Dragon Hoard: Dragon Fairy Tales 1 - 6: Dragon Fairy Tales

By D.C. Harrell

Come not between a dragon and its sass! 

Hunger, cunning, smart-talk, blood-power, tenacity, and cocky composure power the adventures of six everyday champions as they battle sea-serpents and cryptids, dragons and way-drakes. 

With the collected Dragon Fairy Tales, D.C. Harrell lures you through medieval forests and fetid swamps, African legends and Scottish highlands, but you'll burn your fingers on this treasure trove if you're seeking safe supergirls. These coming-of-age heroines defy expectations to stake their territory among dragon knights of the fantasy world. 

~Can Innkeeper's Daughter trick the dragon into leaving his treasure and taking back his scales or will greed ruin her new home? 

~Will Rohi hunt the Red drakonile or will she die trying to save her family from ruin? 

~Can Fisherman's sons fill their bellies with monster meat or will they pay their own pound of flesh? 

~Will Tungel wait for her lover to rescue their baby from the drake-take or will she save the child herself? 

~Can Stutter talk his brothers back to safety or will they be consumed? 

~Does Amma trust to targon-tradition or does she dare to believe her own eyes? 

Drink your "desire for dragons" and discover if you, too, can filch fire from a dragon and survive. 

Pinch your copy of Dragon Hoard now.

Dragon Hoard collects all six short stories of the Dragon Fairy Tales in one volume.

~A Deal is a Deal 

~Drakonian Pink 

~Fisherman and Old Cloot 

~Drake Take 

~Dragon Wear 

~Tarragon Hair

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stone's Throw Publishing
• Release date: Jul 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386576365

Book preview

Dragon Hoard

Dragon Hoard

Dragon Fairy Tales 1 - 6

D.C. Harrell

Stone’s Throw Publishing

Copyright © 2018 by D.C. Harrell

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Published by Stone’s Throw Publishing, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55410.

dcharrell.com

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Cover design by Sophia Feddersen at The Book Brander.

Typesetting created with Vellum.

for Seram, Anika and Avery

and for Violet

Contents

A Deal is a Deal

Drakonian Pink

Fisherman and Old Cloot

Drake Take

Dragon Wear

Tarragon Hair

Author’s Note

A Deal is a Deal

Skin is only beauty deep.

Many years ago when trees still covered the land, there bode a woodcutter on the verge of a dragon-infested forest. Being more fanciful than practical, the woodcutter had located his cottage entirely too close to a stream. Every spring it flooded and mold blackened his walls. For months the logs had sounded punky when he tapped them, but day after day he told himself he would replace the lumber tomorrow.

When tomorrow dawned, he would climb out of bed, pull up his suspenders and eat cold porridge left over from supper. He would shoulder his ax and set off to fell a tree. Sometimes as he traipsed through the wood, he shot a deer with his longbow. Then he ate cold stew for breakfast, but it was not very good.

For years he longed for better meals and a tidy house, but being rather lazy, he neither planted a garden, nor straightened up. Instead, he considered the matter with some regularity and finally arrived at a conclusion. He needed a wife.

That Friday the woodcutter loaded his cart with lumber and headed down to the village. He reached market by midday, spilled some oats for his nag and went into the inn for his own refreshment. Inside, the innkeeper produced an ale, while hollering for his daughter to fetch a plate.

The woodcutter had not seen the innkeeper’s daughter since she was a girl, and he stared at her silky black braids as she disappeared into the kitchen. When she returned, he minded his manners, yet he could not help noticing her red rosebud lips and her milky white skin.

All the next week he thought on the innkeeper’s daughter until everything else seemed ugly in comparison. The shutters fit ill in the window frame. Mud spattered the walls. His bed sheets crunched with a litter of leaves and stray burrs that he had tracked in on his socks. Even the old nag looked swayback.

By Friday he concluded that what his supper and the hut were missing was the innkeeper’s daughter to prepare it right and keep it clean. He changed into his other shirt and set off for the village at once.

That afternoon, when the innkeeper was done chatting and the woodcutter had emptied his pint, he announced his plan. I want to marry your daughter. I have no wife and my house is empty. She can plant a garden in the meadow and draw from the pool under the eaves of the wood. I’ll allow her to visit every Friday when we come to market, and I’ll bring her to church on Sunday.

You don’t come to church on Sunday, retorted the innkeeper to buy some time, for the woodcutter was not what he might have hoped in a son-in-law. He wished fervently his wife were alive, for marriage-making was woman’s work.

I would, replied the woodcutter and meant it.

You couldn’t pay her dowry! The innkeeper breathed a sigh of relief, for he had almost forgotten his wife’s instructions concerning the bride-price.

How much do you want? asked the woodcutter, feeling uncomfortable, for he, too, had forgotten a surety of his good faith would be required.

The innkeeper tried to imagine how much the woodcutter’s load of firewood fetched each week. Usually the man left the inn with a small pouch of salt or cakes from the kitchens. He traded all over the village for firewood, but it was the townsfolk from downstream who bought most of his dried boards. Six guilders, he blurted, hoping to discourage the other man.

