Drakonian Pink: Dragon Fairy Tales, #5

By D.C. Harrell

Well behaved women seldom make handbags. 

Rohi hates handbags, but Mama insists she learn to handcraft one. First she must hunt a dragon; then fashion her own lady-case from its hide. 

But Rohi's convinced that following this tradition won't really help the family purse business stay afloat or satisfy her mother, much less herself. What she craves is respect, not pretty-pretty accessories. So she steals her uncle's airboat and navigates deep into the Erbwaters swamp. 

Will she earn the regard of a legendary dragon hunter or die trying to save the family business on her own? 

With the fifth stand-alone Dragon Fairy Tale, D.C. Harrell stokes your fire for freedom, but don't stray too close to the water unless you're willing to swim with the dragons. 

Do you like relentless heroines and a touch of romance in your dragon hunts? Then this is a coming-of-age adventure for you. 

Got a couple hours? Download Drakonian Pink now and fall in love with Rohi's Erbwaters and the supergirls it sparks. 

Or find all six Dragon Fairy Tales collected as Dragon Hoard: Dragon Fairy Tales 1-6. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stone's Throw Publishing
• Release date: Mar 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386093886

Book preview

Drakonian Pink

Drakonian Pink

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

For a FREE STORY, sign in at https://dcharrell.com/free/

Cover design adapted, with gratitude, from Sophia Feddersen’s (The Book Brander) design for Dragon Hoard: Dragon Fairy Tales 1-6.

Typesetting created with Vellum.

Contents

Get All the Dragon Fairy Tales

Drakonian Pink

Author’s Note

Get All the Dragon Fairy Tales

Sign into D.C. Harrell’s Letter Lair

for your FREE story at

https://dcharrell.com/free.

---

Download the anthology here:

Dragon Hoard: Dragon Fairy Tales 1-6

---

Or buy them individually here:

1. Fisherman and Old Cloot

2. A Deal is a Deal

3. Dragon Wear

4. Drake Take

5. Drakonian Pink

6. Tarragon Hair

Drakonian Pink

No. No. No. No. No!" grumbled Ermana, rising from her stool and snatching the awl out of Rohiya’s sweaty hand.

The ladies at the nearby sewing machines ignored their spat. Around the noisy room, nineteen heads bent over their own handbags at various stages of design, but Rohiya could feel their stifled smirks anyway.

I told you. Groove the leather on the grain side first, bossed her sister. And where’s your cardboard? Don’t you listen to anything I say? I just sharpened this point! You can stone and strop it yourself if you’re too stupid to put an old box underneath.

Last time you yelled at me because the stitching holes didn’t line up with the groove!

Rohiya had never hated this workshop so much. She thought she hated it before when Mama set her outside with the ladies who prepared raw dragon skins, soaking, scraping, preserving and dyeing loricator and drakonile hides until her hands were raw and her clothes stank so bad she couldn’t wash them enough. But at least there was an occasional breeze and bird song out there. She thought she hated it later, when Mama brought her into the oven of a cinder block building to gather scraps, file patterns and buff finished handbags. Buffing. Buffing. Her arm half broke with buffing, but never enough to suit her mother.

Now that her sister was teaching her how to cut and stitch the actual handbags, she knew she would not survive to her sixteenth birthday without driving that drakked awl into something or someone, probably Ermana. It wasn’t Ermana’s fault, though; she was just trying to help.

Rohiya bit her tongue and sucked a lungful of hot air. Her hands were so slick that even when she did plan the angle carefully, the wooden handle slipped. If I make the groove after, then I’ll see the holes and be able to line it up, she argued.

Ermana glared back. Pink, she started in that aggravating, slow cadence that people used on misbehaving 3-year-olds, the stitching will look horrible and then I won’t be able to sell it. Two years ago, once Ermana had made her own handbag, she immediately began taking shifts in Viejo’s front store. Rohiya wasn’t allowed anywhere near the shoppers, which was fine with her.

