners of the realm. What could a poor maiden like herself give him? Without using magic?

A cake.

But no ordinary cake. A cake so light and fluffy it would float off his plate if it wasn’t held down.

A cake made with dragon eggs.

Getting them required stealth, planning and stamina. Plus mountain-climbing gear. Lacking coin of the realm, she had to use a bit of magic for that. (Frederick needn’t know.)

When she was ready, she struggled up the Crag of Doom and across the Glacier of Graves to the Crevice of the Lost. Below lay the dragon’s lair.

She’d been here before, pre-Frederick. Her goal then had been spiteful: to show the dragon that if she wanted, she could steal its treasure.

As a Reformed Witch, the trip was harder.

She hammered in pitons at the top and rappelled down the Crevice. Taking only her hammer and a fishing net, she felt her way through the pitch black cavern until she reached the dragon’s egg chamber.

With a tiny spell, she lit a sputtering candle.

The eggs were overhead, nestled against the stone ceiling.

For Prince Frederick, only the best would do. Using her net, she snagged eggs one by one, testing them for freshness with her hammer. As her mother said, “You can’t make a cake without breaking a few eggs.” That made a mess on the stone ceiling.

Finally she had two perfect eggs that had resisted her hammer. The dragon wouldn’t be happy, but it wasn’t like the eggs were going to hatch anyway: It had no mate. Prince Frederick’s letters had taught her about the power of logical reasoning, and perhaps someday she’d try that on the dragon. (With her cloak at full magical vigor.)

She made her way through the cavern, up the Crevice, across the Glacier, down the Crag and back to her hut.

The next morning she prepared a beautiful cake with violet and gold frosting. She secured it inside a heavy pewter box and entrusted it to the Royal Delivery Service. Then she wrote a long birthday letter to Frederick.

She tied it to Dora’s leg and held the dove over her head. “Fly to my Beloved, faster than the wind!”

Dora looked down at her. The dove did not coo. After a moment, it flapped its wings and flew toward the castle.

Dora didn’t return that day. Which was promising. (It meant Frederick was composing a long, thoughtful letter.)

Nor did Dora return the second day. Talaitha could barely contain her excitement. It was going to be a long, wonderful letter, perhaps quoting Rousseau.

On the third day, as Talaitha was re-reading some of Frederick’s old letters, she smelled smoke.

Not burning thatch. Not rain on fire. This smelled like burning meat: like chicken that hadn’t been fully plucked before roasting.

She opened her door and peered outside.

There on the dirt was a smoldering lump of feathers. The blackened remains of a cord were tied around a charred leg bone. She saw ashes of a rolled-up letter and some burnt sealing wax.

Looking skyward she saw a dark shape retreating toward the mountain. Lightning crackled from her fingertips.

“Oh, it’s ON now.”