Two guilders, the woodcutter answered and regretted it immediately for he did not have two guilders and could not fathom where he would come by that much gold.

Five guilders. The innkeeper found himself negotiating in spite of his opinion of the man, for he loved to drive a hard bargain and counted himself among the most capable businesspersons of the village.

Two guilders and a new copper pot, answered the woodcutter, feeling very discouraged indeed, for the pot would cost him a trip into town. He disliked the town immensely. Townsfolk were rushed and rude, and they spoke in haughty accents with words he did not always understand.

Four guilders and the copper pot. And new sheets, the innkeeper added, remembering his wife at the last moment. She would have approved of the sheets.

The woodcutter was beginning to feel taken for advantage, which made him somewhat defensive. Three guilders. Not a penny more, he stressed in what he thought to be his firmest voice. There’s not a man in this village who could provide her better. The idea had only just occurred to him.

This was true, though the innkeeper had not considered the matter before that moment. He held vague notions of a rich knight in need of lodging, who took a fancy to his daughter, but he had to acknowledge that rich knights did not generally hazard adventures in the forest. On occasion a poor one would spend the night, declaring his intent to ride into the forest to ply his sword at the expense of a dragon, but none had ever returned, at least not by the village road. Besides, three guilders would add a new wing onto the inn.

And the pot and sheets?

And your pot and sheets, the woodcutter conceded, wishing himself back home in his rotting cottage.

Very well, the innkeeper agreed, and bellowed for his daughter.

She appeared immediately and curtsied to her father. Yes, Papa?

The woodcutter’s plight dimmed as she filled his vision, and he immediately felt himself lucky to have gotten away with three guilders and a copper pot.

Greet your husband, the innkeeper instructed.

Her eyes widened until the woodcutter thought they would pop out of her head and roll away.

Him? she choked. Her notions of a passing knight were rather more specific than her father’s. Poor though he might begin, someday a knight would return from the forest, having slain his dragon and won the dead beast’s treasure. Poor no longer, he would remember the innkeeper’s daughter and take her as his bride. Then, not only would she be beautiful, she would also be rich, richer than her father. She would speak properly, wear fashionable dresses and even live in the town.

She could not imagine sharing even clean sheets with this lump of a woodcutter. His eyebrows hooked upward in wiry disarray, and hairs prickled out of his ears. He smelled unwashed, and everyone knew he possessed no personal property of consequence and no practical sense whatsoever.

I cannot marry you, she stated in what she considered her most resolute voice.

Her father tried again, vigorously nodding up and down as though bobbing his own head would loosen her resolve. You shall have a plot for a garden and a near pool for the washing and a new copper pot, he told her in what he believed was his cheeriest voice.

A new copper pot? This did not sound at all like the chests brimming with rubies, ropes dripping with pearl or golden goblets she had imagined.

Your woodcutter has promised three guilders. We shall build a wing onto the inn. The innkeeper had hoped to bolster her mood by implying her value far exceeded the cost of a copper pot, but her frown only deepened. And new sheets, he put in, but his daughter burst into tears and ran away.

Oh, dear, he lamented, and turned his aggravation on the woodcutter. Now be off with you. You shan’t have her until I have three guilders and she has her copper pot. And new sheets. A deal’s a deal.

That night, the woodcutter returned to his moldering cottage much discouraged. A deal was a deal, as binding as if he had given his sworn word. All the way home, he had tried to calculate how many shaved planks he must sell to earn so much as half a guilder, but he was too muddled to add. He boiled water for the porridge, and worn out by the bargaining, fell asleep soon after his meal.

On the morrow, however, he awoke to a fresh idea, if not fresh sheets. Usually he split oak or fir, but deep in the forest, there were other trees. Giant trees. He had been lost one night and had wandered into rings of red trunks so broad that a man’s arms could not span their girth. If he could find them again, perhaps they would yield boards so wide that he could collect giant fees.

Being both inspired and impractical, he took no consideration for the difficulty of chopping such a tree, but set out at once with his axe and his nag. After a day of plodding deep into the forest, he turned off the track. For a while he wandered wherever the undergrowth gave way, but eventually rusted bark replaced black, and red trunks appeared, the girth of which could have contained his hut, had he cared to hollow them out.

So spellbound was he by the enormity of the trees he forgot his errand. Squinting in the dusk, he roamed from one stand to another until the darkness was too thick for walking. Then he sat down in a basket of roots, and tossing the nag some feed, munched his own crust of bread. His lids were about to wink shut when he caught a glint of firelight. He rubbed his eyes, but the flame was still there.

Clambering to his feet, he shuffled to the other side of the stand. The gleam had escaped through a crack in a tree. He fingered the crease, sliding his thumb down to the foot of the tree and the upward beyond his reach. Standing on tiptoes, he stretched higher, but this lost him his balance and he fell forward onto the tree. Something clicked.

When he heaved himself away, the door—for it was a door—sprang open and thumped him to the ground. A puff of hot red air burst into the forest. He stifled a shout and scrambled out of the blast. Then he peeked around the edge. The portal was twice his height, broad enough for four horses to pass abreast, but he could not see the end of the wooden tunnel into which it opened. There was neither torch nor hearth.