Enough!

Rohiya twitched. She didn’t know Mama was behind them. She and Ermana rotated to face her. They knew better than to refuse at least the appearance of listening when their mother took that tone.

Her name is not Pink. Mama had named Rohiya for their grandmother, and she hated the nickname, which meant Rohiya kind of liked it.

Yes, Mama, answered Ermana.

Rohi, you are an adult now. When you do up your hair and dress properly, you are beautiful. It’s time to bag yourself.

Rohi had heard this lecture a thousand times, but sitting on her stool brought her eye-to-snapping-eye with her mother. She wiped her palms on her cut-off dungarees, another point of contention with Mama, who insisted dresses were comfortable enough.

"You will learn everything that your sister teaches you. Mama never met a problem that couldn’t be solved by a force of will, usually hers. It’s well past time, but I can’t arrange your loricator hunt with Uncle Tonton until you finish at least one bag by yourself—whether or not she can sell it," Mama shot at Ermana.

Rohi was surprised to see perspiration breaking out on her mother’s forehead. No matter how much Mama shouted, no matter how muggy Erbwater weather got, no matter how the sweat trickled between Rohi’s breasts, she rarely saw anything but cool skin from her mother.

Was Mama worried about Rohi’s hunt?

That was the only part of her mother’s tradition that Rohi could stomach. Her uncle took her loricator hunting every year as soon as the weather cooled. The speed of the Curtiss, the sweet rot of the air, the buzzing swamp song, the thrill of staking their wits against a dragon—that was the highlight of every year. For her own hunt, Uncle would watch while she lured the beast, dispatched it with a stun stick and severed its spine, but it wasn’t like he was going to leave her in the swamp to hunt alone. Was it?

Even if he did, she could tolerate that better than fashioning her own handbag from the hide she hunted and then feasting on that loricator’s meat at her wedding. She’d watched Ermana bend and scrape to her husband’s will, the same as she obeyed their mother. Rohi had no intention of tying herself down to a man. Mama had made it without a husband, and so would she.

And Rohi definitely would not carry a handbag, no matter how fashionable the silly accessories, no matter how important the family tradition, maybe especially because every single woman in her family had been bagged.

Mama clicked open her own handbag and found a handkerchief.

Rohi stared at the horrible lady-case. As far back as she could remember, her mother had looped those bony handles over her left arm and toted the hard, tan case everywhere, all day long, as though she were queen of Britanik. Every morning, Mama emerged from her tiny bedroom upstairs with the loricator bag in tow. She might set it on her desk while she worked, but the instant she stood up, she put the boxy case on her arm again. Once Rohi had teased that Mama must even take the handbag to bed like a blankie, but then she realized it might actually be true.

Now Mama patted her face with the hankie, and the uncomfortable evidence disappeared immediately as though the cloth held some sort of magic. Mama shoved the square into her dress pocket, lifted her chin and shouted over the din of mallets and sewing machines, Listen!

Silence sprang up immediately, like the jungle overtaking yesterday’s path. Only the room’s one slow fan droned on.

Letty Pade is considering adding loricator handbags to her line, Mama announced in her commanding business voice.

The collective intake of breath almost caused a breeze through the cloying fumes of industrial glue. Almost.

Rohiya couldn’t stand Letty Pade with her pretty-pretty accessories that cost a fortune in swank department stores. They drove her mother’s sales into the ground, but still, Ermana and every other girl Rohi knew preferred Letty Pade’s brightly dyed purses and sparkly clutches.

Someone showed her a Viejo last year and she and her husband Bert want to stop by when they’re here for vacation. They’re looking for a dragon bag supplier. Mama let the good news hang a moment before dropping the other shoe. "Viejo Dragon Bags will be that supplier. We will demonstrate volume as well as our trademark quality. Also, she wants lightweight drakonile options and colors,