He crept inside with his back to the wall. Being more curious than commonsensical, he continued to edge down the twisting hall even after the door was out of sight. The farther he walked, the hotter the air became until his eyebrows scorched and crumbled beneath his fingers. He had nearly decided to turn back, when he rounded a corner and stumbled into a flashing cavern.

Lying curled before him was a huge green dragon. Its tail alone extended twice the length of the woodcutter’s nag. Yellow spines ridged the beast’s back from the tip of its tail to the crown of its head. White fangs poked from under its massive red muzzle. And one granite eyeball stared ahead unmoving. The dragon was asleep.

At least the woodcutter hoped it was asleep. Dragons were tricky creatures. He waited. The cavern throbbed slowly for the dragon’s bellows expanded once for every twenty times the woodcutter inhaled.

Its iridescent wings furled loosely over a giant mound of treasure. Shaped and raw, gems welled from under the worm’s belly, littering the floor with emerald and ruby sparkles. Brooches, torques, chains, rings, bracelets, glittering buttons, even spun gold spilled out of upturned chests.

Guilders and kroners and coins the woodcutter did not recognize were piled into small hills. In each fore-claw, the beast grasped an enormous golden cup.

As the woodcutter peered at the pile, an uncommon urgency grew, thumping in his chest. Finally it strained even the woodcutter’s patience, and he lowered himself to the floor, stealthily crawling forward. When he reached the mound, he watched his fingers sneak out and pinch a guilder. If he took just two more, he need chop no red trees for a dowry. His hand slid to the gold. Two. And again. Three.

He glanced up at the monster, but the dragon’s burning breath continued in and out, and the eyeball stared forward. Beneath the beast and beyond, the mound glittered. A few kroners from that treasure would never be noticed. If he took another guilder, he need do no work for a year. Maybe more. Being more weak-minded than wary, the woodcutter’s hand snaked out again. Four. Five. Six. The coins were strangely cool.

Clutching the gold, the woodcutter pulled himself up and stumbled back along the wandering hall. Once outside he tried to close the door quietly but it leapt from his hand and slammed shut.

In the lair far beneath, the dragon turned and winked in its sleep.

The woodcutter lay at the base of the big tree, panting fresh forest air until he felt the nag nosing his pockets in search of her morning oats. He had not slept a wink. He found his axe, collected the empty victual bag and heaved himself onto the nag’s back.

By the time he reached his cottage that night, he might have forgotten the burning air except his reflection in the pool looked strange with only stubble for eyebrows. Furthermore he felt tender from so much riding. He slipped the guilders under his pillow and fell into bed exhausted, but he dreamed such odd dreams that in the morning he woke with a start.

His back ached worse than usual, and he struggled to climb out of bed. With some effort he hoisted the suspenders of his trousers into place. As he reached for his left boot, a shadow skittered between his legs. Rat, he mourned, but he had no strength to capture the fellow. When he leaned down for the right shoe, he saw it again.

At least, he saw something. With the boot still dangling from his hand, he searched the room, but to no avail. He lifted his foot to a stool and laced the second boot. Straightening up, he groaned and rubbed the offending backbone.

His fingers met tattered cloth. For a moment he felt lucky to have discovered the tear before arriving in town. But the very next instant his hands encountered a protuberance. He snatched his fingers around front and inspected them closely. Then he grabbed the wooden spoon from the porridge pot and waved it behind himself in the neighborhood of his bottom. It struck something. And that something felt cold and sticky where the porridge rubbed off.

With uncharacteristic caution, the woodcutter worked slowly down his back until he reached the tender bulge. Trembling, he craned to the side, running his hand as far down the smooth, scaly thing as he could. But his body twisted, and the thing whisked beyond his grasp and smacked the bedpost. Ouch, he yelped, but in truth it hurt less than it surprised him.

He fled to the pool, searching for an angle that would reflect his backside. When this did not reveal anything, he spread his legs and doubled over. He could see the end of its green and yellow spines, but it sprang away when he grasped at it through his feet. The further he reached, the higher it bobbed. In desperation he tried to catch its end from the side, but no matter which way he turned, it flicked in the other direction. He arched his back and felt the oddly distant sensation of it brushing the earth. Shifting his foot warily, he pinned the tip to the ground. Then, crouching, he grasped the wily thing in his fist.

Gotcha! he shouted triumphantly and let go the tail instantly, for its spines had sliced open his palm.

He bandaged the hand as best he could and lowered himself gingerly onto a stool. What use were guilders in the hand with a tail at his back? The innkeeper would never let his daughter go if he knew the gold to be ill-gotten. A woodcutter with a dragon tail might as well shout the source of the coin from the village green. He considered the matter for some time and finally arrived at a conclusion. He would feign a head cold.

He trapped the tail again with his boot. This time, he captured it carefully, avoiding the thorns. Looping a rope around the tip, he leashed the pliable end to one of his suspenders, pulled it tight and hid the whole thing under an old coat. The coat was too hot for summer and it bulged where the tail was stiff and thick, but he hoped the innkeeper would hear him cough and assume he had caught